Individuality vs Conforming

An operable VW mini-bus model circa 1960: Sons Patrick and Michael 

 

  Mark Andrew age nearly five months (April 8)

Even asleep Mark looks happy.

I had to choose between correct exposure taken from the other side, or, post the one with live figures included even though it's over-exposed.

 

So far this vehicle has five times succeeded in avoiding having its picture taken. I persist because I harbor a grudging respect for the homeless (I assume) owner who lives, I assume, in the vehicle while parked on city streets. He never seems to stay at any one location for more than about four of five days. I've seen him at six different locations. On the front there is a tiny garden, the statue of an angel, and in the rear left hand side his exhaust is an uprising sculpture. On top flies the American flag, large. Would such a mess have been allowed to exist on public street in a dictatorship? I have my doubts. In Russia? Nah. Germany, hell no. Mexico City: not even if the Mexican flag on top was humungous. London? I don't know. China, the owner would be put in prison for rehabititation.

I've yet to meet the owner. One of my sons saw the owner lying down inside wearing a brown blanket. The exterior decorations are more bold than they appear in this photo. The small garden, live not pictorial, on the front left bumper defies description.

That he is tolerated interests me more than the individual himself. Humans, especially the advantaged, in America, tend to sneer at the non-conformist. I thoroughly believe that the eccentric in England is respected far more than he is in America. Bravo Brits!!

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

Religion

Exchange lifted from the Do You Believe? aol (new?) message board which is so crowded with rushing rivers of posts I'm never responed to, or almost never. Ha ha ha. So, I come here to talk to my friends.

< "I'm guessing that Jesus was a nice guy but very naive politically."

<From:  Hector46ofTroy 

A Christian organization (in CA I think)spent a heap of money on a finely shot, color documentary aimed to 'prove' that Jesus was so politically astute that he deliberately upset the tables of the money changers in the Temple so as to get himself crucified, that it was his Mission. The thesis was, in part, that the temple priests deliberately controlled who could attend sacrifices in the inner temple by exchanging their unclean money for the purchase of white, sacrificial birds, only to people they approved of. Jesus did NOT like that: God must be made available to EVERYONE with absolutely not a soul left out! To a Christian that message is potent stuff. I can therefore very easily imagine Jesus in an absolute rage flinging the tables and coins of the money changers every which way.

 

[If anyone has a bead on why this highly dramatic scene was omitted from Mel Gibson's controversial movie I sure would like to hear your slant on the matter.]

 

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

A cogent argument might be possible along the lines that Jesus cannot be shown to have been on a suicide mission. Suicide being, in the Catholic Church, a mortal sin.        - Barry

Journal Content

 

Thank you Ally for your Comment.

I hesitated posting yet another baby

pix given our nutty world in which

children are so often victims. Horrid

to have to make that admission. In

a 'normal' world I'd post a slew of family

pix but even my family cautions me to not

do that.

 

Instead, I think I'll post a photo I took yesterday

of what used to be called a VW mini bus

festooned with nutty decorations by the harmless,

homeless owner who apparently lives in the vehicle.

I've photographed the van at least five

separate times and never done it justice.

I thought I might use the graphic to illustrate

the theme of 'Individuality.'  It is grotesque

and totally irrational, yet I'm very glad the

owner is permitted to drive our streets, and park

where parking is allowed. He moves from spot to spot,

never staying for long in any one place, and never

parked illegally.

 

Thanks Ally for your cheery Comment.

 

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

Mark Andrew vertical

                              

Mark Andrew, Esq. had a reservation about his likeness being Online upside down. So, here he is again right side up.

Now that you've met, notice how much more at ease he is.

More later. Thanks for peeking.

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

Damn, it looks a bit like a trick photograph with the head placed on another body. But no, Mark's head is on a pillow making his face tilted, getting more light from the window, accentuated by flash fill.  - B

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting a Relaxed Friend

(Posted by me on an AOL Message Board two days ago.)

"Have you ever wondered what it might be like to actually meet Jesus? Reading this board,* and seeing the hundreds of thousands of posts, I find myself imagining seeing Jesus from a distance and wondering if I should approach. The setting is Biblical. In that reverie I try to imagine what he might have looked like. The number one thing I think I might notice is how physically relaxed he was. He would be at ease, natural. He'd laugh freely. He would be a skillful speaker and pitch his voice, on occasion, to reach every listener. If a listener were to bring him some water to drink I see him drinking with gusto and profusely thanking the bringer of the drink.  Easy, relaxed, easy to approach, and talk to. In his replies he'd look at you as you have never been watched before, totally accepting and even respectful. How easy he'd be to love!"

- Barry

* Do You Believe an AOL (new?) Message Board which garners hundreds of thousands of posts every couple of days.

Each 'entry' (aka "post") on the apparently new message board "Do You Believe?" has a thumbs up, or thumbs down button which one, even me, can pass, or select. I was stunned to receive the maximum four thumbs up for the above mini-essay. Statistically, I think, the anti-Christian and atheistic posts outnumber in length and stridentcy those religion sympathetic. For that reason my minority vote was, perhaps, read more sympathetically that it might be under different circumstances. Ha!

I feel honor bound to 'confess' that I'd heard my theme before. One Christmas many years ago I went to Midnight Mass at a church in Phoenix, Arizona. I was so struck by the eloquence of the good priest that on a subsequent visit to that church I asked for the name of the priest. I was going to mail him a fan letter. No amount of description or number of details I offered could shake loose the name of the priest. I thought that very odd. But I can't even guess at an explanation. In defense of myself his vocal imaginings were quite different from my written reverie. But the essential idea that Jesus very likely was easy to meet and talk to I got from the priest.

I just this instant remembered that another Catholic Church I visited in Phoenix around that time said Mass in Latin, and otherwise was in violation of Vatican ll's edicts. The priests individually, I think, were in good standing, but that parish no longer received financial assistance from the greater Church. I would guess that by now things have been smoothed over.

You know of course that Los Angeles Archdiocese has agreed to pay victims of priest child molestations a total of $660,000,000 in reparation. And, no, I didn't add three too many zeros.

Over all, maybe just maybe, priests oughtta spend more time with Jesus.

That "Do you Believe?" board can give one a headache. All that hothouse heat.                           (mostly about next to nothing)

 

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meet Mark Andrew

Gee, he's almost upside down. 

Vincent, age 12, did the clicking to get the pix here. Mark is nearly five months old. He's been a heaven-sent addition to our family which now numbers a total of six, four boys for which the boy's mother is a bit chagrined because she insists she ordered a girl. I'll settle for healthy, and that sure is Mark. From the word go,. on exit, when one eye was open already he was busy scanning the scene. he hasn't stopped. I mean he's here to participate! I love him! Oh, oh do I love him! See him looking at you?: he has your number, ha ha ha.

Forgive me, I gush.

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

 

 

Newspaper Chat

Los Angeles, CA has a fine newspaper to which I subscribe: The Times. Today's issue is stunningly full of news about RACE, as in racial equality, race diversity and history of race mixing. 

1. Page One headline: 60 MILLION CALIFORNIANS BY MIDCENTURY.  "Latinos will become the dominant group."

2. Editorial Page, OPINION section, Essay by Heather Williams, "...a Cherokee citizen, and an Indian freedmen descendant."  "The tribe's requirement that members must prove a blood connection isn't racist."           (Atavistic, that)

3. Front page, large photo showing LA's Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa surrounded by 16 news people and their four large, tripod mounted cameras.  'What news!?' you ask: okay, I'll tell you. The good Mayor has been found to have a young, gorgeous,  female, hispanic news reporter as a mistress. The mayor is married: even his surname is a coupling. "Villa" his birth surname, and "Raigosa" his present wife's last, Maiden name. They united their names from love passion.  Apparently the populace is angrily astir with indignation that their mayor would disgrace them in such a plebeian fashion. (How come they don't know that in Hispanic culture the male can do whatever he wants and desires?)  Background: Yesterday's front page news was that Mexican drug gangs can now outgun Mexico's city forces. Now it would be very unwise to retire to Mexico as I did in 1997. USA retirees are routinely murdered, for as little as a beat up old car.

Well, you get the drift. 

I must attend to my chores. Immediately, wash the baby's clothes. Oh boy, you should see Mark Andrew. He put his toe in his mouth this morning said my son Vincent, age 12. What might that foretell?

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

" Hi Barry, yes I have seen "Crash." I found it well done but it held no surprises for me. We all have biases, prejudices, bigotry, whatever name you give it, it's there in all of us to some degree."

Thanks Sheria:
CRASH is presently my all time most fav. movie. My criteria put
acting as film ingredient numero #1. Very often I'll watch a terrific movie
except for the rotten acting.

CRASH has everything. The scene under the upside-down vehicle is easily
my most fav movie scene in all of movie history. Both actors are superb.
Their characters vivid, lifelike, full of surprises. The racist cop effortlessly puts his life on the line to rescue the woman pasenger trapped under the car in which she was riding. Earlier they had hated each other. A desperate crisis brings out the true, loving, self-sacrificing deep human love for each other in the most extreme, near lethal circumstances. As the leaking gasoline flows downhill toward her on-fire underside of the car we gasp expecting an immediate deadly explosion.

One reason, perhaps the main reason, CRASH won the Best Picture Oscar
is that the Actors division of the Motion Picture Academy voted en masse for
the movie because the success of the movie depended so graphically on the
quality fo the acting. After all it was relatively low budget, with a small, not very well known cast. Sure, the prosecutor's wife is well known but not enough to play
the lead in a movie. Her character was somewhat minor. Not that I'm knocking her, I am not, I just want to weigh why the movie was so powerful in the eyes of actors.

it's very rare, I believe, for a movie so successful to carry the burden of a message. After all the movie is a sermion on the evils of racism. Movie audiences do not like to be lectured: they want escape, excitement, a reason to forget everyday struggles. The end scene of a tailgate fender bender and pasenger screaming accusations is put there to emphasise that racism goes around and around in circles and there's never a satisfactory resolution. So the drama ends on a sober note, but it just couldn't end on a happy, lets forget the past: it'd be false. But, in sum, I pray that the movie will eventually move us just a tad closer to loving each other.

Love,
Barry

This here and not a reply to a Comment is that it's more than 'X' number of characters. I've alread turuncated it but too lazy to remember what I tried cutting.

Writing Greeting Cards

Not sure about this but I doubt I've ever sent anyone a greeting card. In this milieu I definitely do not send greeting cards. After all, I'm really talking to myself. If I wanted to talk to you, or you, or you, wouldn't I send an email?!  [So, what brand of writing is writing a blog in the style of a greeting card? but read by any number of people simultaneously?!]

Oh, I had to look up a word. So, since it was there, hovering, I'm posting it: So this is NOT a greeting card.

There used to be a marvellous, spirited lady blogger here (huh?) whose entries were about her caged birds which she dearly loved. She'd been divorced and still seemed to carry animus toward her former husband. Her birds were her major comfort. At the time I thought it was a mite excessive, but now I have five finches of my own and love taking care of them and enjoying their reproduction and merry chirping. A finch is a cousin, or sister/brother of a sparrow. I enjoy anticipating their wants and needs. I regret my proximity can alarm them, but at the same time I feel acknowledged when they line up as if to thank me for providing them twice a day clean cool water in which to bathe. If I miss one of those provisions the water turns grey green and thicker than water. Amazing because I don't see how that can happen. The water is put in a very wide, low, coffee mug, white all over. Their food is provided in at least five different containers. Clean, bottled water is also provided in a one inch in diameter glass container attached to a piece of cardboard. They make a huge mess in that container also. I wonder and wonder why they do that. (Water for drinking is also on the side of the cage) Cleaning their teeth?!  They have mirrors and alternate nests, two of which they dismantled for reason totally opaque to me.

Birds seem to engage in lots and lots of repetitive, similar 'work' yet end up with the result they want. I have a hunch that common sparrows are happier because totally free. The repetitive behavior might be an inspiration to believe our false starts should be tolerated, and the correct course of work will eventually show up and bare fruit. In my own case I tend to give up, wallowing in shame when I should simply try again, and again and again: learn in other words to be a good finch.  : - )

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

Main Entry: ca·coph·o·ny

Function: noun
Pronunciation: -ne
Inflected Form(s): plural -nies
: harsh or discordant sound : DISSONANCE 2 ; specifically : harshness in the sound of words or phrases

 

 

 

 

 

Cur & Pasted Demurral

 

 I don't blog in order
to find agreement, I blog to express in
writing the impulse of the moment. That
is, in a novel or short story I'd practice
social practicality and confine "bigotry"
to the attributes of a character I had created.
If you require that I never offend you, then
please, do not read my semi-private blog, and just
read my fiction if an when it is published.
I do resent being charged with racism (which
has been stated) when I have
interracial children from an interracial marriage.
If, for example, anyone is totally fixated on being a militant African American I suggest they be more
clever: immitate MLK Jr. and find complete
naturalness in those not African Americans.
Lately I've not discussed African Americans:
I spoke only of "Native Americans".

In college, btw, Clyde Kluckhon an Anthropologist,
made a point of telling his class that as of 1953,
and for decades earlier, from a statistical POV,
the American African American population was
zero percent pure African Black.

Damn me as an anti-sentimentalist, not as a "bigot."

Barry

Temper, temper

My kids might as well be playing cowboys and Indians for all the noise they're making. Children (plus myself ages ago) are drawn to the costumes of Indians, and to bows and arrows and smoke signals. Did Indians just play?! I mean the actual Indians? Was life 'play' elevated?! Their language most likely was small in vocabulary, and nature-centered because they knew little else but nature in the raw. I wonder, if they had more words, more inter-tribal communication skills, they might have united, and ended up with a large slice of present day America - not just a few reservations - beginning with the defeat of Custer. We now know, says research historians, that Custer's soldiers ran away.*** Interesting. Human. And, I still love, THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON. (Not crazy about my source, but I could believe that some ways into the 20th Century it was legal to shoot an Indian in California.)

Barry

*** ....and shot to death as they ran. Those Indians had

rifles. American traders gave them the rifles. The horses they got from the Spaniads in the 1500's. 

INDEPENDENCE TAKES STERN SELF-DEFENSE.

Botanists, so says the recent LA Times,
have proved that human domestication
of plants in the Americas, is at least as old as 10,000
years. I'm not clever enough to cite
the evidence, besides, I flunked Botany not
once but twice in college!! I had to read the
evidence on my report card: Medicine was not
for me as a career.

Crying over the fate of North American tribes
who it is claimed owned the land is plain and
simply irrational: it was up for grabs, as untended,
and undeveloped. Those same North American tribes took
the land from previous peoples. To 'own' the land
a civilization able to defend itself must be established.
It took immigrants from Europe for that to happen.
Now the Arabs want it; what are their chances? Nil
to zero most likely. To continue owning America the
present occupants might have to destroy the Arabs
in their desert bunkers. History, human history, is an account
of perpetual warfare. How come Native American can't
get a handle on that?  Native Americans contributed to
Americas WW2 defeat of Japan. America is grateful.

Barry
http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

March Of Folly

"Oh say can you see...?...?".  The United States was founded by English gentlemen. Not sure if I can count on our wonderfull UK blogging pals to believe we celebrate that fact on this day, July 4th. Also, btw, our current, everyday postage stamp is a marvelously designed, beautiful, triangular picture of English sailing ships at anchor near Jamestown, VA (I think it's in Virginia - hey, I'm a little bit Aussie.)

THE MARCH OF FOLLY, written by an American woman historian, takes great delight in pointing out how England could quite easily have kept the Colonies under The Union Jack if this, and if that. It's been a while since I read that essay. I do remember that splendid Mr. Burke (Sir Edmund Burke) said in Parliament, "Let us bind them with laws of trade."  For comic relief, I think, some cite the fact that King George was bats.

In other words, Dear Brits, in celebrating Independence Day we mean in no way whatsoever to thumb our nose at Britain but to hug you for the wisdom of our Founding, English Fathers.

 

Love and hugs,

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

Summer Fun

Summer fun, at least in memory, was year-round in the Australia of my youth - from age three to age sixteen. Sydney, so says memory, had no winter, although the seawater, Olympic-sized swimming pool near our house was closed for a couple of months. In summer and winter I went everywhere barefoot. Crime occurred only in the movies, and generally that was American crime, not Australian. The population then was seven million; since then the population has tripled. Hard to imagine what that increase has done to the lives of summer fun revelers and beach lovers. How I miss the yellow sand of Sydney and environs surfing beaches: Manly, Queenscliff, 'Harboard' (forget spelling), Dee Why, Collaroy, Narrabeen, and on all the way to Palm Beach. And that's just North of Sydney. South, I still have yet to explore.

Memories flooding back simply because daughter Diana is going there in a couple of days in order to meet her Southern Hemisphere relatives for the first time. My daughter is a psychologist; I hope her relatives don't find out. In the Aussie-land I remember one dealt with problems by having another beer. Anything academic was anathema. Or so I remember.  I better not return; in age I'd be easy to knock on my 'keyster'.  Ha ha ha ha ah ha ha.....   Oh well, that's why Aussies have always done so well in battle. Cheerfully pugnacious. (Thank God poor ol' Mel Gibson didn't get into fisticuffs with the Malibu cops.)

 

Adieu, and have a few...             (rendezvous)

Barry

So many years, and so many miles

separate Australia (of the 1930's,

late 1940's, and 1984, and today -

dates of contact) that much more

separation has take place than would

normally happen among family members

from the same country, but separated

only by time and contiguous geography.

And, curiously enough, if it hadn't been

for the bonding that came about during WW2

the gulf would be even more enormous.

 

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/