Quote for the Independence Day Month of July:

A platitude is a high form of mediocrity.
— Bobby Matherne , Moon Baby

New Quotes Added to quotes.htm this month:

• You can't make people better off by taking options away from them.
  Thomas Sowell — American Writer
  
• If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time a tremendous whack.
  Winston Churchill — British WWII Prime Minister
• Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
  Paul Valery
  
• If I knew that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
  Henry David Thoreau — American Writer
• Every truth that is not also a vital impulse is a sterile truth.
  — Rudolf Steiner
• A little alliteration helps a lovely, little oration.
  — J. David Knepper (6/20/2008)

New Stuff about Website:

My Five Favorite Books on Education:

1. Mortimer Adler's How To Read A Book .

I read this book about 1977, and immediately wished someone had forced me to read it while I was yet in high school. Adler's four types of reading are invaluable guidelines to the types of reading I evolved into over the twenty years or so before I had read the book, but to have a guidebook to reading before then would have greatly aided my reading and reduced my confusion as how to proceed with the books I tackled incorrectly. The four levels of reading are:

1. Elementary reading: basically the level of reading one is taught to do in elementary and high schools.

2. Inspectional reading: systematic skimming and superficial reading.

3. Analytical reading: classifying, coming to terms, determining the message, criticizing the book, and author. [typical undergraduate college reading]

4. Syntopical reading: reading multiple books on one subject as defined by you - "one book opens another" C.G. Jung[typical post-graduate college reading]

Once you have determined what your subjects of interest are, then you're ready to apply these five steps as outlined by Mortimer Adler:

1. Finding Relevant Passages: "In syntopical reading, it is you and your concerns that are primarily to be served, not the books that you read. Your aim is to find the passages in the books that are most germane to your needs." [page 316]

2. Bringing the Authors to Terms: "It is you who must establish the terms, and bring your authors to them rather than the other way around." Here one must develop one's own terms and bring the syntopical authors to one's terms.

3. Getting the Questions Clear: These are the questions one brings to the book to be answered. Finding the answers in the author's text to one's own question.

4. Defining the Issues: This is especially important when one author defines the issue one way and another author another way.

5. Analyzing the Discussion: One thoroughly examines and critiques the output of the first four steps to determine the dimension of the problem. "It can clear away the deadwood and prepare the way for an original thinker to make a breakthrough." [page 323]

Want to learn to read a book? Why wait until your college life is over to begin? Start now with the full review:

How To Read A Book

2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile Or On Education

The story of Emile, "a savage made to live in cities", is a familiar one. It is the inverse of the story of Robinson Crusoe in which a civilized man is made to live in the wilderness of an island. Interestingly, the story of Robinson Crusoe is the only book that Rousseau allows Emile to read during his early education. He wants Emile to be able to survive in any milieu, be it the wilderness of a deserted island or the wilderness of a populated city. This perennial theme of a wild man coming to the big city appears in Tarzan stories, and most recently in a movie called Crocodile Dundee. An Australian crocodile hunter meets a lady from the big city and later returns with her to the city. Innocent of the wiles and intricacies of city life, Dundee manages to survive quite well as a modern day Emile, Rousseau's "noble savage", transplanted to the city.

Rousseau paints us a portrait of Emile, but it is not the portrait of a finished Emile, but rather a work in progress, a moving picture of Emile's life in five books from birth to childhood. Each book begins with a frontispiece that presages the course of Emile's education in the coming section. Book I has an engraving of Achilles's mother, Thetis, dipping him as a baby into the river Styx to protect him. It is Rousseau's intent to dip Emile into the cold realities of nature so that he may invulnerable to the harshness of nature thereafter. Book II begins with an engraving of Chiron's training of Achilles as a youth in running. This signals Rousseau's intent to focus the early youth of Emile on his physical development. Book III shows Hermes engraving elements of his science on columns of a temple to preserve his teachings in case of a flood. Book IV has Orpheus teaching men the worship of gods. It is in this Book that Rousseau undertakes Emile's education on religion via the "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar." The frontispiece of Book V has Circe giving herself to Ulysses, a natural man that she is not able to transform. This leads us into the final book where Emile is to fall in love with Sophie, and Rousseau is to complete Emile's education.

In creating this movie of Emile, Rousseau is the screen writer, the director, the shaper, the sculptor, the author, the creator, and the educator of the key character Emile. And yet, Rousseau does not teach Emile — he arranges for things to happen to Emile so as to draw out of Emile the best qualities that will suit Emile as a man, in Rousseau's eyes.

In doing so, Rousseau goes to the root of education — which comes from the Latin roots, e ducere, which means to draw out from. Rousseau arranges with Emile's parents to become the full-time governor of their son when he is a small child. As Emile grows Rousseau arranges experiences for Emile so that his educational plan is achieved.

Always Rousseau prefers the cold hard rigors of nature to the soft, easy ways of civilization for Emile. The goddess Thetis dips baby Achilles into the cold waters of the Styx holding him by his ankle. He is thus invulnerable every place touched by the harsh waters of the river of Hades, and vulnerable on in the spot when his mother's soft hands shielded him from harshness. The soft ways of mothers Rousseau considers to be cruel:

[page 47] Thetis, to make her son invulnerable, plunged him, according to the fable, in the water of the Styx. This allegory is a lovely one, and it is clear. The cruel mothers of whom I speak do otherwise: by dint of plunging their children in softness, they prepare them for suffering; they open their pores to ills of every sort to which they will not fail to be prey when grown.

[page 129-130] People raised too delicately no longer find sleep elsewhere than on down; people accustomed to sleep on boards find it everywhere. There is no hard bed for him who falls asleep as soon as he lies down.

This is but a sample of the insights into living and education of children which awaits you within the covers of this book. If you don't have the book available, read the complete review here.

3. Michael Paulsen's Teaching & Learning in the College Classroom

Dr. Michael Paulsen edited this book with Kenneth A. Feldman and used it in his graduate course, "College Teaching" which I took. This is the only textbook in this list of my five favorite books on education. This book is included because of the review that it inspired. I wrote the review as my Final Paper for Dr. Paulsen's class, and it contains my own insights into teaching and learning.

"Why have lectures survived since the invention of print?" asks McKeachie in his textbook, Teaching Tips, at the front of his Chapter 5, Lecturing. In the McKeachie, et al, article in the Feldman and Paulsen textbook, we read:

[page 115] Not only is the lecturer a model in terms of motivation and curiosity, the lecturer also models ways of approaching problems, portraying a scholar in action in ways that are difficult for other media or methods of instruction to achieve. In fact there is some evidence suggesting that one of the advantages of live professors is the tendency of people to model themselves after individuals whom they perceive as living, breathing, human beings with characteristics that can be admired and emulated.

The essay points us to two distinct advantages of a live professor in front of the students, but it neglects the bi-directional interaction back and forward through which the professors actually shape their presentation as they go along based on feedback from students. In addition, there is an invisible channel of communication which many people have access to, but few have any words with which to express what happened. Here's an example from my own experience:

A couple of weeks ago, as I was reading aloud to my wife, Del, something I'd just written, she interrupted me at the end of a sentence. In the middle of reading that sentence, I was suddenly taken by an idea of an alternate way to approach explaining something, but I did not vary the tempo or tone of my reading. Del had been receiving the communication streaming from me with no problems until the point when suddenly what was streaming from me no longer matched the words coming from my mouth. It occurred to me at that time that the importance of written words is the thought paths that they carry us and others along.

The effect of writing, when it was first invented, was to replace the live teacher in the presence of the pupil with a pale substitute, the words upon the page. Thus, the reading pupil lost the live insights provided by the teacher in his lecture. Plato warned of writing for that very reason:

For this invention [writing] will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of truth, not truth, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.
       ~~~ Plato (274-275BC) in Phaedrus

For the other insights from my Final Paper, read here.

4. Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers

This book is dedicated to those people who actually use it — not just read it. Peter Elbow. “Ah, this is a book dedicated to me!” — I can say this as I write my review some eighteen years after I first read this book. Imagine a book on writing written by a man whose name is "elbow" — which after the mind is the most used muscle in writing. A few weeks ago when I took this book down from my "Previously Read" shelves to look through it, Del saw it and asked me why I hadn't written a review of it. I said, "Duh — I didn't start writing reviews until after I read and used this book!" And it's true, as you will see as my review unfolds.

First I read the book. Began reading it a few days after I bought the book on April 12, 1985. I had already begun date-glyphing books to denote when I bought them and read them. I had not yet begun noting where I bought the books and for how much. The paperback price was $4.95 and listed on the back cover, but the condition of the book indicates to me that I must have bought it used. I might look in my daily journal for that day to see if I noted where I bought the book, but, as with my reviews, I did not start a daily journal until I began using this book.

The key to writing without teachers is Elbow's free-writing exercise. Simply begin writing and keep on writing without stopping for ten minutes. This will usually fill up two pages at my handwriting speed. The key to start immediately, without planning, even if you can only write, "I can't think of anything to say." Over and over if necessary. Soon you will begin to write something else. And sooner or later the judge in you, the editor, gives up and you are able to write freely. Write first, ask questions later becomes your motto. Writer's block becomes like a 100-yd Dash Runner's starting block. You push up and begin writing immediately.

"If you stop to think, write while you're thinking," I said at the beginning of the first free-writing exercise of the "Writing Without Teachers" class. "Don't know what to write next" was my next thought but I kept plugging — somehow hoping to defuse — to incapacitate the judge in my head who wants to edit as I go along.

Time for a new paragraph, but what's the idea to fill out, to flesh out with words as I write? Don't know but I keep skipping merrily along, trying no to look at the watch and maybe something will come along.

It's like walking briskly along a path, no time to stop to examine every little bit of scenery, but yet you examine your path on all sides as you stride along.

Looked at clock and it's 5 minutes left to go and so my walk is half-finished. This writing is like the filler in meat loaf — crushed bread to fill up the pan so that the loaf looks bigger than it is. Doesn't the bread stuffing add to the taste or does it only make it look good? Isn't that the point: with good writing, it must taste good if the writing is any good, not just look good? After all who reads something just because it's a lot of words. Obviously the bigger the better is not a good slogan for an inspiring writer.

So write like you cook seems to be Peter Elbow's message. Select the best ingredients, fold them in at the right (write) time, and heat properly until done. Set the timer, throw the ingredients together, taste the results as you cook (taste — don't eat) and set out the results for all to sample. If it's good, all will enjoy an excellent meal. As the timer I can set the ending right now.

Wanna be a writer? Get your Elbow in action today. Or click below and read a reviews of two of his books:

Writing Without Teachers

Embracing Contraries

5. Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind

This is another one of the perennial favorite reviews of my Good Readers. Its readership climbs near the top at the beginning of every semester (2,170 year-to-date). And why not? Its subtitle offers a promise which Bloom fulfills amply in the course of the book:

HOW HIGHER EDUCATION HAS FAILED DEMOCRACY AND IMPOVERISHED THE SOULS OF TODAY'S STUDENTS

How does Allan Bloom say that we might re-invigorate the college and university curriculum? He suggests that a return to the use of original texts and materials is key. To assign students Dante's "Inferno" rather than a synopsis of classical poems to read. To read Shakespeare plays, not a critical review of his plays. To read Machiavelli, Hobbes, Kant, Freud in the original and to form one's own judgments as what are the important questions and what the answers to these questions are for oneself. That method can have the salubrious effect of actually leading the students to discover a great value, a vital understanding that can only come from directly confronting the authors in their original words in context, and from that discovery to create a royal road to future learning in their students hearts.

Bloom gives the reader one caveat: that we should avoid the mistake of the Great Books Groups who tend to treat the Books like dollars in a bank account where the goal is to get as many dollars in it as possible. The goal should be rather to emphasize as the goal the reading and questioning that arises during the reading — the process is what's important, not how many Books one reads.

During the decades of the 60's and 70's the onslaught of relativism was led by the Humanities professors because their fields lacked the objective criteria of the natural and social sciences. The other two fields were less affected by the revolution of relativism, but became alienated from the reading of the Great Books or original works of famous authors in their fields.

The Natural Sciences saw reading of the original works of natural scientists as a matter of mere historical interest, better suited for electives in the humanities, if a student were to choose one. With the increased specialization, however, fewer students took such electives. Besides that, their professors told them or implied by the disdain in their tone of voice that such electives were a waste of time and were an unnecessary detour on the way to a career in science. The Social Sciences felt a bit threatened by the original texts because these Great Books were teaching many of the same subjects as they were, but in a way that allowed the students to think independently of what their professors would like them to. So the Social Scientists' attitude was that original texts were mostly irrelevant to any practical application, and if one wanted to study them, one should do so on one's own time. The Social Scientists' offered instead composite courses, trendiness, mere popularization and a lack of substantive rigor, all of which led Bloom to claim:

[page 340] The so-called knowledge explosion and increasing specialization have not filled up the college years but emptied them.

Meantime the natural sciences and the social sciences were still able to demonstrate a usefulness for their fields and stayed on track, a track that became more rigid and narrowed in focus, leading to careerism, producing a technological automaton rather than a whole human being. But the social sciences were not out of the woods because in their zest to get the facts that would characterize a true science they were seduced by the siren song of their agenda and led into making the facts fit their agenda rather than fostering an agenda which fit their facts.

[page 354] Hobbes said if the fact that two and two makes four were to become a matter of political relevance, there would be a faction to deny it.

This may sound farcical, if it weren't so true today. One need only look at the events surrounding the presidential impeachment and Senate trial to find ample examples of such denial. Bloom says that "all parties in a democracy are jeopardized when passion can sweep the facts before it." [page 355] Who would have thought the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice would not add up to a crime that would remove an elected official from office?

Bloom suggests that one way of re-invigorating the college curriculum is by adding back a study of the Great Books and classical authors whose books fell into disuse during the 1960's. With this kind of refocusing of educational resources and re-direction of college students he expect that students will come to understand that before one can really experience the thrill of liberation, one has to have something to really believe in. That experience of really believing can come whenever students fully study classical authors in their original works, and, after fully believing in what they've read, learn to question and evaluate the beliefs those original authors held as self-evident to them. Until we and our students do that for ourselves, we are like the shepherds in Bloom's metaphor:

[page 239] We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part. All that is necessary is a careful excavation to provide them with life-enhancing models. We need history, not to tell us what happened, or to explain the past, but to make the past alive so that it can explain and make a future possible. This is our educational crisis and opportunity.

This metaphor reminds me of one crafted by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in his Citadelle (English title: Wisdom of the Sands).

[page 19] Thus men destroy their best possession, the meaning of things: on feast days they pride themselves on standing out against old custom, and betraying their traditions, and toasting their enemy. True, they may feel some qualm as they go about their deeds of sacrilege. So long as there is sacrilege. So long as there still is something against which they revolt. Thus for a while they continue trading on the fact that their foe still breathes, and the ghostly presence of the laws still hampers them enough for them to feel like outlaws. But presently the very ghost dissolves into thin air, and then the rapture of revolt is gone, even the zest of victory forgotten. And now they yawn.

On the ruins of the palace they have laid out a public square; but once the pleasure of trampling its stones with upstart arrogance has lost its zest, they begin to wonder what they are doing here, on this noisy fairground. And now, lo and behold, they fall to picturing, dimly as yet, a great house with a thousand doors, with curtains that billow on your shoulders and slumbrous anterooms. Perchance they dream even of a secret room, whose secrecy pervades the whole vast dwelling. Thus, though they know it not, they are pining for my father's palace where every footstep had a meaning. In the radical fervor of the 60's, great buildings of curriculum were torn to the ground, and now students and professors alike have begun once more picturing that great house, their father's university, "where every step had a meaning."

Bloom says that as a young teacher at Cornell he debated a professor of psychology who bragged about how he removed prejudices from his students. Bloom told the professor in rebuttal that he created prejudices in his students, beliefs that they could someday with work and diligence transcend.

In short, Bloom says, "One has to have the experience of really believing before one can have the thrill of liberation." That may indeed be the kind of "liberation" that is at the very root of what we mean by "liberal education."

Don't have time to read Bloom's full book? Read the full review here: The Closing of the American Mind.

New Stuff on the website:

• "Did you hear the one about the piano which fell down a gold mine and hit A-Flat Minor?"

  Check out the answer to this question and other new "one-liner" jokes, arranged and collected by Bobby Matherne.Thanks to Ginger Thiele for sending a new dozen or so entries for our Tidbits page: One-Liners.

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Movies we watched this past month:

Notes about our movies: Many of the movies we watch are foreign movies with subtitles. After years of watching movies in foreign languages, Arabic, French, Swedish, German, British English, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and many other languages, sometimes two or three languages in the same movie, the subtitles have disappeared for us. If the movie is dubbed in English we go for the subtitles instead because we enjoy the live action and sounds of the real voices so much more than the dubbed. If you wonder where we get all these foreign movies from, the answer is simple: NetFlix. For a fixed price a month they mail us DVD movies from our on-line Queue, we watch them, pop them into a pre-paid mailer, and the postman effectively replaces all our gas-consuming and time-consuming trips to Blockbuster. To sign up for NetFlix, simply go to http://www.netflix.com/ and start adding all your requests for movies into your personal queue. If you've seen some in these movie blurbs, simply copy the name, click open your queue, and paste the name in the Search box on NetFlix and Select Add. Buy some popcorn and you're ready to Go to the Movies, 21st Century Style. You get to see your movies as the Director created them — NOT-edited for TV, in full-screen width, your own choice of subtitles, and all of the original dialogue. Often you get the Director's Cut Edition which adds back excellent footage that was cut from the theater releases.
P. S. Look for HD/DVD format movies which are now available from NetFlix.

“August Rush” (2007) Don’t wait till August, rush out now and watch this movie. Its music will bring tears of joy and happiness into your world. A boy from an unwanted pregnancy is separated from his pop singer father who didn’t know he existed and his cellist mother who didn’t know he survived his traumatic birth. At 11-yrs-old, he leaves the orphanage to continue in earnest his quest for his parents whose music has filled his soul. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! !
“The Hunting Party” (2007) What can you say about a movie which begins with the words “Only the most ridiculous parts of this movie are true”? Richard Gere as a seamy journalist in Serbia trying to outfox the Fox. This is a fun and funny movie especially when the CYA, er, CIA shows up. A DON’T MISS HIT !
“Kinky Boots” (2005) The 4th generation scion of the Price Shoe Co., Charlie, learns the business, but doesn’t want to run it, till his dad dies. Faced with laying off people or finding a niche market, he chooses kinky boots: red as hot sex and hired Lola (aka Simon) to be designer of flashy boots for women and men and those who haven’t decided yet. A DON’T MISS HIT! ! !
“The Air I Breathe” (2008) weaves four stories of love, pleasure, sadness and joy into the warp and woof of a plot and soon the sequence of events begin to make sense. Dramatic, pulls you through to the end and makes the trip worth while.

“Cassandra’s Dream” (2007) Woody Allen flick dealing with Greek tragedy in the lives of two close-knit brothers in London who buy a boat, name it Cassandra’s Dream, and then take themselves for a ride from which they never return.
“Working Girl” (1988) Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford in this eyeglass steamer and working-girl-makes-good epic. Worth a second look. A DON’T MISS HIT!
“How To Cook Your Life” (2007) Edward Espe Brown, known for his Tassajara Bread Book, has a rye sense of humor and delightful approach to life. Movie follows his teaching about cooking and life through weekend retreats at various Zen centers. A delightful movie.
“Wedding Crashers” (2005) What divorce lawyers do for fun, at least Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson do, is crash weddings for the fun of it. And do they have fun! Unless one of their flings gets attached to them and then things get a little sticky. Can’t believe it’s three years since we last enjoyed this rollickingly funny movie. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! !

“Slow Burn” (2005) Hard to take Ray Liotta seriously since Hannibal Lector ate his brains, but as DA he starts off very competent in this movie, and then his world slowly burns away. It’s round up the “Usual Suspects” with multiple twists and turns, like the drama triangle is on a turntable. Who is Danny Luden? Will Ray find out before his job and life are in ashes?
“Matador” (2005) 2nd Viewing (See 068) of zany hitman played to the hilt by Pierce Brosnan who explains to his reluctant trainee, Greg Kinear, the “gotta pee theory of assassination” among other thing. Hilarious, funny, unexpected, and wears well in a second look. A DON'T MISS HIT!
“Days of Glory" (2006) North Africans from French Algeria help liberate a homeland they had never seen and one which didn’t want them during WWII. This “band of brothers” epic shows their trek through Italy and then finally on french soil they are the first french forces to reach the Alsac region and stave off a retrenchment by the Germans till replacements arrive.

“First of May” (1999) is a circus term for “New to the Show” and our 11-year-old hero is just that. A runaway orphan from his umpteenth foster home runs away with a grandma from an old age home and they join the circus. Heart-warming family movie of an age-old theme with a modern twist. (Mickey Rooney and Joe Dimaggio)
“The Bucket List” (2007) Put it on the list of movies to watch before you die. Heck, if you watch it right away, that counts, too. It’s fun, hilarious, and thoughtful, a most unusual combination for a movie from Hollywood. A DON’T MISS HIT!
“We Own the Night” (2007) Who? Either or both the police and the Russian mafia in NYC and one of them has to go. A tale of two sons of the police chief — good cop and bad son. How will they survive when the bad son is working for the Russian mafia? Good plot development overcomes the excessive gore at times.
“John Adams” (2008) Disk 1 of 2. Excellent series on the second president starring Paul Giamotti showing Adams as farmer and patriot who later assigns taciturn Thomas Jefferson to write a Declaration of Independence in case he is able to muster a unanimous vote for independence by the 13 colonies. The rest is history, aka Disk 2.

“Caroline Myss” (1997) Two parts: ‘Why People Don’t Heal’ — because they love the advantages of being wounded; and The Three Levels of Power’ — namely Tribal, Individual, and Symbolic. She develops the eight chakras as if they were data centers and talks about how each impacts the way a person acts.
“Grace Is Gone” (2007) Stay at home husband with two daughters tries to hold home together while wife is stationed in Iraq during the war. When she dies, he loses it, or seems to, but John Cusacks finds his way by taking the long road home via the Enchanted Gardens.
“Greenfingers” (2000) Helen Mirren and Clive Own star in this story of a prison gardener with ten green thumbs. Soon the prisoners are helping landscape other gardens and gearing up for the Hampton Castle Flower Show. What will they have to show for all their work? A DON’T MISS HIT !
“Nancy Drew” (2007) arranged a mystery for her vacation stay in California. A movie star disappeared for five months, came home and drowned in her pool. After twenty years this cold case was just the challenge our over-achieving sleuth needed to make her summer perfect. A ho-hum hit.

“Perils of Pauline” (1947) Betty Hutton in an amazing performance as a seamstress turned actress. Great songs and choreography in Technicolor.
“Man of La Mancha” (1972) Had never watched this musical all the way through before. Peter Sellers as Cervantes and Don Quixote, Sophia Loren as El Donza and Dulcinea. Great condensation of Cervantes novel. Dream the impossible dream and watch it all the way through yourself someday.
“Basic Instinct” (1992) Friends don’t let friends watch this great movie chopped up on broadcast tv. Watch it on DVD and enjoy the raw sexuality combined with heart-throbbing suspense till closing credits. Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in a steamer. A DON’T MISS HIT! ! !
“2 Fast, 2 Furious” (2003) HD/DVD Movie came in just in time to check out our new TV. Great scenes of cars racing the streets of Miami. There may have been a plot in there somewhere — leave that for the historians to decide.

Misses (Avoid At All Costs): We attempted to watch these this month, but didn't make it all the way through on most of them. Awhile back when three AAAC horrors hit us in one night, I decided to add a sub-category to "Avoid at All Costs", namely, A DVD STOMPER. These are movies so bad, you don't want anyone else to get stuck watching them, so you want to stomp on the disks. That way, if everyone else who gets burnt by the movie does the same, soon no copies of the awful movie will be extant and the world will be better off.

“Max Lucado 3:16” (2007) Repetition of John 3:16 followed by a short homily, no matter how good, does not a movie make. Save him for Sunday mornings.
“The Golden Compass” (2007) Great movie for people who love to hear screaming hyper-active kids in a movie with cutsy talking animals in every single scene, at least for the first 10 minutes, before we blew the dust off the DVD remote and ejected the movie.
“Beowulf” (2007) After 37 dismembered, spiked, and decapitated humans, we chopped off the head of this monstrous movie. An example of technology running wild and destroying an epic story. Headline: Hollywood Destroys Beowulf!A DVD STOMPER! ! ! !
“Right at Your Door” (2006) , in fact, in your TV room: a Dirty Bomb of a movie. I wore rubber gloves to remove the DVD from my player and stomped it with rubber boots on. Naturally I disposed of it as one would any hazardous waste. A DVD STOMPER ! ! ! !

Your call on these — your taste in movies may differ, but I liked them:

“Angels in the Outfield” (1951) Janet Leigh and Paul Douglas star in this movie about angels appearing behind each player on the Pittsburgh Pirates team to help them win baseball games. Actually it’s better when it happens and no one sees the angels, up until now. Like it’s been happening with LSU’s baseball team, now in its 23rd consecutive win, the longest in the 75 year history of the SEC. Watched this movie while watching LSU win a game in the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional game.
“Things We Lost in the Fire” (2007) a slow movie, but one which grabs you by the jugular and won’t let go. A tale of two guys: a best friend who dies and the one who got left behind. His widow copes with having to play the roles her husband played, including best friend to a guy she never respected or liked.
“Caramel” (2007) previews left me expecting a movie about eating, not caramel being used to bikini wax legs in a Lebanese beauty shop. But a delightful and interesting bunch of gals make this romp through cosmetology fun.
“The Crimson Kimono” (1959) with Glen Corbett in first starring role. Sam Fuller movie with verve and action atypical of other movies of the time. Worth a look-see.
“Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show” (2006) was not wild, western, or comedic. Vince acknowledged his debt to Buffalo Bill who first used the name “Wild West Show”. But Buffalo Bill’s show had a true star in Annie Oakley, and Vince’s show had none.
“Beerfest” (2006) HD/DVD USA und Deutschland go for the jugular in the Olympics of Beer-Drinking competitions. Monkey-chugs for the Millennium. Enough Schnizzlegiggle for everyone.

Avocado Sprouts Sandwich

Background on Avocado Sprouts Sandwich: I recall these sandwiches from the 1970s and 80s at Nature's Way on Magazine Street and the 80s through 2005 (Katrina) at Plantation Coffeshop on Hidalgo. Both are relegated to fond memories now, but their sandwiches, made with fresh avocadoes and stone-ground whole wheat bread still bring a savor to my mind and a delight to my palette when I prepare one for myself in Bobby Jeaux's Kitchen. With a little planning you can do the same in your kitchen. Simply accumulate the ingredients and you'll be ready on a moment's notice for a tasty and nutritious treat for lunch.

Ingredients
Good Hearth Stone Ground Whole Wheat Bread (Note: The benefits of stoneground wheat accrues from the increase of life-giving nutrients compared to wheat grains smashed between rollers. See this book for details, Appendix A. One can taste the difference.)
Blue Plate Mayonnaise
Zatarain's Creole Mustard
Local grown sprouts
 Preparation
Slice the avocado in half, remove the seed, peel away skin, and cut avocado into thick slices.

Cooking Instructions
Toast the bread to taste. (Also helps to hold sandwich together.)

Sandwich Assembly
Spread mayo on both slice of bread liberally. Then spread the creole mustard on top of the mayo. Carefully place slices of avocado on one slice of bread (Alternately: allocate them on both slices.) Then add sprouts on the top of the avocadoes, close sandwich.

Serving Suggestion
Cut sandwich diagonally for easy and delicious eating.

Other options
Add other garnishes to plate, such as radishes, cucumbers, etc. I just finished eating one for lunch myself which inspired me to write up this recipe for you, dear Reader.

And for my Good Readers, here’s the new reviews and articles for this month. The ARJ2 ones are new additions to the top of A Reader’s Journal, Volume 2, Chronological List, and the ART ones to A Reader’s Treasury.

1.) ARJ2: An Esoteric Cosmology — Evolution, Christ & Modern Spirituality, GA#94 by Rudolf Steiner

These eighteen lectures can be considered as a draft of Rudolf Steiner's grand opus, An Outline of Occult Science, which was written about three years later. These lectures are much easier reading, but in their brevity one loses the scope and details which he was to provide later in his much larger book. My theory is that when learning something new, it's best to know all about it before you start. For you newcomers to Steiner's works, this book of lectures will achieve that function. You will be left with lots of unanswered questions — but you will hear, if not completely learn, all about the evolution of the cosmos and how we humans evolved to this stage where we are ensconced upon this planet, Earth. For those, like myself, who have already studied Steiner's work in depth, these lectures provide an excellent review with thumbnail summaries of the myriad of topics covered in detail in his later and much larger book, An Outline of Occult Science.

Remarkably the notes of these eighteen lectures were transcribed by Edouard Schuré who wrote them down in French each night after the lectures. All of Steiner's lectures were given in German and later translated into English. Schuré wrote these down in French from which they were later transcribed into English as early as 1928. What empowered Schuré to perform these translations? We can only guess it was the indelible impression made upon him by Steiner's presentation.

Schuré relates on page xxi how Steiner "describes how the Rosicrucians worked to unite themselves with the Christ by meditating the first fourteen verses in th Gospel of St. John". This form of meditation was mentioned in my review of this book of lectures, Secret Brotherhoods, at which time I created this webpage for those who may wish to meditate on them on a regular basis. Thanks to Schuré's notes, we have this record in lecture seven of Steiner mentioning this meditation.

While working towards a degree in physics, I encountered discussions about the interior of the Sun and the interior of the Earth. Of course, we have no direct data about either place as no human and no instrument has ever visited either place, nor is either likely to happen. The extremes of pressure and temperature in both places makes it unlikely that sensory data will ever be retrieved of these places. But Rudolf Steiner does not need require instruments be placed within the center of the Earth to experience what the conditions exist there and at each of the distinctive layers one finds going to the center. He visits them with his supersensible sight and returns to explain to us how these layers are organized. One can choose to listen to the wild projections of materialistic science which have no basis in sensory data (are only maps of what might be there, all things being equal inside the Earth to how they are on the surface, which of course they are most definitely not). Scientific explanations of what happens in the center of the Earth are useful mostly in the daily lives of scientists. Or one can choose to listen to Rudolf Steiner who perceives the various layers and gives explanations of how these layers reveal themselves as events upon the surface of the Earth in everyone's daily lives.

The nine layers can be divided into three layers from the Old Saturn stage of evolution which have remained in the very center of the Earth (7,8, 9), the three layers remaining from the Old Moon stage (4, 5, 6), and the outer three layers which formed during the current Earth stage of evolution. Those of you familiar with cosmic evolution as described in Occult Science, will wonder why the Old Sun stage is not represented in the layers of the Earth. My hypothesis is that, when the Old Sun separated into Sun and Old Moon, the Sun took all the purified portions and left none within Old Moon (which embodied the Earth which was to come during a later split). The portions of the Sun will only be achieved during the future evolution of the Earth when at the last it will recombine into the Sun when all of humanity has reached its final state of purification (1).

It is useful to read Schuré's summary in his Foreword of the 9 layers of the Earth as it is somewhat easier to understand than the detailed description in the text proper. (Note that he numbers the layers from the center of the Earth in this description, whereas in the Diagram above they are numbered from the surface.)

[page xxii, xxiv] If we glance momentary at the interior constitution of the Earth, one fact strikes us immediately — it makes up the forces concentrated in the planet and worked at its development through successive metamorphoses, from the nebula of Saturn through the Old Sun and Old Moon periods and on to its present state. These same forces have worked at the human structure and today are more active than ever. 1) Egoism and black magic constitute the opaque center of the Earth, because egoism-love of self for its own sake, which black magic exaggerates and takes to excess — is indispensable to the development of human individuality. The fatal products of egoism are hatred and strife, represented by the next two layers: 2) division and 3) the prism, in which individualities multiply and differentiate in order to battle with one another.
      It may be said that these three layers represent the Earth's kernel as it existed in the nebula of the Saturn period. This foundation is indispensable to all of the Earth's subsequent evolution. It is the springboard from which individuality can rise to higher worlds, as long as egoism (the principle of evil) is conquered and transformed by the higher forces arising from the Sun and the firmament-forces of which divinity is the wellspring, and true human freedom the sculptor.
      The period during which the Earth was still united with the Moon is indicated within the Earth by the existence of three other elementary spheres: 4) the Fire principle is at the root of will impulses and the cause of volcanic eruptions when a path is forged to Earth's mineral crust. 5) Above this is the level of organic plant life. Again, 6) there is a still higher level of the vortex of animal forces, where the ethereal embryos of the living beings destined to crawl, walk, and fly germinate and attain life in a laboratory of ceaseless activity.

      In this second trinity of forces that constitute Earth's interior, we find the remains of the period when Earth was still united with the Moon. In those times, the Earth's surface was a kind of porous substance, the home of hybrid beings, half vegetable and half mollusc, with giant tentacles, while the seeds of terrestrial flora and fauna floated in the semi-liquid, semi-vaporous atmosphere. Wonderful words in the book of Genesis refer to this period: "Darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Waters."
      The third trio of inner organs of the Earth represents its actual form. The final metamorphosis occurs at the time of separation of the Moon from Earth; it is indicated by the addition of two new elements that are, as it were, the "humanized" replica of the Earth's center: 7) Consciousness inverted, in which everything is transformed into its opposite; 8) Negative life, or death. Every living being descending into this realm must perish instantly; it is the Styx of the Greeks, cursed by the Gods of life and beauty. 9) Above the sphere of death stretches the solid mineral envelope of the Earth, the theater of humanity.
      It must be admitted that this extraordinary description of the interior constitution of our planet cannot be verified by any means of observation adopted by natural science. None but a seer possessed of equal power could contradict or confirm it.

Any persistent reader of Rudolf Steiner's works can easily confirm that the descriptions of each layer are consistent with the evolution of the cosmos as he described it in his Occult Science and in many other lectures. — And with other mythological and theological references across many cultures.

The Christ being remained behind in the Sun when the Old Moon carried the nascent Earth within itself into a separate existence. In historical times, this same great spiritual being entered the man Jesus of Nazareth during his baptism in the Jordan, and strove to rescue us from our precipitous fall into materialistic oblivion by dying on the cross, the first spiritual being to experience death as a human being. And He has stayed with us to be an ever-present help in our times of need. If this sounds like some ideal which is airy-fairy and metaphysical, let me assure you that it is genuinely real. One should never discount the importance of a man with an ideal. Ideals are our greatest weapon to ward off the forces of evil.

An ideal in one's life Steiner likens as steam to an engine: it provides the power. What are the ideals you hold dear? Therein lies your power. Words also have a power — as revealed by John: "In the beginning was the Word." Schuré gives an example of the power of living words in a sentence spoken by Steiner, "The thoughts of the Gods are not as human thoughts. Human thoughts are image; the thoughts of the gods are living beings." What happened to cause humans to move from marriages decided by one's father to marriages decided by the man and woman? Anthropology might have difficulty explaining why this is so, but to Rudolf Steiner this change accompanied the development of the human "I" in historical times.

[page 4] Before discussing the world of spirit, we must understand one of the forces that allowed all humanity to pass from the astral to the intellectual level. This occurred through a new kind of marriage. In ancient times, marriages were made within a tribe or clan, which was simply an extension of the family. Indeed, sometimes brothers and sisters married. Later on, men looked for wives outside the clan or tribe, the civic community. The beloved became the stranger, the unknown. Love, which had been merely a natural and social function, now became personal desire, and marriage became a matter of free choice. This is indicated in certain Greek myths such as the rape of Helen and in the Scandinavian and Germanic myths of Sigurd and Gudrun. Love becomes an adventure, the woman a conquest from afar.
      This change from patriarchal marriage to free marriage corresponds to the new development of human intellectual faculties, or the "I." There is a temporary eclipse of the astral faculties of vision and the power of reading directly in the astral and spiritual world — faculties included in ordinary speech under the term inspiration.

With the loss of our astral vision, we have lost our unconscious spirituality and we must now prepare to move to a conscious spirituality. That cannot happen with theology because it is a fixed dogma imposed from without, the religious equivalent of a forced marriage decided by one's father, only this time a Church Father.

The Nebelungen of Germany mythology lived in the land of the mists (Nebelheim) which Steiner identifies as Atlantis. Before the deluge came, Atlanteans lived in a perpetual mist and had to use their spiritual sight to perceive other humans because the heavy mist obscured the physical world. When the mists finally began to subside, they formed a great deluge and brought clear skies to humans for the first time. The rainbow was left behind as a reminder to us of our evolutionary past in the land of mists, Atlantis.

Like the Kings and Queens of our time, Atlanteans referred to themselves in the third person. Royalty are subject to the people they rule and accountable to them, and in that sense they have no "I" which can operate independently of their subjects. Atlanteans also lacked an "I" because their etheric body was yet located outside their physical brain. Later movement of the etheric body to within the physical brain brought to the ancient human race their first "I".

The arguments of Creationism versus Darwinism which are rampant in this twenty-first century are moot because both miss the point. We humans did not descend from monkeys, the monkeys remained behind. The superior race does not descend from the inferior.

We humans at one time in our evolution wrested ourselves away from the animals (whose passions we yet bear within ourselves), and in time to come we must wrest ourselves away from evil. This is the challenge we face as full human beings in this age. To meet this challenge we require a science, a spiritual science of the full human being, an anthropos-sophy or anthroposophy. This is the legacy which Steiner has left to us in his books and lectures.

We humans are descending (in the body) and ascending (in the spirit) beings. Steiner said, The vital point, that of intersection and change in the ascending life of humankind, is also the separation of the sexes. . . . Because of the separation of the sexes, a new, all-embracing element arose: love." (Page 13)

If you have a pet, you likely have wondered at some point as I have, "Why is this pet so loyal and grateful to me?" That is easy to understand because generally our pets depend upon us for their food and shelter. But what do they give us in return for all our expense and attention to them? All they can give us is their love. Consider next our relationship to our guardian angels: they help keep us safe, alert us to dangers ahead of time, and what can we give them in return? Only our love. And just as that love is enough when we receive it from our pets, so also is that love enough when we give it to our guardian angels and other members of the spiritual hierarchies. (See my review of Guardian Angels for the importance of not neglecting our special angel which follows us from incarnation to incarnation.)

Animals are fallen humans and humans becoming — that is another way of saying animals are inferior humans left behind during our human evolution, but which are on an evolutionary track to becoming humans. Likewise, Steiner tells us. "Human beings are both fallen gods and gods becoming." (Page 14) When we understand that at each level of evolution this is a descending and ascending current, we are forced to realize that there are ascending and descending currents in our own being.

Consider carefully what Steiner tells us: A truth must push us forward or it will die. If we imbibe too many sterile truths, we will likewise die. As a physicist I was taught that a truth filled with feeling was an illusion — in other words, I was taught the exact opposite of the truth. With Steiner's help I have learned to accept in freedom and light the vital truth which lifts me up from now on: that soul-filled truths are permeated with feeling.

Where are you on the path to be an initiate, dear Reader? Do you have control over your thoughts and actions, equanimity in all things both good and bad, optimism, confidence, inner balance, and meditation? Before you answer, consider the details of understanding these attributes given by Steiner:

[pag 27, 28]
      1. Control of thought. We must be able to concentrate our thought upon a single object and hold it there.
      2. Control of actions. Our attitude toward all actions, whether trivial or significant, must be to dominate, regulate, and hold them under the control of one's will. They must be the outcome of inner initiative.
      3. Equilibrium of soul. There must be moderation in both sorrow and joy. Goethe said that the soul who loves is, until death, equally happy and sad. The esotericist must bear the deepest joy and the deepest sorrow with the same equanimity of soul.
      4. Optimism — the attitude that looks for the good in every thing. Even in crime and in seeming absurdity, there is some element of good. A Persian legend says that Christ once passed by the corpse of a dog and that his disciples turned away in disgust. But Christ said: "Look, the teeth are beautiful."
      5. Confidence. The mind must be open to every new phenomenon. We must never allow our judgments to be determined by the p