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My wife and I were at some sort of art class, standing at big tables in a big room, many people bustling about or working at their projects. We had to make a false shirt front, a dicky, out of paper, and cut a few button holes and sew around them. We weren't sure why.
We came up with something, a kind of red sash false shirt front with a small crest of arms or badge of some sort lower down -- I remember thinking it would not be visible if I wore my jacket buttoned over it -- but it had only one button hole. A teacher said it had to have three and took scissors and stabbed our work, piercing it and going down into the table's wood. Noticing the teacher had once been a member of Monty Python, perhaps Michael Palin or Eric Idle but serious now, I remarked, "Yeah, the heck with the table, damned wood, growing all over the place."
There was no reaction to this mockery and we were told to get to work. I was quickly frustrated trying to sew around a button hole by hand, to reinforce it. I remember it kept resembling an eyeball and I was sewing around the lids, not to shut the eye, but to surround it with reinforcement so it wouldn't rip further when it opened. Failing at this, I was shooed away by some older women, who took over the sewing, and instead given a task.
I was to take to take a child of about 8 or 10 to fetch something in his apartment in the building across the street. The child was swarthy to the point of being burnished, and I was wary of him, but agreed to go along because the kid seemed to be okay with me. I got the impression he was somewhat hard to handle, maybe a trouble maker, but it seemed I was able to keep him generally reigned in.
We crossed a cobbled street, on a warm day, bright sun at the top of the buildings but us in shadow. I got the impression we were in Italy, probably Rome but not necessarily.
We entered an older but nice apartment building and climbed stairs. The lobby was old marble flooring and the stairs were mahogany and some creaked, but it was sturdy. The railings and corner pieces were carved nicely, again obviously old but still sturdy and serviceable.
At the third floor we paused and I unlocked the door with the key I'd been given, and in the boy scampered. I followed more slowly, wary of the place. It was big, with many rooms and halls, and the air was warm but not really stuffy. No scents of mildew or other older apartment smells. The boy proved to be demonic, making eerie statements far too creepy and mature for his age. He first alarmed, then scared me, and I remember humoring him to stay on his good side, not wanting to upset or anger him.
As we looked for what ever it was, he kept showing me things, like toys or various items in the apartment. All unsettled or alarmed me. Some gave me the willies, others dizzied me, and some just plain revolted me. The boy himself was matter-of-fact about most of the things. "We have one of these," or "look at this," or even, "how do you like my...?" I remember catching glimpses of a demon inside him; every now and then, for an instant, I spotted a kind of dark blur, or overlaid image, and his eyes and smile were terrifying. It was as if the demon in him was taunting me, knowingly drawing me deeper into some kind of trap.
He kept looking for something, and saying he had to get something, and I pretended to help him look while being nervous about entering the apartment deeper. Finally I'd had enough and tried to leave, only to discover the hallways were like a maze. I paused, calmed myself, and got my bearings, then tried again, and finally found the door.
It was closed and locked. I tried the key, and it did not work. I was locked in, and sensed with low key panic something coming up behind me.
It was the boy.
I cringed, wondering if he would grow claws or fangs and pounce, but he simply walked up and said, "Okay, we can go back now," and the key worked this time when I tried it. As I stepped out of the apartment he slipped past me and scampered down the stairs, while behind me all the lights and appliances and so on switched on and off rapidly, over and over, and things in the apartment moved as if in an ecstasy of dark delight.
Scooting forward, I slammed the door and hurried down the stairs with the feeling I'd narrowly escaped something. I followed the boy, who waited for me down in the lobby, where the light came through opaque white windows to give things a kind of aquarium glow. His eyes watching me come down the staircase looked huge and ancient.
We went out into the sunshine and warmth, crossed the cobbles, and I awoke feeling as if I'd dodged a demon of some kind. Am I haunted? Am I under demonic attack? Am I ridiculous to ask such questions?
Am I ever really awake?
/// /// ///
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Dream Poem
I awoke with a poem.
Interestingly, in my dream, I found myself an adult visiting a school, and a teacher I knew, and she actually helped focus the poem as I worked on it with chalk on a playground. "Make these active verbs," she told me about the second and fourth lines. It opened the poem, I realized, and thanked her. She continued prowling the playground, supervising kids.
Later I approached the school, following her. When she disappeared around a corner I thought she'd jumped in through a window and lifted a curtain, surprising another teacher. "Sorry," I said, and went into the school to find the teacher again. Once inside I got lost in a maze of corridors and classrooms.
In one of the classrooms, though, I encountered my cousins, and the smallest one was standing there in a red dress, looking ill. I knelt down to ask her what was wrong and she said, "A thousand bones in my arms and legs hurt."
Standing, I told her mother, my aunt, that a thousand bones in her arms and legs hurt, which we both found cute and also distressing, so we tried to take her to see the school nurse.
Then I was somehow with my Aunt & Uncle not in Germany, as I once had been in real life, but in Africa, walking in a nice residential area. We were coming up a hill when we spotted a huge male lion strutting arrogantly along a sidewalk up ahead. We scrambled and I saw my relatives had gone up stairs and were being allowed into someone's house as refuge from the lion.
I tried to join them but I was separated when the huge lion wandering through residential streets came near. I scrambled and found a house where a woman was waving me inside quickly, where I ducked. There I was given broth and told the best way to avoid lions was to stand still. Then I left to find my relatives.
I ended up on the edge of town and being chased out into the bush, where I dashed through a section of trees and found myself on a veldt with lions and so on.
I got past that and fell afoul of mercenaries, who forced me to shoot, using an old rifle and one bullet, a springbok, which I did, and the I was given another single bullet and told to shoot a guy, which I did not want to do. As I hesitated, and they grew angrier...
odinz9
A small herd of elephants came charging through. I was able to escape notice by pressing myself into a mud mound beside the road. Carrying the rifle, I went to a hut, where I found no help, then made my way across another field to a hill, muddy as hell. I began climbing.
There I encountered my uncle, who handed me a bowl of tar like the one he carried. We walked along atop the mud on plywood, onto which we threw chunks of tar at random, on any bare spot we wanted. "This is how roads get made here," he told me, and I asked where we were going. "We're two hours from Paris, here," he said, and I laughed.
He then said, as we climbed a steep, muddy hill, "look behind you." When I did, I saw a huge jet seemingly suspended at about our height and coming right at us. It passed overhead with only a few feet to spare, and then I reached the top of the hill, and my uncle was gone, but I saw a smaller plane, twin engine, coming in. It barely made it but managed to land.
I spotted my uncle in a crowd trying to get onto the plane, waving for me to hurry.
We both got on and the pilot said, "Hang on, folks, and welcome to the wildest ride in Africa." He then taxied an overloaded plane off the runway and began gathering speed going down the steep hill we'd climbed.
Then he skewed sideways in the thick mud, still gaining speed, and I figured that was it, we're crashing. But somehow he manhandled it into the air at the last moment, and off we flew, for the roughest, most upsetting flight ever. We landed in a skid at a bigger airport and I was saved; my uncle and I flew to Paris.
And through all that I retained my poem.
///
The poem:
"Ginger Girl's World"
Spring and summer
Open windows.
Fall and Winter
Close them.
The moth craves
Fire’s magic
Inside or outside,
Consistently ardent,
Always free.
/// /// ///
Interestingly, in my dream, I found myself an adult visiting a school, and a teacher I knew, and she actually helped focus the poem as I worked on it with chalk on a playground. "Make these active verbs," she told me about the second and fourth lines. It opened the poem, I realized, and thanked her. She continued prowling the playground, supervising kids.
Later I approached the school, following her. When she disappeared around a corner I thought she'd jumped in through a window and lifted a curtain, surprising another teacher. "Sorry," I said, and went into the school to find the teacher again. Once inside I got lost in a maze of corridors and classrooms.
In one of the classrooms, though, I encountered my cousins, and the smallest one was standing there in a red dress, looking ill. I knelt down to ask her what was wrong and she said, "A thousand bones in my arms and legs hurt."
Standing, I told her mother, my aunt, that a thousand bones in her arms and legs hurt, which we both found cute and also distressing, so we tried to take her to see the school nurse.
Then I was somehow with my Aunt & Uncle not in Germany, as I once had been in real life, but in Africa, walking in a nice residential area. We were coming up a hill when we spotted a huge male lion strutting arrogantly along a sidewalk up ahead. We scrambled and I saw my relatives had gone up stairs and were being allowed into someone's house as refuge from the lion.
I tried to join them but I was separated when the huge lion wandering through residential streets came near. I scrambled and found a house where a woman was waving me inside quickly, where I ducked. There I was given broth and told the best way to avoid lions was to stand still. Then I left to find my relatives.
I ended up on the edge of town and being chased out into the bush, where I dashed through a section of trees and found myself on a veldt with lions and so on.
I got past that and fell afoul of mercenaries, who forced me to shoot, using an old rifle and one bullet, a springbok, which I did, and the I was given another single bullet and told to shoot a guy, which I did not want to do. As I hesitated, and they grew angrier...
odinz9
A small herd of elephants came charging through. I was able to escape notice by pressing myself into a mud mound beside the road. Carrying the rifle, I went to a hut, where I found no help, then made my way across another field to a hill, muddy as hell. I began climbing.
There I encountered my uncle, who handed me a bowl of tar like the one he carried. We walked along atop the mud on plywood, onto which we threw chunks of tar at random, on any bare spot we wanted. "This is how roads get made here," he told me, and I asked where we were going. "We're two hours from Paris, here," he said, and I laughed.
He then said, as we climbed a steep, muddy hill, "look behind you." When I did, I saw a huge jet seemingly suspended at about our height and coming right at us. It passed overhead with only a few feet to spare, and then I reached the top of the hill, and my uncle was gone, but I saw a smaller plane, twin engine, coming in. It barely made it but managed to land.
I spotted my uncle in a crowd trying to get onto the plane, waving for me to hurry.
We both got on and the pilot said, "Hang on, folks, and welcome to the wildest ride in Africa." He then taxied an overloaded plane off the runway and began gathering speed going down the steep hill we'd climbed.
Then he skewed sideways in the thick mud, still gaining speed, and I figured that was it, we're crashing. But somehow he manhandled it into the air at the last moment, and off we flew, for the roughest, most upsetting flight ever. We landed in a skid at a bigger airport and I was saved; my uncle and I flew to Paris.
And through all that I retained my poem.
///
The poem:
"Ginger Girl's World"
Spring and summer
Open windows.
Fall and Winter
Close them.
The moth craves
Fire’s magic
Inside or outside,
Consistently ardent,
Always free.
/// /// ///
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Haunted Thoughts
I come from a haunted place. I was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where truckers still spot extinct Logan Indians in green prowling the edges of woods as early morning mists rise and fade. I was raised in Munster, Pennsylvania, where there are ghosts roaming the glens, dirt roads, and farmhouses, from the famous White Lady of the Elmhurst Estate to the lesser known that haunt houses less grand, places less storied.
Elmhurst, a Tudor mansion built by coal- and railroad-tycoon William Thaw’s wild son Harry K. Thaw, hosts both ghosts in the 20 room house and legends of a white lady drivers on nearby route 22 occasionally pick up. She asks to be taken home, directs drivers off the highway, over a railroad bump, and along a long dirt road that leads to Elmhurst, but mysteriously vanishes just as the car pulls up.
She’s supposed to be Evelyn Nesbit, Harry K. Thaw’s mistress over whom he murdered architect Stanton White in the rooftop restaurant at Madison Square Gardens, as memorialized in E. L. Doctorow’s book Ragtime, and the subsequent movie. Nesbit, a Gibson Girl, was known as The Girl On the Red Velvet Swing, and why she’d choose to haunt Elmhurst is unknown. Most likely the ghosts have nothing to do with more famous names.
I stopped by at Elmhurst once and talked to the then-owners about ghosts. They said that, aside from shadows and lights in the windows at times the only thing they’d seen was a misty figure standing down by the barn. They’d seen this several times, usually from the porch, and neither footprints in snow or mud or any other sign that anyone had been there ever showed up when they investigated.
We walked down toward the barn along a dirt path made up of two ruts created by truck tires. It was a warm summer day toward evening and as we walked and talked the light began to fail.
I got a distinct feeling I should not continue toward the barn. It wasn’t fear, just a sense of warning.
Deciding to turn around, we headed up toward the house again and as we did I glanced at an upstairs window in time to see someone gazing down at us. I pointed this out and the curtain twitched and the figure was gone.
“That’s what we see,” the owner said, smiling, assuring me there was no one in the house.
If you want a glimpse of the Elmhurst estate and a nice write-up, check:
http://www.post-gazette.com/homes/20011027hauntedhome8p8.asp
#
So yes, I’ve seen ghosts. Yes, I can sense presences sometimes. Yes, I can be sensitive to place, so much so that I have broken leases to get away.
What ghosts are, I have no idea, but I know they differ from hallucinations. As Kingsley Amis pointed out in his ghostly novel, The Green Man, you can induce hallucination with drugs, but not the same one in groups, and not the same one over decades or centuries.
Some swear ghosts are spirits. Ghosts certainly often look like people known to be dead; a link seems sensible until we ask why only some people, or why an action is repeated mindlessly.
Ghosts do not seem alive. They seem more an echo of a past life. The video tape comparison makes sense.
Some in fact call ghosts recordings. The theory that places might take impressions from strong emotion only seems persuasive until you ask what place is, or why one place differs from another in any objective way.
Ghosts ignore such questions and don’t often interact with people. They tend to repeat one brief set of actions, such as descending a staircase, walking along a road, or pacing a castle’s ramparts. As we’ve seen, though, some are livelier, such as a White Lady who wants a ride home, only to melt away.
Very few, in fact, make a sound, Marley’s chain-rattling and moaning to one side.
There are more complicated hauntings, though.
When my cousin first married she visited my paternal grandparents in haunted Munster, Pennsylvania. This is a tiny hamlet only a mile or so from the Elmhurst Estate, by the way.
That night, as she slept restfully beside him in a bed in my great-grandmother’s old room, her husband was tormented by pokes, prods, and blanket-snatchings. He heard hateful whispers next to his ear, too. By early morning he’d had enough and insisted they leave just after dawn, refusing even an offer of breakfast.
This house, several years earlier, was the setting of a sighting by my sister and me. We were children, she about 8, I about 10. It was the Fourth of July, afternoon. A family picnic had the lawn filled with relatives but the house was empty. My mother, wanting to buy something from a relative, asked my sister to fetch her purse. Being competitive, I tagged along.
In fact, we raced. We slammed into the house, through the porch, through the kitchen, and stopped shoulder-to-shoulder in the dining room doorway. I’m not sure what stopped us but that is where the oddness began.
When we heard the stairs behind the wall across the room creaking, as they always did, we waited to see who was coming down.
An old women, perhaps in her 70s, heavyset, with grey hair in a bun and wearing the kind of floral dress my great-grandmother -- who was out on the lawn -- wore, came down into the doorway framing the bottom landing. She looked up as she turned toward us to enter the dining room, smiled at us in a calm, reassuring way, with much kindness, and in no more than three seconds faded first to a mist and then away.
My sister and I continued behaving uncharacteristically. We looked at each other, raised our eyebrows, then crossed the dining room. We walked past the bottom landing where she’d vanished and we entered the living room to fetch my mother’s purse, all without a qualm.
Neither of us said a word about what we’d seen until much later, in the evening, as we were driving home to bed. We never really talked it over until days later. We’d both seen it and neither of us had any kind of fear. Our surprise was even muted.
Note that in this sighting there was, or seems to have been, at least minimal interaction; the ghost looked up, saw us, and smiled at us. Or so we interpreted it.
Now, it’s possible we only thought she saw us, but the feeling of warmth and kindness, almost of affection, convinced us otherwise. She saw and liked us.
In either case, we looked into a few things over the years after that glimpse. My great-grandparents had built that house and no one had ever died in it. For many years it served as a restaurant; it stands on what is now Old Route 22 at the top of Munster Hill, beside the old truck garage my great-uncle Art ran.
They’d had a nice dual business back in the days of broken truck drive-chains and overheated engines.
No structure and no known grave ever stood on that property prior to the house and garage. It is, as mentioned, close to Elmhurst Estate, which was built in the robber baron era when the rich wanted places with fresh air where they could escape from city pollution. Back then Pittsburgh, PA was known by Andrew Carnegie’s famous phrase: Hell with a lid on.
So where do the ghosts along that killer old Route 22 come from? Crash victims?
My grandparents’ house on Munster Hill offered another haunting; it chased my grandfather out a year or so after my grandmother died. He fled, selling the house at a loss to a neighbor, who had changed my great-uncle’s garage into M & M furniture, an antique and junk shop supplied by estate sales. Last I heard, the house is used as overflow storage for excess furniture.
My grandfather told me he’d been hounded from the house by my great-grandmother’s ghost, upset, he thought, because he’d failed to protect my grandmother from death. He said she poked, prodded, and pestered him, yanking at blankets and hissing angrily at him night after night. She followed him around the house and wanted him gone, he said.
I suspect he mistook the ghost my sister and I saw for my great-grandmother. They looked very similar, but we’d seen the ghost while my great-grandmother sat outside alive and well.
In the years since, I’ve heard that another cousin, one who lives in Cresson, one town and only five miles or so from the house, has been visiting and talking to the ghost on lonely nights. Yes, my family’s like that. How she gets in, knew about the ghost, or what she says I don’t yet know, having fallen out-of-touch with her branch of the family due to deaths and world travel courtesy of the military. I’ve got inquiries in via other cousins and hope one day to learn more.
Hoping one day to learn more is where parapsychology, or ghost hunting, has stood from the beginning. It’s where we all stand as we think about the shadowy corners of life. Hailing from a haunted place puts me perhaps more at ease standing here, even if no better informed. I can’t wait to find out more.
/// /// ///
Elmhurst, a Tudor mansion built by coal- and railroad-tycoon William Thaw’s wild son Harry K. Thaw, hosts both ghosts in the 20 room house and legends of a white lady drivers on nearby route 22 occasionally pick up. She asks to be taken home, directs drivers off the highway, over a railroad bump, and along a long dirt road that leads to Elmhurst, but mysteriously vanishes just as the car pulls up.
She’s supposed to be Evelyn Nesbit, Harry K. Thaw’s mistress over whom he murdered architect Stanton White in the rooftop restaurant at Madison Square Gardens, as memorialized in E. L. Doctorow’s book Ragtime, and the subsequent movie. Nesbit, a Gibson Girl, was known as The Girl On the Red Velvet Swing, and why she’d choose to haunt Elmhurst is unknown. Most likely the ghosts have nothing to do with more famous names.
I stopped by at Elmhurst once and talked to the then-owners about ghosts. They said that, aside from shadows and lights in the windows at times the only thing they’d seen was a misty figure standing down by the barn. They’d seen this several times, usually from the porch, and neither footprints in snow or mud or any other sign that anyone had been there ever showed up when they investigated.
We walked down toward the barn along a dirt path made up of two ruts created by truck tires. It was a warm summer day toward evening and as we walked and talked the light began to fail.
I got a distinct feeling I should not continue toward the barn. It wasn’t fear, just a sense of warning.
Deciding to turn around, we headed up toward the house again and as we did I glanced at an upstairs window in time to see someone gazing down at us. I pointed this out and the curtain twitched and the figure was gone.
“That’s what we see,” the owner said, smiling, assuring me there was no one in the house.
If you want a glimpse of the Elmhurst estate and a nice write-up, check:
http://www.post-gazette.com/homes/20011027hauntedhome8p8.asp
#
So yes, I’ve seen ghosts. Yes, I can sense presences sometimes. Yes, I can be sensitive to place, so much so that I have broken leases to get away.
What ghosts are, I have no idea, but I know they differ from hallucinations. As Kingsley Amis pointed out in his ghostly novel, The Green Man, you can induce hallucination with drugs, but not the same one in groups, and not the same one over decades or centuries.
Some swear ghosts are spirits. Ghosts certainly often look like people known to be dead; a link seems sensible until we ask why only some people, or why an action is repeated mindlessly.
Ghosts do not seem alive. They seem more an echo of a past life. The video tape comparison makes sense.
Some in fact call ghosts recordings. The theory that places might take impressions from strong emotion only seems persuasive until you ask what place is, or why one place differs from another in any objective way.
Ghosts ignore such questions and don’t often interact with people. They tend to repeat one brief set of actions, such as descending a staircase, walking along a road, or pacing a castle’s ramparts. As we’ve seen, though, some are livelier, such as a White Lady who wants a ride home, only to melt away.
Very few, in fact, make a sound, Marley’s chain-rattling and moaning to one side.
There are more complicated hauntings, though.
When my cousin first married she visited my paternal grandparents in haunted Munster, Pennsylvania. This is a tiny hamlet only a mile or so from the Elmhurst Estate, by the way.
That night, as she slept restfully beside him in a bed in my great-grandmother’s old room, her husband was tormented by pokes, prods, and blanket-snatchings. He heard hateful whispers next to his ear, too. By early morning he’d had enough and insisted they leave just after dawn, refusing even an offer of breakfast.
This house, several years earlier, was the setting of a sighting by my sister and me. We were children, she about 8, I about 10. It was the Fourth of July, afternoon. A family picnic had the lawn filled with relatives but the house was empty. My mother, wanting to buy something from a relative, asked my sister to fetch her purse. Being competitive, I tagged along.
In fact, we raced. We slammed into the house, through the porch, through the kitchen, and stopped shoulder-to-shoulder in the dining room doorway. I’m not sure what stopped us but that is where the oddness began.
When we heard the stairs behind the wall across the room creaking, as they always did, we waited to see who was coming down.
An old women, perhaps in her 70s, heavyset, with grey hair in a bun and wearing the kind of floral dress my great-grandmother -- who was out on the lawn -- wore, came down into the doorway framing the bottom landing. She looked up as she turned toward us to enter the dining room, smiled at us in a calm, reassuring way, with much kindness, and in no more than three seconds faded first to a mist and then away.
My sister and I continued behaving uncharacteristically. We looked at each other, raised our eyebrows, then crossed the dining room. We walked past the bottom landing where she’d vanished and we entered the living room to fetch my mother’s purse, all without a qualm.
Neither of us said a word about what we’d seen until much later, in the evening, as we were driving home to bed. We never really talked it over until days later. We’d both seen it and neither of us had any kind of fear. Our surprise was even muted.
Note that in this sighting there was, or seems to have been, at least minimal interaction; the ghost looked up, saw us, and smiled at us. Or so we interpreted it.
Now, it’s possible we only thought she saw us, but the feeling of warmth and kindness, almost of affection, convinced us otherwise. She saw and liked us.
In either case, we looked into a few things over the years after that glimpse. My great-grandparents had built that house and no one had ever died in it. For many years it served as a restaurant; it stands on what is now Old Route 22 at the top of Munster Hill, beside the old truck garage my great-uncle Art ran.
They’d had a nice dual business back in the days of broken truck drive-chains and overheated engines.
No structure and no known grave ever stood on that property prior to the house and garage. It is, as mentioned, close to Elmhurst Estate, which was built in the robber baron era when the rich wanted places with fresh air where they could escape from city pollution. Back then Pittsburgh, PA was known by Andrew Carnegie’s famous phrase: Hell with a lid on.
So where do the ghosts along that killer old Route 22 come from? Crash victims?
My grandparents’ house on Munster Hill offered another haunting; it chased my grandfather out a year or so after my grandmother died. He fled, selling the house at a loss to a neighbor, who had changed my great-uncle’s garage into M & M furniture, an antique and junk shop supplied by estate sales. Last I heard, the house is used as overflow storage for excess furniture.
My grandfather told me he’d been hounded from the house by my great-grandmother’s ghost, upset, he thought, because he’d failed to protect my grandmother from death. He said she poked, prodded, and pestered him, yanking at blankets and hissing angrily at him night after night. She followed him around the house and wanted him gone, he said.
I suspect he mistook the ghost my sister and I saw for my great-grandmother. They looked very similar, but we’d seen the ghost while my great-grandmother sat outside alive and well.
In the years since, I’ve heard that another cousin, one who lives in Cresson, one town and only five miles or so from the house, has been visiting and talking to the ghost on lonely nights. Yes, my family’s like that. How she gets in, knew about the ghost, or what she says I don’t yet know, having fallen out-of-touch with her branch of the family due to deaths and world travel courtesy of the military. I’ve got inquiries in via other cousins and hope one day to learn more.
Hoping one day to learn more is where parapsychology, or ghost hunting, has stood from the beginning. It’s where we all stand as we think about the shadowy corners of life. Hailing from a haunted place puts me perhaps more at ease standing here, even if no better informed. I can’t wait to find out more.
/// /// ///
Friday, August 6, 2010
How the Hypocrites Live
This is excellent, and shows how bizarre, absurd, and out-dated religion is. Rooted in superstition and all about control, it's junk we really can't afford to be carrying around as we scramble to survive.
///
An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation. His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts. But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree was final.
They're laughing over their menus because they know he always ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won't be talked into anything more fattening than shrimp.
Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating?
Well, wives are supposed to be 'submissive' to their husbands (I Peter 3:1).
And all women are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12),
wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9)
or dress in clothing that 'pertains to a man' (Deuteronomy 22:5).
Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10)
as are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19),
shaving (Leviticus 19:27)
and clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19).
And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they're committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22).
So why are they having such a good time?
Probably because they wouldn't think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or - at best - unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes.
-~Deb Price
///
An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation. His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts. But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree was final.
They're laughing over their menus because they know he always ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won't be talked into anything more fattening than shrimp.
Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating?
Well, wives are supposed to be 'submissive' to their husbands (I Peter 3:1).
And all women are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12),
wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9)
or dress in clothing that 'pertains to a man' (Deuteronomy 22:5).
Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10)
as are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19),
shaving (Leviticus 19:27)
and clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19).
And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they're committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22).
So why are they having such a good time?
Probably because they wouldn't think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or - at best - unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes.
-~Deb Price
A Great Moment for Writers
(the following was sparked by a discussion with writer Valerie Douglas)
It's very rare to promote learning over, or at least on par with athletics, yes. Papa Joe's old school, and also just plain old.
The notion that "men don't read novels" has been circulating in publishing for some time and I find it both ridiculous, given my experience and acquaintanceship, and also somewhat typical of the long series of self-defeating stances publishing has adopted over the decades. This is why I'm not at all freaked that soon Big Publishing will either change drastically or end entirely, as post-paper or digital publishing, and the independence and power this hands the writer, kicks in, as it already has, given that electronic sales have now outstripped hard-copy sales.
Seize the day, writers. At last you will not be held hostage by editorial gatekeepers, overhead costs of printing, or access to distribution. At last you'll be able to sell directly to the reader.
Of course, with freedom comes responsibility. You'll now have to make sure your work is professionally copyedited, edited, and laid out. You'll have to ensure it's up to scratch. You'll have to do all the scutwork of legal vetting and release forms and permissions. You'll have to come up with attractive covers, and any illustrations or charts you may want to include. And you'll then have to advertise, and not only create but maintain an audience, which requires your participation with them.
In short, the burden for making a professional product, and for being a professional presence in the marketplace, falls now on you, but the payoff is, no more being nickel-and-dimed, no more being cheated, and no more being misunderstood by promotional departments, etc.
Grab the chance while it's here, it's a unique moment in history. Wake up to it.
(for Gene's next motivational speech, please stay tuned...)
It's very rare to promote learning over, or at least on par with athletics, yes. Papa Joe's old school, and also just plain old.
The notion that "men don't read novels" has been circulating in publishing for some time and I find it both ridiculous, given my experience and acquaintanceship, and also somewhat typical of the long series of self-defeating stances publishing has adopted over the decades. This is why I'm not at all freaked that soon Big Publishing will either change drastically or end entirely, as post-paper or digital publishing, and the independence and power this hands the writer, kicks in, as it already has, given that electronic sales have now outstripped hard-copy sales.
Seize the day, writers. At last you will not be held hostage by editorial gatekeepers, overhead costs of printing, or access to distribution. At last you'll be able to sell directly to the reader.
Of course, with freedom comes responsibility. You'll now have to make sure your work is professionally copyedited, edited, and laid out. You'll have to ensure it's up to scratch. You'll have to do all the scutwork of legal vetting and release forms and permissions. You'll have to come up with attractive covers, and any illustrations or charts you may want to include. And you'll then have to advertise, and not only create but maintain an audience, which requires your participation with them.
In short, the burden for making a professional product, and for being a professional presence in the marketplace, falls now on you, but the payoff is, no more being nickel-and-dimed, no more being cheated, and no more being misunderstood by promotional departments, etc.
Grab the chance while it's here, it's a unique moment in history. Wake up to it.
(for Gene's next motivational speech, please stay tuned...)
America's Story, A Tragic Debacle
America was not always an anti-intellectual torture-addicted war-mongering bully. Scholar-athlete used to be the American ideal, even into the 1950s. A can-do attitude and astronaut-level boldness combined with innovation, productivity, and a manufacturing base the envy of the world.
Then came the core right wingers who have skewed our society toward anti-intellectualism and all the other low-end qualities that have been nascent in America all along, but kept in check by accomplishment, achievement, and progress. With roots in the Aristos of yore, and the Whigs, terrified of the masses and effete in their certainty of entitlement, these money minions in the 1930s founded the Federal Reserve System and fought FDR, who they called a traitor to their class.
These envious, fearful little losers plotted ways to steal all the wealth and power for themselves, and shape USA into Morloch land, with themselves as Eloi. (See both H. G. Wells in The Time Machine and modern Mexico for examples.) In short, the in-bred, (and in-bread; ever seen one go hungry?), elitists and their wanna-be lackeys formed a cabal. (cool narrative touch, eh?) And it gradually took control of ever-larger and more important aspects of our society and culture, until in the late Sixties they were powerful enough to crush the Flower Power movement that might have curbed the War Pigs and Profiteers.
And from Nixon's basement they, the C-student flunkies and resentful little mama's boys and hateful repressed gays and open sadists and other Dicks Like Cheney, slithered, sociopathically to subvert, undermine, and detroy anything benefitting We the People, in order to steal the greater good for their Top Percent Rich corporate masters.
Here we stand, then, oppressed by rednecks, rubes, and teabaggers, hammered by hatred from the fearful bigots and the deep-rooted old white racists, and harangued by religious fanatics to whom extremism is but prelude for their Taliban-modeled Amerika. The 19% who should be inmates are running the asylum, and the rest of us gape and drool and do nothing as the place burns down around us.
How will the story end? Up to you, this is a do-it-yourself narrative.
/// /// ///
Then came the core right wingers who have skewed our society toward anti-intellectualism and all the other low-end qualities that have been nascent in America all along, but kept in check by accomplishment, achievement, and progress. With roots in the Aristos of yore, and the Whigs, terrified of the masses and effete in their certainty of entitlement, these money minions in the 1930s founded the Federal Reserve System and fought FDR, who they called a traitor to their class.
These envious, fearful little losers plotted ways to steal all the wealth and power for themselves, and shape USA into Morloch land, with themselves as Eloi. (See both H. G. Wells in The Time Machine and modern Mexico for examples.) In short, the in-bred, (and in-bread; ever seen one go hungry?), elitists and their wanna-be lackeys formed a cabal. (cool narrative touch, eh?) And it gradually took control of ever-larger and more important aspects of our society and culture, until in the late Sixties they were powerful enough to crush the Flower Power movement that might have curbed the War Pigs and Profiteers.
And from Nixon's basement they, the C-student flunkies and resentful little mama's boys and hateful repressed gays and open sadists and other Dicks Like Cheney, slithered, sociopathically to subvert, undermine, and detroy anything benefitting We the People, in order to steal the greater good for their Top Percent Rich corporate masters.
Here we stand, then, oppressed by rednecks, rubes, and teabaggers, hammered by hatred from the fearful bigots and the deep-rooted old white racists, and harangued by religious fanatics to whom extremism is but prelude for their Taliban-modeled Amerika. The 19% who should be inmates are running the asylum, and the rest of us gape and drool and do nothing as the place burns down around us.
How will the story end? Up to you, this is a do-it-yourself narrative.
/// /// ///
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The Voting Machines Story
My one time inside The Old Weird Harold, on a tour with my eldest son Scott, we were ushered into a room and spoken at by "a real reporter" and, at the end, asked if we had any questions "about current news items or topics".
At the time, replacing paper ballots with electronic voting machines was a big topic of discussion, and I raised my hand and asked, "What do you think about replacing paper ballots with voting machines?"
You would have thought I had accused him of sucking the Pope's cock during high mass. It was incredible. The guy became livid instantly, and called me a crackpot and a conspiracy theorist and so on. He raved, literally. And during the rant he let slip the fact that he KNEW FOR SURE the machines were ABSOLUTELY TRUSTWORTHY because he'd reported on them extensively AND, it just so happened, his brother-in-law and others in his family owned a company that MADE them...
Well, I stood then and calmly said, "You said you reported extensively on the machines, but just said you were related to someone who makes them; isn't that a conflict of interest?"
He glared at me, opened his mouth, shut it, then strode out of the room, leaving everyone in the group floored.
And of course they all then shot ME dirty looks for "ruining" their tour and for being such a crazy liberal trouble-maker... As they stood and wandered from the room, some muttered what a jackass I was, and yet, all I'd done is ask a question and a sensible follow up question.
I was astounded, still am. I'm also now more cynical about how people prefer conformity and orthodoxy to facts, truth, or even to probing for such things. Better not to make waves, better not to rock the boat, than to find out useful, important, and interesting facts, is how they live. They being society, the collective group. The hive mind, the herd, call it what you are taught to call it, what's familiar to you. Better that way. Won't upset you if you reduce it to cliché.
They want answers, regardless if they're lies, and detest questions, regardless if they're revealing, insightful, or trenchant.
Later, I laughed about it, and said, "You know, it fucking figures. I can't even ask ONE innocent question without being buzz-sawed by the right."
The right, meaning the approved, the sanctioned, and the allowed.
///
At the time, replacing paper ballots with electronic voting machines was a big topic of discussion, and I raised my hand and asked, "What do you think about replacing paper ballots with voting machines?"
You would have thought I had accused him of sucking the Pope's cock during high mass. It was incredible. The guy became livid instantly, and called me a crackpot and a conspiracy theorist and so on. He raved, literally. And during the rant he let slip the fact that he KNEW FOR SURE the machines were ABSOLUTELY TRUSTWORTHY because he'd reported on them extensively AND, it just so happened, his brother-in-law and others in his family owned a company that MADE them...
Well, I stood then and calmly said, "You said you reported extensively on the machines, but just said you were related to someone who makes them; isn't that a conflict of interest?"
He glared at me, opened his mouth, shut it, then strode out of the room, leaving everyone in the group floored.
And of course they all then shot ME dirty looks for "ruining" their tour and for being such a crazy liberal trouble-maker... As they stood and wandered from the room, some muttered what a jackass I was, and yet, all I'd done is ask a question and a sensible follow up question.
I was astounded, still am. I'm also now more cynical about how people prefer conformity and orthodoxy to facts, truth, or even to probing for such things. Better not to make waves, better not to rock the boat, than to find out useful, important, and interesting facts, is how they live. They being society, the collective group. The hive mind, the herd, call it what you are taught to call it, what's familiar to you. Better that way. Won't upset you if you reduce it to cliché.
They want answers, regardless if they're lies, and detest questions, regardless if they're revealing, insightful, or trenchant.
Later, I laughed about it, and said, "You know, it fucking figures. I can't even ask ONE innocent question without being buzz-sawed by the right."
The right, meaning the approved, the sanctioned, and the allowed.
///
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