"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." That is a quote by Aldous Huxley. Huxley is best known as the author of "A Brave New World" and "The Doors Of Perception". The Doors Of Perception recalls his experiences when taking a psychedelic drug, and was a book that had great influence on Jim Morrison. In fact, the book had such an impact on him that he named his rock band The Doors. How's that for trivia! Although I am sure that most true Doors fans already knew that. Anyway, Huxley was considered one of the greatest intellectuals of his time and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature in seven different years. While I am thinking about it, congratulations to Bob Dylan for winning the 2016 Noble Prize for literature. He won the award for ‘having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. The Swedish academy stated: “We’re really giving it to Bob Dylan as a great poet – that’s the reason we awarded him the prize. He’s a great poet in the great English tradition, stretching from Milton and Blake onwards. And he’s a very interesting traditionalist, in a highly original way. Not just the written tradition, but also the oral one; not just high literature, but also low literature.” Though Dylan is considered by many to be a musician, not a writer, Danius said the artistic reach of his lyrics and poetry could not be put in a single box. “I came to realize that we still read Homer and Sappho from ancient Greece, and they were writing 2,500 years ago,” she said. “They were meant to be performed, often together with instruments, but they have survived, and survived incredibly well, on the book page. We enjoy [their] poetry, and I think Bob Dylan deserves to be read as a poet.” I find it fitting to write about Aldous Huxley on the same day that Bob Dylan wins a Noble Prize because both men, in their own ways, called for social change. In fact, way back in 1958 Huxley gave a prescient warning about what he saw coming for the world in the future. Now, 58 years later, some of those predictions look startlingly accurate! Meanwhile, Dylan wrote songs in the sixties that called for social changes that also seem to be slowly gaining traction.
To get back to Huxley, after nearly sixty years, his words too are now history. Let's see what he was saying and if there is anything we should have learned. The quotes below come from an interview he did with Mike Wallace back in 1958. At that time Huxley stated that: 1."Technology, bureaucracy and Television will be used to enslave us." Huxley believed that: "we mustn’t be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology. This has happened again and again in history with technology’s advance and this changes social condition, and suddenly people have found themselves in a situation which they didn’t foresee and doing all sorts of things they really didn’t want to do." Specifically, on television he stated: " it is being used too much to distract everybody all the time. But, I mean, imagine which must be the situation in all communist countries where the television, where it exists, is always saying the same things the whole time; it’s always driving along. It’s not creating a wide front of distraction it’s creating a one-pointed, er…drumming in of a single idea, all the time. It’s obviously an immensely powerful instrument. ' There were a lot of other things that Huxley said too. Isaac Davis recently wrote an article about Huxley. Instead of just quoting from his article, follow this link to read it yourself Huxley It is rare that I ever just send my readers to another blog to read, but the article is well worth reading. In my opinion, Huxley was amazing. Now that you have read the article linked to above, I think you can see how self evident Huxley's quote to him. And remember, Brave New World was written in 1931. About 27 years before he gave that interview! Truly, He was a man ahead of his time. It's no wonder that his name often comes up when people speak of George Orwell, another writer of dystopian novels. He is best known for his book 1984. A Brave New World, 1984, and even Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand are all history now. Why not read them? And see if you can learn the messages these authors were trying to alert us to way back then.
0 Comments
A writer that I read daily wrote something that got me thinking today. He wrote "I want to know why you got separated from your spouse. People always say, “It was amicable.” No it wasn’t. Don’t lie. Tell me. Please." Funny that this line hit so close to home for me, since he wasn't really writing about relationships. He was writing about his curiosity and just giving an example of what he finds interesting sometimes.
His name is James Altucher, and he regularly lays his thoughts out for all to see. He writes about the good things in his life and the bad, but his writing usually has a point to it. I like that. Well, his quote above got me thinking because after I got my divorce I sometimes told people I didn't know well that our divorce was amicable... It wasn't really. And so, without further ado, I'll tell the story. My wife and I got a divorce in 2011. In a nutshell, our divorce was caused by addiction. My wife and I first started dating in July, 1999. She was 23 and I was 33. We had known each other for a few months prior to starting dating. She had been married, but her husband had died. We started chatting at a party and when we started talking she told me he had died a couple of months prior. We really hit it off and started dating soon after. About two weeks after we started dating, Sharon told me she was an alcoholic and asked me to help her stop. I gave up drinking on that day, and have not had another drink since. My wife, on the other hand, was never able to give up alcohol for any great length of time. In fact, her longest time sober was when my first daughter was born. She stopped for about two years then... the nine months during the pregnancy and an additional 18 months while she was breast feeding. Soon after, her parents came from England to visit her and the stress of the visit, coupled with depression started her drinking again. Over the years, we went to AA meetings, in-patient re-habs, outpatient programs, Psychiatrists psychologists, and to numerous social workers. None of them could do it for her, and she just couldn't do it for herself. Sharon was a sneak drinker, and Madison was young, so she never realized that her mommy had a problem in the early years. By age seven, this was changing. (I worked from home on and off starting in 2001, and then started my own business in 2003, so I was home to make sure Maddie was safe.) Sharon was not a social drinker and had a tendency to drink quickly but heavily when no one was around to see her. She was very hard to catch, and only regular sweeps of our house and property kept some sort of limit on her drinking. Her tolerance was very high, and she could go for long periods where she fooled me into thinking she was sober. Even so, Maddie knew from a very early age that she was not allowed to drive with Mommy. Daddy did the driving whenever Maddie was going out with us. But I digress. In 2009, Sharon and I decided to have another baby. Sharon's drinking had been getting progressively worse and she thought that she would stop if she got pregnant. Maddie was seven, and by this time she already knew about Mommy's drinking problem. Sharon started lying about the drinking to Maddie, something she never thought she would do. It scared her, and she thought that the pregnancy would force her to stop since she would never willingly drink with a baby inside her. Unfortunately, she was unable to stop. At one point, she was found unconscious in the parking lot at our dojo, and we called an ambulance for her. Believe it or not, we thought it was anemia having to do with the pregnancy. In fact, the doctor at the emergency room actually said that is what it was. After speaking to her at the hospital, though, I began to suspect that she had been drinking and I told the nurse to tell the doctor that she was an alcoholic and that I believe she had been drinking. He tested her blood alcohol content and found she had a .42! This is well above the legal limit of .08. The doctor was stunned. He had had a conversation with Sharon and she had been coherent, so he never even thought to check her for alcohol use. He was astounded that she could even talk at that level of inebriation. At that time, he told me he couldn't tell me if there had been any damage to the fetus, but he thought that it was likely. I was crushed! After that Sharon was charged with drunk driving and I plea bargained with the DA before her court appearance. I told him to tell the judge that I would have her plead guilty and that I would pay all fines at the maximum rate as long as he court-ordered that she enter an in-patient rehab facility. Sharon would never willingly go for an in-house program. In fact, I could barely get her to go to an AA meeting. She was 7-months pregnant and I figured that an inpatient program was the safest thing for the baby. The judge did even better than that. Not only did he court order the in-patient program (and take her license) but he lowered her fines to the minimum that he could, since I was paying for the in-patient program out of my pocket. Sharon entered a program at Phoenix House in Keene. She did well, and it ended about two weeks before she was due to give birth. Unfortunately, Sharon got drunk again on the first night she was back and fell and broke her ankle. I had swept the house and knew it was clean. She had somehow gotten alcohol in Keene and brought it back with her in her bags from the in-patient facility. The doctor recommended that she have a cesarean birth the next day, to help protect the baby. Ashleigh was born on January 18, 2010, two weeks premature and suffering from alcohol withdrawal. She spent the first nine hours of her life in an oxygen tent. At that point, I felt Sharon was too dangerous to be around the girls and I pressed child neglect charges against her. I brought Ashleigh home alone when she was four days old, and I have raised her and Maddie ever since. At that point, I had no intention of divorcing my wife. Sharon went back into in-house therapy, and we tried to get her drinking under control. At one point, (in July) the courts allowed Sharon to come back to live in our home, but she quickly began drinking again. One night, when I called the police to help me with Sharon, (she eventually passed out right in front of the police man), he recommended that I go in the morning and get an ex-parte separation. This would allow me to continue to live in the home, while limiting her access to it. Without that, the police could not remove her from the home since she was legally allowed to live there and drink. I had her taken to the emergency room that night, and first thing in the morning I hired a lawyer and got an exparte separation. Given the circumstances (the child neglect charges, the history of alcoholism and alcohol related arrests, we were only in front of the judge for five minutes. In all, Sharon's stay in our home lasted about three weeks. We paid for a one-bedroom apartment for Sharon and we continued to see doctors and social workers to try and get her to stop drinking. It was at this point, that one of the psychologists told us that Sharon was actually suffering from Addictive personality disorder. (Sharon had eating disorders that we were trying to deal with and other things as well. After ten years of seeing doctors and psychologists, one finally hit on the fact that all of her compulsions were tied together. Sharon continued to drink and I eventually filed for divorce. Of course, there were other things impacting that decision. It's just none of your business. Two years after our divorce, Sharon drank herself to death. She developed esophageal varacies in 2011, continued to drink. After a two week stay in the hospital in a coma, her life support was removed and she died in my arms. Of course, there is more to the story than that. I write about Sharon from time to time. If you look through the archives, you can likely piece together a lot of the story. Some things I just won't or can't write about though. Sometimes, I wish I didn't know... and sometimes, it is better not to know. So, while the divorce wasn't amicable, in time, we both realized that it was the best thing for our girls. Sometimes we need to think about things other than ourselves. Sharon missed our daughters dearly when she was away from them. But because she could not stop her drinking, it was safest that she did not live with us. With that said, our divorce led to a lot of heartbreak, but was the best thing for our daughters. Now that I have written this, I think it is just best to say that our divorce was painful, and just leave it at that. "“A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.” That's a quote by Lionel Shriver. Believe it or not, Lionel is a woman. She was a tomboy when she was younger and decided to change her name from Margaret to Lionel because she thought the more masculine name was more fitting for her.
Not much for me to say about Lionel, I have never read any of her material and I didn't know she existed until I read her quote. I liked the quote, though, and it got me thinking. I get hung up sometimes... not so much about what I can't have, but what might have been...which I guess IS the same thing after all. A lot of times, I will be sitting around working or listening to music, and something will inevitably remind me of my wife. A memory will be triggered and I will feel a deep well of sadness as I think of the good times we had at one time or another, and then I miss her. At those times, I fail to remember the problems we had and how her illness impacted the entire family. It's the second part of the quote that really got me to thinking tonight. I heard a song and thought of my wife and really missed her. Then I read the quote and I thought "if my wife was still alive, would I be having those feelings right now?" And to be honest, the answer was no. Not because I didn't love my wife, or because I no longer love her, but because before my wife died, I had divorced her to protect my daughters. My wife's alcoholism was out of control (it ended up killing her) and she could not be around my children without another adult present. I brought my youngest daughter, Ashleigh, home from the hospital when she was four days old, and I have raised her on my own until my Mom came to live with us in 2013. My wife spent some of that time in and out of rehab facilities, but mainly was out on her own drinking. Don't get me wrong, my wife loved our daughters. She was just not physically or mentally able to stop her addiction until it eventually took her life. She died of esophageal varices. Scarring, or cirrhosis of the liver is the most common cause of esophageal varices. This scarring cuts down on blood flowing through the liver. As a result, more blood flows through the veins of the esophagus. The extra blood flow causes the veins in the esophagus to balloon outward. Heavy bleeding can occur if the veins break open. Well, Sharon's veins broke open on at least two occasions. The second one that I know of killed her. Sharon already had a damaged liver when we met in 1999. She died in 2013. Ashleigh was born in January, 2010. Sharon's descent into oblivion really rolled into place in 2009, soon after she had become pregnant with Ashleigh. She couldn't stop drinking during the pregnancy. Although this likely sounds hollow, I did not know the extent of Sharon's drinking and its impact on her until she was already pregnant with Ashleigh. I knew she had still been drinking before we decided to have a second child, but she believed that the pregnancy would force her to quit again, as she did when she was pregnant with Madison. Unfortunately, this time she couldn't do it. To protect the baby, we put Sharon into an in-house rehab program at Phoenix House in Keene while she was pregnant to help keep her sober during her pregnancy. She completed the program, but started drinking immediately after she came out of the program, about two weeks prior to when she was to give birth to Ashleigh. She got drunk and broke her ankle on the first night she was home from the rehab. She had gotten the booze in Keene prior to me picking her up at the rehab facility. When we got home, I never thought to look in her bag she had brought from the facility since I picked her up from the facility, and brought her directly home. My daughter was born two weeks premature and with alcohol withdrawal. They sent me home with her at four days old. She was underweight, and needed to be fed every half an hour for the first two weeks of her life. Somehow, I did it while looking for a nanny to help me with the baby, while also taking care of Madison who was eight, and still somehow doing some work for my business. I literally had no sleep for the first four days. On day four, one of the travelling nurses who visited me to make sure the baby was doing okay, called me back that afternoon and offered to watch the girls for me in my house, while I caught some sleep. She came over, and I slept for eight hours. To this day, I still believe that angels sometimes walk among us, and come to help us in our hour of need. Soon after, I hired a nanny and things improved a little bit. For the next three years, my daughters and I struggled with Sharon's illness, I don't want to go into what we all went through. (By all I include Sharon, because she was suffering as well. She was ill, and she was missing her little girls. The emptiness only added to the stresses that triggered her drinking.) Looking back now, it seems like our days were filled with policemen, ambulances, hospitals, lawyers, doctor's visits, court visits, and of course, drunken interludes by Sharon. To this day, when an ambulance passes us in either Rindge or Jaffrey Maddie and I look at each other. When Sharon was alive, we looked at each other because we wondered if it was Mom being brought to the hospital again (oftentimes, it was). Now, we just look at each other just to silently say we remember. I can no longer see an ambulance without thinking of my wife... even though she has now been dead for three years. So anyway, what about the quote? When the song played tonight, and I thought about my wife, I realize that she is dead and can't come back. I recognize that, yet I still remember our good memories. The bad ones I mentioned above, I try not to think of any more. Yet soon after those good memories hit, I read the above quote and I thought: "If Sharon could come back, just the way she was, would you want her to come back?" And my answer to myself was no, I wouldn't. Because although I have a tendency to remember our good times together, if I think deeper, I remember all of the unhealthy things that my daughters saw and experienced. And I would never want to expose them to that again! Ashleigh was very young then, and barely remembers her Mom. She did not understand any of the bad things that went on, and I'd like to keep it that way until she is older, and inevitably asks me about her Mom. Maddie does remember, though, and I never want to expose her to anything so tragic and psychologically damaging again. To wit, be careful what you sometimes long for, because not everything you might want or miss is good for you or your loved ones around you. Sorry for the long, weird post... But it's what was going through my mind tonight, and sometimes I need to think out an explanation for myself. "History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools." This is a quote by Ambrose Bierce. If you don't know who Ambrose is, then you really need to read more! "Bitter Bierce" wrote for a number of magazines and newspapers in the 1870's through about 1913.
In addition to writing for the papers, he also wrote poetry and short stories. Bierce had been a soldier during the civil war and fought in many battles. He was injured grieviously, and his war experience had a huge impact on his writing. In 1913, he disappeared in Mexico while travelling with Pancho Villa. Where he died, why and how all remain a mystery to this day. Enough about Bierce! He was an interesting character. If you want to know more go read about him. If you want to see some of his satire in action, then read the Devil's Dictionary... a tongue in cheek book with cynical and bitter definitions of words. Quite funny actually. Just remember the time period that it was written in since some of the definitions are now outdated. To get back to the quote, I think he has a point. History is an account of events that are usually written by the victor. Thus, while you do get an idea of what happened, you never get the full truth. In fact, I imagine that you rarely get the full truth in most of it! Secondly, many of the things that you learn in history are not overly important in themselves, but when taken in the whole, can help to give you some context towards what has happened in the past. My main beef about history is that it often glorifies war. I think that Bierce saw this as a distinct negative too. Some of his war stories are particularly gruesome. He doesn't write about it to gross people out, but to show what he experienced in war. I think that no one can really read his war stories and come away with the thought that war is glorious. In fact, after reading the stories, you may come away with the feeling that soldiers may be fools for believing that war IS glorious. Read "Chickamauga" to see what I mean. Still, history is one of my favorite subjects. I like to see if I can find facts that differ from what I was taught in school. Oftentimes I find that I can find dissenting views... or at least differing points of view. One thing that I find again and again that is different from what we learn in school is that war is hell. This and other similar quotes are written by the soldiers themselves and their leaders. The only ones who say otherwise are the politicians and the people who have never experienced war first hand. With that said, I tell my daughters to avoid military service. Many of the wars that are fought are not fought for the reasons given. For a recent example, think about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction". Furthermore, think about why did we attack Iraq? The Muslims that were said to be on the planes that crashed into the world trade center were said to be from Saudi Arabia... not Iraq, and the sect of Islam that they followed was not followed in Iraq. So, why did we attack Iraq? I will leave that up to you, dear reader. Surely the fact that they have oil had nothing to do with it. Or the fact that they wanted to start selling the oil in a currency other than the U.S. dollar. History is written by the victor. Assume much of it is bullshit. Did we go to war? Yes. Was it for the reasons the government told us? Doubtfully. "The most successful war seldom pays for its losses." That is a quote by Thomas Jefferson. And he is right. The problem we have nowadays is that the men who decide to go to war are usually not the men who are sent to lead it. The men who die in war are usually the poor, the misguided or the unlucky. The poor are the ones who thought that the military was a good way to earn some money or a good way to get a college education. The misguided are the ones who joined believing they were fighting for our country and our way of life, and the unlucky are those who were either drafted or sent up through the National Guard because they thought they were only going to give up one weekend a month for some steady cash.
I realize that my point of view is likely not a popular one. Still, when was the last time that you heard a Rockefeller or a Buffett was killed in Iraq or Afghanistan? Or when was the last time you heard that a Bush or Obama were killed in action? Nowadays, our wars are about money and oil, pure and simple. If there is no clear reason to have a war somewhere, the powers that be invent an enemy to battle. False flag attacks are used to rile up the population and push the country into war. Nowadays, our politicians don't even have to have the guts to declare war. Instead we have police actions...or war on things. We have the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on poverty. Instead of protecting our borders, which would go a long way towards stopping crime and terrorism in the U.S., our Department of Homeland Security makes a big show of harassing travelers at the airports. See how safe they make you as they grope the women and pat down men and x-ray your luggage while you are on your way to Disney Land? Whenever there is an attack on U.S. soil, we need to ask two questions. Who did it? And who benefits? Usually, you will find that the group that is accused of perpetrating the act isn't the group who will benefit from it. Nope, usually the group who is accused of doing the deed is in for a shit-storm of negative publicity and brutal deaths. Meanwhile, the victims of these acts of terror are usually low-level nobodies or low level military personnel. In the grand scheme of things, the people who die hold no value for the group accused of killing them. The dead do have great value for the powers that be in our country though. These people lose nothing important to them, yet they have everyday people who have died that they can use to whip the general population into a frenzy of blood lust against the accused. It's sad actually. The people who die are used to get the general population riled up against the people our government wants out of the way. Meanwhile, targets whose deaths would have benefited the group that is accused of doing the attack are left unscathed. An attack on the rich and powerful of our country or our political leaders would be a much better target for these terrorist organizations. Yet they never attack them. At the same time, an attack on these same people would get less of a response from our general population. Yet every time, these groups supposedly go after the target that will actually hurt their movement more than help it. Why? Go back and ask yourself, who benefits the most from one of these attacks? What does the attack achieve, and who actually benefits from it? Finally, ask "who gets hurt by the attack?" If you see that the group that is accused of doing the attack is more likely to be hurt by it than helped, then you are likely looking at a false flag attack...particularly if the people who actually benefit from the attack are the same people who would have likely made a better target for the accused group in the first place. Face it folks, wars are here not because you want them, or I want them, but because someone who can benefit from them, while being reasonably sure not to be pulled into them wants them. If we had a simple rule that our political "leaders" actually had to lead our troops in the war, regardless of their age or sex, we would have a whole lot less wars. The politicians don't mind punching the patriotism card and calling for wars or police actions because they know they are reasonably safe from ever having to go anywhere where they would be in danger. Since they and their families are not in danger, why not play the war card for some of their benefactors who would likely benefit from it? Meanwhile, the poor, misguided and unlucky will continue to die. In my mind, even one life is too much to lose in a phony war. If we have to go to war, then target the politicians who force us to go to war. Target the money that funds our enemies. Target the families of those we know are involved in the war. Right now, we don't do that because our leaders do not want that done to them! Go ahead, kill their military personnel, but leave their politicians and wealthy class alone! Otherwise, they might attack our wealthy as well...and that would not do. A wise man once asked "what if we had a war and nobody came?" I would truly love to find that out. But as long as our wealthy can trick our people to go die while doing their bidding, then we will never really find that out. Socrates once said that "The unexamined life is not worth living." People have debated for centuries what he meant by that. They don't know, you see, because after saying that line he chose to drink hemlock and end his life, rather than to live it in a way he did not choose. Quite a ballsy call!
You see, Socrates was a bit uncompromising when it came to his philosophy. He felt that people needed to examine their lives and make any changes necessary to make their lives more fulfilling. He shared these thoughts publicly, and would debate people on many topics. Oftentimes these debates would illuminate peoples actions in a negative light, and the people of Greece hated him for it. They also hated that two of his start pupils went on to start revolts trying to overthrow the government. He was taken to court on two charges and was found guilty. The charges were impiety against the state-sanctioned gods and corrupting the youth. Although no one knows for sure, which was the more serious charge, one of Socrates' three accusers was a politician whose son had had a relationship with Socrates. Little of what remains of what Socrates said at his trial had to do with the corruption of youth charge. Instead, the arguments that are recorded focus on the charge of impiety. Needless to say, Socrates is found guilty. Both he and his accusers are asked to propose a punishment for the jury to vote on. The accusers state that they would like the death penalty. Socrates counters by asking the jury for free meals in the Prytaneum, the public dining hall. The jury voted for death and Socrates, at the age of 70, got the hemlock. One author, Doug Linder, said that "The trial of Socrates was the most interesting suicide that the world has ever seen." To me, and I am no scholar now, it seems that Socrates treated his entire trial as a farce. In fact, he seems to be a martyr for free speech.An unexamined life, for Socrates, was a life with little or no principles. In other words Socrates decided for himself what truly was worth dying for. He viewed his life's mission as saving the souls of the Athenian by pointing them in the direction of an examined, ethical life. He then told the jury that "he would rather be put to death than give up his soul saving. By being so bold, the jury seems to have felt that the only way to stop Socrates from lecturing about the moral weaknesses of the Athenians was by killing him. So, to bring it back to today. Would you be a follower of Socrates if he was around today? It's really hard to tell. Socrates wasn't an angel either. Times were different then and so was the moral code. Going strictly on whether or not I think about my actions, and there impact on others before I do them, I would say yes, I do. Do I try not to lie, steal or hurt others? Yes, I believe in peace over power and that my actions should not do harm to others or their property. But to me, examining my life has to go much further than that. Am I happy? Am I taking the steps necessary to lead to my own happiness? Am I doing right by my children? Am I allowing my morals to falter due to the culture I am living in? Am I taking care of my body to the best of my abilities? All of these questions also have to be answered in my opinion. Also, where does my personal philosophy fail me? If I am unhappy more than I am happy, then likely I have a weakness in my philosophy. Here, I am not talking about the sadness I feel from time to time due to the death of my wife, I am talking about a deeper, longer lasting sense of sadness. Thankfully, I do not suffer from that one any longer. If you, or someone you know, does suffer from that type of feeling, then you need to examine the rules you personally live by and see what it is that you are doing that is conflicting with your moral (ie. personal philosophy). Usually, I find, it is not your personal philosophy that needs changing, but the actions you are taking. In the end, Socrates was certainly a brave old goat. Where would you draw the line between your personal beliefs and what you are asked to do? And I mean that both categorically and metaphorically. Answer those questions and you are well on your way to a happy examined life. Places to see, things to do, all within two hours of home! Yesterday, I took a vacation day and had a great time! My daughters and I spent the day visiting museums located within a short distance from our house. Originally, we were going to visit the Polar Caves and Squam Lake Science center in the White Mountains. The radio kept warning about the threat of thunder storms in the Boston area, though, so we changed our plans at the last second so that we instead would visit indoor attractions. While it ended up not raining for the entire day (figures...weathermen are rarely right!), we still had a great time, and I'm glad that we went where we did! Our first stop, after picking up one of Maddie's friends on the way was the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, New Hampshire. The Center was made up of two floors of exhibits and a planetarium. We started our visit at the planetarium since its first show of the day, "The Magic Tree House", was designed for younger children. The show was filled with basic information about space and was just right for Ashleigh. The show kept her attention the entire time, and the underlying story helped to keep the information flowing smoothly. Maddie and her friend also seemed to enjoy the show. Afterwards, we walked through the Center's two floors of exhibits. They had a full-size jet fighter on display as well as a replica Gemini space capsule. There were a number of hands-on exhibits including a simulator allowing you to fly the space shuttle, and another that let you try your hand at landing the Apollo 11 lunar lander. Other stations were designed to help explain gravity, mass, and propulsion. Overall, we had a great time, although I think Ashleigh enjoyed the exhibits more than the rest of us. She really liked playing with all of the hands on exhibits. She even tried on a fighter pilot's helmet, which quickly slipped down over her eyes and made for a funny picture. We next drove about an hour to the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum in Warner, New Hampshire. We stopped along the way and ate a leisurely lunch at a country kitchen and then drove on to the museum. I think my Mom and I enjoyed the museum more than the girls did. We opted for the guided tour and the tour guide was extremely knowledgeable. Ashleigh was tired, though, and needed to go out to the car for a rest, while Maddie and her friend found that the tour was too slow moving for their taste. About half way through the tour, I was the only one left with the tour from my family so I too left and ran to catch up with the rest of them. Outside of the museum, they had a tepee set up and a nature trail. The girls had a better time on the grounds than they did inside the museum. After about a half an hour of walking around the grounds, we left for our final destination for the day. Our final stop was at the Hood Art Museum in Hanover. The museum is attached to Dartmouth College and is free to get in...you can't beat that! This was Ashleigh's first visit to an art museum and it was funny to see her reaction. It was easy to tell what she liked and didn't like. She didn't seem to be a big fan of modern art. At one point, she said "I do better than that!". After looking at what she was pointing to, I must say that I agreed. Most of her favorites were outdoor scenes similar to the one behind us in the picture. They even had a painting of Mt. Monadnock! One of my favorites was a relief from the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud. The relief was carved nearly 3,000 years ago! The amount of detail was incredible. Just looking at this piece from a distance doesn't do it justice. When you get up close you can see small details that the artist added that just make you say wow. The toe nails for instance, actually look like toenails! I expected that they would be little square blocks on the end of each toe, but they weren't. They had curvature to them and depth. Where the toe nail attached to the foot, the artist had even chiseled a little deeper to make it look like the nail was actually going under the skin. It was amazing! So lifelike, and yet one of the men is portrayed with wings! Why? what was the artist trying to symbolize with those wings? I'll be the first one to tell you that I am poor at picking up symbolism in art. Even so, I wonder if anyone really can tell us what is going on here. I love history, and I like to look at art. When I can combine the two, it's even better. If anyone can give me a reasonable explanation of why the artist put wings on this guy, please leave me a comment. Inquiring minds would like to know! . In all, I think we all had a great day! We got home around 10:00 at night after grabbing dinner out and dropping Maddie's friend off at her house. Ever hear of H.L. Mencken? I didn't think so. Mencken was a news paper reporter back in the 1920s who was known for his sharp tongue. Two of my favorite quotes are below"
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable." " The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." I think those quotes speak for themselves. Remember, Mencken wrote in the 20's, 30's and 40's. Even so, he nailed today's politics perfectly. Some things never change! Could you imagine a main stream reporter writing like that now? Nowadays, people get their panties in a bunch if someone even slightly disagrees with them. In fact, I think its comical when people cringe when someone says something that is even a little bit off color. A couple of times I have been asked if I thought something I said offended anyone. I always respond no, and then ask loudly if anyone around me was offended by what I had just said. No one has ever said they were. We have free speech in this country people. I may not like everything you have to say, but I really don't care if you say it. Mencken felt strongly about free speech too. His thought on it is below: "My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious" Was Mencken perfect? Of course not. He had his silly ideas and beliefs as well. What I have to admire, however, is that he wrote daily for nearly fifty years! Imagine having the ability to write something interesting every day...for fifty years. Wow! I would have to think that some of that stuff just wasn't worth reading. Even so, people read it, because they were never sure when something he wrote would be pure gold. A lot of what this man wrote was great so it was well worth reading his bad I would think. Anyway, I have prattled on enough for one day. Who knows, maybe Mencken was thinking about an article similar to this one when he wrote the quote below. "The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal." Nuf Said! |
Archives
September 2021
Categories
All
|