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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 April are:
This year our March roared in with high winds and frigid weather with just enough breaks in the cold to
allow the Japanese magnolias to bloom fully and the azaleas to break out into color. The St. Augustine
grass is once more turning green and the blade on my Snapper Riding Mower will once more be turning
rapidly to keep it trimmed once a week. So far we're enjoying the new wildflowers which populate our
West Portico lawn, tall, spindly spikes with tiny flowers arrayed near the tops. Marvelous excuse for
putting off warming up the Snapper for another week or so. I love to let the weeds grow rampant in
March and April because I know from experience the joy St. Augustine experiences when he smothers
these heretical weeds.
No weed-and-feed for me. All St. Augustine needs is New Orleans weather:
warmth and rain and we're sure to get our bounty of 60 inches plus again this year as usual. This month
we're sodding the East Portico lawn with St. Augustine grass now that the large horseshoe driveway is
finished. The St. Aug sod is only slightly less expensive than the concrete, and there's 1200 square feet
of St. Aug I won't have to cut every week in the height of the growing season when the grass grows 4
to 6" a week.
We drove through March's roaring wind and rain on the way home from our baby-sitting stint in
Bellaire, TX, it lightened to drizzly and sometimes light but blustery rain till we reached the Baton Rouge
area, when the rain stopped. We stopped in Prairieville and drove around till we found the PJ's there
and had a latte together for the remainder of the trip home. This was the PJ's that my video game
afficionado grandson, Collin, excitedly told me about a few weeks ago, having accompanied me on my
daily trip to PJ's on several occasions. His revelation to me went something like this, "Grandpa!
There's a PJ"s Coffeeshop in Prairieville now — right next to the Video Game Shop!" Hint, hint.
We got home exhausted about 12:30 pm and Pierre was waiting for us with problems and questions
about our new bifold shutters. We had to discuss them again and on Tuesday we decided we wanted to
fold completely out of windows, but to arrange it so the piano hinges are folded inside the shutters so
that the hinges are not visible whether opened or closed. Who knew there were so many decisions to
be made on shutters? We're still debating how to effect a secure closed position.
I went right from that decision process to getting ready for a massage by Laura Sampson, my pre-Katrina masseuse who moved to Georgia after the storm completely destroyed the Lakeview house
that she and her husband had worked years to remodel. The bad March weather had migrated from
Texas and was crossing over me as I drove across the river to my Metairie appointment: heavy rain and
wind and colder weather. YUCK! Left at 2:45 with plenty time to get to appt at 3:15, normally. But
bridge traffic was stuck so I got off at Earhart and it was backed up at the exit. Then again at Carrollton
where the road work is going on. Then I got all the way to Villa Park Drive only be stuck behind a
school bus stopping every 5 houses and moms with umbrellas slowly picking up kids. With all that I
was only about 5 to 10 minutes late. Laura met me at the door and I gave her a hug.
"Remind me
again," I asked her, "why did you postpone my massage appointment for 5 years?" She laughed, we
both knew it was hurricane Katrina who did that number on our life.
After the massage, Laura introduced me to
her husband, John Schewe, whom I had not met before. Told him I hoped they came back and I
wanted to be put on schedule for a massage every time they do come back. They are now living in a new
house in Athens, Ga. where Laura grew up and went to University of Georgia. She has a sister and
nephew nearby. They'll be back on some kind of regular basis I suspect. Weather was just as bad
going home, maybe more windy and rainy, but my driving for the day, from Bellaire to Gretna to
Metairie to Gretna was thankfully over. AH March!
March begins the march of festivals for Louisiana, especially the southern part of the state, like New Orleans' Algiers Point which leads off with its Friendship Festival on the Mississippi River levee across from the Old Point Bar. With Whiskey Jim singing song sounding like Kris Kristopherson one song, Willie Nelson the next, and who knows who the next one for a couple of hours. Lots of folks in St. Patrick green, drinking beers, BBQ'ing, kids sliding down the levee on cardboard sheets, and everyone enjoying the cool breezes and sunshine. Got a photo taken by our friend Gus of me and Del on the levee.
Have you had trouble finding blades for your razors at the supermarket or drugstores? I have. No sign of
either of Gillette's latest blades, MACH3 or FUSION. Finally located them in Walgreen's Drugstore
— they keep them in a locked cabinet and you have to press a button to get a clerk to come open the
door. Obviously a high theft item.
Each pack of blades has a sticker saying to report if these blades
were bought anywhere except Walgreen's, so thieves must have been stealing them in bulk and selling
them to Flea Markets, etc. Like Jack Daniels and other popular whiskeys at the A&P which also came
to be locked away out of sight.
In March we planted a white flesh peach tree and a large Japanese Magnolia tree, plus a Boysenberry
blackberry bush alongside our new blueberry bush planted earlier. The bushes are in the far
southwestern edge of the lawn where they are assured of lots of sunlight. We added two knockout
roses on the south side of the house and have a couple of cherry trees and some Pampas Grass for
west lawn. In our vegetable garden I planted some tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, and green
onions. Plus seeds for artichokes, snap beans, sunflowers, and cotton plants. Because I haven't cut the grass yet
this year, the Spring wild flowers will get to finish blooming before I trim the lawn for the first
time. We had these tall skinny spikes of blue flowers which we are filling our vases with that have
volunteered to greet us this Spring in our new home — never saw these before at the former house only
a block and a half away. The St. Augustine we sodded along the south and west lawn has not begun to
grow tall, but it is greening up and getting ready. Our new horseshoe driveway is completed on the east
lawn and will be sodded with Louisiana St. Augustine in the week after Easter. With the new gray
shutters replacing the ugly dark green ones on the french doors of the east portico and our new beveled
glass double door installed, the front of Timberlane will be considerably brightened and beautified.
Spring is a great time to be in New Orleans. Any time's a good time to be in New Orleans. I heard this
song on WWOZ (90.7 FM or wwoz.org) but didn't catch the title or the songster, although she
sounded like Billie Holiday.
When I go heaven
to ponder all my sins
I know I'll have a good time
but I'd rather be in New Orleans."
Here's a thought I had that was inspired by a Teaching Company college lecture:
Then: To be possessed by demons
referred to the same thing which is called
Today: To be obsessed by passions.
Then: Authorities killed people
possessed by demons
Today: Authorities exculpate people
obsessed by passions,
calling them innocent of their deeds
by reason of insanity.
Here's a little technical stuff which I share for those who wondered if it's possible to record from their
DVR's to a DVD. (Digital Video Recorders to Digital Video Disks) Yes, it's possible, given you have
the right equipment. The challenge for me was to get this to work as an integrated part of my Screening
Room without having to plug and unplug wires every time I did it.
With several important programs filling up my DVR Hard Drive space, I decided it was time for me to
learn how to make a copy of a DVR recorded program onto a DVD. My first attempt crashed and
burned, all the screens went blank. I also tried hooking up a line from the DVDR (Panasonic DVD
Recorder) and nothing. But finally I got it to work and got a great image from DVDR onto the left
Samsung LCD! Great! Next I took the line from DVR RF Output (formerly going to Ant B of KURO
Plasma) and hooked it into the DVDR RF Input and lost all the normal channels on peripheral TVs
(since the DVDR is the master spreader of cable). Then I finally turned the other five TVs to Ch 3 and
got them working. On my second try got the HDMI into SAMSUNG LCD working, set it to
HDMI/DVI (Input 1). After several hours of laying on the floor with a flashlight plugging, unplugging,
and testing, I was able to copy successfully the programs from DVR to DVDs and save them for future
use and free up the DVR for other recordings. With the spate of new High Definition channels, the
DVR Hard Drive fills up much faster. It seems to hold about 30 hours of regular definition programs,
but only about 6 hours of HD programs. The HD programs are copied in regular definition form to the
DVDs on my set up (by virtue of recording the DVR-RF output, Channel 3 VHF), but the quality is
excellent.
The back doorbell pushbutton had a broken cover and the front doorbell stuck in
causing a raucous sound from the
bell mechanism till you went and unstuck it. My first trip got door bell pushbuttons that didn't fit. I drove
to Home Depot to return the two doorbell pushbuttons and buy a skinny one to fit the spot where the
broken cover one is. The sticking one I took apart and fixed the sticking problem. The new pushbutton
fits fine at the back door button, but when I took the old one off I noticed that it had a light behind the
button and the new one didn't. By luck of draw, the insides were similar, so I decided to move the
printed circuit board (PCB) with the tiny light bulb from the old button to the new button. The tiny PCB
was too long. I could put a screw to attach one side okay, but I had to chop off and trimmed the other
side of the PCB till both screws could fit in their holes and the end of the soldered wire of the light bulb
touched the metal contact so the light would go on! Nice little 15 minute job to upgrade the pushbutton.
Didn't see one skinny enough button at Home Depot with a light feature, but we have one anyway.
Some more technical stuff, to be skipped by those of you uninterested in computer stuff. One day
I worked on getting links into some A Reader's Treasury reviews and I found that its index page,
artrevs.htm, was giving me a 404Error, a missing page error. It took me awhile to find out what the
problem was. Seems it has to be in both the root and \ART\ folders. Then I used a photo of me in white
tie sans eyeglasses, cropped it, and saved it as both 2004rjm.jpg and 2004rjm.gif and the .jpg worked
fine, but the .gif stopped displaying about 2/3rds down the image. Took a bunch of debugging to fix this
problem. When I got the 404Error, I noticed that it was being quickly replaced by some astrology site.
I didn't know if it was happening on other people's computers, but I endeavored to stop it on mine. at
first I had no clue how to get rid of the hijacking of my 404error page. After some Google searching
about hijacking (the technical name for unexpected webpage replacement), I removed the Google
Toolbar, but no help. Still there. At least it led me to fix the artrevs.htm error for good and it no longer
generated a 404Error.
Luckily the hijacking disappeared over night. Must have been due to the Google toolbar as that is the
only change I made. Also the thumbnails of previously visited sites no longer come up when I try to
open a new Tab in IE8. That was more of a hassle than a help as it took so long to wait for the
thumbnails to fill out when I usually had the URL already to paste into the Tab. Sometimes less is more.
After working on these technical problems for several hours, I went outside and helped Del get the
leaks stopped on all the faucets outside. Some faucets simply needed the packing tightened to stop
leaking, some leaks were from hoses without a good washer in their connectors.
During this blustery and chilly month, my friend Maxine Cassin died, about a week after her husband
Joe. Joe was one of the survivors of the Bataan Death March on Okinawa, and Maxine had been
married to him forty years. I went through my collection of poems from the New Orleans Poetry Forum
looking for ones by Maxine and found a couple which I will share next month in my In Memoriam tribute to
her. I called her the Poet Laureate of General Pershing Street — a gentle lady who will be sadly missed
by poets of the New Orleans.
It's been a long time since I wrote three reviews in one month, but this month I managed the feat. One
is a review of Samuel Butler's Notebooks, one I had first read about 28 years ago and I did the review
and added to my A Reader's Treasury of previously read books. The two A Reader's Journal reviews
are "The Mystery of the Two Jesus Children" and "Echoes of Other Worlds". Finally got finished
reading these two books. The Nesfield-Cookson book is a nice complement to Edward Reaugh
Smith's The Incredible Births of Jesus, filling out some areas and explaining others. Echoes is a book
which carries my name as Author, among others. It is not a pirated book, but a piratey book, written by
pirates and for pirates, a melange of poetry to enjoy and eerie stories to tremble by.
VISITORS TO TIMBERLANE
March was another busy month around here. First visitor was Del's brother Dan to work a real estate deal. Later our four Hatchett children came to town for a memorial
service and it was great having them all together at Timberlane. (The four are shown in the banner image above between Del and me.) The older they get, the less frequently
this confluence happens.
First our son John and his two boys, Collin and Kyle came to visit. Kyle all proud of breaking a wooden plank in his Karate class today. Then came son Jim with his kids, Amanda and Kirt. Then Stoney, Sue, and Sam. Kim came
next with her young cousin Allison. We had a birthday party for Kyle and a chocolate Doberge cake
and Breyer's Vanilla Ice Cream was de rigeur. Doris showed up about 5 and stayed until 8 pm. We
had a great time. Allison Stewart is going to LSU in the fall and trying out for the Golden Girls. She
was a true delight to have around. When she left on Sunday morning, I told her that in two years, I will
be invited into the Golden Circle for the homecoming game for the 50th anniversary of my graduation,
and I'm hoping she'll be with the Golden Girls that night. We'll both be golden, I said, and she gave me
a big smile. I talked to her about how great the LSU campus was and I could already see the future
love in her eyes for my wonderful alma mater. By the end of the month we heard back from Kim that
Allison was selected for the Golden Girls squad.
We played a couple of Blokus games, Del, Kim, Kyle, and I. At one point, I tried to teach Doris how
to play it, just the simple rules, and no matter how many times I repeated or tried to show her to play a
piece by only touching corners of your own tiles, she kept attaching a side, like dominoes, I guess. It
raises an unanswered question as the connection of this interesting process vis-a-vis her Alzheimer's
Syndrome. Del catered the food and everyone had enough to eat: seafood gumbo, potato salad,
sandwiches, veggie tray, and more.
The three boys, Stoney, John, and Jim left about 10 PM to head to Carrollton Station to hang with some old
buddies from school days in Metairie, Todd Murphy, Norman Pineda, etal, and didn't return till about 3
am (4 am with Spring Forward). The next morning I had the rare opportunity to get photos of them all
dressed in their Sunday best before they left for the service.
An idea occurred to me while watching the Hour of Power's new promotion which has a mountain in
the background and a sea in the foreground with a large anchor. I began to see the mountain as a high
wave and Del said, "Yes, the snow tops look like sea foam atop a wave." This led me to say,
"A mountain is a frozen wave of Earth."
Actually mountains only seem frozen to us humans, but in geological time frames, mountains are moving
waves. My geologist daughter and professor, Carla, agreed with me, adding some technical details
which I don't recall. And sometimes mountains move in human time frames, such as in Haiti and Chile
recently.
On the morning of my son Rob's visit with his family, my trip to PJ's was punctuated by a starter failure
on my Maxima. It acted exactly as if my battery were going dead, but I had had a new battery installed.
I called AAA and they sent out the battery man and he confirmed it was likely the starter. Tow truck
came to carry my Maxima to Brandt's. Abdul was my service rep. Super nice guy. My eyes opened up
when he gave his name as Abdul, and I asked, "Do you make tents?" He laughed. Abdul the
Tentmaker is a notorious Saints fan who writes music and talks on call-in radio a lot. Abdul said, "I'd
like to have the money the Tentmaker makes!" I felt glad all morning in spite of the starter breaking. I
had several seals and boots which needed replacing which I had been holding off doing till sometime when
something actually broke. Plus when I got to the break room around 11, having missed my breakfast at home, there
was one donut left in one of the three boxes and some hot coffee. It's my Lucky Day! I thought.
When
the estimate came in, they did not charge me any labor for the starter because most of the labor would
have been for removing the engine and the seals already required that. I asked Abdul to see about
replacing the Timing Belt and he came back with some more good news: "You don't need a timing belt
because this model has a very strong Timing Chain." Belts needed replacement about every 5 years,
chains never. Abdul said the Maxima would be ready Monday or Tuesday. Then on Saturday morning,
when Abdul called me, I shuddered — it could only be bad news, some other problem found. But
Amen! Abdul! He said, "I'm having your car washed now, you can pick it up anytime. The parts came
in the same day and the mechanic stayed late to finish all the repairs." Abdul is from Alexandria, Egypt.
When we were waiting for the clerk to check me out, I asked Abdul if he went to the library when he
lived there. "Yes" I said, "Great! Now I can say I know someone who actually read books in the
Library of Alexandria!" He said there are still a lot Greeks living in the city, a very multi-cultural city.
My plans for the visit of our Indiana grandkids: City Park, Train Garden, Pfister Sisters Concert at City
Park Twilight Concert; go early and visit the sculpture garden and new park features: lake and lawn,
too. Maybe ride the kiddie train around the Park? Then eat at Casino before the concert. Well, life is what
happens when you're making other plans. We did none of the above, but stayed home and our other
daughter Maureen came to visit. We talked, walked on the Golf path at dusk, played bocce ball.
Played one good Blokus game with Sierra showing Mo what to do and the two of them won. Emerson
was fourth and I was third after Del. Del had gone shopping and came back after Rob's gang arrived
with all kinds of Easter baskets and toys which I had to help assemble and figure out how to make the
airplane go.
Rob brought his large robot Funny Car which he drove at high speeds out on the golf course at night
with its spooky headlights on. The thing does 30 mph top speed and has titanium bumpers and
aluminum underbody parts. The front end was a compound plastic which broke on his and Walden's
and he's going to replace it with aluminum also next time. It went into the pond under two feet of water
and came out still in running condition. All parts replaceable with lots of after market add-ons.
Rob, Kathryn and the three grandkids, Sierra, Walden, and Emerson left shortly after midnight to drive
back to Bloomington. Apparently the driving is more fun when all three of the kids are asleep.
The next day I watched LSU Baseball and Football live on TV, a rare occasion to have both sports on
TV at the same time. The football team had its Spring Game, the finale to the Spring Training. The
baseball team, defending National Champs of 2009, played Tennessee, the only SEC team to win a
series against LSU during our Championship run — this year we swept the series, 3 games to none.
That night we took our daughter Maureen to the Broadway musical "Wicked" which was playing in
New Orleans. And we closed out the last weekend on Sunday with a trip to the grand re-opening of
Brechtel Park in New Orleans. We went with our Algiers Point friends, Gus and Annie to the Louisiana
Philharmonic Orchestra's concert in the park. We picked up Subway sandwiches and ate at a picnic
table, then moved to the front of the stage for the concert. It was still a bit chilly for a New Orleans
March into April, but the weather was clear and dry and no one complained. After all, the air
conditioners are still resting up for their long summer run coming up.
Mass of the Chrism
Closing out March, I took a break from the last minute crush of compiling all the activities and photos for this Digest and went to the Mass of the Chrism at the St. Louis Cathedral/Basilica in the French Quarter. It was a postcard pretty day. My drive down Decatur Street was detoured by police clearing the intersection of Iberville and Decatur for a Bruce Willis film being shot. We saw Willis being interviewed during the NBA game last night when our Hornets beat the Lakers handily, something that obviously didn't sit well with Willis the Bruce. (Bruce in Scottish means "strong" and if you saw any of his "Die Hard" movies, you'll know what I mean.) The movie is called "Red" and they were staging an automobile accident between a NOPD police car and something else as I passed. Saw them testing or taking after-accident shots of the police car spinning around on a turntable.
From the ridiculous, we segue to the divine. The Mass of the Chrism is when the sacred oils used in all of the Archdiocese of New Orleans are blessed in three 3-foot high sterling silver urns once a year and distributed to the various Deaneries. One of Del's cousins, Ron Caulkins, was there to receive the oils for the Deanery of Washington & St. Tammany Parishes. The three oils are the Oil of the Cathecums (used for Baptisms, rubbed on the chest prior to sprinkling of water), the Oil for Last Rites used for Healing and Blessing those who are very sick, and the Oil of the Chrism (used for Confirmation, Ordination, and anointing altars at new churches). I have only recently seen the blessing of a new altar and it is quite an impressive ceremony. Sacred oil is carefully poured out and rubbed over every inch of the altar. What makes it sacred? Consider this: the St. Louis Cathedral is the oldest cathedral in the United States, predating the Revolutionary Wary by nearly a century. During the ceremony of blessing the three oils, the oil left over from the previous year is poured into the three silver urns and new olive oil is poured on the top. Then the urns are blessed separately. In that intial pouring into the empty urns goes olive oil which contains remnants not only of the past year's oil, but small amounts of olive oil from each previous. Each year's oil is blessed by the addition of molecules of olive oil that are over three hundred years old! It is not the age that creates the special blessing, but the presence of bishops, priests, and parishioners during the centuries of previous blessings of the various components of the oils, to which is added the blessing of those at this morning's Mass of the Chrism. Anyone baptized, confirmed, ordained, or given last rites during this next year will have the presence of these hundreds of thousands of souls blessing them.
TILL NEXT MONTH
Till We May Meet Again, God Willing and River Don't Rise. April will be a dry, cool month of Easter,
Riverfest in Algiers Point, Spring Festival and French Quarter Festival in the French Quarter,
Shakespeare Society Annual Dinner at Antoine's and Crawfish Boils everywhere! So, if you don't live
in New Orleans, you can always walk in the rain and stop to smell the first flowers of Spring. Whatever
you do, make it a great April for yourself! ! !
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(SAMPLE)
What frenzy has of late posssess'd the brain
Though few can write, yet fewer can refrain."
Samuel Garth ( 17th-century physician and poet )
US writer
New Stuff by Bobby Matherne:
Five Yes, and Even More Poems written by Bobby in 1998
1. Yes, and Even More Design
“Don’t you have a child born on this day?”
Yes, and even more.
“Even more? Two children?”
Yes, and even more.
“Even more?”
Yes, a child of my imagination
was born on this day.
“Got a photo of this child?”
Yes, see diagram at right:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTES on POEM: Yes, and Even More Design:I wrote this on January 14, 1998 at 6:30. The design came to me while I was in bed just waking up and thinking about adding some Yes, and Even More poemlets to the Good Mountain Press website. But I would need a background design. I remembered the Joy symbol I created back in 1980 and got up and drew the YAEM logo on the Timberlane Executive Dining Room table. Then I wrote this poemlet.
My first child, Maureen Grace Matherne, was born on this day in 1962 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and my youngest child, my only son, Robert Hilman Matherne, was born on this same day, exactly five years later in Metairie, Louisiana.
The first letter of the logo spells JOY by combining the letters J O Y into one continuous symbol that may be drawn without lifting one’s pen from the page. I have since 1981 incorporated this symbol into my signature.
~^~
2. Are You Satisfied?
“Is honor satisfied?”
What is the process
specified by this question,
the question Sigmund
asked the Baron
after Siggie won the duel?
“The person that was done to
does something back?”
Yes, the aggrieved becomes
the aggressor.
“And then honor is satisfied?”
Yes, and even more.
“Even more?”
Yes, the map becomes the territory.
“I’m not satisfied.”
Read the next poem.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTES on POEM: Are You Satisfied?:I wrote this on May 2, 1998 about 9:06 PM in the Timberlane Screening Room while watching “The Seven Percent Solution” on Bravo, Cox Cable, Channel 40.
~^~
3. Balancing the Scales
In the physical world the territory comes first,
then the map.
“Right, what does that have to do
with balancing the scales?”
In the spiritual world the map comes first,
then the territory.
“Tell me more.”
And that’s how the scales of karma
can balance:
The physical creates the territory
according to the map
of the spiritual
And the spiritual creates the map
according to the territory
of the physical,
and
It All Happens At The Same Time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTES on POEM: Balancing the Scales: I wrote this on May 2, 1998 about 9:23 PM in the Timberlane Screening Room while watching “The Seven Percent Solution” on Bravo, Cox Cable, Channel 40.
The doing becomes the un-doing: that’s the basic process of karma. What we do to someone to aggrieve them is later done to us. Our doing becomes our un-doing.
Think of it with your you-future-you this way: What you do to aggrieve someone else in the physical world becomes a map in the spiritual world which takes on an independent existence and which hangs around attached to you until it has finally created the inverse process occurring to you, at which point its independent existence is dissolved. We mark that event by saying that “karma has been balanced” or that “honor is satisfied.” Honor is therefore “such stuff as dreams are made of” as Shakespeare so poetically put it.
~^~
4. Dream Stuff
Honor is “such stuff as dreams are made of”
Process is “such stuff as dreams are made of”
We are “such stuff as dreams are made of.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTES on POEM:
Dream Stuff: I wrote this on May 2, 1998 about 9:50 PM in the Timberlane Screening Room while watching “The Seven Percent Solution” on Bravo, Cox Cable, Channel 40. The quote is from Shakespeare in the Tempest.
PROSPERO. You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort,
As if you were dismay'd; be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled;
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity.
If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell
And there repose; a turn or two I'll walk
To still my beating mind.
~^~
5. Leaf Us Alone
"Leaf us alone," Lucy and Ari say.
They are doing onto others
what they did onto themselves.
They are keeping themselves in the leafing stage —
short of the flowering stage
which precedes the reproduction or
seed-production stage.
"Leave us alone, we say.
We have leaved until we now want to be
leafed, leaft, left alone.
But we didn't know how to be all alone.
We needed a lesson in process.
Not someone to tell us — someone to show us how.
Not someone born of woman on earth —
they would be in the leafing stage.
No, someone who was past the leafing stage,
past the flowering stage,
past the seed-producing stage.
Not someone to hold us back,
someone to show us the next step.
No, someone to show us the way to grow beyond
leafing, to flowering, to seeding,
to sprouting.
At the Louisiana Flower and Garden Show, I saw someone go past the flowering stage.
"Can you help me get to the flowering stage?"
I'll show you the way.
"Are you on your way
to the flowering stage again?"
Yes, and Even More.
"Even more?"
Yes, walk this way and you'll find yourself
in the sprouting stage.
"I hear the flowers are beautiful this year."
Yes, and even more.
"Even more?"
Yes, the seeds are sprouting.
Leaf Us Alone: I wrote this on April 3, 1998 about 4:45 PM in the Timberlane
porch swing. Written in the top and bottom margins of my first copy of
The Gospel of St. John in Relation to Other Gospels by Rudolf Steiner.
The theme is that Lucifer (Lucy) and Ahriman (Ari) are heavenly beings whose
evolution halted at the leafing stage and were sent to Earth to do the
same thing to humankind so that they may discover their individual "I"
or Egohood. Once discovered some event had to occur just in time to
prevent humans from being lost forever to spiritual world by becoming so
enchanted by the leafing stage that they never rise to the flowering
stage and continue their evolution.
The one to perform that deed could not be born of a woman because he
would necessarily be imbued with the enchantment of the leafing stage.
It had to be someone who had gone through the leafing, flowering,
seed-producing, and sprouting stage. Someone who would sacrifice
everything to come to the abyss of Earth and show us the way to the next
stage of our spiritual and Earthly evolution.
That someone was Christ and the deed was His death on the Cross at
Golgotha when His blood flowed into the Earth and began the flowering
stage on Earth by filling it with his astral light. The Earth, "this great globe", at that
point continued its previously suspended journey into "dissolving" and "leaving not a rack behind" — to becoming a Sun of Light."
~^~
New Stuff on the Internet:
Found in Google Library, this review of my Novel, The Spizznet File, by Dan Turner of Philadelphia.
Did you ever sit outside on a summer's evening and watch bats dodging after unseen insects overhead? An insect-hunting bat is equipped with a brain the size of a pea, yet its sonar is far better than anything the US Navy has. Consider another animal that uses sonar: the dolphin. Instead of a pea sized brain, the dolphin has a bigger brain than man, and a substantial proportion of it is devoted to sophisticated echo-imaging.
The Spizznet File develops the fictional theme that a dolphin's giant biological sonar is a transmitter-receiver used for communication as well as echo-imaging. I didn't say speech, because Bobby Matherne has coined a new term, "spizualize," for the projection of ideas by equipment specialized for sono-graphic imaging. Fiction models reality, and this book challenges us to interpret known facts about dolphins in intriguing new ways.
Fiction also calls for a story. Here the speculative-science theme is tucked into an entertainment package that will make speculative stimulation a pleasure for Bobby's fans. (He has written several other books and has an on-line journal). I recommend you try the Spizznet File. It'll definitely impact how you think about dolphins. And there's a chance you may become a "Bobby Matherne" fan too!
Hits (Watch as soon as you can. A Don't Miss Hit is one you might otherwise ignore.):
“Departures” (2006) follows the career of a young Japanese husband as he evolves from big city orchestra cello player to small country town encoffiner. The incredibly beautiful cello music accompanies the exquisitely graceful Japanese rite of preparation of a deceased body for burial or cremation in front of their loved ones. Makes the American undertaking service literally pale by comparison. A DON’T MISS HIT! ! ! “The Third Man” (1949) made in post-war Vienna about Holly Martin’s friend, Harry Lime, who paid for a ticket for Holly to come to Vienna for a job and then had the audacity to die on the day before Holly (Joe Cotton) arrives. We know Orson Welles is going to play the key character Harry Lime, just as he was Citizen Kane, but who was the Third Man? And where’s Harry? Cue the Third Man Theme and roll the film? A DON’T MISS HIT! ! !
“Chaos” (2005) Dramatic cop flick with Jason Statham and Wesley Snipes matching wits and other things as the plot unfolds. Great action and suspense. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Law Abiding Citizen” (2009) with Gerard Butler knocking heads and wits with Jamie Foxx in this tussle for moral high ground which became paradoxical the more people died along the way. Butler is gaining revenge for his family’s death while locked in solitary confinement, and the police are on a fruitless search for his outside accomplice. Gripping drama which stretches credulity to the breaking point until the very end. Don’t let anyone tell you about this one in advance and ignore any previews. Enough to tell you this is A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “It’s Complicated” (2009) if a woman divorced for ten years suddenly finds her husband insinuating himself in her life again, much less showing up naked on Skype while her boy friend in watching. Somehow Streep sorts out the wheat from chaff and her ex blows away. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “9 ½ Weeks” (1986) wears well after 24 years. Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke at their sexual and playfulness peak make this movie a classic. C’mon Blu Ray.
“Love Happens” (2009) Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston spar in this unique love story, all the way to ending credits when, finally, love happens. A DON’T MISS HIT !!! “Public Enemies” (2009) tend to be lionized and remembered forever, like John Dillinger in this movie, while public benefactors like Robert Kearns in “Flash of Genius” tend to be forgotten.
“Flash of Genius” (2008) Greg Kinnear stars as Robert Kearns in this true story of blatant theft of his invention by Ford Motor Co. who savaged his reputation and destroyed 12 years of his lifetime during which he fought to get them to admit their theft of his primary property. One can scarcely call justice his eventual victory in court. His invention has been used on every automobile made since and he got only a one-time settlement of $10 million. For lovers of volitional science, this is required reading. For innovators everywhere this is truly A DON’T MISS HIT !!! “Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer” (2007) In the upper echelon of jazz singers with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday, Anita was the only white woman who could hold her own on any stage in Harlem. Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton, Roy Eldridge, Louis Armstrong, Hoagie Carmichael, were her peers. She once sang in a quartet where the other three voices were great saxophone players. During a tonsillectomy, the doctor slipped and slice off her uvula, and she learned to sing mostly eighth notes or vibrate her head to create a vocal tremor if she needed to hold a note.
“Descending Angel” (1990) Eric Roberts (Michael) and Diane Lane are hot for each other’s body, but George C. Scott (Florian) her strict Romanian father stands an iron guard over her and his past deeds. Given the choice between dying and killing, which would you choose? That was his karma and his wife left when she discovered it. How can he reveal it to his only child? Bound by a Hollywood script, Michael cannot forgive Florian and destroys his own life.
“The Time Traveler’s Wife” (2009) “When are you coming from?” Claire asks when her Henry appears from somewhen in time. Poignant love story which spans three generations of Henry’s family. Click Here to read my Review of the Book by Audrey Niffennegger A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Firewall” (2006) is another Harrison Ford up against the wall of evil forces. As the holder of the key to bank security, he and his family become the target and things really get interesting near the end of the movie.
“Reversible Errors” (2004) Long, satisfying movie with lots of intrigues and twists. Miniseries without commercials. Tom Selleck and Bill Macy star. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Jazz on a Summer’s Day” (1960) Did you miss the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival with Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington, Mahlia Jackson, Louis Armstrong and many others? Here’s your chance.
“Thirteenth Floor” (1999) is a world within worlds sci-fi flick reminiscent of Fairhaven in the holodeck of Voyager with ideas from Matrix, Brainstorm, Time Traveler’s Wife, Vanilla Sky, The 12 Monkeys and others. The murder is real, but is the detective trying to solve it? And is the world in which he’s trying to solve it real or Memorex? Will our hero survive or be blown literally to bits? A DON’T MISS HIT! ! ! “Four Christmases” (2008) are what Vince Vaughn and Reese Whitherspoon are stuck with: visits to all four separated parents, the serial "Visit from Hell", whose only salubrious outcome was a . . . well, that would telling.
“Butterfly” (2003) about a waif whose mother leaves her alone after school and she befriends a butterfly collector in the apartment building. When the mother disappears for a day, the little girls begs to go on the Isabella butterfly collecting trip in the foothills of the Alps. A heart-tugging delight all the way through to A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Lucky You” (2006) Eric Bana (Time Traveler’s Husband) is a working poker player in Las Vegas with unresolved dad-issues and Drew Barrymore brings some heart into his roller coaster existence. We’ve seen this three years ago (digest07b), but enjoyed it more this time. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Das Boot” (1981) Three and one half hours of undersea drama (1 hr added in 1997) following the new crew and the seasoned vets of a German submarine in the waning years of WWII when the Allies were fighting fiercely back to protect their shipping lanes. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! !
“Funny People” (2009) may be funny, but their lives aren’t and Adam Sandler plays a guy’s whose life sucks and he doesn’t find out till he’s diagnosed with terminal disease, but that doesn’t help either. Maybe he needs a real friend, but money can’t buy that, only stuff that isn’t important.
“American Experience: Alexander Hamilton” (2006) was the only American Prime Minister as the first Secretary of the Treasury who handled all the foreign relation duties necessary to bootstrap the baby USA into a commercially viable country.
“The Unknown Woman” (2006) Amazing adventure of a Ukrainian woman who survives the brutal sex trade and ends up in Rome looking for something. What we’re not sure, but her behavior becomes intriguingly enigmatic as events unfold. Definitely 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.
“Push” (2009) this DVD on the floor, scream as loud as you can until your aquarium busts its sides, have someone remove your memory of the two hours you wasted on the movie, and stomp this DVD into bits! You will have done to the DVD only a little of what the idiotic characters in the movie did to each other. A DVD Stomper! ! ! “Closer” (204) Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen star in a musical chairs clunker. We also saw it in 2004 — it still stinks. See blurb in digest054.
Your call on these — your taste in movies may differ, but I liked them:
“Flawless” (2007) was exactly that, a flawless diamond heist of all the world’s diamonds. Good script, great actor (Michael Caine), mediocre actress (Demi Moore), and only one flaw: the Hollywood message that it’s okay to steal from big corporations if you give it to poor people. C’mon, Hollywood! You steal admission fares from poor people and keep it for yourselves, do you not?
“12 Monkeys” (1995) Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt — Willis aching, bullet-shot, and complaining and Pitt his hyperactive jolly best the whole movie. Funniest part for Brad to date. Hard to follow, complicated time travel yarn which unravels on its way to an unsatisfactory ending.
“(500) Days of Summer” (2009) was about 499 days too many, but Autumn was nice. Shows clearly how to ruin one’s life by living in expectations instead of reality.
“Funny People” (2009) may be funny, but their lives aren’t and Adam Sandler plays a guy’s whose life sucks and he doesn’t find out till he’s diagnosed with terminal disease, but that doesn’t help either. Maybe he needs a real friend, but money can’t buy that, only stuff that isn’t important.
“The Informant!” (2009) AMD company employee Matt Damon steals 7, 9, 11 million dollars and informs on the top executives of large chemical companies fixing prices, but who can believe a pathological liar?
“Inside Job” (2006) should be done on Clive Owen’s head to relieve the pressure of his “Be Perfect” driver and his overweening egotism. Another Hollywood message that theft is okay if it’s socially acceptable. I frankly don’t want to be part of a society which accepts theft for whatever reason. Isn’t our so-called government’s theft enough?
Thanks to Rich Katona for sending along the inspiration for this Cajun Story.
Boudreaux knew Marie’s birthday was coming up, so he drove over to the city of Lafayette to look for something special for her at the big Cajun Mall. He didn’t know what he was going to get, but as he walked past Victoria 's Secret, an idea cane into his head, “Mais, Cher! Ah can got sumpin for Marie dat we can both enjoy!” So he went inside to purchase a sheer negligee for Marie.
The sales lady showed him several possibilities that ranged in price from $250 to $500 — the more sheer, the higher the price.
He wanted this to be a big present for Marie’s 50th birthday, so he chose the most expensive item, paid the $500, had it wrapped in a beautiful package before heading back to Breaux Bridge and home. He gave it immediately to Marie, and as she unwrapped it, he told her it cost $500 and was the most expensive and sheerest nightgown that Victoria’s Secret had in the store. She said, "It is beautiful — Thank You so much!" Boudreaux asked her to go upstairs, put it on, and model it for him.
Upstairs the Marie thought to herself, “Mais, dis t’ing is so sheer that it might as well be nothing. Instead of putting on, Ah’ll just model naked for Boudreaux! Then Ah can return the nightgown tomorrow, and keep the $500 refund for myself.”
She walked naked onto the balcony and struck a sexy pose. Boudreaux looked up and exclaimed, "Bon Dieu! You t'ink for 500 dollars dat dey could at least iron it!"
5. RECIPE of the MONTH for April, 2010 from Bobby Jeaux’s Kitchen: (click links to see photo of ingredients, preparation steps) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Red-Bean-Eggplant Étouffée:
Background on Red-Bean-Eggplant Étouffée:
I first created this dish one day when I had an eggplant which needed to be used and I was ready to fix my Quick Red Beans & Rice dish. If you'll compare the image of that dish with the one at the right, you'll notice several large chunks of eggplant and some Portobello mushroom slices. The eggplant is cooked down or "smothered" in the onions before the red beans are added. This cooking down in onions is the origin of the name "étouffé", so far as I can tell. Regardless of the names, this is a delicious family and company meal in spite of its wash-day origins. The red beans and the rice complement each other to produce a perfect protein, so it is also a nutritious meal. My addition of the Portobello mushrooms give it an added flair and taste.
Preparation Peel eggplant. Slice 3/4s of eggplant into thin slices for early cooking and into chunks for late cooking. Place prepared eggplants in salted water to soak until ready to add them to pot.
Chop mushrooms into about six pieces each to maintain texture. Separate mushrooms into two bowls for early cooking (for flavor) and late cooking (for texture). Chop yellow onions and bell pepper finely. Slice Portobellos into about 1/2 inch slices. Open cans of beans. Place late cooking ingredients aside as shown in this image .
Early Cooking Instructions
If you are in a hurry, simply slice all the eggplant thinly and add it all at the same time. The separation into early and late cooking phases provides a way of having lightly cooked chunks of eggplant and mushrooms. The timing of the late and early cooking requires some judgment and the times I give are only guidelines. If it sounds too complicated, cook it all in one batch the first few times before trying the early/late cooking cycles.
Cover bottom of large pot with Extra Virgin Light (does not smoke) and turn fire on HIGH, add a spoon of chopped onions to pot, and when it begins sizzling, add the rest of the onions, bell pepper, and garlic. Stir constantly until the onions show first signs of browning or carmelizing. Add some liquid from the Trappey's beans to get the chili flavor into the cooking early. Add thinly sliced eggplants now, saute and stir mixing eggplant and onions together constantly. Add water from eggplant soaking bowls to keep onions from burning and then pour the rest of the eggplant water, but only enough to cook the stack of eggplant slices. See image of this stage of cooking. Cook on MEDIUM heat for about an hour, checking and stirring every 10 minutes or so. When the eggplants are cooked enough, mash the eggplant slices until they become a mush. This will also let you know that they've been cooked enough.
Late Cooking Instructions
Dump the contents of the red bean cans into the pot and stir well. Add leftover eggplant liquid to halfway in one can to dissolve the red bean juice, then dump into each of the other cans and then into the pot. Add the chunks of eggplant and cook for about 15 minutes or until the chunks are edible but still retain their shape. Then add the rest of the mushrooms and the Portobello mushrooms, if any. Stir new ingredients into étouffé. Reduce heat to simmer until ready to serve.
Serving Suggestion
This étouffé is not complete until it has been served over freshly steamed long grain and wild rice as shown in the image above. My recipe for that can be found in Dec. 2002 Digest. It's best to start the rice before cooking the étouffé. It takes about 35 minutes for the rice, so you can start the rice as you're chopping ingredients and the rice will be ready and still warm when the étouffé is done.
Other options
For additional taste and texture, add thickly sliced Portobello mushrooms at the very last, cooking only about 15 minutes long. The brussels sprout shown are a colorful and delicious accompaniement to this meal — simply boil them about ten minutes in salted water with olive oil dribbled on top.
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.
Fill ye a cup o'hot buttered rum, pull up yer chair by the fire and enjoy these tales and songs of pirating and spirits
from the other side, Maties! Blackbead has gathered these for ye to read and enjoy till ye can grab another ship and
head out to sea for profit and fun. If ye be like Ol' Benny Hawkins, ye remember him, he'd be saying, "It's in me
blood, the red rage, aye! It's in me blood." (Page 5)
Er if ye be like Kittye Williams' surgeon's mate, ye remember him, he'd spend hours talking to a dolphin.
"Surgeon's mate, pray, inform me of this tale I heard you tell yon fish. Tis a wild, unlikely story I do say; and perhaps
twas my misunderstanding of your words. But tell me now, was that just a tale you crafted to keep yourself awake
at your posts?" (Page 14)
Er mayhaps like Stephen Sanders, yer dad was yer favorite pirate:
[page 15]
Dad, ye be me favorite pirate,
And there's only one thing more to say:
Not only do I thank ye with all of me heart
But I'll join your crew any day!
Er ye had a favorite compass rose like Master Robert James McGee. Let Shana L. Martin spin the yarn fer ye:
[page 16]
Of our love . . . a love so rare . . . that nothing on earth can compare!
"Let this symbol be a sign, betwixt your heart and mine.
Every chart you course, and map you see, know that you are not that far from me!"
Er sign aboard the Frigate Grey Ghost, "Jest mayke yer mark in bloode here, Laddie!" directs the Cap'n
Robespierre, after showing ye his get-out-o'gaol-free card from Bonny Prince Charles and proclaiming, "With me
Letters of Marque, we'll sail over the shallows and over the depths and escape from the gallows if ever we're caught!"
Ye'll shiver like storm-rocked timbers when he finishes with,
[page 42]
There be ships most elusive
But none of them close
For the Frigate we sail
Be the mighty Grey Ghost!
Er yer dream, like Stephen Sanders, turns into a nightmare and ye lift yerself up and pray to God to save yer soul,
and ever the ocean rolls on . . .
[page 43]
My reality becomes enough
My love finds a sweet, safe home
My struggle triumphs to victory
My legacy is born in a promise
The ocean rolls on and on . . . .
Er mayhaps ye were an honest and God-fearing blacksmith afore ye set sail o'er pirating seas like Pamala A.
Williams' pirate.
[page 46]
"Aye, Sir. A pirate. But I was a blacksmith afore that. It's just that the king took
everything I had in taxes. It was either pirate or go to the poor house. You seen them poor
houses, Sir? Pitiful they is. A death sentence for sure.
"And pirating isn't a death sentence?"
"For most, I suppose. But it's also hope, Sir. And freedom."
Er ye remember the saying that "all cats are black in the dark" and reckon there's several ways to take that,
especially if ye been in cathouses in port, like in Stephen Sanders' tale of Donny Driver and the virtuous Miss
Catherine Black who accused him of raping her. It was Neligan who saved Donny's scurvy arse that day in the Cap'n'
quarters. 'Ow did John Neligan know that Donny had a tattoo on his chest? Tis a tale worth spending another night
in port to hear to its end.
Er, 'cuse, me Matey, is that a Christmas song I hear wafting from the dock? Bless me peg leg if it ain't Blackbead
hisself like Lawrence Welk leading a pirate chorus, awaving bottles o' Indes rum, a-singing at the top o'their lungs.
[page 71]
Fifteen pirates loudly carols singing!
Ho, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!
Christmas bells are merrily singing!
Ho, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!
The crew is like a family this night,
With food and drink we all delight,
And presents that fit us all just right
We welcome the Christ child to the Earth,
With laughter and joy and peaceful mirth
We sing His praises for all we're worth!
Ho, ho, ho, and Merry Christmas to all! !
Ah, Bless me, Boys, Methinks I've seen it all. Look! Up in the sky! Is that Billy "Badass" Barnes being taken for
a ride? After a lifetime of snatching, the toughie's been snatched himself! This book’s filled with good yarns to fill the lonely hours and speed along the darkest evening. If ye’ve had yer fill, there’s one more tale to light the night. Stretch yer imagination and walk along with the Grim Reaper on his rounds. 'Twill open yer eyes to see the deeds he performs as he closes the eyes
of many a mortal. Arh ye taking notes, Lad? Ye might be called to replace him one day.
Tis a night we spent with the quick and dead and off to bed we head, but not afore we stamp in lead the way ye
be a-snatchin' yer own copy o'this fine read. Listen to sounds from o'er the sea, Maties!
Can it be echoes from
other worlds?
For hundreds of years, established scientists held that the process of combustion occurred by the
material phlogiston leaving the wood, e.g., when it is burned. All the evidence that began to pile up to
the contrary was not enough for their hardened convictions, so the phlogiston theory thrived in spite of
its many inconsistencies. Now we know the truth and we can smile at those respected scientists who
were claiming that phlogiston was a substance with all the properties of what we would have to call,
"negative oxygen," today! Oxygen combines with materials being burnt and if you weight all the
combustion products, they will weigh more than the material did unburnt. Yes, it sounds silly to us who
know the truth about oxygen which is added during combustion and we laugh at the idea that
phlogiston is subtracted during combustion.
Similarly, when the truth about the two Jesus children is revealed, we find that all the
inconsistencies of the multiple accounts of Jesus's birth disappear. One cannot explain how one Jesus
child could have two different birth accounts. It's as difficult to explain the presence of two different
genealogies as to explain combustion by conjuring up phlogiston — it's very difficult and yet, as
history proves, it's not impossible. Once an explanation is accepted, no matter how full of holes, a
mindset arises to defend it against all comers.
One need only read Thomas S. Kuhn's classical exposition of the subject in his The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions to understand how pervasive such a mindset, which Kuhn labels a paradigm,
can be. It was Kuhn who promoted the word paradigm from an obscure, seldom-used word meaning
"model" to its ubiquitous usage to describe various mental encrustation of concepts we find in the
world today. Using his word, we would say that the current paradigm for understanding the birth of
Jesus is the various Bible accounts, mainly the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, suffers from bad
translations.
Talk to almost any theologian about this matter, and you will confront a spectacle about
equivalent of that suffered by oxygen-thinking chemists when they tried to explain the errors made by
phlogiston-thinking chemists to them. Likely you will be inundated with explanations and derision for
your effort.
It is with this caveat, I undertake to write this review about a book in which Bernard Nesfield-Cookson attempts to reveal the truth about the two Jesus children, an attempt which, if rightly
understood, will overturn the clumsy and inaccurate paradigm which insists on only one Jesus child.
This is the second book devoted to this subject that I have studied carefully. The first book was
The Incredible Births of Jesus by Edward Reaugh Smith. Here are two scholars who have
independently come to the same conclusion after studying the matter and argue for overturning the
current paradigm of one Jesus child because it simply does not fit the facts.
Does it not make sense that the greatest event in the history of the Earth, the birth of the man who
would incarnate the great Sun Spirit, the Christ, into himself would be a special man? The process of
incarnation by an ordinary human spirit into one's present lifetime, a process you went through, dear
Reader, and I went through, involves several hundred years of selecting and monitoring one's
ancestors, and following them down to the generation into which you have chosen to incarnate at
exactly the right time to perform the deeds you have set for yourself. These deeds include the
balancing of karma with those with whom you lived through previous incarnations, as well as new
deeds chosen for the current world conditions. To provide the Hebrew man to become the receptacle
required even more generations than usual, going back to King David himself (and further, in the Luke
Gospel, to Adam). Two Hebrew men were prepared for the Christ, even though only one would
receive the Christ: one man descended from the kingly line of David, King Solomon, and the other
from the priestly line of David, Nathaniel. That both were named Jesus and had Joseph as his father
and Mary as his mother is not remarkable given the popularity of the names at the time.
The Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew has a genealogy that is traced back to Solomon and the
Jesus in Luke back to Nathaniel. Clearly if the birth stories of these Gospels were of the same Jesus,
the genealogies would have to be identical. The Solomon Jesus was born with the Ego of the great
leader Zarathustra, who in pre-historical times of 6,000 B.C. taught the ancient Persians of Ahura
Mazdao, the Sun Spirit, who resides in the Sun, who is invisible, has the rays of the Sun as His
vestures. The Mystery School he founded trained its students to await the coming of the great Spirit
which would be signaled by a Star in the East — these initiates when graduated were called Magi or
Kings. It is their story which is narrated in the Gospel of Matthew. They visit the large house of Joseph
and Mary, no mention is made of a humble stable or manger. After their son Jesus's birth, Herod
orders all male babies killed, and so his parents flee with him to Egypt. Note that no mention of Egypt
is made in the Luke Gospel, only in Matthew, in the story of the Solomon Jesus's birth and aftermath.
The Jesus in the Gospel of Luke has a genealogy traced back to Nathaniel, and this Jesus was
born in a humble stable or manger, while equally humble shepherds were guarding their flocks on the
surrounding hillsides. Luke makes no report of them seeing the Great Star, nor of seeing the Magi --
rather they experience some ineffable phenomenon which they liken to a host of Angels singing and
praising God, like a cordon of priests celebrating a High Mass singing Gregorian chants perhaps. This
befits the Jesus descended from the priestly line of Nathaniel, a priest and son of David. These are the
facts as presented in the two Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
There is another salient fact which appears only in the Gospel of Luke, and it is the only event
between birth and 29 years old which is narrated in the two Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
Something important must be occurring spiritually to warrant relating this story, something whose
importance has been lost over the two millennia since the event. That is the story of the Nathaniel
Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem for several days and teaching the elders in the Temple.
How could
the Jesus of such humble beginnings, born in a manger, have come into this vast knowledge of the
world that he could keep the wise men of the Temple in rapt attention, answering their many
questions? Not one word of how this was possible is mentioned by Luke, except to relate that Jesus
answered his mother saying, "Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?" Clearly it
was not the business of carpentry that he was referring to, and therefore definitely not of Joseph's
business. He could have only been referring to his Heavenly Father's business, the business which
brought him to Earth, the business of being ready for the advent of the great Sun Spirit, the Christ, to
enter him at his baptism in the Jordan, the event after which He would be named, Christ Jesus.
How did the Matthew Jesus end up in Bethlehem? His father and mother evacuated to Egypt to
escape the wrath of Herod upon their son, but when they returned, they apparently thought it best not
to return to Bethlehem.
[page 4] On their return from Egypt, however, instead of returning to
Bethlehem the Solomon family took up residence in the rural community of
Nazareth. Life there called for a number of adjustments on their part. In
Bethlehem this family had enjoyed certain privileges due to education, wealth
and social standing; in Nazareth, a close knit community, the Solomon family
had to adjust to an ascetically simple lifestyle and relinquish the trappings of
social privilege, if they were to live and work in harmony with the Nazarenes.
We may then, perhaps, conjecture that the Solomon Joseph joined the Nathan
Joseph in his carpenter's workshop, also that the educated and gifted Solomon
Jesus boy would occasionally, or perhaps often, join the younger Nathan
Jesus boy in the fields tending the sheep.
How do we know that the Nathan Jesus was younger? Because Herod was prominently
mentioned in the Matthew Gospel and only his son Herod Antipas is mentioned in the Luke Gospel.
[page 8] . . . the Luke holy family were clearly in no hurry to flee from Israel,
for according to the religious law of the people of Israel, it was ordained that,
after giving birth to a man-child, a mother must go through a period of
purification for 40 days: 'She shall touch no hallowing thing, nor come into the
sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled' (Leviticus 12:4) and, in
the case of this holy family, there was no reason not to obey this law. Herod
the Great's decree no longer threatened the life of the Jesus of the Nathan
line for he had died before the child was born.
We see clearly that there must be two different Jesus
families: one which was forced to flee to Egypt because of
Herod, and one which had to no need to flee because Herod
was dead and they had every reason to stay put.
There is a salient difference between the Matthew and
Luke Mary which is captured and thus revealed in many
classical paintings of the Madonna, and that difference
Nesfield-Cookson delineates for us: the Matthew Mary is
shown with an older Jesus standing or sitting on her lap
whereas the Luke Mary is shown with a younger Jesus as a baby lying on his back. Consider the
differences in how each Mary is portrayed in the two Gospels.
[page 8, 9] We do not know who were the parents of the Mary of Luke's
Gospel. Regardless of whether Mary grew up in Nazareth itself or in the
verdant Galilean surroundings, we can picture
her as a young girl growing up in an area which
Emil Bock describes as being 'an earthly replica
of the Garden of Paradise. . . . From Luke's
Gospel we can sense that Mary was a pure and
innocent young soul, imbued not with
intellectual knowledge nurtured from early
childhood by temple priests, but with a wisdom
springing from a selfless, love-filled heart. In
two places, following the Adoration of the
Shepherds and after the twelve-year-old Jesus
had been found in the temple, Luke's Gospel says: 'But Mary kept all these
things, and pondered them in her heart' (2:19, 51).
The Luke Mary led a hidden life in the small hamlet of Nazareth while the Matthew Mary
led an open life in the cosmopolitan city of the time, Jerusalem. She was taken to the
temple there by her parents when she was only three years old where she, a
precocious young girl, was taught and grew in wisdom for about ten years. (Pages 9,
10) One can easily interpret "precocious" as an indication of an old soul.
[page 10] Early on, the Mary of the Gospel of Matthew manifested as an 'old
soul [. . .] she represents the polar opposite to the young Mary of the Gospel
of Luke'.
The author also reveals that the "ass" as a beast of burden represented the physical body of the
human being whose task is to carry our higher human natures (soul and spirit) during our Earth
existence. The image of Christ Jesus entering the holy city of Jerusalem riding on an ass represents the
human body of Jesus carrying the Christ Spirit within it like the body of the ass is carrying a human
being upon its back. These two levels of understanding had been intermixed in prophecies for
hundreds of years before the event occurred in the time of Christ Jesus.
[page 11] Rudolf Frieling reminds us, moreover, that the ass was always the
symbol of the human physical nature, whose task it is to carry the human
being's higher natures on earth. St Francis of Assisi called his body 'Brother
ass'. The prophet Zechariah foretells that the Messiah will come riding on an
ass (Zechariah 9:9), meaning that he would descend into the realm of
corporeality. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Christ entered the holy city
of Jerusalem riding on an ass (Matthew 21:5).
In the Matthew Gospel, an angel appears to Joseph, the father of Jesus, whereas in the Luke
Gospel, an angel appears to Mary. In Matthew the angel appears to tell Joseph to take his family to
Egypt to escape Herod's persecution.
In Luke the angel appears to tell Mary that her cousin is pregnant with a son. Mary, already
pregnant herself, visits Elizabeth who greets her, telling Mary that she is twice blessed, one by the pre-Fall "male etheric body withheld from Eve" which had entered into Mary and two by pre-Fall virginal
female etheric body withheld from Adam which was inside the Jesus baby in her womb.(1) It was this
pre-Fall etheric body which made Mary a virgin, and gave to her the name Blessed Virgin for all time.
Elizabeth's deed gave us the lines from ubiquitous Catholic prayer, the Hail Mary, "Blessed are Thou
among women, and Blessed is the fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus." Elizabeth was acknowledging what she
could see directly with her ancient clairvoyance in her old age, the two pre-Fall etheric bodies which
formed her cousin Mary's body.
[page 12] We then learn that the baby leapt for joy in Elisabeth's womb at the
sound of Mary's greeting. What we see here is John the Baptist's
instantaneous recognition of the significance of the child in Mary's womb.
This momentous event — not mentioned by Matthew — foreshadows
what was to take place 30 years later in the River Jordan, when John baptizes
and recognizes Christ. He it is of whom John the Baptist has already declared:
'I indeed have baptized you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost' (Luke 3:16). In Matthew's Gospel we hear that when Jesus comes to
John to be baptized, the Baptist exclaims that he rather needs to be baptized
by Jesus Christ (3:13-14).
To understand rightly the event known as the Mystery of Golgotha, how Christ came to the
Earth, entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and died on the cross, one must understand that the
Great Spirit — the one we have come to call Christ and have appended that name to Jesus, either as
Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ — had been known for hundreds and thousands of years before Jesus
was born, and that Christ Spirit had been approaching the Earth and had been worshiped from the
beginning of human times. None other St. Augustine, the great church father himself, spoke of this as
fact.
[page 40] It has been mentioned already that in the early years of the
twentieth century Rudolf Steiner spoke on many occasions of Christ as the
Spirit of the Sun, and that over a long period of time this Spirit gradually
descended out of the cosmic heights to incarnate in a physical body. For
instance, he indicated this in a lecture in 1911. He quoted the following few
words of St Augustine: 'That which we now call the Christian religion already
existed among the ancients and was never absent from the beginning of the
human race up to the time when Christ appeared in the flesh; from that time
forward the true religion, which was already there, received the name of the
Christian religion.'
Essential to the Christ Spirit's appearing on Earth in the flesh were the Nathan and Solomon
Jesus children. One was filled with grace and the other with the wisdom of the Magi.
[page 47] Luke, in his Gospel, speaks of this child as being 'filled with wisdom
and the grace of God was upon him. One could, perhaps, say that it was the
kind of wisdom with which a person is endowed, who lives and works in
harmonious communion with nature, a person who does not intellectually
probe and analyze, but 'knows' with the forces of his heart. Thus in the Nathan
Jesus we see a child with infinite depths of feeling, wisdom of the heart.
In contrast to the Nathan child we could say that the Solomon Jesus
child possessed the wisdom of the Magi, of the Three Wise Men from the
East. 'He was an individuality of exceptional maturity, having profound
understanding of the world, wisdom of the head.
In a miraculous event in the Temple in Jerusalem, there would emerge one child, the Nathan
Jesus who would later receive the Christ Spirit during his Baptism by John in the Jordan.
[page 51] Steiner describes how, in the temple in Jerusalem, the Nathan Jesus
child, all soul and heart, received into himself the spirit and thinking power of
the Solomon Jesus child. As a consequence of this Mystery event, the
Solomon child was depleted of his life-forces and died shortly after it had
taken place. The Nathan Jesus, on the other hand, was now so wise that the
learned men in the temple 'were amazed at his intelligence and the answers he
gave' to their questions (Luke 2:47).94 The keenest capacities of wisdom of
the head, of the brain, such as only a descendant of the house of Solomon
could develop, were united with the purest love forces of the heart of the
Nathan Child. The kingly and the priestly powers were united in the Nathan
Jesus child and formed the chalice into which, 18 years later, at the Baptism
by John in the River Jordan, the Christ Being descended or, as Luke
describes this moment, 'the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost
descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from
heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased' (Luke
3:22).
This three-day event in the Temple can be seen as an early initiation event for the Nathan Jesus
during which his future mission is revealed to him.
[page 51, 52] The twelve-year-old Nathan Jesus became aware of his future
mission on earth during the three days in the temple. We remember that in
answer to his mother's troubled questioning when he was found in the temple
he answered her, according to Luke, with two questions: 'How is it that ye
sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?' His true
Father, the twelve-year-old is saying, is not Joseph but God. He was already
aware of the reality of the divine message which would issue from the
heavenly heights at this baptism.
The perfected human who was to become the earthen vessel of the Christ Spirit would have to
combine the wisdom and reverence of the Magi with the humility and piety of the shepherds. The Two
Jesus children would have to become One in the Temple, "and qualities that had been entirely inward
[would become] outward." (Page 53) The process by which the two become one was first described
by Rudolf Steiner in 1909 and is illustrated in the cover art of this book. It is from a painting by
Bergognone which "shows Mary leading a second Jesus boy away, even while the twelve-year-old
Nathan Jesus boy is still speaking from the podium." (Page 65) Why should we believe these are two
Jesus boys? The author gives us a threefold reason.
[page 65] First, Bergognone is not representing continuity within a story by
depicting two or more actions of one and the same person, for the convention
of continuous representation requires that actions that are separated
chronologically must also be given their individual, separated spaces.
Bergognone has not complied with this requirement. Indeed, as Ovason(2)
points out, 'the device of continuous representation was outmoded by
Bergognone's time'. Second, although the two boys resemble each other in
appearance, they are not the same. The boy on the left of the picture, upon
whom Mary is gazing down with loving concern, appears depleted of energy.
We notice that both are clothed in red shifts. However, the shift of the boy
leaving the temple is paler in colour than that of the twelve-year-old seated in
the center. Both are making similar gestures, though those of the departing
Jesus boy are much weaker; his left arm is not held up and outwards but, palm
downwards, hanging limply towards the ground. This weakened gesture is
reflected in his face. In comparison with the Jesus boy in the chair of the
teacher, the departing boy appears wan and ailing. We notice, too, that the
halo of this boy, the Solomon Jesus, is far less brilliant than that of the
teaching Nathan Jesus. And, thirdly, the two Jesus boys are clearly aware of
each other. In particular, we can recognize the bond between the two boys by
the way in which the Nathan Jesus looks down upon the departing Solomon
Jesus with what Ovason calls 'a strange mixture of love and wistfulness'.
Rudolf Steiner gave his indications of the reality of the two Jesus children before any of the
substantiating evidence found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other apocryphal scriptures. He saw the
events with his own native clairvoyance and his descriptions simply add details and veracity to the
artworks of the Renaissance and other scriptures unearthed since Steiner's time.
[page 65, 66] He [Ovason] goes on to say: 'The Solomon child seems to have
sacrificed something of his spirit, something of his being to the Nathan child,
and consequently is suffering.' According to Steiner the Solomon Jesus died
very shortly after this event in the temple. It is clear that it is not solely the
Nathan boy who is aware of his departing friend, for nearly all, if not all those
learned men who a moment before had been discoursing with the twelve-year-old on the podium, now have their attention directed towards the boy who is
about to leave the temple with Mary and Joseph.
None of these descriptions, paintings, or scriptures can convince you that there were two Jesus
children — it is a conclusion you only arrive at by carefully considering all the evidence as indicating a
deeper reality than is commonly accepted by established historians, so-called experts of Christian
artworks, and Church dogma as revealed to the public.
[page 68] We have seen that the
idea of two Jesus children, spoken
about by Rudolf Steiner as early as
1909, is supported in some of the
Christian apocryphal gospels, in
Gnostic texts and, above all, in
some of the Dead Sea Scrolls first
discovered at Qumran. We have
also seen that there was present a
line of Essene secret teaching which
continued within Christian circles
and that a tradition of the existence
of two Jesus children prevailed in
Christian art up to the Renaissance.
There is therefore some
justification in seriously suggesting
an affirmative answer to the
question 'Were there two Jesus
children?' — the one spoken of in
Matthew's Gospel the other in that
of Luke.
"Were there two Jesus children?" can only have a personal answer to anyone studying the matter
objectively and with spiritual insight. Simply saying, "Oh, that's foolish!" is not an answer to the
question of whether there were two Jesus children as much as it is an expression of one's ignorance
and willingness to remain ignorant on the matter. If you insist on rejecting the idea of two Jesus
children, you will be in good company with the majority of the people in the world and that thought
may be comforting, but you will be left with the unanswered questions posed by the dramatic
discrepancies in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. If you cavalierly ignore these differences you will
have throw out one of the two Jesus babies with your bath water of indifference.
Writing is a curious invention. In our age we take writing for granted — it has been around long before
our modern age began. It is an invention which came to us at the advent of history — for without writing,
there would be no history — thus history began when writing began. It is flat-out wrong to think of time
before humans appeared when we say "prehistorical times". Humans existed for eons before writing began.
Before humans learned to write things down, they seemed to do feats of incredible memory, such as reciting
long poetic epics of Homer by heart. We say "by heart" to imply a feat of rote memory, but we have perforce no records made by those who actually performed these feats of recital. The only records we have were written
by those who no longer possessed those abilities, and absent such abilities, they were forced to write down
the epics of Homer and others. Some wise person wrote about the invention of writing, paraphrasing Plato,
"The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your
disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned
nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company,
having the show of wisdom without the reality."
Writing is a specific in that it is "something peculiarly adapted to its purpose, use or situation"
(Webster's Unabridged). Plato lived in close proximity to the age when Homeric epics were being converted
into writing which can be seen as an invention suitably adapted to replace the fading of ability to perceive
epics and other realities in the spiritual world. This fading ability would make most humans unable to perform
those epics today without flaw. Likely such performances only became public during the transitional time
when the majority of humans had lost this so-called ability of memory — why perform what anyone can see
on their own? This is what led Plato to write in his work, Phaedrus, "For this invention [writing] will produce
forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory. Their trust
in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their
own memory within them." Either writing was the cause of this loss of memory, as Plato hints, or writing
was adaptation to the loss of memory. The latter is how I understand it, and one can only decide in one's
own mind which one it was. To me, Plato was railing against the "dying of the light" in himself and was
forced to express his displeasure using the very invention he was caviling against.
It is at best disingenuous for a human to decry the action of writing while writing, so there must have
been some deep truth that Plato sought to pass on to future generations about a pervasive change in human
nature, some evolution of consciousness which he could still perceive and which he hoped to describe to
future generations who would likely have become inured to their new condition and otherwise unable to
understand the way humans thought before the invention of writing. The very word "other-wise" seem to
imply we can become "other than wise" about our own origins.
Writing is what Samuel Butler did in his notebooks and this book is an edited collection of his vast
collection of notes written in these books over the years. After reading and enjoying the notebooks of
Joseph Joubert so much, I bought this book and read it right away. Like Joubert in his notebooks, Butler
provides us with "a ladder of the mind, a ladder with rungs."
To me, as a child, the act of catching a bird by putting salt on its tail seemed ludicrous, and no one could
tell me why such a saying existed. A bird could fly away so fast that one couldn't get close enough with a
salt shaker to sprinkle salt on its tail. Finally I decided that if one could get close enough to put salt on a
bird's tail, one could just grab it, and that reality was what the old saying was designed to convey. If I had
read Butler's notebook during my search for understanding, I would have acquired a step up because he
provides a ladder with a rung, "One's thoughts fly so fast that one must shoot them; it is no use trying to put
salt on their tails." This describes his reason for writing notes.
[page i, Preface] Early in his life Samuel Butler began to carry a notebook and to
write down in it anything he wanted to remember; it might be something he heard
some one say, more commonly it was something he said himself.
In one of his notes, Butler writes, "A man may make, as it were, cash entries of himself in a day-book,
but the entries in the ledger and the balancing of the accounts should be done by others." His notes were
transcribed into his day-book or journal and found their way, carefully edited, into this book, a ledger of
sorts. A man may make, as it were, cash entries of himself in a day-book, but the entries in the ledger and
the balancing of the accounts will be done later by others.
Some of his entries drink like clear spring water, "My days run through me as water through a sieve"
and some linger on the palate like a vintage wine, "Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from
insufficient premises"; some are humorous, "Lizards generally seem to have lost their tails by the time they
reach middle life. So have most men." and some talk about humor, "A sense of humor keen enough to show
a man his own absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him from the commission of all sins,
or nearly all, save those that are worth committing." (Page 11 quotes)
Physicists in our time bandy the word "universe" around as if it were a shuttlecock or a billiard ball, one
of their academic playthings about which laymen are incapable of having important opinions. The universe
is entirely made of atoms, for example, one might hear, or perhaps, there are multiple universes. Reading
physics today in popular books is like a trip with Alice down the Rabbit Hole where anything you believe is
possible becomes possible and you might hear of "six impossible things before breakfast", like cutting off
a bit of the universe and putting it in some place outside of the universe.
[page 84] The idea of an indivisible, ultimate atom is inconceivable by the lay mind.
If we can conceive an idea of the atom at all, we can conceive it as capable of being
cut in half; indeed, we cannot conceive it at all unless we so conceive it. The only
true atom, the only thing which we cannot subdivide and cut in half, is the universe.
We cannot cut a bit off the universe and put it somewhere else. Therefore, the
universe is a true atom and, indeed, is the smallest piece of indivisible matter which
our minds can conceive; and they cannot conceive it any more than they can the
indivisible: ultimate atom.
If you put something off long enough, you don't have to do it. Those words resonated immediately with
me in the summer 1961 when my German professor shared her ad hoc philosophy of procrastination with
our class. Over the years, I have often thought about her adage, and finally embodied it, some forty years
later, as one of my basic rules.
Gradually I came to understand that this rule was a way that my Cajun
ancestors lived their lives, and I was imbued with processes based on it. For example, somebody dumps
a big bag of hot, steaming boiled crawfish on the table in the middle of you and your four brothers. Do you
act polite and eat the smallest, puniest crawfish first or do you pick out the largest, tastiest ones first, leaving the scrawny ones till last? Clearly, we Cajuns always go for the largest or best looking crawfish first. Similarly when eating cherries out of a
bowl, do you eat the plumpest, dark red, one first? Naturally — at least it was to me. So it tickled me to
find Butler talking about that process which I found so valuable a part of my life: eat the best and biggest
first, and put off unpleasant jobs as long as possible.
After all, you might not survive to eat the best cherries
or to ever tackle the dirty jobs. The ultimate of this process was epitomized for me by a very old man I
heard proclaim, "I've stopped buying green bananas."
[page 99] Always eat grapes downward — that is, always eat the best grape first;
in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem
good down to the last. If you eat the other way, you will not have a good grape in
the lot. Besides, you will be tempting Providence to kill you before you come to the
best. . . . In New Zealand for a long time I had to do the washing-up after each meal.
I used to do the knives first, for it might please God to take me before I came to
the forks, and then what a sell [RJM: disappointment] it would have been to have
done the forks rather than the knives!
Someone once said, "A scholar is someone who remembers one's sources." Unfortunately, that was
before I became a scholar and I didn't catch the name. Attributing sources in writing is a lot easier than in
music, because of the very nature of quoting: in writing one can attribute the source of the quote in writing
because one is already writing, but in music one can only quote in music itself and cannot interrupt the music
to provide a footnote or easily attribute the quote in writing, speaking, or whatever. Butler noticed this
phenomenon and wrote cogently on it as it applies to music and painting:
[page 123] In books it is easy to make mention of the forgotten dead to whom we
are indebted, and to acknowledge an obligation at the same time and place we incur
it. The more original a writer is, the more pleasure will he take in calling attention
to the forgotten work of those who have gone before him. The conventions of
painting and music, on the other hand, while they admit of borrowing no less freely
than literature does, do not admit of acknowledgment; it is impossible to interrupt
a piece of music, or paint some words upon a picture to explain that the composer
or painter was at such and such a point indebted to such and such a source for his
inspiration, but it not less impossible to avoid occasionally borrowing, or rather
taking, for there is no need of euphemism, from earlier work. Where, then, is the
line to be drawn between lawful and unlawful adoption of what has been done by
others? This question is such a nice one that there are almost as many opinions
upon it as there are painters and musicians.
While pondering this dilemma a few decades ago, I began a series of poems in which I endeavored to
record at the bottom of each poem, the date I wrote it, where I was at the time, and every source of
inspiration I was aware of at the time. For myself, I am not sure whether the poetic form worked or not,
but it had a charm which yet attracts me, if no one else. Somehow I managed to incorporate the sources of
inspiration into the art work of poetry itself. At times, poems broke out in the middle of my descriptive notes
about a poem! Perhaps it is the attributing of sources for musicians and painters that Butler was thinking of
when he said, "entries in the ledger and the balancing of the accounts should be done by others". If a painter
had to attribute the sources for how she blends her oils to form the color of the Baltic Sea, it could require
an interruption of her painting to write a treatise likely long enough to cause her to have amnesia for her
reason for painting that sea in the first place!
For a long time I had posted a cartoon showing a blonde floozy being shown a prospective home by
a real estate agent. She stared at empty bookshelves on all the walls and asked, "What kind of a freak lived
here?" On another shelf edge I had posted this sign, Caveat Homo Unis Libri, which I understand to mean
Beware of the Man of One Book, sort of a counterweight to the attitude of the blonde of the cartoon.
Butler was called by Trübner, his book agent, "a homo unis libri," (Page 155) referring to the one book
Butler had written by then, Erewhon. Butler's view towards writing is a lot like my own. When Trübner said
he was in a very solitary position, Butler said it suited him.
[155] "I pay my way; when I was with you before, I never owed you money; you find
me now not owing my publisher money, but my publisher in debt to me; I never owe
so much as a tailor's bill . . . I live very quietly and cheaply, but it suits my health
and my tastes, and I have no acquaintances but those I value. My friends stick by
me. If I was to get in with these literary and scientific people I should hate them and
they me. . . . Of course I don't expect to get on in a commercial sense at present,
I do not go the right way to work for this; but I am going the right way to secure a
lasting reputation and this is what I do care for. A man cannot have both, he must
make up his mind which he is going for.
For myself, I cannot think of anything more boring than doing a book tour, sleeping in a different hotel
room every night, facing a queue of readers eager for me to sign their book in a different city every day —
how much better if they and I spent that time actually reading another book than doting upon one already
written. I love reading and writing too much to spend time doing other things.
[Page 157] If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by
my own success.
Among the words so overused as to have become meaningless in our twenty-first century, I count
"inspiration". Even the most mundane idea is tossed off as inspiration, as in, "At the last second we had an
inspiration to order pizza." Butler sets the matter right for me.
[page 179] Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time.
True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully
recognized for some time. So men of genius always escape their own immediate
belongings, and indeed generally their own age.
This is particularly the case for true art which often is ugly when it first appears, betraying no sign of
inspiration so much as "bad taste", as most critics of early Picasso's work would have proclaimed. Art,
rightly understood, is not the process of creation, but of destruction. Some day that may be credited to
me as an inspiration, but for my part, it is still too soon to tell.
Do not many people today think of their own death in terms of agony, sadness, and the extinction of
their being, in spite of the claims of others that there is a world beyond our life in this physical existence?
Butler has us go inside the perspective of a living baby in the womb and consider what birth must seem like
to it.
[page 289] Refer to the agony and settled melancholy with which unborn children
in the womb regard birth as the extinction of their being, and how some declare that
there is a world beyond the womb and others deny this. "We must all one day be
born," "Birth is certain" and so on, just as we say of death.
Much of the depression and sadness people experience as their life draws to a close at whatever age
can be seen to be similar to the last stages of the gestation process, what Otto Rank called "the trauma of
birth" and wrote an eponymous book on the subject.
In the quoted passage below is one of the greatest statements ever made about science, in my opinion,
"science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance." What do we really know
about the quantum mechanical world? We have equations to express our ignorance about quantum events,
but they describe only the probabilities of events, not the events themselves. Our greatest scientific equations
are but expressions of our ignorance of our ignorance. The happiest person in the kingdom is the fool
because he is blithely unaware of his own ignorance.
[page 339] Science is being daily more and more personified and
anthropomorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature
upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the
world so that those who believe in him, etc.; and they will burn people for saying
that science, after all, is only an expression of our ignorance of our own ignorance.
Butler, like Thoreau, never strayed into a field in which he "did not find a flower worth the finding"
(Page 375), and, also like Thoreau, he shared it with his day-book or Journal and us. From the bounty in
this book of Butler's collected flowers, I have selected a few to place into a vase for your enjoyment. May
they inspire you to take a solitary walk in the field from which I picked them.
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 a Meeting Sign 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 Sign Announcing a Meeting with the Dalai Lama.
2.Comments from Readers:
EMAIL Tidbit submitted by Terry: I was going to write an article called "The Subjugation of the American Male", but my wife wouldn't let me. Terry
RJM Reply: Okay, Terry, but if you do write that article, send it to me and I'll see if my wife
will let me publish it!
Bobby
EMAIL from Steve Sanders aka Blackbead replying about my review of Echoes: Subject: Re: AAARGH ! ! ! Shiver me timbers, if that ain't a review o' Echoes of Other Worlds !!!
An incredible review from an incredible reviewer! This link will now go out to all the authors!
Thank ye, thank ye, THANK YE!
Dang! Gotta run!
Thank you again, mate!
Blackbead
EMAIL from Grace in Indiana: Bobby,
Thank you for making Rudolf Steiner's experiential philosophy available on the web. I was very excited as I read the
underpinnings of anthroposophy. Much valuable experience/thinking/writing is difficult to find in book stores these
days. I practice yoga and have interests in the thread running through all great religions, through history, and through
individual lives. All is threaded together in one great net. All weaves and is woven.
Grace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Grace, Thanks for the nice word. I'll send you an invite to receive our monthly Digest Reminder email. Bobby
EMAIL (excerpt) from Panos in Missouri: Dear Bobby,
Thank you so much for providing Doyletics for free and giving the world such a
wonderful gift. I have been on a search for the structure of the mind and a way to overcome my
own limitations for 4 years now. Your site came as it would at a perfect time, as I was asking
how to overcome these imprinted limitations. I have begun using it and have already benefited
from the Speed Trace.
EMAIL from Betty in Kentucky about our Super Bowl Digest: Well, this was just full of excitement, fun, parties, celebration and "good times". I meant to call you about the Super Bowl, but I get lost with time
and travels for work etc. That was such an awesome game, no doubt!
I love the pictures of you and Del, but also enjoy your family and friends--we can't do without them! When is the cruise and were are you going? I
just got back from 5 days in Vegas and had a great time.
Luv ya, Betty
EMAIL from Dr. Kaisu Viikari, an Eye Doctor in Turku, Finland about her Testament:
Dear Bobby,
When I imagined my being at the gate of heaven last night, I pondered thousands of times who would wake up mankind to consciousness of this enormous tragedy and take care
of spreading the good news to the world about how to prevent 99% of cases of myopia and its attendant ills?
After me — nobody is coming to open the eyes of the world and I do not know who could do it better than you as a writer. The burden that mankind is lugging along, in the deficiency of plus
diopters (or the diopters in that direction), is immeasurable. [Note: plus diopters means reading glass lenses]
It is, if not the biggest, one of the biggest
scourges of mankind — which we can not expect a rank-and-filer [non-eye-doctor] to
understand, even those educated to it [eye doctors], as you know.
And my thinking has nothing to do with monomanical ambition, I´m only
anxious when I think that my research work and findings would once again fade away, not only for centuries,
but perhaps for ever.
And so I beg you to begin to think words for that mission!
Kaisu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My review of your work, Dr. Viikari, will remain on the world-wide web indefinitely and ensure access to your amazing work in helping humans rid themselves of the scourges which attend the wearing of minus lenses (negative Diopters) while doing reading and close work, especially young children!.
NOTE to my Good Readers: Babies should not be kept in playpens or baby beds when awake and should not under any circumstances have mobiles hanging in front of their eyes causing them to focus closer than 10 to 20 feet. The detriment to their eyes shows up only in later years. With only 1 in 1,000 people with true myopia or nearsightness and yet over 50% of the populations wearing minus lenses, one would call this an EPIDEMIC, if the matter were truly understood, the very matter and cure which Dr. Viikari, MD, PhD Opthalmologist, laid out so brilliantly in her small handbood, Understanding and Preventing Myopia. Want to ensure your child will be diagnosed later myopic and fitted with negative lenses? Hang mobiles in their crib to keep them busy while you're not around. Want a healthy child without nearsightness at age 15? Toss the mobiles, hanging trinket, toys in the crib or playpen, etc, in the garbage bin of history. And as soon as you give them crayons to color with, put reading glasses (plus lenses: +1, +2, +3 D) on them. (Plus glasses are the correction for hyperopia or farsightedness, meaning using plus glasses as distant glasses, as well as a help for reading in presbyopia, the typical old age sight problem.) Put these plus glasses on your children as soon as they begin to do close work and they will grow up to be healthier adults and won't be so unhappy with their headaches, vertical frowns, migraines, and other eye problems caused by constant accommodation strain that they become as suicidal as some of Dr. Viikari's patients were before she helped them grow out of their negative lenses bad habits.
EMAIL from Renee about The Two Jesus Children review in this Digest:
Dear Bobby,
This paragraph, particularly the highlighted sentence, is describing something very profound but something that I am missing. What is the correlation between the pre-Fall etheric bodies and the virginity of Mary?
In Luke the angel appears to tell Mary that her cousin is pregnant with a son. Mary, already pregnant herself, visits Elizabeth who greets her, telling
Mary that she is twice blessed, one by the pre-Fall "male etheric body withheld from Eve" which had entered into Mary and two by pre-Fall virginal
female etheric body withheld from Adam which was inside the Jesus baby in her womb.(1) It was this pre-Fall etheric body which made Mary a virgin, and gave to her the name Blessed Virgin for all time. Elizabeth's deed gave us the lines from ubiquitous Catholic prayer, the Hail Mary,
"Blessed are Thou among women, and Blessed is the fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus." Elizabeth was acknowledging what she could see directly with her
ancient clairvoyance in her old age, the two pre-Fall etheric bodies which formed her cousin Mary's body.
Great review. Thanks for sending it!
Renee
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bobby's Reply to Renee Lattimore in New Orleans, La:
Dear Renee,
Thanks for your early reading of this review. Glad you enjoyed it. You ask a good question and it is the most
important aspect of how Mary's virginity came to be.
How can a woman have a baby and still be a virgin? No one in religious
circles ever answers it fully, they throw some lip-service to it and
brush off the question.
The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are described in Genesis. In the
story, Eve and Adam eat from the Tree of Knowledge, but the other tree,
the Tree of Life is left untouched in a far region of Eden.
That far region is the spiritual world where the etheric bodies of Adam
and Eve reside — these bodies make up the Tree of Life. These are
copies of their etheric bodies BEFORE they ate from the Tree of
Knowledge, therefore before sex was invented: thus, these bodies are
virginal by definition, they have never known sexual activity in any
form. It was by Mary's having this virginal body which made her the
Blessed Virgin and the perfect receptacle to hold the gestating body of
Jesus who also contains the other virginal body from the Tree of Life.
Thus the words of the Hail Mary are fraught with deep spiritual meaning
when we pray,
"Hail Mary, Full of Grace,
Blessed are Thou amongst Women
and blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus."
Each "blessed" describes one of the pre-Fall etheric bodies.
We are recognizing the Tree of Life which was held in sanctity in the etheric
plane waiting for the truly Blessed event of the pregnancy of the
Nathan Mary, from which the body of the Jesus who will die on the Cross
will be born.
EMAIL from Kevin Dann in NYC: Hello Bobby,
Oh my! I just realized I never thanked you & Del for sending me birthday wishes; the first bit of
mail that I received here at my new home! Thanks so much.
And thanks so much for continuing to shower us with your motherwit and wisdom. Heck, if
you can survive my emails, I can survive yours!
Jordan, my daughter, has been making great waves down here in the Big Apple; today's New York Times has a little glimpse of her life: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/nyregion/29roommates.html?pagewanted=1&hp
Yours,
Kevin
EMAIL from son Robert in Indiana about Blast from Past photo below:
Holy Crayola... dat be you?
Nice pic!!! Will save this one.
Paul's in Westwego?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bobby's Reply:
Yep! Across the street was Paul's Motors which in the 1950s sold Kaisers, Frazers, and the very FIRST compact car the "Henry J" — all made by the Kaiser Corp. Got a PENNY-a-mile mileage, 30 mpg on .30 a gallon gas. Use the order of magnitude upscale that would be $3.00 a gallon today and guess what? We're almost there! Gasoline has not risen as much as theater tickets in the same time frame. .20 versus $7 a ticket.
Dad
3. Claustrophobia: Tests or Cures?
NOTE: I wrote this message to my friends on the World-Wide Doyletics List"
I recently finished a Teaching Co. course on World War II and
encountered an interested phrase as the lecturer was describing the
preparation they did for B-17 Bomber Crews. "They were tested for
claustrophobia." The implication was that, if they had claustrophobia,
they were eliminated from the bomber crew position.
Most of you know, by now, or should know if you've read much of the
doyletics material, that it is as easy to remove doyles of
claustrophobia as it is to test for them. Whatever way Army Air Force
tested potential candidates for claustrophobia, they would have had to
trigger doyles which would be obvious both to the trainee and the
trainer. Given a short course in doing the Speed Trace, trainers would
have been able, once the doyles were triggered, to lead the trainee
down their time marks (which at ages 18 to 25 would not have taken very
long.)
After a couple of minutes spent on a speed trace, the trainee would
have no longer tested positive for claustrophobia, and they would not
have had to be disqualified from a bomber crew position in cramped
quarters (as most of them were in the 1940s).
How many tests are yet made today, about 70 years later, for various
phobias, claustrophobia, acrophobia, agoraphobia, etc to determine
if a person possesses a phobia and subsequently flunking them out
of some service position? All of these could be augmented by a
simple Speed Trace which remove the phobia tested for.
most cordially,
Bobby
Thanks to all of you for providing the chemistry which has made this site a success.
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In 2012, its eleventh year of existence, the doyletics website topped the NINE MILLION VISITORS MARK ! ! !
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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.
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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
with the book so that they will want to read it for themselves. My Rudolf Steiner reviews are more detailed and my intention is bring his work to a new century of readers by converting his amazing insights into modern language and concepts.
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Red-Bean-Eggplant Étouffée:
