July 28, 2005
A question
Why haven't I ever been to Big Sur, despite having lived in CA for 20 years? Perhaps because everyone who's told me about it has mentioned nude people in hot tubs?
Not that that is a bad thing.
At least I could go to the Esalen Institute bookstore.
carhenge—now with spawning salmon and dinosaurs
I proud to say I was one of only two people in my archaeoastronomy class to know that carhenge is near Alliance, Nebraska.
Spike the Lizard
Gloria has been taking care of our neighbor's Bearded Dragon. He gets "salad" in the evening, and prefers it to be handed to him.
I've never seen him move much, but Gloria says he can really scoot after a cricket when he wants to.
Review of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
[Audiobook version—as read by Gregory Peck ("intoned" may be a better term)]
By Thane Plambeck
* * * *
There's nothing like hearing Gregory Peck say
I AM THE LORD THY GOD
in that ever-so-decisive tone that he has—I'm sure you can imagine it.
But someone should have pointed out to God, or to whomever was responsible for this final compilation of the revealed truth of our Saviour, that things in these four books are bit redundant. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention closely enough, but I think I put the audiotapes in one-by-one, without repeating anything. These four books repeat themselves a lot. These four gentlemen Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John might possibly have been copying over one another's shoulders as they wrote these "independent," "synoptic" accounts of the life of Jesus.
I think I need to move on to Romans. Everyone seems to be quoting from it, particularly the evangelicals.
Something I just found at the web site of Col. G. L. Sicherman:
* * * *
When Herbert Hoover was a small boy in Iowa, his father operated a barbed-wire factory, and, anxious to improve his product, he hit upon the idea of covering the steel strands with tar.
One day young Bertie, standing beside the steaming caldron of tar and wondering whether it would burn, tossed a flaming stick into it. The conflagration which resulted destroyed his father's plant and nearly wiped out the little town and his father's store.
"That night," according to Rose Wilder Lane, one of Hoover's most adulatory biographers, "he heard his father tell how the store, and perhaps the town had been saved. The fire, it was thought, had been caused by the unwatched kettle of tar, which must have boiled over. Bertie said nothing. If he had been asked, he would have told what he had done, but no one asked him.
"He sat unnoticed, eating silently. He was sorry and terrified, yet he was glad. It was such a strange feeling that when he had gone to bed he lay awake for a long time, hearing the katydid in the wild crab-apple tree outside his window. He had done a frightening thing; the shock of it was still in his nerves and the crime of it on his conscience, but he had not meant to do wrong. He had been innocently experimenting, and the result was not entirely disheartening.
"`Anyway, I found out what it would do,' he thought. `I found it out all by myself.' He wondered if he would be punished if he told. He thought not. But he decided that it was best to keep his own counsel in the matter.
"And for forty years he did so."
The story is one of the most revealing incidents in Herbert Hoover's life. It gives the key to many qualities in his character which both his friends and his enemies have been trying to explain.
It explains his vacillation, his indecision, the worry through which he passes before making up his mind. It explains his hesitancy in facing issues, a hesitancy which sometimes borders on outright cowardice. It explains why he privately denounced the oil scandals of the Harding Administration and yet sat unmoved throughout that régime, never denouncing it publicly. It explains why he hesitated three days before accepting the rôle of Belgian Food Administrator which the Allies had offered him. It explains his basic intellectual timidity, his inability to grapple in a straightforward and forthright manner with vital issues, why he is always resorting to such indirect devices as commissions to relieve him of the responsibility of acting on controversial questions.
* * * *
It's long been customary to beat up on Hoover, particularly since circumstances conspired to make his successor FDR America's greatest president (I think—he certainly kicked ass). I've often marvelled at this—no matter who is president, something always kicks that president in the butt. Except for FDR. The guy overcame everything. GBII is going down on Iraq.
David M Kennedy's Apology for Hoover (aka "Freedom from Fear") probably gets Hoover better.
UPS delivery
UPS guy: "I've got some boxes for you."
Thane: What? Two?
UPS guy: "One hundred fifty-nine."
Note to self: forbid Gloria from being the AYSO kids soccer uniform coordinator next year.
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