Ghosts We Think We See

quote

Ghosts we think we see

The mind also tends to impute consciousness to inanimate objects (ever yell at a balky computer?). This leads us to believe that natural phenomena are "purposeful, caused by agents with sentient minds," says Hood, whose book "The Supernatural Sense" is due next year. It's only a short step to thinking that " 'things that go bump in the night' are the result of some spirit or agent," not branches brushing against your drainpipe.
The Ghosts We Think We See
Normal brain functions, such as seeing patterns, make us more likely to believe in the supernatural.
By Sharon Begley
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 3:17 PM ET Oct 27, 2007


http://www.newsweek.com/id/62337/output/print

unquote

I had a lot of different thoughts for the post (missed last nite...at dentist) but when I read on line news tonight there was this story...and it is deadon to what I was talking about in the Haunted Mind posts.

It doesn't extrapolate, as I did, into how this effects how we percieve stories though, and I think that's important. But read together with those earlier posts, or just Hawthorne's Haunted Mind!, is worth...reading!!

But to call it a "sense" the book author Hood has taken it futher than I did...I was being cautious...as if it's a sense...what is it sensing!!??

Halloween is on...I dont watch these usually...but it's midnight almost...and it's Halloween...hoo hoo hoohoo hoo.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 31, 2007

Cyber Bullying

pic if postcard for sale from here:
http://www.cardcow.com/45612/dont-tread-on-me-patriotic/

Webizens who have posted over the years to newsgroups and such, are familiar with the "vandals" I call them...other web creatures fooling around and tagging posts with graffiti like things. It's very annoying, and the only groups I post to have sysops that keep a tight reign on things.





So I'm familiar with what I've learned is called "cyber bullying", though I thought such things were limited to text posting.





But now with YouTube, and other video supporting sites, the vandals have found another way to annoy.





What happened to me in the Chocolate Incident was cyber bullying. The vandal was using the cell phone video in hopes of provoking me, and then clipping something humorous for YouTube, or their circle.





No one likes to be bullied, in any fashion. The reaction to it pins ones thoughts, and the circumstances of this incident, though everyone elses emphasis seems to be on the chocolate!, has created a little mental whirlpool trap.





I'm cooling off, and in a day or two wont trouble with it.





But in the realm of the young the bullying is out of control...one state in Australia has banned YouTube for just this reason.





All the carefull laws constraining the media, who before were the only ones with the technology to record video and broadcast, cant come to bear on the kids doing this...one, they're ignorant of the media laws, and two...they dont care!





It's a new kind of "spray" in a new kind of "can" but it's the same old tagging and graffiti!





The gangs often recruit from the ranks of taggers...tagging being done by the very young...and the flaunting of authority so easily accomplished with a spray can gives them a start on the "attitude'' and posturing.





I suppose the rebelliousness, which at it's worst is criminal, is in some response to the fashion in which our established cultural norms "tag" us. From birth we are pretty much classified as any new fish species!





And I was thinking of this tagging today...the bears get tagged when they cause trouble...and each incident adds a tag.





People do the same to people, run afoul of the law, or just traffic accidents, and you get tagged and noted. Too many tags and you get locked up for good, or have a very high insurance rate!





In response to all this, the kids tag back...it was explained in a tattoo story that people tattoo themselves to sorta say this is my skin and I'll wear on it my story.."I'm my own species.".





It's an odd mishmash, and I'm not explaining it well...





Something everyone is familiar with in the work place is the verbal warnings-- written warnings-- pink slip--you're gone, sequence. Employers with troublesome employees have to ease them out in steps to satisfy State regulation. Oh, some offenses warrant immediate dismissal, but a lot of employees know how to goof off just enough to avoid that, but do get snagged with the incremental warnings. Too many of them and the employer can satisfy the State's over site and fire the failing employee.





This of course is just like the bears with their tags and collars, and gives a new import to 46 scratching at his collar while taking a dip in the Creek!!





Oh, this is long winded...





Charles Schultz and Charlie Brown story after Antique Road Show...





The experience of having a video phone poked at my face though has given me pause though, as I wonder how the critters feel looking down my camera lens!!





If I got a tat it would be the "Dont Tread on Me"...I think I've posted that pic..but another wouldn't hurt!!...brb...well, the third or fourth image in the google image search is of a fellow's back with just such a tattoo..it may be the quintessential tattoo as it expresses independence.





DavidDavid


Tree in the Door


Oct. 29, 2007

Johnny Tremain

Well, an endless mobster movie is on, a real slice of gangster life with some big name Hollywood stars...and a soundtrack of sixties songs...their pertinence I dont understand...but then it's a drug plot and rock and roll has a lot of that, and I suppose it's a dark side thing that so many groups that made lovely songs supported the gangland culture...still the case.

Episode two unfolded at Last Chance...kinda predictable. sigh.

Wretched...that's the word I thought about today...I heard a bagpipe playing Amazing Grace in the Valley, and I remembered that word is in the lyric, let me check...brb...

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me...

Wretch is a pretty powerful word to be in so gentile a song...but it's an old song from a time when words were used differently...

It is one long lasting wretched move about wretched people, and I suppose it's wretched just to watch, however disinterested!...sigh..

But to the Gray Owl...

I have this Great Gray Owl poster on my wall, and have been thinking maybe someday I'll see one, but today I read the caption on it for the first time...it says there were only 52 sightings, only in Yosemite (greater Yosemite I believe, not just the Valley), and it's an endangered species...and I dont know how old that poster is...letmesee if I can get pic...

Well, I did google images great gray owl, and the first is a photog's site with great nature pics, and of a great gray in Minnesota!..so I'm a bit confused....brb...

They live across the Northern Hemisphere, and Yosemite has the southernmost branch of 100 or so...this from wikipedia.

Well, the movie is over! with credits to Layla tune...

I did a lot of gangster posts over in JFK, trying to figure it out, and how the mob configured in, and came to the conclusion that they just got included as they get included in anything sensational, but...the things I found troubling were the suicides of Iris Chang, whose work on Nanking touched on the Panay, and the journalist Gary Webb, I think that was his name, who delved into conjecture of the CIA role in peddling drugs in poor neighborhoods.

Now, Gibson is on in The Patriot, a visually pretty movie, but too brutal for a Johnny Tremain fan!!

In Mexico journalist are often killed for delving into expose of organized drug cartels there..

It's wretched.

Here's wiki's Tremain discussion...whole thing as it fits the post, and the times...

quote

Johnny Tremain, the title protagonist of the novel, is depicted as an apprentice silversmith. Originally skillful at his craft, Johnny is forced to give up his apprenticeship after Dove, a fellow apprentice, plays a harmful joke on Johnny and causes his thumb and palm to fuse together from exposure to molten silver. The combination of cruelty and condescending kindness that Johnny faces after this mishap is one of the most vividly drawn sections of the novel.
After descending into psychological depression, Johnny is rescued by a kind family who owns a hand-operated printing press, where they do job printing and publish a newspaper, the Boston Observer. Young Tremain joins this household, becomes part of the printshop, and delivers papers to the people of Boston. From this vantage point he and the novel's readers can look on as the unfolding events of the American Revolution move forward. Along the way Johnny befriends several historical figures including Paul Revere, Samuel Adams,John Hancock, and Joseph Warren.
The novel was written during the regionalist period of American fiction, and includes many examples of local color in Boston during the 1770s. The novel was also written during World War II, and includes an oration by one of the principal characters on why some warriors have to die so that their friends and survivors can live in freedom.
The novel concludes during and immediately after the battles at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, and the battles are treated as the climax and catharsis of the themes of the novel.

unquote

lot of good links there...

Well, in revisiting the stories of Webb and Chang, I didn't realize how close together they died, both in November 2004...but their stories are far apart, and similar in that they tell how stories are altered.

I was kindof harsh on Chang in the Panay weblog for poor scholarships, and some infringements of other's works...I have to get that Gingrich Pearl Harbor book....

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 28, 2007

Disciple

Lara Croft Tomb Raider is on...almost a tonic after stress of last night and thinking of it all today!

How to react to a perceived threat..and not overreact...or not react at all!...Oh, but it's gotten to the point in the City that the Toughs intimidate in whimsical fashion....just a wrong look draws their ire...Lara's house is under siege...

Again, one of the Jamaicans has asked me if I'm a disciple of Jesus..and while many times I've been asked by the door to door evangelists if I'm Christian...I've never had it put to me if I'm a disciple.

Insomuch a disciple is a student, yes I am, nothing would have pleased me more than to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear those lessons. And insomuch as I do not think Jesus ever left, I think it in the realm of possible things to hear those lessons still.

If by disciple it's thought that someone is specially chosen like the twelve disciples and acquire superhuman skills or something, like the languages they could speak...no, I'm not that.

Larry King put it to one preacher, (did I mention this!), are you an ordained reverend? This was a question some were asking of the fellow as he had no formal schooling or certifications, and his answer was that growing up in his Dad's church had taught him much, and he regarded himself as the reverend of the church now...which I thought a good answer.

People get certification happy, but in truth lessons are where you find them and from all sorts of people.

There's some lesson in the Jamaican's questions...and if there's some lessons here...well ...I cant determine.

Do the righteous draw ire? I've been called a "lightning rod"...they say nearest relatives become the focus of Alzheimer patients and their madness...I can attest to that after taking care of my Dad...I was being "righteous" trying to take care of him, and some days it seemed no matter how much I "cared" things would worsen...something like that I'm trying to describe.

When I refereed basketball I had a real talent for making coaches irate.

There's no polite way to blow the whistle and call a foul.

Stress took me back to how the days felt taking care of Dad.

Seems to me now and then that people have lost their minds, and come at me for caring.

Pic is Atlas and Prometheus...from a Vatican stamp of a vase in their collection, I think...Atlas is often depicted holding up the sky...and the globe of the oldest statue is actually a star map...good stories on that on web.

Lara's talking with the villian about her father...haven't got to the part where he appears, and is Angelina's real pop...Jon Voigt. I remember the talk show interviews promoting this movie.

I need some sleep...g'nite.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 27, 2007

Dian Fosse's Cabin

Well, I came home from work and Gorillas on the Brink was on, and this after a kinda “gorilla” encounter at Last Resort Café…I was cleaning up and a couple tough kids tried to snag a hot chocolate after hours…I’d let it go but they were hanging about just looking to snag something, so I woofed at ‘em and they stopped, but I looked up after going back to work, and one was doing a clip of me with a cell phone video recorder…Oh, I said smiling, if that goes up on YouTube, I’ll come after you. He kept clipping, and I could see he saw no humour in my response, so I asked him to stop, and leave with his friend, but they proved stubborn, so I called for my manager…and later had security hear my tale…so I guess I did go ‘after ‘m’! What to make of it? Well, hopefully it is a tale with no new episodes…

I haven’t seen Dian Fossey’s tale of the Gorillas. Oh, I read National Geo. Way back, and remember she was murdered, but with my mind on ‘cabin dwellers’, I thought, There’s a fit"

Animal Precinct was on next, and then Meercat Manor…I started out in the blog to name the critters like Meercat Manor, but I cant keep close enough track of the individuals…I see the Meercats wear collars. I don’t follow it too close…one I watched close a Meercat was bit by a snake..and it was grim..but, they're ‘cabin dwellers’ too!

Pic is Dian’s cabin, from here:
http://www.lastrefuge.co.uk/data/articles/gorilla_p3.html




Gorillas on the Brink
Natalie Portman and Jack Hanna

And from wiki



Photographs showing the gorilla "Peanuts" touching Fossey's hand depicted the first recorded peaceful contact between a human being and a wild gorilla. Her extraordinary report with animals and her background as an occupational therapist brushed away the Hollywood "King Kong" myth of an aggressive, savage beast.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 26, 2007

Slabsides

Since I bought the John Burrough's book on Amazon, I've been getting email ads of some others he wrote, one which had an interesting quote which led me to believe Burroughs was a "cabin dweller"...letmegetthat..brb

quote

Book DescriptionPREFACE. I HATE deliberated a long time about coupling gome of my sketches of out-door nature with a few chapters of a more purely literary character and as I have confided to my reader what pleased and en gaged me beyond my four walls, to show him what absorbs and delights me inside those walls especially as I have aimed to bring my out-door spirit and method within and still look upon my subject with the best naturalists eye I could command. I hope, therefore, he will not be scared away when I boldly confront him in the latter portions of my book with this name of strange portent, Walt Whit man, for I assure him that in this misjudged man he may press the strongest poetic pulse that has yet beat in America, or perhaps in modern times ...

unquote

Birds and Poets...with other papers.
John Burroughs

He built a little cabin, which I think is referred to above...called "Slabsides". Wikipedia has piece on it.

CNN on all evening.

Can't get pic of Slabsides up...everyone is probably blogging fire pics and stories!

The misspells in the quote are a sic, but I dont know if those are Burroughs spellings...books a bit pricey..I'll put it off for awhile.

Nice Bush came by...as a domestic President he's done fine, I'd say, as has Aronold as our Governor...but the "War President" tout has become burdened with irony...I cant fault the intent and effort though...the intractable vandals and barbarians just seem to be in season or something, and will pass, as all things do.

Walt Whitman has some things I want to explore..for tomorrow...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 26, 2007

Happy Nature

Mel Gibson in movie with the crop circles...Signs...whole thing takes place in an old house, reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode...though this was a crueler story...again, like the fellow in JayLo as police officer movie, where he lost wife in crash, here Gibson has lost wife in crash too, and lost God, and the aliens show up, mean and cruel as the car wreck, and...well...I wont give away the tale!

Alias back to back to back, but ones I've seen so flipped to Letterman, and Ferguson should be on soon.

Nature suffers all the vicissitudes we do, and is regarded as a menace to us by some, which is the take I make from alien movies that depict cruel aliens. I think these films are overlayed on fears of Nature.

There was a family movie about a vacationing family finding Bigfoot and taking him home with them. As the story unfolds their fears lessen, until they befriend Bigfoot...neat movie.

Oh, but these are tough notions to depict, and the stuff of many stories.

Nature is happy I think, and there is Muir quote hereabouts that I'll snag tomorrow that expresses how Nature always heals.

Found it, see John Muir Wikiquote for more...

quote

Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.

unquote

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 24, 2007

Moon

Watched fire news a lot today, and tried to read the blogs and comments added to online news, but as one homeowner put it "The fidelity isn't very good..." Well, with thousands and thousands curious as to how their homes are, it gets jammed I'm sure, but sometimes it just seems by design, like being frozen out of the story.

The earthquake center had that form you could fill out and add to the reports...something like that is needed (see earlier post here, or search earthquake report, or something like that..)

Dancing with the Stars was on...Jane Seymour just made it...she has a painting instruction dvd disc set I just saw in the Cheap Joes paint supplies advertisement I get in the mail...I'll have to send off for it!

Nice day here.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 24, 2007

Cabin on Mars

I know, they're robots, the Mars Rovers I mean...and they hardly "rove"...more like a watching-grass- grow creep. But they're remarkable, and I suspect that for a long time robots will take our senses to Space.

And why not, there's no way anything of flesh and blood is ever going to fly in Space...Space "Flight" being a silly term. Space "Ride" maybe.

And the Mars Rovers' "cabin dwellers" reside and do their dwelling on the surface of Mars in Houston, I guess, wherever NASA has the control center.

For all of humanity, it really matters little if the photos and such come from robots, or Astronauts paddling about. I'm all for Astronauts, they can and will see more than any robot, and tell the tale...but until they can scribble a decent poem, let there be robots!!

Trash on the Moon

Jay Lo on in the Wedding movie...being proposed too...decisions....ok. (And I missed it all but somehow she ends up with Hollywood...)

Now, on the Moon they left their trash, and unmentionables...while the footsteps on the moon seem a noble thing...what about the trash!??

Tiki Temple Offerings, I call it...this pic of two Tiki Cans in the Fall Woods....

Backpacking now everyone brings everything out...oh, the plop can stay, but the paper's gotta be carried out. I'm never sure what to do with it, the paper I mean, I wrap it up in aluminum foil, plastic bag it, and then drop it in the first Tiki Can I come too...but from there it has to go somewhere, a landfill somewhere, and that land of course has lost it's natural state.

As has the moon....lemgosee if there's mention of what they did with the plop...brb...well, that's nuts...I search out astronaut moon diapers and get to see Aldrin punch a fellow on YouTube...the rogue astronaut's long night ride skews the search of course...whom Aldrin shows some sympathy for!!

And there's a book called Space Junk by Judy Donneley (who has a kid's book about JFK, curiously), and it must have in it what they did with the plops.

Oh, Van Damn is Leo the Lion and in deep trouble....

In their short walkabouts the Apollo Astronauts must have changed out in the Lunar Lander...but how the heck will long hikes be possible?? I dont think even Science Fiction has dealt with this dilemma!!

I suppose the Space Station crews are ejecting the plop into the vacuum, which means it's added to the orbiting misslejunk ready to plop into the unwary space travelers of the future!!

Much to the contrary, Robert, near Space has become plopulous!

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 21, 2007

Camping on the Moon

Mythbusters is on...they're going to shoot a piece of straw with compressed air to see if the Hurricane wind myth is true...oh, the drama...(I think Letterman started this sort of stuff!)

Before, I've thought the the Apollo journeys to the moon were like camp outs. Like backpacking too, insomuch weight is a preoccupation...but ironic for the space travelers insomuch as once they're in space..they're weightless! Backpackers should be so lucky.

And, when they got to the moon, they had the Lander...a Cabin...and became...Cabin Dwellers.

Perhaps the penultimate cabin dwellers were the members of the crews that remained alone in the moon orbiter. All the crews were carefully screened and selected for their roles by psychologists, I've read...the ones in the orbiters must have been poets...lemeseeifIcanfindone...brb...Well, Collins, the first command module pilot, is called "euridite"..and the "poet laueate of the astronauts" but for why I'm not sure...And Al Worden of 15, again a command module pilot, has a book of poems...but there is a dirth...and it would do no good to send a poet up...for the meantime astronauts are highly trained in their craft, and a passenger poet wont do!...it would have to be one of them....maybe the Russians...brb...well, that's just as fruitless a search as I've ever done...but found a poem by Robert Frost...


But outer Space

But outer Space,
At least this far,
For all the fuss
Of the populace
Stays more popular
Than populous

Robert Frost

The straws stuck but didn't go through a palm tree. Myth busted I guess...

That Frost poem dont fly either...shhessh...

Well, wait, Collins did sentimentalize over his "cabin", scribbling the following on it...and that is the stuff of poetry....

quote

"Spacecraft 107 — alias Apollo 11 — alias Columbia. The best ship to come down the line. God Bless Her. Michael Collins, CMP"[

unquote

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 20, 2007

Cabin Dwellers 2

Watching CNN talking about the Republican Candidates...after Drew...

I thought some more on what I've come to think of as "cabin dwellers"...now, these are folk who dwell in "cabins" and "dwell" on their surroundings...I've mentioned before Muir and his "hang nest", the little room above the Lower Falls saw mill, and there was Van Gogh and his room, and of course the cabin here, and for that matter all the "cabins" hereabouts. Among them are those who take a keen interest in the Natural world...and I guess that's the name for them "Naturalists". I have that book of the Natural History of the Sierra, and the author is a "Naturalist", and a professional scientists. I dont think you have to be a professional to be a Naturalist, anymore than you have to be a Curator of a Museum to have a keen interest and knowledge of the Museum...

Oh, what am I trying to say...what are the Astronauts and Cosmonauts in the Space Station? They're in a "cabin" and they "dwell" on observing the Earth. (Some pics on MSN tonight...I'll snag one before I'm through).

And they observe the Natural aspects of the Earth, and also the things People are doing that are changing the aspects. In a way, they are studying Nature and Human Nature.

And the "cabin" has taken an extraordinary amount of work and dedication by a lot of people, and yet, it's just a tiny thing, and what it is is secondary to where it is, as it's WHERE it is that really matters. Someday someone will build a mansion in space, and the mansion will be the valuable thing and what really "matters". But now, the Shuttle and Station are just work platforms. They're utilitarian.

And there are these "cabin dwellers" I'm trying to think of who live where they do to study, and their dwelling is not their primary regard, but rather their "dwelling"!!

Well, some sense and nonsense...

Some of these folk are in fiction, like Ishmael in Moby Dick...lemgetthat opening...brb...well, I could just gather quotes a plenty from Melville, but these from the beginning are favorites....

quotes

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
……
Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent- minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries - stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
….
And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States
Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael
BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces - though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Loomings

Moby Dick

Herman Melville

unquote

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct, 19, 2007

Cabin Dwellers

Drew's comedy improv show on..then World Vision...then an informercial for a roll up piano keyboard...now it's acne....gotta find the remote!!...man vs wild somewhere...

I was going over in my head cabin dwellers to consider...it needn't be a tiny place...Thomas Jefferson had a "cabin" in that it's surroundings he gave attention to...and it needn't be a man...though it taxes me a bit to thinkup some women cabin dwellers....go have a look at Emily Dickinson...brb....

quote

It is not widely known that during Dickinson's lifetime she was appreciated as a gardener rather than as a poet. Having studied botany from the age of nine, as a teenager she put together a herbarium consisting of 424 pressed specimens of flowers classified using the Linnaean system with handwritten labels. The herbarium is now held in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.[3] Dickinson's garden at her family home in Amherst was famous locally. The garden has not survived and Dickinson kept no garden notebooks or plant lists, but its layout and what she grew in it can be gleaned from letters and the recollections of her friends and family. One niece, for example, remembered "carpets of lily-of-the-valley and pansies, platoons of sweetpeas, hyacinths enough in May to give all the bees of summer dyspepsia. There were ribbons of peony hedges and drifts of daffodils in season, marigolds to distraction – a butterfly utopia." In particular, Dickinson cultivated scented exotic flowers, writing that she "could inhabit the Spice Isles merely by crossing the dining room to the conservatory, where the plants hang in baskets." She also loved bulbs and was skilled at forcing them. Dickinson would often send her friends bunches of flowers with verses attached: "they valued the posy more than the poetry."[4]

from wikipedia

unquote

Well, that's cool.

Nowadays she would easily be among the ranks of bloggers!!

Book's a bit pricey...

I'd like to see a webring of backyards...hereabouts, thereabouts, everywhere, anywhere...gardens and forests, concrete, asphalt, skyscraper canyons, or Grand...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 18, 2007

Frittering

Drew's comedy improvisation show on when I came home (preferred to the neverending The War)...then a Feed the Children plea...Africa seems to "have all the pain"...then CSI New York which I paid little attention to...now the news...

And...I want to make something of this Thoreau famous quote, but I'm not sure what!

quote

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau, Walden

unquote

I think the blue indicates it's linked, which is cool as there were 64 quotes of Thoreau... Now, letme put this side by side with something Henry Dana wrote...brb...well, this might take awhile...a pleasant awhile going through Two Years Before the Mast, to find this....

quote

San Juan is the only romantic spot in California. The country here for several miles is high table-land, running boldly to the shore, and breaking off in a steep hill, at the foot of which the waters of the Pacific are constantly dashing. For several miles the water washes the very base of the hill, or breaks upon ledges and fragments of rocks which run out into the sea. Just where we landed was a small cove, or "bight," which gave us, at high tide, a few square feet of sand-beach between the sea and the bottom of the hill. This was the only landing-place. Directly before us, rose the perpendicular height of four or five hundred feet. How we were to get hides down, or goods up, upon the table-land on which the mission was situated, was more than we could tell. The agent had taken a long circuit, and yet had frequently to jump over breaks, and climb up steep places, in the ascent. No animal but a man or monkey could get up it. However, that was not our look-out; and knowing that the agent would be gone an hour or more, we strolled about, picking up shells, and following the sea where it tumbled in, roaring and spouting, among the crevices of the great rocks. What a sight, thought I, must this be in a south-easter! The rocks were as large as those of Nahant or Newport, but, to my eye, more grand and broken. Beside, there was a grandeur in everything around, which gave almost a solemnity to the scene: a silence and solitariness which affected everything! Not a human being but ourselves for miles; and no sound heard but the pulsations of the great Pacific! and the great steep hill rising like a wall, and cutting us off from all the world, but the "world of waters!" I separated myself from the rest and sat down on a rock, just where the sea ran in and formed a fine spouting horn. Compared with the plain, dull sand-beach of the rest of the coast, this grandeur was as refreshing as a great rock in a weary land. It was almost the first time that I had been positively alone — free from the sense that human beings were at my elbow, if not talking with me — since I had left home. My better nature returned strong upon me. Everything was in accordance with my state of feeling, and I experienced a glow of pleasure at finding that what of poetry and romance I ever had in me, had not been entirely deadened by the laborious and frittering life I had led.

unquote

I know exactly where this is...and it's now called Dana Point...lemeget the poem that brought me here...

quote (me)

Visit

Oh, I thought to go back and have a visit
Richard Henry Dana
Looking about California again
As you did not so long ago
Really, I wonder about myself sometimes
Too it’s good just to have a look
At Yosemite
Half Dome is always there
John Muir on an overlook
Cliffs at Dana Point Harbor now
Is over the tide pools
Wading in as a kid
Reached down and picked up the hermit crabs
Get scared
Everything does sometimes
Hiding away
Trout in Le Conte Canyon
Like a whole row of El Capitans.

DolphinWords

unquote

The attentive reader of Tree in the Door might even, now, make sense of that!!

Now, the Pilgirm was Dana's "Cabin"... They really need to name a Sierra peak after him....and maybe another just called "Henry"...

(and, while it was unintended, my little poem has led me to think of the rock climbers hereabouts as "trout", insomuch as trout are alway nose into the current, sorta going uphill....cometothink of it oflate, maybe the climbers are like "certhia americanas"!)

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 14, 2007

(eek, it's the 18th...I'm all out of synch...)

Cabin to Cabin

In the back of my thoughts has been the suspicion that there is some similarity between the Creek and Walden Pond...not me and Thoreau...but the Creek is waiting back there for some Thoreau...

There's plenty of "Muirs" roaming the Valley and the High Country....they tend towards the sublime and grand...while Thoreau goes bananas over the minutia...

These thoughts from reading a Smithsonian article about Walden Pond...and it tells how Thoreau kept a careful journal of Walden Pond and the surroundings, and now the journal, and another kept by a devotee of Thoreau after Thoreau died, is of interest to the scientists studying global warming.

Lemego see if I can find that article online...and another story I'm reminded of...brb...following is what I call a "side by side"...

quotes

The upright citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, didn't think much of young Henry David Thoreau. The cabin on Walden Pond, the night in jail for tax evasion, the constant scribbling in journals-it all seemed like a waste of a perfectly good Harvard education. Even more mysterious was his passion for flowers. "I soon found myself observing when plants first blossomed and leafed," Thoreau confided to his journal in 1856, "and I followed it up early and late, far and near, several years in succession, running to different sides of the town and into the neighboring towns, often between twenty and thirty miles in a day."

Teaming up with Thoreau

One hundred fifty years after the publication of Walden, Henry David Thoreau is helping scientists monitor global warming

* By Michelle Nijhuis
* Photographs by Richard Howard
* Smithsonian magazine, October 2007

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/10033806.html

Biologist Joseph Grinnell was a world-class researcher, but he wasn't always the most pleasant of traveling companions. "We'd be sitting in camp, and we'd both be skinning," recalled naturalist Ward Russell, who spent years helping Grinnell trap, skin and otherwise document the wildlife of California. "Pretty soon, he'd throw a rat over to me, and he'd say, 'Here, Russell, finish this one up,' and he'd just ... pick up his notebook, and start writing."
Despite his dubious camp etiquette, Grinnell's devoted record-keeping led to one of the most famous datasets in modern biology. During their travels throughout California between 1904 and the late 1930s, Grinnell and his colleagues snared or shot more than 20,000 mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian specimens, took about 2,000 photographs, and filled 13,000 journal pages with erratic penmanship and beautifully detailed observations. Their portrait of the natural diversity of California remains unmatched in its scope and depth.



Global warming stalks Yosemite

Retracing the steps of a meticulous early 20th century biologist, researchers find that some of the park's tiniest residents have moved a startling distance uphill

Michelle Nijhuis
Sunday, November 27, 2005

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/27/ING66FMV901.DTL

end quotes

Well, I'll have to step it up to team up with these guys! Anyway, the pic for tonight's gotta be Thoreau's cabin...brb...

Oh, here's a site with a free downloadable card model of the cabin..

http://fiddlersgreen.net/buildings/new-england/thoreau/cabin.htm

I've had in mind too some other 'cabin dwellers' ...for sometime later...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 14, 2007

Fall Day

Christina Applegate was on in new show, after 2 and half men, then the Bachelor, and then the news...weather says maybe a little storm coming...

Now where in any of that can I continue the funk! I suppose something awful is going on today somewhere in the world, but I didn't hear of it!

There's a movie called the Farce of Penquins...Applegate does one of the voices...she's funny...

a bit later....

Lara Logan, by her own admission, on Leno...isn't.

I think they're the same age, Logan and Applegate.

someone's bottom in an automobile...Ferguson is funny...(cartouche)

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 14, 2007

Looking

Man vs Wild repeat...Ecuador...then a long show about an expedition to islands in the South Pacific...looking for new fish species...

I've got it into my head to take a pic of all the Critters I can hereabouts....just chasing the birds has brought me closer to seeing things. It's tough to look away from the landscape sights, the big attraction...and the critters are illusive...if I get one good pic a day I feel I've accomplished something...they're not new species, but often new to me...today it's a Crawdad.

And there's something about working with the camera that reminds me of capturing ideas from the TV and media to go in this blog...I never know quite what will turn up during the day.

I haven't read the newspapers much of late, but one was on my table at break..and it was so bleak...and there's so many stories...it's a bit overwhelming.

Didn't think of much today. Oh, that what we do with our studies and efforts is overlayed on what the Critters do hunting for food. That was all we did for a long time...that and romance!

Pic is Deer Looking into Tiki Temple Ruins...

They're all breathing helium and talking like Donald...oh..the Ducks were back today! Sad the specimens end up pickled...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 13, 2007

Mud Puppies

I must have thought about something during the day, but I cant recollect!! Worked making a DVD...news on, and a couple CSI episodes...oh, there was something...the Turkey genocide...my Great Uncle served in the Merchant Marine and saw some of this war...on a vacation visit once when I was very little a neighbor big kid came by with his 22 and we went down to a hollow where birds were on the telephone wires, and he proceed to plink them. I didn't know what to make of this, being too young to handle a rifle, and later when I related the story to my Uncle he was glad I hadn't been offered to shoot the gun. And somehow the conversation he was having with my Dad turned to his sailing days, and what the Turks did to the Armenians...it was one of those indelible days in a kid's growing up.

National Geographic the other night had a bit on salamanders, some giant ones in the South's rivers, and all over the world. Mud puppies and devil something I think they were called. In one part two old timers were talking, and lamenting that when they were kids they played in the rivers, and sometimes did cruel things to the salamanders, kids will be kids...and they had changed and appreciated the effort to preserve them and their habitats.

Genocides in war are on another scale, and on the scales of justice.

Pic is an Alabama Waterdog, from wiki....

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 13, 2007

Swiss Guard

Doing last night's post got me thinking about the Swiss Guard...I googled up the Janissaries too, and the Marmelukes...and had the scandalous Blackwater security company in Iraq in mind...as they all have something in common...they were mercenary bodyguards for Kings, Queens, royal courts and aristocracy.

I read about the Swiss Guard slaughter during the French Revolution...they were France's Royalty personal bodyguards...sorta like old Rome's Praetorian Guard.

Well, and almost on cue today!, there is story about the Vatican releasing an old parchment with story of the Knights Templar...they too were a body guard outfit, getting their start escorting pilgrims to the Holy Land.

I thought the Marines guarded State Department personnel, they do guard our embassies around the world, but there is some mystery here why Blackwater is employed. I think I touched on this in an old JFK post, which maybe I can find in a bit...

There's an author I read from time to time, Jerry Pournelle, somewhat famous for science fiction stories, computer articles, and general punditry, who I find difficult to fathom insomuch as his thoughts seem to teeter between sense and nonsense (remind you of anyone? as Ferguson might put it!), and one I've gathered in for contemplation is his mention of the Janissaries. I've had to try and study them out a bit....

Pournelle has a solution for Iraq--hire mercenaries like the British did in India...Gurkas and such (I forget who were their policeman in Old Shanghai)....

Near as I can figure, the Jannisaries were a military force that was accepted by all sides because they had no national loyalties, only loyalty to their employer...the old Sultans in Turkey. They were formed from non Muslim slaves, persuaded to convert to Islam and serve the Sultan, gaining some freedom...many of them were Chirstians. They solved a serious problem, then, like now, the different Arab factions were terribly suspicious of one another, and could never solve their differences. Having a neutral standing army guarding the court and royalty solved a lot of problems.

(Herodotus has a story of how a king comes to be because he is noted for his trustworthiness in disputes and trusted by all sides for his fairness.)

There's only one Swiss Guard unit left, and it guards the Pope. I was gonna ramble on just about this tonight, but after reading about the Parchment I wondered if there was a connection between the Swiss Guard and the Knights Templar.

Well, it's one of those mysteries, I find, after googleing it up. Sheesh.

Another order, the Knights of Malta, configures into this, and is much a part of JFK lore, and which I've had a few posts about!...if I remember right old Joe Kennedy was a Knight of Malta, along with Clare Booth Luce, a handful of CIA heads, and whole bunch of others, easy to find on the web as the conspiracy sites collect them.

One question I raised was how a political appointee could be a member of Order and hold office...the Order declares itself a sovereign nation. Oh, it's a tangle.

Anyway, here's a thought, is Switzerland the fortress home of the Knights??

I think Pournelle might be a Knight. He claims to have been near the center of the Cold War, what to call it, thinkers. Most in a war just do, but somewhere somehow someone has to think things through. I like his book Footfall. And there's a kinda ad hoc bunch of thinkers in that who may resemble Pournelle's engagement in things.

Hmmph...how'd I'd get going on all this...doggone Rick Steves and his travel brochure world...hooey...in the Valley I'm in one!!

Watched 2 and a half men, reruns I think, then the news..Friends on now...

And of course I go google up Blackwater Security Malta...and a raft of conspiracy sites make the connection...Blackwater an arm of the Knights?...trying to recollect my jfk posts and configure them here would be a task...I did a lot of connection ones on the Knights of Malta...oh, there's a new movie coming out about Queen Elizabeth and the Armada battle....how the old troubles have sifted through to today is remarkable!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 12 2007

Swiss Guns

I was going to include these thoughts in last nights post:

Rick Steve's Travels in Europe was on a couple nights ago, and he was in the Swiss Alps, in one of the Glacial Valleys they have....and he came upon a "curator" who showed him the museum guns of the cold war. All over these high altitude valleys the Swiss secretly built cold war redoubts...artillery emplacements, underground barracks, bomb shelters, hospitals, all in preparation for the grim day.

Now they show them to tourists, I guess, or at least Steve's got a personal showing...a barn made of camouflaged like wood concrete with an artillery canon in it!

The Travels in Europe show is fun to watch, but it's a bit sugary! Europeans seemed to be in denial about all the wars they've had...to get passed them they make memorials and monuments which become tourist spots.

There's a building hereabouts with camouflaged wood concrete, the Awhanee Hotel, but it was made that way from the experience of the previous wooden hotels in the Valley, and much later Glacier Point, which were vulnerable to lightning strikes, and some burned down, so they built the whole thing out of concrete. Kinda disappointing...the beams inside look cool, but I have the impression of concrete overpass beams painted with Indian designs.

Institute of Noetic Sciences...the Kid's Channel, Discovery Kids is on, and they started out with Druids (this is the ghost show, earlier they were trekking in the arctic, a survival show) now it's remote viewers.

See if I can find a pic of the Swiss redoubts..brb

While looking I found Steve's script:

Rick: Fifteen thousand underground installations?
Fritz: Yes.
Fritz: This barn looks like many other ones in Switzerland, but this one hides a secret. Let's have a look inside.
Rick: Wow, look at this thing. What was this for? Why did they have this here?
Fritz: For World War II. It protected the fortress: the Alps.
Rick: Did it get used after WWII?
Fritz: Yes, it got updated over the last decades and has new technology in it.
Rick: So, actually, this gun works?
Fritz: This gun works.
Rick: Now, children could have grown up outside these doors and not known this gun was sitting here?
Fritz: Not only children. Generations were not aware what was in these buildings.
Rick: And this is not wood.
Fritz: No, it's solid concrete.
In this town, four innocent-looking hay barns conceal a network of tunnels connecting several big guns. With the end of the Cold War, many of these once top-secret sites are now open to the public as museums.
Rick: This is the gun we just saw?
Swiss Man: (Speaks in German.)
Rick: So, Fritz, from headquarters they would tell them what coordinates to set the gun on?
Fritz: Yes, they would put the coordinates into that calculator, and the gun gets adjusted.
A quick demonstration shows how the gun was prepped and loaded.
Rick: This is not just a museum piece — it feels like it could still work.
Fritz: Yes, if we had a live round, we could still fire it today.
And these wooden houses look cheery and vulnerable from the outside… but, like nearly all modern Swiss houses, Fritz's family home sits upon a no-nonsense concrete bomb shelter.
Fritz: This is the door to our bomb shelter.
Rick: Oh, man. How much must this weigh?
Fritz: A couple of thousand pounds — concrete and steel.
Rick: If you have a nuclear attack…
Both: You all run in here.
Swiss men are required to spend time in the military, including about 20 years in the reserve. And — like minutemen awaiting an invasion — they have their guns, gas masks, and ammo ready and waiting.
While the Swiss may be ready for war, they seem most at peace with nature.
http://www.ricksteves.com/tvr/jungfraurse214_scr.htm

And here's a web cam of the area:
http://www.swisspanorama.com/html/jungfraucam1.html

And the pic is 19th century painting of the Eiger by:

Maximilien de Meuron

There's a lot of web sites about the Swiss and their war preparations. They could do in a natural disaster too. As a small nation it's possible for these preparations.

Preparations for a grim day can only be..grim..

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 11, 2007

Curator

Curator, that's the word I tried to remember the other day.

How I remembered it: When I forget a word or name, I go through the alphabet...Does it start with...? I ask...and sometimes I get it....I knew curator started with C...but I couldn't recollect...but today I was thinking:

The Indians likely weren't great nature conservationists, consider when they drove the buffalo herds over cliffs...likeley many more than they could use were killed. Nonetheless there were a lot of Buffalo before the Whitemen and their conservation!...But thinking about "conservation"...and the "carrion" the buffalo's deaths would have provided for carrion eaters...I thought...letmesee if I can remember that word beginning with "c"...and it "popped" out...curator.

Now, all that tells me how my memory stores things...if I could just figure it out! Is it by rhyming sounds? I often suspect that. And that would explain rhyming poetry...and give it a new import! But I dont know...English is a very sound based language...words sound like what they depict...at least the anglo saxon ones...

Animal Planet on with Blue Ocean and the deep sea episode again...yes...the fumaroles!!...and the real "twilight zone"...that area in the ocean where sunlight just reaches...

Being a curator in a museum would be cool. I had a docent job once cataloging seashells to put them into a computer...just checking really to see the labels were correct...and the Curator oversaw our volunteer efforts. We set up exhibits too.

The Magic Kingdom, and the Valley here, are like museums...well, they even have museums!! And their Curators.

Vandalism in the Valley causes much consternation...things held sacred are always up against the vandals and barbarians.

The mind is a kinda "Haunted Museum"...and the Curator...us.

Trying to come up with a pic, I keep thinking of the Great Pyramid....the curator priests of Egypt desperate attempt to keep out the vandals and barbarians. And then there's King Tut's tomb, and it's discovery...the careful manner Howard Carter (a 'c') removed and packed everything up.

And the manner in which they study and name the new deep sea species.

And MSN had story of meteor in Peru...an Indian Jones type snagged some pieces, and gave them to the scientists around the world, the curators of all things!, to study.

Poetry is an archaeology of the mind.

Carter's patron was Lord Carnarvon...

1010

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Oct. 10, 2007

Eyes of the Coyote

The Hawk, this Coyote, and the Owl I saw this evening, all have yellow orange eyes...and they kinda have this same look too! I suppose that's from hunting.

Hiked up to the top of Vernal...hadn't done a hike for weeks, and none up from the Valley since before Summer really began.

Didn't think on a post...and the hard drive has filled up, so will spend the evening making room...

Cavemen was on, kinda funny (reminds me, and probably everyone of work-- me especially insomuch as I'm a 'replenesher'!), now Carpool...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 9, 2007

Eye of the Beholder

In the middle of the night I couldn't sleep, and turned the TV on and it was a show about diamonds, and diamond mining in Australia where they find pink to red colored diamonds. Very rare, very desirable.

They move a lot of soil and rock and process it to get to these diamonds, and the nature of the mining is such, and security matters such, that few ever see the product of their labor. Then the diamonds wend their way until, in this story, they are presented secretly to a buyer in a big city hotel--a table layed out with the pink diamonds, each in a little black case--kinda like a baseball card display.

The buyer couldn't express his delight in seeing "once in a hundred years" diamonds. Reminded me of the old Israeli priests who once a year entered the Holy of Hollies, which is a fit, as the diamond industry has a strong Hassidic Jewish tradition. Which is another fit, as it's a kinda priesthood that surrounds the diamonds. The average person cant tell one diamond from another, and it is the diamond experts who assign values, evaluate the stones, and give them their provenance, I think might be the word. (Jewish high priests used to wear a breast plate of gem stones...I think it was seen in Raiders of the Lost Arc...I asked a friend if there is a connection between the words Jew and Jewelery, and he said no, but I want to check an Oxford dictionary!)


And here's a fit! The aurora diamonds would make a fine breastplate...though I think it had twelve stones...lemeseeifIcanfindthat...pic of these is from wikipedia site.


(As a mystery, the Breastplate ranks with the Lost Arc, and I remember Graves has some thoughts on it, which I'll have to recollect...and save this for another sometime!)

And this all reminded me of the art world, where I had thought through an idea awhile back. Paintings that are sold for millions of dollars are like...how can I put it...investments...somewhere to invest money and hopefully the investment will gain in value. There is a whole art world structure of galleries and museums and, I cant remember the word, like caretakers, who maintain the art and it's value. It's like the antique road show, the appraisers.

This is all very important, as money cant all lay around as cash, so in a way these art works are money. Warhol had it right just painting dollar bills. I wonder how much that one is worth!!

(see wikipedia's site "store of value")

The excitement the diamond dealer was feeling may have been the beauty of the diamonds, or even an intellectual understanding of their rarity, the forces that went into making them, their age, and tremendous amount of rock crushed and sifted to get a diamond one picks up with a tweezers!,,,but I suspect it was more of a poker player's high when holding what they hope is a winning hand in a millions of dollars game.

The diamonds are money, the kindof money, like investments, that brings a return as time goes on. I've personally shyed away from art because of this money aspect. I see way too many amateur paintings with high price tags...and way too many professional ones that are valued for the most part because people are investing in that particular artists works.

Before buying a million dollar Picasso, one would have to verify that it is really a Picasso. And there I am at the "verification" notion of a couple nights ago.

"Human efforts need to be verifiable, because human beings are not infallible".

And we counterfeit, in the case of "money", and there's always the problem weather it's a real dollar, or a Warhol dollar. I see the cashiers hold up money to the light all the time...appraising. That they should be so lucky as to find a Warhol dollar!

So, is the diamond's beauty married to it's investment value?

And what is "unholy"?

CNN just came on with the Oral Roberts story...university teachers suing, and accusing the son of, well. fabricating!!

Which takes me back to Newt Gingrich and the alternate Pearl Harbor history book!!! That blessed thing has the Panay story in it, and I dread to think what they 've down with it!! I'll have to send off for the book, and then I'll do some appraising of my own!! Hmmph! Somethings are sacred.

quote
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats

unquote

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 8, 2007

Next Stop

Parts of Hawthorne's 'Haunted Mind' reminded me of Rod Serling's intro to the famous Twilight Zone TV show....here's a bit from Hawthorne...and lemego see get Serling's...

quote

In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your griefs may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late! A funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling assume bodily shape, and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye.


Hawthorne
The Haunted Mind

unquote

Here's a couple of Serling's introductions...

quote

You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wonderous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone!

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call the Twilight Zone.

unquote

Carnegie Hall kids on again...and talking about music summer camp...I went to one for two summers at ISOMATA, and while I never got to Carnegie Hall!, being up in the mountains made a life long longing to be in the mountains, and played a big part in my being in the here and now. Then it was the Idyllwild branch of USC, I think, or maybe that is what it is now, with an emphasis on art I think. They talked about five hours of practice, and mine was like that...orchestra, orchestra ensamble, band, band ensamble. and I had to play revelry in the morning!! Still, there was time for ping pong, and swimming, and the evening programs by the teachers were a marvel. My school band teacher was the conductor, so I had his encouragement, and my folks...and grateful for that.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Oct. 6, 2007