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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ In Memoriam: Mary Travers (1936 - 2009) ~~~~
~~~~~~~~ The Mary of Peter, Paul, and Mary The musical trio known for folks songs Such as "Blowing in the Wind" ~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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 clock on the 404 Error page if you make a mistake typing a URL while on the doyletics.com
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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 Violet and Joey learn about Complaining.
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 January are:
FINAL TOUCHES ON THE MOVE AND THE DECADE OF THE OH-OH'S
Our moving is done! This month we began the final touches on our new home. The new brick-lined
flower beds along the West Portico patio were shaped and completed this month. As of the end of the
month, we had only four Bird of Paradise plants placed in them, with large stones of various shapes
punctuated the spaces between them. We found that we were short of shelf space for the non-fiction
library downstairs and we ordered two new white bookshelves for the living room and everything fit,
with room to spare.
Major project is 99% done: our new Sierra Grey roof. The crew ran out of roofing tiles and the factory was
shut down for the holidays, so the last of tiles will be installed in the first week of the new year. The
endless days of stomping and hammering on the roof are over finally. It was very hard to think while the
roofing work was going on, and I had to be there as questions arose. So I lost a week or two of work
on my reading and writing due to the roof.
The new projects in the works are new bifold shutters over the large windows on the ends of the house.
The current shutters stay closed all the time and the new bifold shutters will remain folded open until
they are needed to be closed. They will be painted gray to match the roof along with the shutters over
the French doors on the East Portico. Two beveled glass doors will replace the solid doors currently
installed. They will have white frames to match the glass frames on either side. The last item will be the
pouring of a curved driveway across the front lawn to make it possible for guests to use the new front
doors. Currently all guests come in through the north-side laundry room, and while the Laundry Room
is Del's favorite room in the house, the entrance through the East Portico doors gives a more efficient
entrance and pleasing prospect for visitors to Timberlane.
THE BABE & THE CHRISTMAS TREE
We always wanted a big Christmas and were previously limited by the height of the ceiling, but no
more. This year we had lots of options for tree size, up to 20 feet high if we wished. We decided to
place the tree alongside the right side of the double-doors (seen from the street) because the right-side
door is rarely used except for moving large items of furniture. An 8-foot tall Frazer Fir fit the space
nicely and we had fun decorating the tree in early December. Driving our Christmas tree home is usually
a problem, with even smaller trees sticking out our trunks, but not this year, thanks to the Babe, our
pickup truck. With her 8-foot bed, I simply dumped the tree into the bed and drove home. We'll miss
Babe next year when it's time to get our next large Christmas tree. We had the tree all decorated and
filled to overflowing with wrapped presents by the time our Family Christmas day arrived.
FAMILY CHRISTMAS FLOOD
Four of the Hatchett kids and one of the Matherne kids flooded our new home with their various children plus our
grand-daughter Tiffany with her three boys (our great-grandsons). Tiffany arrived late when it was dark
and raining heavily.
I helped her get her boys in the house. Sam and Weslee our Santa grandsons were
nearly finished distributing the gifts when I got back into the living room. Then the flood started outside when rain came down like
Armageddon, but the nice part about living across from a drainage canal is that if the water gets high, the excess
simply flows down the driveway into the canal. Del's brother Dan and his wife Karen were here and
they encountered some high water getting Doris, Del and Dan's mom, back to her place along Behrman
Highway. Tiffany told me later, she had to park her car at a service station on West Metairie and her
husband came to pick them up, driving through the high water. We had a lake alongside the fairway for
a couple of days, and when it drained, it left behind a lot of mulch material which I raked up for our
new garden and mulch beds.
Another flood was the huge array of food Del had available for our family: a Honey-Baked Ham, shrimp fettuccini, seafood
gumbo, and lots appetizers and sandwiches for hearty or picky appetites. Two of the kids spent the
night, the ones from Alexandria and Beaumont and the guest bedrooms handled them well. Only two
lanky teenaged boys overflowed onto the long sofas in the living room.
The Christmas tree looked mostly empty the next morning, but soon it filled up again as Del and I
completed our Christmas shopping and the UPS man became a regular visitor to our East Portico to
drop off the latest boxes. This time it was me doing most of the Christmas present wrapping upstairs in
the middle guest bedroom which serves as our wrapping room.
The day after the flooding rain was misty and after everyone left, we planted a couple of trees and
treated the garden plot with my Bio-dynamic Barrel Compost which is a preparation which enhances
the living organisms in the soil and helps the decomposition of the mulch.
THE SAINTS ARE BUMMING, UP UNTIL NOW!
Instead of "coming" as the song goes. In December the Saints seem to be turning into stumble bums,
losing two home games in a row, to Dallas and bottom-feeder Bucs. But there are about a dozen
walking wounded Saints and even with the limited crew available, the Saints stayed in the two losing games to the
end.Only a fluke missed field goal with time running out allowed the Bucs to win in over-time when
they won the coin toss instead of the Saints. With prayerful help from the Vikings losing two games in a row, the
Saints have locked in Home Field advantage and with a first round Bye, they can rest up their banged-up players for the Play Off games.
No frozen field and getting snowballs thrown at our Saints (like in
Chicago in the NFC Championship Game a couple of years ago) — the Saints will be in the cozy
confines of the Dome, ready to FIRE UP their offense and defense which tailored a 13-win season (so far) and
locked in the playoff top seed for their fans. Look out you Sinners in Miami! Make way for some real
S A I N T S!
AFTER CHRISTMAS KIDS
On the week after Christmas our two daughters arrived from Texas, first Yvette and then Carla. Yvette
came with her husband Greg Clark, and their kids, Evelyn and Aidan. Evelyn loved the riding crop I got
for her Christmas present. She is doing English dressage, horseback riding, and didn't have a leather
crop all her own. Aidan loved the Lego machine kit which we gave him.
Del took Evelyn to get her
nails done with her and, when she came back with colorful nails, we asked her, "Is that fungus on your
fingers?" As we used to say as teenagers in the 1950s, "At ease, Disease! There's fungus among us."
She laughed. Actually the color looked more like that of lichens which are a combination of fungus and
algae. Sort of a gecko color. I never imagined that anyone would name a color, "gecko", until our next
daughter arrived from Beaumont, TX in a new Volkwagen Beetle and on the key of the rental car, it
said, COLOR: GECKO. See photo and judge for yourself.
When Carla and Patrick arrived, it had warmed slightly and was a warm, drizzling day all day, perfect
for staying inside and watching movies and playing BLOKUS. That's a simple but challenging board
game that our grandson Thomas likes to play and he's a terror at the game, since Del and I needed some
practice for our next bout with Thomas, we introduced Carla and Pat to the game. Carla loved it
and Pat played along for a couple of games. We had already watched "Cadillac Records" twice, so we
unsealed the NetFlix envelope (ready to return) and let Carla and Pat watch it while I wrote these
Personal Notes and they loved it as well. Great story, great music, and great history all tied up in an
excellent script.
HAPPY NEW YEAR AND DECADE!
It's New Year's Eve morn and I'm finishing up the Digest as we get ready for a couple of parties
tonight and some LSU football in the Capitol One Bowl game tomorrow which pits the State
Universities of Pennsylvania and Louisiana tomorrow. We made wrecks of the Georgia Tech team last
year in a Bowl Game, so perhaps our Fighting Tigers will maul the Nittany Lions at noon tomorrow as
we digest our traditional New Orleans New Year's Day fare of boiled cabbage, blackeye peas and
rice, and corn bread. May your New Year's Day will be equally festive and fun wherever in this
Wonderful World you reside.
TILL NEXT MONTH
That's it for another month of Digest. Till next month, February 1, 2010, when, God willing, we will
return with a new Digest for you to enjoy — designed, written, and lovingly published for you by
Bobby & Del. With Christmas and the New Year holidays behind us, many parts of the country are
dreading the dark months of winter with nothing to celebrate, but not in New Orleans. January 6,
King's Day, brings Carnival Balls followed by Parades all over the metro area leading up to Mardi Gras.
There is no limit of fun things to do in New Orleans. The Saints are making a run for the Super Bowl,
playing one, two playoff games in the Superdome. The city will segue into Spring Festival and Jazz Fest
shortly after the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras is over. Spring around here begins in February with
Japanese Magnolias and azalea blooms. My friend Gus, from Michigan, says there are more things to
do in one night in New Orleans than in a whole year in his hometown up north. Make it a great month
for yourself and pray for the Saints to finish the playoffs with a flourish!
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The writing of a review of this book is as difficult as reading Jung's writing on the subject
of the psyche. He points out that writing ( a conscious activity) about unconscious process is fraught
with problems. How does one write about what one doesn't know? The only way is to begin writing
consciously and allowing the content to bubble up from the unconscious well. The concept of well
is a good metaphor for the unconscious: every time we dip deep into the well we bring up the
possibility for refreshing water or muck. We never know until we find out (Matherne's Rule No. 2)
by looking into our dipper.The French say "no omelet unless you break an egg." In writing, the
"dipping into the well" equivalent is the "free writing" process taught by Peter Elbow — probably
originated by Dorothea Brande in her 1930's writing classes. See her classic book, "Becoming a
Writer". I am writing this review using a free writing process, which allows me to write about a book
that otherwise I could not begin to write about. At least not without an enormous effort and even then
to write in a stilted style, sapped of all life and vibrancy.
The nature of the psyche and the nature of Carl Jung merge in this book. Each subject he
covers trails off into an open ended question of the type he admits to evolving into in his dream
interpretations. The dilemma he faced in dream work was how to permit the patient complete
freedom to interpret her own dream if that freedom permitted no starting place from which to begin?
Lacking the Archimedean lever point of physicists, psychologists are destined to be both the
observer and the observed. Their psyches must inspect their own psyches — how, in such a subjective
endeavor, can an objective science be formed? In this book, Jung tries to answer this question. The
archetypes have a level of reality because their effects on the psyche (via the psyche's effects on the
external world) can be observed. For example, the mandala can be observed in its various
manifestations of a person's life, even though the internal mandala archetype cannot be observed.
In reference to hard physics, Jung points out that atom (a-tom) means "not-divisible", just as
unconscious means "not-conscious". Both definitions are negative definitions, and as such point to
a reality beyond words. Such is the nature of the psyche.
I devoted the month of June to reading this book on psychological types by the master. Having
read various second and third hand descriptions of Jung's types over the past ten years I decided it was
time for me to get the full undiluted treatment. It was equivalent to "jogging in the swamp" — it's slow
going, you get mud splashed all over you at times, you fall in over your head many times, and it just
plainly wears you out. That's a sensate description of the book — my inferior function, so forgive my
crude attempt to communicate intelligently with you primary sensates (who probably aren't reading this
review anyway — except you occasional secondary thinking types).
To you feeling types: you might enjoy this account better if you have someone read it to you
that feels like they understand it. Then you may find your inferior thinking function activated enough
to want to read it on your own.
To you thinkers: there's a bright shiny goldmine of connections and interconnections. Carl goes
back to the Gnostics, to Tertullian and Origen, to Schiller, to Goethe, to Epimedes, he covers Abelard,
Aquinas and Nietzche, delving into Apollonian and Dionysian types, into Galen's humours, into
Romantics and Classics, into William James' types — and that's only the first few chapters. The possibilities for exposition would tax Mr. Spock's ental capacity.
And now for you intuitives — what a treat is in store for you — as you've always suspected —
Jung has fleshed your type out so that the rational types can think about you and feel for you and the
irrational sensate type ( your alter ego type) can understand you as the source of their most curious
unconscious behavior under stress. Lastly, you extroverts can use this to line your spouse's bird's cage.
And this is for the rest of you not covered by the above typology:
In this book Jung gives the most powerful presentation of his philosophy of the reality of the
psyche. At one point he offer the caveat that readers do not take his writings as a description of how
one does therapy. His interest is in demonstrating the psychology of the individual, not how to do the
therapy on them. This goal pervades the writings assembled in this book and makes it an excellent starting pint for a newcomer to Jung. That is saying a lot since there are few other suggestions for a starting
point for a serious beginner in his voluminous works.
He explains in detail the difference between Adler's will to power approach to understanding the
psyche and Freud's sexual repression approach. He gives them each credit for a useful and comprehensive addition to the sum of human knowledge about the unconscious and for providing a pragmatic
approach to therapy. Along the way the reader comes to understand that both Adler's and Freud's
theories are subsumed in Jung comprehensive theory of the unconscious.
Two insights I gained from this book are best described via diagrams. The first one drawn below shows
my diamond typology diagram with bands of conscious and unconscious drawn across it. The intuition
function draws its material from the collective unconscious directly and the sensation from the personal
unconscious whereas both the rational functions, thinking and feeling, draw their material from the
conscious. In fact it is the mediation by the thinking and feeling functions of material that originates in
the personal and collective unconscious that constitutes the very process of consciousness itself.
The second insight comes from page 194 in which he discusses the influence of inner and outer
forces in the individual. "To the degree that the world invites the individual to identify with the mask, he
is delivered over to influences from within." The attraction of the ego to the persona is like that of a
weight to a large body via gravity. As the ego is pulled towards consciousness, the unconscious pulls
back via the spring tension of the anima. This creates the conditions of a harmonic oscillator in world of
physics and one might expect to find similar outcomes in the world of the psyche. The states of
harmonic oscillation are: 1) steady oscillation, 2) damped oscillation, 3) over-damped oscillation, and 4)
critically damped oscillation. Just as the design criteria for shock absorbers for an automobile would be
to provide critically damped oscillations to give a smooth ride for the driver and passengers, so too the
aim for psychotherapy would be, for quite similar reasons. The diagram of the opposing forces looks so:
Here are Jung's words about the oscillation: "The persona, the ideal picture of a man as he
should be, is inwardly compensated by feminine weakness, and as the individual outwardly plays the
strong man, so he becomes inwardly a woman i.e., the anima, for it is the anima that reacts to the persona. But because the inner world is dark and invisible to the extraverted consciousness, and because a
man is all the less capable of conceiving his weaknesses the more he is identified with the persona, the
persona's counterpart, the anima remains completely in the dark and is at once projected so that our
hero comes under the heel of his wife's slipper. If this results in a considerable increase of her power,
she will acquit herself none too well. She becomes inferior, thus providing her husband with the
welcome proof that it is not he, the hero, who is inferior in private, but his wife. In return the wife can
cherish the illusion, so attractive to many, that at least she has married a hero, unperturbed by her own
uselessness. This little game of illusion is often taken to be the whole meaning of life." Thus the
harmonic pendulum of the psyche swings back and forth from increasing consciousness to decreasing
consciousness (unconsciousness). (If the wife in Jung's scenario above refuses to become inferior, the
marriage is not likely to survive the strain in the relationship that results.)
If I change my concept of reality in such a way as to admit that all psychic
happenings are real - and no other use of the concept is valid - this puts an
end to the conflict of matter and mind as contradictory explanatory
principles. Each becomes a mere description for the particular source of the
psychic contents that crowd into my field of consciousness.
But this insight is not sprung on the reader out of the blue, but built up to by the careful
editing of these assembled lectures of Jung. In the first lecture he describes the four types of
psychotherapy: confessional, interpretational, educational, and transformational. These four types
he builds into a pyramid with confessional at the base. For some patients, he says, it is enough to
confess their faults and sins to go on with their lives. For others, the confession is not enough,
but interpretation of the meaning of their transgressions is required before they can continue their
development. For still others, the interpretation helps, but leaves them helpless as a child to deal
with the new insights. Only through education can they proceed to build a normal life.
While the Freudian school might leave the patient in such a childlike state, the Adlerian
school would educate them in the social skills necessary for their next stage of life development.
For some patients the educational phase turns out to be superfluous, coming at a stage in their life
when they already have the social skills necessary. For these, only a therapy that deals with
transformational issues will suffice. This is the contribution of Carl Jung, to put the capstone on
the pyramid of psychotherapy. He created his analytical psychology for these very patients, for
whom mere confession, interpretation, or education is not sufficient, because they crave for a
transformation in depth, one not achievable by these three. For this reason Jungian therapy is
sometimes referred to as depth psychology.
In other lectures Jung lays the groundwork of his psychology of types, describes the state
of archaic man, details his analytical psychology, and finally as the question "Should a patient go
to a psychotherapist or a clergyman?"
If you have been put off by the polysyllabic prose of the ponderous tomes in the Collected
Works of Jung, this book will serve you as a fine introduction to his more detailed works. This
book is an introduction to Jung's works by Jung himself. He covers the major issues of his life's
work in a manner easily comprehended by the layperson. I wish I had read this book first.
This classic little book written by Jung first appeared in the centennial edition of The Atlantic
and popped into my hands in the bookstore the other day. That told me it was time to read or re-read
it and I did, straight through in two days. It brought to my mind the strange paradox of reading Jung
-even his material written for the layperson - if you can already understand Jung's writings, you can
read it and understand it further, if not, reading it will add nothing to your comprehension of Jung.
This makes it very hard to get started with Jung. It is reminiscent of the old saying I made up a while
back, "When learning something new, it's best to know all about it before you start."
This book is a start. It is about an old subject for Jung: the reality of the psyche. How the dual
character of the individual, the ego and the unconscious psyche rule the individual. In addition, Jung
demonstrates how the rule of governments mirror the rule of the ego in the individual. In their
various forms of despotism, such as dictatorship, communism, and democracy, the ruling classes of
society exert influences on the masses of society similar to that which the ego exerts on the life of
the individual. The rule of creeds (as Jung calls organized religions with fixed sets of beliefs, but not
necessarily spiritual elements) over the autonomy of the individual is ever replaced by other rulers,
such as kings, dictators, and tyrannical governments. In each case the ruling class is subject to the
foibles of the individual egos of their membership and foist on the governed masses the same
onerous restrictions as the rulers they replaced had done, only changed slightly due to current fads
and theories.
Thus one comes, with Jung, to see that relief from onerous dictatorship from without can only
come by relief from the onerous dictatorship from within - the individual ego. Like external
dictatorships condemn individual choice and action as harmful to the aims of the state, so too does
the ego condemn the existence of the psyche as an independent existence in the individual. The state
maintains control by statistics that nullify the existence of the individual psyche, and the ego
maintains control by planting the idea to use statistics in the first place. When analyzing the
omnipotent state, one can only come to the conclusion that it is ego all the way down.
In Jung's
words, "Since it is universally believed that man is merely what his consciousness knows of itself,
he regards himself as harmless and so adds stupidity to iniquity. He does not deny that terrible things
have happened and still go on happening, but it is always 'the others' who do them. And when such
deeds belong to the recent or remote past, they quickly and conveniently sink into the sea of
forgetfulness, and that state of chronic woolly-mindedness return which we describe as 'normality'."
And further on in the book, he says, "If a world-wide consciousness could arise that all division and
all antagonism are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche, then one would really know where
to attack." One would begin the assault within oneself, to come to discover and understand the
duality of the ego and the self.
New Stuff on the Internet:
This internet photo of a lazy Christmas decorator has passed around the world a couple of times, so I share it with in case you missed it.
Hits (Watch as soon as you can. A Don't Miss Hit is one you might otherwise ignore.):
“How About You?” (2007) I like it, how about you? Vanessa Redgrave plays someone her own age to perfection. Definitely A DON’T MISS HIT!
“Star Trek” (2009) A prequel without equal: How Kirk Spock, Bones, and Scotty, and became Captain by winning the no-win scenario twice, once in the Academy and once in real life. Dings against it: Copied the Superman origin story: how James Tiberius Kirk was born, got his name, how his father became Starship Captain for ten minutes before dying. Copied ‘Men in Black’ type monsters. Copied Conan Doyle’s quote about the impossible without attribution, blithely, as if it came from the script-writers’ minds. Barely a Hit after the hit for copying others.
“Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story” (2009) Cuban Gooden in another memorable performance as the surgeon who separated cranically conjoined twins, the first to figure a way to do so with both twins surviving.
“sex, lies, and videotape” (1989) First Soderberg film, shot in Baton Rouge with new stars James Spader and Peter Gallagher about a wife who doesn’t like sex, a husband who’s sleeping with her sister, and his college friend who is impotent. A potent mixture for doings and undoings.
“Nothing Like the Holidays” (2008) Alfred Molino as pater familias of this eclectic extended family facing challenges for Christmas when suddenly love breaks out.
“The Open Road” (2009) with Mary Steenbergen faces major heart surgery, she asks for her estranged husband (Jeff Bridges) the baseball jock to come to her and her son and girl friend must fly to him and drive him across country in time. Will love break out in multiple directions?
“The Case for Christ” (2007) starring Lee Strobel in Max Lucado documentary of evidence for the existence of Christ Jesus.
“Faith Like Potatoes” (2006) true story of Scottish farmer in Zambia forced to start over in South Africa.
“Harry Potter: The Half Blood Prince” (2009) With a new Potions teacher, Harry discovers curious recipes on his battered copy of the textbook by the Half-Blood Prince. Intrigue by Malfoy and Snape lead to Dumbledore’ death and Harry discovery of the Horecruxes which keep Valtemore alive.
“The Ugly Truth” (2009) is what Mike (Gerard Butler) is bantering about until Craig Ferguson asks him the tough question. Mike teaches the controlling bitch how to hook her man, but is he bound for take home or catch-and-release? A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! "Somers Town" (2008) Charming movie about two teenage boys growing up in London.
“Paper Heart” (2009) stars Charlynne “Chuck”, a plain looking gal in early twenties, virginal and never in love, and making a movie which asks people what’s it like to be in love. Along the way love happens and shortstops the movie makers plan for a honeymoon in Paris. Or did it?
“Julia & Julie” (2009) Julie is a young fan of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and decides to cook her way through the entire book in one year, 524 recipes. Can her job and her marriage withstand the barrage of cooking blogging? In a parallel view we watch both Julie and Julia make their mark in the world. If you think Julie’s experiences are worth a movie, you’re watching it.
“The Merchant of Venice” (2004) Great production with Serpico as Shylock trying to exact his pound of flesh and destroying his own life in the process.
“Camille” (2007) is a horse of four different colors. Camille dies but insists on her Niagara Falls honeymoon anyway. Quirky, unpredictable, and deeply insightful while stretching the tenuous bonds of reality.
“Angels & Demons” (2009) Pulse-throbbing suspense and non-stop action around the election of a new Pope and the theft of hi-tech anti-matter bomb. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Black Book” (2006) In Blu-Ray movies seem so vivid that we thought we’d watched this one in black & white back in 2007 (before Blu-Ray). Great movie showing the problems the resistance faced near the end of WWII in Holland. Whom can you trust? A DON’T MISS HIT !!! “Avenue Montaigne” (2007) Young Jessica befriends an art collector, a concert pianist, and a comedienne, and bewitches us viewers on the Avenue of Broken Dreams and Fulfilled Ones. A DON’T MISS HIT !!! “The Education of Charlie Banks” (2007) evokes themes of Great Gatsby with a Brando-Irish-Stanley loose cannon banging people up.
“Cadillac Records” (2008) was the pet name of Leonard Chess’s record company because he bought each of his stars, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howling Wolf, Etta James, Chuck Berry, among others, a brand-new Cadillac. A DON’T MISS HIT with LOTS of HITS. “My Boy Jack” (2007) Daniel Radcliffe took a break from being Harry Potter to star as Rudyard Kipling’s star-crossed son who joined the army to escape his father’s clutches and did.
“The Tunnel” (2001) Star swimmer of Germany escapes East Berlin and helps build tunnel to get Lotte, his sister, and others out. Long movie, but worth every minute, a truly epic saga which heats up during the last hour. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! ! “Go for Zucker” (2005) A Minnesota Fats gone wild at the pool tables, in his massage parlor, in his home, with his daughter, but he won’t talk to his estranged and strange Orthodox brother till his mother reaches up from the grave to force him.
“Changing Times” (2006) Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve as former lovers separated by decades but united once again by love, but will she accept him back? “The Merchant of Venice” (2004) Great production with Serpico as Shylock trying to exact his pound of flesh and destroying his own life in the process. “The Note” (2006) delivers forgiveness from a downed airliner & opens the heart of the columnist of the newspaper’s Heartline. No super actors or directors, but the great story pulls this movie through to 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.
“Punisher: War Zone” (2008) Seven necks sliced open in 11 seconds, DVD STOMPED during the 12 th Second. A DVD STOMPER! ! ! ! “The Other Man” (2008) is Antonio Banderas and Liam Neeson tracks him down to discover the truth that lies beneath his Italian suit and smug exterior. Premise is great; execution of the movie is awful. Plot, script suck; a waste of great talent. Another Laura-Linney-mediocre movie.
Your call on these — your taste in movies may differ, but I liked them:
“The Merry Gentleman” (2008) Battered wife moves across town to escape husband and witnesses Michael Keaton as suicidal hitman trying to jump and saves his life. Suddenly she has three men orbiting her life, a batterer, a hitman, and a cop.
“The Bothersome Man” (2006) In a Twilight Zone-type movie, a man is transported to this ideal city and job, but with curious consequences. A bothersome movie.
“Woman Under the Influence” (1974) Life with all its warts. A woman driven to insanity by her supposedly sane family. Will it be a one-way trip?
“I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With” (2006) Another bothersome man who at 39 lived with his mother and hadn’t gotten laid in 5 year. Then he met Sarah Silverman and a chubby chaser (lovely ambiguity) and his life will never be the same.
This story was told me by my brother Paul from Opelousas, whom I assured that I would not use any four letter words when I told it.
Boudreaux was eating in a fancy restaurant which just opened up in Breaux Bridge. By fancy I mean it had tablecloths instead of paper covering the tables. As he was eating, he dropped his spoon on the floor as his waiter was passing. The waiter pulled a spoon from his shirt pocket and handed it to Boudreaux.
"Merci beaucoup!" Boudreaux said. "How did you know that Ah would drop my spoon?"
"Actually, I didn't. We just had an efficiency expert come to the restaurant and he trained us on how to save time. Instead of walking back to the kitchen to get you a new spoon, I simply carry one around with all the time in case it's needed."
"Mais, dat's somet'ing!" Boudreaux replied. "Ah like that efficiency stuff. Any other tricks he taught you?"
"Well, yes. You see that string hanging out of my zipper fly?"
"Uh-huh. Wat's dat for?"
"He showed us how to save time going to the washroom. It's attached to my penis and I use it to pull it out of my pants and it saves me the time I used to spend washing my hands. It works great and is sanitary."
"Hmm," Boudreaux said, thinking real hard, "Sounds efficient, for sure, but told me something, how you put it back in yo' pants?"
The waiter looked around a bit, leaned over to Boudreaux, and whispered, "I don't know what the other guys do, but I use the spoon."
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
5. RECIPE of the MONTH for January, 2010 from Bobby Jeaux’s Kitchen: (click links to see photo of ingredients, preparation steps) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Grama Del's Oatmeal Cookies
Background on Grama Del's Oatmeal Cookies:
Del got the recipe from back of Quaker Old-Fashioned Oats box about 1965. (Original recipe has been replaced over the years.) Children say it's the best cookie
they've ever eaten. A favorite Christmas treat for the whole family.
Preparation
Sift the flour. grease (rub Crisco over) a cookie sheet. Preheat oven to 350 degf.
Cream (Mix thoroughly together) the shortening, brown sugar and white sugar.
Add and beat until smooth the water, egg, and vanilla
Add and beat the flour, salt, baking soda and Oats
Spoon on greased cookie sheet.
Cooking Instructions
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in preheated 350 degf oven.
Serving Suggestion
Make 5 dozen cookies.
Other options
Can add pecans, walnuts, or raisins for variation, about 1 cup of any of the extra ingredients.
Don McNeill might sing if he wrote like me,
“It's Sonnet Time around the breakfast feast;
Let's eat our grits and fritters, cakes of yeast;
A daily sacrament for all to see.”
How easy rhyming is with letter E.
No need to seek the syllabus of Greece;
Just pick a syllable or two apiece
And then you've got a word like Me and Thee.
The hardest part is in the closing line
To choose your pattern carefully (with grace)
To keep your penta-meter in its place
And the iambs not trailing far behind.
When you come to choose a rhyming couplet
Find a happy sounding word and doublet.
And for my Good Readers, here’s the new reviews and articles for this month. The ARJ2 ones are new additions to the top of A Reader’s Journal, Volume 2, Chronological List, and the ART ones to A Reader’s Treasury. NOTE: these Blurbs are condensations of the Full Reviews sans footnotes and many quoted passages.
I will miss these daily walks
With the Norseman Thorer
Through the ancient hills and rills
Of Concord town.
The little ditty from Volume 13 I repeat above as it aptly reflects my mood as I type my last review of
Henry David Thoreau's 14 volume journal, all two million words, spanning his years from 1837 to 1861.
Since Volume 1 covered the ten year period from 1837 to 1847, the rest of the Volumes took approximately
one year each. My reading of Volume 1 began June 22, 2001 and it finished with Volume 14 on December
14, 2009, filling almost an entire decade of my life with daily walks with Henry as his invisible and silent
companion, his very favorite type of companion, one who remains quiet, unseen, and who does not disturb
his meditative walks in the least. I figure, after all these years, I can call him by his first name. With a hint of
sadness I pen these final notes and say goodbye to my erstwhile daily companion, relegated henceforth to
my bookshelf, always at the ready for another trip to Conatum, Mt. Monadnock, or Cape Cod, or a boat
trip down the Assabet or Concord Rivers. If you, dear Reader, think it a daunting task to attack the reading
of Henry's Journals, I assure you will be entranced by his ease of writing style and the years will fly by
quickly.
On Sept. 20, 1860 he delivered his lecture, "The Succession of Forest Trees" to the Middlesex County
Agriculture Society's annual cattle show. His preliminary and followup work on the subject matter of the
lecture fills a large part of this Volume. His observations of how pine forests are seeded and grow up among
former oak forests, and vice-versa, are compiled from dozen of observations of forests in various states of
natural growth, cutting, planting, and reforestation. The type of oak reforestation of which Henry wrote was
that done by ubiquitous planters of acorns, the squirrels. We will share what he has to say about these tireless
forest planters.
August is the haying month and Henry shares with his view of the sky and the golden yellow valley
below.
[page 4, 5] Aug. 1. Again, I sit on the brow of the orchard, and look northwest down
the river valley (at mid-afternoon). There flows, or rests, the calm blue winding river,
lake-like, with its smooth silver-plated sides, and wherever weeds extend across it,
there too the silver plate bridges it, like a spirit's bridge across the Styx; but the
rippled portions are blue as the sky. This river reposes in the midst of a broad
brilliant yellow valley amid green fields and hills and woods, as if, like the Nanking
or Yang-ho (or what-not), it flowed through an Oriental Chinese meadow where
yellow is the imperial color. The immediate and raised edge of the river, with its
willows and
button-bushes and polygonums, is a light green, but the immediately
adjacent low meadows, where
the sedge prevails, is a brilliant
and cheerful yellow, intensely,
incredibly bright, such color as
you never see in pictures;
yellow of various tints, in the
lowest and sedgiest parts
deepening to so much color as if
gamboge had been rubbed into
the meadow there; the most
cheering color in all the
landscape; shaded with little
darker isles of green in the
midst of this yellow sea of
sedge. Yet it is the bright and cheerful yellow, as of spring, and with nothing in the
least autumnal in it. How this contrasts with the adjacent fields of red-top, now fast
falling before the scythe!
When your attention has been drawn to them, nothing is more charming than
the common colors of the earth's surface. See yonder flashing field of corn through
the shimmering air.
Henry observes a Solomon's-seal fruiting and we share with you a photo of what the plant and its berries
look like to accompany his words about the plant.
[page 5] Aug. 1. See a berry (not ripe) of the two-leaved Solomon's-seal dropped at the
mouth of a mouse or squirrel's hole, and observe that many are gone from these
plants, as if plucked by mice.
While on a camping trip to Mount Monadnock, Henry came upon some mountain cranberries.
Accustomed as I am to thinking of cranberries as growing in bogs, I would not have expected there to be
any such berries on a mountain, but there are, "the prettiest berry, certainly the most novel and interesting to
me, was the mountain cranberry, now grown but yet hard and with only its upper cheek red." (Page 14)
[page 15] Aug. 5. We stewed these berries for our breakfast the next morning, and
thought them the best berry on the mountain, though, not being quite ripe, the berry
was a little bitterish — but not the juice of it. It is such an acid as the camper-out
craves.
One of the trees which I was curious about was the hemlock. Henry noted it among the plants he
recorded in his Journal as "The Plants of the Summit" on Monadnock,
namely, "Hemlock; two little ones with rounded tops." Turns out that the
hemlocks are very common trees in the northeast, and one is the state tree
of Pennsylvania. A healthy tea may be brewed from the leaves of the
hemlock tree. The tree gets its name because the leaves smell a bit like the
poisonous hemlock herb. Here's a photo of fresh growth on a hemlock tree.
"A stone's throw" — how many of us have heard that phrase used to
describe a distance and how few have ever measured the distance of a
stone's throw in order to record a distance. Henry did. First, let's describe
for the twenty-first century reader that a rod is 5 meters (5.5 yards) long, so that ten rods is about a half-football field in length.
[page 39] Aug. 9. The basis of my map was the distance from the summit to the
second camp, measured very rudely by casting a stone before. Pacing the distance
of an easy cast, I found it to be about ten rods, and thirteen such stone's throws, or
one hundred and thirty rods, carried me to the camp. . . . it was fifty rods from the
summit to the ravine and eighty more to the camp.
Henry recorded a meteorological phenomenon of clouds forming as they approached to within a half-mile of the mountain's peak, growing larger as they got closer, and then dissolving as they passed over the
summit.
His explanation of the cloud formation explains equally well why clouds form in advance of an
approaching cold front, only in this case it is the cold mass that is moving towards the warmer moist air
instead of the warm, moist air moving towards the cold mountain.
[page 46, 47] Aug. 9. I gave this account of it to myself. They were not attracted to
the summit, but simply generated there and not elsewhere. There would be a warm
southwest wind blowing which was full of moisture, alike over the mountain and all
the rest of the country. The summit of the mountain being cool, this warm air began
to feel its influence at half a mile distance, and its moisture was rapidly condensed
into a small cloud, which expanded as it advanced, and evaporated again as it left
the summit.
The difference between eating fish sticks and going fishing should be obvious — both ways you get to
enjoy fish, but only by going fishing can you enjoy the environment of the fish as well as the flavor of the fish.
Henry reckons the same difference between encountering berries in a pudding versus in its natural environment.
[page 56] Aug. 22. When I used to pick the berries for dinner on the East Quarter hills I did
not eat one till I had done, for going a-berrying implies more things than eating the
berries. They at home got only the pudding: I got the forenoon out of doors, and the
appetite for the pudding.
Henry often found Indian relics and admits to have expected to find them before the fact, as he did with
the shards of a pot he found sticking out slightly from the bank after a heavy rain.
[page 59, 60] Aug. 22. It is curious that I had expected to find as much as this, and
in this very spot too, before I reached it (I mean the pot). Indeed, I never find a
remarkable Indian relic — and I find a good many — but I have first divined its
existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly
what it was to be before I found it.
It seems that Henry lived his life backwards to the normal men of his time: what they saw as small stuff,
Henry attended to, what they say as big stuff, their ordinary business, Henry never bothered with. Here he
shares his views on this matter:
[page 104] Oct. 7. Many people have a foolish way of talking about small things, and
apologize for themselves or another having attended to a small thing, having
neglected their ordinary business and amused or instructed themselves by attending
to a small thing; when, if the truth were known, their ordinary business was the small
thing, and almost their whole lives were misspent, but they were such fools as not
to know it.
One day I was passing a new walking path that had been installed in our town along a road I took daily.
There were people walking briskly along the path for their exercise of the day. What was curious to me was
that there were as many cars in the attached parking lot as there were walkers on the path. Each walker must
have driven a mile or two to the path in order to walk a mile or two on the path. Consider the lessened impact
on the environment if the walkers had simply gotten their exercise by leaving their cars at home and simply
walked back and forth to the walking park. Instead they need a machine to transport back and forth to a
place where they can walk. Henry thought likewise about these townspeople he called derisively, "cockneys",
in contrast to the sturdy country folk who got their exercise by actually exerting themselves in work.
[page 111] Oct. 10. They are hopelessly cockneys everywhere who learn to swim
with a machine. They take neither disease nor health, nay, nor life itself, the natural
way. I see dumbbells in the minister's study, and some of their dumbness gets into
his sermons. Some travelers carry them round the world in their carpetbags. Can he
be said to travel who requires still this exercise?
A party of school-children had a
picnic at the Easterbrooks Country the other day, and they carried bags of beans
from their gymnasium to exercise with there. I cannot be interested in these
extremely artificial amusements. The traveler is no longer a wayfarer, with his staff
and pack and dusty coat. He is not a pilgrim, but he travels in a saloon, and carries
dumbbells to exercise with in the intervals of his journey.
"Ah, Science!" Henry seems to be saying in the next passage, "You give us the partial while we await
the whole at which time your work can be discarded!"
[page 117] Oct. 13. The scientific differs from the poetic or lively description
somewhat as the photographs, which we so wearing of viewing, from paintings and
sketches, though this comparison is too favorable to science. All science is only a
makeshift, a means to an end which is never attained. After all, the truest
description, and that by which another living man can most readily recognize a
flower, is the unmeasured and eloquent one which the sight of it inspires. No
scientific description will supply the want of this, though you should count and
measure and analyze every atom that seems to compose it.
Surely poetry and eloquence are a more universal language than Latin which
is confessedly dead. In science, I should say, all description is postponed till we
know the whole, but then science itself will be cast aside.
One can only imagine that Henry is weary of looking at photographs because of the bland
monochromatic Daguerreotypes which represented the highest quality of photography of his time. But it was
not just the lacking of color, but a lack that no photography of today could provide. The closest approach
is made by time-lapse photography which unfolds for us the entire development cycle of the plant. It was only
with his imagination that Goethe, in Henry's time, could visual this kind of development cycle. He called this imagination the archetypal plant, the Urplanze.
Henry considers the scientific description of a plant to be like a man's passport, useful for little except to
uniquely identify the man, but telling us little about his life as his friends and acquaintances know him, who have
no need for a passport to identify him as their friend.
[page 119] Oct. 13. The men of science merely look at the object with sinister eye,
to see if it corresponds with the passport, and merely visé [RJM: i.e. inspect] or
make some trifling additional mark on its passport and let it go; but the real
acquaintances and friends which it may have in foreign parts do not ask to see nor
think of its passport.
Here we encounter our first passage about the "Succession of Forest Trees" in which Thoreau drolly
compares oak trees to settlers and pine trees to pioneers.
[page 130] Oct. 16. Thus this double forest was advancing to conquer new (or old)
land, sending forward their children on the wings of the wind, while already the oak
seedlings from the oak wood behind had established themselves beneath the old
pines ready to supplant them. The pines were the vanguard. They stood up to fire with
their children before them, while the little oaks kneeled behind and between them.
The pine is the pioneer, the oak the more permanent settler who lays out his
improvements. Pines are by some considered lower in the scale of trees — in the
order of development — than oak.
While the pines were blowing into the pastures from this narrow edging, the
animals were planting the acorns under the pines.
"Let's hear for the squirrels!" Henry seems to be saying next. Rarely have I heard anyone praise
squirrels, much less in such detail as he goes through. My dad complained that the squirrels were eating all
of his pecans from his backyard tree, right up until the time he began shooting them one by one with his air
rifle. Nothing tastes quite as good as his pecan-fed squirrel sauce piquante did. He told us we were eating
his pecan crop. Henry rather sees the squirrel as a tree farmer, even if it is an inadvertent case of planting
resulting from the squirrel's penchant for storing its booty in the ground where the seeds and nuts may
eventually take sprout.
[page 138] Oct. 17. A squirrel goes a-chest-nutting perhaps as far as the boys do,
and when he gets there he does not have to shake or club the tree or wait for frost
to open the burs; he walks [ ? ] up to the bur and cuts it off, and strews the ground
with them before they have opened. And the fewer they are in the wood the more
certain it is that he will appropriate every one, for it is no transient afternoon's picnic
with him, but the pursuit of his life, a harvest that he gets as surely as the farmer his
corn.
Now it is important that the owners of these wood-lots should know what is
going on here and treat them and the squirrels accordingly. They little dream of what
the squirrels are about; know only that they get their seed-corn in the adjacent
fields, and encourage their boys to shoot them every day, supplying them with
powder and shot for this purpose. In newer parts of the country they have squirrel-hunts on a large scale and kill many thousands in a few hours, and all the
neighborhood rejoices.
Thus it appears that by a judicious letting Nature alone merely we might
recover our chestnut wood in the course of a century.
There used to be passenger pigeon hunts on a large scale which killed thousands of pigeons in a few
hours. It was easy to do because these particular pigeons congregated in very large flocks. Plus they were
considered a delicacy (squab). What no one knew at the time was that these large flocks were absolutely
essential for the survival of the passenger pigeon species — if a flock got below about three thousand, the
pigeons would no longer reproduce. Thus it came about that large scale pigeon hunts went on until the day
arrived when the last flock of over three thousand was thinned out and no more passenger pigeons were
born. Soon the species disappeared off the face of the Earth. We human learned from that experience and
now factor the mating and reproduction patterns into how many wild, sport animals are harvested for
food. A recent example: our redfish population in coastal Louisiana had been decimated until it was
discovered that redfish had to be over 26" long before it swam out to the Gulf waters to spawn. A simple
creel limit of one redfish over 26" had led to an abundance of redfish for sport and eating once again.
On page 257 Nov. 22. Henry notes, "The Linaria Canadensis is still freshly blooming. It is the freshest
flower I notice now." The flower is shown in a photo for you. With his emphasis on the Succession of Forest
Trees, Henry has rarely commented on the flowering plants in this volume.
In this next passage Henry invites to consider how in the New England winters, even though the richness
of summer is gone, the world is yet rife with beauty. He chronicles his own Spartan life-style with no wine
in his cellar, but long draughts of vintage air to breathe.
[page 259] Nov. 22. It is glorious to consider how independent man is of all
enervating luxuries; and the poorer he is in respect to them, the richer he is.
Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. Though
he no longer bathes in the stream, or reclines on the bank, or plucks berries on the
hills, still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him. What though he has
no juice of the grape stored up for him in cellars; the air itself is wine of an older
vintage, and far more sanely exhilarating, than any cellar affords. It is ever some
gouty senior and not a blithe child that drinks, or cares for, that so famous wine.
He disdains tropical delicacies and prefers the fruits and nuts of his native Concord, especially the
apples, saying, "You cannot now find an apple but it is sweet to taste." (Page 260)
[page 265] Nov. 24. The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a
bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported
pineapple. We do not think much of table-fruits. They are especially for aldermen
and epicures. They do not feed the imagination. That would starve on them. These
wild fruits, whether eaten or not, are a dessert for the imagination. The south may
keep her pineapples, and we will be content with our strawberries.
As I grew up I came to dislike immensely bowls of wax fruit
which seemed ubiquitous at my relatives' homes when I was a
child. I never could bring myself to buy such fruit when I owned
my own home. The value of their look attracted me, but the
complete absence of life in them turned me off. When I visited my
friends Warren and Corinne Liberty in Ukiah, California about a
decade ago, I was charmed by the bowl of fruit which they had
on display in their kitchen. I wanted such a bowl in my kitchen, all
fresh fruit, on perpetual display, which meant perpetual
replacement of fruit.
Around the same time, I began a Bio-dynamical mulch bed and the two items seemed made for each
other: the old fruit which didn't get eaten could provide live organic material for the mulch bed. I soon
purchased a Portofino Pear bowl which made a wonderful fruit bowl in which to display our fresh fruit. As
thanks for Corinne for giving me the idea and impetus to begin creating our own fruit bowl, I sent her an
identical pear bowl. Since then, we always have fresh fruit filling our bowl, ready to eat at a moment's whim.
Because the pears on the outside of the bowl had a blush of red color on the yellow pears, I began selecting
Bartlett pears with red blushes on them and soon noticed that the flesh under the red blush had a delicious
variation in flavor from the rest of the pear.
Henry gave me the idea for sharing this story with you because in this next passage he talks on the enjoyment of the sight of fruit as well as their taste and nutrition.
[page 273, 274] Nov. 26. The value of these wild fruits is not in the mere possession
or eating of them, but in the sight or enjoyment of them. The very derivation of the
word" fruit" would suggest this. It is from the Latin fructus, meaning that which is
used or enjoyed. If it were not so, then going a-berrying and going to market would
be nearly synonymous expressions. Of course it is the spirit in which you do a thing
which makes it interesting, whether it is sweeping a room or pulling turnips. Peaches
are unquestionably a very beautiful and palatable fruit; but the gathering of them for
the market is not nearly so interesting as the gathering of huckleberries for your
own use.
The enjoyment of blackberry picking cannot be purchased at the supermarket, it can only be found in
the field where the berries grow. When three of my grandchildren refused to eat a blackberry picked from
my bush, I felt sorry for them because they will never, no matter how rich they become, be able to purchase
the joy of blackberry picking and will not know the joy they missed. There is a wonderful paradox about
blackberry picking: if you send a teenage boy or girl out picking blackberries, they will return in an hour with
a bucket of berries, but if you send them out together, it takes about two hours to get one bucket of berries.
[page 277] Nov. 28. 1860. It is a grand fact that you cannot make the finer fruits or
parts of fruits matter of commerce. You may buy a servant or slave, in short, but you
cannot buy a friend. You can't buy the finer part of any fruit — i. e. the highest use
and enjoyment of it. You cannot buy the pleasure which it yields to him who truly
plucks it; you can't buy a good appetite even.
Henry knew about primary property (intellectual derivatives of one's life) and valued it very highly, as we can tell from this next passage.
How rare it is today to find a person of such excellent common sense among one's acquaintances!
Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, "The evil men do live after them, the good is oft interred in their bones."
It is one's primary property which is the good men do which in deed lives after them, lives long after their
houses, barns, woodlots, and corporations have been interred in the ground.
[page 281, 282] Nov. 29. 1860. If a man has spent all this days about
some business, by which he has merely got to be rich, as it is called,
i. e., has got much money, many houses and barns and woodlots, then
his life has been a failure, I think; but if he has been trying to better
his condition in a higher sense than this, has been trying to invent
something, to be somebody, — i. e., to invent and get a patent for
himself, — so that all may see his originality, though he should never
get above board, — and great inventors, you know, commonly die
poor, — I shall think him comparatively successful.
Henry talks about animals and plants vying for "possession of the planet" in the next passage. It my
theory that each plant, in phylogenetic terms, did intend, for a time, to take possession of the planet, in what are
called "plant blooms". Take the simple plant, algae. When it first came into existence, it had limitless food in
the waters around it and ample sunlight, but not a single predator.
It grew without limits until soon an animal
arose who was able to eat the algae and it found itself blessed with limitless food and no predators and it
began to "bloom." Over aeons each plant and animal which “bloomed” eventually found itself having to combat newly-arrived predators and find a way to survive in severely constricted conditions compared to its "bloom times." We
arrive on this planet after a myriad of such cascades of bloom and bust times and find a homeostasis of plants
and animals with minor changes still going on, mostly disappearance of species of plants and animals whose
time has past, who are unable to find a niche in which they can continue to exist, such as the roc, the dodo,
the passenger pigeon, etc.
[page 330, 331] March 18, 1861. When we consider how soon some plants which
spread rapidly, by seeds or roots, would cover an area equal to the surface of the
globe, how soon some species of trees, as the white willow, for instance, would equal
in mass the earth itself, if all their seeds became full-grown trees, how soon some
fishes, we are tempted to say that every organism, whether animal or vegetable, is
contending for the possession of the planet, and if any one were sufficiently favored,
supposing it still possible to grow, as at first, it would at length convert the entire
mass of globe into its own substance.
Henry David Thoreau left behind a wealth of his primary property. He left behind no houses, no barns,
no woodlots, no corporations, nothing that could rot, rust, or burn. Ideas. That was what he left behind and
those ideas fill the minds and lives of millions of people yet today, people who haven't read or even heard
of Henry, but who benefit from the National Parks he inspired, the conservation of trees, animals, and plants
of all kinds, and from his love of the out of doors life. He was truly a rich man by his own accounts and he
has bequeathed his riches and his richness to every one of us. Want to feel some of that richness on a
personal level? Pick up one of his Journals and go on a walk through Concord with him, not to look at the
buildings in the town, but to walk between the buildings out to the woodlots, the hilltops, the streams, Walden
Pond, Flint's Pond, oar your way down the Assabet, glimpse the gossamer covering everything on gossamer
days, watch the bream building their nest in the water, pick huckleberries, and enjoy that crisp flavor of a wild
apple you plucked yourself from a tree no man but Henry knew existed.
Henry rarely mentions any member of his family. I recall only one mention of his father and several
mentions of his mother. He talks about all the wildlife he sees and encounters during his walks, but rarely
about himself. We come to the end of his Journal entries on November 1861 with the knowledge that he died
the very next year, and yet he made little mention of his own health during the last year. Here is the one
exception — he is sick but worried if a tree will recover from the huge burden of snow on its limbs:
[page 307] Jan. 3, 1861. As I was confined to the house by sickness, and the tree
had already been four or five days in that position, I despaired of its ever
recovering. . . .
One can only suppose that the sparseness of journal entries during 1861 was due to his being unwell,
perhaps causing him to miss the months between May and November. Harding clears up the mystery for us.
[page vii, Introduction by Walter Harding] As the journal approaches its end, we find
a very abbreviated account of his trip to Minnesota in May and June of 1861, when
upon doctor's advice he was searching for a better climate to soothe his tubercular
lungs. . . . In actuality Thoreau took lengthy notes on this journey, but they were left
so cryptically abbreviated that they were omitted by the 1906 editors of the journal.
They may be found in their entirety in my Thoreau's Minnesota Journey (Thoreau
Society Booklet #16).
Harding tells us that Henry would rejoice today to know that his beloved Concord, "despite a much
larger population, is more wooded and wild than it was in his own day, and the deer and the beaver that he
never saw there have returned in great numbers. Even the mighty moose occasionally strays through its
forests." (Page vii) No doubt, too, the mighty Thorer the Norseman, the man we know as Henry, occasionally strays
through those same forests in spirit form today.
So long, dear friend. I've enjoyed our walks as your silent companion. Thanks for allowing me along
to notice the aspects of New England woods I missed during the four years I lived there. My inspection of
the woods was done on a trail bike at about 20 mph, not at the slow walking pace you used, so I missed so
much of the local flora by speeding right past it. Plus, my ability to recognize the plants I found when I did
stop was minimal. Through your impressive knowledge of the Latin names for the plants you encountered,
I was able to search for images of the exact plant you were talking about and to see them as they are, some
150 years in the future of the time you lived in, but I doubt the plants of Concord have changed much in that
time.
I'm standing here by the side of the path and watching as you walk away, giving you the "long goodbye"
which the Japanese are wont to do. I'm standing here as you make a slight turn and drift out of my sight. A pain in my cheeks cause me to squeeze my eyes and tears form in them as I turn and head back to the future, back to the twenty-first century, my fingers resting on my computer keyboard, knowing that I will not see you again, but also that I will never forget you and all the
things you have allowed me to learn from you during our walks together for almost ten years.
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 the New Orleans Times-Picayune 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 a Headline about a convicted local Congressman.
2.Comments from Readers:
Response to EMAIL from Nicholas Potter: Subject: Chance Questions
Dear Nicholas,
Thanks for writing. It's always great to meet a good reader of my
reviews.
I'll have a few comments. For a comprehensive
understanding of these matters I suggest you read more of Steiner's
original works. Outline of Esoteric Science best place to start.
you wrote:
> > In the writing on Lucifer and Ahriman presented on this page:
>
http://www.bibleandanthroposophy.com/Smith/main/burning_bush/charts_tabs/i32.html
> it is suggested that an indication of an Ahrimanic characteristic is
> 'belief in chance'.
Roll the dice. That's a materialistic way of talking about chance.
Ahriman is a craps player par excellence because he wants you and me and
all humans to believe that random chance is what governs our life. Makes
sense?
That means the chance of my reading Steiner's works (I've read over 175
of his books) and yours are identical and have no bearing on our
previous lifetimes. For myself, my life only makes any sense if I came
to this world at this time in this body to begin studying Steiner's
revelations at the age of 55, which I did. If you haven't read any
Steiner books, perhaps this is your destiny to begin doing so now. Your
interest expressed by the questions you ask seem to indicate that
possibility.
> I read in this article:
> http://www.doyletics.com/arj/landarvw.htm
> however that 'superstition' is a characteristic of Lucifer
> and 'concrete sensory-based, materialism' seems to contradict that Ahriman is
> characterized by a belief in chance. I was wondering if you might be
able to clarify this for me.
> Many thanks,
> Nicholas
Remember "I Love Lucy" show? Lucy and Desi? Think of these two as Luci
and Ahri. They represent two ways of keeping us from becoming fully
human beings.
Luci wants us to fly towards the spirit, which if we do, we will crash
to the ground like Icarus eventually. Luci wants us to believe in the
spiritual world as the only reality.
Ahri wants us to crawl around on the ground and deal with only
materialistic things, whether they be brick, dice, clothings, autos,
computers, etc. Ari wants us to forget about belief and focus only on
materials, on things. Dice are two physical objects which Ahri would say
"Roll 'em" to prove that everything is chance. He does NOT want us to
believe in anything. He just shows it to be a fact that belief in
anything is pure superstitious folly. Obviously Luci and Ahri don't get
along very well.
"Chance" is a concept, not a thing. "All paradox is at the level of
metaphor" is my way of expressing the apparent contradiction you found
in the two articles you quote.
If you said, "I believe in chance." Ahri would say, "Great!"
"That man believes in pure random events independent of any
spiritual influences. His Guardian Angel will be really upset
and ignore his requests and soon his world will match his beliefs."
Ahri uses beliefs to further this aim of materializing every human.
To be fully human is not to avoid all Luci and Ahri tendencies, but bring
the two into a balance in one's life.
We were saved from a completely spiritualized existence by Lucifer
premature gift of freedom (the apple in Eden metaphor) and with that
Freedom we can choose to be completely materialized which Ahriman would
be pleased to assist us is doing so.
Christ Jesus came into the world to help us maintain a balance of Luci
and Ahri in our lives.
Look at how he handled the three temptations in the desert: he showed us
how to overcome Luci and Ahri by example.
most cordially,
Bobby
EMAIL: Facetious Christmas Letter from our daughter, Carla: Merry Christmas from Carla, Molly, Garret, and Pat,
It’s been a wonderful year for the Tuckers. Molly, aged 11, has received early admission to Harvard; Garret, aged 8, has an internship at Microsoft under the supervision of Bill Gates (thanks Rob); I’ve been nominated to the President's Commission on Global Warming and chosen as Tiger Woods new “caddy”; and Pat has been picked as the spokesperson for the new, improved Mr. Clean. Wow, that felt good. I’ve always wanted to write a Christmas letter like that.
Love,
Carla
P.S. Seriously, it was Princeton.
EMAIL from Del's cousin in Houston: Who dat! Hope you and Del were at the Saints game,
Happy Holidays
Regards,
Patrick Clark
EMAIL from Rich Katona in Houston: Can you tell which one of the seagulls is female?
EMAIL from Debbie in Chicago: Hi, Bobby,
As usual I enjoyed your digest. Funny thing though — today is only December 5, and your Christmas cactus
picture says it was taken December 11, 2009....
Hope you like snow and that it will move on down to Timberlane this year!
Debbie Barford
[RJM Note: Sorry bout dat. One of Santa's elves's finger slipped on one of the date references to the photo. It was Dec. 11, 2008.]
EMAIL from me Pirate Matey, Blackbead, announcing our new book with me poem of Captain Robespierre's mighty ship, 'The Frigate Grey Ghost', namely, Echoes From Other Worlds:
It's time now to start the biggest part of publishing — the marketing. I'm going to put this up
EVERYWHERE! Please do the same. Great News is that Lulu has a Global Reach Distribution for our book! Get it out there my friends!
Okay, I'm going to go celebrate! YOU DO THE SAME!!
It has been quite awhile since the last received newsletter about you and your family. I hope all is well with
you and yours.
How are things going for you?
Glenn Martin
[NOTE: After my Reply, Glenn is now subscribed to the Good Mountain Press Digest Reminder List so he won't miss another issue of the Digest. If you haven't yet subscribed, why not Send a Blank Email right now to: gmpdigest-subscribe@topica.com ?
EMAIL: Christmas Card from Rose Ann Loupe. (Turn on your sound and put on gloves) CLICK HERE!
3. Thoughts on Modern Historians
Thoughts while reading this book, "Rudolf Steiner's Mission and Ita Wegman":
It occurs to me that so-called modern historians view events of the past
much the way Martians might view a football game. They will have to
invent motivations for the progress they observe left and right on the
field, because the true motivations of the football players and the
score will remain meaningless to Martian observers. Events of history
are viewed by such modern historians by observing physical objects left
on the ground after a football game (sometimes millennia later) and from
the reports left by the players, who are often as clueless as the
purpose of their actions than the Martian observers would be, since
their intents and motivations are hidden from view and exist only in the
spiritual realm, not the realm of sensory experience.
This is especially pertinent to those modern historians analyzing why
Alexander wandered so far over the known world. They attribute it to his
intent to conquer the world, but cannot explain why the world seemed
more to conquer Alexander than vice-versa. They note the discontent of
Alexander's army chiefs with his actions of taking on the dress of
foreign lands, often participating in their religious rites, kowtowing
to local high priests, and such, but miss the point that Alexander was
more of a missionary than a conqueror, he was a harbinger of the Christ,
a pre-Christian St. Paul, if you will, carrying the good news of
Christ's reality to disparate lands and people.
in freedom and light,
Bobby
Reply from a friend in Australia:
It is truly a privilege to be able to consider the spiritual truth of what
you say Bobby. I have been comforted recently by a deeper experience of the
effect of just a few people when they perceive spiritual truth, as if a new
conduit is built between the earth and the spiritual hierarchies.
4. Reply from Historian, Professor Kevin Dann:
Bobby,
Thanks (I think!) for including me in the "not one of these
historians" basket. A fun project for my visit would be
for us to brainstorm a list of just such "hidden in plain sight"
episodes — instances where historians act as Martians.
I'm working on 19th c. Spiritualism at the moment, and a whole bunch
of related topics, and there is Martian history
a-plenty to be found from all corners of the academy.
My brother's "Christmas card" just arrived today, and I couldn't
resist sending it on to you. On the back he wrote: "No wonder we
hated going to church. Whatever happened to those dresses?"
Thanks to all of you for providing the chemistry which has made this site a success.
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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
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On the Nature of the Psyche 
Psychological Types 
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology 
my diamond typology diagram with bands of conscious and unconscious drawn across it. The intuition
function draws its material from the collective unconscious directly and the sensation from the personal
unconscious whereas both the rational functions, thinking and feeling, draw their material from the
conscious. In fact it is the mediation by the thinking and feeling functions of material that originates in
the personal and collective unconscious that constitutes the very process of consciousness itself.
physics and one might expect to find similar outcomes in the world of the psyche. The states of
harmonic oscillation are: 1) steady oscillation, 2) damped oscillation, 3) over-damped oscillation, and 4)
critically damped oscillation. Just as the design criteria for shock absorbers for an automobile would be
to provide critically damped oscillations to give a smooth ride for the driver and passengers, so too the
aim for psychotherapy would be, for quite similar reasons. The diagram of the opposing forces looks so:
