Saturday, February 14, 2004
TOO FAST!
A much used comeback line in the days of the old style Minstrel Show used to be - in explaining one's lassitude - to proclaim: “The faster I go ahead, the behinder I get!”
I feel the same way when I meet with all the new knowledge we are supposed to absorb. There are entire armies of technical snoopers out there discovering things we should have thought about a hundred years ago.
With every announcement of a discovery they have just made ...proclamations which are supposed to keep me up with our times, I tend to fall back another notch or so into the century long gone.
For instance, take this matter of “matter”.
I have been completely comfortable with the idea that there were three types of matter. That's what we were taught in the lower grades at school. There were “Solids”. Right? Then, we had another form called “Liquids”, as I recall, and a third type of matter - entirely different from the other two - which we were to call “Gases.” All that, I grasped and understood. “No sweat”, we say which shows how natural and effortless the acquisition of knowledge is supposed to be.
Now, however, my fact-finding friends at NASA tell we there are “at least” - as they put it – six forms of matter. One was added sometime ago, but no one told me about it being so different. The other two are ones I am going to be working on for some time. It does not help one little bit when NASA scribblers start their sentence to me with the words: “Most second graders know...” But, I will go along with their thinking that insists that the number four form of matter is that which we call “plasma.” They cite the sun as being a good example. It ls not a solid, it's not a liquid and it's not a gas even though it may seem to be likeanyhor allof them at times. Plasma is, technically, that state which happens when the atoms have their ions and elections are ripped apart. NASA also says, quite confidently, that the rest of the universe is also made of the same stuff.
The fifth an sixth types of matter are still in the alphabet stage of “discovery”. The one is called BEC or the Bose-Einstein condensate. It was discovered in 1995 and it appears only when you freeze particles called “bosoms” to ultra-low temperatures.
The very latest matter is called “fermionic condensates”. I you just happen to “freeze half a million atoms of potassium-40 atoms to less than a millionth of a degree of absolute zero.” you mayget some of it.
I don't think your local lumber yard is going to be getting in sizable stocks of any of these for some time, so be content with the old threesome for a little while lonmger - maybe like a century, or so. We can all think “plasma”now-and-then to show we are not completely out-of- date.
A.L.M. February 14 , 2004 [c511wds]
Thursday, February 12, 2004
TRUST
As I listen to people telling of affairs in their communities - small, for the most part, I get the feeling that the quality of “trust” is not as strong as it once seems to have been in public affairs.
Cases of graft, embezzlement and cheating in various forms, both old and new, are coming to light at a somewhat faster rate, it seems. Some of the most unlikely persons are suddenly thrust into the limelight as “criminals”- often people we would not, normally, think of as being even potential wrongdoers; people we have known and respected, are being found wanting.
Some restrictive business practices seem to have mellowed over the years, as well, and are becoming visible once more. Activities which used to be considered improper is now allowed to proliferate and new twists on old scams are given a rerun. One current misuse seems to me to be the growing number of so small-called “stores” selling money. The practice seems to be in direct contrast to the intent of our usury regulations and laws.. The growing number of such transitory “stores” which deal in translating personal checks into ready cash, has become somewhat of a shameful epidemic of evil possibly brought about by the growth “rent to own” arrangement stores offering furniture and appliances in particular. Both are based on maximum interest rates obtainable. I realize they have been a blessing to some real estate people concerned with filling some vacant store fronts in dying shopping centers, but they, in their gaudily locations, are designed to lure unthinking individuals into financial chaos. People who feel they are in dire need of cash-in-hand, write checks which those stores hold against the writer's future earnings. Client. Eager and impulsive, often do not realize the interest rate being charged for doing this service on their behalf.
Cash money appears. seemingly out of nowhere in particular, and worries and cares go out the window for a time. Pay up time will come later. But inevitably so. This all seems wrong to me. Such a method, open to trickery and double-dealing, done even at the highest interest rates, can quickly become criminal in my book.
Dishonesty grows in election years, too. I looked back though these pages for these pieces and four years ago scores of the insulting remarks made then, are now being repeated. They were found to be without factual foundation then, but they are being run all over again against our President.. The same vilification of others - among them both “politicians”and “statesmen”- are being rehashed. The permissive attitude prevails as long as an act appears to be to one without backlash qualities. The false statement made or suggested by candidates during the hectic weeks of permissiveness will come back to haunt them again once having been used.
Examine you own feelings today.
Whom do you truly trust?
Your Doctor, maybe? Your Surgeon, perhaps? Who else might you list? How much understanding is there between husbands and wives? Brothers and Sisters? What trust do you place in the guidance of your religious leaders and the authority from whom they have their place in your life?
Whom do you trust and obey? Do you totally trust anyone?
A.L.M. February 11, 2004 [c540wds]
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
YOU DON'T SAY!
We all make judgments every day.
How well qualified we are to do so, is a matter for serious questioning. The urge to do so is one of today’s greatest temptations, especially those of us who, by circumstances, appear to be on the edge of becoming seriously informed on a given subject up for judgmental comment. Far too often we are “students of...” rather than “spokesperson for...” the subjects on which we tend to pontificate.
` It has been said that no one person can know everything, and that is more and more factual today than ever before as our computerized culture continues to generate new information at double the given rate at any set time. We have, long ago, done all we could to keep our educational systems apart from reality. Only now, do we see some signs that segments of our system are becoming aware of the fact that no man or woman be a seen as a sort of container to be stuffed with all that we seem to know for regurgitation at a future time of need.
This is not and an impersonal thing. either. I accuse myself of doing just this sort of thing quite often. I am aware of this and see it as a weakness I must seek to change. I have cringed inwardly upon finding myself and my words being quoted as “authority” elsewhere on the Internet.
Think of it. What is your place in this world of information? I always try to leave a doorway for anyone who thinks otherwise to speak up. They rarely do so.
There is a little-used box on the lead page of each of these essays making it possible for anyone who disagrees to reply, question, comment or cuss-out if that is their mood at the moment.
Among the judgments I have been led to accept accept as being more and more common now. has been the glaringly accurate fact that so many seem to depend on others to determine what they believe. There was a day when newspapers, editors and other writers, determined what residents of their area “believed” perhaps, then radio and a magazine-oriented phase had some influence for a while, before TV moved in and took over the major power concerning what people ought to do with their lives
That, to me, indicates where we stand today -each of us being called upon to make a judgment concerning to what degree TV should determine what we do with our lives. Many of us make or re-make such a choice every day.
Where, I ask, is such a path leading us?
A.L.M. February 10, 2004 [c451wds]
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
OLD CAL
His name was really “Calvin. Everybody in town called him “Cal” or “Old Cal”, if you were younger than he. He was a thin dark man and a bit on the tall side it seemed to me when was small kid. His father named him after John Calvin, whom be believed started the Presbyterian church pretty much single-handedly.
As a kid I always remember old Cal's eyes. He seemed to be about ready to start crying most of the time. His eyes looked funny, sorta watery, uncertain look. Adults never told youngsters that we had “drug addicts” among us. They used a stronger term. There were “drug fiends”out there - never mere faddists. We young-younguns never thought of Cal as being .well, certainly not a-“fiend”or monster of some kind. He was always nice to us and our parents had him to do odd jobs for them around the place often.
Cal earned his living as a janitor. In the winter he fired furnaces.. He fired the furance in the apartment house in which we lived as well as our neighbors. Cal, himself, lived in a room or two in the unfinished basement of the apartment building. This drug thing was an oddity. We expected that he used “dope” like the Chinese people did in the opium dens and all that sort off thing, or maybe just whiskey. It came as something of a surprise, as well as a disappointment, when we found Cal drank a medication we had all used when we had a bad toothache and that sort of painful trouble. Paregoric. We were left to wonder about such a thing. He sipped paregoric solutions.. He was said to have acquired doctor's superscriptions which allowed him to buy the stuff. He could go from drug counter to drug counter to get a small bottle at each. He left home early every other morning and we didn't see him again until he came home that evening happier than when he left. It was a set o routine every other day with only occasional changes.
We came to think of Cal as being the village drunk, I suppose, though he never caused any trouble was never mean or disruptive. . We found, him to be well known where there was a drugstore.
I remember one Sunday morning/The choir was singing: “Shall We Gather At The River?” When we stopped, everyone was surprised to hear Cal adding a fifth verse. One of the church deacons jumped up and ran downstairs were he found Cal seated on some bags of ashes, a-singing his heart out. The singing stopped and the pastor got on with his the sermon.
Cal did a lot of “walkin' "' out” at night. We were always concerned about that acquired habit. Sooner or later he would get hit by a passing truck or car. It happened “sooner” rather than “later”./ A heavy, expensive car skidded on the wet highway and half overturned on him in the grass. Cal was well off the state's right of way.
Now, when people we talk about God working his miracles n mysterious ways, we know we certainly saw it happen with Old Cal. The man who was driving the car which hit Cal saw it that way, too. We heard he set up an insurance annuity of some sort which provided Cal with an income for the rest of his life.
How is that for a strange piece of luck? Of all the people who might have hit old Cal on that rainy roadside, he was struck by a rich, compassionate man. I remember thinking at the time, that maybe an old girl friend of Cal's might turn up to comfort him in his old age/”for as long as they both might live” It didn't work out like that, of course. That would have been asking too much. One miracle was enough.
A.L.M.. February 10, 2004 [c664
wds]
Monday, February 09, 2004
WORST CASE SENARIO
Many people like to look constantly at the bright side of living and, while I can see the merit of such a path, I also feel, rather strongly, that we must, from time-to-time, take an honest, forthright look at potential dangers we may have to face.
Now, during this election time of the year 2004 is such a moment. It may well be a time of radical change.
I cannot think of a time when we have been in such a state as we now seem to be and people are reacting in some odd ways to a circumstances and conditions. We are currently involved in a war that, which, while it is real and makes demands upon us all, does not conform to what a war generally should be in many people's views. Support for the war against Terrorism wavers .It has been dangerously politicized and re-named as “Bush's War” used as an election ploy. This is dangerous enough, but those who are doing so out of warped political party loyalty are admitting they do not realize that this war is far more than a misunderstanding with one small nation called Iraq. It is a time for all of us to see that this is a continuing phase in the old conflict between major religious faiths and that the more we deny that it is, the worse it becomes.
I sincerely hope that it may not work out this way ,but, if the current mood persists and narrow party politics continue to be as flexible and as unprincipled as they seem to be in many areas, we face a time when an immense army of “peace” persons might co-agulate as a major force in our political life. A Democratic Party candidate, willing to wave the bloody shirt throughout the land, could easily gather an overwhelming majority from existing party followers, holdovers, and Republicans and existing peace party persons and others who have lost faith in George Bush for whatever reason. It would take little effort at all for such a candidate, holding high a gaudy peace banner, to show senior citizen how their Medicare funds are being wasted on armaments; to show young people how their future Social Security funds are being drained away, how children, single mothers and widows are being starved to death by underfunded welfare programs.
Such a national “peace” movement may seem unlikely to many. I am not saying it even “may” happen, but I am pointing out that the possibility is there, and that we must avoid such a tragic pitfall. The ultimate consequence of such a thing are beyond our comprehension.
A.L.M. February 8, 2004 [c459wds]
Sunday, February 08, 2004
ARTIST OR HACK?
I wonder how and why it is that we continue to ignore, one of the finest national artists our nation has ever produced?
His name is J, L.G. Ferris and, if just the sight of that name brings immediate recognition to you as that of one of the truly outstanding artistic talents of our national history - – you may to the head of the class.
You will find, however, that you have been sent to a lonely place. Very few Americans know - or care to know, it seems - who Ferris was ; much less what his work should mean to all of us.
This artist, who died in 1930, produced a series of seventy large oil paintings of outstanding events in American history.
Much of the the information one can find about Ferris today is confused and middled. His father wanted his son to become an artist and even gave him the name of Gene Leon Gerome - hence the “J .L.G”.tag , who was a famed French painter of the mid-1800's. The elder Ferris gave his son good training here with reputable teachers, and took him to Algeria ,Spain and France with him to study art and to paint. Ferris actually me this famous namesake who helped him with his plans.
In seeking reasons why the Ferris name was espenged almost entirely from art encyclopaedia's listings in the United States. He is not recorded for having had any personality flaws would have made him for association with the art community of the time.. Around l900, Ferris selected seventy American historical events and set about painting of each of them. His critics accuse him of “lack of continuity”. He did not do the paintings in chronological order. He roamed among the seventy themes and chose to work on the ones which moved him to a confident worsk on that he had enouigh detail in mind to do a good job.,and only when he felt he had sufficient information to make them authentic representations in every detail. I also find rather snide references to him as being “an illustrator” rather than a “ true” artist. This accusation was true in a sense, but not a demerit at all because noteworthy magazines such as “The Literary Digest” featured his works as front-cover art.. There is also some mention of “copyright difficulties” related to the large number of print made for his works. I have an idea there might be other reasons why Ferris was shunned by the art world of his day and I intend to find out what they may have been.
He was born in 1863, in Philadelphia. He willed his paintings to his wife and she, in turn, did so to the City of Philadelphia. I find that many of the seventy series have been on display at the Independence Hall Museum Hall Museum and I find references to the Library of Congress..You may well have some of his works:::The Rail Splitter” (Abe Lincoln in Illinois), “:the Writing of the Declaration of Independence”,: Liberty Bell"”, “Virginia Dare”, “Blacksmith”: and others., but he has been denied his proper place in our cultural history.. His paintings, in book form, would be the basis for an impressive telling of our national heritage and of America's proper place in world affairs.. I intend to find out more about J. L.G. Ferris, Won't you join me?
A.L.M. February 8, 2004 [c575wds]
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