All Is Well On
Galthos
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
Their mission was to harvest water from an obscure sphere one hundred light
years from their galaxy. Traveling at Warp 12, they had projected a five-year search
with Starship Infinity, but had already traveled fifty light years without substantial
success. Fortunately, they finally zeroed in on a sphere that showed promise, but
the cloud cover blocked any clear view of their monitor’s intended target.
Regardless, their detectors indicated an abundance of H2O on this odd,
little sphere, a type their ancestors had called “planets” in Millennium II. Accept
as water reservoirs, planets, such as this minute globe, were preferably destroyed,
because of their potential collision with commercial space travel, as well as with
military and water-harvesting starships, such as the Infinity.
Their fellow inhabitants of Galthos desperately needed water to survive.
All hope for the next generation of Galthosites depended on the Infinity’s success,
but time was running out. Under the command of Captain Gergos, Lt. Uriah
expected to land on this sphere with a platoon of ten collectors, or “absorbers”,
his platoon’s preferred monicker among the fleet.
According to Starfleet protocol, Captain Gergos remained behind with
Starship Infinity in periodic contact with his Starfleet Commander Yawah at
home base on Galthos.
Lt. Uriah had always felt confident of his platoon’s safe return to the
Infinity with Captain Gergos in command, because he treated him like a favorite
son. However, the tedious journey, with no fruitful returns, had taken its toll on
the morale of the entire crew of one hundred. Uriah wondered if, even their
unflappable Captain Gergos was beginning to show stress fissions across his
chiseled-granite façade.
Gergos put an affectionate hand on Uriah’s shoulder as his platoon was
about to debark for their long-anticipated water harvest.
“We’re all depending on you Lieutenant Uriah, the folks back home on
Galthos, the entire Infinity crew, but most of all, me. Don’t fail me, son.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Spare nothing, and no one, who stands between you and the life source
we need to transport back to Galthos. Our extinction rests on your shoulders. You
must not fail.”
Uriah had never seen Gergos in such a state. As he locked in for planetary
transport, he shivered. But entering the cloudy atmosphere below, his temporary
blindness through a thick fog bank made him think only of home and Thiona, his
dear wife, waiting patiently for his return to Galthos. It had been just over five
years since Uriah had held Thiona in his arms and inhaled the essence of her silky,
purple hair, and rippled his extended antennae against her responsive, fluttering
gills.
They had hoped, when he returned from this mission, that the five-year
Galthosite spawning season would have yielded them offspring, at least of Starfleet
quality, to carry their productive breed into Millennium IV on Galthos. The heavy
burden of achieving their mission’s success could mean the difference between a
new generation of Galthosites and extinction.
As the closest solar sphere cast its dawning beams on their craggy landing
target, the Infinity’s harvesting shuttle, called “Slurpy,” emerged from the dissipating
fog. Viewed aboard the starship by Captain Gergos, Slurpy made a soft landing within
a hundred yards of their detected water source.
“Landed safely, sir,” Uriah reported to Gergos, where the captain sat at his
command panel on the Infinity’s bridge.
“Commence your mission, Lieutenant,” Gergos ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The collecting platoon checked their equipment then debarked,
one-by-one, down the landing chute onto the crusty surface of the unnamed
planet. In single file, they followed Lt. Uriah toward their targeted water
source. Fifty yards away from their collection target, Uriah felt intense heat
radiating from a steaming gorge. He waved back his platoon, and all lay flat
on the rocky surface, but the heat from the gorgewas traveling beneath the
surface and scorched them. Those who didn’t jump to their feet quick enough
for some protection from their insulated boots, popped like kernels of popcorn
on a grill. Their heads exploded, raining cerebral matter for yards.
The remaining two of the platoon, along with Lt. Uriah, had blistered
paws, and faces with whiskers singed. Uriah suffered one dehydrated eye, but
stood his ground, depending on his other two eyes to see, at least in front of
him, if not behind. When he turned his head 180 degrees to check his remaining
two platoon members, he saw horror and defeat in their expressions, pitifully
tragic with their singed antennae and quivering gills.
“Captain Gergos, this water source is too hot to transport,” Uriah said
into his remote communicator, which was beginning to burn his webbed paw.
“I regret to inform you, Lieutenant Uriah, we are unable to transport
you, and your remaining platoon members, back to Starship Infinity. Slurpy is
disabled. Its control board must have melted.”
“Why didn’t our water detectors register this unbearable heat source,
sir?”
“It did, but we had to chance it. I promise that your name will go down
in the Galthos Chronicles as a great hero, and I will personally bear responsibility
with Thiona to raise your offspring as Starfleet’s best.
“Thiona,” Uriah said, hoarsely from his parched throat. “How do
you know my Thiona?”
“Everyone one knows of Thiona, Lieutenant, the prize breeder of all
Galthos. I’ve lusted for her gills these many light years in outer space. I will
personally bring the news of your tragedy to her, then nestle my antennae
against her as she sheds tears from all three eyes. Then I’ll tell her of your
your last request. Then, as a Starfleet officer’s widowed wife, Thiona will
learn that Yawah is retiring, and then, as a married officer, I can become
Starfleet Commander with Thiona as my spawning mate to assure our
Galgos legacy.”
Gasping for his last breath, Uriah said, “But Galgos will perish
without our water harvest.
“How else could I get you to leave the Infinity on that outdated
rattle trap, Slurpy, and foolishly land on that barren planet our ancient logs
called Earth? I assure you, Uriah, despite your death, all is well on Galgos.”
May 2023
The Mystery of the Ages
The Universal Gum-Wrapper
Article by Charles E.J. Moulton
Christopher Reeve’s flight through space made me imagine what it was like to be a hero. I was in Star-Wars-Mania and adored cinema. In addition to Luke Skywalker, “Superman – the Movie” flabbergasted me. And one of Hollywood’s most versatile actors starred in what was to become one of my favorite movies back in 1978.
I analyzed the storyline, filled with archetypes, and I thrilled upon seeing someone fly through space without wearing a space-suit. When I slip that film into the DVD-player once in a while, just to walk down memory lane, I analyze the archetypes we invent in our modern day society – or with what character traits we embellish them and amaze at what I see.
Although Gene Hackman played the villain in the motion picture, that part was only half of the fun. His unforgettable portrayal of Lex Luthor gave me a wise quote, one that stuck in my memory as one of the smartest quotes ever to be uttered on a filmscreen.
“Some people,” Hackman said, film-timing at exactly 1:35:55, “can read 'War and Peace', and come away thinking it is a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.”
The length of the phrase lasted only for ten seconds in the movie, but to me it encompassed everything I knew to be true. Truth, love and insight, indeed, is in the eye of the beholder. It is not what you are experiencing, but what you draw from the experience that matters. Now, what a shame that Mario Puzo's script handed that line over to the villain Lex Luthor. Within that line, ergo, lies a deeper truth than we ever will be able to understand: there’s more to life than meets the eye. Wisdom does not seek sociological stature.
What we have to learn from this is that we never should limit ourselves. We can limit our choices, but not ourselves. That distinction is important. We can read one single book, see one single film, meet one single person, and if our feelings and insights are deep enough, our souls can become as insightful and deep as Buddha’s did during his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya around 400 B.C.
We are talking internalizing knowledge here, putting it to practice and understanding it, making it become more than just theory. We are not talking about just the knowledge itself. Knowledge is useless without deeper insight.
Every truth has a story and this one shines.
The tale of the criminal millionaire drugdealer that kickstarted a foundation against drugdealing is a lesson to us all. In order to heal the addicts whose lives he had ruined, he went to extreme lengths because he had to share a cell with a dying drug-junkie. The addict died in his arms. The dealer promised himself never to hurt anyone ever again.
That is the essence of “The Wrapper Principle”: a man who experienced a paradigm shift brought on by one simple experience. In someone else’s shoes, that experience would’ve gone astray. This man had risen to the occasion, tread the path up to that point in his life and was ready to see the light. A cliché? No, the whole truth and nothing but the real truth.
There’s no telling when insight will hit you.
So, here’s the deal: it is not the information that matters, but how we internalize the information that’s there. Our deepest thought reveals who we really are – in our deepest selves. Another and more shallow man would’ve turned the corner, shrugged, escaped and gone about his business.
The New International Version of 1 Corinthians 13:1 reveals exactly what I am saying. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
Wisdom is not having three diplomas and five doctorates. Wisdom is more. Again, it is internalizing and transforming knowledge into insight. Call it love, depth, honesty, faith, truth, sympathy or understanding. Without that inner truth, I repeat, knowledge will become as useless and obsolete as old Christmas wrapping paper. That, too, is “The Wrapper Principle”. It is not with what the gift is wrapped, but the intention with which the gift was wrapped.
St. Paul speaks of love. We can also elaborate on these words and see what wonderful things good and knowledgable people without diplomas or formal education have done to the world and what ill educated men with diplomas have done to destroy it. It does not have to turn out that way, but it can.
These famous people never finished grade school: Harpo Marx, Charlie Chaplin, Andrew Carnegie, Noel Coward, Charles Dickens, Thomas Edison, Isadora Duncan, Maksim Gorky, Claude Monet, John Philip Sousa and Mark Twain.
These famous people never finished high-school: Henry Ford, Cher, Jack London, Frank Sinatra, Orville Wright, George Gershwin, Dean Martin, Al Pacino, Harry Belafonte and Steve McQueen.
These famous people never attended college: Amelia Earhart, Paul Gauguin, Ernest Hemingway, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Harry S. Truman, George Washington, Virginia Woolf, Aaron Copland and Ernest Hemingway.
These famous criminal minds did have college degrees: Ferdinand Marcos (Law, dictator), Professor James H. Snook (Veterinary Medicine, murderer), Albert Speer (Architecture, Nazi criminal), Klaus Fuchs (PhD, Physics, Manhattan Project), Robert Mugabe (7 academic degrees, dictator) and Dr. James St. James (Psychology, murderer).
It goes without saying that education is a necessity, especially in this day and age when competition is at its zenith. Our criteria of judgment, however, should not be limited to the presence of degrees. We might have a Renaissance Man without a degree on our hands or a well-read individual who never went to college. Our aim should not be to seek the university-biography of a man, but his universal insight into the broad spectrum of life. We have to start judging a man not by the wrapping – the diplomas and garments – he drapes himself in, but by his actions, his honesty and his genuine interest – in you.
Anyone who says he can’t tell an dishonest established politician from a excommunicated saint is lying. Is your counterpart looking into your eyes, speaking calmly, standing firmly on the ground, not fidgeting with his hands, listening while you speak, helping you, doing his job, leaving you alone when you ask him to?
Furthermore, does your gut tell you he is honest, no matter if he is the CEO’s nephew or not? Trust me, it really truly matters what’s inside a person, no matter what anyone tells you. Trust your gut. It never lies to you. People sometimes do lie – even if it only is to protect themselves. They promise themselves something and think they can’t change their minds. So they follow up their lies with more lies, just because they can’t go back. Cataclysm follows.
To me, Luthor’s words in “Superman” sounded like something Shakespeare could have written, had he lived today. That phrase reminds me of the sayings of Carl Gustav Jung. His philosophy embodied exactly such an humane attitude about truth and wisdom not being dependant on social stature. Wisdom, indeed, can be everywhere. Wisdom, true wisdom, again, is not within words of the books you read. Your wisdom arises from within you as a reaction to the insight you get from the books or any knowledge of any kind. If you “get it”, that’s enough. I once met a woman who told me she had entirely read Dostoyevsky’s insightful book “The Idiot” in one night and not remembered one word of it. In the same sentence, she criticized me for buying a novel by Stephen King. How insightful. I learned more from that King-novel (creative writing, storytelling, literary skills, marketing, character arch) than she ever did from the supposedly deeper book whose story she never remembered.
Webster’s Dictionary defines wisdom as such:
Knowledge that is gained by having many experiences in life.
The natural ability to understand things that most other people cannot understand.
Knowledge of what is proper or reasonable: good sense or judgment.
Any medium, any person of any age, and any given situation, could be able to teach any given person something valuable. The question is partially, but only partially, what you want to draw from any situation. We should be open to see more than meets the eye or at least give something or someone a second chance.
We will have to choose whom we to listen to, of course. Life means choosing. But choosing doesn't mean judging those we choose or don't choose to listen to. Here’s the deal. “The Wrapper Principle” means succumbing to the potential limitlessness of humanity.
These are my feelings, my philosophy. You are free to agree or disagree. You should form your own opinion. If you want to convince me that you are right, you better be willing to consider that I am right. Many highly esteemed and very respectable individuals indeed will argue that only one person can be right. They might be wrong. I said: “Might!” Then again, I might be wrong. What do you think? Yes or no? Both alternatives are ligitimate.
As soon as you say that there is one single truth, you are bordering on a proverbial world that is an advocate for fascism and dictatorship. Accepting other people's opinion, allowing freedom of speech, giving everyone a chance, is one of the cornerstones of a civilized society. If you eliminate that, you are looking at the Soviet Gulag, the Nazi Concentration-Camps and Mass Crucifiction. Opinions have to vary. Attaining wisdom means being able to let go of your own demands to gather attention to your opinions.
You have your own opinions, but other people might have others. That’s okay. Accept that. We all have different standpoints, physically as well as emotionally. Tell an architect that, generally speaking, the most important thing in life is music. He will probably disagree with you. Tell a musician that the most important things in life are facts and forms. The musician will, most probably, laugh you in the face.
Who are we to tell one of these people that any of them are wrong? Who are we to say we can't be different? Isn't it necessary for us to be different? Shouldn't we be mature enough to have our own opinion and let others have their’s? Isn't the problem that we can't handle being different, rather than having to be the same? We can't be the same, we will never be the same. In fact, if we were all the same, we would hate life in itself. We wouldn’t be able to fall in love. Being different is the point of travelling, educating yourself and gathering experiences. If we all needed to be as similar as many religions hope we should be, any discovery would be pointless. What could we discover? There would be nothing new in the universe for us to find.
God’s world is versatile. Consequently, there are different roads in finding him. One person might see the Christian part of God and follow Jesus. Another person will maybe see the Polytheistic character of the divine and follow the Hindu tradition. Whether we like it or not, whether our egotism forces us to believe only one person can be right, God is not member of any religion. He is above religion. No religion has the monopoly on God. Your soul is eternal. God is not of this world. God is yours to keep. Don’t pay God any taxes. He doesn’t need your money. He needs your faith. Not your money. We just have to learn to accept each other. We are all souls living in bodies. That’s it.
So, here’s where we are: we have to learn to look beyond the wrapper. We have to be open to change, but we also have to be able to cast aside our sociological misconseptions. To illustrate my point, I will tell you a story I read as a child. A rich man prepared to travel to Alaska, in order to dig for gold. His dream was to become rich. So, Yukon seemed like a good place to start.
He ended up sleeping outside, in the snow, in his tent. There was a terrible snowstorm, and even more frightening villains, who all were all competing with him to find the gold. One day, he even witnessed two crooks dressing up as Sasquatsch, Bigfoot, the terrifying Snow-Man, just to scare him away. Well, the young gold-digger didn’t care. He kept on searching for gold, and laughing at the villains.
One morning, though, the real Sasquatsch woke him up, waiting to steal his gold, and scare him away. The gold-digger thought he was dealing with the crooks, so he chased the Sasquatsch away. The monster was stunned that he couldn’t scare away the gold-digger, so he disappeared, and was never seen again. The gold-digger found his gold, got incredibly rich and famous. Only later did the gold-digger realize he had vanquished the real Sasquatsch. If he had known that the real Sasquatsch was attacking him, he would’ve been afraid and lost a fortune. Not being the victim of sociological misconceptions or superficial judgments helped him. The motto of the story: the only thing you have to fear, is fear itself.
We return to our original premise: Lex Luthor’s promise of finding wisdom on a chewing gum wrapper. This anecdote was not retold from a scene in a Jack London novel. It wasn’t Ernest Hemingway and it certainly wasn’t Kafka. It was a story from a Donald Duck magazine. The gold-digger was Uncle Scrooge. If I can find so much truth in a comic book, so can you, but I also found massive amounts of truth while reading Victor Hugo’s 500,000 word epic “Les Miserables”. I don’t limit myself. I like eating at Pizza Hut, but I also love a four-course dinner at Foquet’s down at Champs Elysée in Paris. Both are ligitimate.
Discussions are indeed still not pointless. We really might convince someone the validity of our opinion. We also need to defend our own opinions. That's perfectly fine and normal. The more we try to convince someone of our opinion, the more convinced does that other someone become of their own opinion. It's human nature. We defend ourselves. You really want other people to think like you? Then be willing to think like them. Be willing to realize that life is more than just black or white, up or down, right and left. It can be somewhere in between or both. Yes, both. Life sometimes contradicts itself.
The trick is to be true to yourself, being different, having different opinions, and still be friends. Accept that and change your world forever. The only thing that will halt stagnation and keep you passionate for knowledge is the willingness to accept that there are different truths. What's right for you might be wrong for someone else.
Believing in “The Wrapper Principle” means accepting that treasures might be hidden in unusual places.
Still don't get it?
Everything is not gold that glitters.
Still don't get it?
Things are not always what seem. Accept change.
It’s basically about humility and modesty.
“Our doubts unify us. Our convictions seperate us.”
Such were the words of Sir Peter Ustinov. So we can learn something from everyone, even if we only learn what not to do from someone's wrong choices, from his behavior or his words. If that's what we got out of it, that is enough for anyone. Knowledge and wisdom are not status symbols. Ever. Knowledge and wisdom are spiritual victories.
Wisdom and knowledge can be found in the universities, but it can also be found as an energy or a force. If you are a spiritual person, you will agree that there are such things as spiritual energies. People have emotional energies. You have probably walked into a room and felt the atmosphere in there being happy or angry or sad.
You know instinctively if something good or bad has happened in there. That is a spiritual and not physical entity. If there is soul, there is something independant of the body. Subsequently, there is an afterlife. Friendship is a spiritual thing, even atheists know that. It is a proof of a spiritual existance. Friendship connects us. These things are as divine as God.
Ergo: spiritual energies can teach us something. You don't have to be a believer to know that. Realizing that you know that, however, will make you realize that you are a believer, anyway. You can't escape God, no matter how much you want to deny him/ her/ it or whatever you want to call him/ her/ it.
Any situation will be able to teach us something valuable. If we learn our lessons by not repeating our past mistakes, we have become wiser for it.
What is important to remember is that we don't reject knowledge, or wisdom, just because it comes from a medium or a source that we regard as unworthy of our interest. Comics can teach us not to be afraid. A rocksong can teach us to love. Shakespeare can teach us to laugh. Kafka can teach us how to think.
Believe me, I have seen people all over the world become prejudicial for no reason at all. All that is sociological. Society has taught us that wisdom can only can come from traditionally established, or accepted, sources.
It doesn’t end there. We can find truth in other genres. Science-fiction, subsequently, is a genre filled with symbolism. In that respect, comic books are not the only genre that can provide us with wise reminders. The original Planet of the Apes-series was created during the cataclysmic flower-power-era, when the Vietnam War erupted alongside racial discussions and provocative rebellion and the sexual revolution changed the world.
The kangaroo trial in the original film, where the orangutang judges posed in Hear No Evil, See No Evil-poses, delivered an almost blatant political message. The human captive is given no chance to defend himself and the orthodox justice system denies to acknowledge all new ideas categorically. The political anaolgy of the series is sarcastic to the extreme. The peaceful chimps, the hippies, are terrorized by militant gorillas, the U.S. government. Consequently, the ape revolution in the forth movie was modelled after the infamous Watts Riots of 1965.
In effect, the humans serve as a symbol for the animal kingdom. The ruthless meat- and milk-production and veritable animal-slavery of the current world cannot be thrown into people’s faces, so the genre has the species switch places. Humans are disrespected, murdered, stuffed and put in museums for viewing. That is exactly what we are doing to the animals today. What other genre dares to be so blunt?
Interestingly enough, when the chimps travel back to our own time, humans return to playing their realistic parts: they become usurpers. The finishing message is a positive one, though. Film number five ends with the possible prospect that humans and animals may be able to live side by side in peace.
Judging genre-films from a purely political standpoint may create a realization that there is something to learn even from Spiderman or the Fantastic Four. After all, Star Wars borrowed from Tolkien, Nordic Mythology and used Kurosawa-imagery.
If we limit ourselves to the accepted sources, established doctrines and organized alumni, we are doomed to become boring, making the same mistakes over and over. We are doomed to become as ignorant, and arrogant, as the people we were taught to hate. If we question the established, looking toward other sources, we become really cool people. We’re changing for the better, moving toward new and more exotic locations.
Jesus arrived here on this Earth complaining about the impossible bigotry of organized clerics. As soon as the hunted Christians became accepted and established, they turned into murderers, torturers, hunters, moneymakers and forgerers. They became everything Jesus endeavored not to be. It is only natural that many people have turned away from the Catholic church in order to find God.
Wisdom can come to you via the words from a child's mouth, true insight can pop into your head when you are at peace with yourself, sitting by a campfire by your favorite lake.
Humanity will never see the light of day, in existentialistic and spiritual terms, if it does not broaden its horizons. Violence will ultimately only tear us down. Building bridges, and creating oppurtunities, will save us. Being open to change will change you. Achieving what some people do achieve, namely: opening the senses to wisdom when it presents itself, will catapult you to a higher level of conciousness.
This is no joke. It is harsh reality.
The principle works both ways, though. Wisdom can come from a gum wrapper, but people can also limit their views, and perspectives, so ruthlessly that their microcosmos really resembles the size of a matchbox.
Now, don't misunderstand me. This is not about scepticism. Scepticism is a necessity. Being aware of possible fears, i.e. questioning possible motives of a threat, might not only be a smart move. It might also save our lives.
We should, however, not reject wisdom because of our prejudicial attitudes. We should be willing to learn something, even from an opponent. A Democrat should be willing to learn from a Republican, and vice versa. Catholics and Protestants should be able to collaborate. If you don't think that is possible, I challenge you to find out for yourself that it does work. I know it does, because I have seen it work with my own eyes.
Many critics have been proven wrong. World star Fred Astaire, who influenced and inspired generations of dancers to become better artists, was described by a critic as follows: “He can't sing, can't act, can dance a little.” Franz Schubert, who has turned into history's most important academic composer of classical songs, sold his first song collection of songs a few days before his death. Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings sell for over fifty million dollars at current auctions, had a brother named Theo who paid for all his bills. His brother also bought the only painting he ever sold in his life.
There is a massively long list of artists and intellectuals who first only achieved their fame after their deaths. Jesus was rejected. Gandhi was rejected. St. Franciscus was rejected. If we limit ourselves to only accepting the established, or shove away certain groups of people because of class or creed, we are looking at living a life in a very limited intellectual area indeed. Knowledge belongs to you. So does wisdom. Indeed, you only use 10 % of your brain capacity. You do not need, and should not even consider, contacting Scientology in order to know that you can find, and develope more of your brain-potential.
Your spirit is free, your wisdom is free, your spiritual evolution is free, your intellectual development is free. We set the boundaries, but the fact is that boundaries only imprison us. If we do create them, let’s be smart about who, or what, we exclude, and why.
After all, versatility is the stuff of life. If we are able to open up to people that are different than ourselves, we open ourselves up to a huge world of positive surprises.
A factory-worker thinks he has to be wary of politicians. An artist thinks he must be sceptical toward car mechanics. A Hindu thinks he has to hate a Muslim. A fascist thinks he has to hate a Jew. You may think you can spot a Hindu, a Christian or a Jew, but you would be wrong. There are kaukasian looking Asians, and African Christians. There are white Muslims and Swedish Buddhists. During World War I, there were German Jews who became decorated German military heroes, only to be executed in the concentration camps.
“The Wrapper Principle” (wisdom is dependant on individual experience) is not expecting to be perfect. It is simply expecting the unexpected and being able to keep your arrogance on a low level. It is not being gullible or letting yourself be fooled by people. It is not putting the fool over the intellectual or the rowdy over the professor.
Society, however, sometimes lies to you and tells you not to question the established. It also tells you not accept the unestablished. But politicians like Ted Olson have agreed that politicians lie and journalists have given up their professions because they had to spread lies just to make money for their magazines. We humans are, of course, different. We just have to stop using criminal tactics to convince each other there is only one lying and supposed truth.
A person working in a theatre as a singer will encounter the limitless ignorance of non-singers. An accountant might think that singers just stand there and sing for a living. What he doesn't know is that professional singers have to sing in at least seven languages, sometimes having to learn ten full operas or musicals per season by heart, that they have to remain composed while encountering the sarcastic and harsh attitudes of directors and producers and are asked to crawl, jump, run, fly, climb, fence, box or play tennis while singing a difficult song.
Of course, the accountant does not know what singers do for a living. Even the singers who just sing concerts are confronted with constant irritations, mean crowds, bad producers who do not pay their bills on time and tour-buses that break down an hour before arrival.
Turn the tables on the singer, though. He doesn't know what the accountant has to do at work. He thinks he only sits there and types words and counts numbers. I am sure he has to deal with nasty customers, provocative employers, faulty computers, late nights, early mornings, bad breaths and surplus hours.
In fact, nothing is what is seems. Believing in cliches or stereotypes can prove to be treacherous. Finding out for yourself what the truth is, being open to changing your mind, could be a good idea. When you do change your mind, if you do, be open enough to try finding something new you can learn from that experience. Think about the famous legends of today’s world that had zero status during their lifetime. Form your own opinion. Personal development, pride and eloquence waits for you at the other end of the line.
If we are open to change our minds, we might even convince an opponent that we were right after all. Just because we listen to somebody’s opinion doesn’t mean that we have to share that person’s opinion. If we all shared the same tastes, likes and viewpoints, we wouldn’t know where we were in the first place. We just have to learn not to become violent when somebody is different.
There is a world outside your little matchbox, and it’s waiting to be discovered. Once you’re out there, though, pick up the matchbox you used to live in and read the ingredients on the gum wrapper. Read the label. What chemical ingredients are used? Are chemical substances as cool as we think? Follow the train of thought. Did Osama’s people actually fly into the WTC on 9/11? Did Lee Harvey Oswald really kill Kennedy? What are you eating and why? Could it damage your health? Is milk really good for you? Are we really related to the apes? Is what we accept as true really and actually true?
What questions should we ask ourselves ?
Swedish tea bags had wise quotes printed into the labels back in the 1980s, as did the Austrian TV-magazine “Die Ganze Woche.” Nobody likes a snob. Open up your world. Try to get something out of everything you see. Then you become really interesting.
You never know where you might find something you can use, an interesting piece of information. If you are an artist of any kind, everyone is creative in some way, anything good works. The simple fool sitting next to you in the restaurant might hold that final piece in the puzzle you have been looking for. Or he might just be a guy whose simplicity will teach you to cool down and just exist for two minutes, without asking yourself why. Ask him what his secret is. Maybe his secret will catapult you into worldwide success. Or it might not. You never know.
Find out.
What I am saying might be hogwash or might be the best thing you'll ever hear. Whatever it is, this is my opinion. All mine. This is who I am. Give it 5 stars or no stars, tomatoes or glitter, indifference or love.
Life is about choices. So choose.
Remember “The Wrapper Principle” and limit your choices, not yourself.
There’s more to life than meets the eye.
All About Literature
Memories of Ian Fleming
By Laura Richmond
I remember my childhood in Florida, me and my brothers. We were five kids, all in all. And all in all, t was a helluva time, I got to tell you. Especially since I was the only girl among them. No wonder I became a tom-boy as a teenager.
Nowadays, I don't hide my breasts or give myself a male name or go nuts when anyone calls me Laura. Believe me, I di back then. I called myself Laurence until I fell in love with a guy called Ian. Ian was smart, sexy amd he liked James Bond. I am a married woman with two kids and he is my husband.
What I do recall about my teenage years, though, are the Bond nights. All of my brothers were fans of the movies. Accordingly, we set up camp almost every weekend, even my Mom joining in. Pop-Corn, coke and a whole lotta Hershey bars. None of it British, mind you, but still.
What was really irritating was that my father knew every one of the original Ian Fleming books and used to tell us how different they were from the movies. Now, when you are a bimbo who tries to match up to five guys, yo team up with your mother. Mom and myself read all of Fleming's novels and discovered he was right.
The movies are juxtaposed versions of the books, really, a man's dream of girls, guns, spies and sly scumbags. Ian had his wonderfully eloquent and quite English way of articultaing himself. Although Sean Connery, the original 007, once was quoted as calling Ian Fleming a snob, he was, to me, the born artistocrat in every way. That slightly tongue-in-cheek aristocracy comes through in his books, mindful, always forcing you to turn the page. What I can say is that we have two whodunnit-authors who really have their seperate areas: Agatha Christie of the more old style stories and Ian Fleming, who really knew how to bring MI6, KGB and CIA into the matter. Where Agatha let the murderers train in tennis clubs and take long train rides with Belgians, Ian let his characters jump the highropes, sporting Aston Martins and Martinis.
In retrospect, I am happy my father was such a Bond-puritan. The later movies, such as Goldeneye, where a laugh to him. "How could they name a movie with no plot after his Jamaican recidence?" I tried to tell him that good old Pierce was doing an excellent job. And my father willingly agreed.
By Laura Richmond
I remember my childhood in Florida, me and my brothers. We were five kids, all in all. And all in all, t was a helluva time, I got to tell you. Especially since I was the only girl among them. No wonder I became a tom-boy as a teenager.
Nowadays, I don't hide my breasts or give myself a male name or go nuts when anyone calls me Laura. Believe me, I di back then. I called myself Laurence until I fell in love with a guy called Ian. Ian was smart, sexy amd he liked James Bond. I am a married woman with two kids and he is my husband.
What I do recall about my teenage years, though, are the Bond nights. All of my brothers were fans of the movies. Accordingly, we set up camp almost every weekend, even my Mom joining in. Pop-Corn, coke and a whole lotta Hershey bars. None of it British, mind you, but still.
What was really irritating was that my father knew every one of the original Ian Fleming books and used to tell us how different they were from the movies. Now, when you are a bimbo who tries to match up to five guys, yo team up with your mother. Mom and myself read all of Fleming's novels and discovered he was right.
The movies are juxtaposed versions of the books, really, a man's dream of girls, guns, spies and sly scumbags. Ian had his wonderfully eloquent and quite English way of articultaing himself. Although Sean Connery, the original 007, once was quoted as calling Ian Fleming a snob, he was, to me, the born artistocrat in every way. That slightly tongue-in-cheek aristocracy comes through in his books, mindful, always forcing you to turn the page. What I can say is that we have two whodunnit-authors who really have their seperate areas: Agatha Christie of the more old style stories and Ian Fleming, who really knew how to bring MI6, KGB and CIA into the matter. Where Agatha let the murderers train in tennis clubs and take long train rides with Belgians, Ian let his characters jump the highropes, sporting Aston Martins and Martinis.
In retrospect, I am happy my father was such a Bond-puritan. The later movies, such as Goldeneye, where a laugh to him. "How could they name a movie with no plot after his Jamaican recidence?" I tried to tell him that good old Pierce was doing an excellent job. And my father willingly agreed.
High Old Times in the Threadbare ‘30s
By the late and great Herbert Eyre Moulton (1927 – 2005)
Considering the perilous state of everyone’s finances during the 1930’s --- at least everyone we knew --- and recalling our own feast-and-famine cycles, the wonder is that we managed to take in as much grand entertainment as we did. But then, I was an only child (born July 1927) and no problem to be taken any where my parents went. Obviously I was also smart enough to grow as fast as I could so that these excursions of ours could grow ever more festive. Before anybody realized it, they consisted of at least one carefully chosen opera each season, plus operettas, musicals, stage plays, and, two summers running (’33 and ’34), the marvels of the Chicago World’s Fair, A Century of Progress.
We were determined to miss as little as possible. Damn the Depression, anyway! Naturally, there were the usual sour comments from the local Babbitts: Who did we think we were, anyway? Going to plays and operas, with so many people on relief?
“Oh, don’t mind those old horses’ neckties!” my mother Nell advised. “They’re only jealous. Such Slobs ICH KABIBEL!” (She’d once had a Yiddisch speaking suitor.) “Now, let’s see what’s playing next week, what we can afford, that.”
Something affordable would always turn up --- there was so much to choose from. And if the tickets cost too much, there was always some way to blarney our way past the Manager. “Honey-Boy, remember, I’m not Irish for nothing!” On such occasions, my Dad, Big Herb, would either look the other way or simply pretend he wasn’t with us.
Those were the days of Vaudevill, so we were able to bask in the glow of dying embers. One of my first Show-Biz memories was of Sophie Tucker, all in white, being driven onstage in a white-and-gold open limousine, attended by flunkies in matching livery. They escorted her down to the footlights. “Some of these days/ You’re gonna miss me, Honey”.
I was absolutely transfixed.
There were, as well, lots of live radio broadcasts originating in Chicago, like W-G-N’s popular Soap “Bachelor’s Children” --- we wrote in and got free tickets several times. Got the cast’s autographs, too, and a write-up in our local newspaper, The Glen Ellyn News. So much for the Babbitts.
There were also hour-long radio dramas like the version of “A Farewell to Arms” with no one less than Helen Hayes as Catherine, script in hand, loving, emoting, and finally dying beautifully, all into the microphone. Just think: The First Lady of the American Theater, not ten yards away from us and all the better because it hadn’t cost us a red cent!
The same went for the nightly free summer concerts in Grant Park. We took in them all, or some of them, anyway. And Nell got more articles printed in the paper. Living Well is the Best Revenge!
On athletics and sporting events we didn’t waste much time --- wrongly perhaps, and I the figure to prove it. (Sorry, Jocks!) I did like to go swimming, with my pals at the Wheaton pool in the next town, riding our bikes and devouring candy bars the whole way. There was also skating on Lake Ellyn, the best part of which was the hot cocoa with marshmallows in it at the boat house. That, and chatting up the junior high school girls. And the Hell with the Hans Brinkers outside falling on their bottoms!
We did make an annual pilgrimage to Wrigley Field each summer, mostly to humor Big Herb, an inveterate Cubs fan. They very seldom won a game, but my Dad was convinced they would, and the Pennant, too, if only we’d keep thinking Positive Thoughts. So we did ... meanwhile, the Hot Dogs there - they were just about the best in town.
Well, in 1938, Big Herb’s beloved Cubs finally won their Pennant, and, bless him, he hurried home as fast as he could just to tell us the News in person. It wasn’t just “Gabby” Hartnett’s last minute Grand Slam Homer that had turned the tide --- our own good wishes and positive thoughts had also played their part. Right, perhaps they had ... Nothing like keeping everyone on the Home Front happy and content.
Like most families, we had our share of seasonal traditions and these we kept religiously. Christmas vacation always meant one thing in certainty: a trip to the Chicago Stadium for Sonja Henie’s spectacular Ice Revue --- breathtaking costumes and orchestrations, Olympic skaters, and hair-raising comics-on-ice like Frick and Frack, and, the peak of the program and always dazzlingly beautiful: Sonja Henie herself, solo, a cherubic blond dream in a short glitzy skirt and spinning and wafting her way through Liszt’s “Liebestraum” --- Man alive! Now that was magic! That, ladies and gents, was a star to conjure with!
The Stadium of W. Madison St. was likewise the setting for another family tradition, this one in summertime: Ringling Bros., Barnum and Bailey’s Circus! Three rings continuously alive with clowns and their exploding flivvers, acrobats and tumblers, magicians and live animal acts, and a bevy of pretty ballet girls, fluttering vast butterfly wings a hundred feet up, hanging from the ceiling by their teeth! (Ow!) And at the Grand Finale, having to stop your ears when somebody got shot out of a mammoth cannon. (I never quite grasped the charm of this.)
Yet another amicable tradition: celebrating my parents’ Wedding Anniversary every February 27th, getting launched with a three-way “Kram” (Swedish for “embrace” – we called it simply a Hug-and-a-Boo.) Then a slap-up-dinner at a fine downtown restaurant --- Henrici’s or, better, still, the Berghoff, where the Wiener Schnitzel and Tafelspitz, AND the home-made Lemon Meringe Pie are to die for. This would be followed by a stage show, whatever happened to be playing that appealed to us all. One year, it was “The Hot Mikado”, another: “Porgy and Bess”, and the last such occasion in the ‘30’s (“Good riddance!” was Nell’s send-off-comment): the wonderful comedy “Life with Father” with Percy Warum as fulminating Father Day, and Lillian Gish (Yes!) as the gentle, slightly pixilated mother, heading a company said to be far superior to the popular Broadway original.
Another season brought Noel Coward’s witty Spook-Comedy “Blithe Spirit”, featuring the deliciously dotty Estelle Winwood of the lace-curtained hair-do, wide-set eyes, and pixie movements, along with Dennis King, old-time operetta idol, and the chic but incomprehensible Annabella. We hoped her husband Tyrone Power could understand her better than we did.
A farce my parents loved was “Leaning on Letty”, with the loose-limbed Charlotte Greenwood, whose post-performance display of rubber-legged acrobatics brought down the house. An incredible display, much loved.
Then there was the dark andd melancholy Sylvia Sidney in a stage version of Nell’s beloved namesake “Jane Eyre” (her father had been born an Eyre of Eyrecourt in County Galway, where Charlotte Bronte, the author, once settled, taking that family’s name for her own heroine). One reason for Miss Sidney’s melancholy might have been having the show stolen from under her by that delicious character actress Cora Witherspoon in the cameo role of Mr. Rochester’s complaining cook.
Another star turn, and one deemed by some of Nell’s bitchier lady friends as quite unsuitable for young Herbert’s innocent ears, was Clifton Webb’s waspish “The Man Who Came to Dinner” --- not for school-boys, and, consequently, relished all the more by this one. We also revelled in “Pins and Needles”, a political revue put on by members of the international Garment Workers Union in New York --- their spoof of an old-fashioned mellerdrammer was achingly funny and remains so in memory today.
“Achingly funny” wouldn’t half describe Olsen and Johnson’s zany “Helzapoppin’”, which gave a new meaning to madness, but it sure took a lot of tolerance to reconcile this kind of thing with the dignified Auditorium. What counted was the great old theater was being used as such. It surely was for the next production, which came at the very close “Dirty ‘30’s” --- “Romeo and Juliet” starring the most glamorous and famous pair of lovers of the time, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. We all thought it was the most sumptuous and thrilling Romeo possible, but it’s now reckoned the biggest flop of the Oliviers’ otherwise distinguished career. It played in the theater I shall always love more than any other --- Louis Sullivan’s masterpiece, and I write about it with a reverance reserved for very holy places.
I was and indeed still am deeply devoted to this historic old theater which dates from 1889 and which played such a seminal role in my life. And when it was threatened with demolition in the early ‘40’s, my personal sorrow was so profound that I wrote critic Claudia Cassidy a lament for its apparently inexorable fate. She published it almost in full in her Sunday column in the Chicago Sun --- Fame! And at the tendenage of 15, too. But thank God and a lot of marvellous people, the Auditorium managed to survive after all and is now enjoying a new lease on life as part of Roosevelt University --- restored to its pristine splendor as a protected Historical Monument.
It was there that I had my first real theatrical experience, a musical extravaganza in every sense of the word, “The Great Waltz”, music by Johann Strauss the Younger, book by Moss Hart, and featuring the soprano Marion Claire. It was she, as wife of the Music Director of W-G-N, who, in Spring 1953, auditioned and hired me for my first nationwide broadcast, commenting to the others in the control room: “We must find something that shows off his beautiful diction.”
As for “The Great Waltz” itself, very little I have seen since --- this was 1936, remember --- has ever approached it for sheer theatrical magic, now, during the introduction to the Grand Finale, the bandstand with orchestra, moved swiftly and silently upstage as far as it would go, crystal chandaliers descended from above and pillars slid out from the wings on both sides. Thus, in a matter of seconds, what was just another set downstage for a bit of dialogue, was transformed into the grandest of ballrooms, crowded with handsomely dressed couples waltzing to the beautiful Blue Danube. This was Glamour. This was Theater. This was an Epiphany, and I never quite got over it.
Let’s get down now to the operas my parents took me to in the 1930’s, after a quick glance back to the dark days of October 1929, when, by supreme stroke of irony, the stockmarket crash that triggered the Great Depression, neatly coincided with the opening of Samuel Insull’s brand new, twenty-million dollar, Art-Deco Civic Opera House. This soon came to be known as Insull’s Folly, and for it, his Civic Opera Company had abandoned the historic and still viable Auditorium, home of Chicago opera for four decades. Luckily, Chicago opera is now flourishing again.
In the ‘30’s, the only opera being performed at the Auditorium (probably the best acoustics in Christendom) was that of Fortune Gallo’s San Carlo Company, an excellent troupe of first-class artists from home and abroad, performing standard repertory at “popular” prices a few weeks at a time before moving on to the next city. My first opera was their “Faust”, with a nice chubby Marguerite named Belle Verte, and, as Mephisto, the company’s resident bass, Harold Kravitt (these names have been flashed solely from memory). There was even a “white” ballet between the acts. It was all totally new to me and it left me hooked for life.
My second night at the Opera, again the San Carlo, was Bizet’s “Carmen”, starring the Russian mezzo Ina Bourskaya. The trouble was that particular Saturday night an American Legion convention was in town, and Big Herb, a faithful, if not fanatical Legionaire, was all set to spend the evening with some of his buddies at Mme. Galli’s Italian Restaurant on the Near North Side --- a rollicking occasion reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy’s classic “Sons of the Desert” convention, which also took place in Chicago. All well and good, but what about my Carmen? I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. As curtain time approached, with the merriment showing no signs of abating, I began to twitch, and then to panic. Was I the only one who remembered our date at the opera? Nothing for it, but to burst into tears and create such a scene that the festivities ended then and there. We got to the theater just in time to miss Carmen’s Entrance and Habanera, but the important thing was we got there, period. And a terrific experience it turned out to be.
Besides my tearful brouhaha at Mme. Galli’s, what I remember most about that performance was Act IV and the hardy little band of 5 or 6 supers, got up as matadors and marching round and round in the pre-bullfight parade --- in one side and out the other, then a dash backstage and in again, at least four times, each appearance getting a bigger laugh and louder hand than before.
Then, for the final scene --- Brouskaya resplendent in gold lace, tier after tier down to the ground, with a matching mantilla held in place by a jeweled comb and blood-red rose. What impressed me most was the moment just prior to her death --- she made a frantic Sign of the Cross, then turned and rushed upstage to meet her lover’s naked knifeblade --- this desperate, dramatic Sign of the Cross, then hurtling hurtling to her doom. Boy! That was Destiny with a capital D!!!
The Sacred Hymns of Pachacutec
- Inca Poetry
Oh Creator, root of all,
Wiracocha, end of all,
Lord in shining garments
who infuses life and sets all things in order,
saying, "Let there be man! Let there be woman!"
Molder, maker,
to all things you have given life:
watch over them,
keep them living prosperously, fortunately
in safety and peace.
Where are you?
Outside? Inside?
Above this world in the clouds?
Below this world in the shades?
Hear me!
Answer me!
Take my words to your heart!
For ages without end
let me live,
grasp me in your arms,
hold me in your hands,
receive this offering
wherever you are, my Lord,
my Wiracocha.