Family...what a thing...Which Writer of Greatness Wrote Most Poignantly of them?

Reflecting about family. It is a snow day, which may be incidental to my reflections. I have a cold. Again, perhaps not related.

Families.

We all have them whether we know them or not.

We all have one. Or many.

Our human family traces many climes and {break, 1/28/2015}

Again, trying to wrap these up... Oldies and unfinished.

Till now!

So: what else? 

We are in 2021! Ach, nein! The pandemic is full upon us!

Oh, this pandemic color... 

Why not more purple? Sure! Dast is zer gut! 

 

Way back in 2015 my idea was that I was going to drum up a few names of famous (or infamous)  writers and authors that wrote about their families in the most poignant or touching way[s].

 

C.S. Lewis wrote fondly of his wife, about whom he met later in life. And, she also ended up dying young, which made for very touching prose and reflections.

 

Isabel Allende. Speaking of dying, (not trying to be glib), but she dedicated a whole book to the sad, noble, humbling, painful, instructive, death of her daughter. Paula.

 

Paul Theroux: He has written the nearer to end of the life (as an older guy: he has written many books before age 6) book Motherland, which I read. It is largely autobiographical, but he has taken a lot of license for creativity as well. I had read about his family in his writings before, but this one gets into a lot of things that provoke thoughts and provide some insight and comparison or psychological ruminations, that makes one think of ourselves and others in perhaps new or reminiscing nostalgia, revisiting factors that we had forgotten or not considered in such ways.

Kafka, the Franz kind. From Prague, Czechia (as known now, 2020s). A very entertaining and gifted, perhaps prescient writer. Known to be paranoid or unhinged mentally, he wrote for himself, apparently, and not for many others, the millions these generations that read him still today. He wanted all his writings destroyed; he died at an early age, but luckily his friend retained his works and eventually they were published. Perhaps there was a profit motive involved? He writes a very long, scathing letter to his father in this anthology of his works that I purchased at a good price, a paperback.  Does that count for poignant? Perhaps Kafka was off on a irrational rant, but it is very heart felt and full of pathos.

Well, there have to be more family related books, articles, and reports of great authors who write about their family (plus the not so "great" writers): in the vast and ever-growing realm of printed prose and poetry (hello Amanda Gorman of Presidential Inauguration fame!), but I wish to end it here and potentially get some feedback on those who have other opinions and feedback about family related insights and recordings over the years. There have to be many memoirs and journals, like I can now think of Donny Osmond writing a memoir at age 40 that struck me as very interesting. Celebrities are definitely people, too, and Donny had very interesting things to share. I became aware of his anxiety order, which I wished to share with family that have suffered with different mental issues and problems...

There: the last two authors with mental problems, how is that?

Many greats ones have had them and do, neuroses or psychoses, so that is part of the family insights and sharing, the good, the bad, and the poignant.

 

Blogged it, but wanting more...

 

 

 

 

The Edges of Infinity

The Edges of Infinity

I once read a book in college in the 1990s called Infinite in All Directions by Freeman Dyson, a relatively accomplished cosmologist who describes the intricasy and idiosyncrasies of the universe in a pretty interesting way.

While I do not remember a ton of the specific information that he imparts in the book, I came away more enlightened about the cosmos and physics. Before and since I have always been a student and fan of geography [stopped there]

 

Another old one to finish off and publish over five years later...

 

I was going places with this. Drafted 1/24/2015, I guess. 

Infinity is easy to express, mathematically or verbally, but really hard to fathom.

So much of us as people and animals is finite, limited.

But the thoughts and proofs of infinity are here, out there.

We are but specks, in many senses.

5 years. 50 years. 500 years. 5,000 years.

50,000 years. 500, 000 thousand years.

5 million years.

50 million years.

500 million years.

I should stop there. That is a lot.

Does time go on eternally? We guess so. Do we? We hope so.

But now, we live for the here and now.

Or the things within our life times: Our memories, our belongings, our money accounts, our families, communities, nations, books, words, music, foods...

Fifty years ago I was born. Half a century comes and goes. I watched a basketball game with Oscar Robertson yesterday, broadcast from March of 1970. My mom was about to become or was pregnant with me then. The Big O was playing for the Cincinnati Royals; before he joined a tall player named Lou Alcindor with the Milwaukee Lakers. Two teams that have both gone to California since, now in Sacramento and L.A.

 

I also watched part of a Ken Burns documentary of baseball, when the Giants of New York City (Manhattan) and the Dodgers of Brooklyn left for California, in 1956 and 1957. Things change, many of us re-locate to California.

 

And then come back.

 

Come back to Earth.

 

Back back to our solar system, or the galaxy.

 

A guy at work takes interstellar or cosmic pictures, frames them and gives them to others, maybe sells a few. Pictures of stars or constellations, some of which came from a million years ago.

 

500 years ago were in the 1500s when William Shakespeare was in the creation, and would become the best of all time, according to Harold Bloom, who passed away in 2019 at age 80,  and early in life (around the 1940s?) became a precocious and prodigious reader, and later a Yale literature guru and critic, and when he died I checked out five of his books and read a lot of them, not all of them, and got a feel for his takes and feels, where the Bard of Avon, or whatever we call Billy Shakes affectionately, was the ultimate, or paragon of high culture, haute couture, or the best of whatever the human thinker has crafted as poetry, art, thought.

 

500 years ago the Bard was helping cement England and the English culture, economy, presence as the elite of the elites. It lead to the United States, which brings us full circle. The first to alight upon the nearby moon. The forgers of rockets and missiles.

 

One could argue that if we put more rocket science and money into interplanetary exploration and development than weapons of awful destruction that we could or would be much further now. Perhaps Mars instead of bombs being dropped all over the Middle East and elsewhere. Nuclear powered submarines with their own payloads of Weapons of Mass Destruction (more nukes!) traversing our greats reservoirs of oceans, heating up and letting the ice glaciers melt from Greenland and Antarctica.

 

Yeah, we got this.

 

5,000 years ago was closer to Noah than Abraham, according to the Holy Bible. That is a lot of human history ago. 5 millennia ago predates most of India, certainly Siddhartha Gautama, and most of ancient China and Egypt, all those emperors and pharaohs and their tombs and crypts, sarcophagi, if you will.

5,000 years ago, people were shorter, lived longer, perhaps did not speak as many languages. Maybe all that was before the Tower of Babel, found in present day Iraq south of Baghdad. I have a buddy from Babil Province. Nice guy. Small world. Finite.

 

50,000 years ago us humans were not as human as we would think, maybe. Words were harder to come by: maybe signs and grunts were more the norm. Cro-magnon or neanderthal, we ("we") were probably leaner and meaner, could run faster, or certainly climb better. 48,000 B.C. Where would you check? South central Africa, the Harappan Valley of Pakistan, or the Yellow River of China? Maybe parts of Mesoamerica, or down in Peru? Us hominids were wandering around a few places, perhaps. Maybe not Australia, but then again check the skeletal records....

500, 000 years ago. I forget if this counts as Cenozoic, pre-Cambrian, or whatever the scientific community says it was. We must have been more like apes, or whatever the version of us was. Mammals, those that drink milk, have hair, a four chambered heart, and another thing: live births instead of eggs. We were never snakes or reptiles, right? No, we were meant be more like God, for sure. Mammalian.

5,000,000 (million) years ago. The earth was a crazy place that had some forms of life? I think the solar system was as it is now, give or take. Because the planets and our sun go back a few billion, they calculate. 5 million years is pretty small potatoes for the ages of our local celestial orbs. More water back then, maybe? More sea life than above ground, right?

50,000,000 years ago. Oh, that is stretching the brain. Before or after other dinosaurs?

500,000,000 million years ago. Wow. There was life, I believe. Right? Fossils indicate plants and animals? That is the carbon-based oil we burn up today?

5 billion years ago: our local sun, the smaller-medium star, formed. Give or take a billion years. Somehow planets cropped up around it. And then the moons?

Yeah, 50 billion years is a long, long time, really hard to conceptualize.

Almost infinite, with so many zeros to go.

When I brought up Freeman Dyson five (short) years ago, I think that I was thinking about more space and geography than time. But, they kind of work together. Space ends up being about time -- the distance between all things.

Thanks Freeman, and BYU Honors class. Stephen Hawking: you're next. I own the book, A Brief History of Time.

Isn't it all about time? Yes, it's about time.

Blog it.

2015 does not seem as long ago. Now. What is now? Now is now then... Or then, then?

 

 

Marines and Jews, a Select Few [DRAFT] Last dated 1-20-2015

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1/20/15

Marines and Jews: A Select Few

The world has its share of select peoples; two groups worth contemplating, and in this case even comparing are a couple that think highly of themselves: the Jewish people and the US Marines. Let me add that this author thinks highly of them in many ways as well, hence this article.

Why? Well, upon further review, both populations make some bold claims and try to accomplish their purposes as they see fit. In that sense, they are like... Well, maybe they are alike, at least in some ways.

Over five years later (Bastille Day, July 2020) I still know the gist, approximately, of what I wanted to share.

I think since then, when my oldest child was 13 years-old, I have learned more about both U.S. Marines and Jewish people; back then as a 44 year-old I had a good understanding, but now it is more knowledgeable or mature.

Maybe I should number my points to wrap this up better. Five and half years should be enough time to summarize these ideas...

1. Jewish people have been the Chosen Ones of the Covenant of God for thousands of years. According to their beliefs and doctrines, they need to be Godly examples of the Torah, the holy writ of God, to be the followers and executors of the Commandments of the One True God. They are largely responsible for the Old Testament of the Bible that a couple of billion of Christians still believe in, and the 1.5 billion Muslim world also has origins from.

1a. Marines---

 

NO, IT IS PUBLISHED!

 

See below:

 

https://clinchitsoonerorlater.blogspot.com/2015/01/marines-and-jews-select-few.html

Marines and Jews: A Select Few

Marines and Jews: A Select Few

The world has its share of select peoples; two groups worth contemplating, and in this case even comparing are a couple that think highly of themselves: the Jewish people and the US Marines. Let me add that this author thinks highly of them in many ways as well, hence this article.

Why? Well, upon further review, both populations make some bold claims and try to accomplish their purposes as they see fit. In that sense, they are like [...]

 

BREAK: This has been my oldest unpublished blog post from Jan. 20, 2015. Perhaps last updated then, maybe even started in 2014...

 

5 years ago! I still have some good ideas on how I wanted to put this together, comparing the Jewish people, the few, the proud, with the Marines of the United State military: the few, the proud.

The avaunt guard of their kind, in a way. In many ways, which I will not address so much here, now.

But, I think I want to wrap it up sooner and publish.

I know that most or many of my original ideas are lost in the atmosphere of 2015, my brain and thoughts of me, the 44 year-old, the first year of not having my mom around.

I did learn more about the Marines in the amazingly sad but true book, recently The Frozen Hours, by Jeff Shaara.

The Chosin Reservoir region of North Korea in the late fall of 1950 became a terrible places of death and misery, for a mix of  U.S. army, as Shaara does not capitalize it, and the Marines, who he does. Shaara seems to favor the Marines in this account, by and large, which many people do.

Ned Almond was the villain, as was General Douglas McArthur, for unwittingly or pompously putting so many troops in harm's way, of both the deadly elements of the mountains in November and December and the hordes of Chinese soldiers, who fared much worse.

Jewish people and practitioners are at the vanguard of their beliefs and ways to serving God, and have been doing so for thousands of years. Is King David at 1,000 B.C. a good place to frame the Jewish story? Others would trace back further to the Israelites of Pharoah's Egypt, brought there by Joseph, son of Jacob, Israel, and from Isaac and Abraham. 

However, the people of Judah, for me, become entrenched as they more or less are today as the people of this one particular Israelite tribe, not Ephraim nor Manasseh nor Reuben or the others. 

Judah. Maybe that is too fight a fit for the descendants of Judaism. Us Christians and Muslims and non-believers certainly have our say about things.

Descendants of Abraham, almost the grand majority of the West. Sort of.

But the Jewish people are select, more select than the greater tribes and lines of Abraham. 

Like our devil dog Marines.

May they both ever be featured in the vanguard, and move on with boldness and esteem.

Hail and honor to both unique traditions.

Glory and respect, despite the hatred and calumnies over the centuries.

There, I said a few things, five years later. Better late than never, happy to be around to finally deliver it.

We assume that we will live for another day, another year, another decade. I want to live till 2076; or so I have told myself and others. That would be our nation's 300th anniversary. Tricentennial.

I would be quite old. I have only met two or three centenarians.

 

What else?

 

I took my daughter last school year, rather, at the end of 2019 (pre-pandemic), to a synagogue in Harrisonburg, Virginia. It was a Friday night Sabbath service in a good-sized temple, there was not a big gathering but we has a good time. I felt like there was a good spirit of love, respect, or I might posit that the spirit and presence of God was there, and my daughter and I enjoyed ourselves. The worshipers were friendly before, during, and after the service. We had nice food and treats after the main sermons and ceremony.

The few, the proud, the dedicated, the friendly. Outliers, in many ways, but inside of who we are as people.

The fighters for freedoms and dignity, which in my experience, has been many positive interactions with both groups.

Blogged it...

 Sex and Violence: Or, the other Way Around

    Life and art run close together. Both involve a lot of the two things that get so much attention, ratings, criticism, and money in movies and television and sometimes music, which are forces that either drive some, or in so many ways affect us all: sex and violence, or in the reverse order. Sometimes they are not together, but they often come as as duo. Some people avoid both most of their lives, which is a goal of some religious or otherwise pure or simple people. They are able to avoid violence through pacifism and good fortune and perhaps avoid sexual relations through the will of celibacy, or perhaps innocently going through life without it. Then there are the majority of us.

   Art through the ages reflect all of these factors. Sometimes life imitates art, but I find it is usually the other way around. Art catches up with reality, much of the time.

   I have studied some of the history of film, a bit formally and more informally (like the majority of us), which accompanies television, the theatre, and music and a few other arts. The arts are often lucrative, and the bottom line to the masses, what subject matter that they pay to see, is violence and sex. It is portrayed in our video games, too, lest I not recognize that huge growing medium. Life and art merge into our own hands, hearts, eyes, and souls. Some, a great deal that is still profitable, does not include explicit sex or violence, but we know that too much of it, in my opinion, does.

   Why, what, how, where?

   The taboo and the forbidden are titillating and stimulating for national reasons. Freud would certainly tell us this, even though his interpretations and analyses may be very skewed. Ah, yes, all the German thinkers. Since Nietzsche and Faust and before... Heidegger, Hegel, and the others like Kant and Weber, and maybe Hecht. Brecht and other artists and social scientists and mad scientists, including those of the wars and movements. Deutschland, Deutschland, Deutschland...

 

   All cultures and societies have their relationships with the taboo and verboten, where it is more acceptable to some than others. Where some religions, institutions, and groups and individuals try their collective best to combat smut in the forms of indecency through the forms of sexual messaging and gore, all of it gratuitous or beyond the pale of worth, there are many people and industries exploiting sexual images and practices, and violence and gore, or a combination of the two (salacious films, for example, even to the extreme of snuff films) to exploit their subjects and pruriently tease or tease out the traffic of millions. It is like second hand prostitution, or sex trafficking, or bounty hunting and mercenary work for profit rather than the cause: the worst of us humans. Exploiters and human graft opportunists.

People can argue that governments and other institutions, even hospitals, religions, schools and academies, law enforcement agencies and courts, otherwise normally considered paragons of virtue, are also corrupted and bent towards corruption and suppression of populations for control over sexual mores and methods of their own violence and manipulation and coercion of people for its own interests.

That is a story for another day.

For now, be aware that your/our artistic tastes and drives and consumption habits feed all of the above.

What is in your entertainment wallet?

Are we parts of the problem, or the solution, or are we mere lifeless dummies tossed to and fro in the rivers of filth and surging undercurrents, battering and bruising and killing the life as it goes towards the oceans of the future?

Should we put up damns and river borders, in this analogy flood controls and erosion bulwarks, to ease the flow of sex and violence?

Makes sense to me.

Control. Moderation. Virtue.

Celebrate the decent.

Hank Aaron Did It. Why Can't More of Us?

Hammerin' Hank just passed away. He was 86 years old. A very good life by all accounts. He was a hero to many people for multiple reasons. For some it was the fact that he surpassed Babe Ruth in the all time record of career home runs, and that is the main reason we give him so much attention. But he was bigger than that; he was humble, strong, decent, persistent, kind, and could play the game of baseball in a way that few ever could. 

 

He was consistently good at that sport, which made him great. But he was more than a ball player. He was a decent and great human being.

 

All the way through, good to good, consistently so, like his baseball career. He was perfectly good and consistent, decent and strong.

He dealt with huge vitriol for being black (Black, African-American, Negro), and he withstood so much despite American racism and racists of the past, and even till the present.

Way to go, Hank.

You have done us all very well, your family, your fans, your communities of outreach, your fellow Americans and people the world over.

Barry Bonds gets a few asterisks next to you. He surpassed you in numbers of dingers, but not in class nor impact. Barry was known for being a cantankerous jerk as well as a cheat. Ty Cobb has amazing numbers, too, but he was a known bully and mini-tyrant.

I wish more of us could be so consistently, persistently, good and decent, like Mr. Aaron.

This is more than color of skin or race or ethnic background.

This is being a good, and yes in Aaron's case, great, human being.

 State Capitals and their Capitols

    I have been in and around a few state capitol buildings. This 2021 inauguration we are looking at a few, or all of them, as they represent the democracy and organized governments that we cherish in the United States. After the attack and siege of the federal Capitol building less than two weeks ago (January 6), there are thousands of state troops ready and already deployed to these grounds to protect from the threat of continued trespass and violence.

A review for me:

Alabama. I have spent little time in the state overall; I have never been to Montgomery except driving down beside it on the freeway to get off the interstate and arrive in the Florida panhandle, leading up to New Year's, December of 2019. We looked to the east and saw the city, with daylight moving to the west with the setting sun. Lots of U.S. Civil Rights history there. Good sized town, or city.

 

Alaska.  Juneau is not the biggest city of this small populated state, but it is much further south than Anchorage or Fairbanks, which must help with sunlight and temperature. Travel from other parts out of state, too, should be closer. I was going to visit Alaska last spring, 2020, before our plans were cancelled due to the pandemic.

Arizona. I have been to Phoenix a couple times, but mostly in the suburbs. I have not seen their capitol building up close, but I have gazed at the downtown area while driving by. 2002, 2005...

 

California. I have been to near downtown Sacramento, and to the suburbs with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Temple. 1997, 2007-8. I do not recall going up to the capitol of our most populous state or looking at it. I have lived in California eight years of my life, and I have visited the state many other times.

Colorado. I have spent a little time in downtown Denver, I have driven through the city a few times, but I have not recalled looking at the capitol building of this fast growing state.

Connecticut. I have driven through Hartford, as recently as 2017; I may have seen the downtown area and maybe I saw their state capitol building.

Delaware. I have spent a couple of Thanksgivings outside of Dover. Once coming home, or maybe once going out to the beach, or both, we drove around the capitol building. This is a small town and feels like it. I remember the state capitol building felt more to me like a county courthouse.

Florida. I have driven by Tallahassee a few times, but I do not remember much of seeing into the city, since the downtown is removed from the interstate and the north side where I have passed.

 

Georgia. Huge capital city, like Phoenix, or Sacramento. But bigger. I drove through this burgeoning city as a teen, and spent some time there in the suburbs professionally, driving through the downtown area once, seeing CNN and a few media outlets, but I cannot recall the capitol building there.

Hawaii. I was able to visit Honolulu in 2002. We briefly rented a car and I drove some of downtown, but I do not recall seeing the capitol building.

 

Idaho. I was able to drive by Boise in 1994, and I not remember seeing the capitol building. I do recall seeing the Latter-day Saint Temple.

 

Illinois. The capital is the smaller town Springfield. I have never been there.

 

Indiana. I grew up miles from downtown Indy; usually we would go to the west side of the city for the airport. We would go to the city sometimes as tourists and consumers. I think I have been around the capitol building, a bit north of the central Circle Drive.

 

Iowa.

 

Kansas. 

Kentucky.

Louisiana.

Maine.

Maryland.

Massachusetts.

Michigan.