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~~~~~~~~ At Left: J. B. Borel, President of CODOFIL, Rive Ouest (1921 — 2008) ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ At Right: Francis E. "Purpy" Matherne, Uncle (1923 — 2008) ~~~~~~~~
Both were good friends of mine. JB Borel I knew for only a few years. Uncle Purpy I knew since I was a few years old. (Click to see Photos). ~~~~~~~~
For newcomers to the Digest, we have created a webpage of all the Violet-n-Joey cartoons!
Check it out at: http://www.doyletics.com/vjtoons.htm Also note the rotating calendar and clock
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The Violet-n-Joey Cartoon page is been divided into two pages: one low-speed and one high-speed access. If you have Do NOT Have High-Speed Access, you may try this Link which will load much faster and will allow you to load one cartoon at a time. Use this one for High-Speed Access.
This month, in Part 4 of 4, Violet and Joey learn about Beauty.
Each month we take time to thank two of our good readers of Good Mountain Press Digest, books and reviews. Here's our two worthy Honored Readers for this month. One of their names will be in the TO: address line of your email Digest notification. Our Honored Readers for September are:
August was a little quieter than July, but was filled with two funerals, three birthday parties, the Saints
preseason games, a trip to City Park with grandkids, several Twilight Concerts with Paul Soniat and
John Rankin, plus other things. Details to follow with photos throughout the Digest. Read on.
Two Old Friends Pass As you can tell from the In Memoriam, Del and I lost two good friends, Joseph B. Borel and Fran Matherne. A week after Uncle Fran died, our friend J. B. Borel died at age 87. He was President of CODOFIL (Council
for Development of French Speaking in Louisiana) local chapter and we've known him for about five
years, after meeting him in St. Joseph Church. He would occasionally sit in our pew and would ask
Del's help in identifying the next song to be sung during High Mass. Soon we looked forward to having
him sit next to us, and found out his name at a meeting at the German Cultural Center in Gretna one
night. When I introduced us to him, he said, "Matherne. Hmm, I know some Mathernes from Luling."
Matherne may be a rare name in any other part of the country, but in the Luling area there are about
500 Matherne families. I asked for their names, thinking it was unlikely I knew them. "Paul and Joyce
Matherne," he said. Well, that's my brother and his wife. He knew them from some Cajun activities like
the monthly CODOFIL breakfasts he had just started locally. We began going to the breakfasts with
Paul and Joyce, and continued going after Paul and Joyce moved to Opelousas. We attended JB's
funeral mass in Harvey nearby.
Fran Matherne was known to me since I was two years old as Uncle Purpy. See photo of him in his
Navy blues saluting with me in the Blast From the Past Photo at bottom of Digest. When I look at that
photo today, I feel my left hand warm under his touch and the warmth of his body behind me on the
walk outside our home in Westwego. He was obviously on leave from the Navy and this may have
been the first time he saw me.
Purpy was a good friend to me and the closest brother to my dad, Buster, so far as I know. One story I
like to tell was about going fishing with Buster and Purpy when I was about 14 years old. The three of
us launched about 5 am out of Madison south of Houma. We probably fished around Lake Barré, their
favorite fishing spot. I don't remember how many fish we caught that day, only that we unpacked a
case (24 cans) of Schlitz beer into our ice chest before we set out and about 9 am, we came back to
the dock for supplies and loaded up another case of Schlitz into the ice chest and set out for Lake
Barré to do more . . . er . . . fishing. Mind you, I did not drink a drop of those 48 cans of beer, so
Buster and Purpy must have consumed them all. While I was away at college Uncle Purpy and Aunt
Maryann moved to Florida.
In the weeks after I graduated in 1962, I accompanied my folks down to
Englewood, Florida and spent a week with Purpy and Maryann. Over the years, Purpy and Maryann
would come for a visit almost once a year. We will miss those visits with the Matherne reunions and the
card games which invariably sprang up whenever they came to town. Uncle Purpy was named
"Purpee" as a baby, likely because of his ruddy complexion. That is a common Cajun nickname for a
for "red-faced" child, and the name stuck for him in South Louisiana, but in Florida he was known as
Fran. If you look at the photo of Purpy in the In Memoriam section, you'll notice his ruddy face.
Del and I were unable to attend his funeral in Florida, but we hold Uncle Purpy in our thoughts as he
enters this new phase of life in the spirit world. We have been blessed by knowing him. Our cousin sent
several photos of business places around Englewood whose signs said, "We will miss you Fran
Matherne", "Goodbye to an old friend", this sign to the right, Gone but never forgotten." We have been
blessed by knowing you, Uncle Purpy.
Dean Matherne Returns from Iraq
Our nephew Dean returned from his year long tour in Bagdad. His Engineering Battlion helped clean
our Sadr City and return its control to the citizens of Iraq. We celebrated a belated birthday and
welcome home party for him in Thibodaux on a warm August day. Was great seeing Dean's sister
Robin (with husband Mark and son Hunter) and brother Mark, wife and kids. Also my brother David's
wife Barbara was there and we hadn't seen her for a long time. Mark's wife Becky has two growing
girls, Abby and Ella, and she was enjoying her new Nikon camera, taking shots more than I was. We
talked about cameras for a long time. She mentioned that she had just looked at my Digest this
morning, and I shared with her how I go about processing the photos that I take. Keeping track of over
300 photos a month, cataloguing them, cropping them, and backing them up is a constant chore
throughout the month. Then there's the ones for the Digest. I need to size them down so that they are
the minimum size but still look perfect. One secret is that I only use the Sharpen Image Filter after I
minimize the size of the photo. The image does not sharpen noticeably on the 3 Mb images as they
come out of the camera. It's only in the 20 to 60 Kb images ready to be posted on the web that the
filter sharpens the photo images extra well.
The food was good, the music was fun, and everyone had a great time. There was one incident which
we can all take a lesson from. If one's elderly dad does not wear his suspenders one day and spends
the middle of the day eating at a party, he may loosen his belt, and forget to re-tighten it when it's time
to go. Therefore, it is prudent to advise him to re-tighten his belt before helping him down the stairs. Or
while two people have both his arms to protect him getting down the steps, his pants may drop around
his knees. The embarrassment may be minimal if you quickly pull up his pants, but it can be easily
avoided with a bit of forethought.
Our good friend Rosie Harris called me to say that some people from Africa were coming to interview
her for a video-taping project and could I come over as she was nervous meeting these people by
herself in her home. Rosie is 87-years-old and lives alone in her large home in Timberlane. She is one of
the busiest people I know. She told me, "I get up and get all dressed up everyday by 9 am, so if anyone
calls, I'm ready to go." And she goes a lot. Often it's spontaneous, but she has such a busy schedule
that it's takes her a long time to schedule a doctor's appointment. During one long phone session with a
doctor's assistant trying to schedule Rosie for an office visit, the assistant finally said, "Miss Rosie, I
can't imagine anyone your age being so busy!"
I told Rosie that I would stop over the next morning after my morning college lecture trip to PJ's
Coffeeshop. I drive by her house coming and going to PJ's every morning. My current Teaching Co.
course is "British Literature" by Prof. John Sutherland and he's currently covering Edward Gibbon's
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". That morning, I arranged to reach Rosie's house on the way
home about 10 am and waited for the Africans to arrive. It turned out to be a couple of Brazilians
instead, an artist and her assistant.
Coincidentally the artist was also name "Rose," but Roseângela Rennó pronounced her name HOZ
ANG-el-LAH. Her assistant's name was Diogo de Lima, but the "Dio" is one syllable pronounced as
DZHO. So his name is pronounced DZHO-go de Lima. She is one of the sixty artists working on the
Nov 1, 2008 to Jan 18, 2009 city-wide artshow called Prospect .1 — slated as the largest biennial of
international contemporary art ever organized in the United States. Roseângela's project will be a four-screen presentation of side-by-side video interviews with Cajun and Creole speakers, focusing on
cooking and their early life growing up as French speakers in the USA. Roseângela asked me some
questions, and I explained a some things to her about I grew up, how I learned to cook, about seafood
gumbo, my take on the origin of "étouffée" from the word "to stuff"or "smother" and other things. She
scheduled a video-taping of Rosie on Monday. Wanted to know where Rosie wanted the interview to
be done, and I explained that most things in Cajun household take place in the kitchen. It was where
we had guests in our home, even when the parlor was empty. So the taping was done in Rosie's
kitchen from 11 am to 1 pm. I cooked some crawfish étouffée and rice for our lunch afterward, and
Rosie set the table in her dining room and made a salad and some tea. The production crew picked up
some nice white wine for the meal.
Roseângela gave Rosie a colorful cook book of Brazilian cooking, and Rosie later gave it to me. The
recipe which intrigued me was a dessert made of avocados. Del and I eat a lot of avocadoes and I
have never seen an avocado dessert, ever. So a week or so later, I had accumulated the ingredients
and made an incredibly delicious chilled avocado cream for dessert for me and Del.
Luckily I took
photos of the preparation and final product, so it will be added to the on-line recipes for Bobby Jeaux's
Kitchen in an upcoming Digest. Future dinner guests in Bobby Jeaux's Kitchen will have a chance
to experience a taste of Brazil. As the recipe book explains, avocados are used primarily for dessert concoctions in Brazil and rarely if ever in salads as in North America.
Two 8-8-8 Birthdays Fifty Years Apart Del and I have so many grandkids, about 21 including two great-grandsons, that we had to use our
Contact Manager/Scheduler to remind us five days ahead of time when a birthday was due. That would
give us time enough to place a greeting card/present in the mail. A couple of years ago, as we were
updating the birthdays we noticed that Aidan Clark, our grandson in Bellaire, Texas, was going to be 8
on 8-8-8 this year. We mentioned to our daughter Yvette that this unique event called for a special
party. So we got the invitation with and image of the old Magic 8-Ball who answers all questions, such
as, "Will Aidan's Birthday Be A Hit?" and the answer in the Magic Window came out to be, "Count
On It". We planned to drive to the Houston area for Aidan's 8-8-8 party on Friday night, August 8,
2008. Meantime a second invitation to our friend Ted Graham's 58th birthday party came in.
Reluctantly we advised Ruth and Ted that we'd be in Bellaire that same night.
As the middle of the week of the party approached I discovered that Aidan's party was going to be
coupled with a family reunion for his other grandmother, my ex-wife. So at the last moment we showed
up at Ted's party, not really knowing for sure exactly what day his actual birthday was. It was a Friday
night and his birthday could have been 3 days or so before or after Friday. Our uncertainty as to his
birthday was dispelled immediately as Ted and Ruth appeared in T-Shirts with three 8-Balls on them!
Ted was born on August 8, 1950 and he was 8 on 8-8-58! This year he was 58 on 8-8-8! Just as
Aidan will be in fifty years.
Ted's party was on North Claiborne Avenue, home of the self-proclaimed, "Emperor of the World" —
the inimitable New Orleanian, Ernie K-Doe, and the lounge he named after his mother-in-law who
inspired his Top 40 Hit, "Mother-in-Law", several decades ago. Antoinette, his widow, now runs the
lounge and it is like a small-scale Watts Towers of eclectic artworks and paintings, both inside and out.
While Sam Rodia used broken dinner plates to create works of art, Ernie K-Doe used toilets. Outside
in the al fresco dining and picnic area, about 17 toilets were painted various loud colors, filled with dirt,
and had live and plastic plants and flowers stuck into the water tank and commode. Large colorful
murals filled the inside and outside walls. Antoinette's wheels, a twenty-year-old black Cadillac hearse
sat outside on an open slab next to the patio, framing the outdoor tables and plastic lawn chairs — all
painted different colors to match or contrast with the toilets. Everyone gravitated outside to knosh,
schmooze, and smoke. I had Del take a photo of me giving Ernie K-Doe a High Five, one of us mural
and the other of us Live.
Met Cookie and Barbara from Ennis, TX. Cookie is originally Portuguese from a section of
Massachusetts near the terminus of the French Transatlantic Cable where everyone spoke french, but
he spoke Portuguese. And English. Lives now on a rural farm below Dallas, raising large dogs: mastiffs
and others. Wants to get some llamas for his farm because they kill coyotes. Once he got a 60 lb
Mexican wolf as a pet for his daughter. The wolf became so territorial about his daughter that literally
no one, even Cookie, could go into her room without being attacked. When Cookie would come home
from a Blues gig, he would carry an Oreo cookie up to one end of the double-U-shaped house, toss it
in the door, and then rush through the other door to his bedroom before Wolfie could tear him up.
Cookie is a large man, who plays a mean blues guitar. He told us how his agent called Cookie right
before they left to come to New Orleans for Ted's birthday party. Said that he'd booked Cookie into a
band playing for a nudist wedding in October. Cookie told his agent, "If they expect me to play in the
nude, they are going to have to pass out Barf bags." Synchronistically, a few minutes after he said that,
our old friend Michael showed up with his present for Ted: a bright yellow plastic bag labeled, "Barf
Bag." Inside was a stuffed ape who, when you pressed his foot, began throwing his two arms into the
air, revealing his T-shirt which read "Older Than Dirt" with some approximate song playing. Later,
Michael came outside and updated me and Del on his post-K life. He's only working about 10 — 15 hrs
a month doing consultant work. His former company moved to Mandeville and he told them, "I've
never commuted more than 15 minutes to work, so I'm leaving." And he did. Before we left, we went
inside to see both Ted and Cookie playing on their guitars. Ted was singing, "Oh, Babe, whatya gonna
do?" I looked at Del and said, "We gonna go home" and we told everyone goodbye and left. Glad we
finally made a party at the K-Doe Palace. It was a memorable 8-8-8 Birthday Party — and the drive
home was only 6 minutes instead of 6 hours.
Fall Garden, Garden Club, Flying Horses, Saints, and Sha
Last year, Del needed a lot of help from me to get her Garden Club's Yearbook ready for printing. I
wrote a poem for it, and provided the photos for the cover. This year, Del only needed a little help for
the final touches to her Yearbook. She even wrote the poem (Featured as Poem of the Month in this Digest), "Garden Reverie", which became the theme for the year. We printed the yearbook in two-sided, booklet form on our LaserJet 4+D printer, and looking at the proof, added .2" to outside edge of Binding. We then put the cover color art on her memory stick and said a big THANKS for the Best Buy Geek Squad for setting up the network connecting our computers. Basically we edited the yearbook on Del's Laptop and then
printed out the full booklet from my PC while the original document was residing on Del's LT in her
Public Area. After the garden club officers proofed the final copy, Del printed out the galley and copied
the cover onto her memory stick. Office Depot then produced the final booklets and bound them.
This month I cultivated our vegetable garden area to get it ready for our Fall garden planting. I used my
Echo Tiller to chop up the dead plants from the Spring garden and mix it into the soil and grass
clippings of the summer mowing. We had already treated the garden area with our Bio-Dynamic barrel
compost last month. After letting the garden sit for a week or so, I added dark, rich mulch from our
compost bed covering the vegetable garden soil and hilled the rows preliminarily. The next day Del and
I returned with hoe and rake to define the rows and make the garden plot ready for planting. Went to
Rose's Garden Center and bought brussels sprouts, broccoli, tomatoes and bell pepper plants. Also
bush bean seeds. The next day I placed the plants in the ground, and seeded the bush beans and
parsley seeds. I pulled up all but the ikiban eggplant which was still bearing. I will hold radishes till Sept
1,2 when my Bio-Dynamic calendar calls for root plants to be seeded.
One early afternoon, I drove over to go to the opening of the Carousel and Storyland at City Park.
Stopped by the fourplex we sold last year, the Hagan house. Saw a guy carrying doors out. Name was
David, Suzanne's boy friend who works at a stripping place. He invited me in and he showed me the
doors he's stripped an re-hung in the bathroom and kitchen. Fine-grained Louisiana Cypress doors. He
put a light stain on them and they look marvelous. I had no idea what lay hidden under 17 coats of
white paint. The front, side, and back yards are all clean, and neatly trimmed. David said they're
designing a new awning for the front of the house. Told him to say hi to Suzanne for me. Then I drove
on to City Park and walked through the Amusement Park. Took photos. I was disappointed by the
Carousel. It was working and looked beautiful, but only one door was opened and there was no AC
on. In the summer heat and humidity, it was very stuffy inside, so much so that I could not imagine riding
the Flying Horses in that stifling atmosphere. Why were all the doors closed, if the AC was not
operating? Something did not make sense. The operator seemed obviously clueless. Didn't bother to
ask, just walked back out.
Had an Icee at the concession stand, walked through Storyland, took
photos. Lots of work on-going, but the place is now back. We now have an Amusement Park for the
children of New Orleans to enjoy. Most of the rides were operating. I made a plan to return with some
of our grandkids. Hopefully when it's a bit cooler or the AC was working.
Our chance to ride the Flying Horses at City Park came when our grandson Kyle spent the night Friday
and Saturday one weekend. I had to decide whether to watch the Olympics Basketball game between
USA and Spain (reigning world champ) or picking up my great-grandsons to take them to the Flying
Horses in City Park. Finally decided that since I could not record the City Park trip, but could record
the basketball game, I recorded the game and Del and I went to pick up our great-grandson, Aven. His
older Ben was with his dad this weekend and couldn't come. We drove to City Park all excited about
riding the Flying Horses (New Orleans traditional name for a Merry-Go-Round or Carousel.), but we
were 15 minutes early for park's opening. Since Del wanted to feed the boys, we drove to Casino
Café for lunch while waiting for amusement area to open. The café was empty so we had our choice of
tables. While waiting for our food to be prepared, a bus-load of tourists filed in. I asked one guy where
he was from, and he said, "Canada, Alberta, right above Montana." I thought, "I didn't know there was
anything north of Montana" but that was a parochial thought so I kept it to myself.
Suddenly one side of our table was mobbed by the tourists in line to buy food, so we moved over a
couple of tables to eat in peace. Del took the longest time to eat as she had ordered a Caesar Salad, so
I took the boys outside to explore the environs of the Casino area. A Live Oak tree limb hovered a few
inches above the ground and Aven bounced on it like a horsie. Then we walked to the lagoon and
came upon a huge flock of ducks, pigeons, and Canadian geese. The boys fed them some bread
offered us by a stranger. Aven and Kyle had a ball among all the fowl.
Then Del joined up with us and we drove the two blocks to the Amusement area. The clouds were
ominous heading in from the West, but we decided to chance it. If we only got in one ride on the Flying
Horses, it would be worth getting a little holy water sprinkled on us on the way back to the car. So we
only bought tickets for us each to ride the Carousel. Ride. We were all three in a row and Del took
photos before we started and then held Aven during the ride. He's 3 now and Kyle's 5. Seeing the
looks in their eyes during the ride made the whole trip worth it. As soon as we stepped on the threshold
of the Carousel to exit, huge drops had just begun splatting on the steps, so I took Aven's hand in my
left, Kyle's in my right and we ran as quickly as possible. Del followed with her umbrella. We made it
to the Caddy just as it was beginning to pour heavily and got in before we got soaked. It was the most
exciting ride of the day: that wild run through the park! We drove Aven back to Tiffany's and
apologized for returning so soon.
We drove home, Kyle and Del went to see two movies: "Space
Chimps" and "Voyage to Center of the Earth" while I prepared the small portion of seafood gumbo
with oysters for me and Gus when he arrived shortly 5 pm to go to the Saints game with me. We sipped
a glass of the local Pontchartrain white wine he brought as we ate our hot seafood gumbo with our cold
shrimp potato salad. The Saints lost the preseason game 31-27, but acquitted themselves well in the
first and second string — all but Jason David, who has got to go! He was horrible. The crowd booed
him when he failed to make a stop which was every time a ball got thrown near him. Luckily there are
plenty of guys ready to replace him. The last game against the Dolphins we will watch on replay
because we will be with John Rankin in the Two Sisters Pavilion in City Park while the game is on.
The next morning our son John picked up Kyle and took him back home to Prairieville. We got ready
to go to our friends Sharon (Sha) and Dave Roberts home near City Park which has been completely
renovated since Katrina. The living room and kitchen were opened and the ceiling raised almost to the
roof to give a long, open hall look. We all sat at the long marble table in the kitchen and talked with the
guests, Ann and Alan, Harry, Melissa and Reggie, Jennifer and Nick, plus some other guests. We had
not seen Sha's two daughters since they had gotten married and grown up. Melissa has a son, Devon,
who's about ten.
Reggie barbequed outside and Jennifer helped get all the dishes ready and
served. Sha is due for a hip replacement and wasn't moving around very well. Dave made 60 years old
this year and he and grandson Devon blew out the candles on his German Chocolate birthday cake.
They had evacuated to San Diego and lived there for several years before returning to fix up their
house. Good to have them back in town. Can't remember a birthday party where we laughed so much.
Sha has that effect on everybody — you have to know how to belly-laugh if you're going to be around
Sha. Sha is a dear and that's the reason we call her Sha (Cher, which means "dear", in Cajun
pronunciation).
Saints Shutout Bengals — Chris Paul wins Olympic Medal On Saturday night the New Orleans Saints NFL football team played a preseason game in Cincinnati,
and while most preseason games don't mean anything, this one did. The performance of the Saints
meant that the Defense is beginning to coalesce. The Bengals quarterback, Carson Palmer, who tore
apart the Saints the last time we played them, was sacked three times and left the game with his face all
bloody before half-time. This augurs well for the upcoming Saints season and cheered the hearts of all
the Saints faithful and made believers of a few doubters, likely. Only one game to go and we will be
looking to see Jeremy Shockey in his first game in a Saints' uniform. Next stop: Tampa Bay and Del
and I plan to be in that number.
Why do they make Olympic Basketball games so difficult to locate on the TV? They broadcast the
games, but the TV schedule scroller only lists a four or five hour slate of events with no clue as when a
particular event starts. The local daily newspaper is just as useless. For the Gold Medal game of the
USA versus Spain, I gave up and went on-line to search for the exact time the game started. That was
1:30 AM Sunday morning. I did wonder why, after watching the preliminary games at 7 am and 9 am,
they would put the biggest game of all on at such an ungodly hour, but hey, as long as I can find the
time, I can watch it live.
Lucky for me, the Saints game was exciting all the way to the final second, and it pumped me up for the
basketball game. Got to watch other stuff, like rerun of the Saints game, and the worst spot for me was
1:15 to 1:30 am — those last 15 minutes were torture trying to stay awake.
But I did, and once the
game started, it generated its own adrenaline, with Spain taking a brief lead and then keeping the game
close all the way to the final buzzer. Then the excruciating wait for the gold medals to be awarded.
Game ended at 3:30 am and they began giving out the medals about 20 minutes later. It was worth it. I
saw all of the game and all of the medals being awarded.
Our New Orleans's Hornets' star and runner-up for the NBA MVP, Chris Paul acquitted himself like
the champion he is. Making deft passes all over the court to the open man, playing the most minutes
behind the two big men, and being the one chosen to hold the ball in the last two minutes when Spain
was forced to foul USA to get the back. They got it back but only after Paul had downed two free
throws. The USA team redeemed itself for its previous losses in Olympics play and showed the world
that, while the world basketball level of play is increasing, the USA still is the master of the game that
was invented here.
Miracle Occurs When School Bells Ring We have a grandson Kirt who died several times when he was only 21 months old. He had fallen into a
pond and was rushed to a hospital where the doctors were still administering CPR after he was on the
operating room table.
He survived, but his brain lost oxygen and he has been recovering now for more
than ten years. He is thirteen now and attending school. For many years, his mother Gina had to carry
him around wherever they went, but now Kirt has learned to use a wheelchair. I remember one
Thanksgiving when Chris, my son-in-law's cousin from Atlanta, was visiting us in his wheelchair.
Someone suggested a wheelchair race between Chris and Kirt. It hardly seemed fair, since Kirt was
about 11 and Chris about 40, but amazingly Kirt won the race. Kirt has competed in T-Ball, Soap Box
Derby, and gone fishing and hunting with his dad, our son Jim.
It was Jim who called us to read the news article that appeared in the Beaumont Examiner of August
22-28, 2008 on page 21A. Click Here! to view that article about our grandson Kirt Rennick.
Till Next Time One more last minute event for the month: the traditional John Rankin appearance at the last of the year Twilight Concert in the Two Sisters Pavilion of City Park in New Orleans. This year he brought along his friend and colleague, Tom Sanction, a clarinetist who studied with George Lewis. With John singing or squeezing out blues from his harmonic while playing his guiter full speed, with Tom's able accompaniement on the licorice stick, it was a a stupendous occasion! The eight of us shown in the photo at the bottom of the Digest are from left: Renee, Burt, John, Joy, Annie, Guntis, Bobby & Del. And then I took a photo of a half-green, half-reddish-orange leaf on our new peach tree, a sure harbinger of Fall.
That's it from out our way for August. May the winds blow gentle wherever you are! Till next month,
through the Grace of God, we will return to these pages with more original photos, reviews, cartoons,
Cajun jokes, and other things to help make your life worth living to the fullest extent. Enjoy Labor Day
and the Change of Season wherever in the World you call home ! ! !
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Love is the ultimate ulterior motive.
Bobby Matherne
US Writer
New Stuff about Website:
Five Selected ARJ1 Reviews
NOTE: These are full reviews of these books for your convenience.
1. Owen Barfield's Romanticism Comes of Age
At last the scales have fallen from my eyes and I no longer see as through a glass darkly, but
bright and fresh, the reason: I have been drawn to Rudolf Steiner's writings. I have been hitherto
stumbling in a graveyard, trying to create some semblance of life from epitaphs and dates on dusty
stones and herein I find a quick companion, a pub brother, who over our dark beers, tells me the
secret. Not right up front, but only after a long prologue, a tale of man and nature, of unity, splitting
apart, and reunion. A tale of many tales, of scientists and poets, positivists and romantics, all narrated
in detail, but without an end in sight, until the last five pages of this book when Barfield tells us the
essence of Steiner's contribution to knowledge — his discovery of the starting place of acquiring
knowledge itself: in the activity of thinking. In one fell stroke, Steiner illuminates the bridge between
James' "blooming, buzzing confusion" of the sensory world and our primordial perception of the
sensory world mediated by our previous experiences. That bridge is the activity, the process, of
thinking. Beginning as we must, with the results of thousands of years of thinking insinuated in our
specious present ("specious Given" in Barfield's terms), we can never experience the net Given (the
specious Given stripped of the results of our long protocol of thinking) but we can think of its
necessary existence. And, having done so, we can know that any science of thought that ignores this
distinction of the specious Given and net Given does so at its own peril and creates strawmen that
will not survive the heat of closer scrutiny.
The search for one's eyeglasses is made difficult because the instrument of discernment is
lacking during the search. One invariably requires the assistance of someone of acute sight in the
search. If one's eyeglasses are perched on one's own nose during the search, the search will be
fruitless, even though the eyesight is flawless. No amount of help from clear seeing companions will
be of any help either, unless the companion has the perspicacity of Rudolf Steiner, and looking
directly at you, says, "Your eyeglasses, dear friend, were in place all along." We can discover that
the activity of thinking is not a local phenomenon limited to our skulls, but a living process that fills
the universe if we only heed Steiner's admonition to notice the object of our long search has the
instrument of our search all along.
2. R. G. Collingwood
's The Idea of History
"History as it exists today," Collingwood says, "has come into existence in the last four
thousand years in western Asia and Europe". How did this happen? By what stages has the thing
called history come into existence?" The answer is given in Parts I-IV of this book, and in the last
part Collingwood describes his view of modern history.
How can history come into existence or evolve? one might ask. The answer is that the
processes that existed in the past are not the processes that exist today. Tiberius broke down under
the strain of governing the Roman Empire — that we clearly understand today. Tacitus, the major
historian of that time, reports the breakdown, not as a change in character, but as a revelation of
features previously hypocritically concealed. The idea of a change in character was to Tacitus
inconceivable, a metaphysical impossibility.
We take for granted that the biography of an individual will show character development and
Collingwood says that he expects just so that the general course of history will show a similar
development in mankind. "All history is the history of thought," Collingwood says on page 215 and
again on page 317. It is this quote repeated by Owen Barfield several times that first led me to
Collingwood's works. This book brings this quote to life, and in the process generated in me a deep
respect and excitement about history in its wake. History is not the bland re-telling of dead stories,
but the vivid re-living of thoughts in the present so that the latest and greatest creation of the
evolution of consciousness, me, may re-experience the events of the past in the present, and think
thoughts never before possible thereby.
There is no better cure for the brain deadening dullness of the "scissors and paste" school of
history than to read Collingwood. By the magic of consciousness the individual scraps of paper
spring into action and dance in front of your eyes a tableau produced and directed by your individual
imagination, the ideas of the past re-vivified by the ideas of today. Thanks, R. G.
3. James Boyd White's When Words Lose Their Meaning
— Constitutions of Language, Character, and Community
This book might easily be titled "How to Read a Book, Part II" — as the
information within is a logical extension of Mortimer Adler's classic book on
reading. This book is about the reading process itself. Professor James Body White
addresses the changes that occur in the reader during the reading process. He brings
to bear a wealth of experience in the fields of Law/Rhetoric/Literary
Criticism/Philosophy as the back cover subject matter attests.
The following quotes illuminate the theme of the book:
[page 270] . . . reading involves a dialectic between the ideal
version of oneself that a particular text seeks to call into being
and the rest of who one is.
[page 279] Our concern has thus been with the ways in which
words — and languages — acquire and hold and lose their
meanings, with the methods by which culture is maintained,
criticized, and transformed.
[page 277] The language marks the mind, and one will normally
see that one's language is contingent, not necessary, only if one
experiences a basic cultural dislocation: the sense that words
have lost their meaning.
The author draws us skillfully into readings of Homer, Thucydides, Swift,
Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, Edmund Burke, and John Marshall (Chief Justice) by
analyzing one of their texts in light of his theme, which theme deals with the
establishment of new meanings that come into being because the old meanings are
lost, discarded by the writers.
Jane Austen establishes new meanings in Emma Woodstock and in us in the
course of Emma. Burke creates new meanings in his penpal and us during the
course of his "Reflections on the French Revolution." Burke's work becomes a
discourse on the beauty of the British Constitution, a right-brain, territory-to-map,
bottom-up design, and on the evils of the French Constitution, a left-brain, map-to-territory, top-down design.
This is an intriguing book and sent me scurrying for copies of Austen's
Emma and the books of the other authors he discusses. My review of Emma
indicates the value I found for myself in it.
Whites's volume is 285 pages of text followed by 90 pages of footnotes, so
be prepared for lots of page turning back and forth if you wish to come to terms
with this author and lose some of your old meanings as you create new meanings for
your words.
4. Paul Watzlawick's The Situation is Hopeless, But Not Serious — The Pursuit of Unhappiness
Note the subtitle of this book is The Pursuit of Unhappiness. Knowing that happiness is
something that happens spontaneously, Watzlawick devotes this book to a study of ways for folks
to carefully pursue unhappiness. By cataloging the most popular ways that folks make themselves
unhappy and giving intricate details on how to do it, those folks who recognize their own strategies
for creating unhappiness as they read this book, will be unable to perform the tasks as well as
before, their careful processes for making themselves unhappy will be broken!
When confronted with a desperate predicament, the Northern German is said to take the
attitude that "the situation is serious, but not hopeless" whereas the Southern German, confronting
the same predicament, would take the attitude that "the situation is hopeless, but not serious".
With the southern attitude, Paul Watzlawick offers a simple solution to seemingly impossible
predicaments.
One predicament is choosing to operate on the world the way one thinks it should be
instead of the way it is. Watzlawick says of such a person, "As captain of his ship, which the rats
have already abandoned, he heroically steers into the stormy night."
Of another favorite predicament, "Games with the Past", Watzlawick details four
variations for the reader to consider:
1) Glorification of the Past: Seeing one's youth as Paradise Lost and "making it into an
inexhaustible reservoir of nostalgic misery."
2) Mrs. Lot: Looking back obsessively on the past so as to avoid any possibility of
discovering something new in the present, in effect, turning oneself into stone.
3) The Fatal Glass of Beer: In this predicament, the single act of sinning starts an
irreversible decline (like the young man drinking his first glass of beer in W. C. Fields' movie, The
Fatal Glass of Beer). "Then I sinned, but now I am the victim of my own sin." Watzlawick tells us
in the voice of the hopelessly lost sinner.
4) More of the Same: The story is of Nasruddin, the Sufi joker sage, who was crawling
around the campfire in front of his desert tent when a friend walked by.
"What are you looking for?"
"My key" At this his friend got on his knees and joined in the search, soon another friend
came by and there were three of them helping, then a fourth. Soon, a fifth friend came by and asked, "What are you looking for?"
"My key"
"Oh, where did you lose it?"
"In my tent."
"In your tent? Then why are all of you looking for it
out here?"
"Because the light is better here."
Sounds absurd, doesn't it? If you look in the wrong place, you will never find what you're
looking for, right? Yes, but continuing the game of "more of the same, is one of the most effective
recipes for disaster that has gradually evolved on our planet."
The only hope for the irrepressible "more of the same" player is to follow these two
directions explicitly: [Liberally reworded from the author's text.]
1) You must keep doing what you're doing the same way, since only one way of doing it is
permitted, and if the way you choose to do it is not working, just apply yourself more forcefully.
2) Under no circumstances doubt the assumption that there is only one way to do it; only your
application of that one way and its effectiveness may be questioned and refined.
After these playful romps with the past, Watzlawick examines other ingenious ways that
people use to make themselves unhappy. As Margaret Mead pointed out, while an American
would pretend to have a headache to avoid an unpleasant social engagement, a Russian would
have to have a headache. The American suffers from a hurting conscience, and the Russian from a
hurting head.
For persons unfamiliar with the tools of the average paranoiac, Watzlawick, in The Story of
the Hammer, gives details on how to convert floaters into failing vision, tinnitus into hearing loss,
and one's friends into co-conspirators. It only takes a little practice with the detailed exercises to
become proficient.
Given that all these simple tools may never allow one to achieve the true unhappiness of
Oedipus, Watzlawick points out how the self-fulfilling prophecy, conscientiously applied, can save
the day. He leads us to see Karl Popper's point that "the very actions that Oedipus took in order to
avoid the horrifying predictions of the oracle led to the fatal fulfillment of those predictions."
Need stronger ammunition? Try mixing messages at the object and relationship level,
Watzlawick suggests. "Do you like the soup I made especially for you?" If it tastes bad and you
say, "No" honestly, the relationship will suffer. Some folks spend their entire lives nourishing
themselves on bad tasting soup rather than risk upsetting the relationship by telling the truth.
The author finally unsheathes the most powerful weapon of all in his armamentarium, the
"Be Spontaneous" Paradox. It's use is demonstrated below by two unhappiness experts:
"Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"If you really loved me, you'd say so without my asking you."
Any request or command for a spontaneous act will cause other persons to be unable to
perform the act spontaneously. Whether it's to: "Go to sleep", "Show me you love me", "Be
happy", or even "Do a good job", the mere gracing of their ears with the request will make it
difficult or impossible for them to perform as requested. This is the reason why actors before a
stage performance are told to "Break a leg". Since breaking a leg can only happen spontaneously,
it will not happen on command, and the actors are not stuck in the exquisite "Be Spontaneous"
paradox of being wished to "Perform well tonight". Even the simple request by a photographer to
"Smile" will evoke a faked or posed smile in place of a genuine one. True unhappiness enthusiasts
are experts at the "Be Spontaneous" paradox.
With so many effective ways to create unhappiness, small wonder that one can continue
along unhappy for a lifetime, when merely stopping one's pursuit of unhappiness would allow one
to be happy in a moment. "The situation is hopeless," Watzlawick ends his small book saying,
"and the solution is hopelessly simple."
5. Philip Gould's Les Cadiens d'Asteur — Today's Cajuns
The "Acadians of Today" is a delightful potpourri for the eyes and ears. If you know even
a little Cajun French, try reading the Cajun text first. Some of text is English, most is French, some
of the translations are side-by-side, some are in the appendix. The pictures and stories began
resonating with a deep part of me, each photo, each vignette, like a bass violinist plucking a string
fashioned from my very flesh. Though I've never been to a Cajun horse race nor chased chickens on
Mardi Gras, even those activities felt like a natural part of my past. What a joy to read an authentic
Cajun as he tells you how to make a gumbo. "Season it as you want," he says.
That's what we Cajuns
did with all we found when we were cast out of our chains on the shores of Louisiana. We had been
uprooted from our native land in Acadia like slaves and shipped overseas in chains. Not to waiting
employers and caretakers like slaves from Africa, but to empty land and poverty. Empty, but filled
with food on the land, in the water, and in the air. Surviving on indigenous plants, seafood, and
wildfowl, my ancestors forged a life for themselves, complete with its own unique culture. And in
the twentieth century, they prospered on a new natural bounty under their land and water: oil. Over
200 years they maintained their native language, weaving in American words where convenient, until
they now speak a French dialect whose basic structure has not changed from that of the Brittany
potato farmers of the seventeenth century.
Nowhere in this book were my heartstrings more poignantly plucked than by the story on
page 126 about the Cajun grandmother who would like to speak to her beloved grandchildren. But
she can only speak Cajun French and they can only speak English. She tells how her daughter,
Emma, was slapped one day by an American schoolteacher who came from North Louisiana. She
had told the class to write something, and Emma, who knew no English, tried to find out from her
cousin what was expected. Her father, Sosthene, lost a day's work in the fields to go to school to tell
that teacher she'd better never lay a hand on Emma again or he'd make her paddle a pirogue full of
holes and see how good she'd do that. When the grandchildren call on the phone, the Cajun
grandmother uses her only English words to tell them, "Grammon's fine. An' y'all?"
Hits (Watch as soon as you can. A Don't Miss Hit is one you might otherwise ignore.):
“Mama Mia!” (2008) It will be hard to imagine that these songs were not written for this movie; they fit in so seamlessly and beautiful. This movie never stops, only flows from one scene, one song to another until the credits stop rolling. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! ! ! “More Than Dreams” (2007) Stories of five Muslim men and women who accepted Jesus Christ directly, not through a missionary, but from a personal visit from Jesus, often in their dreams. Some did not even know a Christian before they accepted Christ. This shows that Christ has returned in his etheric body and is present to anyone who invites him into their lives. A Don’t Miss Hit! “Step Up” (2006) A 21st Century “Flash Dance”. Tyler grows from stealing cars to stealing extra bows as a dancer. When he enters the dance academy, he is no longer orphan, but a valued member of the class. Has moves that Gene Kelly and Fred Astairie might have envied. “Mad Money” (2008) Tres Amigas Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes, and Queen Latifah team up to recycle old money destined for shredding at the Fed. With bags of money stuffed everywhere, they begin to spend it and the fun begins. The Feds want to play, the bank examiner is upset, and no one can figure out how or for sure if they did it. As immoral as it is funny. In the spirit of the movie, don’t buy this DVD, steal it!
“Lars and the Real Girl” (2007) Lars’ mother died when he was born. His father never felt anything again till he died about 18 years later. Lars’ older brother left home when Lars was a child because he was freaked out by his father. Now Lars is working full-time, living in the garage of his father’s home and never visits his brother or his wife who live 50 feet away.
He feels intense pain when anyone touches him. One day a box arrives with Bianca, a real-life doll, Brazilian, anatomically correct, and Lars asks if she can stay in his mother’s old bedroom in the main house. Soon Bianca has a job reading to kids, goes to church with Lars, goes to a party with him, and then she dies. Come on, I couldn’t make this up. This is an incredibly sensitive and wonderful movie, great acting, especially the doctor played by Patricia Clarkson. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! ! ! ! “Music Within” (2007) Story of Richard Pimentel’s life after he lost his hearing in Vietnam. He went on to speak for disabled people and helped pass the ADA Act which opened public venues for disabled people. Great story well portrayed.
“Definitely, Maybe” (2008) Everybody likes a good story. What do you think? Is this one? We think definitely, maybe. “Definitely, maybe” will identify the step-mother.
“The Eye” (2007) Sydney gets new corneas and they allow her to see the material world and the spiritual world. Can she overcome these fearful images using the spiritual sight she received via cellular from the donor, a girl in Mexico?
“The Last Castle” (2001) Robert Redford, a court-martialed general arrives in a military prison full of prisoners being abused by the dastardly coward, Col. Winter. The only recourse is for him to take over the castle from the inside and put a stop to the carnage. He can mastermind this takeover but can he survive it? A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! !
“The Brave One” (2007) is Jody Foster who “walks the city” and loses her fiancé. How can she deal with the loss? Can she return to her talk show host on radio? Can she help bring the killers of her beloved to justice? A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “The Band’s Visit” (2007) When the Alexandria, Egypt Police Orchestra gets on the wrong bus and ends up in an isolated town in Egypt, they must either walk back or make friends. This is the story of how enemies become friends in a small town. Poignant, sad, happy, and amazing. Enjoy a night in the desert with the Band.
“The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn” (1999) Sidney Poitier and Mary-Louise Parker star in this big corporation against the little guy, Noah. But Noah was a powerful, well-loved nonagenerian carpenter, who healed everyone who came near him, who fixed things without being asked, and no bulldozers were going to push him around and convert his land into a shopping center. Or were they? A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Anna Karenina” (2000) Tolstoy’s masterpiece done masterfully. The life and times of Anna come alive in great acting performances and vividly real scenery and sets. A gripping tale which holds you to the very end of this 4 hour film. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! !
“The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981) What is a Scarlet Lady if she has no Pearl to prove it? If one finds a Pearl of Great Price, one should not leave it unattended or it might walk away and one might spend the rest of one’s life looking for it. A provocative and amazing movie adaptation of John Fowles’ novel which develops parallel stories of Streep and Irons as actors in the movie and on the set. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! !
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.
“Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay” (2008) — unfortunately, and they made this dumb, gross, horrible movie. They should have retired in “White Castle” while they were ahead.
Quinceañera (2005) In a chicano debutante or “coming out” event, a fifteen year old celebrates her birthday by getting pregnant while her brother just comes out. Slow, nothing much happens, we shut it down and stomped it. If it shows up in your mailbox by mistake, you can, too. A DVD STOMPER ! ! ! “The Bicycle Thief” (1948) Post-war angst in Italy and not much more. Man gets job, needs bicycle, sells everything to buy one, lets bike gets stolen on first day at work nailing Rita Hayworth poster. Spends rest of movie looking for bike. Never finds it. — Don’t look at this one and reduce the angst in your life.
Your call on these — your taste in movies may differ, but I liked them:
“Layer Cake” (2004) Daniel Crag as a happy and rich drug dealer when suddenly he gets an assignment he cannot refuse. Suddenly his simple world goes up in a cloud of cocaine dust and bullets. Intriguing.
“Even Money” (2006) is about writer’s block turned into gambling addiction, but an amazing thing happens on the way to ruin: Amazing Abraham with his sleight of hand provides a plot for a new novel. Filled with lessons that even money can’t buy, like love.
“Kingdom of Heaven” (2005) Forget the Director’s Cut, this movie is already much too long. It drags at every stage of the movie. Always people waiting to make decisions. Get your toothpicks ready to hold your eyes open if you wish to survive this one. Useful for details on Crusades and the folly of their effort. The Middle East suffers to this day from their after-effects.
“The Machinist” (2004) is actually about a man who works machining steel parts in a factory, Christian Bale, who looks like half-a-Bale in this movie. Excruatingly, anorexically thin, under 120 lbs, so thin it pains one to watch him. Hard to believe this is same man who starred in “The Prestige” and “Batman Returns”. Why has he not slept for a year? Who is the strange man at work who follows him in a red convertible? What is the origin of the Hangman’s note on his fridge? Is this a good movie? Your Call.
“Sleepwalking” (2008) A brother and sister from an abusive father sleepwalk through life, barely surviving. When his sister runs away and leaves her 13-year-old daughter with him, the brother must suddenly wake up. But will it be too late for all three of them?
“The Savages” (2007) is about a family who savage themselves with guilt when their dad is losing his mind. A short look at a long goodbye inside a dysfunctional family.
“Little Chenier” (2006) was a little movie with a little plot that sounded a little like Cajuns and was shot in a little Cajun community. Only watch this if you want to see the bayou scenes. This is a dumb movie. A barely YC
“Stop Loss” (2008) a lugubrious look at the worst side of the Iraqi war. A soldier who wants to defect other than go back to Iraq is the focus of this overblown anti-war commentary. When I talked to my nephew upon his return from a year in Iraq, he gave me got a better look at the reality of the progress made in Iraq in recent years than anywhere is hinted at in this movie.
“Ma Vie en Rose” (1997) not to be confused with “La Vie en Rose”, this is about 7-yr-old Ludovic who wanted to become a girl and was already dressing the part, something which his parents had to address. A heart-warming adventure into a family’s loud learning opportunities.
“The Salton Sea” (2002) A neo-noir film with Val Kilmer in a druggie role like in the “Doors”, but with a twist, turns out he’s working undercover for himself while pretending to work undercover for two cops. Then he pretends to work undercover for the FBI, but ends up double-crossing everyone but himself, his real self the gentle trumpet player. Savior or Judas? Avenging Angel or Revenging Devil? Hit or Miss? Your Call.
One evening after returning home from the oilfields, Boudreaux found his door broken open, his house burglarized, and all his possessions completely disappeared. He telephoned the police, "Wat's wrong? Mais, mah house done got broken into! Send a policeman, toute de suite!" The police dispatcher said, "Yes, Mr. Boudreaux."
The police dispatcher broadcast the call on the radio, and a K-9 unit,
patrolling nearby, was the first to respond.
As the K-9 officer approached the house, with his dog on a leash, Boudreaux was standing waiting out on the porch. He looked incredulously at the cop walking up the banquette behind his dog, then rushed back into the house and phoned the police again.
"Wat you doing to me?" he cried into the phone set.
"What's wrong, Mr. Boudreaux?" the dispatcher replied.
"Looka here — Ah come home, all my stuff is a gone pecan, Ah call you for help, and you done sent me a blind policeman!"
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
5. RECIPE of the MONTH for September, 2008 from Bobby Jeaux’s Kitchen: (click links to see photo of ingredients, preparation steps) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Cooking Instructions — De-boning Redfish
Background on De-boning Redfish:
Above is an excellent example of a large Baked Redfish by John Folse. This photo was taken during a taping of his show on July 18, 2006. No deboning is necessary for baking a redfish, but one must take the scales off the fish and remove the guts. Both of these processes are very messy and smelly. The scales tend to fly all over the place, and as a result, I avoid de-scaling fish completely unless I'm at the fishing dock. One can BBQ redfish with the scales still on, something I've heard about, but haven't tried. If you wish to do this, simply stop at Step 3.
I have on occasion received frozen packs of redfish, sheepshead, and drum which claimed to be filleted, and yet still had bones in them. It is so difficult to be sure that you have removed all the bones left in filleted fish that I would prefer to fillet a fish myself than remove bones left in a fillet by someone else. You have to inspect with your fingers (bones are mostly not visible) every inch of the fish after the fillets are completely defrosted. Any ice still in the fillet will feel like a bone.
This is the technique I use to ENSURE that there are no bones in my fish when I fillet them. The bones are visible and easily avoided. If you slip, you'll know exactly where you missed some bones and can easily remove them. Then, whle washing the fillet, you can make one final inspection with your fingers and remove any bones which slipped by earlier, something which happens infrequently. With this technique, you can defrost and cook up the large chunks for a redfish courtboullion with confidence that there are no bones in your fish. Cutting into chunks before packing for freezing is best, if you know it will go into a courtboullion, and you can mark the package at that time.
Ingredients
Large redfish
Sharp, pointed filleting knife (Rapalla brand shown in Photo Here.)
Preparation
I use my flower arranging table with a plastic covering, so that it can be washed clean before and after the filleting is done. Have your Ziploc Freezer bags ready with some water in the bottom to place the fillets into as you remove them from the skin in the final step. My Ziploc bag in shown being held in position by my patented ZZ-Top bag holder. See Photo. Have a trash can with a bag in it to deposit the carcasses of the fish.
Force point of filleting knife in at Point 1 on photo, right behind the gills, about midway on a side, until the tip touches the large back bone. Cut with knife to Point 2 on photo, then turn knife and continue to cut along the backbone, directly above and touching the bones extending the dorsal edge of the fish (top when it's in swimming positon). Aim the point to spot tailward of where the cloaca exits the redfish. Approximate position marked here and shown directly in earlier Photo. Carefully force the point of the knife through the ventral edge (bottom side) of the fish directly behind the cloaca, taking care not to puncture the abdominal sac of the redfish. Once through the skin and scales, continue to cut away towards the tail until both sides of the fillet are free of the redfish body (past the cloaca).
Raise the redfish with dorsal side up and pick up cutting from Point 1 of Photo 1. Cut through skin and scales, riding carefully above the lower rib cage of the redfish like shown in Photo 2. When you pass over the cloaca, cut away the fillet. Wash the fillet, then carefully run your fingers over the fillet to check for and remove any random bones which may have been cut out by accident.
This photo shows the fillet free of the fish, ready to remove from its skin and scales — a fillet completely free of bones . [If you wish to BBQ your redfish with scales intact, you are done. Wash off the fish and place in its container.]
Removing the fish from its skin and scales is the easiest part of the task. Simply lay the fillet, scales down, grab the tip of the tail hard with your other hand, cut with knife facing forward, letting knife cut the fish away from its skin. Photo shows the completed action. Simply repeat Steps 1 through 4 for the other side of the redfish.
Photo 5 shows the completed side of a redfish with no puncturing of the gut sack. This technique not only ensures you will have fillets free of bones, but it also reduces the blood, the gore, the smell, and the cleanup problems.
Other options
If you are planning to use large chunks of redfish or sheepshead or drum for a courtboullion, then chop the fish up into chunks after Step 4. Wash thoroughly and place in Ziploc Freezer bags. Fill leftover space in bags with water to keep fish from drying out. Always freeze this fish with extra water so all the fish fillets will be encased in ice when frozen. Any dark red areas of the fillets are best cut off before bagging the fish. These will be very dark when cooked and not appetizing, so remove them before saving.
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 6. POETRY written by Del for her Garden Club Yearbook: == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
Garden Reverie by Adele Matherne
Under the warming springtime sun
My gardening work was well begun.
I tilled the soil and pulled the weeds,
Put in the ground the bulbs and seeds.
With sun streaming upon my face
I chose myself a shady place.
Cooling beneath a broad oak tree
My mind soon filled with reverie.
I thought of good friends I have made —
Of loved ones — in the soothing shade.
The garden — where time is no more —
A haven for my thoughts to soar.
After watching so many of Sherlock Holmes' adventures in the Black & White films over the years,
it was sheer pleasure to hold in my hands a small red-covered cloth-bound book of 124 pages which
contained all the original words of Arthur Conan Doyle. No longer did some script-writer come between me
and the master detective story writer and his creations. I was back at the helm of my adventure into the dark
moor. With my inner ears I could hear the howling of the fearsome hound, and in my imagination observe the
deer sucked into the great Grimpen Mire. My heart rate was the up tempo background music letting me
know that the "game was afoot." I could follow the very thoughts of Dr. Watson as he attempted to assist his
colleague, Sherlock Holmes, in uncovering the mystery, striving ever to stay alive while doing so.
The game begins with a cane left behind by a visitor the night before. Watson shares his deduction
with Holmes and is greeted with responses of Good!, Excellent! "Perfectly sound!" and when Watson finally
says, "Then I was right!" Holmes replies "To that extent."
[page 2]"Has anything escaped me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust
that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?"
"I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous.
When I said you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I
was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this
instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal."
Apparently Sherlock Holmes, like God, never wastes a mistake. Later when Holmes inquires of the
cabman who his fare was that day, he identifies him as "Sherlock Holmes." Dr. Watson records Holmes'
surprise, which in movie fare would only be hinted at by the actor playing Holmes. Note the use of the word
"foil" in Holmes' response to his surprise. It is a fencing metaphor about being touched by an epee, a foil,
during a fencing bout. Holmes was foiled in the sense of an opponent slipping in a touch during a fencing
match and also in the sense being thrown off the track of his prey. A subtle and poetic use of ambiguity by the
master author, Doyle.
[page 36] Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the
cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a
hearty laugh.
"A touch, Watson — an undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick
and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was
Sherlock Holmes, was it?"
Another gem of literary note is when Dr. Watson comments in a letter to Holmes about his complete
indifference to whether the Sun moved round the Earth or the Earth round the Sun. (Page 55) This would be
precisely the position one might take who was versed in Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity. Both ways
of describing the motion of the Sun and Earth are merely maps, and whereas the maps may represent the
territory, it can never include all of the territory, and more importantly, making a map does not change the
territory one whit!
Soon an escaped convict who murdered someone, and another stranger, who is spotted in a tower
by night, are loose on the moor, which is a most inhospitable place with no means of acquiring food. All this
heightens the mystery as we move into the second half of the book, in which Dr. Watson is mucking about in
the moor along with Dr. Mortimer, Stapleton (a naturalist), Stapleton's sister, and of course the unseen,
looming presence of the great Hound. One feels like the plot of this book has gotten stuck in the great
Grimpen mire, and cannot be extirpated. But just then, there's even more: a lady's initials L. L. shows up on a
crumbling note and must be identified.
Dr. Watson undertakes a daring plan to ensnare the murderer, Seldon, who is apparently living in one
of the ancient stone dwellings in the moor. Gun loaded, he waits through the night, and instead of Seldon, he
ensnares the strangest quarry of them all. We catch a hint of who this quarry may have been in this next
passage. But who can it be?
The tale winds to a dramatic conclusion and all the loose ends are tied up. If it can be said that, "All
writers can be found under Gogol's Overcoat", then surely all mystery writers can be found breathing in the
smoke from Sherlock Holmes' pipe. One can spot a close similarity to the way the mystery is revealed to us,
deepens, spreads out in many directions, and then is all pulled back together neatly in both Sherlock Holmes
stories and the modern TV series, The Closer.
We have closed the book on the mysterious Hound of the Baskervilles. He has led us on a merry
chase through the pages of this novel, howling dreadfully right on cue. We have been interrupted by no TV
commercials nor had to watch obnoxious previews of coming attractions. The projector bulb did not burn out
and the projector operator did not miss the third reel. Our popcorn was popped fresh a few feet from our
comfortable seat. No one answered a cell phone the next seat over and began talking during the chase over
the moor. All in all we spent a marvelous couple of hours in the magical world woven by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle. We have gained a new respect for his marvelous writing. Actors and directors may come and go,
screens may turn Technicolor and High Definition, but the original handwritten words of Arthur Conan Doyle
will ever conjure their magic for all future generations of readers.
This is a condensed version of the full review which is just a Click! away.
What light can spiritual science shed upon historical personalities and events? One might even ask: How
can there be anything left to study when materialistic science has finished its examination of history? The answer
can be stated this way: a fuller realization of historical personalities and events can be achieved by looking at the
influences upon them by spiritual beings who hover ever behind the scenes. Steiner explains in these six lectures
how the potentials of personalities and events are fulfilled to the greatest extent by spiritual beings. We may not
be able to experience these spiritual beings in our time, but in the historical times discussed in these lectures, many
people were able to do so. This ability to bring out the full expression of a potentiality is what Aristotle labeled
entelechy. This was Aristotle's way of sharing what he experienced directly from spiritual beings with whom he
was familiar.
Most important for newcomers to Rudolf Steiner's work is that he brings to us in these lectures, not a
dogma, but a description of reality as he experiences it and which we can all feel as true and right in our hearts.
Feeling is not a way of experiencing reality that is accepted by materialistic scientists, so one would not expect any
of them to be swayed by the exhortation to use their hearts and feeling to determine the truth of anything.
There were spiritual beings operating behind the scenes and individuals operating in the forefront of events
who were reincarnations of earlier individuals. Together these acted as guides and leaders in human evolution, and
shaped the world the way we know it today. The average human being does not perceive spiritual beings operating
behind the scenes today. Few of us even recognize or express gratitude to our individual Guardian Angel who
follows us from lifetime to lifetime. But that was not always the case, and the farther we go back into historical lore,
the more it becomes obvious that people could see directly the spiritual beings who shaped the events of the world.
In ancient Greece, these spiritual beings were given names and personalities and called "gods."
Over 2500 years
away from those times, we are left only with the truth contained in myths and fairy tales, what we might call the
"Grimm" truth, after the famous "Grimm's Fairy Tales." Steiner blatantly claims that more truth is found in those
tales than in flattened abstractions of modern science and history.
Our ability to experience the spiritual world directly with clairvoyant vision abated as a consequence of
our evolution of consciousness over the earlier Post-Atlanteans cultural epochs. In the Indian, Persian, and Egypto-Chaldean epochs, the people carried this ability to view the spiritual world within them and felt a living connection
with that world. This direct connection with the spiritual world only waned until finally fading away during the
Greco-Latin epoch when a direct connection with the material world grew to take its place. The farther we go back in time, the harder it is to understand human beings if we do not expand our
definition of human being to include direct access to Beings of the Spiritual Hierarchies. Here we come upon the
essence of the theme of the lectures of this book: our knowledge of these historical beings must take into account
the presence of these spiritual beings operating within these early human beings. Who are these people?
[page 14] This applies, shall we say, to Hermes, the great Teacher of the Egyptian epoch,
also to Zarathustra, and even to Moses. When we go back before the thousand years
preceding the Christian era we must reckon with the fact that wherever we have to do
with historical personalities, higher Individualities, higher Hierarchies stand behind and
take possession of these personalities — in the best sense of the word, of course.
What happened to our understanding of the world as our consciousness evolved into more direct
experience of the physical world? What we had earlier understood as due to spiritual forces and beings, we began
to understand as due to physical forces and objects. That is where we stand currently: in a world we understand
as comprised only of forces and objects; a world solely determined by the laws of the science of physics. The
grand scheme to develop a Theory of Everything, a Grand Unifying Theory (GUT), has foundered on the rocks
of reality, as huge gaps have developed in every theory which attempts to be comprehensive.
The more we look
for the ultimate particle of physics, the more we realize that we are merely creating these so-called particles by our
own method of searching for them, and they continue to multiply the more deeply we search. We are but recording
the waves created by our looking and giving names to them as though they were real objects. In attempting to take
our materialistic science to the Nth degree, we have discovered that there is no such thing as a thing! This
realization, rightly understood, should bring any thinking person to understanding that a spiritual reality lies below
our material world, just as a foundation lies below the building in which you, dear Reader, are reading these words.
The great myth or story from the Egypto-Chaldean epoch is that of the "God-man" or Gilgamish. The
goddess, Aruru, decides that Gilgamish needs a helper and causes Enkidu (Eabani) to arise out of the Earth. In
what ensues, we see the first example of a man being partnered with a more primitive man, a theme which
continues to this day in movies and television series. We can think of Don Juan and Sancho Panza in literature, but
most recently we would think of Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan Matus, plus a slew of popular duos such as The
Lone Ranger and Tonto, Cisco and Pancho, Red Ryder and Little Beaver, Batman and Robin, Bud Abbott and
Lou Costello, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Amos and Andy, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and so forth.
Always one finds the second name mentioned is a man with a more primitive and direct connection to the Earth
than the first. The first man listed is an old soul (one of many incarnations) and the second man is a young soul (one
of few incarnations) who is various characterized as a wild man, a rough, uncouth, a savage, but still providing
insights for the older soul. They are short, Enkidu befriends Gilgamish and helps his friend in many ways, but none
more important than when Enkidu dies, and Gilgamish must face his own mortality.
[page 17] Gilgamish is now alone. A thought comes to him that gnaws at the very fibers
of his soul. Under the impression of what he has experienced, he becomes conscious for
the first time of the thought that man is mortal; a thought to which he had previously paid
no heed comes before his soul in all its terror. And then he hears of the only man of earth
who has remained immortal, whereas all other human beings in the Post-Atlantean epoch
have become conscious of mortality: he hears of the immortal Xisuthros far away in the
West. And because he is resolved to fathom the riddle of life and death, he sets out on
the perilous journey to the West. — I can tell you at once that this journey to the West
is nothing else than the search for the secrets of ancient Atlantis, for happenings prior
to the great Atlantean catastrophe.
What was life like for Man in the time before the Atlantean flood? It was the time before Adam, whose
very name means "hard" and is the root of such words for hard as "diamond" and "adamantine". Adam was the
first "hard" Man, the first Man to have bones in his body, the first Man to face the riddle of life and death, as
Gilgamish was facing. Before the time of Adam, before the Flood, humans lived as immortals in a land of ever-present mist. They were in intimate contact with the spiritual beings and could see the spiritual emanations from
other human beings as their primary method of sight. They saw clairvoyantly and maneuvered through the misty
land with their supersensible sight. They never felt the need for sleep because their bodies were fluid and
stretchable and not fixed and rigid as our own. When Gilgamish finally locates Xisuthros and asks him for advice
on how he might be immortal, Xisuthros tells him he must stay awake for seven days and nights without falling
asleep. This is merely a description of how the people of the pre-Flood times lived without sleeping. Yes, it was
a condition that accompanied their immortality, but it was a feat that no Man could achieve, even the mighty
Gilgamish, because of the evolution of Man after the Flood.
However, the quest of Gilgamish is fulfilled because he undergoes an initiation when given seven mystic
loaves which act as a life elixir. For a time he experiences immortality, knows that it exists, and he is able to meet
Enkidu (Eabani). Gilgamish returns to his own country in Chaldea with the knowledge that a spiritual world exists
in which Man is truly immortal, even though the circadian evidence of that fact had been lost to post-Atlantean hard
Man.
The secrets of the existence of the spiritual world were passed on to students of the Mystery schools in
such places as the Temple of Diana in Ephesus. Soon the cult of personality arose and Man was unable to
understand those secrets unless being initiated into the Mysteries, a process which recapitulated the trials that
Gilgamish underwent during his long journey into understanding. Steiner reveals to us the epitome of the Man of
personality who tried to destroy Diana's temple of Ephesus and we catch a glimpse of the reincarnation of the spirit
of the individuality known previously as Gilgamish, re-appearing as Alexander the Great, with a most unexpected
Enkidu (Eabani) by his side acting as his teacher, Aristotle. Steiner does not claim that Gilgamish is reincarnated as Alexander, but calls the latter the
"shadow-image" of the former. The case of whether this shadow image represents a reincarnation is left to each
person. There is no dogma in spiritual science, no rules about how one is to interpret the indications in the
descriptions of Rudolf Steiner, and Steiner would be the first to admonish someone who blatantly claimed that
"spiritual science says Alexander was reincarnated Gilgamish". Yet, the indications are there. In more recent times
when Rudolf Steiner stood side by side with Ita Wegman, there were similar indications that the spirits of
Alexander and Aristotle's shadow images were there. Steiner had undergone a similar initiation journey to that of
Gilgamish and he returned to describe to us, as members of the fifth Post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the salient
events of the third Post-Atlantean epoch in the area of Mesopotamia.
It may seem strange to some for Steiner to be talking about spiritual beings operating behind the scenes
to effect changes in the world through human beings, but such events are happening yet today. One need only look
at the life and writings of Jane Roberts, Jach Pursel, and J Z Knight to see the operation of the spiritual beings of
Seth, Lazaris, and Ramtha in their lives. They have acted as channels for spiritual beings, who, with the exception
of Ramtha, claim to have never been incarnated in a human body, and Ramtha only 350 centuries earlier.
During the recent funeral of JB, a friend of ours, I picked up about four materialistic presuppositions from
the priest doing the Mass. For example, he talked about JB as "going away" during a time in which my thoughts
had our dear friend ever present in living spiritual reality. "Where could he have gone to?" was the question raised
by the priest's comment. JB's body was present in the coffin, and it, in its temporary material form, was to be
buried shortly; it could go away. But JB's spirit was alive and present everywhere in the world. When his friends
were led by the priest to feel bad because "he had gone away", JB's spirit experienced great pain. Even now JB
is here, present in reality, in living spirit, right now as I think of him while I type these words! The materialistic idea
that we go somewhere else after death is so pervasive in our culture today that it goes invisible and unnoticed, as
water is to a flounder. It is the medium in which we live, up until now.
I have learned to talk directly to friends about the living spirit of a recently deceased friend. What I have
noticed invariably is a lightening up of the feeling state of the person that I am talking to. When I talked to my friend
Tom after JB's death about JB's spirit being still around, Tom agreed, but he took it as if I was using spirit in the
form we use for school spirit. After I carefully explained that I was talking about JB's living spirit, not a
metaphoric spirit which lives on in friends left behind after someone "goes away", Tom got the reality of what I
was expressing, and his demeanor brightened up considerably. Expressions, like "going away" that the priest used,
do great harm by fostering the prevalent materialistic view of the world. They are empty phrases which sound
logical and well-formed, but, rightly understood, they are abstract ideas vacant of meaning and they do more harm
than good.
Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, was led by the strong spiritual forces of the Archangel Michael and she
single-handedly kept England from taking over France and completely changing the face of Europe forever. Steiner
describes the details of her deed, both from the view of the Akasha Chronicle (supersensible record of living
deeds) and from historical documents, and shows us incontrovertibly the evidence of spiritual beings at work in
her life, directing and assisting in her deed. Steiner gives us the full text of a letter from 1429 about Joan of Arc
and this comment:
[page 35] This letter was written by one who knew the Maid and was in close contact with
the King. It is indeed amazing when one discovers all these things an purely occult
grounds and with occult means of proof — for they are indeed to be found in the Akasha
Chronicle — and then sees how, in cases like this, actual historical documents can also
be produced. In short, it seems almost madness to doubt what was working through the
Maid of Orleans. And when we also take into consideration the fact that through her
deeds the whole history of modern time assumed a different aspect, this gives us the
right to say that here, verified by documentary evidence, we can see the direct
intervention of the supersensible worlds.
We are living in the fifth Post-Atlantean cultural epoch, and we must learn to use our understanding of the
physical world as a foundation for reaching upward into the spiritual world. People ask me, "Why are you not
using your physics?" when they find out my academic background and compare that to my writing. I tell them, "I
use my physics everyday; it is the foundation upon which I build my understanding of the world which is composed
of both the material and the spiritual." Steiner uses the example of the Maid of Orleans to illustrate that point:
[page 53] The Maid of Orleans is therefore a personality already working entirely in the
spirit of our own epoch, when everything that we can produce on the foundation of our
outer impressions must be directed upward to the spiritual. But what does this mean
when we apply it to our own culture and civilization? It means this. — We may direct our
attention, naively to begin with, to our environment, but if we stop at that, if we have eyes
for the outer impressions only, then we are not fulfilling our bounden obligation. We fulfil
it only when we are conscious that these impressions must be related to the spiritual
Powers behind them. When we pursue science in the manner of academic scholarship, we
are not fulfilling our obligation. We must regard everything that we can learn about the
laws of natural phenomena and the laws of the manifestations of the life of soul as though
it were a language which is to lead us to a revelation of the divine-spiritual. When we are
conscious that all physical, chemical, biological, physiological, psychological laws must
be related to something spiritual that is revealing itself to us, then we are fulfilling our
obligation.
One can only be conscious of how all physical, chemical, biological, physiological, and psychological laws
are related to the spiritual world if one has appropriately studied all those facets of reality. One comes by such
diverse knowledge only after long study. When one has studied all these areas of life, one can notice an amazing
thing which can be stated this way: "A work of art is the outer language of the spiritual world." (See italicized
phrase in the passage below.)
I recall vividly when the insight that "Art is the process of destruction." first came to me. It was before I
had delved deeply into Rudolf Steiner's works, but later when I did, I came to understand that true art originates
in the spiritual and when it speaks to us, no one understands it for a time; it speaks a new language unfamiliar to
all. A true work of art destroys the sameness of all the art which existed before, because it has arrived fresh from
the spiritual world and entered the world of familiar art works with an unfamiliarity that is often rejected and
spurned until we come to learn the language it speaks, and then it speaks to us.
Richard Wagner, the famous composer, brought incredible musical works of art into existence. His
opponents were vociferous in their opposition to his works. If one has seen the movie, "Amadeus", which was based on Pushkin's play about Mozart, one can hear
echoes of the complaints of Salieri in the movie about Mozart's music with the complaints that Hanlick made about
Wagner:
From such studies as these, we begin to understand what the evolution of consciousness means to us in
the field of art. New art works speak to us from out of the spiritual world; they arrive with a freshness is that
startling and alarming, but they prepare us for changes in the evolution of humanity which will be arriving. True art
is the harbinger of change.
Aristotle gave the definition of a Greek tragedy play thus: "A tragedy is a weaving together round a hero
of successive actions, which are able to arouse in the spectator the emotions of fear and compassion in order that
a catharsis may take place in his soul." (Page 64) What made it possible for Aristotle to define a tragedy so
explicitly was his initiation, his training in confronting the spiritual world in the Mysteries. The Greek tragedy was
a form of didactic art which provided training to those people who would never be initiated directly in the
Mysteries. They still perform that role to this day.
What do we learn about history from all of this? The deeper meaning behind the Persian Wars, for one
thing. These wars represented the culture of the fourth post-Atlantean culture fighting to survive against the forces
of the third post-Atlantean culture, namely the Greeks against the Persians of the Egypto-Chaldean culture. The
whole of Southern European culture hung in the balance with each onslaught of the massive Persian forces. The
spirits of the Greeks were inflamed with as it were the deeply felt waves from the future which required them to
defeat the Persians in order for European history to survive today as we know it.
This blurb has provided a sampling from my review of how spiritual beings have operated and continue
to operate behind the human beings in the world. But thoughts are but empty phrases unless they find a home in
human feelings about the matters which Steiner shares with us in these lectures. It is our job as reader to provide
a place in our hearts for these feelings so that we may go forth in our time with an understanding of how modern
events are unfolding out of the spiritual world. We live on a robust planet which is designed to be a garden to
sustain our life and a launching pad from which we may spring into the spiritual world. We do best to study
carefully with heart-felt understanding of the workings of the spiritual hierarchies in our world.
I hear often from my Good Readers that they have bought books after reading my book reviews.
Keep reading, folks! As I like to remind you, to obtain more information on what's in these
books, buy and read the books — for less information, read the reviews.
In this section I like to comment on events in the world, in my life, and in my readings which have come up during the month. These are things I might have shared with you in person, if we had had the opportunity to coverse during the month. If we did, then you may recognize my words. If I say some things here which upset you, rest assured that you may skip over these for the very reason that I would likely have not brought up the subject to spoil our time together in person.
1. Padre Filius Reads Datamation Magazine this Month:
Padre Filius, the cartoon character created by your intrepid editor and would-be cartoonist, will appear from time to time in this Section of the Digest to share us on some amusing or enlightening aspect of the world he observes during his peregrinations.
This month the good Padre reads Datamation Magazine article about the new technology, Cloud Computing.
2.Comments from Readers:
EMAIL from Kristina in Melbourne about Christian the Lion: This is possibly foreshadowing the new relationship between the lion and the lamb — enjoy.
I had a great time in New Orleans and with the added pleasure of meeting some of my
brother (Gus) and Anne's friends. Thank you for sending that photo; I'm actually
thinking of buying that SONY camera (T300). I was impressed with the ease of
it... etc. And it actually has the capacity to make old ladies look ok!!
Doesn't do much for older men though. ;-)
Please say a warm "Hello" to your wife from me.
Take care. Ruta
EMAIL from Brona re my photo of an avocado flower:
Bobby, your photo ran in the Austin Chronicle on Friday — here's the link!
EMAIL from Kathryn (our new daughter-in-law):
Bobby,
Well done in removing the creases (RJM: Kathryn's referring to the artwork at top of this Digest which she and my granddaughter Sierra drew and colored of Sierra's farm animals, then sent to us as a trifold card.). I tried doing it with the original image and it didn't turn out as well. What program did you use?
Sierra will be amused to see the image on
the website. It's sad that we now only have 6 of the original 14. We finally confirmed it
was the neighbor's dog, Lucky, who was stealing the chickens and ducks over the past
months. I caught him in the act of chasing our last duck to the pond. I even named one
of the ducks after him...thinking the name Lucky might help him. Oh well! There's
some humor in Lucky getting Lucky.
I'm cleaning out the attic now and taking a moment to cool down. Soon I will have a go
at making pickles with the surplus of cucumbers.
EMAIL from a doyletics user on Children's Speed Traces:
[RJM NOTE: In my reply to the writer of this email, I wrote two paragraphs on Children's Traces which now grace the very top of the Main Page of http://www.doyletics.com/ ]
Absolutely amazing.
Was taking a walk Saturday with my 8 year old and on a whim, I asked him
what he is scared of. He told me that he is scared of swimming. Did
quick trace and it was gone! Should Have Seen The Look On his face. I
quickly asked the plausibility question and out popped the memory of
head going under water in his cousins pool at 2 years old.
The rest of Saturday was busy as I Removed his distaste of chicken.
Then Got rid the 6 year old's hatred of hamburger and fried fish. even
the 4 year old's dislike of chocolate.
Still working on the other stuff we talked about, but I had to tell you
about my kids.
All The Best.]]
EMAIL from Paula Lucidi:
Hello Bobby,
I am a subscriber of your newsletter and also enjoy reading your
reviews, particularly the ones on Steiner. I started doing this
project on You Tube. I am in a book group and 5 years ago we began
studying Philosophy of Freedom and did so by summarizing each
paragraph. I decided to share the work of the group and myself on You
Tube. I am wanting those interested in Anthroposophy to know about
what I am doing. I've contacted the Canadian Anthroposophical Society
and am getting something published in their newsletter. If you know of
others whom I can contact, I would appreciate it. Also I am wondering
if you would like to mention it in your newsletter or site if you are
interested. The link is: http://www.youtube.com/user/1funnyanthropop
Thanks,
Paula
3. Bumblebee Ring Tone and Old School Way
At night we watched an interesting Law & Order episode. The young, female ADA working with McCoy picked up a “bumblebee” ring tone on a teenage suspect's cell phone, to which the teenager said, “Adults aren’t supposed to be able to hear this.” Okay, the older males watching Law & Order could take that as a direct slur. Later the young female partner of Curtis called her boss’s approach “old school” when she was instructed to actually interview the suspects instead of tracking down their email trail. Another slur. Curtis later suggested that he and his female partner do something the “old school way” and it worked. Second slur neutralized (probably by an older script-writer) — first slur left uncallenged.
My problem with the ring tone tactic was that it had absolutely no plot value, but was gratuitously put into the script by a young writer as a slur against older people.
Other than teachers, I can't imagine the utility of the general population knowing about bumblebee ring-tones. Only young people who feeled cowed in the presence of mature members of society would insert an age-ist slur into a script like that. My suggestion to young people who feel that way is heed the advice of the sage who said, "I was young once, but got cured." With luck, you will, too.
4. Gustavean Thoughts
Henery David Thoreau famously wrote something like this: "The masses of humanity lead lives of quiet desperation." With the slightest hint on an impending storm, I have noticed that "The masses of humanity lead lives of noisy desperation." This is something one can notice on any news program which interviews the populace. One can take solace by noting that the change from quiet to noisy brings a modicum of much needed excitement to these lives.
Jane Roberts wrote an insightful book about the steering currents for storms, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and you might be surprised at how storms choose their targets.
Whenever a location along a coast has been very "quiet" for many years, storms seem to seek out this location as Andrew did Homestead, Florida. Then that location goes quiet again for many more years, as Homestead has. How does a storm know an area has been "quiet"? Who blabs? Not the palm trees, not the beach sand, not the fishing camps, not the levees. So who? As Popeye famously said, "It's one of the great myskeries of the sea!"
Thanks to all of you for providing the chemistry which has made this site a success.
— Especially those of you who have graciously allowed us to show your photos on this website — you're looking good!
In 2011, its tenth year of existence, the doyletics website will top the EIGHT MILLION VISITORS MARK ! ! !
Our hits are averaging about ten times the number of unique visitors. A unique visitor is defined by our collection agent, Urchin, as a visitor who reads at least one page, leaves the website, and doesn't return for at least 20 minutes. So multiple page reads by the same person are not counted as new visitors. This is a conservative way of counting visitors.Our Hits average over 10X the number of Visitors.
As of February 1, 2012 we have received over 8.8 MILLION VISITORS to the Doyletics Website since its inception in August 1, 2001, over TEN YEARS AGO.
Over 1 Million in the past 12 months. We are currently averaging about 89,000 visitors a month [Over One Million a year].
IMPORTANT NOTE: With the new Urchin Logs after an Earthlink Upgrade, our numbers seemed to have fallen dramatically, and it was hard to tell if the new numbers were simply wrong or if the old numbers were artificially high. To complicate matters, the engineers worked for the entire summer to get the Urchin logs to begin to work, and they were undependable until mid-September, 2011. It appears to have started working again in October, but full data seems to take a month to arrive. By January, the data became dependable again, but Urchin has redefined what constitutes a Visitor and that is what has caused the apparent fall in Visitors. With eleven years of data, I know that my Hits to Visitors ratio was 10, using with the previous definition of Visitor as a connection by someone who is not returning within 20 minutes. Now the ratio has risen to 20X because Urchin has redefined a Visitor as a Unique first visit by someone. I have adjusted for the change in Visitor definition, and my Daily and Monthly Adjusted Visitors will continue to rise as they have in the past with no discontinuity.
We especially want to thank you, our Good Readers, in advance, for helping our readership to grow. NOTE our new name for future Digests: DIGESTWORLD. Continue to send comments to Bobby and create links to DIGESTWORLD issues and Reviews on your Facebook page and other Social Media. Email your friends about the reviews, the doyletics speed trace, the cartoons, the jokes, the recipes, the photos in all the DIGESTWORLD Issues archived on our website. Urge them to subscribe to the DIGESTWORLD Reminder so they won't miss a single issue! The Subscription Process has been simplified so that no Reply Confirmation is required. An email to the Editor with your First and Last names is all that's required. There is never a charge for viewing any page on our website, nor for any of the guidance we offer to people asking for help with doyletics or other areas.
~~ NOTE: DIGESTWORLD is a Trademark of 21st Century Education, Inc. ~~
The cost of keeping this website on-line with its 18 Gbytes of bandwidth a month is about $25 a month. Thank you, our Good Readers, for continuing to patronize our advertisers when they provide products and services you are seeking as you visit any of our web pages. Remember the ads are dynamically displayed and every time you read even the same page a second time, you may find new products and services displayed for your review. Our reviews, digests, tidbits, etc, all our webpages act as Google magnets to bring folks to the website to learn about doyletics and frequent our advertisers, so they support one another in effect.
We welcome your contributions to the support of the website and research into the science of doyletics. For our street address, email Bobby at the address found on this page: http://www.doyletics.com/bobby.htm. Every $25 contribution helps keep this website on-line for another month.
We wish to thank all Good Readers who have made a contribution to the doyletics.com website! A special thanks to Chris and Carla Bryant of Corpus Christi!
NEW ! ! ! You can read a description of how to do a Speed Trace:
Or Watch Bobby extemporaneously explain How to Do a Speed Trace on Video:
To make a connection to the Doyletics website from your own website, here's what to do. You may wish to use the first set of code below to link to the site which includes a graphic photo, or to use the second set of code for a text-only link. Immediately below is how the graphic link will look on your website. Just place this .html in an appropriate place on your website.
<CENTER> < — with graphics link — >
<A HREF="http://www.doyletics.com/index.htm">Learn to Do a Speed Trace Here<BR>
<IMG SRC="http://www.doyletics.com/doylepb.gif" width="309" height="102" border="2"
ALT="Learn to Remove Doyles — all those Unwanted Physical Body states of fear, depression, migraine, etc." ALIGN=middle><A/></CENTER>
<CENTER> < — text only link — >
<A HREF="http://www.doyletics.com/introduc.htm">Learn to Do the Speed Trace at doyletics.com <A/>
</CENTER>
My reviews are not intended to replace the purchasing and reading of the reviewed books, but rather to supplant a previous reading or to spur a new reading of your own copy. What I endeavor to do in most of my reviews is to impart a sufficient amount of information to get the reader comfortable
with the book so that they will want to read it for themselves.
My Rudolf Steiner reviews are more detailed — my intention is bring his work to a new century of readers by converting his amazing insights into modern language and concepts.
== == == == == == == == == == ==
The Good Mountain Press Digest is mailed monthly to:
Friends and associates
Individuals who have expressed interest in the Digest
Persons who have subscribed at the Digest Subscription Page.
Please Don't Bug Us
IMPORTANT NOTE Good News for Good Readers and Good Friends
who have not joined the DIGESTWORLD Reminder List! ! !
WE HAVE MADE IT SIMPLER to SUBSCRIBE to DIGESTWORLD REMINDERS
As of August, 2011 we have begun using a Contact Manager with an Email Merge feature which allows us to send personalized Emails to everyone in our Contact List. For the time being the Topica.com e-mail List Subscription List will remain active, but you will receive the colorful Email containing the DIGESTWORLD Reminder beginning with "Dear [Your First Name]". It is important that we have your First Name, so if the name you are addressed by in your Reminder is not your first name, please notify us of the name you wish us to use. For convenience you can send a quick email to give us your name by Clicking Here. To Contact Bobby, his Email address is visible on this page.
Nothing BUGS US more than to lose Hale-and-Hearty, Ready-to-Read Friends from the DIGESTWORLD Reminder List.
Please do your part by letting us know of any email address change so that you may continue receiving the DIGESTWORLD Reminders. Most of our Readers come from folks who don't get these Reminders, but we offer the DIGESTWORLD Reminder as a service to our regular Good Readers.
If you discovered this page by a Google Search and want to SUBSCRIBE NOW
Simply Click the Link at right to send an Email Request: SUBSCRIBE
If you have enjoyed a particular issue, let us know, especially around the first of each month when those "lost soul" messages are bugging us, Send us a quick email by Clicking Here!
If you have a friend or two that you think would enjoy reading the DIGESTWORLD, suggest they view the current DIGESTWORLD Issue and perhaps they'll decide to Subscribe.
To unsubscribe from the DIGESTWORLD Reminder List:
Click Link at right to send a Blank email to: UNSUBSCRIBE
If the above canned emails don't work on your system, you can send a Subscribe/Unsubscribe request to the address found on this page: http://www.doyletics.com/bobby.htm Please include your first and last name when Subscribing.
Maintaining a website requires time and money, and apart from sending a donation to the Doyletics Foundation, there are several ways you can show your gratitude and support our efforts to keep doyletics.com on-line.
One would be for you to buy a copy of my Dolphin Novel, The SPIZZNET File. Books May be ordered in hardback or paperback form from Xlbiris the Publisher here:
The best source at the best price is to order your copies on-line is from the publisher Random House/Xlibris's website above.
Two would be for you to use the Google Search Engine for your web searches or to find an item on doyletics.com website. New reviews will have a place to do a Google Search at the top and the bottom of the reviews. Just enter a search phrase in the box below to do a Search. Note you can check whether to Search just this site or all websites.
Thank you in advance!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For good Readers interested in a guided education in the humanities, I highly recommend this educational program:
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OVER 9 MILLION Happy People Have Found Doyletics
~ 9,064,830 to Feb. 8, 2012 ~ January Average: 2,906 Visitors/Day. Hits are about 19X Unique Visitors. ~ Receive Monthly DIGESTWORLD Reminder: Click Here: Subscribe!
Look at George Burns, Bob Hope, both lived to 100. Doesn't that prove that "He who Laughs, Lasts"? Do you find nothing humorous in your life? Are your personal notes blue notes? Are you unhappy with your life? Fearful? Angry? Anxious? Feel down or upset by everyday occurrences? Plagued by chronic discomforts like migraines or tension-type headaches? At Last! An Innovative 21st Century Approach to Removing Unwanted Physical Body States without Drugs or Psychotherapy, e-mediatelytm !
Click on Faces Below.
To Join the World-Wide Doyletics List, Click Choice, Enter your email address below, then Click JOIN:
For Copies of Reviewed Steiner Books, Click on SteinerBooks Logo below.
Romanticism Comes of Age
When Words Lose Their Meaning
— Constitutions of Language, Character, and Community
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.
