We get feedback from many of you that this is your "don't miss" place in the Digest, so we
endeavor to make it fun and informative for you every month. This month I completed posting
on-line my 20 reviews from 1987, 1988. These are reviews that were the very first I ever wrote. I
wrote them in my morning ten minute "free writing" exercises the day after I had read the book.
These were written usually during break time at what Del and I fondly called "Nuclear Prison"
otherwise known as Waterford 3 Steam Electric Station where I was interred, er, interned for 14
long years. (My Cassel's Concise Dictionary tells me in a Usage Note: The verbs inter and intern
should not be confused: inter means to bury and intern means to confine. Hey, it felt like a little
of both to me. I felt like I was resurrected when I retired from that concrete mausoleum. The last
day I drove to that place before I retired, August 1, 1995, as I walked out of my garage to look at
the morning sky, I saw a beautiful full rainbow in the western sky. The rainbow followed me to
Waterford 3. At one time it divided into two nested bows, then it disappeared when I reached the
plant. Both Noah and I knew we were soon going to be docking in a new world.)
Anyway that helps explain how this beginning writer, back in 1988, happened to get Savannah's doctor in the
"Prince of Tides" misnamed from Lowenstein to Lavenstein, as some anonymous miscreant
pointed out to me and the world in my Guestbook last week. That scurrilous post has since been
plunked into blissful oblivion in the bit basket. Some bashful people will do anything to avoid
receiving expressions of gratitude from an author. Reminds me of the famous quote by Max
Reger, as he responded to a savage review by Rudolph Louis in the Münchener Neueste
Nachrichten, on 7 February 1906, "I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your
review before me. In a moment it will be behind me. Max" In most homes, even in the 21st
Century, the smallest room is still the bathroom where the only place to sit is on the porcelain
appliance, the toilet. If you haven't visited my Treasury of Famous and Interesting Quotes, you
may check them out at: http://www.doyletics.com/quotes.htm -- I add new ones every month.
Here's the most recent addition:
We dance around in a ring and suppose,
The secret sits in the middle and knows.
Robert Frost (American Poet 1874 - 1963)
Note how Frost is paraphrasing poetically what the Austrian Philosopher, Rudolf Steiner, said many times:
"When knowledge stops, discussion begins."
In the process of publishing these neglected early reviews, I actually found one book, "The Forge
and the Crucible" by Mircea Eliade, whose review I had never published, neither in book form
nor on-line, up until now. In addition, I managed to locate on my Pread (Previously Read) shelf,
"All the Happy Families" by Paul Bohannen, a book that I thought had been lost forever. Luckily
neither of my book services had been able to locate a copy, or I would have already ordered a
replacement copy. Speaking of a replacement copy, I filled out the last of the missing books from
my ARJ1 collection, "The Book of Strangers" by Ian Dallas. I was able to add a much needed
book cover to its on-line review. Each of the books I read, when I'm finished, I write a review
and tape a printed copy of its review inside the rear cover and place it on my bookshelf. In the
early days before I began this process, some of the books were loaned out and never returned.
There were 26 missing books to my chagrin when I decided to begin this process and it's taken
me ten years to add the missing books back to my collection of reviewed books. You can read the
reviews for these by clicking on the book titles above or by using the links below:
http://www.doyletics.com/_arj1/pot87rvw.htm
http://www.doyletics.com/_arj1/fac87rvw.htm
http://www.doyletics.com/_arj1/ahf87rvw.htm
http://www.doyletics.com/_arj1/bookofst.htm
One don't miss event is the big block party on Julia Street, the first Saturday of August, called
White Linen Night. Everyone dresses in white and around dusk, from 6 to 9 pm at our sub-tropical latitude, walks up and down the street, stopping in to see the new art openings and
enjoying local food and live music. Del and I met up with Ruth and Ted and enjoyed listening to
the Basin Street Sheiks's Jug Band whose musicians are DJ's at WWOZ. Yes, they used a jug, a
"gut bucket" (washtub with broomstick and cord for bass fiddle) and kazoo, among more
traditional instruments to make music. The musicians had so much fun that it was fun just to be
part of their experience, music or not.
Del's been busy helping her dad, Dick, 85, recover from a small stroke and minor heart attack by
getting him to doctor's appointments and hospitals for tests. He's recovering nicely. Early in the
month my younger brother, David, 56, went into the hospital and was found to have inoperable
bone cancer that has spread throughout his body. He is having a brain tumor radiated with
gamma rays to forestall any seizures, but no chemotherapy. His prognosis is about six months.
Your prayers are requested for him and Barbara during this trying time. David, we love you.
Meanwhile our dad, Buster, 85, had some problems, perhaps a small stroke (the doctors found
nothing on the MRIs to indicate either blockage or a stroke), and he is a little shaky and is
requiring some assistance at home for awhile. My brothers Steve and Paul, who live near Dad
and Dave, have been almost running an ambulance service this month - on one day they were
each headed in a different direction taking both David and Dad to their doctors. Thanks, Steve
and Paul.
One of the benefits of working in my home is that I can keep the Fox News Channel on mute and catch any breaking news when I pass through the Screening Room. Never have to watch an evening news program. I was able to catch
Charleston's Heston's speech announcing his diagnosis of the early stages of Alzheimer's
Disease. In it he quoted a famous speech by Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest. I'd added
that quote to my review of the book, Prospero's Island, which you can read at:
http://www.doyletics.com/_arj1/prospero.htm
This month, while looking over the Visitors Log to my website, I was embarrassed to note that a
partial review of "A Separate Reality" was pulling a lot of visitors. I made a point to write a complete review of that Carlos Castaneda book for "A Reader's Treasury" and ended up writingreviews for all of his first four don Juan books. You can read all four reviews by starting with
"Teachings of Don Juan" and clicking forward at this link:
http://www.doyletics.com/art/donjuan.htm
Here a little tongue twister that I wrote as marginalia in Psyclosis, on pages 104, 105, a book by
Ralph Berger, that I pulled from my Previously Read shelves. [Date gylphed: Feb 7, 1985] When I do the ART
review later, I'll have a chance to explain this ditty a little more. Till then, here it is: uncooked
poetry.
It certainly would a grammarian saint perturb —
To verb a noun and noun a verb.
When I verb a noun, I verb the noun verb,
and when I noun a verb I verb the noun noun.
When I verb a verb, I verb the noun verb,
and when I noun a noun I verb the noun noun and noun the noun noun.
We made a grandkid trip to Baton Rouge this month to see Collin Michael Hatchett, our soon to
be 2-yrs-old grandson of John and Kristin. He has lost his baby fat and is walking and talking up a
storm. Luckily he'll have a baby brother or sister to keep him company in a year or so. On the way
home Sunday morning we stopped for 10 am Mass at the Christ the King Chapel on the LSU
campus. This was the chapel in which my first-born Maureen was Christened 40 years ago. We
were in the new chapel, watching a new priest, Fr. Thom, say Mass and baptize three infants. He
held the first baby over the large, overflowing baptismal font, and to my utter surprise, he dunked
the baby completely under water! Never had I seen a full immersion baptism in a Catholic
Church before. The parents dried off the baby and Fr. Thom proudly held up the baby and
walked around the center of the circular church for all to see the new parishioner. Each of the
three got the holy water dunking in turn. Used to be that infants got a spoonful of water poured
over their heads. It's the new millennium, folks, and anything's possible.
In our Steiner study group, we had a birthday celebration of Margaret Runyon’s birthday, which she almost missed due to a flat tire. But the AAA showed up to replace broken valve stem and pump up her tire. She made it just in time to blow out candles and open presents.
This month I bought a new SONY DSC-S85 digital camera to replace my well-used Mavica. I've moved from floppy disk to memory stick technology. I think I wore out my
PC's floppy disk loading up those 6 to 8 thousand photos I shot with the Mavica over the past
several years. I gave the camera to my niece, David's grand-daughter, Mindy Matherne, who is a
budding photographer at the precocious age of eight. At right is a photo she took of her younger brother and her grandfather, David.
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The best source at the best price is to order your copies on-line is from the publisher Random House/Xlibris's website above.
“Chain of Command” Would you vote for a woman for president? Would you trust her to stave off a nuclear attack of the USA in a high stakes poker game on the Hot Line with the head of a superpower? Here’s you chance to check out this scenario. A riveting movie, like in “Rosie the Riveter Becomes President.”
