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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ In Memoriam ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ Dennis Hopper (1936 - 2010) ~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ [ from "Easy Rider" to "Blue Velvet" ] ~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't talk to me of Archimedes' lever. He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world. — Joseph Conrad , Novelist
For newcomers to the Digest, we have created a webpage of all the Violet-n-Joey cartoons!
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This month Violet and Joey learn about Being Amenable.
Each month we take time to thank two of our good readers of Good Mountain Press Digest, books and reviews. Here's our two worthy Honored Readers for this month. One of their names will be in the TO: address line of your email Digest notification. Our Honored Readers for January are:
RUDOLF, RUDETTE, AND A Readers' Journal Vol. 1 (ARJ1)
Del lassoed me into putting together the two lighted reindeer from last year. One moves his head
looking out for Santa, and the other moves her head eating to nourish her baby in the womb to be born
on Christmas Day. Only thing lacking was for the male deer to have a Red Nose, so I found a red bulb,
placed it on his nose, and dubbed him Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I feel a karmic connection with
ole Rudolf since I found out that he first appeared in the Fall of 1939 during the time in which I was
conceived and found myself a set of parents to be born into. He was first called Rollo by the advertising
department of Montgomery Ward's who dreamed him into being, but soon a book appeared with his
story and his name had been changed to Rudolf. Del laid out the white net lights over the leriope
ground cover and if tonight would be the grand opening of the Timberlane Drive lighting contest, since
we have the only lights, we'd be assured of first prize.
I tried to get my ARJ1 files converted to nix the Ad Sense ads and improve my income. Finally had to
give up. This futile effort threw my whole day out of whack. Then I noticed that Rudette's lights were off
and she wasn't moving her head up and down to eat. I was worried as she was already just skin and
bones, er, well, only bones. After some Instrument & Control Systems troubleshooting, I determined
that the power cord where it went into the moving Motor's housing was frayed internally, causing an
open circuit. I carefully supported the power cord under two housing screws so that it was fixed into
making contact. Then I provided some stretch relief and ample flex in the power cord so that as her
motor moved up and down to maneuver her head, there were no tight flexes in the cord which would
cause a future problem. Her head has worked fine in fair and rainy weather, often overnight, without fail
for the entire month of December. I call that a good fix: no parts required, no wires cut, up and running
in under an hour, and will last longer than the original design.
Del bought an electrical set up to turn on the reindeer and the two sets of East Portico ground cover
lights remotely. I installed the three power remote switches as follows: 1 actuates the Left front, 2
actuates the Right front, and 3 actuates the Christmas Tree. Remote kept handy in the left side of
fireplace hanging on the Christmas Stocking nail.
All this happened in one day, the reindeer fix, the remote power light, and then I found huge nest of fire
ants at the base of NW cypress and want to burn them out. Couldn't find our butane fire starter till Del
reminded me that we had hidden it so that the grandkids would not fool with it while the Christmas tree
was up. Such trees are very flammable, and a five year old playing with the fire starter could set it afire.
Dispatched the fire ant nest and replaced the fire starter. About that time I was exhausted, and Del said I
looked and acted like I was the one carrying the Hoar Crux medallion today, so we went to see Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1. In it Hermione, Ron, and Harry have to share the duty of
carrying the Hoar Crux medallion around their neck for safe keeping, and the one carrying it never had a
pleasant day. She and I went to see the Harry Potter movie, I got reminded of what it was like to carry
the Hoar Crux and through the course of the movie I felt at last relieved of carrying it myself. Thanks,
JK!
By the next day, I had figured out a strategy for removing the Ads from all the non-productive ARJ1
reviews. My method kept those reviews without Ads in a separate folder in case one of them became a
popular review and then the Ad-filled review could easily be sent to replace the Nixed-Ad review on the
website. I worked all day from 4 am to 4 pm and finished all of 272 ARJ1's which I had confirmed had
little readership traffic. My hope is to help boost my Coverage rating with AdSense (by increasing the
percent of the Ad-filled reviews which have high traffic) and kick up my monthly income from Google by
helping its advertising revenue increase.
I will stop making changes while these changes to ARJ1 steep
and soak into the weekly Google spidering of my site. If my website Coverage increases, as well as my
Ad revenue, I'll consider doing more Ad-nixing of non-popular reviews. By the end of December the
jury is out on the effect of my extensive changes on the Coverage index and no discernible changes to
revenues have yet been noted.
BEAUMONT AND BELLAIRE BABES
Up early and going to Texas: Bellaire and Beaumont, on successive days. Took the lower route along
Hwy 90, but didn't get off until 7:45 in earnest and it was 1 pm when I got through Beaumont and 2:15
to Yvette's. The Beaumont and Bellaire babes are my two youngest daughters, whom I fondly recall as
babes in my arms in 1964 and 1965 when they were born. Each December I endeavor to make a trip to
each daughter to spend a half day or more with them doing some Christmas shopping for each of them,
plus they assist me locating gifts for Del. On this trip, I had not yet settled on gifts for Del and was unable
to motivate myself to walk through a shopping mall to get inspired. I'm a guy. We go to a shopping
center to buy a certain thing, walk to the store which sells it, buy it, then come home. Sure enough as
soon I began shopping with Yvette, all kinds of ideas for gifts for Del began floating through my head.
We went to Rice Village and didn't find anything until we were at an Ann Taylor Shop where I found an
ideal gift for Del while Yvette was trying on some leopard-skin spiked heels. They looked very nice on
her and they were on sale. Yvette switched from the 6 ½ size to the 6 at the suggestion of the saleslady,
"They will stretch to fit." But she made a move to not buy them, and I jumped to the rescue with, "Wrap
them up, they will be your Christmas present from me." She got $150 shoes for only $50, but when she
pulled out the $25 off coupon, she was chagrined to note it was not valid for sales merchandise. She
then gave it to me and I used it for Del's large gift.
After shopping, Yvette and I picked up her daughter,
Evelyn, and her girl friends. One was named Mackenzie — when I asked her if she had a nickname, she
said, no. I said she was lucky her last name wasn't Mackenzie, and added, "If you get tall, you might get
nicknamed, Big Mac." Yvette fixed supper for us, and I hit the bed early, pleasantly tired from the long
drive and shopping trip.
Early the next morning I left Bellaire (a separate city from Houston but located inside city limits of the
megalopolis of Houston) and headed for Carla's house in Beaumont, a small city near the Louisiana
border on I-10. We usually tell people our kids live on the I-10 Corridor, from Bellaire to New Orleans
with only our son Rob off I-10 way up in Indiana. Carla called me about the time I left Houston and got
onto I-10 east of I-610. I picked her up at home and we drove immediately to Dillard's and found all
we wanted. Carla got presents for Patrick, then we went upstairs and found one of the pots she wanted,
and Elsa, a delightful clerk with dark eyes and hair, about 50, helped us. She seemed to know what I
wanted. Bought some baking pans for Del and a double boiler sauce pan in Caphalon. Then downstairs
to the perfume counter for some Chanel No. 5, 1.26 ounces in spray bottle. As we were ready to leave,
Carla tried on a long black, decorative sweater-type garment with 3-D roses on the front border which
hung down to about her knees. Sounds awful, but it looked classy and very dressy on her. I saw her
eyes adore it, and I got that for her Christmas present. She loved it.
I left Beaumont about 2 pm with the goal of getting home for 7 pm and I made it. Got a bit drowsy, but
switched to WWL sports and it woke me up again. Stopped at Mel's Diner in Broussard about 5 pm. I
was the only customer in the place. Ordered some coffee and Carolyn the waitress said she had just put
on a new pot for herself, so I sat at the counter invited her to join me in a cup. We talked for about 15
minutes about our kids and grandkids, and she mentioned how tips go down during Christmas season. I
left her a big bill for the coffee and wished her Merry Christmas as I left. Also left one with the Salvation
Army lady standing in the cold outside Dillard's in Beaumont.
I was all excited when I turned left onto Timberlane Drive at the Country Club, a mile from our home
and a song came on WWOZ about "Heading for home" — I wanted to share it with Del and called
immediately so she could hear the words of the song, no answer. Called on the home phone, no answer.
The song stopped just as I entered garage and I began blowing my horn. Nobody came to the door.
Then Del appeared with the phone stuck in her ear, and she waved me to stop blowing the horn. Del
said she was talking to her Uncle Bob Legendre about his grandson who at age 20 has had a section of
his colon removed and was in critical condition with sepsis. He has since recovered and is now at home
with rehab. Our prayers were answered.
HOUSE NAZI AND EXCAVATED REVIEWS
After movie I asked Del why the new Clock thermometer was on the hassock instead of the wall and
she replied that she had replaced the batteries and hadn't hung it back up yet. I mentioned that I was
thinking of putting it on one of the french door windows facing in where it will actually be used on a daily
basis and give reliable measurement of temperature. She absolutely refused to hear of it. I got angry at
her inflexibility and went to bed without further talking to her. When the next morning came, I was still
not talking to her. If she wants to be the house bully, she can just do everything on her own. She had
come into the bedroom while I was doing Nei-Kung alone (instead of per usual along with her) and she
mumbled "a--hole", so later one when she went into bedroom, I went in and told her, "Just came to see
if you were doing Nei-Kung alone, so I could say, 'a--hole'." She laughed and we reconciled. I accused
her of being a "House Nazi" and she agreed that she had acted as one and apologized. It was a term I
had learned from my son who talked of the Milk Nazis where he lives that try to keep him from buying
fresh, unadulaterated milk directly from a dependable local farmer's cows. He has to disguise the milk
when he transports it to his vehicle to take home. So a Nazi, by his usage, is someone who dictates hard
and fast rules. Calling someone on "acting like a Nazi" is a useful way of keeping them from acting that
way, if they acknowledge their deed.
What are "evacuated reviews"?
That's my definition for my very early c. 1990 reviews in A Reader's
Journal, Volume 1, which for whatever reason, did not make it into the website when I converted them
all. Reviews since then are all ARJ2 reviews and they automatically get posted to the website
immediately upon proofreading, so it's unlikely I missed any of them, certainly no recent ones. (There
may be some already written ARJ2 ones which missed being published to website during the bulk
conversion of early ARJ2 ones.)
During the upgrade of my AdSense Google ads, I went through all of my ARJ1 reviews and deleted ads
from the low-readership ones. I did a query of all ARJ1 reviews and discovered there were several
reviews in my Library Database which did not appear on the website. These I had to locate in various
places. Some existed only as a paper copy in the back of the books on the ARJ1 shelves in my Library.
(I tape a paper copy of review inside back cover of its book on the shelf.) Some were found in my
master copy of the Word Perfect files of the hard-bound ARJ1 books which I published and sold. Each
step along the way that a review could have been missed, I found one or more reviews, a total of six
reviews. These are now published to the web, placed in the ARJ1 Table of Contents, and are published
here in this Digest for my Good Readers to have first crack at reading them. Hope you enjoy these this
month. If you did not buy a paper copy of ARJ1, you will not have read these before. They are all short
as were all of my ARJ1 reviews, usually only two hand-written pages or a half-page of typewritten text.
They were usually written without my having the book itself present, so they were written from memory
and often have no direct quotes in them for that reason. They represent a style of writing which I use
now mostly for writing Movie Blurbs rather than reviews.
BIG FAN PRESENCE AND 10-3 RECORD
For the St. Louis Rams game, Saints Coach Sean Payton asked for a BIG Saints Fan presence, so I
brought my good friend Guntis Melbardis along with me. Guntis is a BIG man, over 6' 2" with a large
white beard he lets grow long over the Fall in order to play Santa Claus for the New Orleans area. The
folks in Algiers Point where he lives talked him into being Santa one year right after he moved into the
area, and they had a Santa suit designed to fit him, since no store-bought costumes were big enough. As
a result Gus (his Americanized nickname) has been stuck with doing Santa ever since. This year he rode
in a barge down the river as Santa waving to the folks and kids along the Mississippi River levee,
especially those at the bonfire at Algiers Point, a long time tradition for that very old section of west bank
New Orleans right across from downtown.
Saints won over St. Louis Rams and their hotshot QB 31-13 on an outstanding effort by offense and
defense. Courtney Robey was the only major injury, something to his neck and they immobilized him for
transport to hospital for observation. Was a concussion and he was later put on injured reserve status.
Chris Ivory looked fantastic again till he tweaked his hamstring a bit and was asked to sit out since both
Pierre Thomas and Reggie Bush were both healthy. Thomas and Bush each had a good day, nothing
spectacular. Marcus Colston had two spectacular catches for TD's and then dropped several other
passes thrown to him. Malcolm Jenkins had a 96 yard TD interception and another one caught in end
zone. He prevented two TD's by Bradford and made one TD for a nifty night's work.
It was freezing cold with stiff wind on the way to the 3 pm game and dark and even colder on the way
home afterward. Gus and I were both warmed by the Saints' victory however. I dressed warmly and
during game near end of first half I was too warm, but waited till half-time to get my warm jacket off.
With gloves, radio, scarf, etc, I was snuggled into my seat like a F-16 pilot. Took off the jacket and I
was just fine till it was time to go. Saw Kevin and Chris Wisemen during the game in costume and got a
photo as they appeared at a ramp opening just below us. Introduced myself to Lauren, the cute brunette
gal who sat to my right the past two games. She had taken photo of me and my great-grandson Ben at a
previous game. She said she wouldn't be at the Tampa Bay Bucs game, the last game of the regular
season, which will be in the Superdome. Our long-time Season Ticket neighbor Marcus took the photo
of me and Guntis during half-time. It appears in this Digest.
Saints were 10-3 at that point in season. The next game they lost a hard-fought battle to the Ravens to
become 10-4, and then on Monday Night Football, in front of a national audience, they whipped the
Atlanta Falcons, the high-flying birds who hit the turf of their home stadium very hard after Drew Brees
threaded several TD passes through their ragged wings. At 11-4 now the Saints need only win against
Tampa Bay Bucs and the Carolina Panthers beat up the downed Falcons for the Saints to win their
division and have a stay-at-home ticket to the playoffs. At worst the Saints have already assured
themselves a second-year-in-a-row run at the Super Bowl via a Wild Card playoff game.
CHRISTMAS CRUSH AND A CRUNCH
In the course of 4 days we attended three parties: a Jane Austen's Birthday party, a Christmas Party at
my club, ,a Retirement Party for Dr. Mark Parker at Ruth and Ted's home, plus we gave two huge
parties at Timberlane on successive days: Del's Garden Club Christmas Party and our Family Christmas
Party. For the Jane Austen party, we headed to the headquarters of the Jane Austen Society on St.
Charles Avenue. Even though we pinpointed the spot with our GPS, it was impossible to see the
address in the dark and we had to guess which large home the party was in by noticing which front door
was open and had people inside. There was great food at the party and lots of people we knew. We
talked to Duke and Pam and their friends Wilson. The President of the Society read a few pieces of
Jane Austen's for her 235th birthday, and others did the same. As we were leaving to go to my club's
Christmas Party a few blocks away, we looked down and could barely discern the street address
implanted in walkway near the sidewalk. You never know until you find out. We enjoyed ourselves in
the company of our friends, and after wishing all a Merry Christmas, we headed home for last minute
preps for the Timberlane Garden Club's Christmas Party that its President, Del, was hosting at our home
the next day at noon.
Up early the next morning, I got dressed in same suit and tie as I'd worn the night before. Helped Del
get every thing started. Drove to grocery for last minute items such as orange juice, bananas, and milk
for the Family Christmas weekend to follow during which we were to have 17 kids, spouses, and
grandkids sleeping over at Timberlane. Every bedroom was full, plus five pads and blowup mattresses
on the floor of the living room and screening room and three couches.
At Ten AM, the first ladies started coming over to get the food and refreshments ready. Twenty-four
ladies of Timberlane Garden Club came to find well-decorated tables in the Dining Room, Screening
Room, Kitchen, and Office Area. The food was lined up along the long counter, Rita's feast of roast
turkey was warmed in the oven, gravy on stove, and lots of other fixings and desserts. Then Del led the
group into a personal sharing by each member of a favorite tradition they had for Christmas. I guess if I
were asked, I would have talked about the fun of coming down during the night pf early Christmas
morning and peeking through the keyhole into the magical room full of colors and presents in the locked
parlor. Then my three younger brothers and I'd tiptoe back up to bed with visions of Christmas
morning's gifts from Santa dancing in our heads.
After everyone had left the Garden Club Party, just as I was planning to take a well-earned nap, Warren
Perkins came by to pick up his wife Audrey who had already left. I invited him in for a cup of coffee and
got him talking about basketball. I was amazed to discover that he played in the first NBA game with the
Quad-City Blackhawks who later became the Milwaukee Hawks and eventually ended up in Atlanta.
They won the game, too! Got a photo of Warren. We talked for a long time, about the changes in the
game of basketball , about his friendship with Bob Petit who was six years longer than he, and many
other things. He is truly a living legend of basketball.
After Warren left, I took that nap, and then we got up and drove to Mark Parker's retirement party at
Ruth and Ted's, always a good time. Mark was in fine form, glad to be retired finally after several
earlier attempts failed when some company begged him to work for them. He is the most savvy doctor I
have ever met, a true generalist with a broad knowledge of many specialities. In the beginning he said, he
delivered about 10,000 babies before he rebelled against some of the onerous rules forcing him to be
nice to certain low-class pregnant ladies who insulted him while demanding care as some federally
enforced right. Met some of his co-workers including a gal with what looked like a red firemen's hat, but
was actually a Saints emblem on the front of it. We left for home early because daughter Yvette, Greg,
and their two kids, Evelyn and Aidan were due to arrive from Bellaire in an hour or so at Timberlane to
spend the night before the Family Christmas the next day. The preliminaries were over and Del and I
prepared for the kids' onslaught.
Our son Robert and his crew showed up about 8:30 AM as Del and I were busy getting everything
ready. He and the boys working on the new Rock-Climbing remote jeep which supposedly can climb an
80-degree incline. His attempts to get it up the cypress tree which Katrina tilted at about 60 degrees
came to naught because the wheels would slip and the torque of the motor would cause the front wheels
to lift off the tree, causing loss of traction and a back flip.
CHRISTMAS CRUNCH
I took Yvette with me to PJ's in the Cherry Max, and when I returned, Rob's truck was parked right
behind where Del would have to back out later. I made a mental note about it, but decided against telling
Del because it seemed so obvious, plus her new car has a rear view display in the middle of the
dashboard. I assumed she would see it and have to back out of the driveway. She didn't. She was
carrying two hyper sub-teen grand-daughters in backseat and neither looked at Rob's truck on her left
as she walked around the back of the car, nor did she bother to view rear view TV monitor as she
quickly backed out in her usual pattern and CRUNCH! — rammed right into the corner bumper of the
truck, caving in the trunk of the new Maxima and doing no obvious damage to Rob's truck.
The
Maxima is having its trunk lid replaced and I'm looking for a loud fire alarm to wire into a rear-proximity
alarm to keep this from happening again. This is the second time Del has rammed into a vehicle in the
driveway, seems like Aries Rams are equally impetuous in both forward and reverse directions.
We played a little touch football in mid-morning. The big guys against me, Thomas, Weslee, and Kyle.
On the first play I sent Thomas long, Weslee on a short route with a cut left, and Patrick blitzed me so I
threw it quickly, missing Weslee, but it fell right into Kyle's hands and he nearly scored a TD. We didn't
score, but on the next series, I was tired and asked John to take my place and an interception flew right
into his hands which he nearly ran back for a TD. It was fun, but rather too cold for me. I went inside.
We had everybody in the family here except Jim, but with John, his twin brother here, the family seemed
complete at times. Besides, Jim and his family will be joining us in Anaheim after Christmas for our
Disneyland and California Adventures.
Del even picked up and helped her mother, Doris, to be here for the opening of the presents. Del had
earlier planned not to have a Family Christmas because of the Disneyland trip, but her kids were all
going to be in town this weekend for another activity, so we plugged in our own celebration as in
previous years.
My brother Paul and his daughter Monique came by with her two precious children, Taylor (girl) and
Brayden (boy). Remember when names of kids were unambiguous as to the sex of the child? Finally got
photos of the two precious children. At one point when they first arrived, I told Rob, "That's your
cousin, Monique. She's Kim's vet." Rob said, "Shouldn't she have a regular doctor?" Now I know
where I got my wisecracking nature — from my son!
We ended up playing a Pay Me! card game later in the afternoon after present opening at Evelyn's
request. I joined in when I saw that Tiffany our oldest grand-daughter was playing. There were enough
people playing for it to be interesting. Good thing about Pay Me! is that it can handle from 3 to 7
players. It was me, Tiffany, Greg, Del, Evelyn, five of us. Good size for playing the game. One problem
was toddler great-grandson Preston who continually bugged his mom, Tiffany. We asked his Grandma
Maureen who played the Grandma card. So back Preston came, scattering game tokens, distracting
Tiffany, Greg, Del, Evelyn, and me. I drew the line at Yvette helping Evelyn to play her cards because
Evelyn knew the rules and if one player helps another player they gain an advantage by knowing which
cards not to play. Also I insisted that Evelyn not leave the table to take care of the smaller kids, mostly
persistent Preston. Plus I scotched any plans of Evelyn leaving in the middle of the game to go to her
Aunt Maureen's house. Tiffany saved Evelyn by offering to drop Evelyn off on her way home after the
Pay Me! game was over. Thus it came about that we, at the hardest, completed the game through the
final King round. I won several Pay Me!'s and Del won the low score for the game token by a
squeaker, only 6 or 7 points.
I blew up the mattress in the Timberlane Screening Room and woke Rob and Kathyrn on the couch to
move into the room to sleep. I made sure all the kids knew where they were to sleep and chased Aidan
upstairs from the Laundry Room, not once, but twice. This area was the staging area for repairs and
modifications to several of the remote cars of Rob and his boys. On the second time, Aidan said that he
was only watching Walden, but I blasted him, saying, "You do not quibble with me, young man! I told
you to stay out of here and keep the light out!" He ran upstairs and hid, requiring his mother to come and
find him. In effect, he had maneuvered his mother into blaming me for not knowing where he was. I
simply repeated, "I sent him upstairs and that's all I know about his whereabout"s. His mother gave up
her oblique attack, and went upstairs to finally locate where he was hiding. It is a lesson I learned
somewhere along the way, your children will use all their wiles to make you suffer for disciplining them.
Do not fall for that if you wish to raise them to grow into truly independent and resourceful adults.
Walden went quietly to bed after that in the Living Room on the floor mattress. The only grandkids left
up were Thomas, Katie, Emerson, and Kyle who quietly remained in the Office area on the table
painting and coloring mandalas. I left them alone, simply showing Katie where the light switch was. In
the morning the table was cleared off and the lights had all been turned off. Very successful turn-in for
bed for almost everyone.
One glitch developed overnight. It was a cold night outside, under 40 degrees, and the air conditioner
was running full blast set at 66 degrees. I turned it off, but knowing my son-in-law liked to sleep in a
cold room, I decided it best to leave the heater off. The rooms will cool over night, but if the doors are
left open a bit, the warmth from the great room downstairs will heat the bedrooms. One daughter
complained it was 20 degrees colder upstairs in the room than with the doors open. I explained that
Wes liked it cold and that I turned the stat up from 66 to 72 with AC on and figured that anyone too
cold would simply open the door to let heat in. Wes said that he opened his window to the 44 degF air
and he was fine. I had figured that opening a window or opening a door would solve any heating/cooling
discrepancy, but that no setting on the thermostat of either heat or cooling would be good for all parties
upstairs. Next time I will let everyone know how to take care of their own comfort. Three guest rooms
with only one thermostat requires the occupants to control their own temperatures.
DRIER AND DRYER, SHOPVAC AND SHOPVAC
Our old clothes dryer was causing Del to complain that it was not drying clothes well enough. I finally
decided that Del needed a new dryer and since our daughter Maureen had offered us her new electric
dryer when she moved into a house which only had a gas connection for a dryer. We had demurred on
the offer, but I suggested to Del it was time to get that dryer. Patrick and Robert offered to carry over to
Timberlane from Maureen's house and within minutes I had installed it in place and it was drying clothes.
It worked, but its top began to get warm, which indicates the air flow is somehow constricted. There
must be an accumulation of lint in 24' of air duct which goes up from the dryer, over across a ceiling and
then up through the roof. With all those right-hand turns, it is a problem to clean out. Joe Taylor our
chimney man who did it last time said he was retiring this year. So I needed someone to come up with an
answer to this problem. I called AAA Wayne and he confirmed that heat on top of dryer indicates
restricted air flow. He said I could buy a kit for duct cleaning from Ideal Appliance about a mile from us.
I told Del that it needed to be done and she wanted to hire someone, but when she called Husbands for
Hire and they couldn't clean the flue until after the first of the new year, I decided to follow Wayne's
instructions, knowing full well that it would likely be a full-day's work. I dreaded the task, but there was
clearly no other way to get Del's new Dryer working properly and not overheating. Luckily Del took
Rob's two sons to see the new Narnia Movie in the afternoon, so I didn't have any interruptions in what
I had to do.
So I bought the Duct Cleaning kit for $100 with 12' of rods and 12' extensions. It required a shop vac to
do it from the inside out. I like that approach as the lint is not blown out into the air, the roof and yard,
but sucked into the Shop Vac.
Well, my old Shop Vac was way too small. I decided to buy one from
Home Depot and I got one for $45 and it was also too small. I went back with the cleaner adaptor to
ensure it would fit before I bought another Vac, the $80 Vac fit the adaptor fine. Came home, hooked it
up and ran the cleaning brush as far up as it could get, which I suspected was to the base of the last
right-hand turn up to the stack. Darn. Luckily Robbie came home and he was willing to get up there and
detach the water cover of the vent and run the brush DOWN into the vertical flue. He said there was a
small layer of lint around the inside of the pipe. He brushed it down while the big Shop Vac was running
to suck it up. Afterward, as we could tell from the reduced suction on the flexible vent, the rest of the
dryer vent up to the roof was completely free of lint. Still, what we sucked out showed that there was an
awful lot of lint which escaped from the dryer's first filter into the ductwork in just one year.
That took me most of the day, and along the course of the next few hours I felt my nose drain as if it was
the onset of a head cold. At last my head cold which had been holding had descended upon me. Luckily
I had been taking zinc tablets for about a week in anticipation of this possibility and the cold affected me
for only a day and a half during which I took some AlkaSeltzer Cold tablets and then I was fine — just a
guy with head cold, no aches, fever, or pains, just an aggravating sneeze or drippy nose at times.
Kids, Walden & Emerson went to WWII Museum with Patrick and Carla. I didn't feel well enough to
go. I took AlkaSeltzer and felt better about an hour later. They came back about 2 pm. We did
crosswords together. Patrick & Carla got ready to leave. They left in afternoon and went to Maureen's.
Rob wanted to go to Luling to see his Grandpa Buster, so I went with him and his two boys. Vicki was
there so Rob got to meet his Aunt Vicky for the first time. Also hadn't seen Kevin for 20 years, so it was
a productive visit. Then we drove to Debbie's house and I got to see Anthony's large house. Inside is
gutted and painted to look like a French Quarter patio. Then we went to Maureen's and Amy and
Jenny Terranova were there. Amy's like Jenny's only younger sister. They were doing artwork. We
visited for a while till I was ready to go home again. Del and I watched "The Closer" which turned out to
be Part I of a two part series about Serbians doing violence to Albanians. We won't get to see the
end before we return from our Disney trip on January 1st.
THE CABLE GUY FROM HEAVEN
Rob and his gang left about 2 am the next morning and I had a quiet day until the Cox Cable guy
showed up. I had problems with the RF output from the Cable DVR box which had been going on for
several weeks, but with the Christmas Crush, I had not bothered with it. Hoping to have it fixed for the
bowl game and post-season NFL games, I called Cox as soon as our family had returned home and the
house was empty. The dryer was fixed, now for the Screening Room. There were several nagging
problems that had accumulated. I couldn't play DVR on our HD Plasma TV, Turner Classic Movies
(TCM) which we watch a lot couldn't display on either the DVR nor the Cable Card in our HD TV, the
size of HD TV programs quickly filled up the Hard Drive on our DVR, and there was a lot of noise on
the Weather Channel and a couple of other channels. If I could just get the RF output working I would
be happy I thought as I placed the call for service.
From 3 to 5 pm I was told to expect a Cox technician, but he didn't show up until almost 5. I thought I
was doomed! Byron was his name, and he turned out to be an angel! The nicest and most competent
Tech they have even sent to me! I explained to him what the problem was and he immediately said
"You need a new DVR box."
Hooray! I yelled silently to myself.Then he added, "I have a special one
I've been saving for someone who would appreciate it." I asked him if it had more hard drive and he
said "Yes, double the old amount", he said. DOUBLE HOORAY! Then I explained that we weren't
getting TCM, Ch 59 and he promised to fix that. He also added a powered amplifier with 1 to 4 splitter
to replace the passive 1-to-4 one I had installed. He also made up two short connection jumpers with F-plugs to fill the gap with right-sized cables. Channel 59 came on all TV's! Then he told me I could use
the HDMI cable from DVR to KURO. Quickly I found one, thanks to Del's careful plastic bagging of all
the cables during move, installed it and, sure enough, it worked! WOW! A Christmas MIRACLE! A
Cox Cable guy from Heaven. Every nagging problem was fixed and my overall reception improved, plus
as a final fillip, Byron measured the signal coming from the house at the outside junction box/splitter and
said he was going to schedule someone to come after the first of the year to track down and eliminate
that back-scatter noise, likely from improperly or unterminated connections left over from the previous
owner's exuberant scattered wiring of Timberlane. Who could ask for more?
CHRISTMAS EVE JOY, CHRISTMAS DAY JOY, AND EVEN MORE
On Christmas Eve, Del brought the Maxima to the Collision Center who promised to have it ready when
we return after the first of the New Year. Then we went to our two neighbors to deliver Del's Christmas
Cookies in the Santa Jars. First we delivered a jar to Barbara on the north side, and then to Connie and
Don on the south side. Connie goes outside to smoke so I usually check before going to the front door.
We found her outside, and she said she thought she was coming down with the flu. In reply, I said we're
both getting over colds and our bodies are full of antibodies, so we'll be just fine. Brought her the
cookies and she cheered up a bit. Then later I called Connie to ask her to pick up our newspapers. Del
went to get her Mom to have some Christmas cookies and coffee by our tree and she opened the
Christmas outfit del had bought for her to wear tomorrow. We then went to bed early to let Santa do
his deliveries undisturbed by us.
On Christmas morning, it was already only 52 degF outside and too warm for a fire in the hearth today, so
I saved it for tomorrow. I made a large brunch omelette of Crawfish-eggplant dressing and we ate
heartily before opening our presents in the Living Room with the Christmas music playing in the
Screening Room.
Del had me open my many presents first. A travel alarm (to be re-gifted), a pack of 96 clothes pins, a
small SONY digital tuning radio which clips onto my pocket was a favorite toy, also a tiny binocular set
which fits easily in any coat pocket, both a boon for Saints games. Also several other things. My coffee
is warming on a hot plate she bought for me about 18 inches to the right of my right-hand on the
keyboard right now. It's tepid, but not cold. She also gave me a beautiful jacket, light and comfortable,
although the arms may be an inch too long. A new shirt with a pocket and no visible buttons on collar
(hidden buttons she didn't see). I gave her the heavy present containing the Chanel No. 5 and she loves
it.
Will apparently wear it as she is so like Coco Chanel. Next the Cashmere scarf which she also adores
and finds very lovely and useful for cold Ball Nights at my club. The pot and the pans I
bought her were also a big hit! The double boiler in stainless steel is too pretty to put anywhere but on
the stove top. The baking utensils in Calphalon she also adored. Said she'd throw some old ones away.
In the early afternoon we went to see Doris at Woldenberg. It was frigid! 20 degree wind chill no doubt
with the stiff wind. We had rain in the morning, but I recall that at about 11 am, a very stiff wind picked
up, whistled through the roof vents, and ceased in ten seconds, but during that gale, the cypress trees
had dusted a new coating of needles on the ground I had vacuumed with lawnmower when kids were
here. That was the cold front edge and afterwards we had no more rain, but the skies were cloudy all
day at our Home on the Range. We disconnected the two reindeer at nightfall as we want to keep the
outside lights on the ground to warm it through Monday night which may be below freezing.
Got to take a couple of photos of Doris with her girl friend Margaret, they sat on the sofa together and at
least one time I heard Doris refer to Margaret as "him" as is her wont, for what reason, we can only
guess. Margaret doesn't mind. She has some dementia, but not ALZ like Doris. They are clearly good
friends, and Doris sorely needs a good friend at this otherwise very lonely period of her life.
At nightfall we watched the rest of one movie and the whole of several other movies "The Sensation of
Sight" (2006), "Greenberg" (2009), "Scrooged" (1988), and "White Christmas" (1954). Watching
White Christmas in HD, we noticed dance production numbers that we could swear we'd never seen
before, probably because of the poor resolution of the older TVs. We enjoyed the last of our alone time
together, because the Disney trip was looming ahead, some six days filled with thousands of people and
15 relatives.
The morning after Christmas was very cold and a perfect day for burning the firewood I had arranged
almost a week earlier. I got up and started fire in the hearth and read the Times-Picayune newspaper,
my last TP for almost a week. Then I got Del up with the promise of fire and hot coffee. Del, in her
impetuous Aries mode, began immediately taking down the Christmas tree. Our son John was coming to
stay the night with his two boys and we would head to Moisant (Louis Armstrong) Airport together the
next day. I spent the rest of the morning getting photos into this Digest.
Losing six crucial days at the end
of the month and having lots of activities and photos to add after the normal first of the month publication
date meant only one thing to me: All the components of Digest, all text, and all photos had to be filled in,
and as much of the Out Our Way Notes had to be written as possible. Then I could add the Notes and
new photos from Disney trip on the day we get home and be ready to publish it to the website the next
day.
Great Hour of Power this morning without Robert H. Schuller, her father, Pastor Sheila did great
inteviews with Interim Choir Director and then with a guy caught under debris of Montana Hotel in Haiti
during the 7.0 Earthquake about a year ago. He was rescued a long 60 hours later and no one knew if
he was alive or dead till he came out on a stretcher and looked up for the cameras. Then Jim Penner led
us with his homily into a celebration of JOY — he got everyone on their feet, in the Crystal Cathedral
and at home, saying, "Jesus Come!" He utilized bits from previous homilies by Sheila, Ken Ulmer, and
Tony Campolo, e. g., Ulmer's "water in the Glass" metaphor morphed into "Joy is in Jesus and Joy is in
Us". It was a crescendo of Joy all around the world.
On my way to PJ's shortly afterward, there was WWOZ.ORG's Gospel Show with a song saying, "I
don't call my mother, I don't call my father, I don't call my sister, not even my brother. Who do I call?"
and the low choir refrain began, "I call Jesus" and then a louder and louder, "I CALL! I CALL JESUS!"
Incredibly Joy-filled singing. Several more such Gospel songs played on way home after a Joy-filled
reunion with David the drummer boy newly returned to my favorite coffeeshop, PJ's on Manhattan!
Can I have a per-rum-per-rum-pum? David showed up at PJ's this morning after a hiatus of several
months with no hope for his return. He was hidden by the stack of goodies on top of the display case, as
I was talking to Cody. When David appeared, I stepped back in mock fright, and exclaimed, "I've been
watching 'Scrooged' too many times yesterday! The Ghost of Christmas Past is before me!" David
laughed and said, "Also Christmas Present and those to come!" He explained that he has been rehired
by Charlie starting today. He will soon return to his weekday hours after a few Sundays, etc. I said,
"David, I can just imagine Charlie crawling up to you on his knees and kissing your foot to get you
back!" He started to reply and I said, "No, don't say anything to spoil my imagination of what
happened." He started to shake my hand and I said, "Nope! this calls for a big hug!" and I walked
around counter and we embraced in joy.
We heard that our son Jim is still sick and may have to postpone his flight to Disney by one day. Gina,
when asked if she were still coming, said, "I'd have to bury Kirt!" Her son is so excited about coming on
this trip his Grama Del promised him a year ago to "go see Mickey Mouse!"
FIRST DAY STUCK INN
Up at Four AM to get to airport in time for our 6 AM flight. We flew to LAX from MSY in 3.5 hours.
Great flight. Our plane on the ground was delayed getting to our gate and getting bags. Then long delay
for the Blue Shuttle getting a handicapped van for Kirt. Del didn't want to leave the airport building to go
outside, but I did and found it very pleasant.
Finally, I went in and coaxed her outside and she agreed it
was great. She was expecting it to be cold like back home, but it was nice and the air was fresh. We
needed to call 1-800-BLUE VAN but neither of us knew by heart how to convert |BLUE VAN to
numbers because Blackberry cell phone's do not have a Telephone Number pad on them and the Blue
Van forgot to include the number version of their phone number on their literature. She had to go inside
to the Info Lady to get the numbers off a regular phone.
The elusive van finally showed up and we made it straight through to Disneyland. Jim said he saw a sign
about USC DISNEYLAND EXIT. He did a double take and then recognized it was actually USE and
wondered what University of SE was, but then realized it meant to USE the DISNEYLAND EXIT.
Our rooms at the Residence Inn were not available until 4 pm, so we signed up for ART 7 shuttle and
went to California Adventure Park because Disneyland was all filled up and could allow no new
admissions to the Park. So we walked through the new park to familiarize ourselves with it.
After our cursory tour, we began walking back to shuttle and got there just as a No. 7 green shuttle was
pulling up. Made it back in time to check in. Jim helped me move the bags to Unit 10 only to find our
unit 1023 was upstairs, and remembering Del's shoulder injury moving her own bags upstairs at the
Johnson & Wales Inn in Seekonk, Massachusetts in 2000, Del went to the office and got a bellboy to
do the heavy lifting. Meantime, the Saints game was due to start any minute and the bellboy had not a
clue as how to find the channel that Monday Night Football was going to be on. I know the Channels in
New Orleans, but in Anaheim and on a first-time TV and with no Channel Listing, I didn't want to spend
the first quarter looking for the game. But the bellboy was useless to help and I had to find it myself.
Located it within minutes of kickoff. This was my first hint that the Marriott Residence Inn was going to
leave a lot to be desired before our stay was over. First the Internet was broadband only in their
imagination. It was more like a California Adventure roller coaster with its ups and downs, the bars
never stayed at 3 for more than a few seconds, and mostly laid at 1 or 2 with long excursions into a RED
star or BLUE donut or a Yellow Sun, all of which meant what site I was waiting to open would have
restart loading and I might have to re-enter and re logon again. In other words our room's Wi-Fi was
Lo-Fi and basically sucked.
That was during clear skies — when it rained on Wednesday, I had to carry
my Laptop IN THE RAIN about a hundred yards to the so-called Business Area which had a PAC
MAN game set up and since it was raining, subteens babbled and crawled all over. The "Corinne,
Corinna" rock ballad from the 1950s blared from the loudspeakers over head, just the very thing a
businesswoman wants hear while making financial decisions in the Business Room. Or a writer like
myself needs to hear while trying locate photos and text files for a review or a Digest. I managed to get
the Rock & Roll music turned off, but I couldn't locate the MUTE button for the subteens or their
parents who were eating and blabbing a few feet from my tender ears. One day the water in the shower
had water pressure so low that in order to get the water to come from the shower head and I had to pull
out the valve on the lower spigot and hold for several minutes for the fill up the shower stem and the light
sprinkle of water to come out. It was a bare step above a bird bath at the lavatory sink. The coffee
provided in the room was good Arabica beans, but the coffee pot was full of tricks and traps with its
fancy no-drip if coffee pot is not in place, needed only for dummies who shouldn't be drinking coffee in
the first place. Once the coffeepot's cheap plastic cover was not exactly in place and 8 of the ten cups
of water spilled over the top of the filter while it was brewing and I had a mess to clean up. Where do I
write to thank the newly graduated engineer whose design messed up my morning?
The LG TV was
obviously designed for HIGH DEFINITION images, but the blurry ESPN broadcast of the Saints was
pitiful! I knew who the players were on the New Orleans team and at the numbers on their jerseys and
still had trouble discerning who was carrying the ball. The breakfast buffet was okay, but the lack of grits
and the oatmeal without salt was cruel and unusual punishment. By the time I found Salt to make the
oatmeal palatable, it was barely lukewarm. What a waste for them to create a perfect desk for my
laptop and a useless Wi-Fi! I could sit at my laptop and see three bars on the Wi-Fi indicator luring me
to use the Internet and as soon as I did, the rainbow colored failure modes began. The fireplace had a
fire log ready to light, but no matches anywhere in our room to be found. Well, that ends my rant about
the Marriott Residence Inn.
Hey, it was walking distance, 10 minutes or so, to Disneyland Shuttle area.
Imagine with me for a moment how fun a ten minutes walk can be after 6 hours on your feet in a place
where you are standing in a line to get in the place, to get out of the place, to eat, to drink, to pee, to go
on a ride, to ask a question, to buy a ticket, even to get a hug from Goofy! You get the idea. Want to get
ready for Disneyland, get in line! Any line! It's good practice.
Back to reality and the Saints football game. It was a hard-fought game which I prayed to end with
Brees in the Victory Formation: Brees kneeling with the ball for the last minute of the game, and
amazingly that what happened. Enjoyed watching the close-ups of Brees's eyes during critical plays,
their determination, their intensity, their hawk-like movement as they flitted left, right, straight ahead,
searching for a target for his passes. The back-flip he did to Pierre Thomas to save a sack was
incredible, like he had eyes in back of his head. Likewise the deftness of his quick-tempo running plays
which sprung Thomas loose for two long gains, one ending in TD. His ability to escape the grasp of the
clawing Falcons by his quick foot movements as the Atlanta blitzed on almost every down. His
shoestring tackle of the lineman who had intercepted his pass and was heading for 6 points, followed by
his 90-yard — 13-play drive for the winning TD. A masterful show that revealed the Saints are still in
the hunt for their second in a row Super Bowl win.
The first day at the SUCK INN was an exhausting day whose tedium was wiped out by the great
Saints's win. If the Saints and Panthers win next weekend, it will be another Division Win for Saints and
home field advantage for the Super Bowl run in the playoffs. It could happen. Brees expects it to happen
and so do I. If so, we'll be in the Superdome for the playoff games, Del and I, God willing.
DISNEY AND CALIFORNIA INTENSIVE
An intensive is what in the 1970s and 80s we called an extensive immersion in psychotherapy training
lasting several days or a week. Well, we've gone through this in Anaheim, with Disneyland and the
California Adventure. A little ambiguity there needs explaining. California Adventure is the new
amusement park built on the site of the original parking for Disneyland. In the 1970s when we lived a
block off Katella Avenue and a mile from that parking lot, we got to know it well. You never walked
through the parking lot because it could take as long as 20 minutes, you simply waited for the shuttle
tram to pick you up. Now people, thousands, tens of thousands of people are walking over that same
ground today but it known as Downtown Disney and the California Adventure! Where do the cars park
today which used to daily fill the huge lot? Several ten story parking lots which look like office buildings
fill the northern boundary of Disneyland Hotel. They are the largest parking lots in the world holding
10,000 cars! How do people get into the park from the garage? There is a special train which runs into
Downtown Disney and drops them off within easy walking distance of the two parks, Disneyland and
California Adventure.
As for the ambiguity, Del's kids, who could be blasé about Disneyland after multiple visits to the Florida
version, have all but one (Stoney) never been to California, so their California adventure is driving to
various sites and scenes of the great state of California. Huntington Beach, Pacific Coast Highway,
Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica Freeway (with its gridlock 12 lanes of traffic each way
at rush hour), Rodeo Drive, Hollywood and Vine, Mann's Chinese Theater (with cement imbedded
footprints of Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, etal), the stars on the sidewalks of Hollywood Blvd, the snow-capped San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mtns which line the northern horizon (in these days of crystal-clear post-rain air). The list is endless and the last two days they've been hitting the highways and
running up mileage on the two rental vehicles. As my new T-Shirt says, "Been there, Done that, Got the
T-Shirt", and I have enjoyed some solitude typing away these notes for my Digest.
SAD NEWS
On Monday when we arrived in Anaheim, I called Doyle Henderson only to have Norma answer. I
talked to her and discovered that Doyle had driven up the hill to Big Bear (at 7,000 feet elevation) to
stay with her over the holidays. Great news I thought. Doyle and Norma had remained good friends
after their short marriage and it was good to hear that they were together. Then I talked to Doyle. He
was cheerful as usual, but said one thing that was ominous, "I can hardly make it to the bathroom
without running out of breath. I'm never coming back up here." He was on full oxygen, but his lungs and
heart already weakened due to congestive heart failure were having trouble keeping him going at 7,000
feet. He had had trouble a couple years ago when he and Norma visited up in Garden Grove at a150
feet above sea level. We talked about the possibility of Del and I driving up to Big Bear to see him and
Norma in a couple of days.
The next day I was surprised to see Doyle's bright face on cell phone as I
answered, but it was not Doyle speaking but Norma who told me that Doyle had fallen on the way to the
bathroom that morning and never recovered. The EMT's were called and they took him to Big Bear
hospital and he was later helivac'ed to Kaiser-Permanente hospital in Irvine, California about ten to
twenty miles from us where he never came out of the coma when he passed. Doyle Philip Henderson,
born in San Bernardino on Columbus Day in 1924 died in Irvine on December 28, 2010. He was to
make a significant discovery for the good of all humankind as did Christopher Columbus who shared his
birthday. And now he, like Columbus, has departed the physical plane for a New World. Every good
thing must come to a new good beginning. And so it is for the spirit we all knew and loved, Doyle
Henderson. The entire Southland of California, from the Pacific Ocean to the San Gabriel Mountains to
the Big Bear mountains was washed by tears from the skies in the form of rain for the entire day
following Doyle's passing, with large amount of beautiful white snow covering his beloved Fawnskin in
the Big Bear area where he lived for so long with Betty when I first met him some twelve years ago. He
and Betty are re-united now and his long-time friend and colleague Warren Liberty will no doubt be a
frequent visitor to their new Fawnskin cabin in Heaven. Meanwhile we below are left to mourn the
passing of our dear friend, the ever cheerful Doyle.
EXTENSIVE INTENSIVECONTINUES
After the shock of Doyle's passing and the realization that there would be no funeral service, only a
private cremation, we returned to squeezing out some fun in the time we have set aside for this Christmas
vacation with our kids and grandkids.
As soon as rain stopped about midday Wednesday, Del and I walked to Disneyland with intention of
eating lunch in Blue Bayou (bayous are Louisiana waterways, a slow river to Gulf) which I used to pass
in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, all lit with blue lights. Our reservation was for the next day, but we
suspected there would be opening at noon due to the heavy rain and we were right. We got in after a
half hour wait. The food was tremendous and the atmosphere lovely.
Having lunch there instead of the
next day in the afternoon cleared the way for us to meet my old buddy Glenn Martin from our
Lockheed days and his wife Sara Lee who live near here at the Rain Forest Café for dinner. It would
have been hard to have two meals so close together, so our gambit worked — we got a table within 30
minutes, when the previous day we had been assured that there were NO reservations left till after Jan 1,
2011.
After lunch we rode the monorail and went to another ride in California Adventure section of park. In all,
we spent another six jam-packed hours at the two parks. Much more fun than hauling and minding 4
kids as I did 30 years ago when we lived a mile away for three years. We always tried to jam everything
into one day and now we could spread things out over several days. All and all it was a good trip.
EVERY GOOD THING MUST COME TO
A NEW BEGINNING, SO UNTIL NEXT MONTH, NEXT YEAR . . .
Till we meet again in February for the onset of the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras Time in 2011, God
Willing and the River Don't Freeze. Whatever you do, wherever in the world you reside, be it hot or
cold, make it a great winter season for you and yours in the New Year ! ! !
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In the early 1980's I read the other eleven volumes in this set, some of them several times.
When I got on the Internet for the first time several weeks ago I discovered this volume for sale by
a Sufi Book Center in Virginia. I ordered the book over the net on a Friday afternoon and was
reading it Monday afternoon.
This book is divided into two sections: I. Health and Order of Body and Mind and II. The
Privilege of Being Human. The first section was a good review for me, but the second section was
packed with insights. If I had read the book ten years ago when I first began looking for it, it
would have undoubtedly not have had the same impact for me. One afternoon I sat down to
continue reading from page 165. I had just finished three intensive days of income tax preparation
and felt too washed out emotionally to write anything. In the course of the next three hours and
fifty pages I wrote fifteen poems, inspired by the writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan. Here is a list of
the titles which will suggest something of the nature of the poems:
1. Write On! 2. 'appiness 3. "Judging or No-Judging Section?" 4. Sound Harmony 5. Feed No Evil 6. Life's Massage 7. No-Fault Love 8. A Pear Tree 10. Chains of Mind 11. Hang It All! 12. Light Traveler 13. Dogs of War 14. Salt of the Earth 15. Without A Doubt
This past month I listened to a minister friend give a homily on the Samaritan woman at
the well. He explained how she had come to the well under the hot midday sun so that she would
not encounter other women who might scorn her presence there, and how after Christ told her of
the living water, she left her vase at the well and ran back to the city to tell everyone.
On page 159
Hazrat comments on how children outgrow their dolls and says, "So it is with us, the children of
the world.
Our likes and infatuations have a certain limit; when their time has expired the period of
indifference commences. When the water of indifference is drunk, then there is no more wish for
anything in the world."[italics mine] It was the water of indifference, of divine knowledge, that
Christ offered the Samaritan woman at the well that caused her to drop everything, all her
attachments to the things of the world, and to rush back to the city to tell how she had found
everything inside herself, thanks to this man at the well.
When I found Hazrat Inayat Khan ten years ago, I was alone at the well, carrying heavy
vases during the heat of the day to be filled. He filled my vases then, and when I returned ten years
later, I was empty-handed, and he gently reminded me to look within, for the divine knowledge of
God, the water of indifference, flows therein as an eternal spring. And if one has an eternal spring
flowing within, one will never need to return to earthly wells.
To read a book by Joseph Conrad is to take oneself on a sea voyage with him. The equivalent
of, as the French say, "une campagne de trois ans dans les mers du sud." You soon ignore the
swaying of the cabin and the creaking of the timbers and hear only Conrad's voice as he talks deep
inside your head.
"Don't talk to me of Archimedes' lever. He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical
imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right
word and the right accent and I will move the world." This is one sample of his words, and here's
another, "Most of the working truths on this earth are humble, not heroic truths."
For three years "Almayer's Folly," Conrad's first book wandered the sea lanes of the world
with him, till at last it found a publisher. The day that it was published Conrad reckons as his
birthday and comments in this book that he is a mere lad of 15 years old as he writes these personal
thoughts.
Another favorite passage of mine is about Conrad meeting his mentor. "I tell you it was a
memorable year! One does not meet such an Englishman twice in a lifetime. Was he in the mystic
ordering of common events the ambassador of my future, sent out to turn the scale at a critical
moment on the top of an Alpine pass, with the peaks of the Bernese Oberland for mute and solemn
witnesses?" And further on . . . "As far as is possible for a boy whose power of expression is still
unformed I opened the secret of my thought to him and he in return allowed me a glimpse into his
mind and heart; the first glimpse of an inexhaustible and noble treasure of clear thought and warm
feeling, which through life was to be mine to draw upon with a never-deceived love and confidence."
I have met such rare friends infrequently in my life and have treasured them dearly. Through
his books, Joseph Conrad has become just such a friend.
How do we see? How do we perceive constancy of size in our visual field as we move about?
How does sleepwalking work? How does dreaming affect our eyes (REM) but not our arms and
legs? These and many other questions about the nature of perception are asked and often answered
in this book.
Bolles takes us on an historical survey of the field of perception. We look through his
studious eyes as he inspects the manifold reaches of this field. We follow him into the library as he
studies the history of perception and then to Irvine, California and Dallas, Texas as he visits research
teams working on problems in this field. We watch as he recreates the humanist-physicalist battle
for dominance in explaining perception. Do we have vision to create a physically accurate
representation of the world or do we have vision to create an individualized human view of the
world.?
The answers, when they come, derive from key experiments by researchers in the field of
perception. When they inverted a frog's eyes and re-wired them, the frog constantly missed bugs with
its tongue. When they put upside-down glasses on humans, similar response occurred for the first
three weeks, then a marvelous thing happened: the visual field inverted itself in the wearer's head
and he could see things right side up again. The message was clear: the brain learns by changing the
way it works not by storing mechanical information in large vats. Lashley spent his life looking for
such vats. He called them engrams, or memory traces, and after a life of dead-ends he came to the
conclusion that memory was impossible.
Through the many theories and experiments we find a focus either on the subjective or
objective characteristics of perception but nowhere do we find something that bridges both. This
question science leaves unanswered: Is this gap between specific and general meaning, subjective
and objective characteristics, an unbridgeable one? Are we rationally constructed automata with
lightning fast reflexes or clumsy, slow learning machines with a perceptual basis? Bolles answers
in the last sentence of this too short book, "When the slowpoke, perceiving mongoose goes up
against the lightning reflexes of the cobra, it is madness to bet on the cobra."
"Who is John Galt?" is the opening sentence of Atlas Shrugged. It is also the answer to
the questions: "What happened to John Tower?," "What happened to Eastern Airlines?," "Was Oliver North a hero?," "What happened to Whitewater and the other Savings and Loans?", "What happened to Worldcomm?", "What happened to Enron?", "What happened to Bernard Madoff?", "What happened to everyone's 401K?", and each decade the questions go on and on. It is a question in Ayn
Rand's fictional world that was an answer to hopelessly unanswerable questions. It is also an
ingenious plot thread that the heroine Dagney Taggart follows assiduously to its ultimate
conclusion in which the hero answers "I am" and proceeds with the longest and most boring
radio speech in real or fictional life. It winds on without a break for almost 80 pages, erupting
with such pearls of wisdom as "Existence exists" — shades of Werner Erhardt! Much better for a
radio broadcast would be Francisco d'Anconia's monologue on money given at Hank Rearden's
party, but Rand had built up to her Aristotelian climax and she laid it on thick.
Oh, for those of you who have not been so fortunate as to have someone you respect stare
you intensely in the eye and say, "You must read this book," the story is about how the moochers
(welfare state interventionists) and the looters (politicians and their henchmen) gain their day
only to find the victims of their victory disappearing from their pleas and grabs. The victims
disappear, abandoning all their material wealth (usually intact), taking with them the very item
the moochers and looters had railed against (their intellect), and leaving the leeches behind to
discover that the very intellect indispensable to their survival had disappeared.
Railroads collapse, copper mines disappear, oil wells dry up and the social welfare
bedbugs find themselves faced with the disastrous consequences of their own folly, thanks in no
small part to Rand's hero, John Galt. Galt acts as an accelerator of the destruction by explaining
the results of their interactions and offering them a viable alternative to supporting an immoral
structure. The producers disappear and laws are created to unify the railroads (shades of Amtrack
and Conrail), the steel industry and equalize opportunity for all (although Rand in her wildest
imagination never dreamed of minority set-asides: laws requiring contracts to be awarded to the
least capable because of perceived past injustices). The new laws succeed only in bringing further
collapse.
That there is a happy ending may be guessed from the ending words, "...the sign of the
dollar."
In this followup to his "Make Every Word Count" Gary Provost gives us a guided tour of
creative writing that could be labelled "Make Every Word Sing." He is not satisfied with the concept
that style, like life, is "what happens when you're doing something else," but feels that good writing
style can be cultivated. As a writer and a teacher he reviews many manuscripts of beginning and
professional writers and has developed the skill of spotting places where their writing doesn't work.
In this book on how to develop your individual style, he warns us that any technique that is
obviously a technique doesn't work because it makes the reader aware of the author instead of the
character or subject of the writing. One poor technique is describing the viewpoint character using
a mirror or shop window reflection, "she saw in the shop window that her hips had grown wider than
she imagined." Another is switching viewpoints abruptly within a single scene or paragraph.
Another
is inserting dialogue or description that adds no meaning to the piece.
On the positive side he suggests the use of quotes. "Credibility is believability," he says, "and
everything you write, fiction or non-fiction, must have that quality." Quotes, showing that it's true,
and "plants" are ways he suggests of adding credibility. Plants are basically presuppositions of other
time and space actions that are created in the readers' minds by some statement. The juggler's sticks
tumbled in the air like Tony's body did during a triple somersault during his college gymnastic
competitions. Later when Tony does a triple somersault to foil a robbery we tend to believe it as a
result of the plant while he was watching a juggling act.
"Beyond Style" is written using all the techniques that Gary suggests for writers to follow.
He achieves a coherency of form and content thereby that adds credibility to his suggestions for
improving style. This is an enjoyable and easy to read book that every beginning writer should have
in his armamentarium. With it one can discover that what lies "beyond style" is the individual writer
that transcends stereotypes to create writing that is as unique one's fingerprint and as revealing as an
intimate portrait.
Hits (Watch as soon as you can. A Don't Miss Hit is one you might otherwise ignore.):
“The Human Comedy” (1943) starring Mickey Rooney, Frank Morgan, and others in a splendid portrayal of William Saroyan’s great novel. Enjoy a time warp to 1943 and join in singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” with a train full of young soldiers heading off to fight. Movie theaters all over America must have resounded with audiences singing along during war-time. Arching over everything was Saroyan’s marvelous philosophy and descriptions of the spiritual world. A DON’T MISS HIT! ! (NOTE: not currently on Netflix, saw it on Turner Classic Movies — TCM)
"That Evening Sun" (2009) Hal Holbrook stars as an aging man who walks away from a nursing home to reclaim his family home which is haunted by a new family and remnants of his old family. If you treat your kids mean when they're growing up, you won't like what they do to you as they take over parenting you in your old age.
"Chloe" (2009) Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, and Amanda Seyfried star in this menage à trois, or is it à quatre? Is Liam betraying Julianne, she wants to find out, and hires a call girl to report back. The reports turn on Julianne and thereupon hangs a tale not to be missed. A DON'T MISS HIT ! ! "Alice in Wonderland" (2010) takes us along with Alice as an adult back to "Underland" and everything has become more adult, darker, and evil. The Red Queen treats people as furniture, and Alice take umbrage over that, calling herself Um from Umbrage, and decides to exert her muchness and turn things around. We see a bit of Oz process as bumbling twin girls of Alice's friends become Tweedledum and Tweedledee. We watch the caterpillar Absolam morph into a butterfly, and Johnny Dep become the maddest Hatter of all. Worth the wait, worth the ride, worth a second look. A DON'T MISS HIT ! ! "Please Give" (2010) is a movie you want to hate, but enough reality breaks through with love and kindness that it warms your heart at the end.
"Get Him to the Greek" (2010) a movie you want to hate because obviously everything's going to go wrong for the young guy escorting a superstar from London to the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, but it's so much fun and hilarious at every step that you don't want it to end. Madcap adventures like Alice following the eponymous Madcap.
"Nathalie" (2003) is French movie from which "Chloe" was adapted. In a curious twist of movie mores, this movie is absent the sexy and flirting scenes of "Chloe". Interesting movie in its own right.
"The Extra Man" (2010) staring Kevin Kline in a comedic tour-de-force as an aging male escort to the rich. Unexpectedly funny, as it moves to second half of movie, the laughs are non-stop with unpredictable twists and situations. Worth a couple of viewings. A DON'T MISS HIT ! ! "Lovers and other Strangers" (1970) a medley of stars of the era play out the fun in this romantic throwback to the throwaway 70s.
“Flame & Citron” (2008) is a true story of possibly the only resistance when Denmark rolled over for the Nazis in WWII. Flame & Citron are like Bonnie & Clyde or Butch & Sundance in their epic and often confusing struggle to get rid of Nazis in their homeland. Dark, moody, and bloody, but worth a long look. HIT
“Letters to Juliet” (2010) is a wonderful love story at two levels, unrequited love satisfied after 50 year hiatus and young love blooms between two protagonists after they push ice cream in each other’s face. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! !
“Confessions of a Shopaholic” (2009) Fun movie about a gal to whom buying clothes more is important than work and sex. Suddenly thrown into notoriety as The Girl with the Green Scarf, she celebrates by going on another shopping spree.
“The Pillars of Earth” (2010) 3Disks An epic tale of the building of Kingsbridge Cathedral and the lives of Tom Builder, Jack Jackson, and Prior Philip who made it all possible. Intrigue and subterfuge kept England in the throes of poverty and battles for twenty or more years while the cathedral rose twice from the ashes. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “White Christmas” (1954) Watch this classic in HD and you’ll notice dance production numbers that you’d swear you’d seen before, probably because of the poor resolution of the older TVs. Bing Crosby, Rosie Clooney, and Danny Kaye star in a marvelous story for the eponymous evergreen song of a snowy holiday. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! ! “Scrooged” (1988) This holiday classic was broadcast continuously in HD and we finally gave in and watched it all. Charles Dickens, if he were alive today, would be turning over in his grave! The updates of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and To Come were deliciously clever and zany and Bill Murray played the bad guy/nice guy Scrooge while Buddy Hackett played the period Scrooge in the live “Christmas Carol” being broadcast by the Cable Channel Murray is head of. A DON’T MISS HIT ! ! !
Misses (Avoid At All Costs): We attempted to watch these this month, but didn't make it all the way through on most of them. Awhile back when three AAAC horrors hit us in one night, I decided to add a sub-category to "Avoid at All Costs", namely, A DVD STOMPER. These are movies so bad, you don't want anyone else to get stuck watching them, so you want to stomp on the disks. That way, if everyone else who gets burnt by the movie does the same, soon no copies of the awful movie will be extant and the world will be better off.
"Interception" (2008) Somewhere along the way this movie had intercepted: its script, its acting, its plot and its directing, and yet by the end of the movie, you know it was awful in every way. A DVD STOMPER ! ! "Centurion" (2010) Bloody battle after bloody battle in cold, dark north. Ends as meaningless as it started. "Grown Ups" (2010) were nowhere to be found; 4 year old sucking on his mommie's tit and 34 year olds not weaned either; potty humor and prat falls; 7-year-old humor makes this an AAAC! "Love and other Disasters" (2006) such as this lugubrious Brittany Murphy movie!
“Greenberg” (2009) A Ben Stiller quirky movie in which a NY’er moves into brothers home in Beverly Hills and develops a relationship with a German Shepherd and a Personal assistant, but hardly anyone else. His job is “doing nothing” right now, and that’s what the movie mostly did. Some wit, some insight, some sexy scenes, some quirky advice from narrator, and a puzzling ending.
Your call on these — your taste in movies may differ, but I liked them:
"Winter's Bone" (2010) Remember Old Mother Hubbard whose cupboard was bare? That's this movie: Absent any explanation of the situation, devoid of joy, of human kindness, of love, of food, and what they forced a 17-yr-old daughter to do to retain the home in which she was forced to raise two young siblings and her crazy-sick mother shouldn't happen to a dog. Not a travel poster for Missouri hill country. "Splice" (2009) Two geneticist attempt to improve on God in designing humans and their results are as predictable as Frankenstein's. Using genes instead of electricity, and hubris instead of common sense. They produce Dren, a surprisingly androgynous being in this lethal tale.
“The Sensation of Sight” (2006) involves a teacher whose student blows his brains out shortly after giving him some antique encyclopedias and asking him to put them to good use. After this event in an otherwise abandoned classroom, the teacher quits and begins door-to-door selling of the encyclopedias. On his peregrinations, the ghost of the student accompanies him through this somber movie. Will the ghost ever move on to the light? Will the teacher ever return to his wife and little boy who love and miss him? “Light is responsible for the sensation of sight.” is the eponymous quote at the end of the movie.
This joke may be the only shark joke extant which does not involve a lawyer in any way (unless it happens to be a swimming lawyer), plus it may be the first Cajun shark joke. (Note: A Cajun purges crawfish before boiling to clean out the mudbugs' intestinal tracts.) Adapted from a joke told me by Cindy our garden helper.
Two Cajun sharks were swimming around in deep water below a man who was struggling on the surface of the water.
The Mamma Shark told her teenage boy shark, "T-Boo, follow me now, Cher. We can't attack right now. We must go up on the surface and circle the man three times, making sure dat he sees us."
During the second trip around the flailing man, the teenage shark had enough. "Oh, Mamma, this is boring! Why can't we just eat him right away?" Lil Boudreaux axed.
"Mais, T-Boo, didn't yo' Papa teach you 'bout dat? We got to purge him first, so dat he taste better!"
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
5. RECIPE of the MONTH for January, 2011 from Bobby Jeaux's Kitchen: (click links to see photo of ingredients, preparation steps) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Grama Del's Clam Chowder
Background on Grama Del's Clam Chowder:
When our daughter Maureen some years ago introduced us to Progresso's New England Clam Chowder, we enjoyed it immediately. Nothing out of a can ever came close to authentic New England Clam Chowder, a concoction which takes the chill off out of the coldest New England day. Recently Del came up with a way of extending the chowder and adding an additional savor. Here's the recipe.
Pinch of Cayenne pepper Season with Salt, Pepper, and Tony's Preparation
Open all cans.
Cooking Instructions
Pour entire contents of all cans into sauce pan (or Corning Ware dish in Microwave). Heat over Medium to Low heat untill simmering. Thin with a little cream or milk if too thick.
Serving Suggestion
Add a half slice of hot buttered toast to the side of each bowl. (Croutons or Oyster Crackers optional)
"The eyes are created by the light for the light." Goethe
Everything you do is based on prior programming.
"I don't get it."
Have you ever rubbed your eyes in the morning
to get them going?
Maybe a cold wash cloth does the trick for you?
What is going on?
"The blood starts flowing to the eyes?"
Right. You re-create the original irritation of the beams of sunlight
that caused the creation of the sense of sight
during the dawn of creation.
"I don't get it."
Everything we do is based on prior programming.
"I still don't get it."
If you don't get it, it's because of your prior programming.
"Oh."
Prior Programming: Written December 7, 1995 at 217 Timberlane Road. This poem describes the theory of Goethe and Steiner that it was the presence of light that created the organs of sight.
Excerpt from my review of Supersensible Knowledge by Rudolf Steiner, who editted the Goethe archives:
. . . Goethe's saying, "The eyes are created by the light for the light." The impact is this: that our eyes were created as a result of persistent impacts of light rays falling on the surface of the skull, causing pain (an abundance of sensory inputs), destroying the skin, and leading to the creation of a sensory apparatus (eyes) to record the sensation. (Perhaps humans passed through a Cyclops stage, before binocular vision was created.) The key here is that the presence of data created the transducers. Much like a computer systems analyst would add a transducer to record temperature of a device if the temperature of that device were crucial to the operation of the system. Thus we might expect new sensory apparatuses and capabilities to form as soon as persistent sources of new data appear.
The "I don't get it." additions came from Del's review of the original poem. Thanks, Del.
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.
[RJM NOTE: These five reviews were part of my "A Reader's Journal, Volume 1", but were missed during the initial website publication.
Newly resurrected, I include these reviews here and in the ARJ1 reviews. ]
[RJM NOTE: You may remember Robert Fulghum from his popular book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten from 1988. I have just added a passage to the review from page 218 as it contains a dictum I have often used but had forgotten the origin of, up until now: "He who laughs, lasts." ]
The fireman responded to an apartment fire and found a bed on fire. They questioned the tenant
as to how the fire started. "I don't know," he said, "it was on fire when I lay on it." Thus was the title of
Fulghum's successor to his "Kindergarten" book generated. Once again He mixes together a melange of
anecdotes and philosophical nectar into a potpourri, which, when quaffed in deep draughts, warms the
heart.
The three weddings he describes presiding at provide excellent examples of his genre. In the
first wedding, the controlling mother's shenanigans are overturned by the bride's puking all over the
wedding party in full view of the assembled congregation, Three video cameras, God and everybody.
In the second the eloping brother-in-law (a widower) and sister-in-law (a widow) are surprised by their
kids from both marriages, cousins soon to be siblings, who join in the ceremony. In the third episode,
the marriage of a devout Catholic and a devout Jew proves that not only does love conquer all, but love
is stronger than religion.
"Fulghum" is the only word on his business card as he does not wish to limit himself by putting
an occupation on it. On airplane trips he prefers to concoct an occupation in order to generate
conversation. Once he agreed with his fellow traveller that they would both choose alternate
occupations and Fulghum chose "nun." The end of the plane ride brought him strange looks from the
people seated behind him when they got their first glimpse of the nun to whom they had been listening.
His wife sleeps with a sleep mask on every night and when he goes to bed he chuckles to
himself about sleeping with the Lone Ranger. He says he is now content to say things like "Goodnight,
Kemo Sabe" to himself in deference to the sleeping beauty before him. This book is full of things that
Fulghum has been privately chuckling about for some time and we are invited to join him in the fun.
[page 218] Some years ago I cam across a phrase in Greek — asbestos gelos — unquenchable laughter. I traced it to Homer's Iliad, where it was used to describe the laughter of the gods. That's my kind of laughter. And he who laughs, lasts.
If you would ask him, if this is his last book, I'm sure he would answer "Belum," which is a
quaint word in Indonesia, a favorite word of his, that means, "not quite yet."
[RJM NOTE: This review left out of the bound version of A Reader's Journal, Volume 1, and was missed during the initial website publication. Newly resurrected, I include the review here and in the ARJ1 reviews. My early reviews were typically two pages long like this one."]
Jung starts this book with a quote from an ancient adept, "If the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way." Thus Jung starts the reader on a journey to that unique destination, individuation. The outcome of the journey is never certain; the goal is to arrive at one's own center of being and from there to gaze upon the world for the first time. Jung strives to bring metaphysical insights into the light of psychological understanding and explores the subterranean caverns of alchemy to mine it of its jewels of insight into that yet mysterious process of individuation. In simple terms, Jung tries to turn the wrong man into the right man.
He leads us through explorations of the secret of the golden flower, the writings of Paracelsus, the myths of Mecurius, and the lore of the philosophical tree. Till at the end of the book he tells us,
It seemed desirable to discuss in some detail the process which underlie both alchemy and the modern psychology of the unconscious. I am aware, and hope I have made clear to the reader, that merely intellectual understanding is not sufficient. It supplies us only with verbal concepts, but it does not give us their true content, which is to be found in the living experience of the process as applied to ourselves.
And in the closing sentence,
We feel sorry for the [alchemist] and admire the [chemist], but no one asks about the fate of the psyche, which vanished from sight for several hundred years.
Vanished, that is, until Carl Jung focused his research on it and returned it, as a holy grail, to the light of day to heal all those who drank from it.
It is a shame that such beautiful insights should lie hidden in such a ponderous and unapproachable book. The process of individuation is never easy and easier to approach books tend to lead us farther from the goal of self knowledge.
In this book Reshad covers some basics that any healer requires to be successful in his art. He
covers the three R's of healing: Recognition, Redemption, and Resurrection. The second R, redemption,
he says, we keep ourselves from by erecting three walls around our heart: the walls of resentment, envy,
and pride. (See my poem, "Three Walls", which was directly inspired by this book.) Unless we dissolve,
shake apart, or tunnel through these walls we will not heal ourselves and thus will not be able to heal others.
Feild discusses his experiences as healer of the earth, called a geomancer. By divining rods held
over maps, he discovers vortices of negative energy and using iron rods clad with copper, he is able to
divert the energy into useful channels. A couple at a small cottage have their peace interrupted by fires and
floods (from an underground river, no less). He discovers that the nearby site of an old monastery had been
paved over (shades of Amityville) and once he restored the disturbed flow of energy to its former path by
directing it around the slab with his copper clad rods, peace was restored to the cottage.
He gives directions for the Mother's Breath: a sequence of 7-1-7-1-7 breaths: actually a rhythm,
not a fixed time sequence. This is the same rhythm used by smokers of marijuana to produce altered states
of consciousness.
Once when moving, a glass desk top sheared and a huge guillotine shard of glass sliced across my
wrist. I automatically began breathing deeply and regularly in a similar fashion. The result was that the cut
hardly bled at all. A friend who was watching me said she saw me stop the bleeding. That was the Mother's
Breath I'm convinced now. Everyone should practice enough of this to ensure its availability in time of
need.
Read this book and be ready with the Mother's Breath.
[Bobby's commentary found in handwriting from Back Inside Cover]:
April 20, 1989:
Hypnosis: Whenever you ask a question and happen to say remember when, if you mention a person, place or thing, you lead, via a subtle form of hypnosis, the other person into conjuring up an image of what you described. Do not do this unless that is your intention!
June 4, 1989:
Large Groups Suck: You must wait for everyone in the group to show up before you can move to
another place. Thus, the person who has the most problems, the most kinks in their life, will hold up and
inconvenience everyone else. This is the major difficulty with democracy. We are all dragged down to the
lowest level of limitation, up until now!
Starting with "dreams as facts", Jung ends with all facts as dreams, if we interpret the
psyche as dreams. Jung avers the reality of the psyche clearly and concisely in several places. Here's one example:
Early in this book Hoeller identifies himself as a modern day Gnostic and the book seems
dedicated to his examination of the main tenets of Gnosticism. He explores the writings of the father
of Gnosticism (Valentinus), the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Nag Hammadi library.
The "Song of the Pearl" is a story told by Bardesan (b. 155 A.D.) as an ancient Gnostic myth.
It tracks the plot of so many stories of the hero who forgets his mission (modern day version: `Man
Who Fell to Earth'). It concerns the plight of the prince who, visiting a strange country, forgets his
mission until some event intervenes to assist him in remembering who he really is. Here is a fragment
of one of his hymns presereved by St. Ephrem:
[page 81, 82] Thou fountain of joy
Whose gate by commandment
Opens wide to the Mother;
Which Beings divine
Have measured and founded,
Which Father and Mother
With their steps have made fruitful.
Let her who comes after thee
To me be a daughter
A sister to thee.
When at length shall it be ours
To look on thy banquet.
To see the young maiden,
The daughter thou sett'st
On thy knee and caressest?
Hoeller tells us details of the two great Gnostic mystery rites: the bridal chamber and the
redemption . He explains how these two rites became flattened of affect and meaning and were
transformed into the mundane sacraments of matrimony and penance in the second or third century.
In the bridal chamber, the man is reunited with his female angelic part from which he was separated
at birth, the woman likewise with male angelic part. The difference between our matrimony and the
bridal chamber mystery is that matrimony, in which a real man and real woman join together in a
partnership, is one step removed from the process of the bridal chamber. The bridal chamber rite is
the mysterium coniunctionus of Jung or the heiros gamos (or mystical marriage) of the Greeks. In
these rites the `eternal male' part is united in one body with the `eternal female'. The individual
undergoing that rite will become unified, made one, `be alone but never lonely', and may or may not
be married. In a real sense marriage is a poor substitute for heiros gamos and although it may be
useful as a stepping stone to the real thing. So often, however, the hero (or heroine ) forgets his (or
her) ultimate goal and builds a house upon the stepping stone. As the Sufi's say, `counterfeit coin
can exist only because real gold exists'.
Stephan Hoeller shows us the real gold and we can see our houses of religion as stepping
stones to self-knowledge and individuation and not as the final goal.
I first read this book in April 1994. I remember it well because when I reached page 88 on April
14, 1994, I read the following, " . . . today is Wednesday, April 14, 1993 . . . ". Exactly one year, 365
days, had passed from when Eco wrote the original words until I read them in a finished book, second
printing. I noted the date in the book, and later, on August 14, 1995, I again encountered the same page
in the course of re-reading this book, one year and four months later. I return to Six Walks like Eco gets
lost in the woods in Sylvie. After his first reading of Sylvie at the age of twenty, Eco returned to it time
and again: in his papers, seminars, and graduate courses he gave on the novel. He says, "Every time I
picked up Sylvie, even though I knew it in such an anatomical way — perhaps because I knew it so
well — I fall in love with it again, as if I were reading it for the first time." Eco gets lost in Sylvie's
fictional woods like I did in the Foxborough State Park on my trail bike. Soon I came to know where all
the trails came out, where all the waterfalls were, where the granite quarry was, but still I rode to enjoy
new combinations of trails and the changing of the terrain with the different seasons of the year. Each time
Eco's Model Reader reads the same book another time, the Empirical Reader is experiencing a different
season of the year, of life. During our perambulations with Eco, we discover there are Model Authors
and Empirical Authors as well — makes for a busy reading time, since four's company.
Here is a potpourri of Eco from Six Walks:
Eco gives a process description of a pornographic film: what is non-sexual takes as long
as real life, what is sexual takes much longer.
Eco asks, "How can a verbal text put something before our eyes as if we could see it."
He explains how the impression of space is created by expanding "both the discourse
time and reading in relation to the story time."
Eco points out that "it was believed that the Morning Star was different from the Evening
Star (Hesperus and Phosphorus, as they were called), but that these are really the same
celestial body — namely, Venus." Thus, those who worshiped the Morning Star held
their adorations in the morning. They were loath to believe that the object of worship of
their evening worshiping brethren was the same as their beloved morning icon. Two
perspectives, one object.
Eco says, "During the seventeenth century, Francis Lodwick put forward the idea that
original names were the names not substances but of actions." Like the American Indian
names we hear today, such as "Dances With Wolves" or "Rainbow Dancing Waters."
The focus is on the action, the process, not the thing. Using this naming process, one
might call Umberto Eco: "Walks in Fictional Woods."
Ablaze with self-indulgent and self-congratulatory fluff — this masterpiece of hyperbole hardly
ever finishes a sentence or a complete thought. E.g., "The strategy of the carp. And the strategy of the
shark." or later "It's the road less traveled, but if you begin, in the discovery sense, you are already there."
This is future shock in mega-doses, "open wide" they say (in effect), "we have you pegged and here is
your curriculum vitae for future success. You only have to jump into the pool and dophinize your shark
and carp brain to swim circles around others to succeed in creating a flow that overwhelms you with
abundance everywhere: of money, love, friends, success, and, of course, money! By the way, here's our
address to send us money at Brain Technologies Corporation."
I read this book through in one session (about 2 hours) since there was little material that was
new to me and because the hyper-onceover the book gives the subjects encourages that kind of express
train mentality.
Read this book if you are a carp or a shark and have fallen so far behind in your field that you
cannot catch up in one simple lifetime. It will at least give you an explanation of why. Or at best plot a
blueprint for a springboard to a revolutionary way of thinking/being that will make your former
shark/carp/pseudo-enlightened-carp thinking irrelevant to your future self.
Dolphins: save your money and skim it at a library.
This Review Blurb completes the one begun in Digest10c on December 1, 2010.
Quick summary of the three planes brought by Steiner out of the abstract Cartesian coordinates of x,
y, z axes into the three human planes in which we live, move, and have our being. First consider the plane
which divides our left and right sides of our body. This is the plane of Thinking and discriminating. The
second plane divides our front from our back (anterior from posterior). This second plane does not exist for
animals because they are not human and have no possibility of this anterior/posterior plane because the natural
animal body is oriented parallel to the surface of the Earth instead of perpendicular to it as humans are
oriented naturally. This is the plane of everything dealing with human Will. The third plane is that of Feeling
which is the horizontal plane you form by stretching out your hands, it separates the head region from the
body and limbs region, the above from the below.
What is the option that modern astronomy provides us?
[page 10] Naturally if one only takes this last remnant of the human being — the
three dimensions at right angles to one another — if that is all one wants to imagine,
then the Universe appears terribly poor. Poor, infinitely poor is our present
astronomical view of the Universe; and it will not become richer until we press
forward to a real knowledge of Man, until we really learn to look into Man.
Astronomers and physicists subtract away the essence of what it means to be Man and starve upon the
abstract, dead logical constructs which remain. Having studied astronomy as a physicist, I have some
acquaintance with the matter. I was trapped by my academic studies like a triangle in Abbott's Flatland. I
would watch in awe as 3-D objects penetrated my 2-D world, a sphere appearing as a point, growing larger
and then smaller till it became a point once more and disappeared. That was how the world of above and
below, the world of feeling appeared to me. I didn't have a clue as to what I was feeling, it was just things
which happened to me. One day I read Jane Austen's Emma and I was taken aback — she was writing
about feelings! A whole new dimension of existence opened up for me that was nowhere to be found in
Skilling's "Electric Waves" or Margenau's "Quantum Physics". Like Alice consuming the "Drink Me" liquid,
I grew out of the abstract me into a full human being who could now move through the Flatlands of astronomy
and physics with ease. More importantly the things I talked to people about were full of meaning to everyone
not just to the academic types.
During this process of growth, I studied Left and Right Brain functions, a subject of much interest in the
1970s and 80s, and one that I find Steiner was familiar with over ninety years ago. Here is his description
of the distinction between Left and Right Brain processes. Note that he refers only to the external limbs which
are cross-connected to hemispheres of the brain, so that left sense-organs (connected to the right hemisphere)
are and charged with sensing outer objects, and our right sense-organs (connected to the left hemisphere)
are charged with "sensing our sense" of them. (Page 11)
[page 11] We bisect our organism as it were into right and left; for we really act
quite differently with our right and left sense-organs. This we can appreciate if we
observe that with the left sense-organ we undertake as it were, the handling of outer
objects; and in our thinking too, there is a sort of handling or feeling of external
objects. With the right sense-organ we as it were 'feel our feeling' of them. It is then
that they first become our own.
Try this experiment: bring your two hands together and interlace your fingers with fingers lying on top
of each hand in the valley formed by the knuckles. Do that now. Observe which thumb is on top of the other
thumb. Is your right thumb or left thumb? Whichever it is, separate your hands by several feet and bring them
together again so the opposite thumb is on top of the other — if your Right Thumb was on top, now your Left
Thumb should be on top. Notice how different it feels? Awkward, perhaps? Difficult? Perhaps you would
like to learn how to make both ways feel equally comfortable.
Here's how to do it: Start with the natural way
from the first time, let's say it was Left Thumb on top. Slowly move your hands apart, always keeping the
Right Thumb and Fingers lifted against and touching the Left Thumb and Fingers. When you reach the
extremities, roll over the tips of Thumb and Fingers and begin to approach with the Right Thumb and Fingers
on top. Move slowly till both hands are interlaced as originally, only with the opposite Thumb on top. You
may encounter some difficulty during this, so make sure that you allow your wrists to flex in order to complete
the process. After a few times, you will find it possible to feel equally comfortable with either Thumb on top.
This can be seen to be an Ego or "I-am" building exercise as it requires coordination between both your left
and right hand sense-organs.
[page 11] We could never have attained to the ego-concept if we were not able to
perceive, together with what we experience on the right, also that which we
experience on the left. By simply laying the hands one over the other we have a
picture of the ego-concept. It is indeed true that by beginning to use clear images
instead of living merely in phraseology, man will become inwardly richer and will
gain the faculty of visualizing the Universe in greater detail.
Animals lack an Ego and thus cannot experience abstract dimensions in space as any human being can.
When a Zoologist calls Man the "highest primate" it is an insult to every human being who knows that no
animal has an Ego.
[page 14, 15] The question is important: How do we manage to obtain abstract space
dimensions from concrete ones? An animal could not do this! An animal would
always feel its plane of symmetry as a concrete 'symmetry' plane, and it would not
relate this symmetry plane to any abstract direction, but would at most, if it could
think at all in the human sense, feel the turning (from one plane to another). The
animal in fact does feel this turning as a deviation of its symmetry plane from the
normal. Herein lie important and essential problems of Zoology, which will once
again be illustrated as soon as Man studies them from the standpoint of their
impulses in reality.
Anyone over the age of 60 has seen dramatic changes in automobiles during the twentieth century. If one
has ever driven a car which had a crank to start the engine, as early Model T Fords, one knows how
convenient the invention of the electric starter must have been. No longer did one have to walk outside in all
kinds of weather to the front of the automobile, instead one pushed a button on the dashboard to start the
motor. Every new incarnation of automobiles arrived with some function that previously one had to go outside
to do or check: the oil level goes low and the engine light on the dashboard comes on, the tire pressure goes
low and a light on the dashboard comes on. The dashboard went from a flat board designed to keep water
from splashing on the driver (thus the dash-board) to what should be called the instrument panel or the
sensory coordination center, the brain, if you will, of the automobile. Considering how the various generations
of cars have evolved, it shouldn't be too foreign to consider that human beings undergo a similar process of
evolution, namely, what forces were in one's limbs during a previous
incarnation are now located in one's head. "Head forces are the
metamorphosis of the limb forces of the previous incarnation." (Page 15)
Our head is the equivalent of the seed of a plant, the main difference
is that the plant growing up away from the Earth whereas the human being
grows down towards the Earth. In the womb we are first formed as all
head, and then gradually the limbs are added, we born unable to stand
erect, but as we complete our maturation outside of the womb, we
eventually stand up and complete the process of growing down to the
Earth. Thus, when looking at how the various portions of plants affect
which portions of the human body, one must imagine the human being with
its head under the ground, as if its head were a seed growing up.
This is the key to understanding how we have evolved abstract notions of space and directions: our head
begins its existence independently of the Earth and only gradually grows down towards it.
[page 21, 22] Consider for a moment what we as civilized humanity have done since
the beginning of this Fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We have thought about the
Universe with our head. And it is the head — that part of us which has made itself
quite independent of the Earth — that has contracted the world-movements into the
abstraction of the three dimensions. We have the Copernican conception of the
Universe, designed for us by the least appropriate means, the head, the essential
characteristic of which is its emancipation from co-operation in the world
movements. It would be somewhat as though you wished to obtain an idea, shall we
say, of the movement of a railway train in which you are traveling, from a picture of
it you draw with your hand, without reference to the movement of the train, but
solely according to your own ideas. You draw something; you make yourself
independent. But you cannot consider such a drawing as depicting the movement of
the railway train; it has nothing whatever to do with it! And just as little to do with
the world-process has a picture of it that we have designed according to external
spatial astronomy, using for the purpose the instrument that is the most inadequate
for its conception.
If you wish construct a model of how the Earth revolves around the Sun, take an old phonograph record,
glue a round ball to its periphery, and start the turntable spinning. There will be the Earth revolving around
the center of the turntable where the Sun would be located. Simple enough — but what does this model leave
out? Well, the Earth is spinning around the Sun more like a ball on a string whirled around with one's hand
held in the air. But consider that the Sun is moving quickly through space. So imagine you are on the tip of
a rocket rising straight into the air and are spinning the model of Earth around, what does it do? It trails after
you as it spins around you. That is how the Earth trails the Sun during its travels through the universe. And
we as humans on the surface of the rotating Earth traverse an amazingly complex path of spirals within spirals
through the Universe.
[page 24] But I will show you first how to gain a conception of the true relation of the
Earth to the Sun — that the Earth actually follows the Sun in its path — by
searching for the one thing that will show us this relationship, namely certain
processes in the human organism connected with the representative of the Sun in
man — the human heart. For it is by taking our start from the knowledge of Man
that we must seek to attain to a knowledge of the Universe.
The method is to distinguish the three planes of the human being which relate to thinking, willing, and
feeling, not to build a different set of lines of orbits of the Earth and Sun.
[page 26] I have tried to show you how, the moment one begins to pass to a more
intensive experience of the three directions of space in one's own form, one realizes
how these directions differ in nature and kind from one another; it is only the faculty
of mental abstraction in the head which makes these three dimensions abstract and
does not distinguish between above and below, left and right, before and behind, but
simply takes them as three lines. And a similar error would immediately again be
incurred if one set out to build any other construction into space in a purely abstract
way.
The next bit of news will no doubt come as a shock: the Sun is really a black hole and does not generate
light and heat but merely reflects it back from the rest of the Solar System. This might seem to some staunch
materialists as weird as saying that the heart is not a pump, but rather the circulation of the blood moves the
heart! The interesting part of these two phenomena is that they are isomorphic with each other: the Sun and
the heart are both receivers of the bounty of the milieu in the center of which they are embedded! Both are
hollow vessels which receive flow, pulsate, and emit flow back into their sphere of control. To be convinced
of the truth of the heart's operation as a hydraulic ram which interrupts the flow of circulatory blood to create
turbulence in order to oxygenate the blood, one need only observe the pulsation of the heart in a fetus, an
organ that does not resemble a pump at all because it has no discernible structure nor muscular walls, but is merely an elongated portion of an artery.
As for the true nature of the Sun, scientists have never been able to explain
why the temperature in the atmosphere of the Sun is higher than that inside the Sun, a scientific fact which
seems to indicate that the Sun is a charged body traveling in a galactic magnetic field and thus acting as a
generator of electromagnetic radiation. All of which, if so, is exactly as Steiner described it 90 years earlier.
Plus, scientists have postulated Black Holes as existing in various distant parts of the universe, but no one
actually has seen one and thus the Sun could be one and no one would know, and if that were so, Steiner
would be right on his other point that the Sun's center contains "negative space which absorbs everything
which comes near it". The radiation of the Sun is not absorbed because it happens at and above the surface
of the Sun, being generated by the motion of the large charged body in a magnetic field. If there are some
thermonuclear reactions within the body of the Sun, these would be confined to the surface area and a side
effect of the Black Hole in the deeper interior of the Sun, which we have no instruments for measuring.
[page 37, 38] Look at the principal course of the blood-vessels in the human
organism. Seen from above it is like a looped line. Instead of drawing it, we should
follow the hieroglyphs inscribed in our own selves; for then we would learn to
understand the nature of the qualities in the Universe outside.
This we can only do
when we are able to recognize and experience livingly the fact of which I have also
spoken in public lectures, the fact namely, that the heart does not work like a pump
driving the blood through the body, but that the heart is moved by the circulation,
which is itself a living thing, and the circulation is in its turn conditioned by the
organs. The heart, as can be followed in embryology, is really nothing more than a
product of the blood circulation. If we can understand what the heart is in the human
body, we shall learn to understand also that the Sun is not, as Newton calls it, the
general cable-pulley which sends its ropes (called the force of gravitation) towards
the planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and so forth, drawing them by these
unseen forces of attraction, or spraying out light to them, and the like; but that just
as the movement of the heart is the product of the life-force of the circulation, so the
Sun is no other than the product of the whole Planetary system. The Sun is the
result, not the point of departure. The living co-operation of the solar system
produces in the center a hollow, which reflects as a mirror. That is the Sun! I have
often said that the physicist would be greatly astonished if he could travel to the Sun
and find there nothing of what he now imagines, but simply a hollow space; nay, even
a hollow space of suction which annihilates everything within it. A space indeed that
is less than hollow. A hollow space merely receives what is put into it; but the Sun
is a hollow space of such a nature that anything brought to it is immediately
absorbed and disappears. There in the Sun is not only nothing, but less than nothing.
What shines to us in the light is the reflection of what first comes in from Cosmic
space — just as the movement of the heart is, as it were, what is arrested there in
the co-operation of the organs, in the blood-movement, through the activity of thirst
and hunger and so forth.
Truly there is in operation the macrocosm of the Sun in the Cosmos mirroring the microcosm of the
Heart in the Human Being. If the human being evolved in synchronism with the cosmos, as Steiner describes
in his Outline of Occult Science, then this is surely to be expected. If we are ever to follow the dictum over
the Temple of Apollo, "Know Thyself", we will find this knowledge of ourselves revealing a knowledge of
the cosmos and vice versa — it all happens at the same time.
There is an interesting religious aspect which suggests itself at this point, people who would gladly
acknowledge taking Christ into their heart might balk at accepting the reality of Christ residing in the Sun, the
heart of our Cosmos, up until now. We discover the living Nature of our macrocosm aligning with the living
Christian religion of our microcosm.
During life between death and a new birth what was formerly outside of us is inside of us, instead of
looking out into the cosmos as we do now, we look then within ourselves. "In a certain sense we look then
from the periphery upon the center." (Page 103)
[page 108, 109] Between birth and death we say: My heart is within my breast, and
in it converge the streams or motions of the blood-circulation. At a certain stage of
development between death and re-birth we say: In my inner being is the Sun — and
by this expression we mean the actual Sun, which the physicist claims to be a ball of
gas, but which is in reality something quite different. We experience the actual Sun
in the same manner as we experience here the heart. Here the Sun is visible to the
eye, whereas during the time between death and re-birth the evolution of the heart
on its path to the pineal gland, as it undergoes on the way a wonderful
metamorphosis, is the cause of sublime experiences. We experience the complete
system of our blood-circulation — the forces at work in it, that is, not the substances
as such. As existence between death and re-birth proceeds, these forces undergo
transmutation, so that, when once again we come to be born again on earth, they
have become the forces of us of our new nervous-system.
Here is a concise summary of the tripartite human as a being of thinking, feeling, and will. In our thinking
we are awake, in our feeling as in a dreaming sleep, and in our will as in a deep unconscious sleep. Our will
is connected to our metabolism and part of our limb-nature and all this is "really in a state of perpetual sleep"
— which means a deep unconscious sleep.
[page 114] We must be absolutely clear that this state of sleep continues in regard
to our inner organism, when we ourselves are awake. We can therefore say that the
'limb-being' as carrier of our 'will-being', is in a permanent state of sleep. Our
circulation or 'rhythmic-being', which may be described as mediating between the
head-organization and the limb-being (the latter extending into our interior in
metabolism) is in a continuous dream state. This rhythmic system is at the same
time the outer instrument for our world of feeling. The world of feeling is rooted
wholly within our rhythmic organization and while our metabolic system, together
with its outward extension — the limbs — is the vehicle of the will, the rhythmic
system is the vehicle of our feeling life, and is related to our consciousness in the
same way as our dream state to our waking life. Between waking and falling asleep,
we are only really awake in our life of ideation and thought.
One must also be aware that our limbic-being includes the various processes of digestion as well as the
operation of our outer limbs.
[page 114, 115] Thus man, in his life between birth and death, is in an intermittent
waking state in respect to his life of thought, in a dream state regarding his emotions
and feelings, of which the rhythmic system is the vehicle; and he is in a state of
continuous sleep as regards his limbs and metabolic system. We must realize at this
point that really to comprehend human nature, it is necessary to fix our attention
upon the fact of the extension of the limb-nature into the interior of man. All the
processes that are ultimately connected with the abdominal region, everything
connected with assimilation, digestion, as also with the secretion of milk in females,
and so forth, all these processes are a continuation of the limb nature, directed
inwards. So that in speaking of the will-nature or metabolic-nature, we do not mean
only the outer limbs, but the continuation inwards too of this limb activity. In respect
to all this, intimately connected as it is with the will-nature, we are continuously
asleep.
Here we encounter another difference between what Steiner perceives as an inner reality and what the
science of physiology holds to be true. Steiner reveals that there are no motor neurons, only neurons of
perception. Thus when a neuron is severed which would otherwise report the position of a man's leg, e.g.,
that man will not be able to move his leg, because he will not even know the leg exists, even if he can see it
with his own eyes!(3)
[page 115] The nerve merely informs us that we have a limb, it tells us of the
presence of such a limb. This nerve as such has no part in the activity of the Ego
upon that limb. A direct correspondence exists between the limb and the will, which
latter is associated in man with the Ego-being, and in the animal with the astral body.
All that Physiology has to say in respect, for instance, of the speed of transmission
of the so-called will, needs to be revised; it should be impressed upon us that here
we have to do rather with the velocity of transmission in respect of the perception
of that particular limb. Naturally anyone initiated into modern physiology can
challenge this assertion in a dozen ways. I am well acquainted with these objections.
But we have to try to rise a really logical thought process in this matter, and we shall
find that what I say here corresponds with actual facts of observation, while what is
said in physiological textbooks does not.
The Deed of Golgotha, when Christ Jesus's blood flowed from the Cross into the Earth and forever
changed the nature of the Earth, setting it glowing for spiritual sight. It was this glow which the Hebrew initiate
Saul encountered on the road to Damascus and caused him to understand and proclaim the Good News of the
arrival of Christ, the Great Sun Spirit as a living presence thenceforth in the Earth. This Deed, this Event both
physical and spiritual, cannot be rightly understood unless the human being is understood as a being of body,
soul, and spirit. A speed bump to that understanding was installed in the ninth century at a meeting of Church
fathers.
[page 123, 124] It is possible to understand the physical man as an expression of the
Spiritual which is experienced between death and re-birth. The physical world
explains itself and brings the spiritual world into this explanation. But we must first
know this, saying to ourselves: The phenomena of nature are only a half, as long as
we have them as mere sense-phenomena. We must first know this. Then we can find
the bridge and understand the event that gave Earth its true meaning — the event
of Golgotha: then we can understand how a purely spiritual event can at the same
time enter right into physical life. If a man is not prepared to see the relation of the
physical to the spiritual aright, he will never be able to grasp the fact that the Event
of Golgotha is both a spiritual Event and an Event of the physical plane.
When in the
eighth General Ecumenical Council, in the year 869, the Spirit was eliminated, it was
made impossible to understand the Event of Golgotha. The interesting point is that
while the Western Churches started from Christianity, they took great care that the
essence of Christianity should not be understood. For the nature and essence of
Christianity must be grasped by the Spirit. The Western creeds set themselves
against the Spirit, and one of the principal reasons why Anthroposophy is prohibited
by them is that in Anthroposophy we have to relinquish the erroneous statement that
'man consists of soul and body' and return to the truth that 'man consists of body,
soul and Spirit'. The prohibition indicates the interest taken on that side to prevent
man from coming to the knowledge of the Spirit, and so arriving at the true
significance of the Event of Golgotha. Thus the whole knowledge which, as we see,
throws so much light on the understanding of Man, has been entirely lost.
Steiner says, in effect, that "empty talk is the sister of falsehood" and it is the task of each and every one
of us to find our way into a knowledge of the spirit which will lead us out of the labyrinth of empty talk which
has masqueraded so long for religious dogma. (Page 125)
There is a treasure chest in every lecture in this volume, too many subjects to be dealt with
comprehensively in this review. In Lecture 16 Steiner sums up the case for human beings and our life and
purpose here on Earth. If ecologists think humans are destroying Earth, in a long-term sense, they are exactly
right. We are annihilating Earth and will continue to do so until it passes into nothingness, like a Hollywood
set made expressly for a movie is often destroyed in the final dramatic scenes, but like that movie, the film
is saved, the pictures survive the complete destruction of the set.
[page 211, 212] Throughout the world of Nature, conversion of forces prevails. In
man alone matter is thrown out by pure thought. That matter which is actually cast
out of the human being by pure thought is also annihilated, it passes into
nothingness. In man, therefore is a place in the universe which matter ceases to
exist.
If we reflect upon this, we must think of all Earth-existence as follows: Here
is the Earth, and on the Earth, man; into man passes matter. Everywhere else it is
transmuted. In man it is annihilated. The material Earth will pass away in proportion
as matter is destroyed by man. When, some day, all the substance of the Earth will
have passed through the human organism, being used there for thinking, the Earth
will cease to be a cosmic body. And what man will have gained from this cosmic
Earth will be pictures. These however, will have a new reality, they will have
preserved an original reality. This reality is that which proceeds from the force
which, as central force, makes itself felt through the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus,
when we look to the end of the Earth, what do we see? The end of the Earth will
come when all its substance is destroyed as described above. Man will then possess
pictures of all that has taken place in earthly evolution. At the end of the earthly
period the Earth will have sunk into the Universe, and there would remain merely
pictures, without reality. What gives them reality however, is the fact of the Mystery
of Golgotha having been there within human evolution giving these pictures inner
reality for the life to come. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, a new beginning is set
for the earth's future existence.
In the end, freedom cannot be proved, only grasped, and it can only be grasped through the kind of
sense-free thinking which Steiner described and illustrated in his classic work, The Philosophy of Freedom.
[page 214] Anyone who seeks to be constrained to recognize Christ cannot find His
Kingdom, he can rise only to the Universal Father-God, who however, in our world,
has now only a share in a decaying world, and precisely on account of the decay of
His own world, has sent the Son. Spiritual cosmogony must unite with natural
cosmogony, but they must unite in man — and that by a free act. Hence we can only
say of one who wishes to prove freedom that he is still at an ancient heathen
standpoint. All proofs of freedom fail; our task is not to prove freedom, but to take
hold of it. It is grasped when one understands the nature of sense-free thinking.
Sense-free thinking however needs again the connection with the world, and this
connection it does not find unless it unites with what has been introduced into the
evolution of the world as new substance through the Mystery of Golgotha.
As you finish this review, I hope it is clear to you that you have only tasted the appetizers and the full
banquet awaits your attention in the sixteen lectures of this book, many of which were not touched upon in
this review. As with any banquet, the best sauce is a good appetite, so order yourself a copy of this book,
work up an appetite, and be ready for a feast.
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 Sees a Kid's Exchange Retail Shop this Month:
Padre Filius, the cartoon character created by your intrepid editor and would-be cartoonist, will appear from time to time in this Section of the Digest to share us on some amusing or enlightening aspect of the world he observes during his peregrinations.
This month the good Padre wanders past a Kiddie Clothes Shop.
2.Comments from Readers:
EMAIL from Carolyn Bienski in Texas:
Hi there Bobby,
Your reviews this month were pretty darn fantastic. Thanks so much for all your work, labor of
love, and sharing the fun. It's a real treat.
EMAIL from Sarah Cherry in Tennessee: Greetings, Dear Ones,
At Steiner Study group on Sunday, we worked through an exercise practiced in many consciousness studies. We observed a simple object and commented on it, with the intent that we would only connect those thoughts to it that were directly related to the observation of the object. We did not assign a concept to the object from any memory or other association. We were to connect through direct observation, using our senses. (read more on this exercise below, just scroll down) This prompted me to realize that many of you may not be familiar with Steiner's
view of the senses and defined twelve of them.
Below is a chart of the TWELVE senses. It is from a review of Steiner's Riddles of Humanity written by Bobby Matherne, a friend, Scholar and Gourmet
cook from Louisiana. If you wish to read the entire review, it can be found at:
http://www.doyletics.com/arj/trhrvw.htm
In the review of the book, the twelve senses are explained in detail. I invite you to check out Bobby's entire site. It's wonderful.
EMAIL from Kevin Dann in Germany: Hello Bobby,
I am keen to read your Stieg Larsson review. The Larsson trilogy was of course prominently
displayed in every German bookstore — along with an enormous pile of pop occultism stuff,
from vampires to magicians. Heck, the Germans invented the genre, no? Wish we could go
back to that great little bar and I could give you the whole travelogue.
Great Christmas card! Truly the loveliest young ladies I've ever seen
and so color-coordinated, as if by an artist! Makes me want to go jump
in some snow! Can I use that photo in my upcoming Digest?
Oh, and to make Christmas Eve perfect, I received one of your aprons a
few minutes ago. I love it. It will become one of Chef Bobby Jeaux's favorite aprons!
(See Photo above) Photo of the Chef in it will follow after the
Holidays.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
warm regards,
Bobby
~~ REPLY from Vesa Loikas: ~~
Great that you like the apron and the photo. Sure you can use. Just put my website adress
along with it (www.vesaloikas.com).
Good Night!
Vesa
EMAIL, etc., Title
3. EpistemologyTHOUGHT: In earlier times when we humans knew directly, we did not need a science of what it means to know. Thus, there was no need for Epistemology. Anthroposophy, rightly understood, is the only modern science which contains its own Epistemology.
Thanks to all of you for providing the chemistry which has made this site a success.
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My reviews are not intended to replace the purchasing and reading of the reviewed books, but rather to supplant a previous reading or to spur a new reading of your own copy. What I endeavor to do in most of my reviews is to impart a sufficient amount of information to get the reader comfortable
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Out Our Way: 
After shopping, Yvette and I picked up her daughter,
Evelyn, and her girl friends. One was named Mackenzie — when I asked her if she had a nickname, she
said, no. I said she was lucky her last name wasn't Mackenzie, and added, "If you get tall, you might get
nicknamed, Big Mac." Yvette fixed supper for us, and I hit the bed early, pleasantly tired from the long
drive and shopping trip.
1. Hazrat Inayat Khan's 
Art of Being 
