Memories of Historic Past Iran Conflict "Color" My View of the Present

 There's nothing like getting up a couple of hours before sunrise and getting started on the day.  Brewing a nice pot of flavored coffee works well with a ten-minute session of running-in-place on the living room rug floor.  My reading and studies seem to be morphing into more passive, visual and mental undertakings, and my little habit changes are becoming more directed toward the more manageable, less supremely ambitious sort.  Today is Monday, March 9.  Were I going to the 9th grade at Nova, I'd get my homework worked and gathered at the dining room table, setting the final morning alarm to give me a reasonable amount of time to clean and dress for school. As it actually is at this moment in time, I can sip my cup d K-cup flavored and brewed coffee and move over to watch a little YouTube TV.  And after a brief bathroom visit I can return to Jim Rohn's stoic personal development podcasts. Then it's back to bed for a while.  I'm getting sick and tired of the war news going on, with Trump trying to constantly insert himself in the press meetings.  

This Iran thing brings to memory when I was first going to college in the mid-to-late 1970s when the two campuses I attended became loaded with Persian overseas students.  To me they seemed to enjoy a promising, privileged existence (although none wanted to talk with me) and the idea that their home country was an autocratic police state that imprisoned and/or tortured dissidents seemed far-fetched...why, the Shah was our buddy, wasn't he? It wouldn't be until the violent rioting in 1978 eventually  kicked Shapour Bakhtiar out and brought in Khomeini for his long brutal, murderous reign.  And then came the hostage crisis.  After Khomeini began to crack down on the nation's socialists, I got a knock on my apartment door from a couple of Iranians who wanted me to sign on with their cause.  What's that, you go to town loudly running down me and my country to the world, and now we're all suddenly friendsy-pindsy because we think we might have a common enemy? In politics, trust is a difficult thing to build and only too easy to destroy...never again, Iran and Russia.  I honestly don't understand how most of our so-called allies can trust us to any degree after our current president's behavior toward them, espcially Ukraine and Denmark with its prized Greenland that Trump wants to add to his personal map of territorial conquests..  Now let's see...I look ahead right now for the next several hours, noting the potential for a a nice wide-open time span devoted to modest personal projects...A little attempt at walking endurance looks like a good option...  

Evangelicals, Worldliness and Cognitive Dissonance

I've written before on this blog about how I'm put off by people who devote much of their very-verbose speaking efforts at defining their theology within the conservative evangelical Christian movement and discussing different people they personally know, employing a judgmental yardstick behind their backs regarding their salvation status and Christian walk.  Frankly, I just wish these good people would just shut up and sit back.  They also seem predisposed to be much more worldly in their materialism and status within the world system's pecking order.  For some reason church lay leaders place very heavy emphasis on people's professional and financial status.  Business owner, physician, college professor, engineer, lawyer, overall rich person...they seem to confirm that these individuals have leadership (over me) qualifications because of their worldly achievements and that they, by default, have more spirituality than someone who has lived a responsible life for themselves and their family but doesn't check the "right" boxes.  I've encountered this worldly, unspiritual snobbery on multiple occasions at church social gatherings...hard to digest and reconcile without the word "hypocrites" screaming out to me. I think, however, that I can deal with that sort of elitism better than the two-faced kind of cognitive dissonance I've noticed among some who, while insisting on their own high level of spirituality, are completely immersed in the struggles for political power in this world, particularly between the Republicans and Democrats in this country.  I mean, if you're on the "wrong" side, which they literally hate while extolling the name of Jesus, you might just consider carefully keeping your own counsel around them.  I have a choice with these folks, several of whom seem to harbor good will toward me since they do not know of my political leanings. Either I can eschew politics when around them or I can eschew them for my own mental and emotional peace, God bless 'em. Or maybe just try both paths...solitude can be a true blessing...

New Pope Enjoying Widespread Popularity Now

I'm glad to see that people in general, and especially the practicing Catholic population, seem to be okay with the new Bishop of Rome, that is, the Roman Catholic Church's pontiff or Pope.  Cardinal Robert Prevost, originally from Chicago in the good old USA but with dual citizenship in both America and Peru after serving there for more than a decade, was elevated to Cardinal status by Pope Francis two years ago.  He was then elected in the secret Vatican Conclave to replace Francis, who died recently.  The Pope, in centuries gone by, at one time actually did have a lot of direct political/military power...that's how the Crusades got started.  Now, though, his power is that of persuasion, bringing to light in the world its spiritual, social and physical needs through the bully pulpit that his high office accords him.  I wish Pope Leo XIV, as he has renamed himself, the best and hope that he isn't surprised when he inevitably gets around to ruffling the feathers of our Narcissist-in-Chief. Leo is also the first Pope to be around my age level, born the year before me...he looks pretty fit, wonder what kind of exercise routine he has, if any...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 12

Sometimes the story I'm reading is a little lengthier than usual, and sometimes I have different demands on my attention over the course of the week: I think both may have been at play here as I have just one 1999 tale to discuss below.  It appears in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection.  The entry's title certainly got my attention...

PHALLICIDE by Charles Sheffield

The setting here is Utah in more or less the present era.  A young woman who appears to be something of a scientific genius is performing some kind of advanced research at a private facility in a hush-hush project.  Then she realizes she has just lost a week of time for which she cannot account...she was supposed to be visiting her family.  Then her "handler", a high official in a renegade offshoot of the Mormon church...renegade because it still illegally practices polygymy and early teenage marriage...interrogates her and she recovers the lost memory.  The project is centered around coming up with effective drugs to enable the church elders to maintain their sexual potency in far advanced age.  But our scientist has had enough of all this, having experienced for herself the worst of this kind of child abuse.  And then...well, read that title and then read on to the story's end.  And that ending: what exactly was she dreaming up in her head that made her smile?

Next week: more from 1999...  

Skipped Run This Morning, Attended Church Function

Normally, Saturday morning is the time for me to drive down to Depot Park, just south of downtown Gainesville, to participate in their weekly free Parkrun 5K.  Yesterday evening, though...following the viewing of the movie Conclave...I felt a twinge of slight pain in my leg behind the knee.  Not wanting to take a chance on aggravating a possible injury, I decided to skip the event.  No problem...I slept in and got some extra needed sleep: I can take it easier on the exercise and see how it goes.  Later today, Melissa and I went to the nearby United Methodist Church to attend a conference headed by Wesleyan scholar Paul Chilcote.  It was well-done and I felt a spirit of love and camaraderie there.  I did notice, though, a personal aversion to interacting directly with others.  It wasn't a matter of disliking anyone for any reason, but rather a physical reaction I experienced, as if I were somehow allergic to them.  Oh, one thing that kind of rubbed me wrong was Chilcote claiming at the end that he was an introvert...that dude apparently hasn't a clue about what the word really means.  Still, his message was welcome although I felt he invested too much time and emphasis on the official denomination and its founders.  Then again, I guess that contributed to how he got to rise like he did in stature within the organization.  That's fine: he's a good guy and I wish him well...

Watched the Movie Conclave Tonight

Since Melissa and I are Amazon Prime subscribers, we had the opportunity to watch the suddenly-timely movie Conclave on their channel.  I have to admit to being a bit resistant to sitting there through this fictional account of the selection of a new Bishop of Rome, i.e. the Pope, after the death of the incumbent pontiff.  But I thought, why not, especially after reading up on it that it received high critical reviews and starred one of my favorite current actors, Ralph Fiennes.  Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, tasked as the manager of the Conclave.  The College of Cardinals, all with their red beanies, are shut off in a well-staffed and well-supplied building in the Vatican, and have to take repeated ballots to finally come up with their selection for the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.  Since Pope Francis just passed away recently, this Conclave process is coming up soon, at the beginning of May.  The deliberations and negotiations behind doors will last as long as it takes until someone is finally elected.  As for the movie itself, I found sticking through it all rather tedious, with men representing different predictable factions vying for an edge against each other.  Scandal, tenuous alliances, megalomania and betrayal abound here...these "holy men" would fit in quite well with the Nazgul of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for their coveting of power.  I'm not Catholic and I don't harbor any delusions that their situation is any worse than anyone else's...the urge to lord oneself over others is a human foible, largely male, as I have suffered from this desire on the part of would-be alpha-male "leaders" to make me subservient to them, going all the way back to childhood and continuing through school, work and even into old-age retirement.  I don't boss others around, nor do I want to: if you see yourself as my leader, then you ARE deluded and need to stay away.  Conclave's depiction of humans in conflict...albeit peaceful conflict...may enhance a story's dramatic appeal to many, but it left me flat and drained.  Who cares who they finally picked, and sadly, who cares in the real world how "our" Cardinals will  decide...

Easter Celebrated with Family

I hope all of you who celebrate Easter have enjoyed this holiday today.  You have to be something of an astronomer to determine, on your own, on which date this honoring of Jesus' resurrection falls within each calendar year.  The formula is: Easter (as celebrated in the West, not in the Eastern Orthodox churches) lies on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the first day of spring...for some reason it goes that way, maybe you can enlighten me on why.  Melissa and I spent it at home, with various folks in our family stopping by to enjoy lunch with us...what a blessing.  Later on in the day I watched the conclusion of the ongoing PGA golf tournament, the Heritage Classic held in Hilton Head, South Carolina.  Justin Thomas held on in sudden death to win his first tourney in some years...good for him, I guess.  I'm not a golfer...the irony is that were I one, I probably wouldn't have any interest in rooting for one over another in these tournaments.  After all, I'm a runner and I absolutely could not care less about the premier runners in the world or this country...or even in my own home town of Gainesville, for that matter.  That's another thing that maybe you can enlighten me on why...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 6

This past week, as I continued reading through the annual retrospective anthology series edited by the late Gardner Dozois titled The Year's Best Science Fiction...this volume covering 1999 material being the Seventeenth Annual Collection...I managed to get through just one story.  Tomorrow I'm having surgery and see possibilities for a little more reading time in the week to come as I recover.  That's good, because the next story after this relatively short one is a long drawn-out novella...

WRITTEN IN BLOOD by Chris Lawson

A Muslim man is taking his daughter with him to Mecca as he is fulfilling Islam's Fifth Pillar by going on a pilgrimage there.  Told from his daughter's perspective, "Da" is a trained biologist who is in remission from cancer.  There they encounter a vendor selling a special product: the Qu'ran encoded into one's own blood.  Da takes him up on the offer, and as the story's ending reveals, most likely suffers the consequences of that action.  I felt that this story was sensitive to Islam and its believers, and I learned a few things about their prophet Muhammad in the process.  As for imprinting a document...or pictures...onto one's own DNA or blood is concerned, the author raises the point that while doing so might be done as a gesture of faith or  personal preference, it could also eventually be used against the person to identify them as being part of an group in disfavor, exposing them to persecution down the line.  In an allegorical sense, I think all the trails of ourselves that we leave in the Internet are doing something similar, don't you?

My intent for next Wednesday is to keep on reviewing stuff from the Dozois anthology...

Quote of the Week...from Pema Chödrön

Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to let another person or event control your emotions.

---Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön is an American-born and raised Tibetan Buddhist nun who has written a number of books promoting her beliefs.  Whereas I'm not all that keen on immersing myself in another religion's underlying mythos and dogma, on a more practical level they often can provide some useful insights into living and how to approach it. The notion of "inner peace" isn't just an element of Buddhism, though, and doesn't have to necessarily be tied to organized religion.  The above quote of Pema testifies to this, although if you're stuck...say on the job...in a subordinate position to a bullying and disrespectful supervisor...it may prove to be challenging to implement. Yet I've discovered that I can deflect it all, by refusing to let myself become entangled in conflict, and once free, I am definitely at peace.   Pema's quote is true, but as I mentioned before, implementing it is sometimes difficult...

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had suffered not the slightest inconvenience from it.                                ---Mark Twain

I read the above quote from the beloved American writer Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemons) a few weeks ago on a Facebook reposting...that app does occasionally have some use in spite of its serious drawbacks.  Of course, religious doctrine fueled some of the reactions of the comment section, distinguishing between pre- and post-physical life.  Believe what you want about that and stay in your own cognitive/metaphysical bubble if that comforts you...no judgment from me.  What Twain was talking about was the absence of the physical, breathing, animated life and consciousness that people experience within their lifespans on Earth.  Fear of death is a sweeping, important survival trait of anyone and contributes to people not only being careful about how they take care of themselves, but also how they treat others...the cornerstone of civilized society.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, I believe is how the saying from Jesus goes.  Yet physical nonexistence as a living organism is something preceding my conception and birth for eons upon eons, and my body will return to ashes at some future time.  We can draw comfort from the assurance of an eternal spiritual life beyond that, but I also believe that there is comfort in Twain's truth regarding the past...

Quote of the Week...from Goth Kid on South Park

Life is pain.  Life is only pain.  We're all taught to believe in happy fairy tale endings, but there is only blackness...dark, depressing loneliness that eats at your soul.

                                                            ---Goth Kid from South Park's Raisins Episode

I think that my favorite characters in the long-running satirical cartoon South Park series have to be the Goth Kids...although I wonder whether their depiction accurately reflects Goth culture on school campuses (and presumably beyond).  They're shown to be utterly cynical about life and society specifically...I can totally get that outlook at times.  They also repeatedly point out how nonconformist they are...but as the series' main character Stan quickly finds out on that episode, you have to wear the same clothes and listen to the same music if you want to join the "nonconformists". As for their ostentatious expression of style, to me it doesn't ring well with their philosophy. I think I would have made a great Goth kid in school because back then I embraced many of their attitudes, but had such a group existed in the 1970's, they would have no doubt rejected me just for my nonconformity.  Yet in spite of that apparent hypocrisy about them brought out on South Park, there are times in my life when their cynical, highly critical opinions on the world and humanity scream loudly with truth. The ultimate irony of this is that with Christianity, humanity is also essentially depicted as fallen, with only undeserved divine intervention providing rescue and solace. You'd think that there might be a kind of distant alliance between the Goths and Christians, but sadly my impression over the years is that too many of the latter are prisoners of their own self-imposed pride, materialism, selectively convenient legalism and idolatry worship of secular political figures while casting a critical eye at anyone different from themselves, the exact opposite of the noble creed to which they claim to adhere...   

Just Finished Reading American Idolatry by Andrew L. Whitehead

The full title of the book I just read, by Andrew L. Whitehead, is American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church.  It just came out this year and expressed some concerns about conservative evangelical Christianity in this country that I have been feeling for some time.  The author also went a little too far is pushing his conclusions, in my opinion.  Whitehead is a professing Christian from his youth, attending the very types of churches he discusses in this book.  The American flag is prominently displayed in their sanctuaries, and much is made of the United States always having been a Christian nation, established on Christian principles.  He disapproves of the flag being there and disagrees with America's Christian heritage.  In fact, he seems repelled by both the word "heritage" and its common companion "traditional", since they usually imply that the social values of the "good old days" were better and more noble than our society in the present time.  But slavery lasted until 1865 and then afterward legalized discrimination against the former enslaved blacks was practiced until the US Supreme Court struck it down just two years before I was born.  Still, the struggle has continued for African Americans to get a fair shake in our country.  As for Native Americans, the push for much of our history had been to eliminate either them or their culture, with a strong push toward Christianizing the population, especially children.  I'm totally in agreement with Whitehead's grim assessment of these facets of our history...they should be taught in all the schools without any attempt to cover anything up.  Where I do have a problem with his book is that he tends to repeatedly emphasize something that, while true up to a point, has some sinister connotations: the notion of privilege, which he applies to whites whether they subscribe to Christian nationalism or not.  Historically, different groups of people have been collectively scapegoated for society's problems by essentially being accused of being unfairly privileged: this has long been a recurring theme with anti-Semites when railing against Jewish people.  Careful: attacking or criticizing people for being born a certain way crosses an important line and can place you in the company of those who are prejudiced...well, by its very nature it is prejudice.  Also, I don't like whole groups of people lumped together and judged by a few in their midst who espouse objectionable views: I think I know of quite a few Christian nationalists in churches I've attended...and quite a few much more tolerant and open-minded folks...should I automatically judge Muslims because some among them have radical notions?  This book is nevertheless an appropriate response to the type of Christian nationalism pushed by, of all people, a thoroughly secular reprobate who once as President had federal troops tear-gas peaceful demonstrators so that he could walk from the White House to a church he never attended and...in front of it and numerous cameras...hold up a Bible he never read, much to the adoring approval of Christian nationalist Franklin Graham.  The sad thing about it all is that the very people who need to change their attitudes the most are thoroughly (and happily) brainwashed and will only double down on their convictions.  Still, I thought the book was a worthwhile effort despite some of my disagreements.  Whitehead made a very good point of contrasting Jesus' walk on Earth and his ministry and sayings with the political, bellicose attitudes of many today who liberally invoke his name while violating his principles.  There's a fork in the road for Christianity, for sure: which way will it go?

Some Stuff about Facebook

First of all, before I go further, I deeply appreciate you readers of this blog, all of you.  Chances are very strong that you access it from Facebook, where I post my (usually) daily entries.  But I have to admit that I'm not very enamored with Mark Zuckerberg's social media site, since it is largely there for people to bond with one another and establish social pecking orders.  For me, I'm more like the Goth Kids in South Park who say screw the established order...we're going our own way and if you don't like it, too bad.  I had a friend request the other day, not an uncommon occurrence but still annoying, since the overwhelming number of my Facebook "friends" are people who, although connected with me in some way, I have never even had a simple pleasant conversation with.  Yet to Facebook they are "friends".  You don't have to interact in person to have a conversation...I value those who have taken a few moments of their lives to type in a comment to one of my posts...or even hit one of "like" icons.  Anyway, this young man who friend-requested me is someone I've never met but seems to have some affiliation with the church I used to attend...or at least organized Christianity.  I checked out his posts before responding and he is heavy on both Bible verses and subscribing to far-right-wing political propaganda, including bashing in a hatefully personal way Anthony Fauci, the epidemiologist who spearheaded the fight against COVID-19 in cooperation with Presidents Trump and Biden.  Worshipping the two gods of Religion and Politics may seem for some to be totally compatible...and it's true that if you're into some of the homegrown paramilitary groups flourishing here in America, the fusion of the two into one mega-god to idolize might sound alluring.  My take is simple: restrict your automatic acceptance of things requiring faith to that faith which you have adopted, and keep a skeptical eye on the other stuff that you (and I) are being constantly deluged with in this scam-filled digital media age...

My #12 All-Time Favorite Album: In Search of the Lost Chord by the Moody Blues

IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD, from 1968, is the Moody Blues' follow-up to their highly acclaimed Days of Future Passed and is my #12 all-time favorite album.  Yet it wouldn't be until the 1990s when I finally got around to hearing it in its entirety, although I was vaguely familiar with two of its tracks, Ride My See-Saw and Legend of a Mind, from album rock radio in years gone by.  That first song I mentioned, coupled with the preceding track Departure, would become a common bumper music feature of the late Art Bell's wildly popular late-night paranormal talk radio show, but it stands well on its own.  In Search of the Lost Chord is very thematic, focused on Eastern philosophy and religion, particularly that of India. That's cool with me since I tend to be a sucker for mystical stuff...just lay off the dogmatism, please. And all five band members not only had strong creative roles in the different songs, but they also sang (or spoke) on them. Here are my takes on the tracks as they appear on the record...

DEPARTURE--drummer Graeme Edge composed several spoken pieces for the Moodies...this one muses on the possibility of transcending our usual senses to perceive reality on all its levels... 

RIDE MY SEE-SAW--John Lodge's song expanding on Edge's prose poem, very enthusiastic and a rocker as well...

DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME--Ray Thomas, my favorite from this group, sings about the idea that we're all searching for something...not just the famous discoverers from the past...

HOUSE OF FOUR DOORS--I interpret this four-part composition by Justin Haywood as doors leading to various stages of personal enlightenment...leading into one of the trippiest songs ever recorded...

LEGEND OF A MIND--you may know this one from its lyrics "Timothy Leary's dead" but Ray Thomas...this is his song...assures the listener the promoter of LSD was alive and well, at least back then.  A profound instrumental rabbit role experience in the song's middle with flute, guitar and mellotron is not to be missed.  I have mixed feelings about this masterpiece because of its pro-drugs stance...

VOICES IN THE SKY--a slow, sweet song by Justin Haywood...just the same, I'm not sure I want to hear "voices in the sky"...

THINKING IS THE BEST WAY TO TRAVEL--keyboardist Mike Pinder's song title sounds cool, but it also seems like he's promoting drugs as the way to go faster than light: not cool as far as I'm concerned...

VISIONS OF PARADISE--Lodge and Thomas collaborated on this somber piece with a lot of Eastern sounding instrumental background...

THE ACTOR--Haywood's best song on the album, in my opinion...he's introspective here about a lost relationship, very emotional and heartfelt...

THE WORD/OM--Edge wrote the spoken preamble The Word, Pinder provided the vocals both for it and his song Om, which is about the Hindu sacred word...a little too religiously dogmatic for my tastes, thank you...

Next week: my all-time #11 favorite album...

Just Finished Reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

A few weeks ago I was listening to a Rob Dial podcast in which he referenced a book titled The Power of Now but failed to mention its author.  He is Eckhart Tolle, a German metaphysical philosopher and teacher now living in Canada who published the book, full title The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, in 1997.  Reviewing it presents a sort of quandary, in that Tolle maintains that people in general place too much store in their thinking, and that what endures within ourselves is what he says is the "observer", rooted in the here and now.  One's thoughts, he believes, are just so much noise that tends to obscure our true nature. So in reviewing this book of his, I'm giving in to my thinking "self"...forgive me, dude!  The book's format is very readable, in question-and-answer dialog form as the author covers the main concerns about his philosophy, which seems to bear some resemblance to Buddhism although he claims that the kernels of all religions proclaim essential truths...you just have to know where to look for them.  That's the only part of the book I had a problem with: Tolle tends to give his own interpretation of various religions' scriptures...of course, all the references and quotes he uses conveniently fit his thesis.  Lately the notion of "mindfulness", where one pauses during his or her daily routines and worldly endeavors and focuses on what is immediately around them in the present moment, gets star billing here.   Tolle maintains that true enlightenment can only come by shedding the notions of past and future and embracing the here and now where dwells our eternal nature. There is a lot to cover for a book that forswears too much thinking, but Eckhart Tolle isn't against thinking per se...just doing so excessively to the point where one confuses their thoughts with their own true essence.  A very interesting and thoughtful book, one worth going back to but with some accompanying discernment.  A thinking person's book that eschews thinking: sounds Zen, doesn't it...

Just Finished Rereading The Shining by Stephen King

The Shining is a 1980 horror novel by Stephen King, one of his big early successes in his long, prolific career as a writer of popular fiction.  I first read it about fifteen years ago, a little before this blog began, so I don't have a review of it...until today, that is.  I was prompted to pick it up again after reading King's latest novel Billy Summers, which mentions the earlier novel's central Overlook Hotel and its topiary of shrubs shaped to look like real animals.  Now I've finished reading The Shining...and have a few things to say about it.  It is about a family of three, the Torrances: Jack, the father, is an alcoholic writer/teacher with a short, violent temper that has stood him poorly in recent times, and Wendy, his beautiful wife, tends to see him as a troubled man and a danger to their five-year old son Danny.  Danny has the special gift of "shining", that is to read others' thoughts and see into the future.  Jack is giving winter employment by his old reformed drinking buddy as caretaker of Colorado's Overlook Hotel and he takes his family with him for the bleak, snowed-in months.  Danny is warned by his "imaginary" friend about the hotel's dangers and befriends the chef Dick Halloran, who is psychically sensitive as well and quickly picks up on the boy's talents.  Halloran is leaving for Florida for the winter, but tells Danny he'll come back if called.  Although on the wagon for several months, Jack finds himself craving alcohol...but the hotel is bone-dry, or is it?  The Overlook seems to have a mind of its own and sees in Danny the means to bring itself power and presence...it intends to use Jack and his addiction to that end.  The rest of the story spirals into a mix of ghosts, violence, and soul possession as the three struggle to survive their experience in this clearly-haunted establishment.  Like several of Stephen King's earlier stories, The Shining deals with demonic forces that invade and possess people...in this sense his writing mirrors the attitudes of many religious people who see demons and evil spirits all around themselves while interpreting others' perceived wayward behavior in terms of demonic possession.  Also, as in the case with many of his works around this time, the narrative often slips into stream-of-consciousness mode...I don't notice this literary device used nearly as much in King's more recent novels.  When I first read The Shining, I misinterpreted the book's ending as to what happened to Jack Torrance...this time around I saw it all in a much different light.  As to the Jack Nicholson movie adaptation, what I saw of it diverged too much from the book, with Nicholson as Jack and Shelley Duvall as Wendy, both roles seriously miscast.  Finally, one message I received from this intriguing story is that people have a tendency to think they are in control and masters of their own lives' destinies while in reality they are often pawns manipulated by forces unseen and beyond their control: welcome to the universe of Stephen King.  Doctor Sleep is a 2013 sequel novel to The Shining, with Danny Torrance grown up and suffering from the same weakness to alcohol as did his father...and having to contend with creatures that prey upon psychics...

Just Finished Reading Mental Immunity by Andy Norman

About three weeks ago I was with Melissa in Books-a-Million browsing around when my eyes fell on Andy Norman's book Mental Immunity in the "self-help" section.  I briefly surveyed the contents and discovered that the author, one of those rare professional philosophers among us, wrote it largely in response to some of the things I was noticing about how people were adopting really, REALLY bad ideas that they were picking up from friends, the Internet, TV and radio.  But how does one reverse the tide of "alternative facts" and confront those who believe in them?  After all, aren't we all entitled to our own opinions?  Norman hones in on this assumption and challenges it, concluding that no, that while legally we may be so entitled our own flawed views...even when the "facts" supporting our positions are false...we are in no way morally entitled to them...even with matters of religious faith.  And, in fact, the idea of NOT challenging those pushing false beliefs is in itself immoral.  Norman doesn't just come up with his notions spontaneously, but bases them on the historical development of philosophy, going back to that of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and progressing up to the century-old dispute about faith between William James and William Kingdon Clifford, the latter of whom promoted a more scientific approach to philosophy...and in particular epistemology, that is the study of knowledge, its truth value and use...and with whose perspective the author essentially agrees.  James, on the the other hand, made one's faith and core belief system a kind of unassailable fortress, basically giving rise to the notion that what people thought was somewhat a sacred right and to confront them was out of line...it was James' approach that won the day, and according to Norman this is causing a great deal of trouble in our time with conspiracy theories and slanted narratives running rampant and people bubbling themselves off with others who share their peculiar beliefs.  It is necessary to dissipate the aura of sacredness regarding one's own beliefs and open them up to the open, public scrutiny that they merit.  As for me, I often find myself standing back from disputing what I hold to be unwarranted assumptions from others around me, falling back on that old James-inspired "everyone's entitled to their own opinion" mantra as a kind of cop-out excuse for avoiding possibly unpleasant and awkward engagement.  Mental Immunity is a very rigorous introduction to philosophy, particularly the branch of epistemology, and there are sections in which I experienced difficulty keeping up with Andy Norman's narrative.  Norman is a philosophy professor, and his evolving teaching approach to the subject reveals part of his strategy for stemming the tide of bad ideas infecting our culture.  After seeing that his lectures weren't getting anywhere with his students, he changed his teaching tactics to include their in-class input...while politely questioning their various assertions as to where they got them from.  The book is an attempted balance between the author trying to justify his views on the state of affairs in our misinformation society of today and explaining in as much detail as he can, with his academic background and knowledge that he uses to back up those views.  It's a tough balancing act, and I respect his efforts.  I'm sure a rereading will help me better understand Norman's approach.  He seems to have rejected the parade of philosophies over the ages, finally setting on a modified version of Socrates' in which the search for truth is marked, not necessarily by rationalization and proof, but rather by inquiry with the notion of commonly-held presumptions playing a major role.  For example, when confronting someone with "bad ideas", politely-leveled questions leading to clarification and giving the source of those ideas helps to keep that party off the defensive, with the dialogue more likely to lead to mutual enlightenment.  At the book's end, Norman has an elaborate strategy laid out for this...I'm gonna have to go back to it...

Just Finished Reading Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

In 2009 mother-and-daughter writers Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor collaborated on the book Traveling with Pomegranates, in which each of them recount through alternating chapters their travels together from preceding years through Greece, Turkey and France.  I just finished reading it and can understand the wide range of reactions I subsequently discovered about it on the Goodreads review site.  Especially with the mother, they have this privileged air about them that it's nothing to just take off on trips to exotic places and have the locals there expected to cater to their every whim while they are totally focused on themselves, taking every statue, exhibit, painting, or happenstance occurrence and interpreting them in the most detailed ways about their personal selves...yes, this got tedious for me in a hurry.  Before I began reading it I thought it would be something of a travelogue of these two women's experiences, and to an extent it was, making me want to see and experience some of the things that they did.  Although I feel the two went way overboard about personalizing everything and everyone they encountered, as a reader I also understood that each of us has our own personal voyages, and to us these voyages are of the utmost significance and interest: it's just that I think that others probably aren't going to remotely share my own interpretations with the same enthusiasm that they mean to me.  You know what I'm saying: just think of someone in your own life whose entire conversational style with you is focused on talking about themselves, and you're just an unimportant bystander whose role seems to be to receive everything spoken with vigorous head-nodding and affirmatory verbal utterances.  On the other hand, Kidd and Taylor's book is clearly autobiographical in its theme, and let's face it: folks who write autobiographies are talking about themselves, which is why they're called autobiographies: the root "auto" means "self".  This very blog of mine has strong autobiographical elements to it as well...I share experiences that I feel have a possible universal application to others, and I imagine that what this book's authors are doing is very similar.  Each of them discusses a change not only in their life phases...Sue entering her elderly years while unsure about writing her first novel while Ann is a young adult unsure as well of her own future and depressed about recent rejection...but also their changing relationship to one another.  Both of them use their travel experiences with Greek mythological characters like Athena, Demeter, Persephone along with the widely different representations of Mary, Jesus' mother in Greece, Turkey and France to symbolize their own identities and life direction.  One thing that struck me was that, especially with Sue, they felt the need to travel to some exotic locale in order to experience an epiphany moment, but I remember the Robert Pirsig quote, "The only Zen you'll find at the mountaintop is the Zen you took with you." To that effect I have discovered that while traveling in itself is fun and meaningful, the greatest positive changes I've made in my life, along with the most profound introspective moments that revealed who I was, came about during my ordinary day-to-day living and routines.  But to each his own, and I enjoyed Traveling with Pomegranates.  And you have to grant this concession to the authors as well: when someone is baring their soul to you in an honest manner, they will also be revealing aspects of their personality and character you might find just a wee bit disagreeable...that shouldn't detract from the reading experience, but rather challenge the reader with their own introspection... 

A Little Metaphysical Diversion Into Time and Subjective Existence

Many of the stories I read...especially in the science fiction genre...elicit speculation about the nature of reality, especially as it pertains to time: Kurt Vonnegut's brilliant novel Slaughterhouse Five is a prime example. Much of religion as I see it is based on people's projection of themselves within a universe carrying on with its reality after their deaths...the notion that there will be a year, say, 2200, in which they won't be around is very difficult for many to accept...so they desperately cling to what they consider to be the best belief system that puts at least their spirit, if not their body, in that temporal reality with everyone else.  Conversely, pretty much no one is especially concerned that before their conception and birth, reality stretched far into the past...at last estimate, some 13.8 billion years (and they weren't alive in all that time).  Yet as far as science...specifically, physics...is concerned, the laws work the same way whether you go forward or backward in time...the "progression" of time into the future is to some merely an expression of the general principle of entropy, i.e. the breaking down of complex, higher-energy forms and systems into those simpler and of lower energy.  The notion that my life span, bordered by both its temporal beginning and ending, will always possess an essential reality within the fabric of the universe, is something that very few people subscribe to: we're social creatures, and the idea that I am leaving this world while everyone else keeps going on just doesn't wash on an instinctual level...hence the religion that keeps us in a sort of community.  Spatially, it is no stretch to say that we as individuals can't be everywhere...our physical location pinpoints where and who we are in reality...but we have a problem saying that we temporally cannot be everywhen, but this equally-limiting factor is also a crucial element of defining our existence within the greater domain of reality.  There is the objective mega-universe equally existent everywhere at all points of time and then there is the personal, subjective universe that corresponds to our individual courses through each of our respective lives in our limited space and time with our experiences...

Great Old TV Episodes...from Family Guy

 

Probably much better known as "Surfin' Bird", the I DREAM OF JESUS Family Guy episode, originally airing in 2008 several years before I began watching the series, is probably my all-time favorite of its entire 19-season run (so far).  In this irreverent episode, Jesus Christ runs a used record store and is tempted through superstardom celebrity fame, but that's really the "second story" to Peter Griffin's rediscovery of his old favorite song Surfin' Bird (by the Trashmen) when a juke box operator at a local diner is about to throw it out and gives it to him.  Never one to do anything halfway, Peter then spends the next days constantly playing the record and acting out this very, very funny, silly song...until the point when talking dog Brian and devious baby Stewie hatch a plan to end their suffering.  In the above picture, Peter's just begun talking about it (once again) and is about to dive into another performance.  I think if you just cut out the later satirical nonsense about Jesus and made a repeating loop of the rest of the episode...and just played it nonstop for a couple of hours, this might be a fantastic remedy for those down in their spirits. A well, don't you know about the bird? Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!