Saturday, November 13, 2004
MEANDERING MYSTERY
Do I just imagine it to be true, or is it a known fact that the public interest and concern about cults and off-beat religious groups abounds in mysterious cycles?
We seem to go along for years without hearing about such oddball beliefs, and
the comes along a sudden flood of stories on the weird themes. And, each time it does so, it is accompanied by a list of newly declared devotees.
The current list is all feminine, too. That puzzles me, as does the fact that the list is appended to all stores about the phenomenon is always printed for us in the same sequence. Notice this year's list of personalities who have announced their intense new devotion to the observance of the rites and run-on reasoning of the oft and much-criticized “caballing”.
In addition to Madonna, who started the current list off early, others included are: Brittany Spears, Brittany Murphy, Denni Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Monica Lewinsky, Rosie O'Donnell, Rosanne Barr, Diane Ladd and Sandra Bernhard. I don't know the background of all of these ladies, but it appears they do have much in common.
Spelling in variety of ways, the cabala is, most likely, the granddaddy-of-'em-all as far as cults are concerned. It is associated with the earliest days of Jewish lore. Some features bears out they were lifted from Egyptian religious concepts and there are Greek terms in the make up of the organization itself. Anyone seeking change quickly sees great advantages . It can be part of just about any cultural background an individual professes. It can be seen as the religion of he ancient Druid at Stonehenge and other such sites; or, if you like, you can do rituals attributed to the ancient Mayan of Aztec cultures. The oriental concepts are there; the Nordic, and even the pseudo social isms we think of as being modern. One cabala fits all and you use only what suits you ,specific need. Madonna had pointed that out. You need accept only those parts and portions which allow you to feel more comfortable.
The “black magic” qualities found in some writings the Cabala collections have served as the base for a n number of novels and films. It has served well as the foundation on which satanic worship cults, and has, it seems, never been without active members. To me, the list which is currently being bandied about shows how much such thinking of this nature is gaining and it has real meaning for all of us. I do not know the status of those on the current list but I do know some of the ladies mentioned do not represent the best qualities of today's society. Their obvious need for religious certainties in their troubled lives stands as a challenge to us. If those, and other young ladies need religious certainties and we allow them to sip at the deceptive brews of cults we ,too, are off course.
Often followers of cults are careful to insist that their beliefs do not constitute a “religion.” It can be a temporary means which allows them to do what they wish in a social sense, but they do not view it in the same eternal outlook of a true faith. I don't see it as a thing which can be said to course be their fault alone. They, of course, make the choice but the fact that all the rest of us have so little faith in our own professed Faith suggests that the continued success of such false, mis leading concepts places some of the reasons for their being at our own doorsteps
A.L.M. November 13, 2004 [c618wds]
Friday, November 12, 2004
FRAGILE FAME
The special pressures of fame must be a great trial to those who enter that area of living.
To suddenly arrive a point where your life is no longer your very own to be lived according to your wishes and desires, but, rather, one which must conform to what others expect of you, must be quite a jolt. A single deviation from that plan established by the mass, multi-mind of those who control your fate, can prove to be fatal.
One of the most tragic occurrences of this past year in thousands of homes across the land, and yet it has been largely forgotten by this time. It was personal tragedy for one young man. A small thing, in one way, because pertained just one, still boyish young man who was on the very edge of fame and a well-paying career. He struck us as being genuinely glib;, enthusiastic in every way and born with a seemingly natural ability to excel in the art of sincere salesmanship. He was well on his way to becoming the TV spokesperson for the only remaining line of computers still being made in the United States. He impressed us with his puckish humor as today's, modern version of “Tom Sawyer.” He oozed enthusiasm and had the verbal verve to match.
Suddenly, he was no longer there. We saw no obit notices. A few readers found short snippets in the folds of our newspapers that he had run afoul of the marijuana weed. I never knew the extent of his involvement but his career was at an end ... destroyed. Ever since that time, I have wondered when our scientific, medical, social and political people will find a workable plan to rehabilitate and restore such wasted talent.
Now – today – another young man of special ability his on center stage - young Ken Jennings, from Salt Lake City, Utah who in the prevailing and seemingly unbeatable champion on the TV program “Jeopardy.” This long-standing TV favorite recently revised its rules for the regular program showings to allow winners to remain on the show until defeated. Jennings has won millions of dollars and show not sign of being bested. He has won the hearts of million of TV viewer who are not setting forth all sorts of potentials for his future. is modest nature will, I think, cause him to do what all true champions ought to do – attain to a certain point that will make any future record setters have second thoughts, and to then retired
undefeated.
Ken Jennings is responding well to the pressures of fame and good fortune.
A.L.M. November 12, 2004 [c445wds]
Thursday, November 11, 2004
REDOLENCE
I miss the election fervor.
Suddenly, it seems too quiet. The air is free of insults being flung right and left and hitting mostly people in the center each of whom harbors a hint of whatever the one side is accusing the other of being.
We are, as a nation a strange amalgam of diverse peoples often irked by contending views and appreciations who,most of the time, feel it proper to subdue any actions to change things too radically. Election time removes those barriers, at least in a vocal sense, and we find ourselves saying things we never thought we'd ever express; doing some unusual maneuvers and, at times, shocking ourselves and our peers.
There is a continuing warp and woof in the weaving of our election process time after time. I don't actually recall the campaign which put Woodrow Wilson in office but I do remember the aura of pungent displeasure expressed by many people well after that time concerning his set ideas about the place of the League of Nations in our future.
Later on, about the time of the sudden demise of our leading news magazine of that time “-”The Literary Digest”-by reason of polling the political postulation and naming the wrong man as being the winner elections took on a expansion of the senses.
From the Harding days comes a whiff of scandal which has, since that time, has permeated the political parameter in a manner not unlike the the theory of aroma therapy. We talked of personal scandals; of the Tea-Pot Dome oil affair and other such
evidences of poor judgment at various governmental levels. Evangelist Billy Sunday did his loudest and best to blame all such things on the Devil launched tabernacle terror throughout the land to confute, or, at least, confuse his satanic majesty.
With President Calvin Cooledge, things simmered down somewhat, and enabled him to spend a lot of his time in north woods retreats. He held the record for the most days-off, I think, for a long time but it has probably been upset by now with traveling Oval Office facilities having become what they are. The appearance of Herbert Hoover was quiet but his years became a continuing time of world wide economic transformations we have never known before or since. The “aroma” of the elections of that era are not pleasant at all. That time set my personal political clock. I witnessed the death, in many ways, of what had been called “yellow”journalism and saw the rise of “pinko”papers to follow. I came of voting age when Russia's “five year plans” were new endlessly, when Franco evolved out of the Spanish in-fighting, Il Duce and then Adolph Hitler and his counterparts. The FDR elections were phenomenal. Herbert Hoover was demeaned and Al Smith made “RAD-e-oh” a permanent part of the proceedings. I heartedly disliked the idea of a 3rd term but voted FDR , my Commander-in-Chief, over businessman Wendell Wilkie.
And, on and on ... into modern times.
Election time has been more volatile than I would have thought now that I have scanned my personal feeling about those past. Just last week I wrote about being glad it was all over for 2004.. Then, just a few days later I find myself missing the presence of election time sensitivity to our political needs. There is a special aura about election time, I now find, which comes to us as a fragrant, sweet smelling and valued reminder of evocative pressures from within us telling us what we wish - some day - to become and be for all Time.
A.L.M. November 11, 2004 [c609wds]
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
THANKS TIME
Every year when the caloric splendors of Thanksgiving Day are rolled by me, I think of an artist whom I have trouble even remembering at other times of the year. His name was George Henry Boughton, a man born “near Norwich, in Norfolk County, England” in 1836. He has always been, to me, the world's prime painter of Pilgrims.
George Henry was, probably one of those unfortunate children named after both father and father-in-law or after both grandfathers. He is never spoken of a either “George” or “Henry” but always as a two some. Picturing him, as a kid, and being from “near” the fine old city of Norwich, I looked at his paintings for years trying in vain to find some landscape reminders from that area - Wroxham Broads, perhaps, old Elm Street Hill, or Mousehold Heath, perhaps. Nothing. I found out later it was because when his family left near-Norwich, GH has attained to the age of two years. We have to say, that he was “brought up” at their new home in Albany, New York.
Until he was seventeen he was not an artist, although he did pen-and-ink drawings and other sketches frequently. He was destined to be a “business man”, but one fine summer day in that seventeen year when he was at a store buying some new fish hooks, he noticed a set of oil paints in colorful tubes. He bought that set instead of the fish hooks; found an old piece of used canvas and became a widely exhibited artist painting landscapes, Pilgrims, historic sites, pilgrims,peasant folks all over and more pilgrims. His work is widely respected and admired for its “simplicity, tenderness and subdued, but not weak, coloring.”
His most common picture of American pilgrim settlers of l620-plus phase is that called ”Pilgrims Going to Church”, owned by the New York Public Library. In it you see a group of men, women and children, walking - strung out loosely - through a small clearing on the edge of a forest. Two armed men are at the front of the line, women and children in the center and two armed men at the rear - plus a tailgater lagging perhaps fifty yards behind the group as a flank guard, a late member or the first of another such church-bound set of Plymouth Colony settlers. As an indication of his strong leaning toward doing pilgrims, other paintings include such titles as “Return of the Mayflower”, “The Scarlet Letter, “Priscilla and John Alden” and 'Going Home From Church” and “Pilgrim Exiles.” After selling some of his paintings at that l7-years mark, Broughton went to London to study art but stayed only a few months. He returned to New York City and opened a studio. He exhibited works in both New York and London. In 1861 he removed again to London - this time to make it his permanent home.
George Henry Boughton was a busy man. In addition to his paintings, his detailed knowledge of peasant and pilgrim life; details of their group and personal life-styles and an awareness of their simplicity, and self-governing strictness made him a perfect artist to illustrate special editions of “Knickerbocker's History of New York” an of “Rip Van Winkle”. An odd note appears in some articles about the special talents of a rather staid Boughton. He is widely respected and admired among fellow artists, it seems, as having been especially successful in painting female figures.
This year,when you see a copy of “Pilgrims Going To Church” in your favorite paper, magazine, or book; as the November page on your calender or on TV, think of seventeen year old George Henry Boughton as he decided to pass up a box of much-needed fish hooks in favor of a few tubes of oil paints. That decision change his world – and ours.
A. L. M. November 10, 2004 [c653wds]
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
THE GAMES THEY PLAYED
Many years from now experts on Mankind's progress will examine our records to determine what games we played as children.
Of what records? Of what games?
We take pride in the obvious fact that the mind of Man is much more receptive to new information than that of the general group of animal creation. It is far more flexible than we care to admit.
The games we make available to our children today are doing a great deal to determine what their future will entail. Objection has been raised consistently concerning the nature of such games. Used increasingly as entertainment-education tools they are exerting tremendous influence on our youngsters. Repeatedly, honest attempts to evaluate these entertainment-educational hybrids are thwarted by potential profit for the makers thereof.
At that time when we finally get around to a serious examinations of the situation, what will they find?
Initially it will be learned that there seems to have been a radical change general era following World War II. Games, in general, became sedentary rather than physical. Outdoor exercise games gradually gave way to indoor technology-assisted play.
We continued deeper into this area as the decades went by and today the majority of children play electronic games as their favorite pastime or watch special sport which have gone far beyond their ability to perform. Most children, being small versions of adults, seek an easier way to get a thing done,and certainly there can be n nothing easier than plugging in an appliance and pushing buttons or flipping levers.
If the investigators of the future have at hand a selection of “records” from various institutions detailing the progress, growth and changes of the genre they will see how their subjects conducted themselves and be able to judge much about their early training and experiences.
Will it be that, if they examine prison records, they will find that - as children - many inmates where well schooled in all forms of violence and forceful achievement their goals? Or, will it be that some other records will show adults living in a fantasy world in which unlikely things happen routinely and aspiration as achieved without effort.
Yet another vast group of adults might then be living a farcical existence in which they pretend all is well and leave management and care up to others while they wonder how the came to be subjects under a dictatorship.
We can no longer deny that some real dangers exists. A quick glance at the current crop of games will show you that our children are being taught by what, to them, seems living example, that violence solves all problems ....if anyone does anything you don't like - eliminate them. They are being shown how man's history is nothing but a fantasy or a farce.
We may be too late. I think that more and more as I witness parents playing their children's games. Statistics of the future may not show that facet of figures which are steeped in clandestine caution.
It is, perhaps, past time for adults to tinker openly with today's “games” we allow young people to play.
A. L. M. November 9. 2004 [c533wds
Monday, November 08, 2004
THE GOOD YOU DO
Are you automatically irked when you buy an item of clothing and find it was made in some foreign country?
If you have a violent reaction which likens the situation to “treason” you are, perhaps and average American. Major retailers have sincerely tried to offer only “Made in the U.S.A.” items. They have quickly been made to realize it cannot be done. Our manufacturing abilities are a thing of the past and the usual expression we hear so often is that “they have been sent overseas.”
A more truthful statement might be that we, over the years, we have, literally, by allowing the production costs of such manufactured goods to climb to unprecedented heights in the name of some transient blends of warmed-over economic theory and left-overs of resident fevers of political correctness.
We used the expressions such as : “...over there they have thousands of natives who are paid pennies to do .....the slave labor....” We go to great trouble to establish the idea that native workers are being paid very low wages without any regard to what local wages scales may be .I have not the slightest idea how much – or how little the native worker in far-off Nepal was paid for sewing up the shorts I happen to be wearing as I sit here typing these views. I don't know what the minimum or average wage might be in Nepal, but if it bother you that you must buy finished goods from such areas, you need to modify your thinking a bit to be more at ease.
Those “pennies” we speak of might well be the only income that native worker will see this week or month. Those petty coins will go to help feed that man an d his family. You a re giving him or her a chance to live as a human being. You are providing for their welfare though you need. What better type of international relief” could we possible participate in than to provide employment for individuals in a poor country?
` Let's be honest about such “giving” in past years. There was a time when our churches gave generously to such projects but we see less money dedicated to direct assistance both in religiously oriented and government relief plans as well. When we “give”a needy person a job making our clothing, as an example, we provide work for millions of needy people around the world. We often refuse to see that we have abandoned certain work areas, and we also, tragically, have had a growing feeling of being ashamed of doing manual labor and of teaching our children to do so as well.. I happen to live in and area where Latinos - both legal and illegal - have quickly filled jobs local jobs local residents would no longer accept in the poultry-processing and fruit-growing businesses.
Instead of moaning so often about feigned fears of financial failure because “our jobs are being shipped overseas.” You might find it better for everyone if you honestly try to see it as good we are doing.
You have a part in it, too. Put on your new work shirt made in - somewhere far away - and reflect upon what your “pennies” may have had on lives in that area.
A.L.M November 8, 2004 [c562wds]
Sunday, November 07, 2004
AT HOME
How aggressive do you want your local media to be?
During the recent political campaigns it became painfully evident that the media,in all its forms, was slanted toward the left side of the philosophical spectrum. It was generally thought at the time, to be expedient to speak of the off-balanced situation is rather hushed, esoteric terms such as that, but, now - with the election over – we need to speak and think of as it was – planned, overt actions taken with intent by many members of the media to side always with Democratic Party. It was often done in the guise of seeking ways to show both the “best” and the “not so good” sides of every point of discussion, or, said more blatantly as meant giving people a choice between “good” and ”evil”.
To protect our future as a nation, we are in dire need of curbing such tendencies. We must move now as a unit to determine who will, control each of the media's many elements in times of national stress. Right now, during “hangover time”, might be the best time we will have; our finest opportunity to examine the evidence and become aware of how very close we came to going totally wrong in the Summer and Fall months of the year of 2004. We need to determine how personal we want our media to be in our lives; how pervasive and with what authority it acts. And - all must be done without imposing by general consents and without imposing censorship.
The basic difficulty to be found in getting anything of value done on this sort of thing is found in the fact that the American people do not, by and large, agree that they are influenced by the media. PR people in Hollywood and in our TV production studios wherever they may be, lead us around like flocks of sheep to see their various creations. The very same lures can lead us politically, and it is technique of Today and of our Tomorrows.
Many facets of the media became evident in the recent election which had not been evident before. Among them was a rapid growth in what is currently being called “talk radio shows”. The name is mis-applied to the big network shows featuring a talker but the grass-roots style of regional voices are the ones which has shown phenomenal growth and impact. The Internet and E-mail were use extensively in the Howard Deane primary campaign and have served well as connectives between. Other potent media tools - Direct Mail, Phones and Cell Phone addictions, fax machines and copiers. All were used in the recent election to influence voting. When we speak of the Media, let's not limit it to newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and magazines... and all related branches.
I realize I am speaking into the wind with all of this talk. We Americans are not about to curb our media, save under the most dire conditions when, even then it is done, not by rules or law, but by common sense and gumption. That's our way. In the past we have depended on common sense and peer pressure. My guess is we will try it again and again until that one time, when it did not work.
A.L.M. November 7, 2004 [c558wds]
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