Cabeza Revisited and Updated 3

Chapter 24, GURU I

Page 251. “The Holy Song of Thanksgiving.” — There Is a comment at YouTube: “If you listen to this movement it will change your life.” Not untrue. See what I wrote regarding it in The Last Sonata chapter.

Page 264. “Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31” — see my rendition of this Sonata at YouTube along with my discussion. I’ve also noted “Jane’s” favorite part, which might be summarized in words by Julian of Norwich’s “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Maybe “Jane” will see it, and listen someday.

Chapter, 25, GURU II

Page 265. “Beer day.” — It’s now wine day: Cabernet Sauvignon. Red wine is the only alcohol that might actually be good for you. Up to three drinks a day for men and two for women are not associated with any increase in mortality. But if you are diagnosed with cancer it might be best to stop, although I’ve read that red wine may be protective of prostate cancer.

“Only be married to someone of an artistic temperament, of a creative nature.” — Kay Redfield Jamison, in Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, writes of assortative mating, whereby people choose partners who are temperamentally similar. There’s no other way for people to understand each other.

“Change my mind on the way down.” — One young man did change his mind on the way down from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. They’ve now put up protective netting there as well as some sort of barrier at the George Washington. Just before it opened in the 1930s a daredevil jumped as a stunt. He died. One week later someone jumped to commit suicide. They succeeded. But it seems in one third of the attempts the person survives. They should put up signs to that effect — might be a deterrent.

“I hit her.” This would probably infuriate “Jane,” but I feel much much worse about something I said to my first girlfriend, “Melinda,” out of “self defense,” but I’m certain struck to the core. “Melinda,” if you ever read this, I am truly sorry. Also, I have no memory of what “Jane” said, but it must have struck me similarly.

Page 276. “The Dalai Lama… chosen… some esoteric means I’d rather not know about.” — Sad to say that knowledge was inflicted on me in some book or other: he had a mole in a particular place on his face as a two-year-old boy.

Page 281. “Peyton Place… As the World Turns.” — Perhaps not clear to the reader is that these were the names of soap operas of an earlier date.

Page 282. “The cause of all your suffering.” — Again, Beethoven: “Man cannot avoid suffering. He must endure without complaining, and then again achieve his perfection, that perfection which will be bestowed upon him by the Almighty.” It is our genes that likely program us to try to find external causes for our misery since that may in a roundabout way help our reproductive success. Even the supposedly spiritual George Harrison sang in While My Guitar Gently Weeps: “I don’t know how you were diverted. Someone perverted you.” And even his last song, recorded by his son while he was dying of lung cancer is even entitled Brainwashed: by everything that society, et al., has done to us. But as Shakespeare understood, “The fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.” And I know for a fact it is possible to find freedom from that — through free won’t and sitting.

“5000-year-old “Iceman” discovered in a melting glacier in the Alps.” — Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Natures, notes that later, samples of blood were found from four different individuals, including presumably the Iceman himself, on his clothing. Presumably he must have been part of a raiding party and at least drawn blood from three others before being killed. Noble? Who knows. Peaceful? Not exactly.

Chapter 26, GURU III

Page 287. “There is no how.” — What is missing from this is that one must allow the finite being to suffer without complaining, through countless hours of sitting without striving, just seeing if the mind can simply be with itself. Only thus can the finite being, the unfree will, wither and die. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: “A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)” and “The only hope or else despair / Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre / To be redeemed from fire by fire.” But he couldn’t do it himself.…

“Mind, having no abode, should flow forth.” — Not Dogen, but Bassui. Bassui also wrote (in letters printed in The Three Pillars of Zen), “With hands held high, leap into the flames of your own primordial being.” But how does one leap? It’s an act of will. The unfree will. But if one just sits, and sits, and sits… the flames will come. And if one keeps sitting — despite the revolt of the unfree will — well, the words of the Bible in one of my favorite parts of Handel’s Messiah expressed that: “But who may abide the day of His coming. But who shall stand when He appeareth. For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”

Page 289. “Can you see that?” — While Toni used the words effortless awareness, I’ve come to see that’s not what she deep down meant. She would say, “Look at what is going on.” I would say, “Be with what is going on.” Looking at I see as a way from distancing, defending oneself from what is inside. Defending the finite being/unfree will. Preventing it from what The Woman of the Lightning mentioned later in Cabeza calls “The eternal necessity of suffering.”

Page 293. “Firebombing of Dresden.” — This was at her Wikipedia page, but is incorrect. She lived through the bombing of Leipzig. When they sheltered in the basement room she was struck and appalled at how frightened her hitherto totally protective father was. But you are going to die, every single one of you and there’s nothing even the great God ITSELF can do about it. The finite being is doomed to dissolution, but the Infinite Spirit is beyond time and space.

Page 294. “Be open.” — Trying to be open is the trap of trying to get out of the trap. Being open is the result of giving up all trying, giving in to everything. Letting go of the whole thing. Not reacting to the inner drives of wanting or fearing by means of free won’t — all of which entail allowing the finite being/unfree will to be devastated unto death.

Page 295. “Kyle and Toni’s son Ralph” — Ralph was adopted. Later I learned (after I rejoined the Center) that Ralph was considered quite irresponsible. This was at a trustees meeting when it was being discussed how to help Toni financially after she had become bedridden due to spinal stenosis. One trustee expressed that they didn’t want any funds end up going to Ralph. Irrespective of what I’ve written about Toni, she and Kyle (a school principal before his early retirement) were very responsible persons. That their adopted son was not again shows how so much of what we are is in the genes.

Page 296. “Just being there with oneself.” — Using any meditative technique may be a way to keep the fears deeply buried, and thereby be an escape. Allowing the mind to be with itself allows all the wanting and fearing to come up. Which is the last thing the finite being wants. Because it allows that Something which is devastating to the unfree will. But that Something is the very reason why we are here in this Universe. And is there all through the first three movements of Beethoven’s Ninth.

Page 297. “I find Krishnamurti an immense conundrum.”

But maybe he’s not. On the link below, someone asks him, “What is meditation and how is it related to creativity?” Krishnamurti’s response to this question—in a dialog—is so pathetic it virtually convinces me Rajagopal wrote all the books. When I showed it to Anne, who had read Krishnamurti before she met me, she said, “He seems dumb!”

http://www.krishnamurtiaustralia.org/articles/meditation%201.htm

And why aren’t there any Krishnamurti meditation centers? I suggest it’s just as Sloss quoted him: “Without my talks I would die.” Talk after talk after talk. Video after video after video. Book after book after book. But meditation. . . . Kyle, by the way, although he never sat, did purchase, and watch the complete set of Krishnamurti videos — which were later donated to the Center. If I ever have the opportunity I will redonate them to the Monroe County recycling center.

I would answer the question regarding creativity and meditation as follows: Wilhelm Furtwangler said, “Art springs from spheres that are beyond the sphere of the will.” Meditation has the potential to help one enter into those spheres. That’s my short answer. My long answer is all of Cabeza, all of my photos, and all of my piano renditions.

Page 305."Steve"-- see here.

Page 306. “Those who were bullied most?” — This should read “Those who were bullied least?”

Page 307. “Great Salt Desert.” — This should be Great Salt Lake Desert. Same for the captions of the photos. We were lucky that year that the lake level was very high providing the reflection. In recent years it’s been going down exposing more salt flats which have lots of heavy metals (some from as far away as China) that the wind picks up — making the air downwind to the east quite unhealthy.

Page 313. Time for another Christmas story:

Christmas 2022: I WAS NOT LOST

I was not lost. I am never lost. I always know where I am (more or less, that is). I have an excellent sense of direction: that’s why my compass was safely stashed in the top of my pack … and no way I was going to go through the big hassle of taking it off and digging it out, especially at a time like this.

It was just that … well … it wasn’t precisely clear which way I should go. But then, Yes! Aha! A track! Exactly what I was looking for. The trail must be nearby.

But … strange. Very strange. I hadn’t seen anyone all day, but there was a snowshoe print through the ice of a small stream — just like I had made about 20 minutes earlier. And the print was exactly the size and shape of my snowshoes. And not only that, but there were marks from trekking poles in the snow exactly like mine. Weird.

Somehow I had gotten off the trail and had been following along the depression formed by a small stream that seemed to be, to my eyes, the trail … until I had crashed through the thin ice. Water had seeped up under my rain pants and over my boot tops to soak not only my socks but the lower 6 inches of my fleece pants. I decided to ignore it. For the time being.

But someone else had done exactly the same thing. And I hadn’t seen anyone. How could that be? Slowly, slowly, slowly the realization seeped into my mind. I had done what all the books say you do when you are lost. I’d made a complete circle back to where I myself had crashed through that ice!

This was my third winter trip to the Adirondacks in as many years. There had been two around 1980, the first carrying cheap plastic snowshoes, camping the first night in a lean-to. I learned that lesson well: woke up from a nightmare screaming, “The spirits of the earth are worse than the spirits of the sky!” only to realize mice were crawling all over me. Never again. Pitched my tent the next night and then circled back over Avalanche Lake (photo) in bitter cold and high winds.

The second I’d attempted Dix Mountain but the steep trail had inflicted a mortal wound on my cheap snowshoe, truncating my visit.

The first two trips of recent years, with top-of-the-line snowshoes, I had climbed the highest peak, Mount Marcy. On the first, the night before had been -15° F, but thanks to Anne not being thrilled with midwinter backpacking for some reason, I had her sleeping bag to throw over my own … and was nice and toasty. High winds, light snow, and cloud scudded across the rocky summit but I was dressed for the occasion.

Returned to where I’d pitched my tent for the second night. No need for the bug screen so the door stayed unzipped. Woke up to find … a pine martin dragging off my Ziploc-bag-enclosed first aid kit! I quick grabbed it … but to my greatest dismay discovered it had already dragged off my bag of tea! Later it dawned on me I was vulnerable due to being only ½ mile from a lean-to, and lean-to means people means food for everybody. Or, rather, tea for everybody. Not to mention first-aid kits. On the drive home I heard an NPR report on how people working at the Washington zoo felt closer to the animals they tended than their human acquaintances. Maybe they have tea with them, too. Reporter didn’t say.

The second recent had been relatively balmy weather but deep snow, so, the biggest problem with winter trips was how to avoid lean-tos and pitch my tent in 4-foot-deep snow (other hikers packed down the trails). Thus, I had the bright idea of using a bivy sack, which we’d used in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. In clear weather.

Here, now, in the Adirondacks, the forecast had been for the skies to clear. But. Mountain weather. It was in the teens and still snowing. I eventually found the trail and then saved myself much trouble by cutting straight across solidly frozen Lake Colden. Then up the trail to Mt. Colden and a spot to plant the bivy. But. The snow, the snow, the snow. 2 inches, 4 inches, 6 inches. More, and more, and more. Had to stay inside the bivy. WITH my soaking wet socks and fleece pants, which steamed up the whole place. Tried to sit, tried to sleep, tried … but gave up.

Packed everything up and headed back. No moon, but enough starlight filtered through the thin clouds and snow to guide my way. My main concern, finding the trail at the far end of Lake Colden turned out to be no problem. Even a meadow with drifts obscuring the trail was just barely negotiable.

But that was yet to come. At the halfway point, in the middle of the frozen lake I settled down into a sizable drift, made myself comfortable, munched on some nuts and raisins, and gazed contentedly at the sparkling snowflakes gently drifting down from above and all around, seeing if I could just let it all in.

Not what I’d planned, to say the least. But overall … perhaps … not that bad a trip.

End of story, but I put it here because when I got back to the truck/camper I sat some, slept, sat some more … and realized what I really wanted to do was more sitting. I looked online after getting home at the Springwater Center’s site and saw they were now offering Quiet Weeks when people could come, for up to two weeks, for self-directed retreats. For the next couple years I went every month or so for two days at a time and wrote the following epilogue to this chapter of Cabeza:

Epilogue: In January 2011, after looking at the Springwater Center’s website I decided to attend a few days of the Quiet Weeks (a relatively recent innovation) period in February, and also to rejoin the Center. I have since attended numerous three-day self-directed retreats and have found these times quite helpful, to say the least. I suggest that anyone open to Cabeza’s message and interested in either a structured or self-directed retreat, on a uniquely beautiful property in upstate New York, may wish to do the same. See www.springwatercenter.org and www.meaningofwilderness.com for more information.

Independent of what has been written in this chapter is that the great legacy of Toni Packer, who is now permanently bedridden in her home not far from Springwater, is to have created a place where people can come and find out for themselves if it’s possible to simply be with their own mind; allowing mind to know Mind, Being to permeate being. On their own terms. However it works best for them. Without nonsense. Without extras. Without . . . whatever. This is something very precious. I hope it will endure, at least as long as things human are capable of enduring. —Phil Grant, July 2011.

I haven’t been to Springwater in a while because they are requiring everyone to be vaccinated with all the boosters, and I’ve read too much about possibly severe side effects. Hopefully that requirement will be dropped soon.

Another note about Toni: she became permanently bedridden due to spinal stenosis and has since passed away at age 87. Around 1982 when I was on staff I heard her mention, regarding a woman who had made a tragic life decision, to someone, “Actions have consequences.” (The woman later committed suicide.)

About that time Anne was living at the center and doing cleaning of the rooms in lieu of paying rent. She happened to be cleaning Toni’s room when Toni was there and discovered a yoga mat under the couch. Toni said, “Oh, I’m supposed to do exercises [for her back]. But I don’t do them.” Yes, actions, or non-actions, DO have consequences.…

(I have the same problem — I’ve lost 3 inches of height since high school — but all my life I have been doing regular back exercises.) As I’ve said, talk is cheap. Even George Harrison, and biographies I’ve read, was described by friends as “talking the talk, but not walking the walk.” But walking the walk is devastating to the finite being.

Chapter 27, IT

Page 314. “And suddenly…” — This is another allusion to the Messiah: “And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying: Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God in the highest. And peace on earth, goodwill towards men.” Saint Luke 2 : 13-14. Could apply to the Adirondacks in autumn.

Page 316. “Something… So vast, so profound, so beyond all comprehension…” — I later discovered that my cousin Nell had had a very similar experience, recording it in what I call her poem This Body: “There was a wisdom up, away, there… and I, me, this body began to absorb just a tiny bit. Tiny, tiny bit. I must say this body because “I” is something more now. Vast, oh so big.” For more see the book on Nell that needs to be finished.

Chapter 28, THE FINAL FUGUE I

Page 318. “Unaware of Franz’s syphilitic condition.” — The author of the best biography I know of Schubert, Elizabeth Norman McKay, indicated that Schubert could not have considered marriage knowing that he had syphilis. But both Robert Schuman and Theo van Gogh (who died an utterly horrendous death from the disease a mere six months after his brother Vincent) did both marry. So I’m confused on this point. But I think what I wrote was correct regarding Schubert.

Schubert also said near the end of his life, “Sometimes I feel I am no longer of this world.”

As physicist Brian Greene wrote: “The reality we experience is but a glimmer of the reality that is.” Interestingly, Brian Greene’s brother, Joshua Greene, spent 20 years in an ashram in India and wrote a biography of George Harrison. They each seem to have influenced each other’s books. Both searching for truth in their own way. Like my friend Steve and I. The last time I saw him he was working on his PhD in nuclear physics. We had bumped into each other in Grand Central Station in New York City on our way home to visit our parents. There is a picture of us talking in my parent's living room then: he has an Afro and I had just shaved my head. I may post it somewhere.

Page 319. “Muslim men, at least as described as Ali in Infidel, are not notably anxious about how they perform in bed.” — See Discover magazine, November 2010.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/vital-signs-education-all-around

[A physician is conversing with a resident at a hospital] “You already told me that she had no complaint of pain. Were there any changes in her bowel habits or unexplained weight loss?” I suggested. He shook his head no. “Abnormal vaginal bleeding?” No again.

“Dyspareunia?” His brow furrowed and his eyes nearly crossed. I realized he didn’t know what the word meant.

“It has been estimated that medical students learn upward of 10,000 new words in the course of their medical education. Besides the names of innumerable body parts and physiologic phenomena that must be memorized, there are words for every conceivable symptom. There’s a word for pain with swallowing, pain with breathing, pain with defecation, and yes, even pain with intercourse.

“Dyspareunia,” I told him. “Pain with intercourse. It can accompany a number of conditions, including pelvic tumors.”

“He stared at me, bewildered.

“I stared back at him. “What?”

“He glanced away and then whispered, “I thought intercourse was supposed to hurt the woman.” He was dead serious.

“I felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room. Where had he, a highly intelligent but obviously inexperienced young man, learned this? When we chatted earlier, he told me he had been raised outside the United States, in a country [Muslim for sure, but Discover is too woke to mention that minor detail] that I knew had less progressive views of women’s rights. Had he brought this bit of nonsense with him from the old country? For the moment, it didn’t matter where he’d picked it up. He was in my office to learn, and I set about teaching something I hadn’t expected to have to teach that day.…”

Page 320. “Just at tree.” — Dictation screw up. Should be “just a tree.”

Page 321. "Mozart… came across The Art of the Fugue." — There's a video (part of a movie on Mozart, I believe) on YouTube called “Mozart discovers The Art of the Fugue.” In that video Baron von Swieten is with Mozart and Mozart is playing the most complex of all Bach's fugues: Contrapunctus 11. Mozart says, “Such voice leading. This is music I could learn from.” The Baron says, “Do you envy him?” Mozart response, "I don't know."

This exchange was not in The New Bach Reader which was the source for what I wrote in Cabeza about Mozart and The Art of the Fugue. I also was unable to find it in a biography of Mozart. So I don't know if the dialogue actually happened.

If Page 322. “Susan Sonntag.” — A comrade in spirit of Sonntag is Sarah Jeong, a member of the New York Times editorial board, who said, “The world could get by just fine with zero white people.” The reason is that, according to her assessment, white people have contributed nothing to the world, improved nothing, invented nothing: “Have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation? There’s literally nothing.” Apparently Jeong never heard of science, the industrial revolution, parliamentary democracy, computers, and the internet, having suffered from inferior education at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School.

Of course, Jeong was far from the first to disparage whites and Western civilization. Earlier “intellectuals” with a weak understanding of world history condemned whites as the scourge of the world. Here is the “wisdom” of Susan Sontag: “The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.” --Susan Sontag, Partisan Review, 1967

How could anyone possibly make such a statement without being absolutely filled with BLIND hatred. As mentioned earlier, every account I’ve read of first contact between Europeans and Native Americans has indicated the latter sought the former as allies against their enemies. The prime example of this is Hernán Cortés, who only conquered the Aztecs with the help of the subjects of their enemies.

Wikipedia: “In 1519, [Moctezuma] was informed of the arrival of the Spanish fleet of Hernán Cortés, who soon marched toward Tlaxcala where he formed an alliance with the traditional enemies of the Aztecs. … … Today, many scholars point to ideological explanations of the practice [of human sacrifice which claimed many thousands of the enemies lives], noting how the public spectacle of sacrificing warriors from conquered states was a major display of political power, supporting the claim of the ruling classes to divine authority. It also served as an important deterrent against rebellion by subjugated polities against the Aztec state, and such deterrents were crucial in order for the loosely organized empire to cohere.”

As mentioned earlier, the Chimú “culture” cut the hearts out of young children. Do you, dear reader, really wish you had been born into such a culture or that of the Aztecs? MS-13 gang members are their descendents. Are really all cultures equal? Pope Francis seems to think so. See:

https://pjmedia.com/columns/raymond-ibrahim/2023/05/11/are-all-cultures-equal-pope-francis-thinks-so-n1694566

https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2023/05/15/is-any-one-culture-superior-to-others/

https://pjmedia.com/columns/raymond-ibrahim/2023/05/09/whats-behind-reports-of-a-rampant-rise-of-necrophilia-in-muslim-nations-n1693771

Would you really like to live in a “culture” that, if not directly promotes, at least legitimizes necrophilia? As mentioned, the meaning of Islam is to submit. And this especially applies to women. Is it possible that necrophilia is catching on because dead female bodies are a paragon of submission? The epitome of submission. The quintessence of submission. Just wondering.

Call me a racist, but I will gladly take our Western civilization — with all its admitted faults — over any other. But so many just want to destroy it:

https://townhall.com/columnists/scotthogenson/2023/05/13/our-american-suicide-n2623211

New Yorker cartoon: A man and a woman are sitting on a porch and a stork carrying a baby is flying towards them. Man: "No. I ordered the life where I can do what I want." I wonder if the cartoonist realized that the only reason they can have the life where they do what they want is because countless other people, especially cooperative with high IQ, did have the babies who are necessary for the civilization we have.

https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2023/06/07/demographic-jihad-baby-muhammads-overrun-the-west/

Page 327. “Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor.” — One YouTube comment says, “This is the voice of God!” Yes. The Infinite Spirit expressing itself through the medium of Bach’s finite being.

Page 328. “The Woman of the Lightning.” — Just rereading her experience now, May 13, 2023, I find it of inestimable profundity. And it dovetails perfectly with the Anthropic Principle discussed earlier.

Page 331. “Lies in the choice of fire or fire.” — Should be “Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre / To be redeemed from fire by fire.” Dictation screw up again that I missed.

Chapter 29, HELPING OTHERS

Page 332. “Toscanini said, ‘I still don’t understand that music.’” — It would seem that the majority of conductors, and likely musicians also, don’t understand it. A survey of 151 conductors by the BBC asking which symphonies were the greatest (by all composers) rated Beethoven’s 3rd at the top of the list, and 9th second. And Schubert’s didn’t even make the list. I would rate his 8th (The Unfinished) and 9th in a tie for second. Then Beethoven’s 6th, 7th, 3rd, 5th, possibly in a different order, then Mozart’s 40th and 41st, and maybe 39th. Then Brahms, Mahler, Bruckner, Berlioz and Dvorak could fight it out for the remainder of the spots. I don’t listen to any of them.

There is a reason why Beethoven’s 9th is always played when there is a special occasion, such as opening a new concert hall, the tearing down of the Berlin wall, etc. Hopefully the reader will be inspired to give the performance I put a link to — the Berlin Celebration Concert — a try. Multiple tries. Multiple multiple multiple multiple tries.The first three movements truly express the what of Stephen Hawking's "what is it that breathes fire into the equations."

Page 333. “These poor, beautiful, gentle creatures.” — Well, the more I observe them sitting at the window occasionally looking out at our view I see them fighting amongst themselves. Sometimes one will chase another one away. They will briefly stand on their hind legs and paw at each other with their front ones. These are the does, not the nasty bucks. Fighting for reproductive success. One doe has been chasing a rabbit:" that's my grass you're eating!"

Another Christmas story:

A Little Story of Life and Death

One fine late May morning Anne pulled back the bedroom curtains to find, before her very eyes, just 25 feet away in our pine woods, a mother deer, a new mother deer . . . giving birth. To twins: the first was already on the ground with the second on its way. After its arrival the mother began licking them both, and herself, over and over and over —imparting them with beneficial bacteria, as we recently learned — for close to three hours, as they began trying out their weak and wobbly legs and sniffing all the wonders of their new world. Then they were gone, off on their journey of life.

We saw the three of them frequently, even almost every day, browsing in our meadow that I mow most of only once or twice a year — making it the perfect repast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Often they’d be quite close by the house and from time to time one or another of them would look in at me at the piano, eyes and ears wide, as if wondering, “What the heck is that guy up to?” before getting back to the important business of munching. Sometimes another doe, perhaps the sister of the first, would be there too with her own singleton fawn. From time to time if there were a loud noise, or we pulled the drapes too quickly, they might dart off into the woods, ever aware how dangerous this world is. But otherwise, we gave them no reason not to feel safe.

Every once in a while, a mean-looking buck would show up chasing everyone out of his yard, but most of the time it was just our happy, contented family. In early fall it seemed the twins’ spots disappeared overnight, and we could see the bumps begin to grow on the heads of both, eventually to turn them too into mean-looking bucks. But for now it was quite a bucolic, idyllic, scene.

Then came . . . hunting season, and because there are way too many, far too many, deer . . . there are lots of doe permits. Early the first morning I heard two shots on our neighbor’s property, and a little later Anne informed me . . . a deer, a doe, perhaps the mother, was limping across our property. On three legs. Because appallingly, horrifyingly, her right foreleg had been horribly shattered by a shot, and was now hanging loose by a single tendon. At one point she stopped and looked down at it as if thinking, and I cannot say she was not, how in the world am I going to live with this? And the ever so sad answer, given especially that deer in part survive the winters by uncovering acorns buried under leaves and snow — with their front legs — was, you aren’t.

After donning my orange vest and cap I headed out looking for the neighbors so they could end her suffering. But they were nowhere to be seen, and besides the deer had wandered away, so I came back in. But later we saw her, not far from where she had given birth, in a spot on our property where she must have felt secure, her body curled on the ground but her head erect, eyes squinting from the pain, unmoving — as if she were, in her own way, meditating on the meaning of life and death. And I cannot say she was not.

Regretfully I went to look for the neighbors again, this time finding them, but as they approached, she quickly hobbled off across our road to someone else’s posted land where the neighbors did not feel they could follow.

And now I wonder . . . if I really should have . . . just let her die in peace.

I regret this is not a terribly cheerful tale for Christmas time, but so be it. Without death . . . there would not be life. No evolution. No “endless forms most beautiful and wonderful,” as Charles Darwin so eloquently put it. And besides, otherwise the planet would be getting pretty darn crowded.

Page 334. “Extremely suspicious of people ‘doing good.’” — H. L. Mencken: “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” “In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.” “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”

Page 335. “Bill Gates… Now he's seen the light.” — I do have to say that his funding of projects to mitigate global warming — chalk in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and more practical nuclear reactors, especially since they go against the progressive/Democratic narrative — seem worthwhile.

Page 340. “More than half the aid went to those oh-so-compassionate aid workers. Who left after a couple years. Presumably for the next more highly publicized crisis.” — The situation is actually far, far worse than this. As Lily Tomlin said, “No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.” See The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid?, by Linda Polman. Before opening your wallet in response to those oh-so-heartrending ads for “donations” to charities, or rather donations to aid workers, please read this book.

From the back cover: “This disturbing account of the multibillion-dollar juggernaut that is today’s global humanitarian aid network raises profound questions not just about the palliative efficacy of aid, but whether it fuels and prolongs conflict.… Deeply troubling.”

The Crisis Caravan, page 10: “Every major disaster now attracts, on average, about a thousand national and international aid organizations” and it is estimated “that the total number [of them] exceeds 37,000.”

Page 22: “On all the food rations distributed by aid organizations, the Hutu government, from its tourist hotels, levies a war tax to pay its army, which enabled it to continue its campaign of extermination against the Tutsi regime back in Rwanda.”

Page 32: “What exactly was the problem between the Tutsis and the Hutus about? And what’s the problem now? “[The author] asked to no one in particular. My table companions shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the politicians. It’s not our [the aid workers] concern,” one of them said.

A member of the World Food Program staff changed the subject: “I had I had yet another of those meetings with the mayors today.” He stared into his glass dejectedly. Nothing but complaints. No more white beans in the rations, they had to be brown beans, and the maize meal was too thick. ‘What time would you like to eat from now on and would you perhaps like a Waldorf salad with your dinner?’ I asked at one point, but my sarcasm escaped them. They would discuss the salad with their bosses, they said.” And did anyone ever say thank you? “Hah!” He sneered. “On the contrary! We were given orders to deliver firewood in lengths of exactly 60 cm in the future.” “Let AIDS take care of them!” said someone who was listening from a table behind us, raising a glass. “And Ebola!” roared another aid worker. “May the [nearby volcano] erupt!” “Hear, hear,” came the cry.

Page 36: “Abundant humanitarian aid was all that enabled the Hutus extremists to carry on their extermination campaign against the Tutsis.…”

Page 39: “There’s a market for good works, and it’s big business. Call it the ‘moral economy’ if you like,” Nicholas Stockton, a former executive director of Oxfam, told Newsweek. We see what looks like one big happy family moving in concert into crisis zones to ease human suffering, but the most powerful link between humanitarian aid agencies is that of commercial competition. Wars and disasters generally attract a garish array of individual organizations, each with its own agenda, its own business imperatives, and its own institutional survival tactics. It’s a long time now since the relief of suffering was something the humanitarian world engaged in wearing sandals. Nowadays, as the aid workers themselves point out, they dress in sharp business suits. Organizations that want to remain competitive need to know all about integrated marketing strategies, cost-benefit analyses, and competitive incentives. Ideally their top officers will be made up of graduates trained in nonprofit management or business economics, with an understanding of product positioning, proposal development, and client relations. There is no sign of donor fatigue; the budgets of donor governments and contributions from private donors grow every year, as does the number of aid agencies wanting to help spend the billions donated, and the competition among them.

Page 49: “The salaries, per diems and danger and discomfort bonuses on offer make working in the established aid sector highly attractive. In ‘humanitarian territories,’ the restaurants, squash courts, and golf and tennis facilities are often back up and running before bombed out schools and clinics. With three quarters of Sierra Leone still in the hands of murderous rebels and the majority of the population wandering the region crazed with fear, humanitarians were able to wield their clubs and rackets once more on the raked greens and gravel of the capital, Freetown.”

Page 50: the humanitarian aid community that travels to war-torn, crisis ridden countries feels no embarrassment about looking like an international jet set on holiday. Its Land Cruisers can be found triple parked outside the restaurants, bars and discos of war-ravaged towns and cities every evening. Wherever aid workers go. Prostitution instantly soars.”

Page 99: “Wherever aid organizations appear, local political, military and business leaders suddenly start driving around in expensive cars and building splendid houses. Prices in ‘humanitarian territories’ go through the roof…”

Page 105 [Doctors Without Borders] report: “It is also important to note that, although only the financial value of assets has been calculated here, vehicles and communications equipment have a value beyond their monetary worth for armed actors, increasing their capacity to wage war… This raises a serious challenge for the humanitarian community: can humanitarians be accused of fueling or prolonging the conflict in these two countries?”

Page 107: “All over the world, refugee camps act as a magnet to warriors. Strategic withdrawal to a camp allows armies and militias on the losing side to avoid getting minced. In a refugee camp, they have time to regroup, civilians to hold hostages as human shields against attacks, and a chance to recuperate. Rich international aid organizations provide food, clean drinking water, medical care, shelter, education, and welfare, both for the fleeing troops themselves and for their families and supporters. It costs the fighters nothing, and supplies will be brought to the camps from thousands of miles away if necessary. By forcing fellow camp dwellers and INGOs to pay ‘taxes’ and ‘protection money,’ they can top up their war chests at the same time.”

Page 115: regarding the famine in Biafra: “Not since the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps had anyone in the West seen children looking like that, with faces of little old men and bellies so swollen they seemed about to explode. What the viewers were not shown in the harrowing television coverage was that the famine had been caused and deliberately sustained by an army commander using supplies of food aid intended for the victims in an attempt to win a war.”

I had intended to quote much more from this book but I’ve had enough. Read it yourselves.

And Patrick Moore, a cofounder of Greenpeace, writes in Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom on Page 10: “It was a bittersweet parting with Greenpeace, the organization that I had helped build, shape, and guide for 15 years. Unfortunately, Greenpeace had gone from an altruistic group of volunteers with a noble vision, to a business with an ever-expanding budget, a matching payroll to meet, and was now rapidly transforming into a racket pedaling junk science.”

If you are so flush with cash that you don’t know what to do with, well, why not quit your high status, high paying job, buy a nice place in the country, and start sitting four hours a day… and maybe even take up the piano. BE a way for the cosmos to know itself. This is the ONLY reason why we are here. And if you’ve still got money to burn, have lots of children and hire people to take care of them. Or pay your children to do the same. Remember, as Freakonomics proved as does Gregory Clark in both of his books, it doesn’t matter what you do for your children. All that matters are your genes.

As David P Goldman (his books can be found online) has said: “The best thing you can do for zombie countries is not be one of them.”