We know from talking to many of you that this is your "don't miss" place in the Digest, so we endeavor to make it fun and informative for you every month.
We have made many changes to our website this past month, some of which may not be obvious, so we’d like to call them to your attention. The biggest project was to give “A Reader’s Journal, Volume 2” a Chapter organized Table of Contents of its own, similar to what Volume 1 and “A Reader’s Treasury” has. You can inspect the new webpage by Clicking Here. And as you click on the reviews, you’ll notice that each review has been cleaned up, new photo of yours truly, an image of the book cover, and an author’s photo in the upper left corner if one was available. I hope these changes will add to your enjoyment of the reviews.
Look for the spires of the St. Louis Cathedral with the Full Moon over its right side. We tried to include some of our favorite photos of New Orleans on this webpage. If the page loads too slow for you, it’s because it has a lot of colorful images. Don’t miss the photo at the bottom of the Matherne’s Reviews Superstore.
You can still access the Chronological List for ARJ2 as before. This page is organized with the newest reviews appearing at the top of the list and has very few images, so it will load faster if you’re in a hurry to find a recent review.
If you are in a hurry, there’s another way to go directly to a review on my webpages, and that is to do a Google search by putting in for the search terms Matherne and a word or two from the desired book’s title. For example, I put in these two words: [Matherne Closing] and got my review of “The Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom as the fourth item from the top of the list. Google is so fast and convenient that I often use it to find a review of my books rather than scan through several webpages to find them.
On the new ARJ2 page, you’ll find some words of praise from one of our Honored Readers this month, Sandy Sellers of Canada. Thanks, Sandy, and keep reading.
Two reviews that I added material to this month. The first was as a result of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. The Nobel physicist Richard Feynman did his famous o-ring demonstration of the cause of the Challenger disaster and wrote about it in his book, “What Do You Care What Other People Think?” A newspaper reporter wrote saying a “similar panel” would be needed for the Columbia accident. Only problem is that there was only one Richard Feynman.
The second review was of “The Star Café.” I enjoyed reading it so much that when I commented about that to Del, it resulted in a new Violet-n-Joey cartoon for this month called “Readin’ & Writin’” at: http://www.doyletics.com/02100397.gif At the bottom of the review I have a link to “The Art of Fiction” by David Lodge. Here’s the first paragraph of that review in which I describe how Lodge’s book influenced my writing of “The Star Café” review:
After reading this collection of Lodge's articles about fiction, my writing can no longer be the same. I offer as evidence the review of The Star Café that I just finished moments ago. In the short review I write about my reactions to a word she uses, I criticize my own use of two phrases, "But I digress" and "during the last century" and then go on to use them repeatedly, neither of which I might have felt comfortable with doing, had I not read Lodge's cogent descriptions of the writing styles of the authors he covers in his essays. In writing the review of Capronegro's book, I used her style of writing to end the review. "Extraordinary at times: the coffee at The Star Café." Now I'm using Lodge process for talking about writing styles, so far as I am able to mimic him. Imitation is rightly understood the sincerest form of flattery because humans when giving speech to flattery always seem to fall short of sincerity. Better left unsaid: flattery — as Capronegro might say.
Also I noted in my review of “The Star Café”, that I had created an “e-adverb.” That is, an adverb beginning with an “e” representing “electronic” like e-mail is an “e-noun.” The e-adverb is “e-mediatelytm” — which I e-mediatelytm trademarked, as it refers to using the electronic media as a way to mediate the removal of unwanted doyles immediately , which more and more folks are doing every day at the www.doyletics.com website. You’ll notice our new brightly colored new e-adverb showing up at various places on the website.
Two other popular webpages that were reworked this month: Violet-n-Joey Cartoon Page [updated to include all the latest cartoons from recent Digests] and Matherne’s Rules. You can now find an explanation for each Matherne Rule by clicking on its number. These will be expanded as I encounter illustrative demonstrations of the rules, but there is now at least a short explanation of the meaning of each rule.
By now some of you are wondering what did Bobby and Del do this month besides work during February, so here goes: Trip to Baton Rouge for Kristen’s baby shower. God willing, she and John will be having our 17th grandchild in March.
Del had an upsetting dream in which it was raining frogs in a fierce downpour. We talked about it and came up with this reframe of the dream as “reigning potential” since each frog if kissed might become a prince and have the potential to reign as a king someday. The idea was enough to dispel her upset feeling. Rightly understood, psychotherapy is a process of breaking spells. Spells of limitation that have held one in thrall, up until now.
This was a cold month for us and we kept a fire going in the hearth almost every day, which made for great reading, sitting in front the warm fire, and accounts for the six book reviews for this month.
We had one spate of bad weather, thunderstorms and rain, which would usually get me nervous about continuing to work with the possibility of a power glitch shutting me down, but not this time. I had just installed a new UPS, uninterruptible power supply, with a battery backup to allow me to survive up to 15 minutes of power outage and gracefully shutdown before the battery gives out. This was a great addition to my Win XP system which works so well that I can open as many different tasks as I require for web design and writing projects and leave them open for a week if I need that long to complete some project. That’s why I added the UPS system — prior to XP and 1 Gigabyte RAM, I had to shutdown the PC every night to keep the system from getting clogged and requiring a reboot. Now the PC stays powered on all the time, hibernates at night, and keeps track via the USB to the UPS if a power glitch occurs.
We went to high school play at Destrehan High School with our friends Jim and Gail. The play was about a star-crossed wedding involving the marriage of the Hahnville family to the Destrahan family, which surnames are the names of the two high schools of St. Charles separated by the Mississippi River. As the wedding progressed, the play unintentionally revealed why teenagers shouldn’t get married. The minister chewed the scenery severely, mocking the sanctity of the marriage ceremony in the process. While her histrionics made for a spirited presentation, I would have preferred had she kept the spirit sans the dispiriting effects of mocking the sacred vows that the two were taking. The wedding was complete with a reception with real food: roast beef, fried fish, fettucine, and wedding cake and chocolate groom’s cake. It was dinner and a play rolled into one piece. Reality programming live. The audience was considered as wedding guests, so we were all involved in the play which went on all around us, especially during the reception when members of the two wedding families came to sit down next to us and complain about the other family. Did I enjoy the play? A little. Would I go to another one? As my first Matherne’s Rule goes, “Once in a row is enough.”
Unfortunately our daughter’s father-in-law died this month after repeated illnesses and operations. Captain Brownie Gralapp was much beloved by the many people that he knew and helped. He will be surely missed by all.
Del and I went to Genghis Khan’s Restaurant for Valentine’s Day and were regaled by the operatic voices of the waiters and waitresses who regularly sing for the patrons of the restaurant between serving tables.
The next day we went to a carnival ball put on by the Krewe of Caesar. We’ve only been a couple of times and 23 years earlier we had gone as guests of Jim Friedman, a young accountant at the CPA firm where I was an EDP consultant. When we arrived at the Ball, we discovered that Jim was the Emperor Caesar for 2003. 
I think he would agree with Matherne's Rule #33: “The first 23 years are the hardest.” Was great to see him again. Also we knew one of the maids, and several other couples that were at our tables. With Bobby Cure and the Summertime Blues playing and a great full course sitdown meal served by the Hilton, we had a ball. Danced off both our shoes. I even encountered a new phrase, a “Dessert Show,” which is what they called the Baked Alaska presentation after dinner. Del and I were dancing when a huge kettledrum was rolled past us on the dance floor. We nearly got drunk on the fumes wafting out of the drum, about 2 gallons of cognac. They wheeled this to edge of the dance floor where the chef set it afire and with the fire leaping 3 feet in the air and a jungle beat by the band, the waiters carried the Baked Alaska over their heads to the Witch Doctor at the flaming drum for him to bless their tray of dessert with a douse of flaming cognac which they carried to their tables to be served. One lady from North Carolina said she had never seen anything like that and I replied, “The last time we did anything ordinary in Louisiana was when we became a state.” 
The next day Del went to another baby shower for Becky, our niece-in-law (as Calvin would call her), and that night we went to a potluck supper in River Ridge for the Central Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America. I brought one of my crawfish leeks tarts that had been waiting in our freezer for a good occasion. Was great meeting folks from Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa whose names I had only seen on paper before.
A friend of mine, John E. Wade II, has just published his book of essays called “Deep in My Heart.” Congratulations, John!
As the month of February closes out with the last week of pre-Mardi Gras events, we are going to a Carnival Ball in a grand old mansion on St. Charles Avenue after the fashion of Carnival Balls of the 19th Century. Great food, great pageantry, and great music by the New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra. As Boudreaux would say, “It don’ get no bettah dan dis, Sha!”
On the first day of March we went to the christening of Monique and Jason’s new baby, Taylor Ann at St. Charles Borremeo Catholic Church in Destrehan and we didn’t to wait a whole month to slip in this note about our brother Paul’s new grandbaby. At the christening I talked with Mr. and Mrs. Paul Backes, whose daughter Angie had done an interview with Paul and wrote up the oral history on the website I encountered the previous day.
Look for “My Interview with Mr. Paul Matherne” by Angela Backes on page 22.
You’ll need an Adobe reader and to allow time for about a half meg download to read it.
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The best source at the best price is to order your copies on-line is from the publisher Random House/Xlibris's website above.
in suspended animation
Evolution and the New Gnosis
Man in the Past, Present and Future and Sun-Initiation and Moon Science of Druid Priest 
The Work of the Angels in Man's Astral Body 
Ideas and the Novel 
