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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ In Memoriam ~~~~~~~~ Sandra Cannizzaro Tranchina (1941 - 2010) ~~~~
~~ "I am a steel magnolia not a weeping willow." ~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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This month Violet and Joey learn about Weapons of Mass Instruction.
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 June are:
Back last Fall I bought an HP Color Printer and a new Uninterruptible Power Supply, with the idea of
installing them after we got moved into the new house, and that time finally came this month. I also had
trouble with our network connections and I called the Geek Squad and they sent out a tech who took
care of fixing the network connection between Del's computer and mine, as well as installing the new
HP Printer onto the network, and setting up the software for the new UPS. When he left, my DVD RW
drive was working again. Plus we could print color photos from a memory stick or from each of the
three computers. With his okay we put the wireless router, the broadband cable/phone modem onto the
UPS so that during power failures, the phone and broadband will stay running. Also ran the master
cable through the surge protector as well as the router's connection to the computer, protecting the
computer and the modem from power surges due to lightning strikes nearby. Also the power
conditioning of the UPS will provide a better power quality to the modem.
Before he left, he also showed me how to print a color photo from the new printer using the simple GUI
which requires you know the name of the photo you wish printed. By transferring just the photos I want
printed to a blank memory stick, the job will be easy and not require the computer for the final printing.
If you haven't used the Geek Squad before, I can recommend them to you for any variety of computer
problems.
Our projection screen Mitsubishi went blank shortly before the end of April and I finally called David at
AAA TV to come fix it. The problem is the power comes on, but clicks off in 3 seconds, before any
image can appear. The first chip he replaced didn't solve the problem and as of the end of May, he's
still seeking a solution. All the voltages are coming up normal except one and he's tracking down what
might cause that. Still sounds like a solvable problem, but in the mean time, we're down from 5 TV's to
only 3 in the Screening Room because the fifth one has been removed from the top of the Mitsubishi
until it is fixed.
We had one more curious electronic failure this month. Our Security System suddenly began giving us a
FC or Failure Code once a day. Finally I scheduled a Tech to check it out. As he was checking it, I
noticed an LED lamp, which gets its power from the telephone, was blinking. Suspecting that the lamp
was the source of the problem — I had installed it about the time the FC problem started — I
immediately disconnected it and asked the Tech if the problem went away. It did! I had remembered
that plugging in two of those lamps caused problems with the ring tone at our previous house and had
thrown one away. Del had just located it a week ago and I plugged it in and didn't notice any difficulty
right away. The FC came up only once a day and I didn't think to connect the lamp and the FC
problem until I saw it blinking. But as a maintenance-minded person, I have learned to check the last
change made to a system with any new problem, and that keyed my immediate response to the blinking
lamp.
LSU BASEBALL
The month of May is the heart of the college baseball season and LSU started off with a bang but is
going out with a whimper, having fallen into a deep slump during the second half of its SEC play.
Defending its National Championship this year has been extremely difficult, and yet, the problem has
not been that the SEC got better, but LSU has fallen in its pitching and fielding execution. During this
slump nearly every team LSU played managed to get 7 runs on the scoreboard before the fifth inning!
Especially against LSU's best pitcher, Anthony Renaudo, who was the starter on Friday nights last
season as a freshman. This season, an early injury kept him out, and he simply hasn't come back to last
season's form, up until now. But hope in Baseball, like a young man's fancy, springs eternal and the
Tigers are going to the SEC Tournament with hopes of winning a third straight Championship there and
playing in a College World Series Regional somewhere. Is there hope of another Alex Box Regional?
Scant indeed, but miracles do happen.
In previous years, I suffered through watching LSU baseball games on-line as provided by JUMP-TV,
but I finally gave up trying this year. I cancelled my subscription to Geaux after horrendous problems
early in the season last year and asked for a refund. None came. Not even an apology from
LSUSports.net and Athletic Department. My email pleas for help were answered by, "I will pass this
information on to someone to take care of."
That someone never even replied to me. If the games were
not broadcast on cable TV, I listened on radio, and never had a single problem with either. Internet
broadcasting of college baseball is a new medium, but it had better start acting like the old media or it
will completely dry up. When a baseball game is on and you're fighting to get a connection, and you're
paying for the privilege of being hassled, that's the sign of a failing system. Time to bail out and never
look back.
Del and I went to one baseball game this month, in Tulane's Turchin Stadium, to watch our grandson
Weslee Gralapp and his team, the Menard Eagles, play for a spot in the State Championship game.
Weslee's team was down, but came back to tie the game at the top of the last inning only to lose to
Curtis in the bottom of the ninth inning. Beautiful stadium with the sun setting over center field. Only bad
thing was the Curtis-leaning announcer who rooted for the Patriots instead of just announcing the game.
He rarely said "Eagles" but Patriots was constantly on his tongue. I'd like to see a rematch of these two
teams next year when Weslee will be playing in Right Field as a Senior for Menard.
Myopia and Cataracts
This month was filled with problems trying to get my review of Dr. Kaisu Viikari's book edited. I
decided to add to the Epilogue and in the middle of discussing the changes, my internet provider
decided to bounce the good Doctor's emails, deeming them to be SPAM. That took almost a week to
sort out, with the capable assistance of Vesa Loikas, her web master in Finland, who sent me the
bounced messages. I had to call tech support which gave me an address to send a message that "this is
not SPAM" and soon the editing process was working again. The Epilogue as it appears in the review of her Myopia book can be seen below in the Commentary Section.
Meanwhile, my experiment with throwing away my minus-lensed glasses is paying great dividends! (See photo of me sans eyeglasses above, right) I
can see clearly without my minus glasses, and I keep two pair of plus-lenses readily available to use
during close work, such as typing on my computer screen as I am now. A person with pseudo-myopia
caused by doing close work, as I am, can correct their eyes by wearing plus lenses to reduce the
accommodation spasms which are simply constantly tense muscles caused by focusing up close.
Reduce the accommodation spasm and one's nearsightedness will disappear. I was leery about this
working when I first read her book, "Understanding and Prevention of Myopia", but from my own
experience, I can tell you that her procedure works.
Wearing reading glasses (plus-lenses) to read, even if you are myopic and don't need them, will allow your eye muscles to relax and soon you may be able to see distance images clearly. That has been my experience. My normal prescription glasses are -2.5D and -2.0D and I no longer need to wear them while driving or watching TV. When reading a
book, I use my +1D reading glasses (+1 D and higher lenses are available at most drugstores) and
while watching TV or working on PC I wear my +.5 D reading glasses (which I had to order on-line).
I was wearing my plus lenses one day and walked past a mirror and removed them. I was looking at
my eyebrows and within a few seconds, I noticed my eyebrows were gradually, ever so slowly moving
down and the slight vertical frown between my two eyebrows was increasing. These two muscle
movements I've learned to recognize as signs of accommodation spasm setting in. When I put the plus
lenses back on, my eyebrows within minutes relax and move up and apart. This has been going on for
over five decades since I first began wearing minus-lens at age 17 and I was not aware of it.
What does all this mean to you? If you began wearing minus lenses after about age 5, likely you were
not myopic, but instead suffered from close work induced myopia or pseudo-myopia, and the switch to
plus lenses can be a great benefit to your eyesight and your general overall health. Long-term pseudo-myopia can lead to cataracts, glaucoma, retinal detachment, macular degeneration, intense migraine
headaches and a whole variety of nervous disorders.
What does it mean for your children? The enormous increase in the percentage of myopia among
Americans (See Epilogue below for details) is testimony to the damage being done by minus lenses to
our school age children. If you have small children, as soon as you see them doing close work, get them
some +3 or 2 D reading glasses so that when they hold their heads 6 inches from a coloring book their
eye muscles will not contracted into the beginning of a lifelong accommodation spasm. If they will wear
these in school, you can rest assured that they will be wrongly diagnosed as myopic and go on to a
lifelong experience of increasing minus-lenses with all the attendant health problems.
Dr. Viikari sent me an email to check out this website: http://www.preventcataract.org/ . I examined it
carefully and found that a Russian doctor has created eyedrops which dissolve cataracts. The active
ingredient is N-acetylcaprosine and the way it works is that the N-acetyl portion acts as a carrier for
the caprosine to enter the lenses of the eye. Once there, caprosine acts as an antioxidant to dissolve any
molecules linking together to form the dark molecular chains which constitute cataracts. This website is
run by a man who was diagnosed with cataracts requiring surgery and after several months of using the
eye drops, his cataracts were gone.
I have completed a month of using these eyedrops and they are the most comfortable eyedrops I have
ever used. My small cataracts from my last eye examination will likely be completely dissolved by my
next eye exam and I will have eliminated what seems to be the mandatory operation for friends my age,
the cataract removal operation. I will let you know how this proceeds. Meanwhile if you are concerned
about cataracts and would prefer eyedrops to the scapel, check out the website above for yourself.
TRIP TO ALEXANDRIA
On the way to Alexandria we stopped to see my dad, Buster, for a few minutes. Then we arranged to meet my brother Paul and his wife Joyce at Stallion's in Opelousas for dinner. The band started playing shortly after we finished eating and Paul and Del got to dance together. We arived at Kim and Wes' house and had time for me to view the new exterior of their home.
For about a year I have had a brochure for the now closed sawmill town of Long Leaf near
Alexandria, Louisiana. I asked our daughter and son-in-law who live there where it was and they had
never heard of it. On this trip up to celebrate Mother's Day, our grandson Thomas' 14th birthday and
his graduation from the 8th grade, I found the perfect opportunity to visit Long Leaf. Well, not exactly
perfect time; the previous weekend would have been perfect, as it was Heritage Weekend with lots of
visitors, and the sawmill steam locomotive train would have been running and taking passengers on
tours around the sawmill. When I arrived I was the only visitor, a young lady named Kathryn showed
me around the Museum. Two other visitors arrived later. But I was not allowed to walk around the
grounds of the sawmill, I only saw its building from the outside.
But there was a sawmill, no doubt much like the sawmill in the little town of Donner in which my mom
grew up and told me so much about. Mom's sawmill town is gone and the only remnants of its presence
are the brick walls of the sawmill which still stand. The sign on one of the exhibits for the Long Leaf Mill
says, "GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN", a phrase I used to end the poem I wrote about the Donner
Sawmill town. When the clear cutting of the old-growth Louisiana Cypress trees was done, the dikes
which held out the waters of the swamp were broken and everyone left the town.
At least in Long Leaf, the town remains and can come alive once a year for Heritage Days and anyone
can visit the town on days in-between. A school group of 12 or up can schedule a visit and they will fire
up the locomotive for the tour.
While I was locating and visiting Long Leaf, my son-in-law Wes was locating some 225 pounds of
crawfish for Thomas' party where some 20 or so 14-year-olds with voracious appetites were
converging. When I got back the crawfish were almost ready and soon I was enjoying some boiled
crawfish with Wes and some of his friends. Del was helping Kim get all the platters, drinks, and other
food out on the patio for the ladies and the teenage horde. It was a fun party and only the second time
we've left our new home for a few days since last Fall.
Mother's Day was the next day, and finding an available restaurant without an hour and a half wait was
not easy. Del and Barbara and Kim were patient as Wes finally located on his third try a restaurant that
had only a half hour wait because it was due to open in that time. We got served right away and
enjoyed some stir fry veggies, shrimp, and other goodies.
Del had hoped we could visit our niece Monique Matherne in Alexandria, but she was with her mother
for the day, so we decided to go home Sunday night instead of the next day. I did manage a drive-by
photograph of Monique's Veterinarian Clinic as we cruised by on the traffic circle on the way home.
LATCHES, SOUTH LAWN PATIO AND BIO-DYNAMIC TREATMENT
Del decided she wanted to improve the area around the park bench on the south edge of our lawn.
Instead of letting her make several trips back and forth to Home Depot for mulch, I drove us in the
Babe and the store's workers dumped the mulch in the bed of the pickup truck.
I went down to the
hardware aisle to look for latches with a photo of what I wanted in my camera. The guy took one look
and said, "Go to Neely's Hardware". I knew he meant Neeb's Hardware as I had used it before to
buy hard to find items, like a replacement glass door knob for our Four-plex on North Hagan. I
showed Neeb the photo and he walked about ten feet away, coming back with the exact latch I
wanted. He only had two, so I had him order two more. These will go on the bi-fold shutters we just
had installed to make it possible for us to keep the shutters open except in the event of a heavy wind
event as we get every few years around here.
Nice thing about owning a pickup is that you can leave stuff like large bundles of mulch in the truck and
slide out four or five bags into a cart to haul to where you need it. Del had Babin's crew add sand to
the patio area and install enough 16" tiles to make a small patio area for the park bench, planting more
St. Augustine sod to fill in the many open areas in the southeast and south area of the lawn. Then she
began digging up the area behind the bench to plant yellow knockout rose bushes, oleander bushes,
and lots of other flowering plants, until finally she had reached the edge of the azalea grove which
surrounds our bird bath.
It was time for us to do our second Bio-Dynamic Barrel Compost treatment of our mulch bed,
vegetable garden, and flower beds. For the first time in the ten years we've been doing this treatment,
we had some neighbors who were game to assist us, Connie and Don. Their garden is already beautiful
and bountiful, but they agreed to help us out and in exchange their garden also got its very first Bio-Dynamic treatment.
The process involves a large bucket of rain water, a handful of Barrel Compost, a
yardstick and some stirring and sprinkling. We also invited Fay and Otto to join us, another set of
backyard golf course neighbors, and we set up some candles, some wine, some nibbles, and about 8
pm, we threw in a handful of Barrel Compost and began stirring the water for the proper amount of
time. When that was done, Otto helped me by moving the cart with the bucket of water along the
garden and flower bed area as I sprinkled the water/compost mixture onto the plants using a long-handled car washing brush. It was dark by then, which is the proper time for applying the solution.
When we completed our areas, I turned the brush over to Don and he and Del maneuvered the cart
and water bucket to his and Connie's garden areas and sprinkled the rest of the mixture.
The rain fell later that night and washed the solution into soil where it will go to work encouraging the
growth of microscopic organisms and tiny insects in the soil which will help the plants to receive the
nutrients they need. Don and Connie's gardens were prime candidates for Bio-Dynamic treatment
because they already practiced organic gardening, eschewing the usage of chemical fertilizers and
insecticides. Chemical fertilizers and poisons kill the live organisms and insects which are beneficial to
plant growth. Bio-Dynamic treatment makes the plants healthier so that fertilizers are not needed and
the plant can resist the onslaught of insects.
LOST FRIEND AND NEW PRESIDENT
We lost a good friend this month, Sandra Tranchina. Del first met her when she began going to
Tallulah's Beauty Parlor. Sandra was the manicurist at that time, and later began to work on her own
and would do Doris's nails at her Woldenberg Assisted Living apartment. Along the way Sandra and
Del became good friends and I always liked talking to Sandra when she came over. She had a great
sense of humor and I always told the latest joke I had heard, just to hear her wonderful laugh. After her
son Michael died in January, Sandra took ill and went downhill very quickly. She kept up her spirits to
the very end, saying, "I am a steel magnolia, not a weeping willow." We will miss her bright smile and
easy grace.
Del was elected President of the Timberlane Garden Club, which is an honor for her and a relief for me.
A honor because she has garnered the respect and admiration of her fellow members. A relief for me
because I have had to help her for the past several years produce the Yearbook for the Club and as
President, she can appoint someone else to do that job.
THREE OFFSPRING SPRING INTO NEW HOMES
Out of our eight children, four have split up with their spouses in the past several years. Two stayed in
the family home and two moved into apartments. The two who moved into apartments are both moving
into houses within a week of each other, John and Maureen. The third, Rob, has remarried and will be
moving shortly into downtown Bloomington, Indiana.
Maureen was our first stop, in Metairie, on the way to John's house and she met us at the door and
showed us around. No furniture yet for her, she's about a week behind John. We had brought over to
her the boxes that John had used and she could use for packing up her kitchen and other stuff.
Del had taken a trip to help John pack up his kitchen before the move, and we went on a Saturday to
help him with some post move duties of hanging Venetian blinds and assembling a bookcase. I got
bookcase duty and had my portable drill all charged up and ready to go. I inspected the partial
assembly some college age kids had done before John stopped them, and I examined the several
discrepancies John had noticed. Soon it became clear that the outside molding had been installed with
the beveled edge inside instead of outside the frame, making the bookcase look wrong. I corrected that
mistake and then noticed that in the place in the instructions where a note on the diagram pointed to
pieces B and F and said, "NOTE CAREFULLY THE ALIGNMENT", the kids had not bothered to
read or follow that instruction and the top decorative bracket was installed upside down. Looked okay
till you discovered that it would not fit.
Along the way, I was able to give my ten-year-old going on 27
grandson Collin some hands-on experience hammering small nails to attach the rear panel of the
bookcase. At first he said, looking at the job I was about to do, "That's simple." Then I gave him the
hammer, showed him how I did it, and still he couldn't do it, not at first, but by following my lead he
was hammering the nails in straight (only bending one) and even indenting the head slightly as instructed.
John had made a counted cross-stitch of an Owl with two owlets in 1988 for his Gramps, Del's dad,
Dick, and Del had saved it from her parents apartment when her mom moved out. Recently Del got it
framed for John to hang in his new house where he is like that Owl father protecting his two young
sons, Kyle and Collin, and helping them to grow.
The next morning, Del announced that she was going over to help Maureen pack up her kitchen and
did so as I began to work on the final stages of my Digest for this month. Maureen's brother, Rob, is
the third one moving, sometime in late July, and I'll be driving up for one last visit to the Kerr Creek
house sometime in June.
TILL NEXT MONTH
Till we meet again in July, God Willing and the River Don't Rise. June will be full of fresh vegetables
from the garden, cucumbers, bell peppers, eggplants, okra, Creole tomatoes, potatoes, and snap
beans, among other things. There will be a French Festival saluting Jeanne d'Arc in the French Quarter,
Del and my Cat & Mouse Annual Dinner at Antoine's and ice cold watermelon when we come in from
cutting the St. Augustine on a hot afternoon. Whatever you do, wherever in the world you reside, be it
hot or cold, make it a great June for yourself! ! !
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Five Favorite Sufi Stories:
Since 1976 when I was first introduced to the Sufis, I have read hundred of Sufi stories whose origins go far back into history. Some of these stories have come into public knowledge, such the one about the Sufi trickster Nasruddin (portrayed in photo on a donkey) looking for his key under the streetlight instead of in the house where he lost it, "Because there is more light out here." Few people hold unanswered questions long enough to mine the spiritual and practical potential of these stories. If the one about the peach doesn't pique your attention, check your heart beat.
1. Nasruddin's Day in Court
One day Nasruddin was called to court. When he arrived, he was told that it was the custom of the city to select one resident to be Judge for a Day, and this year he had been selected. Nasruddin donned a judge's robe and took his place. He was introduced to the court as Judge and in came the first case for him to hear and judge.
First the Prosecuter came up to Nasruddin, and told him all the horrible things the Defendant did, and declared that the Defendant should be found guilty! Nasruddin looked at the Prosecuter and said, "I do believe you are right!"
The Bailiff was there to assist the judge in the orderly conduct of the trial, and quickly whispered into Nasruddin's ear, "But Judge, you haven't heard the Defense attorney speak yet." Nasruddin looked over to the Defense attorney and asked him to state the case for the defense.
The Defense attorney pleaded eloquently for the Defendant, explaining what a worthy man he has been all his life, and how he could not possibly have done all the things he is accused of. When the attorney was finished, Nasruddin looked at him and exclaimed, "I do believe you are right!"
Once more the Baliff rushed to Nasruddin's side and whispered into his ear, "But, Judge, they cannot both be right!"
Nasruddin looked at the Baliff and said, "I do believe you are right!"
2. Nasruddin Goes for a Ride
One day Nasruddin was invited to go riding with some of the local gentry. He showed up at the stable to see the finely dressed gentlemen up on their fine Arabian steeds, whereas he wore his everyday clothes. He saw Al-Kabn, the man who invited him, and asked, "Where is my horse?" The man pointed to a long-eared donkey without a saddle on it. Nasruddin immediately ran over to the donkey, jumped on it facing the rear end of the donkey, and grabbed hold of the reins with his left hand and the tail with his right hand. Al-Kabn said with a sneer, "Perhaps you are unaccustomed to the riding habits of gentlemen?" Nasruddin replied, "Perhaps you thought that I wouldn't notice that you palmed off on me a front-to-back donkey!"
3. A Master Goes On A Perilous Journey
Two men set out on a long journey through the desert wilderness. The first man was attacked by brigands and he fought them hand and foot, escaping barely with his life. No sooner had he resumed his journey as a lion jumped him, clawed him, and only by the greatest of effort was he able to slay the lion and resume his journey, only to find the well he was depending upon had gone dry, and he had to dig a new well in order to survive. When he arrived at the distant city, a crowd of people, seeing this man all scratched and torn up, rushed to hear his story and took him into town for a great feast to celebrate his great feats. The second man arrived shortly after the crowd had dissipated, having had nothing of consequence go wrong during his journey to the same city. Which man was the Master?
4. Tale of the Turkish Maiden
This tale is a famous Sufi story related by Idries Shah in his book,
Learning How to Learn which I read about 1978.
[page 65] It is related that Hiri was once asked to look after a Turkish
maiden by a Persian merchant who was going on a journey. Hiri became
infatuated with this girl and decided that must seek out his teacher,
Abu-Hafs the Blacksmith. Abu-Hafs told him to travel to Raiyy, there to
obtain the advice of the great Sufi Yusuf al-Razi.
When he arrived in Raiyy and asked people there where the sage's
dwelling was, they told him to avoid such a heretic and free-thinker,
and so he went back to Nishapur. Reporting to Abu-Hafs, he was told to
ignore the people's opinions of al-Razi, and seek him out again.
In spite of the almost unanimous urgings of the people of Raiyy, he
made his way to where al-Razi sat. There he found the ancient,
accompanied by a beautiful youth who was giving him a wine-cup.
Scandalized, Hiri demanded an explanation of how such a reverend
contemplative could behave in such a manner.
But al-Razi explained that the youth was his son and the wine-cup
contained only water, and had been abandoned by someone else. This was
the reality of his state, which everyone imagined to be a life of
dissolution.
But Hiri now wanted to know why the Sufi behaved in such a manner that
people interpreted it as heretical.
Al-Razi said: "I do these things so that people may not burden me with
Turkish maidens."
5. A Peach of a Story
If any of the previous stories left you feeling like you wanted someone to explain the meaning of the story to you, here's a story for you. Consider yourself as the pupil of the Sufi master in this story, as a young learner who was used to having someone explain the meaning of everything that happened and every story that was told.
The pupil was sitting at a table with his Master and there was a bowl with one large, ripe peach in it between them, closer to the Master's side of the table. He says, "Master, would you pass that peach to me?" The Master says, "Yes." and proceeded to eat all the flesh from the peach and then passed the barren peach pit to his student.
Hits (Watch as soon as you can. A Don't Miss Hit is one you might otherwise ignore or have missed previously.):
“Air Force” (1943) Howard Hawkes made this movie about the events surrounding Pearl Harbor when the crew of the B17 fondly named Mary Ann left from California before the Japanese attacks all over the Pacific Ocean and arrived at Hickham in Oahu right after the battle and had to fly to Wake Island and the Philippines, having to resurrect the Mary Ann from sure destruction to lead a bombing attack on the Japanese fleet heading for Australia. The story of the men of the crew and the rising of the Air Force as a separate arm of the military from the Army Air Corps is all in this incredibly fine movie. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “The Crossing” (2000) Jeff Daniels portrays General George Washington in his most perilous moment, when the America Revolution rode on Washington’s back and without his resolve to cross the Delaware, the war would have been lost. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! !
“The Edge of Love” (2008) about Dylan Thomas and the two ladies in his life which gave an edge to love which apparently he liked. Wrapped around with Dylan’s poetry, this movie takes us through the Blitz of London and ends in the countryside of Wales.
“Songcatcher” (2000) is a great look at an Appalachian family and their indigenous music. Aidan Quinn stars as the surly banjo player who seems like he’ll never warm to outlander music PhD come to exploit the music of the region. Was definitely worth a another look for us — was better the second time.
“My Cousin Vinny” (1992) In which a cousin from Brooklyn shows up in the boondocks of Mississippi to defend two young men accused of robbery & murder. Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei at their all-time best make this one a must, every time it comes on, like Top Gun and Ferris Bueller, A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! Life on Mars, Disk 1 (2008) In NYC, Harvey Keitel stars as the irascible boss of Sam who has plummeted back 33 years to an NYC that existed when he was three, only he’s a detective in the 1973 version of the police station of 2006! Is he in coma, a time traveler, or crazy. Sam would like to know, but he’s got a job to do as he finds out. A DON’T MISS HIT !!!
“The Lovely Bones” (2009) Tucci and Wahlberg star in this serial killer whose activities are monitored by those he killed. Life on Mars, Disk 2 (2008) In 1973 NYC Sam Tyler arrests his dad unknowingly as a kidnapper, and the lady in the red dress during his 4th birthday in the park turns out be a friend of his in his 1973 reprise. A DON’T MISS HIT !!! “Nine” (2009) Day-Lewis in his favorite role as philanderer plays Italian director and film maker who can’t make any more movies except one last movie about his entire life, this one. Music and dance fill the big screen in color and black & white. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Body of Lies” (2008) DiCaprio and Crowe star in this gripping Iraqi undercover mission which shows us who our real friends in the Middle East are. (2nd viewing, see also digest096) A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! “Powder Blue” (2009) Ray Liotta, Patrick Swayze, Lisa Kudrow, Kris Kristofferson etal on a Christmas Eve in L. A. have their lives as priest, mortician, and crooks intertwined.
“Amelia” (2009) Earhart asks with her life, “What do dreams know of boundaries?” Spectacular movie of her life, loves, and accomplishments. When she missed Howland Island on the last leg of her round-the-world flight, it was a man who let the battery of the direction finder on the island go dead. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Melinda and Melinda” (2004) Woody Allen idea for movie about a woman who shows up unexpected at a dinner party. Is it a comedy or a tragedy? Why not both? Two stories of one woman play out during interesting movie. If you missed it when it came out, it’s time to watch it. See also digest05c.
"Life on Mars", Disk 3 (2008) In 1973 NYC Sam Tyler encounters problems with women at every level. A DON’T MISS HIT !!!
“Crazy Heart” (2009) Jeff Bridges in a part one would expect Kris Kristopherson to play, a drunkard blues/country singer hits bottom after Annie (Maggie Gyllenhaal) leaves him and he comes back singing. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Phoebe in Wonderland” (2009) as everyone wondered what was going on with Phoebe, until she won the part of Alice in the school play and everyone began to love, understand, and take part in Phoebe’s Wonderland. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Where the Wild Things Are” (2009) a very fine rendition of a children’s story by Maurice Sendak. A young boy takes a journey to Oz, which like Dorothy, takes him inside himself, and longing for home again. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! "D-Day: The Sixth of June" (1956) with Robert Taylor as a married American Captain who fell in love with a British girl named Valerie. A great line: "A whole country became the voice and face of a single person." That’s what Valerie became for him. The unsatisfactory ending was necessary for it to pass the censors of the time. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Life on Mars” (2008) Disk 4 of 4 this set deals with women: Annie goes undercover as a stewardess to solve a murder and Rose gets Sam to talk to his four-year-old self, and Sam fights Vic. Plus we see for the first time Life on Mars as the last scene fades away and credits roll. The last episode is a MUST SEE! A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “The Messenger” (2008) stars two Iraqi vets whose job was to inform the Next of Kin of the death of their loved one. Heart-wrenching stories of coping with loss.
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.
“Sherlock Holmes” (2009) After several attempts to watch this turkey, which has as much to do with Sherlock Holmes as Humphrey Bogart has to do with musicals, we gave up halfway through. Time-Warner requires you to play through ALL THE PREVIEWS before you can watch this DVD. Wait for it to DVR it if you feel masochistic enough to watch it. A waste of Jude Law and Robert Downey’s talents and my time.
Your call on these — your taste in movies may differ, but I liked them:
“Life on Mars”, Series 1, Disk 1 (UK Version) (2006) Sam, in a coma, is detecting in 1973, thirty years before his coma life, and his attempts to use procedures not yet invented gets him in trouble, out of trouble, and makes him rather unpopular. Good enough to watch another disk, but we found a NYC Version.
“Friends with Money” (2006) gossip about friends with and without money and Frances McDormand finally shampoos her hair.
“The Secretary” (2002) Gyllenhaal and Spader in a warped tale of self-mutilation and repressed sexuality expressed in the confines of world’s weirdest office.
Adapted from a story told by Becky Allen's singing partner who heard it from Becky's mom.
Clothilde and Theophile had been flirting with each other on the bench every afternoon for many years at the retirement village. One day Clothilde said, "Theophile, you jest turned 90 and Ah'm almost 87, don't you think we should go to bed together after all these years we been friends?"
With that two lovers walked into Clothilde's room and consummated their friendship.
Afterwards, as they lay in bed together, Theophile looked over to Clothilde with a look of sadness on his face. "Clothilde, Ah want to apologize to you, Cher. Ah didn't know you was a virgin! Ah would have been more gentle with you."
Clothilde smiled back at him, "Bon Dieu, Theophile! If Ah'd known you could get it up, Ah would have taken my panty hose off!"
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5. RECIPE of the MONTH for June, 2010 from Bobby Jeaux’s Kitchen: (click links to see photo of ingredients, preparation steps) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Oyster-Artichoke Soup
Background on Oyster-Artichoke Soup:
This is a New Orleans standby and one that I have been wanting to cook for a long time, what with artichokes and oysters being Del and my favorite things. Here is the result. May you enjoy making and eating it yourself.
Preparation
Buy a quart of oysters. Drain the juice and separate the oysters, removing any pieces of shell. Use half the oysters and all the juice. (Or buy one pint of oysters and extra juice, clam juice can be used.)
Chop the green onions, parsley, and basil, keeping the green onions separate. Drain the artichoke hearts and discard the juice. Chop the hearts, removing all tough leaf-pieces.
Cooking Instructions
Melt butter and gradually add the flour, stirring constantly over low heat. Add the chopped green onions and garlic, simmering and stirring. Add the oyster liquid, stirring. Add the artichoke hearts, bay leaves, thyme, and Worcestershire Sauce. Simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the oysters, simmer until oysters are cooked (edges curl a bit), about 10 minutes or so. Then add the cream or evaporated milk. Sprinkle the chopped parsley and basil leaves on top and stir into soup. Return to simmer and it is ready to serve.
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.
Margaret Atwood brought me to first read Empson in 2002 after she credited him in several
places in her insightful book on writing, Negotiating with the Dead. I was working on my final paper
for Dr. Michael Paulsen's "Teaching & Learning in the College Classroom" and my subject was
The Live Lecturer in the Classroom. In that paper, I wrote:
While reading the classic book, Seven Kinds of Ambiguity by William
Empson, I had an insight. What I wrote in the top margin of page 14 was this,
"Who is the other when I'm reading but myself?" Suddenly I had the answer
to this unanswered question that I had been holding for some three years.
Here is where my insight comes in. It's so simple, it's hard to explain. The
other is my self. When I am reading, I am receiving direct mind-to-mind
communication, not from the author to my self, but from my self to my self!
Said differently: when I read, I can only make sense of what I'm
reading if my mind is receiving direct communication from the me that exists
at the point right before I read the next word or phrase or sentence. For me
to understand what I'm reading, a part of me must already understand most
of what the next sentence is going to contain. The me that already knows
communicates with the me that doesn't know as the words proceed into my
thoughts, mind-to-mind. Thus, while one part of me was reading Empson's
words, another part was doing the live lecture using Empson's lesson plan.
Empson's book was put aside after that course, partially read, until I stumbled upon Michael
Wood's quotation from it in this passage from London Review of Books 17 December 2009:
[page 10, LRB] Honour itself is not a patient word, and Empson also likes to
talk of self-respect, as in the following brilliant passage from Seven Types of
Ambiguity:
people, often, cannot have done both of two things, but they
must have been in some way prepared to have done either;
whichever they did, they will have still lingering in their minds
the way they would have preserved their self-respect if they
had acted differently; they are only to be understood by
bearing both possibilities in mind.
With the impetus provided by Wood's article, I picked up Empson's book and read the rest of
it and will hazard to review it. This is a dense book, full of literary references and language which many
will find indecipherable — I certainly found my share of unanswered questions along the way, but also
many gems which sparked from the pages of the book and whose facets reflected in my mind. I will
endeavor to share some of those facets with you.
Here's a salient example, from the beginning of Empson's Preface to the Second Edition, 1947,
in which he discusses the problems of coming back to edit one's own works years later.
[page vii] It seemed the best plant to work the old footnotes into the text, and
make clear that all the footnotes in this edition are second thoughts written
recently. Sometime the footnotes disagree with the text above them; this may
seem a fussy process, but I did not want to cut too much. Sir Max Beerbohm
has a fine reflection on revising one of his early works; he said he tried to
remember how angry he would have been when he wrote it if an elderly
pedant had made corrections, and how certain he would have felt that the man
was wrong.
In attacking the profundities of Empson's subject and trying to discern the differences in the seven
types, one would do well to hold his advice in mind:
[page vii, viii] Apart from trailing my coat(1)
about minor controversies, I
claimed at the start that I would use the term 'ambiguity' to mean anything
I liked, and repeatedly told the reader that the distinctions between the Seven
Types which he was asked to study would not be worth the attention of a
profounder thinker.
Empson quotes Mr. James Smith's review of his book which says, "A poem is a noumenon
rather than a phenomenon." Translated into Korzybski's words, "a poem is What Is Going On, not
a Map of What Is Going On." The poem is an object itself as distinct from a perceived object, i. e.,
there is always more going on in a poem than what a reader can perceive, so that anyone who calls
a poem bad is describing more what is going on in one's head than in the poem itself. On page 8,
Empson writes, "It is more self-centered, and less reliable, to write about the poems you have thought
bad than about the poem you have thought good." Why? Good poems are good in unique ways, and
"you must rely on each particular poem to show the way in which it is trying to be good." (Page 7)
Critics, especially those who dote on bad poems or literature, are like "barking dogs" of two
sorts, "those who merely relieve themselves against the flower of beauty, and those, less continent,
who afterwards scratch it up."
[page 9] I myself, I must confess, aspire to the second of these classes;
unexplained beauty arouses an irritation in me, a sense that this would be a
good place to scratch; the reasons that make a line of verse likely to give
pleasure, I believe, are like the reasons for anything else; one can reason
about them; and while it may be true that the roots of beauty ought not to be
violated, it seems to me very arrogant of the appreciative critic to think that
he could do this, if he chose, by a little scratching.
Unleash a critic of Empson's sensibilities upon ambiguity and it's amazing to me that he only
uncovered seven types!
[page 25] Among metaphors effective from several points of view one may
include, by no great extension, those metaphors which are partly recognized
as such and partly received simply as words in their acquired sense. All
languages are composed of dead metaphors as the soil of the corpses, but
English is perhaps uniquely full of metaphors of this sort, which are not dead
but sleeping, and, while making a direct statement, color it with an implied
comparison.
My poem below was inspired by the above passage which hints at how ambiguity may arise from
implied comparisons:
Sleeping Beauties in my prose —
I'll have none of those.
Give me ones who
spring to liveliness
Without the need of
slobbery kiss.
Let not one dare re-awake
till I my terminal period make.
Please pay respect to my acuity
if you find an unintended ambiguity —
It is apt to happen, now and then,
that one should split in twain and twin.
The ambiguities in the next stanza by Browning are rife, and yet resolve into a beautiful song
before the terminal period.
I want to know a butcher paints,
A baker rhymes for his pursuit,
Candlestick-maker, much acquaints
His souls with song, or, haply mute,
Blows out his brains upon the flute.
One of the more offensive conversational ploys to come into recent popularity is making verbal
quotes with two fingers of two raised hands. One wonders if such people could communicate with
their hands tied behind their backs. In written text, the habit of quotes or italics around one word for
emphasis is equally egregious. One may use such artifacts until one learns to write in such a way that
they are not needed, rather as one soon learns to walk as a child without leaning upon nearby objects.
[page 28] . . . the practice of putting single words into italics for emphasis . .
. [ is ] vulgar; a well-constructed sentence should be able to carry a stress on
any of its words and should show in itself how these stresses are to be
compounded.
It is easy to be confused by the prolix of spelling and punctuation which fill Shakespeare's plays.
Empson points out that our confusion is merely a consequence of having frozen the forms of words
and punctuation since then. One does better to consider the leeway which we can have when reading
Shakespeare. ". . . the Elizabethan rules of punctuation trusted to the reader's intelligence and were
more interested in rhetoric than in grammar." (Page 134)
[page 83, 84] One must consider . . . that the Elizabethans minded very little
about spelling and punctuation; that this must have given them an attitude to
the written page entirely different from our (the reader must continually have
been left to grope for the right word); that from the comparative slowness, of
reading as of speaking, that this entailed, he was prepared to assimilate
words with a completeness which is now lost; that only our snobbish oddity of
spelling imposes on us the notion that one mechanical word, to be snapped up
by the eyes, must have been intended; and that it is Shakespeare's normal
method to use a newish, apparently irrelevant word, which spreads the
attention thus attracted over a wide map of the ways in which it may be
justified.
Can you spot the pattern in Othello's words, "the flinty and steel couch of war"? We have a noun
and noun of noun, a flinty couch and a steel couch of war or taken together "the flint and steel with
which you fire your gun." (Page 90) Or in this one from Hamlet (page 91), "Even to the teeth and
forehead of our faults." Or this one from Measure for Measure, "Whether it be the fault and glimpse
of newness" (Page 92). Or this one of the form "by noun and noun, the noun": "As when, by night and
negligence, the fire is spied". There is a good reason this usage seems familiar.
[page 94] . . . Shakespeare uses it very often; it has been drummed,
therefore, into the ears of his reader till they take it for granted.
Within the book and volume of my brain.
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper.
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind.
The pales and forts of reason.
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
The whips and scorns of time.
The natural gates and alleys of the body.
After reading all these examples of the form, I could not resist incorporating the form into a poem
I was writing for an annual event in which my club members invite their ladies to a formal dinner at
Antoine's Restaurant in the French Quarter and read poems to them.
In this year and night of mirth we come here
To feast and fete you ladies with our song.
Let us lift our Spirit and our Task to Thee
Whose voices and shapes to Heav'n belong —
While we Earth-bound, and bound to worship Thee,
Loose our tongue and spirit with our melody.
What could stay our chorus on this night
But a look and sigh of Love from Thee
Upon my fellow romantics and me.
Hold but a minute and a smile aright
And we will hold our glasses high to Thee
To toast the Love that you have shown to them and me.
This next poem by Pope about old women, seems to me most true about women of the country
club set for whom beauty is the be all and end all of their otherwise empty lives. It is droll to imagine
the ghosts of beauty haunting the wrinkles where formerly beauty lived. They marry the convivial
young stud lubricated by martinis who grows into an alcoholic slug.
[page 149] As hags hold sabbats, not for joy but spite,
So these their merry miserable night;
So round and round the ghosts of beauty glide,
And haunt the places where their honor died.
See how the world its veterans rewards.
Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,
Young without lovers, old without a friend;
A fop her passion, and her prize a sot;
Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot.
Empson suggests that it was the study of Hebrew, especially the Old Testament, and the English
versions of the Bible that helped create our tolerance and even penchant for ambiguity.
[page 193] The study of Hebrew, by the way, and the existence of English
Bibles with alternatives in the margin, may have had influence on the capacity
of English for ambiguity; Done, Herbert, Jonson, and Crashaw, for instance,
were Hebrew scholars, and the flowering of poetry at the end of the sixteenth
century corresponded with the first thorough permeation of the English
language by the translated texts. This is of interest because Hebrew, having
very unreliable tenses, extraordinary idioms, and a strong taste for puns,
possesses all the poetical advantages of a thorough primitive disorder.
With Egyptian hieroglyphics, we find the seventh type of ambiguity most strongly, the one in which
the two meanings of a word can be opposite to one another. One word could mean both young and
old, with only a gesture in spoken language available to distinguish the baby from the old man. In
writing, a hieroglyph could be present to indicate which is meant and to trigger the extra hieroglyph
when required.
Here we are, having survived the seven types of ambiguity and still possessing a working sense
of humor, we hope. We have learned a bit about ambiguity and how it brings a liveliness and freshness
to poetry. We have discovered the freedom of Elizabethan poetry which required neither a belt of
exact spelling nor any suspenders of grammatical punctuation, instead it simply hung upon the page
and awaited our pleasure for the dressing or undressing of meaning. To paraphrase my favorite poet,
Samuel Hoffenstein, "Lives there a man with hide so tough, who thinks seven types of ambiguity are
not enough?"
For what reason should you read this story? Well, there's a story behind the reason.
[page 8] When the great 13th Century Sufi teacher Nizamuddin Awliyya was ill, his
disciple Amir Khusru — the eminent Persian poet — recited to him this Sufi
allegory. To mark this event, Nizamuddin on his recovery placed this benediction
upon the book:
"Who hears this story will, by divine power, be in health."
With these words, Amina Shah, the daughter of the eminent Sufi author, Idries Shah, begins her telling
of the tale of the four dervishes and King Azad Bakht. These 144 pages will seem to fly by as you read
theses tales, but for any readers who think the stories are too long, consider this: these stories have been greatly condensed by the oldest weapon in the arsenal of story tellers, a weapon which is brandished to lop off great sections of story on many occasions, namely, "to make a long story short"! Shah adds this
note:
[page 8] It is widely believed that the recitation of the story will restore to health the ailing,
and that the allegorical dimensions of the adventures of the Dervishes contained in it are part of a
teaching-system which prepares the mind of the Seeker-after-Truth for spiritual enlightenment.
Be prepared to be a bit confused by some of the stories, especially to those academic types who bring
their already full teacup to the dervishes' long tea party. Empty your mind of expectations and allow the
fragrant aroma of Sufi tea to fill your nostrils as these stories unfold. And unfold is meant literally: after my
first reading of the book I went through it a second time (in a paperback edition I no longer have) to track
the enfolded complexity of the myriad of stories. I started with a horizontal line and each time a new story
was entered, I dropped down a half inch, then drew a horizontal line until either a new story was entered (if
so, line dropped down) or the story ended (line returned back up). The major lines are the stories of the
four dervishes plus that of King Azad Bakht, interspersed with stories of Princess of Damascus, The
Generosity of Hatim Tai, and Prince of Nimroz, plus many smaller stories too numerous to put into the
Table of Contents.
Note that Shah advised us to hear the story, not just read it. During my earlier readings of the story
back in 1988, I did not take the opportunity to read it to someone, but enjoyed it in solitude. For this new
reading, my wife and I read the stories of the book to each other during an automobile trip one weekend.
We each got to hear a recitation of the story of the Four Dervishes.
My first impression after this recitation was to compare the stories of the Four Dervishes and Azad
Bakht to those of Odysseus in the Odyssey of Homer. Those stories were recited from memory for
centuries before the invention of writing became necessary due to the evolution of human consciousness.
Humans became no longer able to envision the epic tales of Odysseus directly because they had lost their
spiritual sight which had allowed them to view epic tales directly. Soon only a few humans could view the
tales and recited aloud to those who couldn't. At that point in human consciousness, writing was invented
and luckily the tales of the Odyssey and the Iliad were quickly written down, likely by Homer initially. It is
possible that these Sufi tales, like the epic tales of Homer, were not written down at all until recently and
that Homer himself (or some other ancient Greek story-teller) heard the Tales of the Four Dervishes and
was inspired to create the epic stories of the Trojan War in a similar fashion. Like this book, the Odyssey
consists of adventures by a man who must at various points tell his life story, which grows progressively
more interesting with each stop along his way home, and listen to the stories of the others he encounters
along the way.
If there is some validity to the Dervish Tale preceding the Homeric epics, then it's possible that the
Greek custom of xenia, the concept of hospitality, or generosity, and courtesy shown to those who are far
from home, originated in the Tale of the Four Dervishes, for in each tale, one of the Dervishes is abandoned
helpless and penniless, far from home, and dependent upon the kindness of strangers. In every case, the
Dervish, a King in his own right as was Odysseus, is taken in by a stranger, fitted with the finest clothes, fed
the most sumptuous foods, and given an apartment to live in for as long as he desired. Only after the
vagabond had been dutifully fed, bathed, rested, and clothed was he asked for an explanation of how he
arrived in his host's environs.
The story begins with the great King in Istanbul, Azad Bakht, who turned forty years old, and faced
the attack of gray hairs appearing each day in his beard in increasing numbers, and he was yet without an
heir, a son, to whom he could turn over his fortune. He was distressed beyond consolation, and retired to
his private rooms and refused to come out. Meanwhile his country fell into ruin and his Vizir hazarded to
interrupt his King who came out to set his kingdom right again. But something strange happened.
[page 11, 12] One day, the King read in a book that if anyone was oppressed with
grief which could not be cured by any human act, he should visit the tombs of the
dead. 'For,' it said in that manuscript, 'have not all of them left behind their riches
and possessions, homes and offspring, horses and elephants, and are lying there
alone? All those worldly advantages have been of no use to them, and how have
they settled their accounts with God? Having thought about all these things, the
flower of a man's heart will always bloom. It will not wither in any circumstances.'
Azad Bakht decided to dress humbly and exit the palace at night unseen so as to visit a cemetery as
the book suggested. He creeps at last towards a flame where four men he took might be dervishes were
gathered about a flame. Not wishing to risk his life, he decided to listen to them awhile to be sure they were
dervishes and therefore trustworthy. This is how the stories began.
[page 13] They took out their water-pipes, and started to smoke, and each reclined
on his mattress. Then, one of them said: 'O Brothers of Freedom, friends in mutual
pain, and wanderers over the world! Let us each tell our story, for have we not met
on this same spot for pure companionship? Tomorrow's events are not known;
whether we will remain together or part forever, is not yet decided. Let us pass this
night in talking, and each will tell his own tale.'
The others nodded in agreement, and the First Dervish began to speak.
The first Dervish was the son of a wealthy merchant who passed an early life of carefree luxury until at
the age of fourteen, he took over his father's estate when both his parents died. He followed the advice of
all the people he hired to assist him, but with his interest in drinking and gambling to excess, soon whatever
had not been lost by neglect from his father's estate had been plundered by his own servants for their own
use. Soon he was broke, hungry, thirsty, and all alone. His sister takes him in, feeds, clothes, and sets him
up in a business of trading with Damascus. Soon he meets the Princess of Damascus with whom he has
fallen in love and asks her to tell him her story.
After her story the two of them set out together on horses, she dressed as a man, and when they came
upon a great river, the Dervish asked her to stay as he sought a ford or a ferry. When he returned, she had
disappeared and he was left disconsolate, tearing his clothes, became an vagabond fakir, searching without
luck for her everywhere. He was at the end of his wits and endurance.
[page 35] Eventually, I came to a mountain. The idea suggested itself to me that I
should climb it, and throw myself from the top, ending my existence and therefore
an insupportable misery.
When I was about to cast myself upon the rocks below the mountain,
someone touched my arm. I looked around and saw a horseman dressed in green,
with a veil over his face. He said to me: 'Why try to destroy your life? Despair is
unfaithfulness towards God. While there is breathing, there is hope. A few days
from now, three dervishes will meet. Like you, they are entangled in difficulties;
they have had problems and experiences like your own. The King of the country of
Rum is named Azad Bakht. He, too, is in great distress. When he meets you four,
the heart's desire of every one of you will be fulfilled!'
I caught hold of his stirrup and kissed it, saying: 'O Friend of God! What
you have said has consoled me. Please tell me, in God's Name, who you are.'
He said: 'I am Ali. My function is that whenever anyone is in trouble, I am
there to succor him.' As soon as he had spoken, he disappeared.
At this miraculous intervention, I felt much encouraged, and, following the
advice of this spiritual guide, I set off for Istanbul, in Rum. After the hardships that
were my lot on that journey, I have encountered you. We have met. We have
conversed. It only remains for us to encounter King Azad Bakht. When we do, we
shall surely gain the desire of our hearts. O Spiritual Guides! Let us pray that our
problems may be resolved.'
Azad Bakht, still in concealment, and having listened with great attention to
this tale, started to listen to the story of the Second Dervish.
This is a thumbnail of the tale of the first Dervish, and hospitality, or generosity, and courtesy the
succeeding tales will each end in a similar way with the appearance of the green-veiled horseman and a
promise that each will soon receive their heart's desire. The green-veiled horseman can be seen as a Christ
figure, in the time before Christ appeared on the Earth and took human form, a figure who came when
someone was in dire straits and offered them hope if they would but just allow their life on Earth to play out
without their own termination of it.
After the second tale, King Azad Bakht returns to his palace in order to greet the dervishes and when
they arrive, he asks the third and fourth Dervish to relate their stories to him. When they are unwilling to do
so, Azad Bakht relates his own tale to them which is epic in its own telling, taking up the middle half of the
book. Azad as a young king questioned his Vizir who claimed that a merchant in a far-off land had a dog
which wore a collar with twelve rubies on it as large as the one the youth Azad had spent his days admiring.
Azad found the story incredulous and threw the Vizir into the dungeon "Until someone brings proof of the
existence of such an unlikely dog". The tale unwinds with the Vizir's daughter disguising herself to find the
man with the dog and the two cages he carried with him in which two sorrowful men are kept and fed on
the leavings of the dog. This incredible tale involves the man showing repeated hospitality, generosity, and
courtesy to his good-for-nothing brothers who find themselves penniless until he rescues them and they
repay kindness attempting to kill him. Finally, the man is forced by the public nature of his two brothers
crimes to promise to imprison them forever and treat them lower than any dog.
Soon we hear the tales of the third and fourth dervish and, as the succoring green-veiled horsemen had
promised, the heart's desire of the four Dervishes and that of Azad Bakht are fulfilled. In the course of
reading only this review, you have tasted this story — but not in full, rather you have tasted it as one who
might to Antoine's Restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans, ask for a menu, read it, and then
proceed to eat the menu itself. Could such a person be said to have tasted the food of the famous
restaurant? Get a willing friend and begin the recitation at the earliest possible moment, you are in for a feast
of epic proportions which will enrich your life beyond measure.
In the Preface we are given a passage of Steiner's introduction to these lectures by Guenther
Wachsmuth, which is a different translation of the text on pages 7 and 8. Rudolf Steiner spoke in German, I
prefer to share his speaking about reincarnation and the Mysteries from this translation. He deals with an
often neglected aspect of successive incarnations: that the world we arrive in has changed between them.
[page I, Preface] Just as the evolution of man in the various regions and in these
successive periods of human life takes on different forms, such is the case also with
everything that we designate as 'the system of the Mysteries.' We do not pass in
our soul through successive lives on earth meaninglessly, but for the reason that we
experience something new every incarnation and can add this to what we have
united with our soul life in the preceding incarnations. The visible external world has
in most cases completely changed its appearance when we enter again through birth
into the physical existence of the human being, after having passed through the
spiritual world between death and this new birth. For reasons, therefore, easily
understood, the nature of the Mysteries, the principle of initiation, must change in
successive epochs.
Another aspect that Garber writes about is how Steiner describes the right way of thinking about our
brain. He says, in effect, that materialistic science, which claims that thinking proceeds from the brain, has
placed the cart of the physical brain before the horse of thinking. Rightly understood, it is thinking which pulls
along the brain, helping it to evolve over the ages to match the evolution of thinking. Right thinking in this
lifetime prepares in us the ability to mold our brain in future incarnations. Hard, materialistic thinkers in this
lifetime will become weak thinkers in their next lifetime. Garber quotes Steiner:
[page III, Preface] Thus all activity of the brain is the result of thinking — not the
reverse — even in the course of history. The brain has been plastically molded by
thinking. If only such thoughts are formed as are customary at the present time, if
thoughts are not permeated by the wisdom of the Spirit, then the souls of human
beings who occupy themselves today only with materialistic thinking will not be able
in later incarnations rightly to mold their brain, since their forces will no longer be
able to take hold of the brain, having become too weak.
One reads of ancient people who took long travels to visit places for inspiration and to learn of various
Mysteries. There was a time, when if one wanted to learn of the Delphic Oracle in Greece,
one had to visit the site itself, or to learn of Egyptian mysteries, one had to visit Egypt, but
that is no longer true in our time. Now one has only to travel within oneself. As Collison says
in the Introduction on page 5, "Wisdom now has less of a local character — formerly one
had to travel to places of Initiation."
When a man achieves an ability for direct knowing, of being able to perceive in a flash what must be
done, it is difficult for him to explain the situation to others.
[page 13] Then perhaps he is asked by those about him: "Why should we do that?"
To be sure, when he can appreciate the other person's point of view he will always
be able to account for this from the stage on which he is standing and where he sees
as it were in a flash what has to be done, and take his stand beside the other, where
he forces himself to follow the train of thought of ordinary life in order to show what
proof there is for what he sees through in a flash. This rapid comprehension of
widely varying and complicated circumstances of life is that which appears as a
phenomenon accompanying the faculty of rising above personal opinions and views
and standpoints.
What makes Rudolf Steiner so valuable a lecturer is that he does the process described in the passage
above so very well. It has often been reported that Steiner would custom-shape his lectures for the specific
individuals who showed up in his audience, clearly he did this so that he could stand alongside them both to
speak to them in ways they would understand and about subjects foremost in their minds at the time.
In a remarkable passage below, Steiner reveals what happens to the amoral or immoral, those who are
amoral by omission or immoral by commission, when they spend time between their death and a new birth.
They become agents of destruction acting upon the physical world.
[page 31] It is a fixed law that is evident here. The seer perceives how souls that
have passed through the Gate of Death and whose previous disposition was towards
slackness of conscience or unconscientiousness in their dealings, for a certain
period between death and a new birth make themselves into servants who must
cooperate in bringing about diseases, illnesses, and untimely deaths into the
physical sense-world.
[page 33] . . . they will have as souls to be servants of the god or gods of Opposition,
those gods who place particular obstacles in the path of evolution. And these again
are the spirits who are under the rule of Ahriman.
Where does this slackness of conscience come from? In another book, Steiner relates how the age of
maturity in our time is 27 years old. That age has decreased to its present levels from a high of 55 or so
during ancient times in India. Back then, an old person was revered and respected and sought out for
advice. Why? Because, regardless of what a person did, when a human reached the age of 55, they were
automatically more intelligent and wiser than a 40-, 30-, or 27-year-old person. Today the age of
automatically wiser is 27-years-old and a person reaching that age is smarter than a 25-, 20-, 15-year-old
person. What happens after the age of 27 today? If the person does not study further and coasts along in the
work place, enjoying a busy job, and afterward lots of leisure time and ease, that person gets older, but not
smarter, and at age 55 is not any smarter or wiser than at age 27.
Steiner is a seer and it is from his own personal experience that he reports what a seer can see, but he
also knows that what he sees is true because his own perceptions match those of other seers in so many
ways. An example of this was that he was able to head up the German Section of the Theosophical Society
because what he taught from his own seer-ship matched that of the age-old teachings of the Society.
[page 31] To take another example, we can look at that which the seer learns when
he turns his attention to a quality that is very widespread among men — the desire
for ease and comfort. This desire for ease and comfort is really more widely spread
than one generally thinks. People indulge far more in indolence than one realizes.
Men are indolent in their thinking, indolent in their manner and behavior. And
particularly indolent do they appear when they are required to alter their thinking or
their habits. If men were not so ease-loving in their innermost souls it would not so
often have happened when the necessity arose for learning anything fresh, that they
resisted it. They struggled against it because it is uncomfortable to have to unlearn
anything.
When I was taking Philosophy 101 in college, a farm boy in our class during some discussion mentioned
that he had noticed, as had many other farmhands, that if one dug postholes for a fence during a full moon,
there was always more dirt left over than if one dug the same postholes during a new moon. We debated the
merits of his observation and even proposed that we put it to the test, but that was impractical, so it has
remained an unanswered question in my mind, up until now. Steiner mentions the tale of Gustav Theodor
Fechner who studied the Moon and came to the conclusion that more rain occurs around the Full Moon than
around the New Moon. Steiner says, "There were many people who wanted to prove their scientific learning
by laughing at Gustav Theodor Fechner and his studies of the Moon." (Page 37) A test was made by a
famous botanist, Schleiden, and Fechner. Their wives captured water for their laundry once a month,
Schleiden's wife was asked to capture her water during the New Moon and Fechner's during the Full.
Fechner's wife had more water every month!
I postulate that the reason for more dirt being left over during
the Full Moon than other times of the month was due to the extra rain which falls on average near the Full
Moon — the extra moisture in the soil leading to a greater density and thus a reduction in the amount of
compaction it could withstand when placed into a posthole. Therefore more dirt would be left over during a
Full Moon post-holing expedition.
[page 38] Thus, I might say in an ironic fashion, a decision was reached, to which,
however, we attribute no great importance now. Later, however, it will emerge that
everything — sunlight, sun-heat and also the other stellar influences — will make
their influence felt on the plant world.
As we go through grades in school, the arithmetic we learn in grades 1-4 we use in higher grades, the
algebra we learn in grade 8, we use again in high school and college, and so on, what we learn at early
grades we use again in a repetition of learning at other levels. It should come as no surprise that similar
repetition occurs at all levels in the evolution of the cosmos and of humanity.
[page 66] Everything that appears at a certain time in the evolution of humanity, in
order to bring this evolution forward, must in a certain sense contain a kind of
repetition of what has gone before. In every later epoch the earlier experiences of
humanity must again appear, only in a fresh form. We know that it was especially
the sentient soul which was concerned in the third post-Atlantean epoch; the
intellectual or rational soul in the fourth or Greco-Roman; and that in the [fifth
period] in which we ourselves are living, it is the consciousness soul that should
come especially to its development.
From the time of the sentient soul when humans were beginning to understand the cosmic forces coming
from the stars through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, there came into being King Arthur and his Round
Table of twelve knights, each knight representing one of the signs. These knights carried out purges in the
sentient world of monsters and giants which represented the purification of the human astral body. In the
Legend of Arthur and his duty-bound knights we have preserved for us a vivid image of the purification we
each must go through in our own astral body if we are to progress as full human beings of the fifth period.
[page 68, 69] . . .those [cosmic] forces during the fifth period inspired certain
persons; so that in the dawn of the fifth period there were persons who, not exactly
through their training but through certain mysterious influences which operated,
became the instruments, the vehicles of cosmic influences issuing from the sun and
moon during their passage through ,the Signs of the Zodiac. Such Mysteries as
could then be won for the human soul through these individuals constituted the
repetition of that which was once experienced through the sentient soul. And the
persons who expressed the transit of the cosmic forces through the Signs of the
Zodiac, were those who were called" The Knights of King Arthur's Round Table."
There were twelve of them, and they were surrounded by a number of other men,
but they themselves were the principal knights. The other persons represented the
starry host; into them flowed the inspirations which were more distantly distributed
in cosmic space; but into the twelve knights flowed the inspirations which came from
the twelve directions of the Zodiac. And the inspirations which came from the
spiritual forces of the sun and moon were represented by King Arthur and his wife
Guinevere. Thus in King Arthur's Round Table we have the humanized Cosmos.
What we may call the pedagogical high school for the sentient soul of the West,
proceeded from King Arthur's Round Table. Hence we are told — and the legend
here refers in pictures of external facts to inner Mysteries which were taking place
in the dawn of that period in the human soul — how the Knights of King Arthur's
Round Table wandered through the earth and slew monsters and giants. What is
here presented in external pictures points to those efforts which have been made
with the human souls who were to advance in the refining and purifying of those
forces of the astral body which expressed themselves for the seer in those pictures
— the pictures of monsters, giants and the like. Thus everything that the sentient
soul was to experience through the later Mysteries is bound up with the conceptions
of King Arthur's Round Table.
This is no easy matter to comprehend, but if we follow Steiner's presentation to the end, we find the
Round Table Legend representing the evolution of Man's sentient soul, the Grail Legend that of our
intellectual soul, and the Parsifal Legend that of our consciousness soul. Whatever attraction these legends
have yet today stems from these underlying connections, which for non-Initiates remain unconscious, but
nevertheless very real.
[page 73] Thus the Secrets of the Grail referred to the permeation with new wisdom
of the intellectual or mind-soul.
[page 79] . . . and all that finds expression in the figure of Parsifal, this ideal of the
later Initiation, in so far as this later Initiation is dependent upon the consciousness
soul, represents the forces which must especially be made our own through that
which we call the consciousness soul.
Our consciousness soul must come to deal with the vacuity of modern materialistic thinking, which uses
its sharpened rational thinking to arrive at such concepts as the "heart as a pump", "motor neurons", and
worst of all, "the brain as the origin of thoughts". Treating the brain as the origin of thought is the most
materialistic of all the concepts being taught to our children in standard schools today, schools which rightly
understood, should be called substandard. What would educators do if they understood their prominent
mode of teaching our children today will lead these children inexorably to become imbeciles in successive
incarnations?
[page 81, 82] That which man has been learning for some time, that which is
considered the right thing to give to a child and to instil into it, and that which is
taken as the foundation of the newer education, is not to be judged merely in
accordance with the fact that someone who considered himself clever says he
understands things and they are absolutely true; but everything is to be judged
according to how it affects the soul and fructifies it, and what impressions it
produces upon it. And when a person becomes cleverer and cleverer in the sense in
which it is the fashion today to call people clever, he develops within his soul forces
which perhaps even in this incarnation make him very capable of dominating the
conversation where one wants to live materialistically or monistically, but then
certain vital forces which ought to be within the human organism wither.
And when
such a soul has taken into itself only these extraordinary dregs of modern
education, it lacks in the next incarnation into which it enters the forces for properly
building up the organism. The more understanding, the "cleverer" one is in an
incarnation with regard to the time which we are approaching, so much the more
imbecile is he in a later incarnation. For those categories and concepts which relate
only to sense-existence and to such ideas as hold external existence together, set
up such a configuration in the soul as may be ever so fine intellectually, but which
loses the intensive force for working on the brain and for making use of the brain.
And to be unable in the physical body to make use of the brain means to be
imbecile.
We ignore these soul forces to our own peril and that of our children. Unless we come to understand
that our thoughts work upon shaping and forming the brain, the soul forces we bequeath to our next
incarnation will be inadequate to work upon our brain, and we will become soft-headed and incompetent.
The materialists who claim the heart is a pump cannot explain how the circulation of blood precedes the
development of the heart. I have seen a movie clip of the so-called beating heart in a fetus at a time when the
heart was merely an enlarged area in the blood stream. Yes, it was pulsing, but this nascent heart was not
capable of pumping, in my opinion, it was merely acting as a tiny hydraulic ram which interrupted the blood
flow as to facilitate the oxygenation of the blood by the turbulence created. Another example, the eye was
formed by the presence of sunlight which had to precede the existence of the eye. The irritation caused by
sunshine impinging upon the eyes led to the creation of a sensory organ to perceive what the light contained.
If we had some equivalent means of viewing the evolution of the brain over aeons of time, we would notice
brain being built up by thoughts, just as the eye was built up by the presence of sunlight.
[page 82, 83] If what the materialists maintain were the truth, namely, that the
brain does the thinking, then one could certainly give them some comfort. But this
assertion is not true; it is as false as the other assertion that the" center of speech"
has created itself. It has created itself through the fact that men learned to speak,
and hence the center (or agent) of speech is the result of speech. Similarly all
cerebral activity even in history is the result of thinking-not the other way about.
The brain is plastically modeled through thinking. If only such thoughts are
developed as are usual now, if the thoughts are not permeated by the wisdom of the
spirit, then the souls which only busy themselves today with thinking about material
things, in later incarnations will no longer be able to be too weak.
In this next passage, I came to a full realization of an understanding which had been developing over the
decades since I took a degree in the most materialistic science of all, physics, an explanation for why I could
not work simply as a physicist for very long! After a decade or two of working as a physicist, I began an
earnest search which eventually led me to Rudolf Steiner books and lectures, and the answers I was seeking
for the cause of my own seeking I found in his writings.
[page 83] A soul which to-day is merely occupied with, let us say, calculating debit and credit,
or busies itself with the usages of commercial and industrial life, or only absorbs the ideas of
materialistic science, is only filling itself with thought-pictures which gradually in later incarnations
darken the consciousness, because the brain like an un-plastic mass (as today in the case of
softening of the brain) would no longer be capable of being affected by thought-forces. Hence for
him who looks into these deeper forces of human evolution, everything that can live in the soul
must be permeated by the spiritual comprehension of the world.
Our unconscious contains the dead forces of our soul. Gradually my experience of those dead forces in
my soul, though I could not call them that at the time, led me on a life-long search which continues to this
day, this very second, as I tap these keys. Only through infusing my consciousness soul with spiritual
knowledge have I found the relief I was seeking. Friends ask me, "Why do you not use your physics?" I
answer them now, "I do use my physics, it is the foundation of everything I do." But you see, one can not
worship in the foundation of a church, the foundation is cold stone. One can only stand atop the foundation
to worship within a church. To understand the spiritual world without a solid understanding of the physical
world can lead to spiritual inflation and religiosity instead of true knowledge. To understand the physical
world without grasping its spiritual underpinnings creates a philosophy as dead as stone.
[page 84] That is part of the fruits of the newer Mysteries; those are the important
and significant results which must be appropriated from the present-day Mysteries,
which are an after-effect of the Grail Mystery. But unlike all ancient Mystery-wisdom it can really be understood by the generality of people. For gradually the
unconscious and dead forces of the soul and of the organism must be overcome
through a strong permeation of the consciousness-soul with spiritual knowledge, i.e.
with a knowledge that has been understood and grasped spiritually, not a knowledge
that is built up on authority.
[page 85] The more present-day man looks into himself and tries to exercise honest
self-knowledge, the more he will find how strife is raging within his soul, which is a
conflict within the intellectual or mind-soul. For self-knowledge is a thing which is
more difficult in this connection today than many people think, and will in truth
become more and more difficult.
This lecture by Rudolf Steiner speaks directly of my own search, my own seeking, in a way which
convinces me that he also went through such stages in his own life. Yes, you may be thinking, but few people
bother about such seeking or searching today. Steiner would agree with you, especially when talking about
scientists.
[page 85, 86] The difficulties of this inner life may perhaps never occur today to
those persons who see true knowledge and true cognition in external scientific
occupation. But a soul that takes this impulse towards knowledge seriously and
worthily is in a different position when it obtains a true insight into its inner being.
This soul seeks perhaps in this or that science, seeks and seeks, seeks also in life,
seeks to find some reconciliation between all that manifest in human life. After
some searching it thinks it knows a little. But then it seeks further. And the more it
seeks with the means which the times provide the more does it frequently feel torn
in pieces, the more does it feel itself drawn into doubt. And the soul that, after
having absorbed the education of the period, own to itself that with this education of
the age it can know nothing, this soul is frequently the one the exercises the most
earnest and the most worthy self-cognition.
In the image of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we find the modern equivalent of Parsifal and Amfortas, the
competent doctor of healing and the wounded, hurting, and angry man. We must each go through the
wounding of the Amfortas in ourselves in order to come to know the Parsifal in us.
[page 86, 87] Thus one who approaches the nature of modern Mysteries must really
feel that he is so confronting himself, that he must endeavor to become such a one
as strives after the virtues of Parsifal, and yet one who knows that through all the
modern circumstances that have been described he is something different, because
he is a man of the newer age — he is the wounded Amfortas. The man of these
modern days carries this double nature within him: the aspiring Parsifal and the
wounded Amfortas. Thus must he feel in his self-cognition.
From this there flow
forth the forces which from this duality must be brought to unity, and which should
bring man a little further in the world's evolution. In our intellectual soul, in the
depths of our inner being, there must be a meeting between the modern man —
Amfortas wounded in body and soul, and Parsifal the cultivator of the
consciousness-soul.
Steiner suggests at the end of Lecture 4 in February, 1914 that he may later speak in "clear terms — if
that may be — of what the nature of the modern Mysteries discloses concerning the entity of the modern
person, concerning the dual nature which man bears within him: concerning Amfortas and Parsifal." Any one
who doubts that the Legends of the Round Table, the Grail, and Parsifal hold important lessons for all of
humanity should take another look, take a deep draught of these legends and allow them to work upon
one's soul, so that the wounded Amfortas within can speak up and call upon one's own Parsifal to ask,
"What ails you, Uncle?"
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 wanders through French Quarter:
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 finds a Curious Drink at a Bistro.
2.Comments from Readers:
EMAIL from Carol Fleischman in French Quarter: Hi Del and Bobby,
Missed you at my French Quarter Fest Brunch — it was a huge success — perfect weather, over 100 great
people (the important part), delicious food, music etc. I did have help of Laurie and my
sister, Helen.
A belated Happy Birthday, Del! I hope you celebrated well.
Let's catch up soon.
Love, Carol
EMAIL from Russ Copping: Everyone...,
This site deserves close attention by most of my circle of acquaintances. I think it'll turn out to be a
Ground breaker. Got it from my friend, Father Don.
Russ
This web site is phenomenal! Watch the preview when you have the time and it will boggle your mind. There are no limits to what you can do with this website...it is a "keeper!" Be sure to copy it to your "Favorites." Watch the Introduction first: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html
Myopia means, increasingly, frequently repeated, easily managed visits to an ophthalmologist or optician due to this complaint, profitable trade of glasses, plenty of contact lenses; and mutilation of healthy eyes that poses a risk to the eyesight and often needs to be repeated, as well as other surgical inventions, which keep an immense money-making racket going – a criminal abuse of the doctors’ knowledge, which is intended for the safeguarding of people’s health.
What Evidence is There for a Claim of Criminal Abuse?
In the January 16, 2010 issue of Science News under News Briefs was an article about the increase of nearsightness (myopia) in the USA. Nathan Seppa wrote:
Researchers tapped into a wide-ranging health survey to rate vision, comparing data for more than 4,400 people tested in 1971 and 1972 with that from another set of 8,300 people test from 1999 to 2004. This broad survey showed that 25 percent of theose examined in the early 1970s were deemed nearsighted, compared with 42 percent examined three decades later, researchers report in the December Archives of Ophthalmology.
If these statistics were describing an almost doubling of actual myopia (which is always due to the anatomical elongation of the eyeball), this would be incredible — it would mean in a short thiry-year span some mutation has occurred in Americans to cause their eyeballs to be elongated! As Dr. Kaisu Viikari says below:
[page 2] Before perusing the theme I will be dealing with, we should take a short trip back in history
to realize that myopia is not about an ordinary development trend. It is unlikely that any other
consequence of evolution, if this is what we can call it, has come about as fast as
myopization. We only have to remember how valuable a myopic slave was in ancient Greece,
as a rare person who preserved his ability to read and do near work far longer than the
majority of the population. Spectacles were only invented some 700 years ago.
Given the unlikely nature that actual myopia is responsible for the increase in myopia prevalence, it must be the case that these data are revealing the increase of pseudo-myopia, which is easily prevented by the protocols that Dr. Kaisu Viikari describes in her books.
Pseudomyopia is caused by nothing more than a fatigue cramp in an overworked accommodation muscle of the eye.
The cramp is brought on by an insufficient opportunity for the muscle to relax (e.g. from too much reading).
Pseudomyopia, being a 'spasm of accommodation' can be released. Left unattended however, the
spasmic, overworked accommodation muscle will cause the eyeball to elongate causing irreversible,
actual myopia. This happens especially in a young eye. Even though an actual myopia has developed, there is always some pseudomyopia included. The pseudomyopic portion of the 'total myopia' can be released, thus the worsening of the myopia is prevented and a variety of symptoms can be relieved (migraine, headaches, etc.).
Perhaps instead of "criminal abuse" it should be called "criminal negligence" because eye doctors have had access to the research and methods of Dr. Viikari and chosen to ignore them. To be "criminal abuse", eye doctors would have to be choosing some more-profitable approach to eye-care which is detrimental to the eyesight and general health of their patients. In either case, eye-patient abuse by the medical profession seems evident from the statistics reported in the December Archives of Ophthalmology. It is rather unbelievable, that an esteemed medical journal writes about the situation without further ponderings of its etiology.
NEARSIGHTEDNESS PREVENTION FOR PILOTS
This website by the The Francis Young, Maurice Brumer and Jacob Raphaelson Scientific Study for Threshold Nearsightedness Prevention offers information about a study of myopia reduction and prevention in Navy/Air Force pilots who must have 20/20 uncorrected eyesight in order to fly. This study lists Dr. Kaisu Viikari as an advisor. Here is the website: http://myopiafree.i-see.org/Embry.html. See for yourself is the best advice.
In this book, Professor Tilly gives his four categories of reasons. Using those four categories, one can easily see that, while Dr. Viikari gave numerous personal stories of healing during her decades of service to her patients, and while she gave detailed technical accounts, the people who opposed her work used the grounds of conventions and codes as reasons to ignore her work. If they had merely ignored her work, they would have deemed it worthless, but for the very reason that they attacked her work, they proclaimed her work worthy of consideration. They revealed by their actions that the danger was to their cherished profession, not to the health of Dr. Viikari's patients. Her patients' improved health is best evinced by the patients' esteem for this courageous researcher in the field of ophthalmology. One example of a patient's testimony is given below in a cartoonal and poetical tribute by Dr. János Székessy.
~^~
Here are the covers of two earlier books by Kaisu Viikari.
After examining them carefully, I wrote to her that her book covers
are a lesson in themselves.
"THESE BOOK COVERS ARE A LESSON IN THEMSELVES."
Examine them for yourself and note how the faces have vertical frowns and other symptoms of ocular accommodation spasms on the Book Cover of her book, "PANACEA", and how the face on the cover of "jotta" is shrunken by the heavy minus Diopter eyeglasses. She sees these frowning and unhappy faces as correctable symptoms of pseudo-myopia caused by over prescribing of minus lenses. One gentleman wrote after she helped remove his ocular-caused unhappiness, "You saved my life. I am no longer suicidal!"
You will recall that you were kind enough to give me a prescription to order a pair of .75 positive glasses in order to avoid migraine in later years. Now the glasses have arrived and I am happy to report to you that the result is incredible. As you will see from the following description the change 'Before and After' seems unlikely but I am prepared to testify that it is true.
Cartoon Figures Illustrating Life-Changing Nature of Removing Ocular Accommodation Stress. From the Rear Book Cover of Dr. Kaisu Viikari's 'Panacea' Book are these two cartoon faces drawn at the bottom of a letter from
Dr. János Székessy.
THE VIIKARI SYNDROME
Professor Matti Saari has rightly named the vertical frown, the Viikari Syndrome, because Dr. Kaisu Viikari has uniquely and incontrovertibly identified the etiology of the vertical frown as resulting from a severe accommodation spasm which can lead to various severe medical conditions. Her success with treating these medical conditions, especially migraine headaches, by adjusting eyeglass prescriptions led to her attracting thousands of patients to her surgery in Turku, Finland from all over Scandinavia, and Northern Europe.
A Preview Version of this Book is available through Google Books. Click Here!
NOTE: Portions of the Text and Images from the Book can be accessed on Dr. Kaisu Viikari's website: Click Here!
NOTE CAREFULLY PHOTO FROM 1950 AT LEFT: NO GLASSES!
Yet within ten to fifteen years my mother and I and most of my cousins in the photo were wearing glasses for myopia. The simple and inexpensive expedient of wearing plus lenses (reading glasses) for close work at an early age would have prevented the pseudo-myopia which occurred later.
4. Instant Justice
How many times have you wished that those responsible for some egregious mistake which causes a disaster could be brought to immediate justice? Consider the case of the British Petroleum oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
I'll get back to that, but first let's examined what seems to have happened.
It an old saying, but a wise one, that one should wear suspenders and a belt. I witnessed an old who had forgotten his suspenders get up from a table where he had eaten lunch and loosened his belt. As he walked down the steps from the porch to lawn, in the front of all the celebrants at a birthday party, his pants fell to his ankles. An embarrassment, but not a disaster. What are the equivalents of belt and suspenders for an oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico?
A working Blowout Preventor is the belt, the last resort, and a heavy slug of mud is the suspenders. Why? Because if everything else fails, the mud will hold the pressure from gas and oil and prevent it from reaching the surface.If for some reason the pressure is greater than the mud, an unlikely event but possible, then the last resort is to trigger the Blowout Preventor and within a second the hydraulic rams will shear everything in its way, pipe and even drill stem, and prevent a blowout from occurring.
What happened? The suspenders were taken off before the final sealing of the well! The drilling mud was removed to speed the well closure. "Okay, if the well blows out, it will be expensive, but the Blowout Preventor will shut the well," the well-managers could well reason. And their reasoning would have been valid, if only the battery which is essential to trigger the Blowout Preventor had been working, but unfortunately, like the battery on the Tracking radar at Howland Island was dead and caused the death of Amelia Earhart at sea, the BOP battery was dead and not tested.
To make matters even worse, it was revealed this morning that the Schlumberger crew sent to test the integrity of the cementing job with their downhole acoustic tool were aboard the rig and were sent home and never ran the essential test of integrity which would have shown that the cementing had flaws which could lead to a blowout and the well closing would have been stopped.
Where were those responsible for these shoddy practices at the time of the explosion caused by their neglience? They were in the cafeteria aboard the rig and were slammed against the wall by the explosion and killed. What were these responible managers in the cafeteria doing? They were celebrating a seven years safety record on the rig. We mourn with the families of all those killed on the rig, but one can see justice at work.
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Oyster-Artichoke Soup
Professor Matti Saari has rightly named the vertical frown, the Viikari Syndrome, because Dr. Kaisu Viikari has uniquely and incontrovertibly identified the etiology of the vertical frown as resulting from a severe accommodation spasm which can lead to various severe medical conditions. Her success with treating these medical conditions, especially migraine headaches, by adjusting eyeglass prescriptions led to her attracting thousands of patients to her surgery in Turku, Finland from all over Scandinavia, and Northern Europe.
