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Good Mountain Press Monthly Digest #075
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ In Memoriam: Buck Owens (1929 - 2006) ~~~~
~~~~~~~~ Best known from Hee-Haw TV Program ~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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~~~ GOOD MOUNTAIN PRESS DIGEST #075 Published May 1, 2007 ~~~
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Quote for the Merry Month of May:

             When you walk along the strand
             seeking a message in a bottle,
             Your feet are squishing in the sand
             Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle.

                    — Bobby Matherne in The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations.

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©2007 by 21st Century Education, Inc, Published Monthly.
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THE GOOD MOUNTAIN PRESS DIGEST #075, May 2007
Archived Digests
Table of Contents

1. May's Violet-n-Joey Cartoon
2. Honored Readers for May
3. On a Personal Note
4. Cajun Story
5. Recipe of the Month from Bobby Jeaux’s Kitchen
6. Poem from Flowers of Shanidar:   "Latest Information"
7. Reviews and Articles Added for May:

8. Commentary on the World
9. Closing Notes - our mailing list, locating books, unsubscribing to Digest
10. Gratitude

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THE GOOD MOUNTAIN PRESS DIGEST #075
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ARCHIVED DIGESTWORLD ISSUES ON THE WEB
 
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1. May Violet-n-Joey CARTOON:
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For newcomers to the Digest, we have created a webpage of all the Violet-n-Joey cartoons! Check it out at: http://www.doyletics.com/vjtoons.htm Also note the rotating calendar and clock that follows just to the right of your mouse pointer as you scroll down the page. You'll also see the clock on the 404 Error page if you make a mistake typing a URL while on the doyletics.com website.

The Violet-n-Joey Cartoon page is been divided into two pages: one low-speed and one high-speed access. If you have Do NOT Have High-Speed Access, you may try this Link which will load much faster and will allow you to load one cartoon at a time. Use this one for High-Speed Access.

This month Violet and Joey learn about a novel truth.

#1 "Novel Truth" at http://www.doyletics.com/images/02010702.gif

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2. HONORED READERS FOR May:
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Each month we take time to thank two of our good readers of Good Mountain Press Digest, books and reviews. Here's our two worthy Honored Readers for this month. One of their names will be in the TO: address line of your email Digest notification. Our Honored Readers for May are:

Beverly Matherne in Marquette, Michigan

A. J. Friedman in New Orleans

Congratulations, Beverly and A. J. !


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3. ON A PERSONAL NOTE:


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Out Our Way:

Our California Experience
This month started with us already in California for the Palm Sunday weekend, so I'll begin our personal notes a few days earlier, March 22, when we left from Louis Armstrong International Airport for Orange County airport. The switch of planes in Dallas seemed innocuous enough and would save us the long shuttle ride from LAX to Garden Grove.

We got up at 5 am or so to get packed and ready to leave for airport. Got there and checked in at American. New automated terminals very confusing first time around. Glad there are other airlines who don't replace the folks at the check-in counters with ATM-like machines. Airlines are going through the ATM revolution that banks did about twenty years ago. American seemed to have gone too far. With help from a real person we got our boarding passes printed out from the machine. Home Depot is doing something similar with their checkout lines and need about as many people to show folks how to use the new machines as they had clerks before. We did manage the automated two-step solo on the way back.

Our plane was at risk of not taking off due to an approaching heavy weather front and everyone was urged to get seated quickly. We made it in the air and had to fly towards Wichita to escape the front and still had lots of bumpy weather. We made it to Dallas and ate at Friday's between planes. Used the sky train to expedite movement between Concourse D and C. Saw Bennigan's too late, and made a note to eat there on way home.

We had a delightful shuttle driver take us to our hotel in Garden Grove, the Anaheim Marriott Suites. I verified that he had the right name and that he said that he knew all the 6 Marriotts within a mile of Disneyland and yet, he still dropped us off at the wrong hotel! Didn't know it until Del tried to check in and found out. They gave Del a voucher for cab fare to the right one down the road about a mile at Harbor and Chapman, which was where I thought we were , so I hadn't questioned the driver. Intersections are so large, it's hard to tell from hotel which corner we were on without walking a long way. When the taxi driver let us out at the right hotel, I gave him $5 and said, "I gave this to the other driver who dropped us off at the wrong hotel, so you deserve it for getting us to the right hotel!" May have been more than the taxi fare for half-a- mile, but it was certainly more than fair!

Downtown Disney
We unpacked and decided to take trolley to Downtown Disney, having been clued in by the wrong-way driver. The Disneyland Parking lot which filled the space between the entrance gates, Harbor Blvd and Disneyland Hotel has been filled with a new park, "The California Experience" and great outdoor spaces, restaurants, shops, and live musicians. No admission to DD, and only $3 each for round trip on shuttle from Marriott. Every 20 minutes and no other stops in between -- the shuttle took us directly to our hotel and back without a stop elsewhere. Since the Shuttles were numbered from A up to K, so far as I saw, that meant there were a dozen or so hotels who supplied enough Disneyland visitors every 20 minutes to almost fill the shuttles which serviced them. We watched our shuttle operator spend almost 20 minutes getting one person off the shuttle in a wheelchair. Had to move bus twice to get it next to curved curb. Meanwhile the rest of us could have walked to Disneyland during that time instead of standing around.

Del and I walked the length of DD and looked at all the sights, trying to assimilate them. The California experience seems to be either a new ride or an entire park. I think that the Park-Hopper ticket gets you in there and Disneyland, too. Probably a third park lurking around also. We weren't interested. We wanted food. Nothing since the soup and sandwich at Friday's in Dallas. But all the restaurants had 45 minute waits and even the side-Express lines with the same foods were fifteen to twenty folks long. Tried Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen, 45 minutes. Express long as well. Plus food didn't look good. Only NO does NO food great. Everyone else does poorly mostly.

We went back to La Brea Restaurant, the first one we passed on way in. Only 20 minute wait, but we chose the Express, no wait. Chose what we wanted. I sat on a stool near a small round table and waited.

As I waited, a young boy about 4 or 5 came up with a transparent clamshell container of assorted fruits which he placed up on the table, almost eye-level for him, and tried to open it unsuccessfully. I started to offer to help him as his mother was nowhere in sight, probably paying at the cashier for the food, but I heard him saying aloud, in a low voice, just a couple of feet away from my ears, "God is great, God is good; Let us thank him for our food." I waited for him to finish and then saw his mother coming over to him and she helped him open it. I told her what he had done and thanked her for being such a good mother.

Never before have I ever seen or heard a child that young saying grace before meals alone and unbidden. Amazing. I told this story to Jim Poit, the Executive Minister of the Crystal Cathedral Ministries, the next day. He asked if he might use it and I said sure.

We had each a large roll of sourdough bread, hollowed out and filled with hot chowder. It was delicious and we ate all the chowder and ate most of the plate afterwards. Also shared a veggie sandwich that was mostly tasteless. We sat outdoors under the high radiating heaters and waited for the fireworks display to start at 9 pm. It didn't. At 9:15 I gave up and suggested we walk to the front. Found someone finally to ask and found out that they shot them off now at 9:30 pm. (was 9 pm in my Anaheim days in 1970 when I could set our clock at home for 9:05 every night of the year when the fireworks would start. Sometimes I would get up on the roof of the single-story home to watch them clear the treetops, some mile or so from our house. )

It was cold, but we didn't want to go through the security checkpoint once more just to get a warm place to watch, so we watched some from just outside the main entrance and then sidled our way over to the J-Shuttle stop where we watched the rest of the long show and the finale. After the short ride back to hotel, we hit the bed exhausted and slept the night away.

Friday: Crystal Cathedral Tour
The next morning was the first day of our Leadership Conference at the Crystal Cathedral Ministries. Most of the conference members were staying at our hotel. We met Clayton and Marian in the lobby and discovered that they were local. Del told Marian, "You look very familiar. Are you in the Hour of Power choir?" She said, "Yes."

Had breakfast at the Sunspot Restaurant. A large one, as we wouldn't eat until 5 pm or so. I put on my trunks and went down into the pool for a relaxing swim and Jacuzzi. Also reading the rest of "Something Rotten" novel by Jason Fforde poolside. Del came out to join me to get a little sun. We left as the pool sides began to fill up.

At about 4:00 we got dressed and went down to the lobby to start meeting folks and get our conference package from Caitlin. We had talked to her several times and she answered all our questions. She gave us our tickets for the Glory of Easter that night. Then we bussed over to the Cathedral Campus and began our long tour of the grounds. George and his wife led us through the Gardens, Sculptures, Memorial Gardens, and Crystal Cathedral and its green rooms and production studios below.

Jim Penner the senior production manager of the Hour of Power told us how he did his job. He's recording in HDTV now onto his server and does all his editing from the hard drives, only copying the final edition onto tape for shipment to broadcast outlets. They usually ship the previous week's work out on the following Tuesday so that there is only a one week delay between live and Memorex. The Palm Sunday service is due to be aired on April 22, a week later because of the Easter week intervening. If that schedule holds, it will be a great service.

We visited the Memorial Gardens with small family grass areas inside stone cubicles. Roger Williams has an indoor crypt with glass covering it. White marble with black piano keys across the left side. Across the back is a grand piano shaped Stained Glass window portraying Roger at the keyboard. In the back is an indoor mausoleum for people's ashes to be put on display.

At five pm the hors d'oeuvres were served in the Art Gallery. In it are hung the artworks of George Chann, an artist who devoted his life apparently to creating depictions of scenes from the Bible and willed it to the Crystal Cathedral upon his death. I met an amazing lady there, Pat (Patricia) Nordberg who was 82 and still working as a school psychologist to teach kids how to excel in their schoolwork. She learned the hard way after she had an aneurism in her brain which threatened to kill her unless surgery was done. This was back in the mid-fifties and she was first person to undergo the latest technique of hypothermy. They opened her skull, re-routed the blood flow, and patched in a replacement artery to keep her brain alive. She lost motor control on her left side and had to press her fingers on the typewriter keys of the manual machine to get them to go down and to exercise her apparently dead finger muscles. But soon she was typing 100 wpm on a manual. She couldn't speak clearly and some college teacher gave her a B even though her grades were perfect on her tests and other work. Said it was because she couldn't talk right. Wouldn't even listen to the explanation of how she was re-learning to talk. She is currently working on a book of her life and a self-teaching aid to students to learn as she did. She mentioned that her husband had bought her a Corvette with a manual transmission during her rehabilitation period. It had a stiff clutch which required her to exercise her left leg until it was normal again. Smart guy that man!

Then we moved to the Arboretum, the old Hour of Power Church, which is still outfitted for Sunday services. Robby, Robert A.'s son, is going to the seminary and holds optional services there on Sunday. Met at least one of the other conference attendee who were going to hear him and recommended we go. I wanted to go to the 11:00 services, so put that out of my head.

We had a delicious fish dinner with a scrumptious white mousse confection for dessert. Robert H. came in to greet us. And left the podium without saying grace. Someone talked to him and he came back to the mike and said, "Grace." Got a chuckle and then did a proper grace for everyone. Got to shake hands with Robert A. and talk for a few minutes. He was called Bobby as a kid, too.

We walked over to the Crystal Cathedral as it was getting dark and took our seats. I went back to the Visitors Center for a pit stop and saw the Glory of Easter players in costume getting assembled for later entry. It was a great presentation of the Resurrection of Christ which started with his triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Six angels flew overhead at various times during the Easter Sunday portion. Two gladiators on horseback came in. Then camels, goats, sheep, etc. And finally Jesus on the back of white donkey for Palm Sunday. I wondered if Jesus would be back in the Cathedral during Palm Sunday, 2007 when Robert Evel Knievel will be the guest. He was. On a Friday in the darkened Crystal Cathedral, we watched a Jesus hanging on a cross on Golgotha as the sky flashed, lightning thundered, and the Earth shook and we saw him rise from the tomb in a blaze of glory. It was an awe-inspiring, once-in-a-lifetime event.

Saturday Conference at Crystal Cathedral
Took the bus to Campus and had breakfast in PJ's Heavenly Café — an on-campus café run by the official Anaheim café downtown. Enjoyed sitting outside in the sunny portion of the patio. Met Steve and Denise who told us that they are coming to New Orleans for Jazz Fest in May. Told them to call us when they have some time free from their group of 17 folks coming.

Also met Mr. Al and wife Betty who are RV'ers. Al's in his middle 80's and just as lively as a man can be. Great guy, great gal. Live near Orlando in Florida, but spend the winter on the road in their RV.

We went to the Freed Theater for morning devotions led by Robert A. and then listened to presentations by the various ministries. Ms. Beverly Muffin for the Global Church, Jim Coleman (married to Sheila) for the brochures and books, Jim Penner for the TV production showed up, whom we'd heard the day before on the tour. His wife is Gretchen Schuller Penner who runs the Hour of Power planning and execution. Dan was the emcee and the glue who held the presentations together. He introduced each speaker, such as the CPA who keeps the finances and the budgeting on an even keel. Right now they feed Hour of Power broadcasts into 100 countries. They have begun broadcasting from Hong Kong into mainland China and plan to begin broadcasts into the interior of China soon. Most foreign broadcasts are in subtitles, but in Germany, e.g., Robert A. said that they see him "sprechen auf Deutsch" on the TV each Sunday. They actually get Sunday morning prime time on the FOX channel in Germany, something that would be cost-prohibitive in the USA on any of the big four channels who have Meet the Press, etc., filling those slots.

We had a buffet lunch in PJ's Heavenly Café and sat outside again. Then we returned to the Freed Auditorium for more questions and answers about the Hour of Power Ministries. Lots of good questions and answers. We went away convinced that we were part of a great ministry bringing Christ Jesus to peoples all across the world.

We bussed back to the Marriott Suites and we got ready for the banquet in the Crystal Ballroom at 7 pm. Some chicken concoction, but the side dish of rice pilaf was good, as was the chocolate cake dessert. Both Robert Schullers talked. Robert H. Schuller told about getting a call out of the blue from Evel. His secretary called him and said, "It's somebody who says he's Evel Knievel." He took the call directly and Evel said that he'd led a terrible life and two weeks earlier Jesus had come into his life and he wanted share his testimony on the Hour of Power. Schuller said, Yes right away. About 3 days later he called Evel and said he'd like to fly out to Orlando to meet with him. Evel said, "Dr. Schuller, you're over 80; you sure want to fly that far?" Well, he did and he told us that after that meeting he felt as though Knievel was one of five most impressive men he'd ever met in his life. Considering the great men Schuller has met and interviewed, Reagan, Gorbachev, Armand Hammer, etc, this was saying a lot. Everyone was enthused about the next day, but none of suspected what was in store for us. No one. Not Robert H., not Robert A., not Gretchen (who's supposed to run things), not Dan Denton, and certainly none of us.

Palm Sunday Miracle at the Crystal Cathedral
Up at 7 to get breakfast, a full one this time, from the buffet. No eggs, but oatmeal, salmon, fresh fruit all made it delicious. A male and female French duck had landed in the swimming pool right on the other side of the glass wall next to our table. Our waitress spotted them first and got all excited in an Argentinian sort of way.

Took the 8 am bus to the Campus and decided to go to the early 9:30 service and keep our options open for the second 11:00 service. First off, the Hour of Power Stage Manager, whom we had seen during the music rehearsals, came up to make this announcement, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I am sorry to inform you that Evel Knievel is unable to be with us today." Immediately we recalled hearing that Evel's health was poor and that he was breathing from an oxygen tank. Something must have happened to him. The mgr continued, "We searched far and wide and was able to come up with an apt substitute, 'Perilous Poit'." At which time, Jim Poit the Executive Pastor who makes the "Minister's Welcome/Announcements" came riding across from the left up the ramp to the speaker's dais. He was dressed in goggles, crash helmet, and flowing cape. On his T-shirt was the name "Perilous Poit" emblazoned. He announced that Evel was in fact coming, and this was an April First prank. We enjoyed the good-natured fun. This didn't make it to the Hour of Power broadcast, and only the local congregation got to enjoy the playful skit.

The Palm Sunday service started with the Glory of Easter troupe doing a reprise of Jesus's triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. The apostles led off the parade through the middle of the Crystal Cathedral holding their palms high over their heads to a rousing rendition of Hosanna! rendered by the Choir. Jesus appeared on the small white donkey waving at the crowd. No better way to start off a Palm Sunday celebration.

Robert A. Schuller came out to give his opening greeting, and then the choir with Don Neuen sang "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name." This powerful song was followed by the orchestra playing "The Holy City" and then Robert H. Schuller strode to the podium to introduce Robert Evel Knievel. As soon as Del saw Evel Knievel, she began to tear up. I asked what was it, and she said, "He won't be around very long." Evel was off the oxygen, but you could tell he was breathing deeply and not getting quite enough air. We found out later that he had a debilitating lung disease.

But Evel walked across the stage with a special fire in his eyes and in his heart that was obvious to everyone there. Robert H. asked him to tell us his story after they played a short clip of his Caesar's Palace accident and then his LA Coliseum successful jump. Evel told us that he made a lot of money and spent it mostly on himself. He said, "I had five Rolls-Royces, five Ferraris, Lambourginis, many motorcycles, yachts, and even two jet plane. I had my name painted on the side of my jet plane and I bought another jet plane just so I could ride in one and see my name on the side of the other one in the air."

He believed in God, but not in Jesus. He had studied Hindu, Islam, and all the other religions, and had many people praying for him all over the world, especially before a jump. He said he could feel their prayers as he rode down the ramps. Then Jesus came into his life in a personal way several weeks ago, and he knew he would never be the same again. Someone told him that he should tell the world about the difference Jesus was making in his life, and that's when he decided to call Robert H. Schuller and ask to be on his show. He turned to the crowd in the Crystal Cathedral and said, "Some of you out there may have never felt the presence of Jesus in your life as I have, but I can tell you that it is like nothing I have ever felt before." Robert H. asked him if he would like to be baptized. Robert E. Knievel said, "Yes." and they went over the baptismal font where he proceed to baptize him. He dipped his hand in the water three times. Once he pressed Knievel's forehead saying "I baptize you in the Name of the Father." Then more water and hand pressed to the forehead, saying, "I baptize you in the Name of the Son." Then more water and hand pressed to the forehead, saying, "I baptize you in the Name of the Holy Spirit." After it was over, the crowd stood on its feet in a standing ovation. Later Evel said, "In all the many times I have ever felt people praying for me, none has been as strong and powerful as the prayers I feel coming from you here today."

He went to sit down next to Robert H. and Donna as Robert A. Schuller came to dais. Next up was to be "Amazing Grace" followed by passing the basket for the offering, followed by "Ride on, King Jesus!" by Dorothy Benham, former Miss America, then second reading from Philippians 4 by Donna Schuller, and Robert A.'s homily coincidentally entitled, "Finding Happiness from the Inside Out." Part 6 of a series. NONE OF THAT HAPPENED. Instead a MIRACLE happened.

The Senior Pastor, Robert Anthony Schuller, newly appointed in the past year, came to the dais and said, "The Spirit is moving me to ask, 'Are there any of you in the church today who would wish to be baptized? If so, would you come up here to the front and I will baptize you.'" Taking the cue from the seed Robert Evel Knievel had planted in the audiences' minds, Robert A. offered them a chance to experience what Evel Knievel had just testified to. Several people came forward, then more, and soon the lines were leading to the back of the church. Robert proceeded to baptize each personally and it became obvious that the lines were too long, so Jim Poit got someone to help him, the Spanish Minister got at the head of another line, and some third other minister and they baptized each and every one who was standing in line. The choir was off-script, so they did a sotto voce version of "Amazing Grace" followed by "Softly and Gently Jesus is Calling" calling to you and to me. More songs were sung. I looked back to see Don Neuen and the choir singing with each of their eyes glued on the incredible scene taking place in front of their church. Never before had there been an altar call in this church. I've seen them happen on other TV church broadcasts, but not culminating in baptism as this one. Del told me she thought his father, Robert H. was a prophet and Robert A. would be an evangelist. Amen.

After the baptisms were all done, Robert A. said, "Looks like I've used up the time for my homily." Someone called out "Basket!" and reminded him that the offertory hadn't been taken. So he improvised, saying that the former Miss American, Dorothy Benham, would sing her song while the collection was taken up.

The orchestra fired up and Dorothy belted out an incredible version of "Ride on, King Jesus!" that bore little semblance to the rehearsal version earlier in the morning before the service. Even Robert A's homily fit for what actually happened in its place, "Finding Happiness from the Inside Out." Services let out at 10:45 am, just barely enough time for us to walk around outside and then return to our seats. I took a 360 panorama of the church bldgs as the Carillon bells rang out with "What a friend we have in Jesus." I had just started my .mpg movie clip when Jean, a volunteer, came up and introduced herself to tell me of the best spot to take a photo. Then as I continued rotating myself and the P200 Sony camera, Del called me on my cell phone and I had to reach down to quickly silence the ringing sound. Tough job being a photographer. I caught Jean later in line at the Heavenly Café and explained to her why I was so short with her and showed her the photo I took of the spot she had directed me to. Definitely a postcard shot.

Del was busy so I told her I'd get our same seats. I looked back later to find Sue Ann heading into church and waved her to come. Then Al and Betty saw Del and I went out to get the three of them to sit together in the place I had reserved. We had a volunteer take a photo of the five of us in the pews before the 11 am services began. Didn't know at this point whether there would be a reprise of the "Palm Sunday Miracle", which is what Del called it in her note to Robert A. Schuller when we got home a few days later.

The second service mirrored the first. Jim Poit reprised his role as "Perilous Poit". Evel Knievel gave the same great testimony and was baptized another time — he is now a well-washed Christian. There were about half as many people to be baptized, but still long lines with four ministers working. This time, we knew what was to happen next, and it did. The choir did their prepared songs as background music to the baptizing activities. At one point Robert A. ran out of water to baptize and someone showed up with a couple of bottles of water.

If you would like to read the transcript of Robert H. Schuller's interview with Evel Knievel, Click Here. Also check the Hour of Power website ( http://www.hourofpower.org/ ) to order a CD or DVD of the 4/22/2007 program entitled Evel Knievel's Leap of Faith.

Postscript
Del and I watched the first broadcast on the Hour of Power after the Easter broadcast and Robert A. Schuller told us about how great leaps on motorcycles are short-lived records. Soon after Evel Knievel did his world record leap, a young rider, Trigger Gumm, broke Evel's record with a leap of 277 feet which stands today as the world's record. He flew 80 feet in the air during a leap that was a few yards short of a football field length. On Palm Sunday Evel Knievel, the former record holder, was baptized by Robert H. Schuller, the former Senior Pastor. But there was a young man who had been pacing back and forth across the rear of the Crystal Cathedral during the second service on Palm Sunday, and while Robert A. Schuller walked back to the platform from performing baptisms, this young man came running up the aisle to be baptized. That young man was Trigger Gumm! He had come to take the greatest leap of his life, a leap of faith. With that the symmetry was complete. The former Senior Pastor had baptized the former world record holder, and the new Senior Pastor had baptized the new world record holder. No Hollywood movie could have scripted the day better — this was truly a script written in Heaven.

If you would like to read the transcript of Robert A. Schuller's discussion of Trigger Gumm, Click Here.

After the service was over we said our goodbyes and Del wanted to find the Global Ministries meeting which was supposed to be on the 14th floor of the Tower of Hope. But the guy at the desk in the lobby didn't know about it. We went into elevator and the highest numbered floor was 12, so I figured someone had the number wrong. Well, the Chapel turns out to be on the 13th and top floor, but it is marked only by a button saying "Chapel" and not a number. Since there weren't two more numbered buttons, I figured that there could be no 14th floor, until we walked around and I recalled the superstition about skipping the 13th floor and going directly to the 14th. We went up and listened to Ms. Muffin talk about the Global Church. Great view from the Chapel, all-glass, all-around.

We got on bus back to the Marriott Suites and arrived back there about 4 or so. We took a nap and then went to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner. This was the best run restaurant outside of Houston's which I had been in. The manager came over to talk to us after our meal. Ain't it curious how this happens in the best run restaurants? The food was fresh and delicious and about New Orleans price levels. We went to our Rm 802 and ordered this movie "Deja Vu" (2006). Watching it made us feel as if we were back home again instead of in Anaheim, California where we watched it in our Marriott Suite. A time slip mystery holds a promise of saving the lives of the 585 people who died in an explosion of the Canal Street ferry in New Orleans. Can they uncover the clues to averting the disaster in time to keep it from happening all over again in real-time?

Then we hit the sack to prepare for our long flight home.

The Longest Day (Flight Home)
We breakfasted in the Sunspot Restaurant. Leonel was our waiter and he loved my new black felt hat. I told him how to get one and he wrote down the phone number to call Meyer the Hatter in NO. I shot a photo of him with it on and it looked great on him. We got to the John Wayne airport in plenty of time, which was good because that airport has only two security checkpoints for the entire airport and one of them was closed. Every single person coming into the lobby had to go through the checkpoint and the line was constantly backed up. We sat outside on wooden benches till I spotted a shortening of the queue and then we checked through. Our flight was an hour late leaving OC airport and when we got to Dallas, we rushed from C11 to C4 only to find that, even though we arrived exactly at 6:35 our Dallas take off time, the gate had been locked closed and the name changed on the backdrop. I thought we had gone to the wrong place. When we tried to find out the only people behind the counter were American Airlines pilots and they didn't care about our dilemma.

Del got us booked on the 9:30 flight to MSY and we had three hours to kill in a Concourse with nothing but McD's and Wendy's. We walked down to C2 where we were due to leave later and went up the large escalators. At top all we saw was a long sky bridge and the powered walkway was blocked off halfway across. Del went to sit down while I thought about what to do. An airport employee, a large woman, came our way and we asked about finding a restaurant. She pointed to Concourse D across the sky bridge and we knew of the one with the Bennigan's we had seen on the way to LAX. So we got on the walkway and soon a handicapped cart came our way. We asked about getting to Bennigan's and he said he'd drive us. Took the elevator down with us and drove us all the freaking long way to Bennigan's where we got a nice meal. And he came back to get us as promised after our meal and took us to the escalators down to C2. Our gate C2 right in sight as we came down the escalators, only to find that the damn gate had moved a third time! Now it was C14 right on the other side of the C11 we arrived at three hours earlier. What a crock!

We walked, rode to C14 and when we got there I explained our situation to the gal at the desk. We didn't want to be in the far back of the Super-Stupid 80 (SR80) again where all you could see out of the windows was the engines. She said she'd do what she could and lo, and behold, she put us into First Class. In the first row, but comfortable and the flight home was peaceful and on-time.

No more a 3 hr flight from LAX to MSY, this one was going to take all day, even if all flights were on schedule. And they weren't. We had missed our connection to New Orleans in Dallas by a few footsteps after rushing as fast as we could. We arrived at the exact time on the schedule and they had closed the gate. What was puzzling is that, even though our flight refused to wait even a minute for folks who were held up by a previous flight being late, before we could leave for New Orleans, that flight was held up to wait for folks arriving late at the gate! Same Airline! Next time we'll fly to LAX on a direct flight and take the shuttle. We spent all day getting home and, instead of getting home at 7:30 pm, we settled into our beds around midnight.

Mass of the Chrism
The next day I had scheduled to take J. B. Borel with me to the Mass of the Chrism at the St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter. We both wore our seersucker suits, a New Orleans summer time tradition. We were pushing the season only a bit. J. B. hadn't gone to this Mass before, but I have made a regular event on my Easter schedule. Held on the Tuesday of Holy Week, the priests come from every church in the New Orleans Archdiocese to be present for the blessing of all the oils to be sure in Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, and Last Rites throughout their parishes for the next year. Three large silver urns are carried down the aisle of the cathedral to the altar where they are filled with olive oil and then blessed. The priests all renew their ordination vows. Great music with trumpets, the organ, and the choir in the loft and the 40 priests singing. Always an inspiring event. After the services, J. B. and I walked over to Café du Monde for some café au lait and beignets and then headed back home across the river.

Our good friend Rosie Harris helped Del get the pieces together to design her very first flower arrangement. There's a photo of the two proud ribbon winners at left.

Later in the week, I got an email from Dale A. Boudreaux who lived across the street from us on Avenue F in Westwego. He was a year younger than my brother, Paul, and he and Paul were good friends. He had Googled his name and found my note in my "Wild Mind" review that "He was a rich kid who lived across from us." He said he didn't think of himself as "rich" and neither did his parents. Well, he was an only child and got all the new toys he wanted and we provided the siblings for him to enjoy them with! I called him immediately. Later, I talked to Paul and he said that he had several times tried to locate Dale Boudreaux, but didn't know his middle name and, "Do you know how many Dale Boudreauxs there are in Lafayette?" So Paul had never located him, up until now.

Paul told me that Dad was feeling his old self again. On one visit there, Paul saw that Dad was all dressed up and asked him, "Where ya going?" Dad said, "To Hell if I don't pray!" That is a typical Buster-of-old response and was good to hear.

For Easter Sunday we picked up, Rosie Harris, to take her to St. Joseph's Church with us for High Mass. We got there and the church was almost full. Found a half a pew midway up the aisle, and took it. Right before mass started, Donna Harris with her mom and two kids came to sit in the pew in front of us. Donna kept looking back for her husband, Ronnie, Rosie's son, and didn't see Rosie, her mother-in-law sitting right behind her for a few minutes. When she did, she said she was looking for Ronnie. That told me Ronnie was here. I looked around and waved for him to come up. When he arrived I moved out of the end pew, and asked him if he'd like to sit next to his mother. He accepted and ended up sitting right behind Donna his wife and his kids, who were in the full pew ahead of us.

Our new Roman Curtains were installed in four of the Timberlane Living Room windows. With the window sills cleared, it was a good time to get the wooden sill repainted. I got out my electric "mouse" sander and used it for the first time to remove paint from a wooden surface for repainting. With that done, Del's remodeling of the Living Room awaits only the new area rug between the sofa and the hearth for completion. That should happen in May. It's been almost a year since she began talking about this project and it's nearly over. Good job, Del.

Del's Birthday Celebration
Stoney, Sue, Sam, John, Kristin, Kyle and Collin are coming over and maybe Maureen, Steve and Gabe. Will do crawfish again. Probably fifty lbs if Mo comes. Well, Mo came and Steve invited Chris and Carrie, Tiffany and John, Ben and Aven. There were only stragglers of crawfish left when we cut the cakes. Sue brought a great pecan covered and filled white cake, like I recall from Aunt Clarise's and other Bourg country weddings in the 1940s and 50s. Del bought a Gambino carrot cake, Rosie brought her own delicious carrot cake and it went. The store bought Gambino one left with Rosie for the CODOFIL celebration Tuesday night which we'll miss.

Del's Mom Moves Down the Hall
Doris had to move from her apartment in Woldenberg Village because it was due to be remodeled. Luckily Del found her an apartment much closer to the elevator which had already been remodeled, so this move will be permanent. I drove over to disconnect and reconnect the plasma tv from the cable and then reconnect it to regular cable till the digital cable guys could get there to get her digital cable working fully in the new apartment. The staff provided the movers, but it still required Del to pack up all her mom's breakables and unpack them. Almost a full week of work on Del's part to make this happen. One advantage to this move within the assisted-living complex was that the cabinets are the same in all apartments, so the movers could move entire drawers, contents and all. Doris offered to buy us dinner for helping her with her move. Del and I chose the Red Maple Restaurant for dinner. Told her the more we come here the more it reminds me of the Lafayette House Restaurant in Foxborough, Massachusetts where I lived before my move back to New Orleans in 1975. I had the mahi-mahi over rice pilaf and asparagus, which was beautiful and delicious, Del had the crab salad.

Pirate Saturday
I had invited my grandson Chris to breakfast at my club. He turned 21 last year and this was the first time he could come. Chris enjoyed himself. When asked what he did, he told people he was studying Electrical Engineering at Delgado Community College. And building fences. His girl friend Carrie is in her junior year and will graduate next year. She can't wait. She's still planning to be a teacher.

I came home and took a nap while waiting for Del to return home and about 3:30 we left for the French Market for the Pirate Parade. When we got there we didn't see swash nor buckler of a pirate. We walked around Jackson Square. Sat in front of the Cathedral and watched a guy with a marionette playing the guitar and saxophone. At one point the puppet sat on a box and farted. A First! Later after giving a lively performance on his guitar, the puppet "died." The master carried his puppet in front of him. It was stiff as a board (naturally) as a dirge played on his boom box. Amazing show.

Another performer was a juggler on a unicycle, juggling burning torches. An 8-year-old boy was helping him and he was educating the kid. Asked for lighters from audience and got two. After lighting his torches, he told the kid to return the first and ask for a dollar. Had the kid put it in shoe, lacking a pocket. Then he asked him what the second lighter was he held up in his hand. "A lighter" the kid replied. "No," he said forcefully, "another dollar." Then he instructed the kid to give the dollar to a young girl in the crowd about his own age. Afterwards, he said to his young helper, "Get used to it, kid." Funniest juggler I've ever seen.

But still no pirates, so we walked to the Moon Walk on the river and then into Café Du Monde and had our café au lait and beignets, then we walked back towards our car parked in the first lot off Canal Place. My heart leapt as we saw five pirates coming towards us, and I asked them about the parade. "7 PM at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop". Great! Only an hour and half from now! Took their photos and Del and I decided to walk to Felix's Oyster Bar to satisfy Del's craving for oyster on the half-shell. When we arrived there, Del ordered a dozen and half oysters, and I fixed the sauce.

While we were eating our oysters, a couple came into Felix's and I thought I heard them speaking German, "Deutsche?" I asked and the woman and man began speaking very fast to me. "Spreche langsam," I said, "ich spreche Deutsch ein wenig." (Speak slowly, I speak German a little.)

With that we began to have a conversation. They knew very few English words, and at one point I gathered that they wanted crawfish and wished to know if they could eat them at the table or just at the bar, so I asked the waitress behind the counter and she said, "Either." They were from Berlin. I offered to give them one oyster to taste. "Schmeck gut!" I said. (Tastes Good!) The opener gave us a small one and I got fork for them and offered it to her.

We thoroughly enjoyed the oysters and gave the opener $20 for the dozen and a-half oysters including a healthy tip, and we walked towards Bourbon Street. Met two more pirates. This couple hailed from Toronto. They were headed away from Bourbon but were going back for the 7 pm parade start.

Del and I stopped and sat in the Musical Legends Park on Bourbon Street and listened to trumpet player/singer, Steamboat Willie, and his New Orleans Jazz Band. Took photos of the statues of Fats Domino, Al Hirt, and Pete Fountain, of Willie's band, of Del, and of the flowers.

At 6:35 or so, an impromptu parade headed up Bourbon. We recognized the Storyville Stompers Brass Band as the guys sitting in the Monteleone Hotel where we mad a rest stop on the way to Bourbon. Took movie clip of them passing the Musical Legends park.

Then we walked up Bourbon as it neared dusk. Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop was already crowded with pirates. We met the five we first saw. Then the Toronto couple. Plus a lot of authentic looking pirates of every imaginable kind. A swashbuckler with large red feather. A Zorro type with attitude and cane, looking ever so Spanish and torero-like. We had a great time during the lead up to the parade, then it passed so quickly that we decided not to try to keep up with it. Till it turned right onto Decatur and I was able to catch the last carriage as it passed Jeanne d'Arc statue.

When we got home, I tuned in the Trinity Broadcast Network to "Hour of Power" and we sat in awe of how marvelous they produced the show from the two shows we attended on Palm Sunday. All signs of Palm Sunday were removed. (Will be added back for next year's Hour of Power Palm Sunday services.) Robert A.'s scripture reading from the Gospel of John was from some other day. But Robert Evel Knievel's amazing testimony came across as strong or stronger as we saw in person. They used most of the first service and some of the second and edited out some extraneous stuff. I had goose bumps again as I saw the testimony and the hundreds of baptisms which followed, with "Amazing Grace" and "Softly and Gently, Jesus is calling" being sung in the background by the choirs while people queued up to be baptized by the hundreds. Following that, more goose bumps for the three standing ovations for Evel Knievel, the one for Robert A. after he completed the baptisms, and the one for Dorothy Benham when she completed her rousing version of "Ride on, King Jesus!"

Pirate Costume and Book-binding
On Sunday I went to the Pirate's Conference headquarters where there was an exhibit area selling pirate gear and costumes. I talked with an Irish lady named Arlene who told me how to put together a pirate costume. Her husband came by and told me how to create the pirate pants which involved slicing the pants below the knees and sewing together the pieces into legging ties. I got out the new sewing machine I had bought for just such a project and had to learn how to operate it. The material of the pants were a stretch knit material, so I had to locate a stretch needle. A little Google search informed me that a stretch needle is one that has a ballpoint tip rather than a sharp tip so that it separates the threads of stretch material instead of tearing them. I needed my handheld 35X to confirm which of the two needles with the machine was the stretch one and install it (very little difference to the touch or naked eye). After awhile I had the pants all sewed up and ready to try on. I'm ready for the next costume party, Mardi Gras, or Pirate Conference.

My other project over the weekend was binding a copy of this out-of-print book which I downloaded from the Rudolf Steiner Archives website, "The Inner Nature of Man" which consists of six lectures in Vienna from April 9 through 14, in 1914. I separated the lectures into three signatures, each with two lectures apiece. Stapled each signature section with my saddle stapler, pressed them in a jig in my vise, filled the back spine with Elmer's Glue, and let it set overnight. The next morning, I attached the full-color cover and inked the spine with the title. Ready to read.

We were delighted to have Rosie for dinner in Bobby Jeaux's Kitchen for some old-fashioned Cajun home-cooking, Green Beans and Potatoes over Rice, plus some corn-on-the-cob. None of the food cooked by my Cajun parents and grandparents was spicey-hot, but just well-seasoned and delicious. The over-spicing of Cajun food does not served my Cajun ancestors well. That's what I like about Bobby Jeaux's cooking. He gives it tang without giving it a bite, flavor without deadening the lips and tongue like so much restaurant prepared ersatz Cajun cooking. For dessert Bobby Jeaux served some fresh pineapple that he had peeled and chopped in the morning. Delicious! He places the fresh pineapple inside the fruit bowl surrounded by pears and apples for a week and the vapors from the other fruit creates a delicious ripe pineapple every time. After dinner we retired to the Timberlane Screening Room to watch the DVR copy of the Hour of Power services at which Robert Evel Knievel gave his amazing testimony of how Jesus Christ came into his life just recently and was baptized by Robert H. Schuller. This is service that we attended on Palm Sunday a couple of weeks ago. After it was over, Rosie said, "What could be better? Great food, good company, and a good cry. That was worth a thousand dollars."

The New Orleans Shakespeare Society Annual Dinner was held in the Rex Room of Antoine's Restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans near the end of April to coincide with Will's birthday. We read Henry V in condensed form after a fine meal from the kitchen's of Antoine's. The restaurant is back in good running order now, and has lost none of its charm. One can see the memorabilia from the Krewe of Rex, King of Carnival, which lines the wall behind me in the photo at right. My parts for the play are French Constable, Exeter, Gower, and the Duke of Burgundy, so I chose the red wine for the dinner, naturally.

It's busy a busy April for us, and a blessed one. I hope your April was equally blessed and that May will likewise be a wonderful month out your way. Till we meet next month in these pages, God Willing, may I offer you all the pirates' farewell, "Fair Winds to Ye!"

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New Quotes Added to quotes.htm this month:
  • Politics — n. strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
    Ambrose Bierce

  • New Stuff on the Web quoting Bobby Matherne:
  • Article from newspaper, The LSU Daily Reveille quotes Bobby Matherne:
    "LSU Tiger Stadium Dorms - News — Bobby Matherne, a resident of North Stadium from 1958 to 1961, remembers a similar atmosphere. “It was like being in basic training almost. The beds were like the ones in Army barracks,” he said. “In 1958, all the guys had to have their heads shaved and wear beanies and be in ROTC. Only a few foreign students didn't."
  • From Making Birth Safe in the US. (aka Hospital Birth Debate) Website

          An Excerpt quoting Bobby Matherne:

    In case, you, the reader is new to the field of "unscientific" thinking of the natural and homebirth movement and advocates, here are links to get you updated.

    From a book review Book Review by Bobby Matherne of The Cry and the Covenant by Morton Thompson, 1949. It has some gruesome tidbits about the way women were used in research.

    Semmelweis was a country bumpkin from Hungary in the sophisticated milieu of Vienna and his cup of social graces was as empty as his font of empathy for his patients was full. Exactly the opposite of what the noble profession of medical doctor, surgeon and professor of medicine required. Also he had a dangerous penchant for innovation that was unwelcome in a university whose job was deemed to be that of teaching what was known of medicine as it existed at the time. Childbed fever had always existed and always will, one of his friends told him. Ignatz, or Naci, as his friends called him, rebelled at the thought that there was no hope for stemming this carnage of human life. Unanswered questions filled his thoughts: Why did the women who gave birth in the streets not die of childbed fever? Why was the rate of death in the Second Ward one-third that of the First Ward? Why was the rate in Vienna so high compared to England? To France?(1) And most importantly what was the etiology, the one true cause of childbed fever?

    Most natural birth and homebirth advocates know who Semmelweis is. One of the doctors on the three different continents who came up with the "discovery" that "lying in" or "birth fever" was being caused by germs (although not yet called that.) Childbirth fever later became identified as Puerperal Fever and identified as strep. Today, it is still such a problem that women are tested for it in late pregnancy.
  • May's Mastications quotes Bobby Matherne:

    Laws of Form by G. Spencer Brown is one of the seminal books of our modern era. Reviewer Bobby Matherne quotes enough of the juicy bits that, even though this is more personal reflections of its application to the Evolution of Consciousness than actual critical appraisal, it is a truly distinctive read.

    The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please.
  • The five most popular A Reader's Journal, Vol 1, 2007 to Date:
          1. Flowers for Algernon — The Daring Novel of a Startling Human Experiment! by Daniel Keyes
          2. Mutant Message Down Under — Discover the Wisdom of an Ancient Culture by Marlo Morgan
          3. The Prince of Tides — A Novel by Pat Conroy
          4. PANACEA! The Ultimate Alternative? by Doyle P. Henderson
          5. The Way of the Urban Samurai as revealed by Kasumi
    • New Stuff about Doyletics Website:
    • Top Ten Countries of Visitors to www.doyletics.com Website

      (For Six days in April, 2007: Total pages= 27,582.
      Listed in descending order of no. of pages read)

        1.     com   (USA plus other Commercial sites)

        2.     net   (Network)

        3.    unresolved    

        4.    edu    (Educational)

        5.    ca     (Canada)

        6.    au     (Australia)

        7.    uk     (United Kingdom)

        8.    us     (United States)

        9.    sg     (Singapore)

      10.    de     (Germany)

      To see the rest of the Top 100 Countries Click Here!



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    Movies we watched this past month:

    Notes about our movies: Many of the movies we watch are foreign movies with subtitles. After years of watching movies in foreign languages, Arabic, French, Swedish, German, Polish, British English, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and many other languages, sometimes two or three languages in the same movie, the subtitles have disappeared for us. If the movie is dubbed in English we go for the subtitles instead because we enjoy the live action and sounds of the real voices so much more than the dubbed. If you wonder where we get all these foreign movies from, the answer is simple: NetFlix. For a fixed price a month they mail us DVD movies from our on-line Queue, we watch them, pop them into a pre-paid mailer, and the postman effectively replaces all our gas-consuming and time-consuming trips to Blockbuster. To sign up for NetFlix, simply go to http://www.netflix.com/ and start adding all your requests for movies into your personal queue. If you've seen some in these movie blurbs, simply copy the name, click open your queue, and paste the name in the Search box on NetFlix and Select Add. Buy some popcorn and you're ready to Go to the Movies, 21st Century Style. You get to see your movies as the Director created them — NOT-edited for TV, in full-screen width, your own choice of subtitles, and all of the original dialogue.
    P. S. Any rumors that Netflix doesn't deliver DVD's promptly is hogwash so far as I am concerned. Our new DVD's are delivered with a couple of days of the old ones being put out on my mailbox.
    Hits (Watch as soon as you can. A Don't Miss Hit is one you might otherwise ignore.):
    “The Prestige” (2006) One of most amazing and interesting movies we’ve ever seen! A 1-2-3 Magic Punch at every level: the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige. We see two young apprentices to a magician. They turn into extraordinary magicians. Only one remains standing. But which one will it be? And who is this Fallon guy? If you wish to be a magician you have to devote your entire life to it.
    “Blue” (1993) The first of the Colors Triology of Kieslowsky, followed by “White” and “Red”. Each are dramatically different and excellent in their own right. Juliette Binoche plays a composer/wife of composer who loses her husband and daughter in the beginning and is haunted by unfinished music. Triology is A DON’T MISS HIT! !
    “Red” (1994) The final film of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy and it is a masterpiece. We saw it second, but we recognize all the main characters of the trilogy in the climatic final scene. A DON’T MISS HIT!
    “Freedom Writers” (2007) were created by one courageous English teacher who refused to simply pass her ghetto kids through the school mill but to give them a change for the better along the way. The first half hour of movie is a tough slog for her and for the viewers, but something magical happens when she and her kids begin to connect. Look for Pat Carroll in a magnificent cameo performance.
    “Sunshine” (1999) Three hours of sunshine on the Sonnenschein family through five generations of life, love, war, and good things to drink in Hungary. We see them celebrate the new twentieth century and follow their lives through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.
    “Déjà vu” (2006) made us feel as if we were back home again instead of in Anaheim, California where we watched it in our Marriott Suite. A time slip mystery holds a promise of saving the lives of the 585 people who died in an explosion of the Canal Street ferry in New Orleans. Can they uncover the clues to averting the disaster in time to keep it from happening all over again in real-time?
    “Dark Blue World” (2001) starring Czech pilots who flew for the Brits after Hitler invaded their country. Learning English and flying and womanizing at the same time posed a challenge for these very young pilots. When two pilots fall for the same English woman who husband was lost at sea, the possibilities are endless, but as the movie wasn’t, you get to find out the dark and blue world of these brave young men and the women they loved. A DON'T MISS HIT.
    Casino Royale (2006) Learn about how Bond develops his cavalier attitude towards women, his passion for Aston-Martins, and his style of martini. A vesper is an evening prayer and the name of the love of Bond’s life. This reprise of Casino Royale may be the best of the Bond movies to date.
    “Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004) in which things get serious when Harry meets his Godfather Black, Hermione does a “Back to the Future” jitterbug, and Ron loses his long-lived rat. Great special effects include Death-Eaters, Whompin’ Willow, and Patronus. A Don’t Miss Hit!
    Skipped Parts (2000) Lydia is a single mother who with Sam, her 14-year-old son, are sent away from a southern mansion to Wyoming so her father could run for governor. A fun movie because Lydia makes all the wrong moves as a mother and still things turn out alright. In the end she and Sam make a family in Wyoming and cut the apron strings to the Guv. A DON'T MISS HIT! “The Odyssey” (1997) Armand Assante and a cast of class actors do a bang up job on portraying Homer’s classic tale.
    “A Simple Twist of Fate” (1994) Wonderful Steve Martin movie based on “Silas Marner” about a lonely miser whose his fortune in gold coins walks out with a thief, but a new fortune in the form of a golden-hair little toddler walks into his house and his heart. A DON’T MISS HIT!
    “Notes on a Scandal” (2006) A tour-de-force by Cate Blanchett as a new school teacher taken under the wing by Judi Dench, an older one. Reveals how dangerous a second set of books can be — they always get found.

    Misses (Avoid At All Costs): We attempted to watch these this month, but didn't make it all the way through on most of them. Awhile back when three AAAC horrors hit us in one night, I decided to add a sub-category to "Avoid at All Costs", namely, A DVD STOMPER. These are movies so bad, you don't want anyone else to get stuck watching them, so you want to stomp on the disks. That way, if everyone else who gets burnt by the movie does the same, soon no copies of the awful movie will be extant and the world will be better off.

    “Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (1982) DVD deserves to be cut into pieces by barber scissors. A DVD STOMPER

    Your call on these — your taste in movies may differ, but I liked them:

    “Superman Returns” (2006) on DVD. A fantasy of crystals creating new real estate while destroying the rest of the world. Who’s gonna populate Luthor’s fantasy island? His dumb henchmen? Talk about Idiocracy. Oh, and having a pool table on a cruise yacht? Watch it on DVD and at least you’ll have saved a first-run theater ticket in the bargain.
    “Elephant” (2003) There’s an elephant in this high school, but no one seems to notice it until blood is spilled and then it’s too late.
    “Dead Bang” (1989) A young Don Johnson as a down-and-out detective who tracks crazed killers into several other states before the final shootout. Flashes of his later Nash Bridges persona.
    “The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie” (2003) Gena Rowlands as Mrs. Ritchie to whom James Caan as principal sends a problem student to work for in her garden. The kid brings trouble with him, but is unable to overcome the dumb, but unconditional love of the batty old lady.
    “The Killing” (1956) Kubrick Black & White classic about a bunch of guys who plan to “make a killing” at the racetrack by robbing $2 million in receipts and in 1950s that was equal to 20 million bucks today. The plan goes off as planned as did the Hollywood censors’ dictated ending, but an entertaining look at the 1950s with its idioms and quirks.
    “Premonition” (2004) Japanese father loses his little daughter in a fiery car crash and is haunted by newspaper clippings which predict future local catastrophes. Will they ever stop? A haunting tale to the very end, which earns it a barely Your Call rating. Del wanted to stomp it, gals, so be forewarned.
    “Klute” (1971) A young Jane Fonda flirts with a taciturn Donald Sutherland in this mystery flick which takes us into the call-girl world of the big city. Very slow paced, but worth a watch.
    “City of Ghosts” (2003) Directed by Matt Dillon and starred in by him and James Caan. Long lugubrious looks at Cambodia’s seamy underside and scant glimpses of its beauty and beautiful people. A man’s search for his father unfolds in the course of an insurance scam. A barely Your Call.
    “Merry Wives of Windsor” (1982) ‘Tis a merry tale indeed, this comedy of fools, buffoons, philanders, cuckolds, and wives. This version was done on a replica of the original Globe theater upon which Shakespeare staged his plays. Had the flavor of an historic re-enactment. Starred Gloria Graham, the girl who couldn't say "No" in "Oklahoma".
    “Cousin Bette” (1998) playing the spinster in the plain brown wrapper who was everyone’s cousin and no one’s lover. Jessica Lange does marvelous job as the sinister spinster who dresses up well, but only to get revenge.


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    4. CAJUN STORY:
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    Thibodeaux had a big party at his house one day and got very drunk. He and Boudreaux had a contest to see who could drink the most Dixie Beers and Thibodeaux won the prize. He began celebrating winning 10 pounds of andouille sausage from Boudreaux. He was bragging to his friends how he could beat Boudreaux at anything. He told them, "Ah not only drank more beers dan him, but I'll bet he's drunker dan me!"

    After a while, Thibodeaux wanted to ask his wife, Clothile, where he could put Boudreaux's sausage, so he went looking for her. He couldn't find her in the yard or downstairs, so he went up the stairs and, looking in one of the bedrooms and he saw Clothile and Boudreaux (both as drunk) doing the wild thing.

    Thibodeaux runs back downstairs and yells to everybody, "Hey, y'all t'ink I'm drunk? Come upstairs and see Boudreaux. He's so drunk, he t'inks he's me."

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    5. RECIPE of the MONTH from Bobby Jeaux’s Kitchen:
    (click links to see photo of ingredients, preparation steps)
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    Quick Seafood Jambalaya

    What makes this recipe quick is that you begin with a Seafood Stuffed Sausage and precooked wild and long grain rice mixture.

    Ingredients:

    Seafood Sausage, 4 links (1 Package)
    Two yellow onions
    1 tbsp chopped Parsley
    1 tbsp Shrimp Powder
    1 tbsp of chopped garlic
    Bertolli’s Extra Lite Olive Oil
    Season-All Salt, Tony’s
    Malabar Black Pepper
    1 Cup of frozen wild rice and long grain rice
    , previously cooked. (See Recipe.)

    Microwave the frozen rice mixture in a covered bowl the first thing. Keep top on to hold moisture in the rice. Chop onions and sauté them with parsley and garlic in the olive oil till translucent. Slice sausages in ½ inch pieces. Add sausage to pan and cook on Medium Heat for at least ten minutes. Add rice into frying pan and stir. Cook another 10 minutes on Low Heat. Season to taste. Add a tad of water to keep from drying out, if necessary. Should look like this when done.

    Serve immediately. Makes excellent side dish for four or a main dish for two.

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    6. POETRY by BOBBY from Flowers of Shanidar:
    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

           Latest Information

    I am a person most of all unique
    So if it is the real me you seek,
    Don't fall into the comparison trap,
    Don't try to find me in your mental map.

    I may exist on many levels, true,
    But your maps represent not me, but you.
    The thought of me you have inside your head
    Is what you saw me do or someone said.

    Since you got your latest information
    I have lived and changed in God's creation.
    Confront me as you would a masterpiece
    In the process of completion by artiste.

    Each time you visit in his studio
    You scrutinize and update what you know.
    You may leave with latest information
    But's it's you that did the correlation.

    So look on me as you are wont to do
    And you will see in truth not me but you.


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    7. REVIEWS and ARTICLES for May:
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    And for my Good Readers, here’s the new reviews and articles for this month. The ARJ2 ones are new additions to the top of A Reader’s Journal, Volume 2, Chronological List, and the ART ones to A Reader’s Treasury.

    1.) ARJ2: Dancing with the I Am — Meditation on the Eighth Beatitude using St John's Gospel by Kristina Kaine

    8.4 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
    On the surface it seems strange that a person would be persecuted for righteousness. What this beatitude says is that people flee away from those who are balanced. So this would suggest that the way of the world is for people to be unbalanced. There are forces trying to influence the evolution of the world that prefer human beings to be unbalanced. For when we are balanced, we are able to determine what is right and what isn't. We have an innate sense of justice and morality.

    Morality is very misunderstood. It isn't about behaving according to the half-formed ideas of others; it is about love in its form as agape — the Christed love that calls from the depth of our being. When it stirs, it is a love that you can't hold back. It flows out in abundance into the hearts of others. St. John gives us a most interesting picture of morality in his Gospel story of the woman who had been caught in adultery. Shall she be stoned according to the Law of Moses? they ask Jesus.

    Kristina Kaine, a minister from Australia, leads us to understand how Jesus responds through the Eighth Beatitude by applying it to our own consciousness, and she gives us a powerful image, of how our body, soul, and spirit interact with each other.

    Where we are at present in the evolution of humankind, the death of our soul is a very real threat. We are in a real crisis. Demonic forces are distorting reality in us. We must learn to allow our spirit — our I AM — to work into our soul, and only then will we begin to dance with our I AM and have a chance to make the kingdom of heaven truly ours.

    Read this Guest Essay in which Kristina meditates on the Eighth Beatitude reminding us of the powerful story from the Gospel of John from which the words of Jesus ring across the ages to us, “Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.”

    http://www.doyletics.com/arj/dancingi.htm

    2.) ARJ2: Something Rotten — Thursday Next Novel No. 4 by Jason Fforde

    In the dramatis personae Fforde gives a listing of the all the characters accumulated over the previous three Thursday Next novels. Here’s a test for you. Read this description of SpecOps.

    [page xviii] SpecOps: Short for Special Operations, the governmental departments that deal with anything too rigorous for the ordinary police to handle. Everything from time travel to good taste.

    To find out how you did in this short test ask yourself if you chuckled or otherwise found anything remotely funny about the description of SpecOps. If you answered, “Yes” you are a candidate for reading the Thursday Next series of novels and if this one is your first, you should hie yourself over to visit Thursday inside “Jane Eyre” where she shows exceptional good taste by changing the lugubrious ending to the novel. If you answered, “No” because you found nothing funny about the description, you obviously think that ordinary police have good taste and therefore you are grossly unsuited to read this review and should stay away from all Thursday Next novels. Quickly skip to the next review below or enjoy looking at the photos in this Digest.

    Next, Thursday Next, that is, asks Hamlet if he’d like a coffee drink and his response mirrors what many folks feel when they are confronted with a huge array of coffee choices in a Starbucks or P.J.’s Coffeeshop. You ask a simple question and you get bombarded with an onslaught of words you never heard of before and you are expected to digest all these words and answer rationally within a second.

    [page 78] “What is there?”
           “Espresso, mocha, latte, white mocha, hot chocolate, decaf, recaf, nocaf, somecaf, extracaf, Goliachino(tm) . . . . what’s the matter?”
           Hamlet had started to tremble, a look of pain and hopelessness on his face as he stared wild-eyed at the huge choice laid out in front of him.
           “To espresso or to latte, that is the question,” he muttered, his free will evaporating rapidly. I had asked Hamlet for something he couldn’t easily supply: a decision. “Whether ‘tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain,” he continued in a rapid garble, “or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and opposing the endless choice, end one’s heartache — ”
           “Cousin Eddie!” I said sharply. “Cut it out!”
           “To froth, to sprinkle, perchance to drink, and in that — ”
    Maybe the “something rotten” in England is all the puns which Fforde teases us with. But he likes to have Ffun with the genre that we know and love as fiction, and when he applies himself, something spectacularly outre comes out, such as Thursday Next next begins to have sex with her newly un-eradicated husband, Landen.
    [page 279] I was back in time to help Landen scrub the food off Friday, read the boy a story and put him to bed. It wasn’t late, but we went to bed ourselves. Tonight there was no shyness or confusion, and we undressed quickly. He pushed me backwards onto the bed and with his fingertips —
           Wait!” I cried out.
           “What?”
           “I can’t concentrate with all those people!”
           Landen looked around the empty bedroom. “What people?”
           “Those people,” I repeated, waving a hand in the general direction of everywhere, “the ones reading us.”
           Landen stared at me and raised an eyebrow. I felt stupid, then relaxed and gave out a nervous giggle.
           “Sorry. I’ve been living inside fiction for too long; sometimes I get this weird feeling that you, me and everything else are just . . . well, characters in a book or something.”
           “Plainly, that is ridiculous.”
           “I know, I know. I’m sorry. Where were we?”
           “Just here.”
    And just here is where you have a decision to make. Let's hope you're better at making them than Hamlet. Look, if you’ve made it this far through the blurb, chances are that you’ll enjoy the full review (Click Below) and also likely that you will find yourself pulled — as on a rickshaw pulled by a neanderthal — through all of the four Thursday Next novels. I guarantee you that your trip will be one of delight and fun, every neanderthal step of the way.

    http://www.doyletics.com/arj/somerott.htm

    3.) ARJ2: Harmony of the Creative Word, GA#230 — The Human Being and the Elemental, Animal, Plant and Animal Kingdoms by Rudolf Steiner

    Here is an inspirational scheme of the world as a living flux of spirit seeking incorporation into matter, and matter itself seeking to be spiritualized; here is a world picture which has as its genesis and goal the idea of the truly human being, whose volution has been carried spiritually by the creativity of cosmic forces since the very beginning.

    -- Ann Druitt in her 2001 Introduction

    The human being is a microcosm of the cosmos in which we are embedded. The laws and processes found in the world around us are also found within us human beings. There is a harmony in what exists in us and what exists in the world around us. To tap into this knowledge we will have to delve into the secrets which lie in the world, and we will have to delve at the same time into the secrets which lie inside of us as living human beings. Steiner will be our guide into this world of laws and processes of the world and the human being.

    Part One: Man's Connection with the Cosmos, the Earth and the Animal World.

    If we look for the characteristics of the bird in the human being, we see the head; for the characteristics of the lion, we see the human chest. Lion-hearted means to have the breathing and circulation attuned in the human body as it is in the lion. If we look for the characteristics of the cow, however, we must look at the stomach, for entire cow seems to be designed for digestion. It not only has a long digestive tract, but it has multiple stomachs to extract nutrients from the plant stuffs it ingests while grazing. It devotes its life to digestion and anything which distracts it from digestion is unwelcome.

    What does any of this have to do with the human being? From the above considerations of the animal kingdom's bird, lion, and cow, Steiner has drawn out for us the three human processes of thinking, feeling, and willing and shown their relationship to the bodily processes occuring in the head, breathing and circulation, and the metabolism.

    Steiner said about the below process, "Reality of this kind cannot be grasped by mere thoughts, for to them reality is a matter of indifference. " Thoughts depend only on logic, but logic can be used to prove anything. Compare the logic used by the hyena and the wolf in this amazing metaphor, a fable of the African tribe, the Felatas.

    [page 18] Once upon a time a lion, a wolf and a hyena set out on a journey. They met an antelope. The antelope was torn to pieces by one of the animals. The three travelers were good friends, and now the question arose as to how they should divide the dismembered antelope between them. First the lion said to the hyena, "You divide it.
           The hyena said, "We'll divide the antelope into three equal parts — one for the lion, one for the wolf, and one for myself." Then the lion fell upon the hyena and killed it. That was the end of the hyena. The antelope still had to be shared out. So the lion said to the wolf, "Look here, my dear wolf, we'll have to share it out differently now. You divide it. How would you share it out?"
           Then the wolf said, "Yes, we must now apportion it differently; there can't be equal shares, like before. Since you have rid us of the hyena, you as the lion must of course have the first third; the second would have been yours in any case, as the hyena said, and the remaining third shall be yours because you are the wisest and bravest of all animals." That is how the wolf apportioned it.
           Then said the lion, "Who taught you to divide in this way?" To which the wolf replied, "The hyena taught me."

    "So the lion did not devour the wolf, but, according to the wolf's logic, took all three portions for himself," Steiner said of the fable. This is how it is with abstractions — especially logic — you can prove anything you want, but if you ignore the realities of life and the lessons it teaches you in the moment, your life could be in danger. "Use it right away" is an excellent motto for learning, and the wolf showed us the life-saving value of immediately applying his new-found learning from the hyena.

    America is infused with the one-sided nature of the eagle and too much hyena thinking, Europe with that of the lion, and the Orient with that of the cow. Steiner explains how any one of these one-sided approaches to civilization would end in a sad fashion. He gives us a modern version of the African fable above to illustrate his point, which is that we must oppose each of the one-sided approaches with a threefold approach of the human being. We must grasp "the call of the eagle from the heights, that of the lion from the surrounding world, that of the cow from the interior of the earth." (Page 37) Then we can learn the language of the stars from the cow, the language of the cycles of the Earth from the lion, and the language of the eagle which allows us to create a universe in our head.

    Part Two: The Inner Connection of World Phenomena and the Essential Nature of the World.

    The three lectures in Part Two of this four-part book deal with "The Inner Connection of World Phenomena and the Essential Nature of the World." In Lecture 4 we learn about the butterfly, which corresponds in its metamorphosis to the plant. Its seed does not enter the Earth, but hangs in the air. When its caterpillar appears, it is like the leaf appearing on a plant. When the caterpillar enters its chrysalis stage, it resembles the calyx of a plant from the flower later developed. The butterfly when it unfolds its wings does so as a flower unfolds its petals. Bright colors appear and flutter in the breeze with the flower as with the butterfly. "Just as the butterfly lays its egg, so does the flower develop within itself the new seed for the future. So you see, we look up towards the butterfly and understand it to be the plant raised up into the air." (Page 67)

    [page 83, 84] The bird is the flying thought. But the bat is the flying dream; the flying dream picture of the cosmos. So we can say: The earth is surrounded by fluttering butterflies — they are cosmic memory; by the kingdom of the birds — this is cosmic thinking; and by the bats — they are cosmic dream, cosmic dreaming. The flying dreams of the cosmos actually rush through space as bats. And as dreams love the twilight, so, too, does the cosmos love the twilight and send the bat through space. The enduring thoughts of memory, these we see embodied in the girdle of butterflies encircling the earth; thoughts of the moment we see in the birds encircling the earth; and dreams in the environment of the earth fly about embodied as bats. And you will surely feel, if you enter deeply enough into their form, how much affinity there is between looking at a bat in this way and having a dream! One simply cannot look at a bat without the thought arising: I must be dreaming; that is really something which should not be there, something which is as much outside the other creations of nature as dreams are outside ordinary physical reality.
           So we can say: The butterfly sends spiritualized substance into spirit land during its lifetime; the bird sends it out after its death. Now what does the bat do? During its lifetime the bat gives off spiritualized substance, especially that spiritualized substance which exists in the stretched membrane between its separate fingers. But it does not give this over to the cosmos; it sheds it into the atmosphere of the earth. Thereby beads of spirit, so to say, are continually produced in the atmosphere.

    Part Three: The Plant World and the Elemental Nature Spirits

    In Lectures 7, 8, and 9 Steiner gives a detailed description of the interactions of the plant world and the elemental beings of gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders (fire spirits). In fairy tales and movies we see gnomes and dwarves always associated with mountains, but we see them walking freely outside the rocky substrates in which these elemental being actually live. For gnomes, rocky strata are like a living room would be to use or a large stadium, a place in which to roam and play. Gnomes are root spirits and are responsible for pushing plants up out of the ground.

    Once the plant reaches out of the ground into the air, the water sprites or undines which are the elemental spirits of the watery element which work in the sphere of moisture-air while the gnomes only worked in the moisture-earth sphere. While the gnomes operate in the moisture-laden earth around the roots, the undines operate in the moisture-laden soil in the air directly above the surface of the soil. The undines act as chemists who foster the growth of the plant.

    The next elemental which fosters the life of the plants are called sylphs. These beings live in the elements of air and warmth and are particularly drawn to currents in the air, such as a flock of birds. In fact, a sylph flitting through air devoid of birds feels like lost. When a bird then arrives, it feels its ego through the generated by the bird's flight through the air. Through the sylphs birds become like the bearers of love.

    The sylph is the light-bearer to the plant world and the force of this light augments the chemical actions generated by the undines. One begins to see how the elemental forces are at work in the soil, water, air, and light around the plants and to feel as a gnome must about what botanists try to convince us are merely chemical reactions in the material world which create the lush plant life we live amongst.

    Now we are able to follow the process of reproduction of the plant aided by the elemental fire spirits.

    [page 119, 120] Up here (see drawing), after it has passed through the sphere of the sylphs, the plant enters the level of the elemental fire spirits. These inhabit the element of heat and light. When the warmth of the earth is at its height, or has reached a sufficient level, it is gathered up by the fire spirits. Just as the sylphs gather up the light, so do the fire spirits gather up the warmth and carry it into the flowers of the plant.
           Undines carry the action of chemical ether into the plants, sylphs the action of light ether into the flowers. And the pollen provides what may be called little airships that enable the fire spirits to carry warmth into the seed. Everywhere warmth is collected with the help of the stamens, and is carried by means of the pollen from the anthers to the seeds in the carpel. And what is formed here in the carpel in its entirety is the male element that comes from the cosmos. It is not a case of the carpel being female and the anthers of the stamens being male. In no way does fertilization occur in the flower, but only the preforming of the male seed. Fertilization occurs when the cosmic male seed, which fire spirits in the flower take from the warmth of the universe, is brought together with the female principle that has trickled down into the soil as an ideal element at an earlier stage, as I have described, and is resting there.

    For plants the earth is the mother, the heavens the father.

    In Lecture 9 Steiner gives this summary of the four elementals.

    [page 150, 151] Thus we see how these elemental beings are the intermediaries between the earth and the spirit-cosmos. We see the drama of the phosphorescent upsurge of the undines, which pass away in the sea of light and flame of the higher hierarchies as their sustenance; we see the upward flashing greenish-reddish lightning, which is breathed where the earth continually passes over into eternity, the eternal survival of the fire spirits, whose activity never ceases. For whereas, here on earth, birds tend to die at a particular time of year, the fire spirits make sure that what is to be seen of them pours out into the universe throughout the entire year. Thus the earth is as though cloaked in a mantle of fire. Seen from outside the earth appears fiery. But everything is brought about by beings who see the things of the earth quite differently from how man sees them. As already mentioned, man's experience of the earth is of a hard substance on which he stands and walks about. For the gnomes it is a transparent globe, a hollow body. For the undines water is something in which they perceive the phosphorizing process, which they can take into themselves as living experience. Sylphs see in the astrality of the air, which emanates from dying birds, something that makes them into more actively flashing lightning than they would otherwise be, for in itself the lightning of these sylphs is dull and bluish. And then again the disintegration of butterfly existence is something which continually envelops the earth as though with a shell of fire. Beholding this, it seems as though the earth were surrounded by a wonderful fiery painting; and there to one side, when one looks upwards from the earth, one beholds these lightning flashes, these phosphorescent and evanescent undines. All this shows us that here on earth the elemental nature spirits move and work actively, striving upwards and passing away in the fiery mantle of the earth. In reality, however, they do not pass away, but they find their eternal existence by passing over into beings of the higher hierarchies.

    The title of this book is "Harmony of the Creative Word" and the Gospel of John begins with these words, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." What is the meaning of Word and how was it in our beginning? Steiner sheds light on that in this next passage and calls our attention to the chorus of voices proclaiming the Word that we humans might miss in our current state of evolution of consciousness where the voices of the gnomes, undines, sylphs, and fire spirit spirits do reach our ears and we have been unconscious of their presence in the world around us, up until now. And, of course, among those countless beings are our new friends, introduced to us by Rudolf Steiner in these pages, the gnomes, undines, sylphs, and fire spirits. If we do not attend to the presence of their voices in this cosmic chorus, we lack understanding into our skeletal system, our metabolic system, our rhythmic system, our nerves and sensory system.

    [page 156, 157] When the gnome chorus sounds forth its 'Strive to awaken' this — translated into gnome language — is the force which is active in bringing about the human skeletal system, and the system of movement in general.
           When the undines utter 'Think in the spirit', they utter — translated into Undine — what pours itself as World Word into man in order to give form to the metabolic organs.
           When the sylphs, as they are breathed, allow their 'Live and create breathing existence' to stream downwards, there penetrates into man, moving and pulsating everywhere in him, the force which endows him with the organs of the rhythmical system.
           And if one attends to the fire-spirit sounds that resound and stream in from the fire mantle of the world with a voice of thunder, then one finds that this sounding manifests as image or reflection. It streams in from the fire mantle — this sounding force of the word. And the nerves and senses of every human being, every human head we might say, is a miniature image of what — translated into the language of fire spirits — rings out as: 'Receive in love the will-power of the gods'. This 'Receive in love the will-power of the gods' is what is active in the highest substances of the world. When man is going through his development in the life between death and a new birth, this transforms what he brought with him through the gate of death into what will later be the human organs of the nerves and senses.

    Part Four: The Secrets of the Human Organism

    This series of lectures given to people with the purpose to foster a deep study of the human being. For example, when we eat foods, they can be combinations of minerals (such as salt), plants, and animals. These foods must be completely altered before they can become part of our human body. Unless that transformation is complete, we will become ill from the food. Minerals must be given warmth by our body, plants must take on a transitional airy form, and everything animal must be made into a liquid form before the human body can digest it.

    Food is dissolved in the mouth by saliva, the pepsin in the stomach, secretions from the pancreas and then from the gall bladder, etc. Each of these processes must be linked in a chain because when the next process in the chain takes over it and checks the previous metabolic process, which if unchecked would make one ill. Note that metabolic processes started during the Moon period of evolution and the circulatory processes started during the earlier Sun period. The circulatory processes continually heal the body while the metabolic processes try to harm it. It's as if divine wisdom had created the doctor in advance of the illness.

    What happens in smoking (and using other tobacco products) is that when the substance nicotine enters the body, the heart rate is increased in relation to the breathing rate. This throws the cosmic balance of our breathing and respiration out of whack and eventually causes sickness. Steiner shows us how to calculate our respiration rate from the cosmos and this allows us to check our respiration rate against our circulatory (pulse) rate and discover for ourselves if it is out of balance.

    The processes of the circulatory and nervous systems must be kept in harmony and what runs in each must be kept separate from each other or problems will occur. Steiner summarizes neatly:

    [page 177] What runs in the nerve must remain in the nerve, what runs in the blood must remain in the blood. If what belongs in the blood enters into adjacent tissues, inflammation results. If what belongs to the nerve enters into adjacent tissues, all kinds of lesions develop that are commonly referred to as tumors.

    And yet the factors which can cause illnesses in the human body must be there as under certain circumstances, they are agents of healing. It is good to recall what Steiner says about "evil" — it is a good out of its time or place.

    And there is no better way to look into the world or into yourself than to have Rudolf Steiner as your guide and clairvoyant seeing-eye assistant. It should be clear that Steiner does not begin with abstractions about the world or the body. He doesn't peer into a telescope to learn about the cosmos, nor does he peer into a microscope (which he labels a "nulloscope") to learn about the human body. He makes observations about how the processes of the human body's systems interact together. Most importantly he avoids the deadly assumption that what happens in the human body is equivalent to what happens in a chemical laboratory. Human beings are not machines and deserve to be treated as individuals, not as diseases on a doctor's chart. "Here's the hernia patient. . . . etc." To recognize a person's name is to recognize their individuality and separate what is going on in them from what goes on in every other patient with the same disease.

    The human organism must exert enough force to bring the external mineral substance into warmth ether, and if it doesn't achieve this, the substance remains as a foreign inorganic matter and in deposited as such in the body. (Page 186) Gout and diabetes are too common examples of such a condition. In gout it is uric acid crystals which are deposited in the muscle tissue of the lower limbs and the result is extreme pain which persists until the conditions, usually overeating, which caused the crystal deposits, are reversed. In diabetes, it is sugar in mineralized form which is deposited.

    The Swedes say this about the weather, "There is no bad weather, only bad clothing." What is it about cold weather which causes one to catch a cold? If one is not wearing the appropriate clothing for the conditions one finds oneself in, then one is unable to adjust one's individual warmth quickly enough. Good clothing prevents cold by allowing one to do this.

    Steiner has on several other occasions mentioned that the human beings does not require the complex proteins in animal meat unless one has a very short intestinal tract such as the lion and other meat-eaters naturally have. In fact, eating a diet of meat easily leads to overeating of protein which can make one more susceptible to infections and other illnesses. Some people have short digestive tracts, but probably a minority of people. In any case, Steiner refuses to tell individuals what they should eat. He simply gives the facts of nutrition as he knows it and allows individuals to decide for themselves. This is a healthier approach, in my opinion, than most Western doctors take with their patients. For their part, they seem to be mostly quoting statistics as if one could accurately choose what's right for oneself from statistics. And if you don't choose to do what their statistics indicate you should, your doctor will likely get upset or even angry at you. Such an "I-know-what-you-should-do" attitude of Western doctors towards their patients does not serve either the doctors or their patients well. Steiner rarely uses the word should as an injunction for his listeners and readers to do some thing or another. He lays out the facts as he knows them, sometimes he is a minority of one, and you get to decide what is best to do in your life. In this case he uses should to refer to something he strives to avoid doing for himself in the spiritual science he founded and promoted. As you read this next passage, imagine yourself hearing such advice from your personal doctor, "I give you the information about diet and you decide what's best for you." It would be surprising and refreshing, would it not?

    We look at the human body today and see only half of its reality unless, in addition to flesh and bones, we perceive it at the level of mind and spirit. We would not know, for instance, that the bones can lead us into hatred and the blood into confusion. But the ancients could perceive such things directly by looking at a person.

    A popular song during the last quarter of the twentieth century was "These Boots Are Made for Walking" and it was about a woman who was tired of being put down and ignored by her man and who said in the song that she would reverse the order of things when, "One of these days, these boots are gonna walk all over you." The idea that the boots could think for themselves didn't seem strange in the context of the idiomatic speech of the song, but Steiner might say that it indicated a spiritual truth that our feet have an innate knowledge of our karma which ofttimes our head does not possess.

    We perceive but half of the actuality of the world around us if we perceive it only with our physical senses, and likewise, any biography written of one's life by someone who only perceives with physical senses will portray only half of one's existence — the part between life and death — and the other half -- the part between death and a new lifetime — will be ignored.

    People are always asking questions of this tone, "How did we get in the mess we're in?" They seem to love asking the question, but I wonder how many of them have ever tried really hard at finding the answer to this question. And of them how many would do the hard work to understand the answer if someone laid it out on the table for them as Steiner has done? See for yourself what he has to say about how our civilization came to be the way it is. It is not surprising that the two illnesses Steiner chose almost a hundred years ago to use as metaphors for our civilization's sorry shape should be the very same physical illnesses which plague so many people today.

    In 1914 he was speaking of the time immediately before the Great War which after the second great war in 1940 became called World War I. He was aware of the spiritual illnesses in the world, what he called the "utterly diseased tissues of civilization." He saw the parasitic tendencies of civilization in his time. If he were alive today, no doubt he would see even more parasitic tendencies in our time. Mistletoe is a parasite that cannot live in the earthen ground, but can only live off of living plant tissue. Much in our civilization is like mistletoe, but it lives off of the products of the human mind. "Change your thoughts and change your life" was the motto of Donald Curtis in his book entitled "Your Thoughts Can Change Your Life" written in the mid-twentieth century. What Steiner is telling us is that we can change our mind and change all of civilization!

    And now he gives us a quick summary of material he covered in the earlier lectures of this book dealing with the elementals, material which if he had not covered, we would not be able to grasp what he is telling us now. He is revealing how two poisons fill our culture. A parasitic culture which ignores elemental law and spirituality which is converted to poison when it enters people.

    "This is all well and good," you might be thinking, dear Reader, "but why doesn't Rudolf Steiner offer a solution to the problems he raises?" If that question or one like it arose in your mind, perhaps you are unaware that one of the medicines for what ails civilization that Steiner proposed was right thinking education. He actually created a form of education which bypasses the entire process of parasitic poisoning mentioned above. He gave a lecture on education to the workers at the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Factory in Stuttgart, Germany and after the lecture the workers and managers asked him to start a school for their children which operated on those principles he had expounded. That led to the founding of the Waldorf Schools which now operate around the globe, in greater and greater numbers every year. (In Australia they are known as Steiner Schools.)

    Steiner has given us the diagnosis of the illness that civilization is infected with and now he has also, like a good doctor of medicine, provided the therapy needed. It will come, not in some drug-de-jour as so many cures in the twenty-first century, but in a revolutionary way of teaching our precious children so that the parasitic poisons are eliminated by the very form of education they receive from the youngest age through to high school. Imagine a school system which encourages teacher to progress through each grade with their pupils, so that they come to know each child individually in a way no mass-produced educational system can ever encourage or deliver. This may sound fanciful and impractical to you if you have never been in a Waldorf School or never had a child in a Waldorf School or known a Waldorf School teacher, but I guarantee you that further study of Waldorf School will feel you with awe and wonder at the results they produce.

    If someone has had a problem with a modern Waldorf School, most likely that person was educated in a state or private school that did not use the Waldorf principles and they are filled with the very kind of parasitic and poisonous thinking that the Waldorf system strives to eliminate from the very children who will lead the next generation of our civilization. In them lie our best hope for curing the illnesses of civilization — of extirpating it, pulling it out at its roots — and those roots grow in the great majority of our children of today, up until now. It is up to each one of us to ensure that our children's education will be free of the parasitic and poisonous ways of thinking from now on.

    Hopefully this blurb will prompt you to read the entire review. (Click on the Link Below) As a blurb, it can only serve up an appetizer of what the full review contains. Taste these morsels and if you enjoy them, you may wish to sample the complete set of hors d'oeuvres awaiting you in the review.

    http://www.doyletics.com/arj/harmonyo.htm

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    I hear often from my Good Readers that they have bought books after reading my book reviews. Keep reading, folks! As I like to remind you, to obtain more information on what's in these books, buy and read the books — for less information, read the reviews.


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    8. COMMENTARY:
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    In this section I like to comment on events in the world, in my life, and in my readings which have come up during the month. These are things I might have shared with you in person, if we had had the opportunity to converse during the month. If we did, then you may recognize my words. If I say some things here which upset you, rest assured that you may skip over these for the very reason that I would likely have not brought up the subject to spoil our time together in person.

    1. Padre Filius Reads a Bumper Sticker this Month:

    Padre Filius, the cartoon character created by your intrepid editor and would-be cartoonist, will appear from time to time in this Section of the Digest to share us on some amusing or enlightening aspect of the world he observes during his peregrinations.

    This month the good Padre reads a Bumpersticker on a Resident who apparently returned home right after Katrina.


    2.Comments from Readers:
    • EMAIL from Prof. Dann in Plattsburgh, NY:
      Bobby,
      Thanks so much for pointing me toward your review of Paavo Pylkkänen's book. I loved the way you explained your method of creating book reviews at the outset, and that you admitted to being slightly challenged by the task of reviewing Pylkkänen's having done the same with Bohm's work. The review helped me understand my own intellectual 'blind spot' regarding physics: I loved high school physics, when we were playing with wave tanks and inclined planes, but other than taking on teaching that 8th grade physics block a few years back, I don't think I've done any further study regarding physics. Though I am constantly trying to move my history students from the sensible to the supersensible, when it comes to physics, I find myself like a child clinging to his mother's apron strings, content to stick just with a kind of Newtonian simplicity. Yesterday I taught the Saturn gesture and sound to my classes, before a discussion of Kaspar Hauser's prodigious memory capacity, so your discussion of memory vis à vis implicate/explicate order was of great interest. I wanted to hear you say more about this. Best,
      Kevin
    • EMAIL from Steve in New Orleans:
      Bobby,
      Just wanted to say thanks you for sharing your pictures with me. Even though I sit by a window, they added additional rays of light to my day.
      You & Del are looking good.
      Thanks again, Steve
    • EMAIL from another Matherne
      Hi Bobby!
      My niece and I were reading your web site and could not help but notice the name "Matherne." My name is Laura Matherne Ditta and I am from St. Charles Parish in Louisiana. I would love to know — where are YOU from? I am enjoying your site!
      Sincerely,
      Another Matherne
    • EMAIL from a childhood friend. Dale wasn't rich, but was only child of a single mom who bought him every new toy which came around, it seemed to us. He shared his toys with us and we shared our four brothers with him. Dale writes:
      I decided to Google my name today for the hell of it, an low and behold I came across one of your reviews stating, “I remember Dale Boudreaux, the rich kid across from 566 Avenue F…”. Damn I never new I was rich; the family didn’t think so anyway. Reading that brought back old memories.

      Where are you located? I have been living in Lafayette, LA since 1960. Came up here to attend USL and decided to stay after graduation. I am presently enjoying that stage in life known as a semi-retired CPA. Love to hear back from you.
      Dale

    3. Louisiana's Wild Strawberries While taking a photo of one of the prettier wild strawberries growing in our North Portico Garden at Timberlane, I thought back to my childhood when we were warned by our mother not to eat them. And I wondered if these were what other people called wild strawberries. A quick Google search led me to resolve this question once and or all. See below from Southern Manners:

    Mock strawberry, Indian strawberry [from the country of India] (Slide 7, Duchesnea indica (Andr.) Focke; see also several synonyms) This Asian weed has a southeastern range that extends down into north Florida, where the real strawberry (Fragaria spp.) is rare or absent. Though edible, the mock strawberry is bland and will be a certain disappointment to one who expects the semi-sweet tart flavor of a strawberry. (This narrative relied on Bell C.R & B.J. Tarylor (1982) Florida Wild Flowers and Roadside Plants. Laurel Hill Press, Chapel Hill and several www sites.)
    So now I discovered another bit of flawed but caring advice from my mother who wanted us to be safe and avoid any plant we weren't completely sure about. Especially any red berries of any kind. I will still call these "wild strawberries" as they grow wild around here and produce fruit long after local strawberry farms have past their season (February through March).

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    9. CLOSING NOTES:
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    Thanks to all of you Good Readers for providing the Chemistry which has made this site a Glowing Success. — Especially those of you who have graciously allowed us to reprint your emails and show photos of you and by you on this website — you're looking good! As of June 1, 2019, it enters its 20th year of publication. The DIGESTWORLD Issues and the rest of the doyletics website pages have received over 21.6 MILLION VISITORS ! ! !

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