July began with a birthday dinner at Marcie St., my daughter Maureen's house in Metairie, for her son Gabe's 14th
birthday. Jane Bayhi, her mother-in-law and most of Bayhi clan were there: Brian, Charlene, and
Nathan and Nobie, Kathleen, and their two daughters were there. Grandson Chris was BBQ'ing
out front when we arrived. Then Jennifer and Anthony showed up, as did Tiffany and John with
our youngest great-grandson, Aven, who's about two years old. Jimmy Kytle showed up with a lady
friend. It was a great dinner party with lots of sausage, pork chops, chicken and some grilled
sliced zucchini which I enjoyed. When you're eating light as I have been since February, you can
always find enough food you like to eat no matter where you are.
Watched the National July 4th celebration with Tony Danza who should never attempt to imitate
James Cagney as a hoofer! Then we drove to the Dry Dock and had a very good oyster po-boy with
sweet potato fries. Then we walked downriver a bit and
joined Joy and John to watch the fireworks from directly across the river. It was fun, but after the
main display, local fireworks continued for another hour and it was hard for us to hear each
other talking.
Usually I attach my hat to Del's purse, but I forgot to, and I ended up leaving my good black hat
on the porch, or so I hoped, when the next morning, I realized that I had left it somewhere. Called
Joy and she eventually found it after giving me pause to be concerned. Her neighbor in the other
side of the shotgun double, Linda, had secured it behind a chair on the front porch they share. I
was driving there when I called Del to tell her it was found. She asked, "Bromeliad?" reminding
me that we had decided to give Joy 
a bromeliad from our pink blooming stock, and I immediately
did a U-Turn on Whitney to head back to the house and caught a train! Stuck. Finally got it and
drove to Algiers point, gave Joy the bromeliad for her back patio, instructions on how to water
and propagate it, and picked up my hat.
The next day was Friday and time to cook the fig preserves and get packed to leave for our big
Orange Beach week the next morning. I had been picking figs all week, knowing that I wanted to
make fig preserves this year, since the tree didn't bear last year due to the Cuban Red Sugar Cane
taking all the moisture from the roots of the fig tree. I uprooted all the cane so that I would have
figs this year. I like to eat them fresh off the tree after they have chilled overnight in the fridge. I
also like to have the stems on when preserving them, so I place all those with stems into a large
pot each day, covered them with cane sugar, and put the pot back in the fridge. By Friday
morning's picking the figs had topped the pot. I added honey and more cane sugar and began the
cooking down process. I let the preserves cook until the syrup stage on the thermometer (110-113
degC). The figs came out well-cooked, but there wasn't enough liquid. I will need to adjust my
ingredients next year to ensure there is enough syrup. Luckily, I have some from two years ago
with extra syrup to correct the dryness of the last couple of jars.
With the figs put away, I packed my clothes and things for the week. We keep a log of the
various places we go and of the things we take along. This is a big help to ensure that we don't
forget anything. We couldn't check in until about 3 pm on Saturday, so we decided to do the
packing in the morning before we left. We were done about 8 and left the Timberlane driveway
about 8:30 AM. We were in Mobile about 11:15 with about a twenty minute stop for gas. If you
drive straight to Orange Beach, it's about four and a half hours. We stopped to shop in Foley at
Tanger Mall and still got to the Kaiser Realty office before 3. Our place wasn't ready, so we went
to Bruno's and bought groceries for the week. We went back to the car to unload the hundred
dollars of groceries and suddenly remembered that the trunk and the back seat were already full
of stuff! Somehow we loaded the groceries into the cracks in the stuff in the back seat and drove
back to Kaiser at 3:15. Still not ready! What a bummer! Our check-in says 3 PM. We had
perishables in the car and could not leave it in the sun for too long. We drove to Palm Beach and
I kept car running while Del went up to our actual room. 
It was open and the gal told us we could
begin unloading while she finished cleaning. The gal at the Check-In window at Kaiser wouldn't
give us the key, but the maid would let us unload. After I had loaded up the major food and
clothes on the cart and taken it up the elevator to the fifth floor, Del drove back to Kaiser to insist
that they give her the key, which they finally did. Our son Stoney could not get into his room
until after 5 pm, and this is a bit ridiculous. If you must leave by 10 AM on the last day and can't
get in till after 5, that knocks an entire day off the stay.
We have never had this problem with Escapes! personnel, but we couldn't use our normal
condo this year and get the week that we needed in order to get six condos for all of us. We'll put
that condo week in the bank to swap later. We are planning a 2008 trip to Dornach, Switzerland
with a couple of friends, and we may be able to swap that for a week in Switzerland during or
after we visit the Goetheanum.
The rest of our kids made it in okay, with grandson Kyle suffering a cut from a fall at
Uncle Stoney's house in Mandeville where Del's kids congregated before heading for the beach.
Last time Kyle, our five-year-old grandson came to the beach, he was sick and stayed in his room
the whole time; this time, he could not get his head wet, but it didn't spoil his fun. He waded in
the waves, wore a swim cap for the pool, and had as much fun as the rest of our grandkids.
I went out on the boogie board twice on Saturday and got beat up a couple of times when
the board hit the sand. The surf was the best of the week that day. Saw one jellyfish but kept my
distance and none stung me. Did feeling some minor irritation while in the water, which I expect
was the sea-lice I heard several people talking about. Amazing how many people go to the beach,
and complain about things they only have at the beach.
Del took off with her daughter Kim, granddaughters Katie & Amanda, daughters-in-law Sue & Gina out to lunch and for some "emergency shopping" on Monday. Seems to me that I've never heard any guys use those two words together, but somehow to the ladies, it makes sense. I decided to take my two out-of-town daughters, Yvette and Carla,
to lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday. It's so rare that I can have time alone with either of them.
So one baby-sat while the other went to lunch with her dad.
Tuesday was Yvette's day, and she wanted to use her laptop to get a little work done, so
after lunch we looked for Dizzy Beans which has a Wi-Fi hot spot. But we drove over the
Intracoastal Bridge's upramp and missed Dizzy Beans' street, which the ramp goes over. First we
tried Lamberts' Café with the "Throwed Rolls" and I nearly "throwed" up. Full of hillbilly
memorabilia and food. You like a platter of hog jowls? This is the place. It doesn't take credit
cards, but does take personal checks, go figure. We sat down, after Yvette nearly had to jump
over a large tray held by some oblivious waitress who was blocking the only aisle to our table.
We ate a roll which was throwed into our hands (dropped, actually), looked over the menu, and
decided to tip and leave. Went to Ruby Tuesdays a block away and got a decent meal in a real
restaurant. Only thing was: after we told the manager that we left Lamberts to eat at his place, he
raved about the food at Lamberts! Maybe that's the only place he can get "Hog Jowls" for his
lunch.
After lunch we drove to Dizzy Bean's coffeeshop and I got on the computer to
check emails while Yvette did her work on her laptop and wireless. After all the hassle at the
Palm Beach condos that Wes, Maureen, and Yvette had trying to get their wireless connections to
work, Dizzy Beans was a welcome relief. I even found a shortcut through Gulf State Park on the
second day. Our feedback to the owners of the units we stayed in was: PROVIDE
BROADBAND. The unit we own with ESCAPES! has COX Broadband with a LAN connection
that works perfectly. As a result, I spent little time on the computer and did some reading instead
of writing. Finished two books that I brought and wished I'd brought at least one more. By the
time I returned home, I had over 250 photos of the week to process (time-date stamp, identify
people, places) and two reviews to write. Took me almost till the end of the month to finish the
photos.
Wednesday was my date with Carla. Coincidentally, in the newspaper for this day was a
Family Circus cartoon with Dolly sitting with her dad at a restaurant. Dolly asks him, "Daddy, is
this like a date?" I had clipped it and gave it to Carla as we sat down to eat. We went to the Crab
Trap Restaurant because I wanted to check it out for our final night dinner. See if it could handle
all of us. Wouldn't give me reservations, the manager said come about 5 pm and you will be okay.
A neat gal named Rachal waited on us, and I found out she'd be there on Friday night, so I told
her to look for our party of 31 or 33. I had the Grouper sandwich and it was delicious. This
appears on Florida menus and rarely elsewhere, and we were just over the state line into Florida,
about seven miles from our Palm Beach condo complex.
Wednesday was the Beach Sculpture Contest, judged by Ms. Gee of Escapes! Carla and Yvette
had entered their two sets of kids in a combined sculpture which had a sand turtle, a dolphin
(Evelyn and Molly), and two volcanoes (by the volcano boys, Aidan and Garret). Carla had found
the ingredients to create an eruption using baking soda and vinegar and added red pop to color
it and liquid soap to foam it. It worked great! Maureen did her third mermaid of three trips to Orange
Beach, and it was a sure winner, so she told Gee to exclude her from the competition. Sure
enough! The volcano boys and their sisters won the day and the ribbons! 
This night was white
shirt night with matching pants for the Gralapps and the rest of the Clan decided to do the same
the next night. It seems like strange to me that one of my grandchildren looks like Gina
Lollabrigida, but Katie Gralapp does. One day my eyes followed this gal walking ahead of me in
a bikini like Gina L. might have worn in the 1960s, and when we got to the beach I realized she
was my grand-daughter, Katie.
On Thursday Wes took his and Stoney's teenage sons fishing and they came back with some
redfish they caught, cleaned, and grilled for the night-time meal. Our son, Rob, from Indiana
arrived in time for the photo shoot. He loaned me a white T-shirt and we all gathered to take
Matherne family photo groups. Even the Park Ranger showed up to watch the photo shoot on the
sand dunes. The rules are there to protect the sea oats, which we didn't disturb, but the ranger
was very nice, just invited us to leave and we did. We moved out of the closed-in area, but after he
left, we used the farther-away area with no sea oats but white sand.
I was up early Friday morning and walked the beach picking up sea shells. A bounty of shells
filled the beach, and I brought back my collection, spreading them out on the counter and taking
a photo. Also shot some of the shells spread on the beach. Got a portrait of a seagull standing
stock still on the beach. A diving bird in the surf near the sand brought up a fish, but by the time I
could get close with my camera, the fish had gone down its gullet.
The night of the big dinner, and everybody was ready. Del told all the offspring that the meal was
on us, and I informed the manager when I arrived to bring me the check. All 31 of us arrived
within minutes of each other. I had Del drop me off at the front door, so she could pull around
back, and then carry the VCR out to the eating area. I wanted videos of the gkids on the playset.
There were already folks half-filling the awning covered table area to the left with the best view
and access to the playground area. So I told the manager to block off one length of tables to the
left-side and the tables on the right side facing the play area. One couple was sitting at a table in
the right side, but agreed to move since they hadn't ordered yet. Only Mo and Steve and Robbie
sat on the near side away from the rest, but close to our table. Del chose to sit next to Jim and
Gina and Yvette sat on the other side of me.
I had thought that the sandlot and Jungle Gym play area might keep the kids occupied for about
15 minutes before they would come back and whine to their parents, "I'm bored" because there
were no video games like Flounders in Pensacola had, the last time we did the big dinner thing.
No way I could have been more wrong! Two hours later, we had all eaten and we were ready to
take a group photo before leaving, and we still had to peel kids off the slides and playset.
How we managed to get them all together for a group photo is beyond me. I saw it happen, but I
wasn't involved with making it happen. Wes asked Del, I found out later, if she wished to have a
photo of everyone and she said, "That would be great, but I don't know how to do it." Wes said,
"Leave it to me" and soon everyone was heading in the direction of the walkway. We finally
settled on the tables laid out in the open bordering the playset area. Kids sat on the bottom seat.
Adults sat on the table, some stood behind and now we had only one problem, all of our
photographers, some 7 or 8 of them had to be in the picture! A couple of women were watching us
get everyone together, and as I shot a couple of preliminary candid shots, one of them offered,
then the other, to take the photos for us. I gave her my camera, and soon they had a couple or
three cameras apiece to shoot the photos. What a blessing they were!
Everyone loved their food. Everyone was smiling and having a good time. The cousins loved
playing with each other, some of them, like the three Indiana kids, were playing with their
Hatchett cousins for the first time ever. The manager came by several times to ask if we needed
anything, and we had only praises for the food and the service by Rachal and Haley. A few flies
flew around the crabs, but Mo was not deterred by them. She loved her Dungeness Crab so much
that she was reluctant to stop picking at the shell when it came time to take photos. Aidan
attacked his large snow crabs, and several other kids opted for the more docile but delicious crab
cakes.
On Saturday the Hatchetts and Gralapps headed out to Kountze, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, and
Mandeville. Yvette and her family headed up to Michigan for their annual summer trek to her
husband's boyhood home. Our other three Matherne kids stayed over another day and night and
left on Sunday. It was a wonderful week. Some condos got a little crowded, some tempers got
tested, a few jellyfish stings, a few pink areas of flesh, but on the whole, everyone had a great
time being together at the beach with family.
Drove home on Sunday and encountered very little traffic. The house was hot because I had
turned the AC up while we were gone, and it takes an hour or so to cool it back down the ten
degrees. Plus my desktop PC would not boot up. I tried everything I could think of and finally
told Del, let's go to the movies. She had seen the latest Harry Potter movie with the gkids during
our beach week, and I hadn't. We cooled off, enjoyed the movie, and when we got back I tried
my PC again with a cooler head. Thought it was the new hard drive that had gone bad, which
seemed unlikely. Maybe its electrolytic capacitors had dried out, so I kept powering it on and off
and on again to reform the electrolytic coatings. Finally I noticed an Overclocking Message and
realized that it was probably a CMOS configuration problem. I recall one previous time when the
Boot Drive sequence got changed during a power off time. Sure enough, all I had to do is make
my VIA drive no. 1 and it came right up. Probably my CMOS battery needs replacing and
couldn't hold the charge for an entire week.
The next day I stopped by our good friend Rosie's after my latte run to PJ's Coffeeshop. I
installed a DVD player on her TV, but the video of her 85th birthday would not play on it. It just
showed BAD in the display, 
so I had Del bring over several DVD movies to test the player. They
worked fine, it was the poor recording on the DVD that was the problem. I left Steel Magnolias
in the player for her to watch later. Came home and tested the birthday DVD on my other player,
and it played, but very poorly. On a hunch I tried out the new HD/DVD player I had just installed
in the Timberlane Screening Room, and it played the video perfectly. Seems the newer one has
better resolution and can handle the marginally recorded DVDs much better than the older DVD
players themselves can. For supper that night I made creole tomatoes in Del's sauce, and cooked
some jambalaya with the shrimp boudin, and invited Rosie to come over to join us for
supper and watch her Birthday video. Rosie had a good time. She enjoyed the meal. We went to
the Screening Room after dinner. While waiting for Del to join us, I played the first section of the
Planet Earth HD/DVD for Rosie to see what HD TV was about. Then we broke to eat a slice of
watermelon and later returned to watch her 85th birthday video. The video was made just before
we met Rosie two years ago. Her son, Ronnie, talked about going to the CODOFIL breakfast to
tell her friends about her operation. Del and I were at that meeting, and it was then we decided
that we'd have to meet Ronnie's mom, Rosie.
After Rosie left, Del reminded me that we could watch "The Closer" on DVR and skip all the
obnoxious commercials for the sandwiched programs, "Saving Grace" and "Heartland". These
may be great shows, but we ain't watching them live and not for several years. Let them age in
the cask for a few years and prove whether their vintage is worthy of a sip or two. "The Closer"
is the only first-run network program we watch, and even it needs to be on a DVR-delayed basis
to suit our own viewing pleasure.
The next morning, I got on my NetFlix account to switch our DVD format to HD/DVD. For no
extra charge, they will send our movies in HD/DVD format whenever a movie is available in that
format. They also gave me the list of HD movies available to choose from. I ordered "The Lake
House" which we had seen last year and wanted to view it again. The next day the HD/DVD
came in, but it wouldn't play on the player! I examined the HD side of the disk and it looked like
someone had tried to rescue a scratched disk and had ruined it. I sent it back. After that all the
HD disks have played with no problems.
The night that the "The Lake House" HD/DVD wouldn't play, I went to our DVR recorded
programs and found an intriguing Star Trek Voyager episode. In it episode invisible aliens were
making the crew Voyager starship sick. Having just finished writing my review of "Broken
Vessels" it occurred to me that what these aliens were doing is exactly what spiritual beings do in
the course of weaving our illnesses into our karmic working out in this lifetime. We get
migraines, perhaps, like Janeway did, and we cannot perceive the spiritual beings who are
causing them. But they are real nevertheless. Of course, in the Voyager episode the crew had to
find a way to make the aliens visible, discover their motives (research), and then get rid of them.
If everyday folks were to make these spiritual beings visible, they would want to get rid of them
as well -- to their own detriment! Luckily the world is such that in order to perceive these
spiritual beings, one must undergo an initiation in which one understands the goals and
objectives of the spiritual beings and the salubrious effect of their actions on each human being's
existence over thousands of years of karmic working out. For more details, read complete review.
On the last Wednesday of the month, we spent the day with my dad, Buster, and his seven
remaining siblings. I had called my Aunt Carolyn on her birthday Saturday, the day after my
birthday. She is only three years older than I am, and we played together a lot as kids, so I make a
point to wish her Happy Birthday when I can. She said she was going out to lunch with her
sisters when I talked to her, but later found out a huge surprise birthday party was planned for her
including a last-minute surprise visit by Purpy, her brother from Englewood, Florida. We met them
at Lydia's house, went to the Red Maple for a delicious lunch, and then visited 92-year-old Hilda,
the oldest of the ten Mathernes. She doesn't get out too often, we all packed ourselves into her
small living room, using up almost every chair and sitting place in her home for a visit and
naturally a family portrait. Del and I had a good time. For me it was like being a kid again and for
Del it was another chance to experience the unique energy of the Matherne clan which has hardly
flagged a bit with them ranging in age from 70 to 92. We did notice that three of them are
currently using canes.
On Friday, I had just written to Louise Lewis, who wrote of having a friend Holly who blew
bubbles into her cubicle one day when she was too serious, "Del and I are heading out for our
29th anniversary tonight, dinner with my best friend, Brian, who blows bubbles into my space if I
get too serious."
When I placed a call to Brian on his cell to make sure he was on his way. He and his wife, Judy,
were due at 5 and it was 4:55. He said, "I thought you were coming to get us." "No," I explained,
"but we're ready, can you come over right away?" He lives about a 15-minute drive from us. I
walked immediately out to the garage to get our car ready for when they arrived and there was
Brian petting our Schnauzer, Steiner, at our gate! Brian had been blowing bubbles into my space!
Judy fussed at him in the car for saying what he said when my call came in just as they were
rounding the corner to our house! We had a big laugh over it. For me it was especially poignant
as it illustrated what I had just told Louise, in process!
We drove to City Park reserved our four seats up front, then walked thru the Aboretum, the
Japanese Zen Garden and the Train Garden before the music started. Thaïs St. Julien sang in her
delicate soprano voice several indelicate songs about naughty or dangerous women, ending with
a rousing encore of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" which involved a naughty Dorothy who
didn't come in before the rain and the tornado got her.
After that we drove to Mandina's Restaurant on Canal Street, newly re-opened with their new
addition, enlarged parking lot, and a long line out the door. We opted for Bon Ton on Magazine
Street instead, with validated parking, and no lines, and great food and service. The manager
came by our table after dinner to chat with us. I told him how much I loved his shrimp-crab-eggplant étouffée. A great evening all around. Good music, friends, and food.
On Sunday we drove to my dad's to play cards, as he loves to do after church. He had already
eaten a small lunch, but he came with me to get some boiled crabs at Irene's in Boutte, she had
none, and I had to get large boiled shrimp instead. We ate about half and brought the rest home
for a seafood gumbo. We Played Pay Me! after eating our shrimp. My brother Steve and his
wife Janice got three Quizno's subs in Coronado Park outlet for them and sister-in-law Barbara.
Del Janice, Steve, Barbara, me, and Buster all fell victim to Del today. I made one Pay Me each
game, and Del won both of the end-game low scores. But it was fun. Steve wanted to show us his
kitchen after the game. Looks great. Over 3 solid years of work remodeling his house and he has
just finished the last bit of trim in his totally redone kitchen. I joked with him about not sending him
birthday cards for five years for how much trouble we'll have to go through to redo our kitchen
after Del saw what he had done.
It's Monday, July 30, as I type these words. Del has peeled the leftover shrimp, and there's a
pound and a half of okra waiting to be sliced, crawfish defrosting in crab boil seasoned water,
and oysters awaiting their turn to be dumped into the seafood gumbo pot later this afternoon. My
Digest awaits these Personal Notes and the addition of the photos I will select from the 300
photos I shot during the month of July. It's been another full, busy, and fun Summer, and we look
forward to the wind-down of summer, football, and start-up of school which August will bring.
Till next month, when God Willing, we will return with a new Digest full of reviews, good news,
and colorful photos. May we part for now by saying See You Later as my Cajun ancestors like to say it, À bientôt !
Important Message to All Those Who Have Changed their Email Address Since Last Digest Issue
New Quotes Added to 
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 
“Derailed” (2005) is what our hero is when a gal he meets innocently enough on a commuter train leads him into bed at a sleazy hotel where a thug breaks in, beats the guy up, rapes the girl, and takes all their money. He tells his wife it was a street mugging and next day the thug calls to blackmail him. This goes from bad to worse to worser and worser. Where will it? With our hero in prison, but for what? Ahh, thereupon a tale is hanging down. HD/DVD format.
“Rocky & Bullwinkle, Season 1” (1960) This is a full season, warts, mooseberries, Moon men, and all. Only the commercials have been deleted, and for me the color was added. I was busy in college during this first season, so I missed a crucial bit of setup. When Mr. Peabody begins by saying, “Peabody here with my boy Sherman.” I thought Sherman owned the dog named Mr. Peabody all these years, but am now crestfallen to find that Mr. Peabody obtained Sherman to have a boy to keep himself company! This is still great stuff. We watched the whole series, one episode at a time, as a cartoon interlude between movies in the Timberlane Screening Room. Bring on Season 2! 
“Casablanca” (1942) When I first saw this movie in a film class at a college in Massachusetts, the 16mm projector created an image as big as the one on my home TV screen. Watching it in the new HD/DVD format gave us a sharp, crisp B&W image which brought this evergreen back to life for us. Will Ilsa go away with Rick or her husband? Ingrid Bergman didn’t know either until she filmed on the last day as the writers were constructing the script as the shooting proceeded. This added a verisimilitude which helped make each viewing of this movie, “The start of a beautiful friendship!” A DON’T MISS HIT! HD/DVD Format
“Night at the Museum” (2006) Ben Stiller, whose name almost spells “Silly,” interviews Ann Meara (his real mom) for a job at the unemployment office, and she turns him down. So he pleads with her and gets a gig that nobody else wants: night watchmen at the Natural History Museum, “Where Natural History comes to Life” — every night, in fact. But being a guy, does Ben read the instructions on how to survive the first night? Noooo, but throw the guy a bone, he keeps coming back for more. Robin Williams as the wax statue of Teddy Roosevelt is a hoot. Gets a 10 on the Silly Scale and a Your Call on the Movie Blurb scale. 
“Children of Men” (2006) Julianne Moore and Michael Caine have supporting roles in this
lugubrious but interesting movie in which no children have been born for over 20 years in 2028. The world is such a mess that even England looks like war-torn Kosovo. This movie makes 2007 look great by comparison! Everything is spiraling slowly downhill when a pregnant woman shows up who makes Mary Magdalene seem like a virgin. Then it spirals down faster until . . . well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it, old chap?
“Off the Black” (2006) with Nick Nolte as a high school baseball umpire who makes a fateful call which keeps the local team out of the state playoff game. Locals paper his house and he catches one who breaks his Geo’s back window. It was the pitcher for whom he called “Ball Four” in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and game tied. They become friends and by dint of the very last line of the movie we learn what the title refers to. 
Or whip up a smoothy in the Vita-Mix. Very little goes to waste and even the waste enriches the soil in one of our gardens. In the fall and early spring months our Navel oranges, Honeybell oranges, and pink grapefruit from our citrus orchard goes into the fruit bowl, at least a few pieces.
bent like a bow, hastening along the road, barefooted, as usual, with an axe in his hand; was in haste perhaps on account of the cold wind on his bare feet. . . . When he got up to me, I saw that besides the axe in one hand, he had his shoes in the other, filled with knurly apples and a dead robin. He stopped and talked with me a few moments; said that we had had a noble autumn and might now expect some cold weather. I asked if he had found the robin dead. No, he said, he found it with its wing broken and killed it. He also added that he had found some apples in the woods, and as he hadn't anything to carry them in, he put 'em in his shoes. They were queer-looking trays to carry fruit in. How many he got in along toward the toes, I don't know. I noticed, too, that his pockets were stuffed with them. His old tattered frock coat was hanging in strips about the skirts, as were his pantaloons, about his naked feet. He appeared to have been out on a scout this gusty afternoon, to see what he could find, as the youngest boy might. It. pleased me to see this cheery old man, with such a feeble hold on life, bent almost double, thus enjoying the evening of his days. Far be it from me to call it avarice or penury, this childlike delight in finding something in the woods or fields and carrying it home in the October evening, as a trophy to be added to his winter's store. Oh, no; he was happy to be Nature's pensioner still, and bird-like to pick up his living. Better his robin than your turkey, his shoes full of apples than your barrels full; they will be sweeter and suggest a better tale. He can afford to tell how he got them, and we to listen. There is an old wife, too, at home, to share them and hear how they were obtained. Like an old squirrel shuffling to his hole with a nut. Far less pleasing to me the loaded wain, more suggestive of avarice and of spiritual penury.
[page 110] This old man's cheeriness was worth a thousand of the church's sacraments and memento mori's. It was better than a prayerful mood. It proves to me old age as tolerable, as happy, as infancy. I was glad of an occasion to suspect that this afternoon he had not been at "work" but living somewhat after my own fashion (though he did not explain the axe), — had been out to see what nature had for him, and now was hastening home to a burrow he knew, where he could warm his old feet. If he had been a young man, he would probably have thrown away his apples and put on his shoes when he saw me coming, for shame. But old age is manlier; it has learned to live, makes fewer apologies, like infancy. This seems a very manly man. I have known him within a few years building stone wall by himself, barefooted.
to go around again and again with ever-increasing wonderment and joy. His theme of the seasons on pages 127 through 130 inspired me to write this poem of the seasons using some of the details of each season laid down by Thoreau in those pages:
How many can exercise the highest human faculties? He is the man truly — courageous, wise, ingenious — who can use his thoughts and ecstasies as the material of fair and durable creations. One man shall derive from the fisherman's story more than the fisher has got who tells it. The mass of men do not know how to cultivate the fields they traverse. The mass glean only a scanty pittance where the thinker reaps an abundant harvest. What is all your building, if you do not build with thoughts? No exercise implies more real manhood and vigor than joining thought to thought. How few men can tell what they have thought! I hardly know half a dozen who are not too lazy for this. They cannot get over some difficulty, and therefore they are on the long way round. You conquer fate by thought. If you think the fatal thought of men and institutions, you need never pull the trigger. The consequences of thinking inevitably follow. There is no more Herculean task than to think a thought about this life and then get it expressed.
In the study of π we find that there is π in the sky and π on the Earth. Most of my life I have lived within a few miles of the large and winding Mississippi River which is governed by the curious number we know as π. During their field trip to the Palace of Discovery built for the Great Exhibition of 1900, a large oval room was built with the first 700 decimals of π emblazoned in a complete arc around the room. They listened to the guide talk about π and how it could be found in the far reaches of the cosmos as well as down here on Earth.
Max and his parrot, Sidney, are kidnaped and Pierre Ruche must drive in Albert’s taxi from Paris to Sicily to find them and when they arrive they find that Pierre’s other old friend, a third pal from the war, is waiting to greet them. So the mystery is solved, but with great difficulty and we can only wonder if the parrot will live happily ever after or die at the hands of the kidnappers.
What have we learned from our journey through the history of maths? Deep gratitude to the men whose lives were devoted to coming up with the “series of clever tricks” we know as mathematics. A deeper respect for the contributions of the Arabs, for another thing. They took a book written in India with the ten digits we all use now, translated it, and made it into such a popular form of calculating that it was their name that popular parlance has attached to what we call “Arabic numbers.” Then Al-Jabr began a little bone-setting and we had algebra to help us set things straight in a world of unknowns. We have also learned that maths can be exciting. Denis Guedj orchestrates the lives of Elgar, Mr Ruche, Perrette, Albert the taxi driver, Max, the teenage twins: Jonathan and Lea, an Amazon blue parrot name Sid Vicious, and a few thugs to convey the sense of excitement that anyone can get by studying the history of mathematics. We have a chance to visit the Institu du Monde Arab building and watch the 27,000 irises open automatically to let more light into the glass monolith and walk through the Palace of Discovery with the large room with the 700 digits of Pi arrayed around its lower ceiling. We have learned the origin of the five great constants of π, e, i, 0, and 1 and why they are important even to people who have never heard of some of them, and how they are united in one grand embrace in Euler's Equation. If five such amazingly different numbers which came into existence over thousands of years can be related so intimately it gives us hope that the amazingly different people of the world will discover that we are all intimately related to each other and can embrace each other as well.
The priest, on the other hand, performs rituals in full view and consciousness of their flock, be it a church or at the bedside of an ill member of their flock. During the ritual, the spiritual world flows into both the priest and the parishioner.
Since no suggestion is present in a ritual, a sacrament, e.g. communion, cannot be symbolic, but must involve a streaming of the spiritual world directly into the person receiving communion. Here we can see the difference in approach of the physician whose therapy brings life to consciousness and the priest whose ritual brings consciousness to life. 
Now, all of these stages of development are ignored by physicians who are not anthroposophically trained. How much more complex is the human being than what is studied in anatomy and physiology today. Physicians who do not know the complexities and interactions of the physical, etheric, astral, and Ego bodies will produce equivalent results as if one took precious paintings of Rembrandt to a paint-by-numbers hobbyist to be restored. One might imagine the results would not be acceptable, and an unacceptably high percentage of the paintings would have to be discarded.
We watched a Star Trek Voyager episode in which invisible aliens were making the crew sick. Captain Janeway had a weeklong migraine headache, Chakotay became suddenly old looking, and various other crew members went to sick bay, some with life-threatening illnesses. No one could see these aliens or knew of their presence on the Voyager starship. When Seven of Nine had her Borg implants adjusted by the Doctor, she could see the aliens going around the ship, hovering over members of the crew and making them sick. In particular, she saw two aliens inserting acupuncture-type needles into the places where Janeway was having her headaches. I had just finished writing my draft review of this book, and it occurred to me that what the aliens were doing is exactly what spiritual beings do as they “weave an illnesses into the fabric of karma” in our lifetime. We get migraines, perhaps, like Janeway did, and we cannot perceive the spiritual beings who are causing them. But they are real nevertheless. Of course, in the Voyager episode, they had to find a way to make the aliens visible, discover their motives (research), and then get rid of them, a typical human reaction, but if we did the same thing to our spiritual beings to stop them weaving an illness into our karma, what would be the effect? We would never balance our karma, which is another way of saying that we would never progress into the spiritual world and would remain as reincarnated earthly beings until our death would coincide with the death of the Earth. If we, like the Voyager crew did, were to make these spiritual beings visible suddenly to everyday folks they would want to get rid of them as well, to their own detriment! Fortunately the world is such that in order to perceive these spiritual beings, one must undergo an initiation in which one comes to understand the goals and objectives of the spiritual beings and the salubrious effect of their actions on each human being’s existence over thousands of years of karmic working out. It is all part of the great plan which leads us as human beings to becoming spiritual beings ourselves before the Earth dissolves away.
There was a time when the source of all illnesses was sought in sin, when the spiritual world was thought to be the source of the things of the physical world. Remove what was wrong with a person spiritually and what was wrong physically will go away. Certainly one can find many instances which demonstrate this in stories in the Bible. A demon is cast out of a person and they are no longer ill. But in modern times, that belief has fallen aside, to replaced by whatever the newest theory or technology suggests. In the nascent twenty-first century, that would be genetics and genetic engineering. All diseases are deemed to have some genetic basic and with the results of the human genome project, our medical scientists seek the one gene which is the cause of every disease. Have you noticed how many deeds people do today which were formerly considered sinful or immoral and today are considered due to some genetic defect or medical condition? Whereas before sin was deemed to cause illness, now illness seems to cause sin ! Has anyone ever considered seriously that the whole human rational process of assessing blame is wrong? The truth seems to be deeper than either direction to which one can assign a cause-effect relationship.
A scientist who does not understand the mysteries that comprise the human being can be fooled into thinking, like Dr. Frankenstein, that it is possible to build a human being from its component parts. Steiner uses an elaborate metaphor of building a house to help us understand this matter.
She asked in desperation, “What am I going to do?” and lowered her head in prayerful expectation. Three answers came from her Muse.
[page 13] Garrett: To do good in the eyes of the Lord. To understand the Abramic covenant. To read the words of the prophets and to read in those words the design of the Lord, the one true God of us all. Then, to understand the renewed covenant that is offered through the Messiah as predicted in Psalm 23 and Isaiah 54 and carried out in the new (covenant) testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and further amplified in Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians and particularly recounted in Acts. The sea is water, but not the water of life, which is through Jesus. The boat moves not the sea.
