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Saturday, September 18, 2004
WHO DONE IT?
This season's more than plentiful supply of serious hurricanes and associated tornadoes along the southeast coast of the United States make us aware of the fact that climatic changes are always afoot and that any quirk in their usual patterns may be a minor part of a major, much more profound change in climate which could re mold our civilization radically. We are all a part of such changes, know it or not.
I find it difficult to believe that a scant five thousands year ago, dependng on who's clocks and calenders we use, the area in which I now live was covered with layers of ice. If pale-Indian men lived in this area at all, they would have had a rugged time of it. For foods they would have hunted the mammoth, the bison, a giant sloth and tapir. Judging by what tools and weapons men of that time must have been a forced vegetarian. Tradition, however, holds that early man did indeed “hunt”for food. He was able to kill large animals by his skill and craftiness; by being able to deceive animals and to lure them into traps or to stampede herds of them over the edge of high cliffs and the, to butcher to his liking those which were killed in the fall. The mammoth, the bison must have been favorites. This is commonly described method of hunting in primitive times. The giant sloth was much larger than the creature found today. It was not carnivorous, even docile and easily killed and could, in a fully grown example, yield about eighteen hundred pounds of edible meat. That may explain, in part, why both the giant sloth and the tapir seemed to have died out. Were they killed out by man in his search for sustenance?
As the climate warmed, the ice coverings melted away and ,in due time, the coast lands were modified to new lines. A glance at the underseas edge of our continent will how you a “shelf” all along the seaboard which edged the seas in former times.. That changed when the continental ice coverings melted and we should remember today that we still have The Arctic and the entire continent of Antarctica, plus Greenland, and numerous mountain crests all around the world yet to melt. That water, augmented by violently increased amounts of rainfall in revitalized area could increase the physical size of our seas and oceans so that a new, inland shoreline would be developed. We could, you see, here in Virginia replace Norfolk with Richmond, or, with additional water the coastline may recede to quite near the Blue Ridge Mountains is some areas.
Unlikely? True, but possible. It even become probable in the mind of many when we experience such destructive power of wind and water has been evident in the storms which have hit the eastern coast in recent weeks.
Another hurricane is on the way this morning, forming even now in the South Atlantic and headed for the recently hard-hit areas once again. When it hits, and if you are in it, think about all of this for a moment. Are you a small part of something really big?
Each storm is a harsh reminder of our situation. Our tenure is temporary and short.
A.L.M. September 15. 2004 [c555wds]
Friday, September 17, 2004
NEW AND USEFUL?
Isn't it interesting how Nature releases new bits and pieces of information which we might be of use to us once we realize how they fit into the overall scheme of existing things? Over the centuries Man has adapted various plants, minerals, and substances of various kinds to make his life more pleasant, safer or longer.
Some such items, have come from the most unlikely places, too. Take one of the latest such finds have heard about, are found in, of all places, tiny clumps of strange microbes that have the remarkable ability to renew themselves completely in a matter of minutes after their DNA has been destroyed by every standard known to be harmful – intense, continued radiation, extreme dryness for protracted periods, and even exposure to the vacuum of space. These tiny microbes live although saturated by the intensely salty water of the Dead Sea - ten times as salty as other sea waters - seeping into their structures and breaking the body apart. Just how these tiny microbes - only five microns in length - develop the power to restore their shattered DNA structure is unknown, of course. They can restore their DNA pattern which has been broken, destroyed, mutated and accomplish that impossible feted in a matter of a few minutes.
Very few people, realizing that can be done, can avoid see in how important such a power could to mankind when disease takes control of the human body and, when human DNA structures are broke or endangered wouldn't it be wise to have something of that nature in our little bag of trick used to confute the ravages of disease among us.
The microbe has a suitable name . It is called “halo” with tech-sounding “bacterium”.Major work is being done to find the uses of this piece of knowledge at the University of Maryland where a research group is active in seeking out detailed uses of the Halo microbes abilities and the force which they provide for us to restore DNA. It is even being considered that, since Mars seems to have once had salty pools, it might also have halomicrobes in such areas to this day. Now that the initial discovery has been made and how it is to be used. True enough the experimental labs at our leading universities an other such establishments have taken on the battle for now, but you are a potential worker in the same field by setting forth forth your ideas are just as important as those of the experts.
Think about it. If DNA structures, when damaged, could be repaired, how would that influence the world. The tool with which we might work are found in plants and animals and plants and this discovery is and important one and it comes as a direct challenge to scientists and microbiologists, in particular - those of the present, and even more so, of the future. The humble halo microbe, found - as far as we know - only in the Dead Sea - a most inhospitable environment - offers a new chance for chance for a young, fearlessly alert, aggressive and venture-minded young man or woman to best the evils of disease and to bring to reality a better world for all of us.
A.L.M. September 16, 2004 [c557wds]
Thursday, September 16, 2004
A WOMAN'S PLACE
It has not been too long ago since the Japanese denied a formal education to women.
They were not alone in such a crime against society. Other nations did the same thing and there are few who still continue to do so. We, in various ways, seek to oppose such a view as an infraction of an individual's basic human rights, and it is important that we understand the background of it all, be aware of its weaknesses and to seek to replace it.
The case of Murasaki Shikibu, the greatest of all Japanese novelists is certainly a prime example of what can take place if female education is given freely - surreptitiously - some may question if she came to be the “Greatest Novelist of Japan” but there are many who ascribe even greater fame to her. The extol her as a rare Japanese girl who's father permitted her to sit quietly by while her brother was being instructed in the Chinese classics and culture. She is said to have assisted her sibling in difficult translation passages when needed. Murasaki is described as being the greatest Japanese writer of all time. She was, in effect, at the least, the William Shakespeare of Japan. She was the main chronicler of the Heian Period from about 794 to 1192 A.D.
Murasaki. While quite young, started writing the novel titled 'The Tale of Genji”. It details the most intimate history of the political life of the Heian period. When completed, the book ran to a total of around six-hundred thousand words by modern typography counts.”The Tale of Genji “ features well over four hundred active characters who are named and identified, plus as many others who serve as “the populace”. It strikes the present day person, to be as if Rawlings had lumped all of Harry Potter's adventures into one, forever book or Will Shakespeare had left us one wide wad of drama. Murasaki set out to write the political history of her time and she did a full some job of it. She wrote at a time when Chinese influence, so long dominant , was disappearing from Japan and they need to be more aware of their true governmental status.
For centuries the Chinese language was used in Japan for all governmental documents and records. This was continued for many years to enable Japanese political leader to keep the people ignorant of true affairs of state. For woman such as Murasaki Shikibu to develop an expertize in Chinese was a real door opener. The very title of the work and limits it in a way, yet expands it in another. The word refers to someone of first generation of royal blood who has been declared unfit to be named as ruler. .
Japan, as that time, was polygamous nation so there is plenty of what has been termed as “sexual politics” in the novel. It uncovers all human passions and revels in domestic switcharoos unequaled. Mel Gibson will probably make it in to a longer- than-ever movie any year now.
A.L.M. September 13, 2004 [c520wds]
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
TOAD TALK
A youngsters, we never touched toads. They gave you warts.
Everybody “knew” that – adults included – so it wasn't a difficult thing to do since adults didn't touch them either. That made it easier for young girls and boys to refrain from taking the ugly little brownish-gray creatures in hand. However, since adults tended to thing and speak of toads as being ugly, nasty, filthy and repulsive so boys and girls, out of simply curiosity, seemed to be attracted to toads even more
.
We respected the frog and toads as gallant bug scavengers and, probably attributed more garden protection to them than they really deserved, but the main stage of development which fascinated us was the “tadpole”stage. That was the few days in which the egg was developing the general shape of small fish minnow-like, lithe and lively but with a long tail which made it, to us, at least, more of a “fish” than a frog. What kid, reared of a farm or near a gently flowing unspoiled creek, has not gathered in shoals of tadpoles and watched them gyrate and spill over each other in the still water? Small inlets of curbed creek water teemed with tadpoles. We used to dam up little sections of the streams edge and herd tadpoles into the inlet we created. A thin weed with a seed growth at the end would lure them, if deftly handled. It took a lot of silence and patience which most of us did not have in abundance, so we did a lot of plain old dipping to get our stock.
The frog stays in the tadpole stage for about twelves days or so, and kid interest did not always last that long, so we never really found out, for sure, which ones matured to be leggy jumping frogs or which ones were stub-legged walkers – toads. True frogs would have we-looking skins and like damp, cool living places; true toads would have dry-looking, warty surfaced skin coverings, so we could not have become experts on many of them regardless of our attention to them. Each, at birth had tiny gills and in the ten-twelve day tad period, the skin gradually grew over that area to hide them completely. They became amphibia and returned to the water only to breed. They stayed nearby water as a rule but could leave such areas for extended periods of time without suffering ill effects.
Some people actually raise toads as a hobby. You find their eggs hanging on water plants like littles strings of black-eyed pearls. True Frogs lay their eggs in batches or clumps. Pine tree needles are toxic to young toads, too, so be careful where you try raise them.You must have fresh water. There are exotic styles among toads, too.: Colorful Cane Toads in South America weighing in , commonly, at four pounds each.
Which was it, I'm wondering, that the young girl had to kiss in the fable to bring forth her Prince Charming?
A.L.M. September 14, 2004 [c509wds]
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
HAPPY TIMES!
It is quite evident to me as I read my favorite newspapers and magazines that the publishing tangent of our social order day does not subscribe to the much quoted maxim which decrees one “cannot buy happiness.”
Our entire social order would crumble into chaotic confusion if we actually believed in, and acted upon, such a sentiment. I think we get around it all by pretending that all the blessings we have as normal part of our daily life is just being supplemented, enhanced, enlarged, made more perfect - not being replaced. We are adding to our happiness, rather than purchasing a new stock. The means, then, that we are worthy of special commendation for being such good stewards of that which we already have and that we have been taking excellent care of it seeking ever to increase it's meaning in our lives and make life more complete and enjoyable for ourselves and those around us. Who could possibly accuse us of attempting to buy happiness? We are extending it's powers to be a worthy adjunct to our existence.
Your can buy diversion, the advertisements tells me, what may help shake off any burdens of doubt we may have about our lives and guide us into ofter unseen paths of contentment. That advertised economy cruise to Cancun, for instance – six wonderful days and about as many nights are typical of such enhancements of the already good life we enjoy, otherwise we could even think of such a Mexican vacation much less finance it. The ads in the glossy – inked to the very edge of each magazine or foldout – and the chopped-up sequence of tantalizing three-second suggestions which keep the viewer's busy visually while they are being firmly sold verbally on having whichever pictorial bait caught their fancy best. You, too, can enhance your good life.
Another methods of improving outward qualities of happiness is for you to learn the art of self-effacement. Make a concerned effort to think more of other people and, thus, less of yourself and your needs. I feel this compulsion strongly every time, for instance, I visit the Veteran's Hospital in our area. There I see people in far more need than I have ever been. Walk among them; talk with them and get a new view of loneliness and poverty ...the “minus values”of our culture.
Other less on how to improve the happiness quota in our lives is to watch small children at play, amongst themselves and unsupervised by by adults. Just yesterday on the cul-de-sac pavement outside my window I watched a very small boy teach himself to use a skateboard. Two other boys, older were “skating” back and forth and all around him. He had trouble holding his skateboard up in front of him where it was taller than he,and if he tried to step on it,as the older boys did, it skidded out from under his foot foot. At one point he saw the other "bellywhopping" down the slight incline in the road. He tried that and lacked a running start or a means of propulsion.,When he saw the others sit on their skateboards and push along with their feet, he tried that. The first attemptlanded him on his rear end because he too far back on the board. He slid forward and pedaled with his feet his feet and went down the hill laughing with the others. He did it again and again and here has never been a more perfect picture of happiness in one little boy. Watch other being happy. Learn. Emulate. That's a way of gaining new happiness.
One more happiness treatment comes to mind, much akin to the skateboard example. If you can find films videotapes, scripts of the comedy works of comedians Jack Benny, Red Skelton and Fred Allen you will have in hand an all time masterwork treatment of “how to” enjoy life. They all three depended heavily on self-effacement. Jack Benny would often built up complicated situations in which others in his cast were going to be in real trouble. He had it all rigged, however, so that when that moment of crisis hit – it all fell, comically, on him. That famous “look” of his told the entire story and evoked pity and laughter in his audiences.
Red Skelton did the same thing in shorter versions. He often tired to emulate someone and it usually ended in a super-pratfall such as only Skelton would dare undertake. Most of the time he escaped injury.
Fred Allen, much more of a writer, used it constantly in depicting the people who lived such fun-filled lives in his “Allen's Alley” feature on radio.
I suppose it still holds true that you “can't buy happiness”. Why buy it when you can borrow it so easily from other happy people? Ever more important is the fact that you can barter your happiness for that of as it evolves from your being genuine, real, earnest and fair-minded in all that you think, say or do.
A.L.M. September 13, 2004 [c849wds]
Monday, September 13, 2004
FIFTEEN SECONDS OF FAME
Andy Warhol, who created attention-demanding art with a can of soup, long ago set the per person quota of fame at fifteen minutes. I think his estimate is about right, too. Fame is said to be “fickle” but I feel it is more stable than the public perception of those things deserving the verbal designation “famous”. We would have far more famous individuals if we had outward, spoken respect for the good things many people do without receiving any recognition.
True fame comes to the individual does a good thing for another person and both know it. But it never lasts more than fifteen seconds. I had the special, strange sensation his week the first time I heard the song of mine sung by a group dramatizing the actual building of the stone church in which we continue to worship over two hundred and sixty five years later. They seemed to be enjoying doing so, as were the six or so children accompanying the pipe organ and singers with a rhythmic sound pattern tapping stone together emulating primitive builders in the act of building a stone church structure. I literally tingled in my deepest being for a time hearing that unusual sound added - and , then, the sensation was a gone.
In 1970 I wrote the book for full-sized musical comedy and a local high school produced it and performed to capacity audiences for six nights and a Saturday afternoon children's performance. On opening night, when the kettle drums rolled and the curtain seemed to shiver a bit in anticipation with the first notes of the overture – the fame sensation hit me and lingered. That, too, lasted perhaps fifteen seconds or so.. And, since I was playing string base in the pit orchestra, I quickly returned to the work at hand we had a successful show. Fame was mine when I hear that overture setting for three songs which had been a part of me one time, and were, at that moment, translated to other lives.
Few people lay claim to notoriety, logically, yet I think we all have such moments in our lives. Mine was quit vivid and memorable. A short story I have written was published by a college magazine and illustrated with an arty drawing of a nude female. The major newsstand taped a dozen copies of the magazine open to story on the street-side window, the edition of the magazine was banned in at least three women's colleges, and finally, a local anonymous gossip columnist absolved me of poor taste but questioned the judgment of the magazine; editors in choosing the illustration as being a bit excessive. During that time, I sensed that phase of fame known as notoriety, and found it to be, in all honesty about the comparison.
Another incident in my life which has accorded me such a sensation.; made me feel worth. I was in attendance at a church gathering in which adults were being examined concerning becoming church officials. Each of the young people before the examiners outlined his or her religious experience I was surprised when one young man concluded his remarks by saying that he was where he was in life because of attending Sunday School for ;taught by a man who is in this room." rooms! He called my name and came over to shake my hand and thank me public ally. That got to me - way down.
I have experienced “fame” of a more rustic or informal kind when I have romped with grandchildren or other kids of no relative connection ...playing with them rather than just cavorting in their midst; not just among them but trying to feel what children feel among their own competitive, fame-seeking peers. While playing guitar, piano or the old melodian, to back their efforts, I have shared fame with such tiny singers who felt they had reached perfection as their song completed itself and pleased parents and grandparents.
Such shared fame is the very best, I think.
A.L.M. September 12, 2004 [c680wds]
Sunday, September 12, 2004
RAIL-SPLITER HERO
When I think of our great president Abraham Lincoln ...Number 16, was a he not?.. I, normally, think first of the image which depicted him, not as a tall, rather dour stove-pipe hatted, fully-bearded person, but as the robust, youthfully masculine and dynamic rail-splitter as shown in the John Leon Gerome Ferris' painting bearing that destructive title -”The Rail Splitter”.
I wonder how many other youngsters see Lincoln in that active role rather than as the oh-so-serious, heavily bearded oldster he became. He has dignity in either role and his eyes hold a strange, haunting hint of compassion.. It is there in either pose, of course, and those who look at the pictures come to sense an amazing of compassion and understanding in the man. It is in his eyes, or, could it be in tiny folds in his skin under the eyes toward the temple area which could well be the basic seed of a smile that is always ready to beam out to reflect inner good-will to all.
Another likeness of Abe startled me year ago, when one day in London when coming out of St. Margaret's Chapel just a few seeps from the main entrance to Westminster Abbey, I came, rather suddenly, upon a pedestaled statue of the older, bearded version of Abraham Lincoln sitting there in what happened to be a bright Brit sunlit afternoon. He seemed to be looking a bit up and away at the white clouds and blue sky and oblivious of the samplings of many nations of people passing by on either side. I think often of Abe being there in a land from which so much of our own heritage came. I have tried to make it a point to stop there a few minutes when I visit The City. I must look it up some time to find which Lord Mayor of London granted him permission the stay in that specific area.
I suppose we could say that the picture we have of Abraham Lincoln comes to us in the form of a “double feature” presentation: young and old, formative and mature, happy and sad, youth and old-enough to know better - that sort of mish-mash. I have read what people who know about arty things who insist they see in Lincoln, the rail-splitter and young man who, taking time to wipe genuine sweat from his brown with red bandanna handkerchief if :doubtless dreaming of great deeds” he must yet do, even as he pauses to rest his brown. One of those art-experts sees symbolism in the large size log Lincoln had chosen to work with saying he was a young man who was unafraid of hard work.
I have geographical ties to Abe. His immediate forebears lived just a few miles north of my present home here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia near two small villages a-growin' called Linville and Edom. We are all located alongside the celebrated Indian Trail which came to be called, The Great Road and .more recently, U.S. Route #11 now paralleled, more or less, by Interstate #81. Depending on which way you were going -either migrating to the west territories or returning from there with produce from the wilderness to eastern tern markets, it known as “The Knoxville Road “ for those trekking westward, or, “The Philadelphia Road (or Baltimore)if you were header northeast.
The Lincolns , who had worked to build quite a spread here, decided to go the Kentucky,Tenneesee, and such like places where even greater opportunities beckoned. The Lincoln men and women must have like hard work and vigorous, hard-scrabble living. Had they stayed here Abe Lincoln may well have been a native Virginian. I don't know that any painter has ever captured on canvas the deep agony which his rugged featured mirrored a fed minutes to the midnight deadline for his signature taking away one-half of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
I think I prefer the “older” versions such as that in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It 's nice to know about the younger buck qualities of the tall, ruggedly handsome calmly dignified man. As with the heavy, outsize log in the Ferris painting - he was for all this life called to solve big problems others had set for him to do. His big task - well done - was to maintain our nation as one against serious divisions and to have the courage others seemed to have lacked to officially free slaves to be equal citizens.
A.L.M. September 11, 2004 [c758wds]
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