1920s and 30s America, When We Were Censored and Prohibited For Our Own Safety

"The first week of December 1933 will go down in history for two repeals, that of Prohibition and that of the legal compulsion for squeamishness in literature. It is not inconceivable that these two have been closely interlinked in the recent past, and that sex repressions found vent in intemperance. At any rate, we may now imbibe freely of the contents of bottles and forthright books. It may well be that in the future the repeal of the sex taboo in letters will prove to be of greater importance. Perhaps the intolerance which closed our distilleries was the intolerance which decreed that basic human functions had to be treated in books in a furtive, leering, roundabout manner. Happily, both of these have now been repudiated." (Morris L. Ernst, New York, December, 11, 1933 on Judge John Woolsey's decision to lift the U.S. ban upon James Joyce's Ulysses)

Why You Should Read Lolita Before Traveling In the U.S.A.: American Travelers Are Lolita, and The TSA Is Humbert Humbert

In 1955 Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian emigre to the United States, published Lolita, a tale of a linguistically and aesthetically talented pedophile who runs off with his 12 year old step daughter, "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta" (first lines of Lolita).

Lolita was not published in the U.S. until 1958 due to its pornographic subject matter. Nabokov intensely hated cruelty to others and sexual deviants. So why did he write a book from the viewpoint of the pedophile, Humbert Humbert, who has conned several generations of readers and academics with the beautiful account of his love and "protection" of a 12 year old girl?

Nabokov hated evil. He had escaped the Bolsheviks in Russia, then later, escaped the Nazis with his wife of Jewish descent and their young son. They arrived in America and fell in love with it. Nabokov's wife, Vera, promptly purchased a gun to replace the one she had left behind in Europe, and learned to drive.

Nabokov, a seemingly absent-minded butterfly-chasing professor with an innocence about him that relied upon his wife's ferocity and protection liked to look at things from a very detailed and scientific perspective. He hated evil and studied it, dissected it, and understood its minutest detail. He climbed into the mind of evil when he wrote Lolita, shocking readers and enchanting millions with the beauty of his language.

Lolita was a triumph and proved how easily a population can be tricked into accepting evil, calling it beautiful, spending entire lifetimes studying its details without ever getting to its ultimate meaning. Anyone can tear apart an engine, or dissect a body and name the parts and figure out how they operate, but most cannot figure out the ultimate meaning -- why was this human body created, what is its purpose? How does one get into the mind of the creator via the act of dissection and cataloguing of the parts? It is impossible if one has no love or passion driving them. Creators and inventors generally have more love and passion which compels them to work harder and longer at something, creating a thing that changes the world for better.

Most inventions and creations were initially designed for the betterment of mankind or to add beauty or freedom. But many inventions are corrupted and used for evil purposes. The written word was made to better the world, but evil tries to corrupt it. The same goes for all art. We see technology abused, being used to make life harder rather than easier. Even Lolita, meant to show us evil from its own perspective, has been corrupted and adopted as a wonderful and dreamy tale by many gullible girls and joking young men, none of whom are aware that they have been artfully conned and that Nabokov proves his case of how evil survives and is accepted into the world.

Nabokov, the great enchanter and magician deceives many with his artistic slight of hand, keeping our focus upon the aesthetic, causing us to accept Humbert Humbert's defence because it is merely art and has no ultimate meaning or moral. If art is only aesthetic, then beauty has no meaning, thus what is the point of creating it?

Nabokov, a talented lepidopterist, studied butterflies and moths and was fascinated by their beauty. These creatures are patterned in ways that attract and enchant us, but also hide them from evil. Some butterflies blend in with their surroundings while others mimic dangerous animals to avoid being eaten. Nabokov learned that a butterfly's patterning is not merely aesthetic, but also enhances its survival. And this is what art's purpose is. Art is not merely aesthetic, but driven by truth and survival. If we cannot learn from art how to be wiser, better, kinder, and more graceful to others; to have pity, then art has no purpose, much as a shiny car has no meaning or purpose without an engine. A car is nice to look at, but without an engine it gets us nowhere.

The reason I expound upon Nabokov's Lolita and art is that more than ever America is deceived by the Humbert Humberts who claim they love us and want to protect us, while molesting us in various ways. We are made to pass through Naked Body Scanners, which undress us and expose us to dangerous mutagenic radiation. We are searched and groped by TSA officials as we travel the country, much as Lolita was groped by Humbert Humbert along the highways and byways of America. The stories now include "enhanced" searches that have left many feeling sexually violated after having had their penises, anuses, labia, and breasts felt by TSA screeners.

Now, does Humbert's love for Lolita feel nice and beautiful? Sure, he attacked the pornographic movie maker that ran off with Lolita, because that kind of art is immoral and degrading; but what of Humbert's protective and fatherly love for her? More than ever Nabokov's Lolita is important, for we all are her.

Was Lolita clean and innocent as the wind-driven snow? Was she faultless? No. But was that any excuse for Humbert Humbert to molest her? Was Lolita a kind and sweet child? No. She was obnoxious and sometimes crude. Was she more deserving of Humbert's sexual predation because of this? No. Americans are like this 12 year old girl and even though we are annoying and obnoxious and immoral it does not mean that we deserve to be treated by our states, by our fellows that work at TSA, as criminals in need of being stripped down or molested as we travel. Humbert Humbert protected Lolita as much as our airports are protecting us.

This is not beautiful, this is not America. This isn't even Nazi Germany. This is worse. This is worse for numerous reasons. Firstly, it's far worse and more abusive passing through United States airport security than in the rest of the world. America is supposed to be less abusive than the rest of the world. Second, the atrocities of the Nazis and American eugenicists and corporations in the first part of the 20th century are not so far removed from memory that we have forgotten them and what they looked like -- and what is going on in the United States right now resembles these past times.

The TSA's arrogance is only a small, yet extremely visible HINT as to what period of history we have regressed to. If a Naked Body Scanner, a long line in which one is divested of their possessions and shoes, hurried along, and subjected to physical searches which involve humble and silent endurance while one's anal and sexual reproduction areas are touched by uniformed employees of the government before being boarded upon crowded vehicles traveling somewhere doesn't wake us up and cause deja vu; then far worse than what happened in Nazi-controlled areas of Europe awaits us.

Rather than humbly lining up like the Jews, believing they'd eventually return home, we should stop cowering in embarrassment and start saying to hell with the "law," which breaks every law written into our soul. American travelers aren't terrorists and neither are visitors from other countries. The terrorists are the ones that apply for TSA jobs, and willingly carry out the orders of their superiors. If TSA employees were intelligent Americans they'd go on strike until they no longer were made to mistreat their fellow Americans. The terrorists are the ones groping for your wallet and now, your genitals. Soon, the women and children will be divided from the men, then the children from the women as enhanced airport security. It's already happening on an individual level. What next? Confiscation of Passport and Citizenship? Child sacrifice? When will their appetite be filled?

Wake up, America. Don't let the lives lost of the millions of Jews and others be for nothing. It's time to wake up out of our self-righteous and false morals. We are imperfect, we are obnoxious, we are all sinners, and we're not afraid of it. The Nazis were afraid of sin and imperfection and tried to hide it and eradicate it. We don't have to fall for that lie.

America wasn't founded as a utopia away from imperfection, but a place that would toughen up and accept it. That First Amendment isn't for the perfect or the safe people, but to protect the imperfect and those that speak unsafe things even if they are the truth and offend others. Our entire Constitution was designed to protect the so-called "impure," the "unsafe," the "sinful," the obnoxious, the rude, and the human. If the Constitution was only for the perfect and the moral, then our Founding Fathers would not have had any rights.

According, to Britain the American Revolutionaries were a bunch of terrorists, criminals, and tax evaders. And, according to our side of history they were brave, courageous, educated lovers of freedom. It all depends on who is writing history as to what the words "terrorist," "art," "pedophile," and "free" mean. We want to be on the right side of history. The trick is figuring out what the "right" side is. Usually, it's the side that is willing to break the law to show pity and hospitality to others when they are traveling in an inhospitable world.

America, this is not ancient Sodom where travelers were subjected to rape when visiting that town. Why are we forcing ourselves upon travelers? How does it protect us to treat citizens and visitors to this country this way? We are not Nazis, not Humbert Humbert, not Sodomites -- are we?

image: George Washington, Commander of the Terrorist Americans who threatened Britain's safety and health, also known as The Father Of Our Country, The United States Of America.

A Guide To Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody

Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody is like a piece of great literature and needs to be "read" like one. This means that the viewer needs to have an ability to make connections with other literature and with their heart. If the reader is able only to make superficial connections they will come away with the impression that there is no ultimate meaning to life at the end of the movie.

Back in my university days it was very common for the students to forget that "Every great writer is a great deceiver" as well as a "storyteller, teacher, enchanter--but [that] it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer" (Vladimir Nabokov "How to be a Good Reader or Kindness to Authors").

And thus, I had to sit through many a class while my fellow students destroyed literature with their ignorance and cruelty. The youngest and most beautiful girls would swoon at Nabokov and Wallace Stevens and say it was so beautiful and wonderful, drooling sick and sugary syrup from their mouths, but never understanding exactly why the literature was beautiful. I once, heard a beautiful girl, accustomed to being thought intelligent in high school, tell the professor that she loved T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland because it was dreamy and had mermaids.

And then, there is the intellectual student. These are the ones with dour faces and black-rimmed glasses and mouths that know big words. These never understand anything and all great literature is nihilistic and nothing to them. They drone on, explaining why the literature was great -- because it means nothing and has no meaning (actually, they're too blind to know meaning when they run into it). These go on to power positions in politics or universities where they attempt steal the joy and meaning of learning and living from the rest of us.

These two types of "readers," the sugary girls and the educated idiots are bad readers and will not understand Mr. Nobody, but will shape nearly all opinion about it.

"the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense"(Vladimir Nabokov "Kindness to Authors").

Here are a few connections I've noticed upon completing a first viewing. There must be much more:

Literature:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe
Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov
The Odyssey by Homer
Bible

Movies:
Groundhog Day with Bill Murry
It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart
The Matrix with Keanu Reeves
Dead Man with Johnny Depp
The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland

Symbolism:
Water
Muses
Trains
Tunnels
Colors

And ultimately, these connections to the wider universe are only road markers, pointing us to the meaning of Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, which is about the most important connection of all.

Mr. Nobody, Jaco Van Dormael's Sublime Universe

In the year 2092 Nemo Nobody is 118 years old and the last mortal human. A journalist asks Nemo what life was like back when humans were mortal and Nemo replies:

"There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful."

I haven't enjoyed a movie as much as Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody in years. It's like Vladimir Nabokov on screen. Brilliant, provoking, intelligent, playful, beautiful, pitiful, awful and awesome -- Sublime.

Tolkien, Tobacco, Censorship, and Liberty

I recently received a very nice hard back edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a gift. I last read this work when I was 13 years old and have wanted to read it since the film versions came out, but never got around to it.

I like to do a little research upon an author following a reading of them. It is helpful to understand a little of the private interests and passions of an author to understand why they care so much about their literary creations, and work so hard upon them.

I found it interesting that Wikipedia's biography of J.R.R. Tolkien had to use a picture of him from 1916 in military uniform, when he was an unknown and only 24 years old. The only other picture of him on the Wikipedia bio was of Tolkien in 1911, when he was 19.

The probable reason that Wikipedia could not, or would not use a more appropriate picture of J.R.R. Tolkien, one that showed him during the time he became known to the world outside of the University of Oxford for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is because there aren't many close-up photos of him without a tobacco pipe in or near his mouth.

Usually, a Wikipedia entry displays, or should display the first defining photo as the one that shows the person as they are most known and recognized by the world, not as they looked in childhood or as a teen. The childhood photos, should be relegated to the section pertaining to childhood. If the bio is describing Bette Davis or some movie star known for her good looks, the defining picture should be one that shows her at her peak, not one that shows her as an old hag. A picture of the youthful Albert Einstein would not be the defining image the world has. It would look out of place and odd when we all know he had unkempt white hair. Perhaps, Einstein carried his pipe a bit lower than Tolkien which allowed for the illusion that he was a tobacco-free thinker.

J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892 and died in 1973, which means he lived to be 81 years old. If he hadn't smoked he would've lived forever and The Lord of the Rings would look quite different (although, in the literary world one's creation is considered to make one immortal). I wonder if writing about Hobbits smoking tobacco qualifies as 2nd or 3rd hand smoke? And why does he look so much happier with the pipe than without it? He's probably glad he's not stuck on a piece of our modern PhrankenPharma nicotine gum.

Unlike the film version, which depicts the victorious Hobbits returning to their peaceful and untouched home in the Shire, the book shows an entirely different picture. Tolkien shows that the last battle is the one closest to home.

In the final chapters of the book, the Hobbits; Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry return home to the Shire after having gone to Hell and back, saving the earth from the dark evil of Sauron by tossing the Ring of power into the depths, forever cutting Sauron off.

The Hobbits return home to find gates across the roads, Rules which dictate the lives of the Shire; preventing the inhabitants from lighting fires, freely travelling, sharing food or home with strangers; and that beer and tobacco are no longer allowed for use amongst the common folk, being reserved only for the few who lord over them. Anyone that breaks a rule or speaks up is confined in the Lockholes by the Shirriffs who enforce the Rules.

There is general poverty amongst the people and the land. The homes have been burned down and ugly row houses line the road where once beautiful trees grew. The gardens have gone to weed, and the new mill belches out dirt that pollutes the river and air. The wizard, Saruman, has decided to set up a monopoly over the lives of the Shire Hobbits, which began innocently enough with a prohibition upon beer, but escalated to every aspect of life.

Merry wonders "What's the matter with this place?" ("The Scouring of the Shire," The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien).

One of the native Hobbits explains: "We grows a lot of food, but we don't rightly know what becomes of it. It's all these 'gatherers' and 'sharers', I reckon, going round and counting and measuring and taking off to storage. They do more gathering than sharing, and we never see most of the stuff again" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"[O]n every wall there was a notice and a list of Rules. Pippin tore them down. There was no beer and very little food, but with what the travellers brought and shared out they had a fair meal; and Pippin broke Rule 4 by putting most of next day's allowance of wood on the fire.
"'Well now, what about a smoke, while you tell us what has been happening in the Shire?' he said.
"'There isn't no pipe-weed now,' said Hob; 'at least only for the Chief's men. All the stocks seem to have gone.....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"'No welcome, no beer, no smoke, and lots of rules....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"'There's hundreds of Shirriffs all told, and they want more, with all these new rules'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

Sounds a bit like my town and the rest of the country. The bigger the jails, the larger the police force the more criminals are invented. In the United States of America one is lucky if they have never been arrested or jailed. At least, 1 out of every 25 people is jailed in their lifetime, far exceeding Russia or China.

Many good people are sitting in our jails and prisons at this moment, some for traffic or parking tickets. In a jail not far from me sits a grandfather who loves his grandchildren and became their guardian when the children's mother (his daughter) became a neglectful drug addict. He protested Social Services constant and intrusive visits to his house to make sure he was taking care of the children and was arrested for standing up for his rights and family. He committed no crime other than doing the right thing and for telling Social Services to stop coming to his house.

"'So things went from bad to worse. There wasn't no smoke left, save for the Men; and the Chief didn't hold with beer, save for his Men, and closed all the inns; and everything except for Rules got shorter and shorter, unless one could hide a bit of one's own when the ruffians went round gathering stuff up 'for fair distribution': which meant they got it and we didn't....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

The four Hobbits, returned from battles, set about "raising the Shire," and waking the inhabitants from their sleep and powerless condition. They route out Saruman's thugs, although not without some loss of life. The Shire was ready to overthrow the Rules and those that forced them to live in a world "fair" only to the greedy. When we hear the words "fair" and "unfair" we need to ask what exactly is meant by these words, for most often they are employed by mean misfits of society.

After freeing the captives from the Lockholes, Frodo is appointed Deputy Mayor until the Mayor is properly recovered from his time in prison. Frodo promptly lays off the majority of Rule enforcement:

"The only thing that he did as Deputy Mayor was to reduce the Shirriffs to their proper functions and numbers" ("The Grey Havens," The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien).

Not only did the Hobbits save the earth from Sauron, an equivalent to our Satan, but they introduced Middle-Earth to tobacco smoking. The Prologue of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings details a bit of the history of this "art" in the section entitled "Concerning Pipe-weed":

"There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed, or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or 'art' as the Hobbits preferred to call it....

"And certainly it was from Bree that the art of smoking the genuine weed spread in recent centuries among Dwarves and such other folk, Rangers, Wizards, or wanderers, as still passed to and fro through that ancient road-meeting. The home and centre of the art is thus to be found in the old inn of Bree, The Prancing Pony....

"Hobbits first put it into pipes. Not even the Wizards first thought of that before we did. Though one Wizard that I knew took up the art long ago, and became as skilful in it as in all other things that he put his mind to."

How much longer before this book is banned for its universal message of liberty and of overcoming evil? How much longer before it is censored and conveniently forgotten, along with so many other great works of literature? Will our children and grandchildren find this book, complete and as its author wrote it? Already, its author's image is being censored, in a way typical of Soviet Russia, when it commonly erased images of those no longer politically correct. And pipe-weed is nearly banned in favor of Saruman's Phake Pharma Nicotine monopoly of patches, gums, lozenges, inhalers, and other patented "therapies" for those that enjoy life too much.

images: J.R.R. Tolkien

Tips For Defending America From Corporatism

Here is my list of ways to DO something to prevent the complete pharmaceutical and chemical monopoly that is currently being instituted in the United States of America in an attempt to make the country the new home of IG Farbenindustries which attempted a takeover of Europe with the help of Hitler and the people of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s:

*Watch the documentary film Food, Inc.

*Read History. Go to Dr. Rath's Health Foundation site and read the historic books and documents posted there, especially those pertaining to IG Farben. Then, ask yourself, objectively, do you see any eery similarities to our time? Have we been experimenting upon silent minorities and outcasts of society--prison inmates, alcoholics, children of unwed/poor mothers, the military, veterans, tobacco users, the elderly, illegal immigrants, etc. Do you care, or are these human "burdens" useful only as guinea pigs?

*Splurge One Meal A Week Or More On Grass-fed, Locally Raised Meat, Poultry, and Dairy. Each time you buy this food you are increasing demand, supporting a smaller, non monopoly person like yourself who cares about the community and puts money back into it. Grass fed, and free-range meat is happy meat, and humanely butchered. After watching Food, Inc. you will see how beautiful happy meat is, and you'll be glad to know that the steak or ground beef you're eating had a good life for you.

After watching Food, Inc. you will also feel proud of buying grass-fed and local because you are supporting FREE SPEECH! That's right, the one or two corporations that own nearly all of the patented corn and soybeans in the U.S. go after the farmers who dare to speak up, destroying their lives with military-like midnight raids, and lawsuits.

Buying local free-range inhibits the abusive employment of Mexican illegals who are shipped in to work the large corporate plants that process our meat, and pick our produce because they have no voice. These corporate operations don't want American citizens working these jobs because we have rights and can speak up without fear of deportation, changing the system, not working under abusive and inhumane conditions. Buy local, save American dignity, force Mexico and the corporations to clean up their act. Make a local farmer or rancher rich!

*Forget Your Political Or Religious Preferences. You may find that you have a lot in common with a "liberal" or a "conservative" person. If you dislike tobacco smoke but find that a tobacco smoker or group is working against corporate controls of the country or community, put your bias aside and love them as human. The objective is not to agree on much, except that you each are fighting for the right NOT to agree or be alike. The objective is to stand up for people's God-given right to NOT agree with each other.
If you are a Christian judge an individual of another religion separately from that religion.

If you are Black, White, or Hispanic judge each individual of other colors or backgrounds individually. Discriminating is not bad. Wine tasters are said to be "discriminating" in their taste. Discriminate based upon the individual, never the color, neighborhood, educational status, etc. Remember, the corporations want us to be separated, not to mix, to believe stereotypes, never be friends, because then we can be used against each other.

*Stop Keeping Up With The Joneses. No one likes them anyway.

*Never Vote For More Law Enforcement Or Bigger Jails, Or For School Bonds no matter how legitimate the reasoning behind their desires appears. The public school system is a monopoly and gets billions of our money. Let them whine. We do without all the time. We're not stopping them from making a budget or cutting the salaries of the overpaid bureaucrats. Small business owners do without to make payroll, so can the public school system. And the bigger the jail, the more police enforcement the more arrests for petty offenses, the more helpless the citizenry. We each have, arms, legs, and brains. If you see a crime, stop it!

*Don't Believe The Doctor Is A God. You don't know everything and neither do they. They know what you know and wear white coats and are allowed to cut people with fancy knives. The doctor is often a high-paid drug dealer and nothing more. Some are good, but usually as mystified about what ails a patient as the patient is. A doctor is useful in the way an auto mechanic is useful--for repairing broken bones, pipes, hearts/motors and such, but not much more.

Afraid of appearing like a nature nut and appearing "alternative" with dred locks and sandals? Stop worrying and change the stereotype. If you must go into the local food co-op to buy the local goat cheese and granola, so be it. Let everyone know who you are and what you're doing and why. Go shopping where you haven't before, let the business know there's a new kind of customer on the horizon.

*Support legal marijuana even if you don't believe in using it. Why? Because when marijuana is legalized it drives the state crazy because they stop receiving federal funding. Less federal funding means more freedom in all aspects of life. I only recently figured this out, and am now a supporter of legalized marijuana. Not to mention, if we allow the current corporate monopoly control of our governments we all may have to smoke it to ease our pain and poverty.

*Fight Tobacco Control And Codex Alimintarius. Summer's warming up. The pharma-backed anti-tobacco movements power up in summer because no one cares and doesn't show up for the meetings. Summer is when they implement all action.

*Fight Tobacco Bans. Why should you fight tobacco control? Go read up on pellagra and niacin and nicotinic receptors. The pharma monopoly wants our access to niacin through supplements and food cut dramatically. You think those pictures of lung cancer look bad, look at the photos of pellagra, which is associated with a corn-fed diet. And we are corn-fed people. You may need a cigarette, cigar, or pipe when you're done finding out the strange truth about how important niacin/nicotinic acid and tobacco are. Ask yourself is it really withdrawal when one quits tobacco, or is it deficiency of nicotinic acid? Is a tobacco ban really Pharma monopoly and control of our access to nicotinic acid? Yes. There is nothing moral or healthy about smoking bans.

*Join Toast Masters. This group of diverse people will help in a fun way to teach public speaking and in mastery of one's self even when nervous.

*Use the Written Word. All of the great pamphleteers of the past have written, usually anonymously. There is a growing movement against anonymity, claims that it is dishonest and a sign of fear in the author. This is a lie. Anonymous authors are difficult to catch and shut up. Daniel Defoe wrote anonymously and when found out he was put in the stocks. The citizens had loved what he wrote and showered him in flowers instead of refuse while he was displayed in the stocks. America's founding fathers wrote anonymously, as well as a few brave souls during IG Farben/Hitler's reign.

*Beware the Temptation to Join Mass Movements. Throughout history these mass groups of people have been used for bad purposes, thinking it was for good. A mass of people are easy to herd, easy to use, easy to blame, easy to catch. Mass movements distract from the real issues and solutions. If the individuals in mass movements would disperse back to their homes and towns and act there they would accomplish more and be more of a threat to corporate monopoly. A mass movement is a flood.

*Be A Spark. A raindrop cannot drown the land, but a spark can set a fire. A pebble dropped in the pond sends out wider and wider waves. Go be a spark at your local church potluck, shock a few people. Go sit down at the local bar and talk to the person next to you. The great movers and shakers of history have gone amongst the people living and working in the community, getting to know them, showing them they care. Every single day, be interested and interesting to those around you.

*Be Not Be Consumed With Hate. You lose and the enemy wins if one becomes bitter. Love is not wimpy and spineless. Let the love of freedom and mankind fuel all work, not hate. Love works harder than hate. Love is tougher and more resilient than hate. Love and compassion look really good when combating evil, which always pretends it acts in love; but tries to create emotional, hateful, frustrated outbursts from those it seeks to paint as "terrorists."

*Be Creative and Keep A Sense of Humor. Give those prudes funded by Pharmaceutical grants the other cheek, the full moon.

*Support the Local Rebellious Business Owner. Are they breaking the tobacco ban or other ban? Have they been fined by the local Pharma/Health Department? Go patronize them even if you'd rather stay home and aren't allowed to smoke indoors. If you don't drink, buy a couple drinks for someone else and tip the bartender. Conversely, was there a bar or business owner who supported the tobacco ban, and mysteriously happened to come across enough money for a high class renovation while campaigning for a smoke-free environment? Boycott that business and tell everyone why. Make new friends if your friends snub you for not joining them in patronizing that business.

*Support An Indian Casino, Hotel, or Tobacco Manufacturer. If we're not allowed to do these things off the reservation, then we need to show that off-reservation bans increase business on them. Show the State what they're losing. Indian tobacco manufacturers represent that smaller, more accountable, local, less monopoly business. Big Business doesn't mean corporate/state monopoly. It means success and quality. Also, the Tobacco Settlement gag order on defending tobacco doesn't apply to First Peoples. Their voice may defend those off the reservation and income derived from those off the reservation. If we belatedly defend the First People's rights, not by pushing for federal welfare, but by encouraging and requesting tobacco, grass-fed meat, non-patented produce, and so forth, we will boost their economy (which the State is afraid of) and preserve important sources of nicotinic acid which are primarily supplied by good meat and tobacco.

*Recharge. We are not machines. Go fishing, take a walk, work in the garden, stare at clouds, play the guitar, find a lover, eat a pleasurable food, build something, have a barbecue, read a work of fiction, enjoy silence. These are moments of being human and often when wonderful and unexpected knowledge is gained. It's not wrong, it's not lazy to enjoy life and have pleasures.

*Buckle Down And Remember Freedom Is MORE Important Than Money. There is no money without freedom. Freedom is not freedom if the rights of certain groups are trampled upon for the despotic "rights" of another group. Freedom is not free. It's priceless. The only monopoly America should strive for is a monopoly of liberty for all. Slavery to the State and to "Health Care" is not liberty or freedom to be born, live, or die as one chooses.

Albert Jay Nock's Word To The Remnants

"Isaiah's Job" by Albert Jay Nock, The Atlantic Monthly, 1936:

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: "I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?"

An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe. Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind can not possibly know everything, and I was pretty sure he had not had my opportunities for observing the masses of mankind, and that therefore I probably knew them better than he did. So I mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the idea out of his head at once; he would find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less for himself, since in such circumstances the popular favourite is generally some Barabbas. I even went so far as to say (he is a Jew) that his idea seemed to show that he was not very well up on his own native literature. He smiled at my jest, and asked what I meant by it; and I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah.

It occurred to me then that this story is much worth recalling just now when so many wise men and soothsayers appear to be burdened with a message to the masses. Dr. Townsend has a message, Father Coughlin has one, Mr. Upton Sinclair, Mr. Lippmann, Mr. Chase and the planned economy brethren, Mr. Tugwell and the New Dealers, Mr. Smith and Liberty Leaguers – the list is endless. I can not remember a time when so many energumens were so variously proclaiming the Word to the multitude and telling them what they must do to be saved. This being so, it occurred to me, as I say, that the story of Isaiah might have something in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness is overpast. I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech, since it has to be pieced out from various sources; and inasmuch as respectable scholars have thought fit to put out a whole new version of the Bible in the American vernacular, I shall take shelter behind them, if need be, against the charge of dealing irreverently with the Sacred Scriptures.

The prophet's career began at the end of King Uzziah's reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however – like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington – where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.

In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are." He said, "Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."


Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job – in fact, he had asked for it – but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so – if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start – was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

II

Apparently, then, if the Lord’s word is good for anything – I do not offer any opinion about that, – the only element in Judean society that was particularly worth bothering about was the Remnant. Isaiah seems finally to have got it through his head that this was the case; that nothing was to be expected from the masses, but that if anything substantial were ever to be done in Judea, the Remnant would have to do it. This is a very striking and suggestive idea; but before going on to explore it, we need to be quite clear about our terms. What do we mean by the masses, and what by the Remnant?

As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, labouring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.

The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man – be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper – gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. The mass-woman also gets off badly, as sharing all the mass-man’s untoward qualities, and contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible. The list of luxury-products that she patronized is interesting; it calls to mind the women’s page of a Sunday newspaper in 1928, or the display set forth in one of our professedly "smart" periodicals. In another place, Isaiah even recalls the affectations that we used to know by the name "flapper gait" and the "debutante slouch." It may be fair to discount Isaiah’s vivacity a little for prophetic fervour; after all, since his real job was not to convert the masses but to brace and reassure the Remnant, he probably felt that he might lay it on indiscriminately and as thick as he liked – in fact, that he was expected to do so. But even so, the Judean mass-man must have been a most objectionable individual, and the mass-woman utterly odious.


If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord’s word at its face value (as I hear is the case), we may observe that Isaiah’s testimony to the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority. Plato lived into the administration of Eubulus, when Athens was at the peak of its jazz-and-paper era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah’s fervency, even comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts. Curiously, too, he applies Isaiah’s own word remnant to the worthier portion of Athenian society; "there is but a very small remnant," he says, of those who possess a saving force of intellect and force of character – too small, preciously as to Judea, to be of any avail against the ignorant and vicious preponderance of the masses.

But Isaiah was a preacher and Plato a philosopher; and we tend to regard preachers and philosophers rather as passive observers of the drama of life than as active participants. Hence in a matter of this kind their judgment might be suspected of being a little uncompromising, a little acrid, or as the French say, saugrenu. We may therefore bring forward another witness who was preeminently a man of affairs, and whose judgment can not lie under this suspicion. Marcus Aurelius was ruler of the greatest of empires, and in that capacity he not only had the Roman mass-man under observation, but he had him on his hands twenty-four hours a day for eighteen years. What he did not know about him was not worth knowing and what he thought of him is abundantly attested on almost every page of the little book of jottings which he scribbled offhand from day to day, and which he meant for no eye but his own ever to see.

This view of the masses is the one that we find prevailing at large among the ancient authorities whose writings have come down to us. In the eighteenth century, however, certain European philosophers spread the notion that the mass-man, in his natural state, is not at all the kind of person that earlier authorities made him out to be, but on the contrary, that he is a worthy object of interest. His untowardness is the effect of environment, an effect for which "society" is somehow responsible. If only his environment permitted him to live according to his lights, he would undoubtedly show himself to be quite a fellow; and the best way to secure a more favourable environment for him would be to let him arrange it for himself. The French Revolution acted powerfully as a springboard for this idea, projecting its influence in all directions throughout Europe.


On this side of the ocean a whole new continent stood ready for a large-scale experiment with this theory. It afforded every conceivable resource whereby the masses might develop a civilization made in their own likeness and after their own image. There was no force of tradition to disturb them in their preponderance, or to check them in a thoroughgoing disparagement of the Remnant. Immense natural wealth, unquestioned predominance, virtual isolation, freedom from external interference and the fear of it, and, finally, a century and a half of time – such are the advantages which the mass-man has had in bringing forth a civilization which should set the earlier preachers and philosophers at naught in their belief that nothing substantial can be expected from the masses, but only from the Remnant.

His success is unimpressive. On the evidence so far presented one must say, I think, that the mass-man’s conception of what life has to offer, and his choice of what to ask from life, seem now to be pretty well what they were in the times of Isaiah and Plato; and so too seem the catastrophic social conflicts and convulsions in which his views of life and his demands on life involve him. I do not wish to dwell on this, however, but merely to observe that the monstrously inflated importance of the masses has apparently put all thought of a possible mission to the Remnant out of the modern prophet’s head. This is obviously quite as it should be, provided that the earlier preachers and philosophers were actually wrong, and that all final hope of the human race is actually centred in the masses. If, on the other hand, it should turn out that the Lord and Isaiah and Plato and Marcus Aurelius were right in their estimate of the relative social value of the masses and the Remnant, the case is somewhat different. Moreover, since with everything in their favour the masses have so far given such an extremely discouraging account of themselves, it would seem that the question at issue between these two bodies of opinion might most profitably be reopened.

III

But without following up this suggestion, I wish only, as I said, to remark the fact that as things now stand Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest. This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic monster described by Plato, and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave, trying obsequiously to placate it and win its favour, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises, trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they think might strike its fancy.


The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.

Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.

If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. The prophet of the American masses must aim consciously at the lowest common denominator of intellect, taste and character among 120,000,000 people; and this is a distressing task. The prophet of the Remnant, on the contrary, is in the enviable position of Papa Haydn in the household of Prince Esterhazy. All Haydn had to do was keep forking out the very best music he knew how to produce, knowing it would be understood and appreciated by those for whom he produced it, and caring not a button what anyone else thought of it; and that makes a good job.


In a sense, nevertheless, as I have said, it is not a rewarding job. If you can tough the fancy of the masses, and have the sagacity to keep always one jump ahead of their vagaries and vacillations, you can get good returns in money from serving the masses, and good returns also in a mouth-to-ear type of notoriety:

Digito monstrari et dicier, Hic est!

We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.

It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the Remnant is no doubt a good job, it is not an especially interesting job because it is as a rule so poorly paid. I have my doubts about this. There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety, and some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive. Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of research student in the sciences is said to be; and the job of looking after the Remnant seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be as interesting as any that can be found in the world.

IV

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those – dead sure, as our phrase is – but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

The fascination and the despair of the historian, as he looks back upon Isaiah's Jewry, upon Plato's Athens, or upon Rome of the Antonines, is the hope of discovering and laying bare the "substratum of right-thinking and well-doing" which he knows must have existed somewhere in those societies because no kind of collective life can possibly go on without it. He finds tantalizing intimations of it here and there in many places, as in the Greek Anthology, in the scrapbook of Aulus Gellius, in the poems of Ausonius, and in the brief and touching tribute, Bene merenti, bestowed upon the unknown occupants of Roman tombs. But these are vague and fragmentary; they lead him nowhere in his search for some kind of measure on this substratum, but merely testify to what he already knew a priori – that the substratum did somewhere exist. Where it was, how substantial it was, what its power of self-assertion and resistance was – of all this they tell him nothing.

Similarly, when the historian of two thousand years hence, or two hundred years, looks over the available testimony to the quality of our civilization and tries to get any kind of clear, competent evidence concerning the substratum of right-thinking and well-doing which he knows must have been here, he will have a devil of a time finding it. When he has assembled all he can and has made even a minimum allowance for speciousness, vagueness, and confusion of motive, he will sadly acknowledge that his net result is simply nothing. A Remnant were here, building a substratum like coral insects; so much he knows, but he will find nothing to put him on the track of who and where and how many they were and what their work was like.

Concerning all this, too, the prophet of the present knows precisely as much and as little as the historian of the future; and that, I repeat, is what makes his job seem to me so profoundly interesting. One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of a prophet's attempt – the only attempt of the kind on the record, I believe – to count up the Remnant. Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job. He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat. The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him the True Faith could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to; "and as for your figures on the Remnant," He said, "I don't mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are."

At that time, probably the population of Israel could not run to much more than a million or so; and a Remnant of seven thousand out of a million is a highly encouraging percentage for any prophet. With seven thousand of the boys on his side, there was no great reason for Elijah to feel lonesome; and incidentally, that would be something for the modern prophet of the Remnant to think of when he has a touch of the blues. But the main point is that if Elijah the Prophet could not make a closer guess on the number of the Remnant than he made when he missed it by seven thousand, anyone else who tackled the problem would only waste his time.

The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get their attention. If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical material for publication on the side of "human interest." If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale, nor entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers. All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid down for the prophet of the masses; it is, and must be, part of the great general technique of getting the mass-man's ear – or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H. L. Mencken, puts it, the technique of boob-bumping. The prophet of the Remnant is not bound to this technique. He may be quite sure that the Remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious aids; and not only so, but if they find him employing any such aids, as I said, it is ten to one that they will smell a rat in them and will sheer off.

The certainty that the Remnant will find him, however, leaves the prophet as much in the dark as ever, as helpless as ever in the matter of putting any estimate of any kind upon the Remnant; for, as appears in the case of Elijah, he remains ignorant of who they are that have found him or where they are or how many. They did not write in and tell him about it, after the manner of those who admire the vedettes of Hollywood, nor yet do they seek him out and attach themselves to his person. They are not that kind. They take his message much as drivers take the directions on a roadside signboard – that is, with very little thought about the signboard, beyond being gratefully glad that it happened to be there, but with every thought about the directions.

This impersonal attitude of the Remnant wonderfully enhances the interest of the imaginative prophet's job. Once in a while, just about often enough to keep his intellectual curiosity in good working order, he will quite accidentally come upon some distinct reflection of his own message in an unsuspected quarter. This enables him to entertain himself in his leisure moments with agreeable speculations about the course his message may have taken in reaching that particular quarter, and about what came of it after it got there. Most interesting of all are those instances, if one could only run them down (but one may always speculate about them), where the recipient himself no longer knows where nor when nor from whom he got the message – or even where, as sometimes happens, he has forgotten that he got it anywhere and imagines that it is all a self-sprung idea of his own.

Such instances as these are probably not infrequent, for, without presuming to enroll ourselves among the Remnant, we can all no doubt remember having found ourselves suddenly under the influence of an idea, the source of which we cannot possibly identify. "It came to us afterward," as we say; that is, we are aware of it only after it has shot up full-grown in our minds, leaving us quite ignorant of how and when and by what agency it was planted there and left to germinate. It seems highly probable that the prophet's message often takes some such course with the Remnant.

If, for example, you are a writer or a speaker or a preacher, you put forth an idea which lodges in the Unbewußtsein of a casual member of the Remnant and sticks fast there. For some time it is inert; then it begins to fret and fester until presently it invades the man's conscious mind and, as one might say, corrupts it. Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how he came by the idea in the first instance, and even perhaps thinks he has invented it; and in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the pressure of that idea will make him do.

For these reasons it appears to me that Isaiah’s job is not only good but also extremely interesting; and especially so at the present time when nobody is doing it. If I were young and had the notion of embarking in the prophetical line, I would certainly take up this branch of the business; and therefore I have no hesitation about recommending it as a career for anyone in that position. It offers an open field, with no competition; our civilization so completely neglects and disallows the Remnant that anyone going in with an eye single to their service might pretty well count on getting all the trade there is.

Even assuming that there is some social salvage to be screened out of the masses, even assuming that the testimony of history to their social value is a little too sweeping, that it depresses hopelessness a little too far, one must yet perceive, I think, that the masses have prophets enough and to spare. Even admitting that in the teeth of history that hope of the human race may not be quite exclusively centred in the Remnant, one must perceive that they have social value enough to entitle them to some measure of prophetic encouragement and consolation, and that our civilization allows them none whatever. Every prophetic voice is addressed to the masses, and to them alone; the voice of the pulpit, the voice of education, the voice of politics, of literature, drama, journalism – all these are directed towards the masses exclusively, and they marshal the masses in the way that they are going.

One might suggest, therefore, that aspiring prophetical talent may well turn to another field. Sat patriae Priamoque datum – whatever obligation of the kind may be due the masses is already monstrously overpaid. So long as the masses are taking up the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun, their images, and following the star of their god Buncombe, they will have no lack of prophets to point the way that leadeth to the More Abundant Life; and hence a few of those who feel the prophetic afflatus might do better to apply themselves to serving the Remnant. It is a good job, an interesting job, much more interesting than serving the masses; and moreover it is the only job in our whole civilization, as far as I know, that offers a virgin field.

Why We Fight

I have been reading The American Revolution, Writings from the War of Independence, selected by John Rhodehamel, part of Penguin Putnam's Library of America collection.

The selections alternate between British and American writings by various authors. Many of the writings are journal entries and record the constant ups and downs of those for and against independence. After hundreds of pages of battle, starving, travel, and exposure to the elements; we suddenly come upon Sarah Wister, a very young woman living at Gwynedd, Pennsylvania (not far from Valley Forge), excited that her home is to quarter General Smallwood of the Contintental Army.

Sarah Wister's little heart goes pit a pat with all of the brave young company filling her home, and she falls in love with a handsome young Major Stodard of Maryland, who "has the softest voice never pronounces the R at all." As she closes her diary the first night of blushing excitement she says, "adieu I am going to my chamber to dream I suppose of bayonets and swords, sashes, guns, and epaulets."

And Major Stodard, his weary soul filled with hospitality, food, peace, and beauty goes to sleep to dream of pretty Sarah Wister who represents life, liberty, and happiness. She put on her best dress for this young soldier, and he put up his best fight for her.

And not far from Sarah Wister, is Albigence Waldo a surgeon with the Continental Army, who is ill, and homesick for his wife and children in Connecticut, who write to him that they have no money or food, and wish he would come home to take care of them. Albigence has no money, he eats a paste of water and flour, and breathes the smoke of the campfires every day while in Winter Quarters at Valley Forge. He writes on Christmas Day, 1777:

"We avoid Piddling Pills, Powders, Bolus's Linctus's Cordials and all such insignificant matters whose Powers are Only render'd important by causing the Patient to vomit up his money instead of his disease."

But a couple days earlier, December 23, he records, "This evening an excellent Player on the Violin in that soft kind of Musick, which is so finely adapted to stirr up the tender Passions, while he was playing in the next Tent to mine, these kind of soft Airs it immediately called up remembrance of all the endearing expressions, the Tender Sentiments....

"....and filled me with these tender emotions, and Agreeable Reflections, which cannot be described, and which in spite of my Philosophy forced out the sympathetic tear. I wish'd to have the Musick Cease, and yet dreaded its ceasing, least I should loose sight of these dear Ideas, which gave me pain and pleasure at the same instant."

This is why beauty and art cannot be neglected, ever. They are not mere entertainments and diversions, but lifters of the soul, healers, keys that open doors of sweet remembrance. Although it may be against the "philosophy" of many brave and war-torn souls, there are acceptable and quiet moments when a cleansing is required so that peace can be regained, and morning made to shine sweeter. How many dirty, sick, and starving soldiers were replenished and washed with memory of home, love, and warm tables by that unnamed violinist? How many remembered what it felt like to be human, and that this is why we fight--for our natural desire to live as humans, not drudges?

"The Man who has seen misery knows best how to enjoy good" (Albigence Waldo, Valley Forge, Dec. 1777).

image: Renior, Woman Playing Guitar

Motive For Metaphor

"You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning...."(The Motive For Metaphor, Wallace Stevens)

In my opinion, there are two motives for metaphor. One reason is to imbue a taste of the aesthetic sublime into one's art in order to elevate another's awareness of sense, of how something felt (be it horrid or wonderful), and to enrich meaning beyond the ordinary of realism.

But the other motive for metaphor is as highly important, for it serves its purpose during times of repression and regression. When dictators, despots, and social movements control even the air one breathes; it is metaphor that serves as a kind of secret code or underground for the few who are able to understand. This is why certain types of art and creativity are feared by repressive governments. They are always afraid of the hidden message within the art and of how it may encourage and inspire its audience.

Most choose not to see the metaphor, but those who do, live in an even more real world. A world more harsh, more beautiful, more intricate and unexplainable to those who only see the surface.

Metaphor shows one that there is more than the rote "A B C of being" (Stevens). When we can see beyond those symbols we see that often words repeated by our society are like cripples "among the leaves," and "without meaning."

"....The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound -
Steel against intimation - the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X" (Motive For Metaphor)

image: David and Goliath, Caravaggio

Is The Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

The past week I have been reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Stacy Schiff's Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), and Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind. I have not finished Solzhenitsyn. I was overwhelmed by the interrogation techniques used by the Russians due to the fact that many of these are being used by the local law enforcement upon my fellows. Sometimes, the truth is too dark and breathtaking when it removes the shiny curtain of imagined freedom to reveal the very evil one thinks cannot possibly exist in their own community.

Interestingly, these three books go together quite well and I cannot help but think that it was ordained by some greater will that they should have been brought together for my pleasure. Schiff's Vera shows us how to overcome evil, slipping through like water in the hand of Russian and German hatred; and live quietly, yet brightly in the persistent pursuit of one's love. If I could rename Schiff's Vera it would be And Then She Typed, Then She Transcribed, Then She Took Dictation, Then She Translated. Vera was not written how I would have written her, but it sure makes one think about typewriters, vehicles, and words, drive and fingers.

Nasar's biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. tied the trio together nicely. Nash makes a perfect metaphor for our current society and how it has become sick with schizophrenia. Everything that Nash suffered as an individual schizophrenic describes modern culture, except there is no sanitarium for the masses, and there won't be a Nobel Prize.

And now, I'm looking into propaganda, which is fairly dry when one has learned most of this information from reading good literature. Great writers expose their readers to the world of lies, truth, and ways of thinking critically. A great reader doesn't always believe the narrator if they know what's good for them.

Here is a quote on how propagandists play with numbers:

"'2 out of 5 fatal automobile accidents was due to drinking. 33% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had been drinking. 24% of the pedestrians involved in fatal accidents had been drinking. Therefore, alcohol intoxication is a major cause of automobile accidents and drunk driving must be dealt with harshly'

That logic sounds impressive, but it's completely wrong. Consider the reverse logic:

'3 out of 5 fatal automobile accidents did not involve drinking. 67% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had not been drinking. And 76% of the pedestrians involved in accidents had not been drinking. Therefore, sobriety is undoubtedly the major cause of fatal automobile accidents, and sober driving must be outlawed immediately, and punished harshly'" ("Propaganda and Debating Techniques," A. Orange).

I don't know if we should be bandying those sober numbers about. A mother of a child who died at the hands of a sober driver may get ideas and form M.A.S.S. (Mothers Against Sober Sinners). We are at such a precarious point in our schizophrenic world that people would actually support banning sober drivers.

This is why we need to stop feeding our emotions and listening to those nasty adverts featuring the sobbing wife of a drunk husband who killed a father of a small and darling child with his car. It's pure emotion designed to pass a law which will eventually lead to another law and another until everyone is a criminal, and made to pay penance for farting and belching, or simply looking odd while driving.

I wish that those, especially the women, convicted of DUI and put through the illegal and humiliating treatment at the local gulag would put out an advert exposing the inhumane treatment they were subjected to.

The Original Gold Second

"We speak of one thing being like some other thing when what we are really craving to do is to describe something that is like nothing on earth" (Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister)

Like. But isn't. Not exact, not the thing itself. Like.

How does one explain, give the meaning, not a mere semblance of the meaning? This is the ache and the yearning, the chain of being a human on earth. It's as if; like being a prisoner bolted to a cell with a heavy chain that allows one to get near the key, get near the door, nearly touch it....but not quite.

"Certain mind pictures have become so adulterated by the concept of 'time' that we have come to believe in the actual existence of a permanently moving bright fissure (the point of perception) between our retrospective eternity which we cannot recall and the prospective one which we cannot know. We are not really able to measure time because no gold second is kept in a case in Paris but, quite frankly, do you not imagine a length of several hours more exactly than a length of several miles?" (Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister)

There is no "gold second" to measure, although we do measure time with those adulterated "mind pictures." Somehow, we forget the meaning and imagery used to make meaning, which due to our forgetfulness look adulterated, unfamiliar. Because these pictures appear foreign to our present we say they are of another time. Why this is, I cannot tell.

When we read Shakespeare we must pull out our history and dictionary to understand what his meaning is....because the images, the likenesses have become adulterated. Would a gold second fade and disappear this way? Is it the gold second, the meanings that have faded, or is it us? Did someone drop the gold second and did the janitor sweep it under the display case? Are we reading backwards?

If time is moving forwards and our meaning, our images are only copies of other things; like something else that came before, then the future is only a copy of a copy of a copy, and so on. We are like wine that has been watered down, stretched out, and made clear.

Where is that original cask of wine, that golden first, and how good must it have been to have lasted all this while, after all of these adulterations?