Contemporaries

Photo from the inside cover of The Velvet Doublet by James Street.  Street was a Southern, American author and journalist who wrote several historical novels in the first half of the 20th  century.  He was born October 15, 1903 in Lumberton, Mississippi and died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on September 28, 1954.

Thomas B. Costain, who wrote The Silver Chalice published in 1952,  was a Canadian journalist, and also an author of historical fiction.  Costain published his first best seller at age 57, in 1942.  He was born in Ontario, Canada May 8, 1885 and died in New York City on October 8, 1965.

I was introduced to these authors by my bookshelves, which hold assorted books collected by family members over a century.  My grandmother, Kate, had books by both Costain and Street.  She also gifted my father with educational books and atlases, like the Atlas of World History, from which I have gleaned maps and short summaries about people, historical events and geographical movements over time.

Around 6 pm edt, I photographed the Atlas.  It is still Tuesday.

My copy of The Times Atlas of World History was published in 1978 in London and in Garden City, NYC, just after I had left for adventures westward.  The book probably belonged to my father, and this photo of the jacket cover shows Handy Underfoot’s work, before Tweety got too sick to eat book jackets on my bottom shelf.

It is now dark outside, at midnight, edt, and temperature about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Tweety seemed okay after I rescued her from the carport trash bin, since it was almost full of sticks and branches for burning in the wood stove. She and Speckles are now resting peacefully in their coop. After a new wave of wanting to throw this cell phone into the river, I note that in 2016 or 2017, it was announced that Bayer and Monsanto were merging.  Today I read farmers in the Northeast US of A are suing Bayer for cancers related to the use of Roundup, a weedkiller.  Well, well, well.  Never mind that the chemical industries are related to the agricultural industry; to the pharmaceutical industry; to the government industry; and to the bombs and weapons industries.  Big Tech is on top of it, because Big Tech is an outgrowth of Little Tech, which started with the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, when someone invented a pump for draining water from coal mines in the UK.  Then, in the 1800s we had the railroads and the Robber Barons in the US of A for connecting the vast stretch of North American land mass east to west and west to east.  In the 1900s, the world was interconnected by land, sea, air, and electricity, with the first transAtlantic and transPacific cables laid for telephone and telegraph communications.  In the 2000s, we have satellite communications, with ever expanding opportunities to make peace or war via technology.  

Both Costain and Street were born and raised in North America during the years before and after the first and second world wars.  Costain, born earlier, died later, at 80 years old.  During his life he worked in several areas of publishing.  In 1920, he became a naturalized citizen of the US of A and worked as an editor at Doubleday, which published my copy of his book, The Silver Chalice, in 1952.

The Velvet Doublet, also published by Doubleday, in 1953, is a novel about Christopher Columbus, as journaled by Lepe, a seaman who joined Columbus’ crew aboard the fleet of three ships that ventured west into the unknown seeking the riches of Cathay. 

LilOleMe began working at Doubleday in midtown Manhattan, NYC in 1975, as an assistant editor in the children’s books department.  From the tall office building, I could see Grand Central Station, which at that time still hosted the Penn Central Railway.  Outside, I could also see its large clock, which was right behind the two female would-be purse-snatchers who threatened me with an invisible knife on my lunch hour.

So over 40 years later, when I found these dated books, both published before I was born at a publishing house I remembered well, I felt as though the authors and I had a connection in time and space by our overlapping experiences.  Both books are damaged by age and humidity, but they have helpful maps of the places encountered by seaman Lepe in The Velvet Doublet, or by Basil the silver artisan in The Silver Chalice.

Tweety has helped personalize the library, with her little Devil/Angel beak.

And at midnight edt I’m ready to post and recharge.  Good night.

Why Fight?

Nobody wins in a fight, except those who like fighting.  Call me a coward, if you will, but I have been caught in the middle between others’ fights all my life.  Choose any side, and all the weaponry turns toward me.  Supposed allies join with supposed enemies in their joint retaliation against a spoiler of their fun.

Today, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, at almost noon edt, I’m saddened to see so much human energy and creativity misspent (according to me) on indulging hate and fear, when sun is shining, and birds are singing outside my open door.

I’m lucky to be in this position, knowing through media that mucky-mucks in other places around the world are contesting their relative powers to destroy things and people others have built, including their abilities to maintain what they have.

Life is terminal.  I felt the loss last night on reading  Mr. Flowers has died, of natural causes.  This peacock I had never met lived on a farm in the midwestern US of A, and his caretaker has been posting blogs for years about the animals on her farm.  Cecilia hails originally from New Zealand.  She has led an exciting, multi-continental life, with offspring spead far afield, whom she visits when she can.

Ceci shows no need to fight.  She is too busy taking care of her farm and animals, traveling, posting blogs, and doing human things that wend their way around all the wars perpetrated by mucky-mucks and their stage of limelight-seekers on the soapboxes of the world.

Did Mr. Flowers care?  I think not.  Why should I?  I’m still walking, talking, breathing, and driving, challenge enough, given the unpredictable upsets in the HumanLand dimension.

So Tweety and Speckles are OK, for now. I have no need to fight. At almost 2 pm edt, on Tuesday, Mars’ day in astrology, Mardi in French, even the Gun Clubbers are taking a break. In my Now, all is peaceful.

Striving for Content

Trying to find reality in all the Truth presented by human beings pretending to know it.

This is a collage I made by hand depicting my experiment with burning trash at the end of the spit of land that I pay property taxes on. I was burning paper trash (mostly junk mail), yard trash, and plastic trash (mostly packaging) to find out what becomes of CO2 emissions in the environment. The plastic was in a separate, composting bin; and it melted the metal. It also emitted toxic fumes that blew my way when the wind changed and the tide started coming in.

Considering that Monday, April 22, 2024 is designated Earth Day, with the theme geared toward plastics, it seems relevant to note how pervasive plastics have become, mostly in the form of packaging. True that the plastics industry–a major industry, with many products and potential products, given the “plasticity” of the source material–has blossomed since 1900, as has the human population of the planet.

Freinkel’s book, published in 2011, gives part of the story of plastics, and even she recognized in 2011 that plastic debris was creating huge “gyres” in the world’s oceans. The Pacific Garbage Patch, for instance:

On p. 129, she writes that a California-based sailor was returning home from Hawaii in 1997 and noted that for a full week, no matter what time of day he looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere:  bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments.

Freinkel then cites a Seattle oceanographer, who has made a career of tracking floatsam, debris, and the contents of cargo containers lost at sea, such as rubber ducks and sneakers, to better understand ocean movements.  Debris from North America and Asia is caught up in the gyre currents, but some gets spun into the center.  The technical term for this gyre is "The North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone."  This ocean "garbage patch" is the size of Texas and "swimming with an estimated three million pounds of debris" says Freinkel's 2011 book.  The book notes that this area is the feeding ground of the Laysan albatross.

My sporadic efforts to keep my own life running smoothly force me to contradict the human idiot on Facebook who claims I can't have a personal truth.  Idiot says "Truth" is conditioned, apparently, by what I am told.  Huh?  Does Idiot want to haul away the plastic garbage that washes onto my burning experiment at spring and fall tides? Or the bits of shiny plastic dropped by crows onto my sandspur-infested lawn?  Or riverside trees that blow over onto the roof of my house in high winds?

This is my truth. 

What’s Happening?

Are people really waking up? My personal life hasn’t changed much in the last couple of days, but the emergence of sunny days after a winter of rain and storms is bringing messages of universal love and compassion from unexpected points on the globe and in time.

Speckles crowing

Sunrise?  Today, Saturday, April 13, 2024, shortly after sunrise on a blessedly clear day, the gunners are already blasting down the street.  The Gun Club has been a fixture in the surround all my life, so their noise  provides background to all the additional noises that the wave of new development has brought.

No.  The hopefulness comes around and through the media-promoted messages of conflict, war, violence, disease, destruction, and despair.

Well known celebrities are talking about God, or showing their awe at the wonders of the cosmos.  I’m seeing short videos about the abilities of multi-talented animals and their communications that need no words.

Unknown human beings have pieced together representations of their world experience, and have shared wondrous insights through sound and video.  Creativity is flourishing everywhere. In Savannah, a place I can touch, feel, see, and smell directly,  flowers are blooming, and the puddles are sinking into the ground.

Last night I listened to a YouTube discussion between Tucker Carlson and Naomi Wolfe.  Tucker has been on a roll recently.  Since leaving Fox News, he has interviewed several world-renowned figures, including Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary.  

Tucker’s recent discussion with a Christian pastor in Gaza highlighted how Christians in Israel are caught between the Israeli military and its conflict with Hamas.  He mentions that any of the weapons used, maybe on both sides, came from the US, either by intent, or through circuitous routes.

Nobody asks me, but I wonder why the US is funding war anywhere, especially since the US has such a dismal record of contributing to every conflict, including those within the nation’s Capitol and Capital (the building and the city).

But the talk with Naomi Wolfe enlightened me regarding old Biblical texts and the individual’s direct relationship with God.  She said that texts modified over time and through different versions of the Bible have minimized this, but God’s instructions are simple and clearly repeated over and over.  She cited the book of Jeremiah , which I’ve never read.  This morning, I have pulled out my grandmother’s old Bible, which is losing its cover from age and this climate’s regular change from humid to more humid, to flooded with salty river water; and I began reading about Jeremiah.

Another of Kate’s books, Halley’s Bible Handbook, the 24th edition published in 1965, is in my lap, for reading about Jeremiah after I let The Screamer out to enjoy some sunshine.

Layers Upon Layers

Today, Friday, April 5, 2024, at almost noon, on the SE shore of coastal Georgia, US of A, I just photographed pages of my book Moby Dick that was on bookshelves, inherited from my mother along with all her other stuff.  The books are valuable to me, because I have read many of them.  This one was published in 1949 and contains a color photo or two along with some line drawings.

This is one of my all-time favorite novels, about a life at sea in the early years of the 1900s, when Herman Melville lived and wrote about New England whaling.  Moby Dick is the white whale that becomes the obsession of Captain Ahab of the Pequod, the whaling vessel on which the narrator Ishmael escapes November “in my soul” by taking to the sea . . .

“Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be overconscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger.  For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.”

In the Now, the sun is shining, and I must move to Do Things while the phone charges.  It’s a beautiful day, about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Speckles and Tweety have been too quiet. The owls may be sleeping.  Lollipop, the stray cat I feed, appeared at 3 am this morning, for the first time in three days, and must have slept indoors.  He was still inside this morning after daylight.

More later . . .

And now, after 3 pm edt, the sun is shining bright and hot.  Gunners are blasting at their club, and my chickens are undernesth the building where I sit, in the shade, out of the glare.  Mr. Machine Noise, aka my brother-in-law, may have retired his blower or pressure washer or weed whacker, the loud power tool that adds to his supply of annoying outdoor Noise-makers.  

Layers of time and circumstance converge on odd moments.  My volume of the Moby Dick story was published by the Literary Guild of America, Inc. in Garden City, New York by the John C. Winston Company.  It is also copyrighted in Great Britain and in the British Dominions and possessions.  Another copyright in the Republic of the Philippines tells me how the the 20th, and now the 21st century wars, have rearranged maplines around the world.

And area noisemakers have resumed, and Speckles is making happy chatter with Tweety.

Melville’s writing style is amusing, if old-fashioned.  “What of it, if some old hunks of a sea -captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks?  What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament?  Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hulks in that particular instance?  Who ain’t a slave?”

At 4 pm on Friday I’ve looked again at the list of chapters in Moby Dick.  It fuels my wanderlust through space and time.  But Now I want to wander outdoors. The book will wait.  They usually do.

 

 

Brain Without Heart

Brain without heart is the essence of all devilishness, said Isabel M. Hickey in her updated 1981 primer about spiritual astrology.

Hickey’s words came back to me earlier this week, when I read of yet another travesty perpetrated by “intelligence agencies” in the US of A.

In her introduction, Hickey says character is destiny. A horoscope is a blueprint of our character, strengths and weaknesses.

And tonight, Thursday, April 4, 2024, at 10 pm edt, I am following up on leads from the past few days. I listened to a YouTube interview by Chris Cuomo of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, and was impressed by both men and their ability to discuss without rancor several topics related to 9/11, “conspiracy theories” and RFK, Jr.’s stance on vaccines.

Because I respected Mr. Cuomo’s journalistic style, and because his name seemed linked to that of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, I consulted Wikipedia and found, indeed they are brothers, both sons of Mario Cuomo, who was also governor of New York.

I don’t watch television, except on rare occasions when I’m in social situations where a specific program or movie is part of the plan. So I didn’t know that Chris Cuomo has been a TV journalist for some time.

My interest in astrology, that woo-woo discipline which generates strong reactions in so many people, led me to note that Chris Cuomo is also a Leo, like me, and was born in Queens, NYC, like Donald Trump, who is a Gemini, but born in the morning, when Leo was “rising” on the eastern horizon.

Not that this matters to people who don’t appreciate the symbolism of place and time, but synchronicity is attributed to Swiss pychiatrist Carl Jung, who was a Leo, too, Sigmund Freud’s protege, before the two had a falling out in the early 1900s. Jung often used patients’ horoscopes to gain insight into their characters.

And now, it’s Friday, April 5, 2024, at 2 am edt, with clear weather outside, temperatures in the mid 50s Fahrenheit. The moon is waxing, high in the sky, and due to be full Monday, April 8, 2024, with a total solar eclipse predicted mid afternoon in North America, visible along an arc from the Northeast to the Southwest.

In astrology, the sun “rules” Leos, the lions of the zodiac, symbolic of heat, fire, and personal love. In early April, the sun makes its annual transit through the portion of the sky assigned to the constellation of Aries the Ram, associated with rebirth, beginnings, impulse, enthusiasm and creativity. Like Leo, Aries is a fire sign.

Isabel Hickey was a Leo, and her astrological primer was my first introduction to the “cosmic science” her book describes. Former US presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are Leos, too, for what that’s worth.

Carl Jung had great respect for symbolism, as did Freud. Jung is known for introducing the concept of “archetypes” universal human symbols found in ancient cultures, writings, and archaeological discoveries. The sun and moon are the most visible “lights” on earth. When they align in a “conjunction” and the moon seems to blot out the sun, the earth seems to quiet.

Now, it’s 2 am edt, early Friday morning, the day of the Roman week assigned to Venus, goddess of love. But on the other side of the world, in New Zealand, in the South Pacific Ocean, for instance, it’s Saturday. And the world keeps spinning . . .

Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024

At almost 9:30 am edt, Speckles crows, as if he senses my frustration over converting thought to technology’s rules.

I am located at 32 N and 80 W, approximately, on the world’s grid. Space and time say little about my rooster’s personality or Tweety Pie’s revival yesterday from a bout of illness or depression after all the rain we have had this past winter.

But flowers are blooming, including the Cherokee roses that hang from trees, with vicious thorns that could be used for fish bait in the tidal river that flows past my piece of turf.

Some azaleas are blooming, too.

At almost 10:30 am, I’m moving with the sun, or the earth, depending on perspective.  The sun is high in the sky, which looks hazy, but sunlight has not reached the chicken coop, where Tweety and Speckles are standing at the gateway, looking eager to escape.

Apparently my latitude comparisons disappeared into cyberspace.  Savannah is at about the same latitude as Shanghai, China; Hiroshima, Japan; Kabul, Afghanistan; Tehran, Iran; and the Strait of Gibralter between Spain in Europe and Morocco in Africa.

The world’s grid of space and time was political, apparently.  The English who explored the seas determined how time would be measured, so the UK got Greenwich, England as point zero for each day’s beginning.  The French, who calculated measurements of weight and measure, used the System Internationale–the metric system–for standardizing weights against a platinum bar of one kilogram.

While Easter as a religious holiday is acknowledged in Christian traditions around the world, my two chickens know nothing of human symbology.  Speckles crows at night, sometimes, when he’s uncomfortable,  and before daylight, when the sun begins to rise.  He knows nothing about Daylight Savings Time, a political attempt to corral human activity into temporal slots.

The metric system is used to measure temperature, too, with the boiling and freezing points of water set as standards for comparison.

Water has unique properties, with its flexibility to exist in solid, liquid, or gaseous form, depending on a life-friendly range of temperatures.  Scientists over generations devised a series of experiments to determine how plants use components of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen to utilize sunlight for growth, a process now known as photosynthesis.  It’s called the Krebs cycle.  

Easter, for some of us, is fraught with religious significance, a symbolic recognition of the beginning of spring, a rebirth of life and the earth’s above-ground renewal from the dreary grays of winter.  

But the vernal equinox and the birth of spring have been heralded throughout the northern hemisphere, in various religions and belief systems, long before Christianity, even if clock time and calendar time can’t agree with the earth’s propensity for wobbling this way and that in its rotation on its polar axes and revolution around the sun.  Now, at almost noon on Easter Sunday, the temperature is rising to almost 20 degrees, centigrade, and 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  Skies are still hazy, and chickens have been quiet.

Each of our human stories and traditions add to the tapestry that includes all life on the planet and the imaginings inspired by the stars.

Happy Easter, all, and thanks to Mother Earth and Father Sun for the birth of spring.

 

 

 

 

Time, Space and Weather

The Easter bird is singing, here on the coast of Georgia, at 8 am edt on Tuesday, March 26, 2024.

I can’t say the bird’s official name, but I hear it every spring. It sounds like it is saying “Easter, Easter, Easter”. I have never seen the songster so can’t identify it by feathers, beak, or other idenitfiers used by the Lumpers and Splitters. My sister, who lives next door, knows what I mean. She has heard the bird, too. It is gone by summer.

Birds are plentiful just now, as I sit with open front door. The tide must be out. It was high late afternoon yesterday. The moon was near full last evening, as it rose in the northeast, over the marsh. The skies are cloudy this morning, with temperature about 65 degrees, Fahrenheit. Thunderstorms are predicted tonight.

There are many dimensions. Physical space defines only one of them, according to me. Sound is definitely another. The Easter bird need say no more to tell me Spring is here, or that Easter is on its way.

And Speckles crows in the Now.

Azaleas are beginning to bloom. This is the season for wisteria to cover the ground, trees, and buildings, if it can. Wisteria blooms emit a heavenly smell, but I have already had to cut back the growth this spring. The plant can take over sunny spots, kill trees and pull down porches.

The mind takes circuitous routes. Last night, as I was going through old newspapers from September, 2016, I noted the Libertarian candidate for US president did not know what Aleppo was. He was ridiculed because Aleppo is an ancient city in Syria, where civil unrest has been brewing in the past few years.

I knew of Aleppo because of a novel by Thomas B. Costain, published by Doubleday in 1952, and from my grandmother’s collection. “The Silver Chalice” is a work of historical fiction that was a best seller the year I was born. I haven’t finished reading the book, but I remember it was set in the area around the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, in the early Christian era. In the inside cover of my copy, the publisher was kind enough to provide a map of the land to the north of Jerusalem, including Samaria, Phoenicia, Damascus, Antioch and Aleppo.

Well, la de dah! In the Now, at 10:30 am, edt I have successfully completed another milestone, to upload the inside cover of “The Silver Chalice”. Thanks, Kate Otto, Doubleday, Thomas B. Costain, Aleppo, and modern technology for conspiring to make my morning a success.

And the tide is coming in . . .

Jigsaw Puzzle of People

I collect impressions from my surroundings.  There’s no order or organization to it, but they all feed into a world view unique to me.  Lately I have wondered why humanity seems so afraid.

This past weekend, on Saturday, March 23, 2024, I spent most of the warm and rainless day trekking back and forth between two buildings, organizing the clutter of sometimes useful doodads that are usually in the way of whatever I’m looking for.

On Sunday, I spent a half-hour rearranging the two extension cords in the chicken coop, to extend wiring from the only outlet box.  It needs to be fixed, but I can’t schedule an electrician because of other commitments in the way.  Yes, it’s a dangerous fire hazard, but I’m now compelled to pay for fire insurance through my property tax.

Yes, I’m complaining, but that doesn’t stop the rain from getting inside buildings, or the humidity from corroding connections.

An image of a jigsaw puzzle reminds me we are all connected in numerous ways, even if there’s no direct contact.

And today, Monday, March 25, 2024, I have continued thinking about how the life forms on this earth are interconnected, but not in easily identifiable ways.  I listened to a Tucker Carlson interview with Roseanne Barr, the 71-year-old (but three months younger than I am) multi-talented actress and comedian I remember from the TV series “Roseanne” of 1988-1997 years.  Although born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Roseanne was a child of an othodox Jewish family and remains devout in her faith, not to Judaism, but to God.  I could relate to her personal belief in an unknowable beneficient Creator who guides personal choices.

I also picked up on similar attitudes regarding Dolly Parton, who is reputed to be extraordinarily kind to everyone.

Famous people like these remind me that there is hope for humanity, despite the machinations of the rich, powerful, and destructive forces of those who promote reducing population en masse, as happens in war.  Even Donald Trump wanted to “stop the killing”, and even he has been known to extend acts of individual kindness to those he has met in dire straits.

The intriguing concept of a jigsaw puzzle is that every piece contributes to the picture, but every piece is unique.  It is non-competitive and invites participation from many people.  It is not restricted by time constraints.

The jigsaw puzzle is a human game with no obvious benefits except the opportunity for several people to play together and share time on a predetermined, non-competitive goal.

I liked Roseanne’s attitude.  I like Tucker Carlson’s attitude, too, Donald Trump’s, and Dolly Parton’s, although I may never meet any of them.  I just like knowing they exist.  And knowing there are many others with similar attitudes towards their fellow human beings and other fellows in the Life Sphere, like plants and animals.  Even microbes have a legitimate place in the jigsaw puzzle of life.

Taken together, they give me hope for the planet.

Domination and Control

In Titan, a biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow, Rockefeller was the creator of Standard Oil and built an empire of interconnected oil enterprises using cut-throat tactics against competitors.  Standard Oil quickly became so large that it became the target in 1890 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  This merely inconvenienced the wily "combine".

While Rockefeller personified the practice, the quest for domination and control underlies many nations, institutions, and individuals.  The strategy of "cripple to control" is used to subvert another person or group to one's will.  On an individual level, domineering people can use subtle or blatant practices, like intimidation or threats, guilt or manipulation, punishment, shaming and any number of tactics to gain advantage.  Chernow says Rockefeller required secrecy from his business associates.  He asked them to sign agreements to that effect.  He also negotiated secret "drawbacks" on railroad freight shipping rates, which were also secret, as a means to undercut competitors.  

In larger groups, strategies are often hidden, as with war plans.  War is one example, but,there are others.  Before a conflict begins, a group of people must delegate power to others to make decisions for the group.

Today, Wednesday, March 20, 2024, at almost noon edt, I have been reading online about a threatened government shutdown in two days, if Congress can't agree on a spending package.  What does that mean to me, an individual?

Will the wars stop, the mail service, the banks, the grocery stores, the gas stations, and all the services provided by the "economy" of the US?

Maybe, but I doubt it.  I have lived through previous "government shutdowns", but life went on as usual in my corner of the US of A.  After a few weeks, the government opened up again, and government employees received back pay for the inconvenience of having been out of work while the government was on vacation.

In the modern US,we claim we are free, yet we have become entrapped in a host of contradictory laws, rules, standards and expectations that restrict autonomy.

In 2018, I was writing about the “opioid crisis”. Opium and its derivatives have been around for thousands of years, used for pain relief, as well as for its euphoric properties. It has been used as “commodity money” by governments, drug cartels, and the man on the street.

In 1729 China outlawed it, having found opium rendered men unsuitable for work or the military. But the British used its “protectorate” in India to cultivate the opium poppy and to smuggle it into China. This led to the Opium Wars, largely between 1848 and 1852. Britain won and secured Hong Kong, among others, on the South China Sea for conducting the “China trade”, which included silks, spices, and other Chinese products.

After the Spanish-American War, which was set off by an (accidental) explosion of the US Maine anchored in Cuba, the US won the Philippines and Guam, via the Platt Amendment in 1901.

President Theodore Roosevelt instituted a number of federal control initiatives, including the Pure Food and Drug Act in about 1906. This led to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).

And now it is Saturday, March 23, 2024 about 9 am, edt. The tide is high enough to reflect light, which is now emerging from yet another morning rainstorm. I’ve been reading online about all the “shadow” organizations that mine personal data for sale to the highest bidder.

As a result of all the confusion surrounding information systems, I find less and less of interest. After years of collecting newspapers, I’m re-reading before burning damp newsprint with damp “yard trash” in my wood stove.

The title of this blog, “Domination and Control”, refers to strategies used at every level of human, and probably non-human (as in animal, plant, and even microbe) populations to gravitate to areas most conducive to growth, of body, mind, or sensory fulfillment. Even photons do it, although few claim photons are “conscious”.

Albert Einstein used a total solar eclipse in the early 1900s to substantiate his claim that gravity bent light. There were two total solar eclipses in the early 190Os. The first, in 1914, occurred just after the beginning of World War I, after Germany had invaded Russia. The scientists were stopped, and their equipment confiscated. Walter Issacson, Einstein’s biographer, says clouds covered the sun in the Crimea during the two minutes of the eclipse’s totality. A second total eclipse would occur on May 29, 1919, most visible along a path in the Atlantic from the coast of Brazil to equatorial Africa. By that time World War I had ended, and a British-led expedition was mounted to photograph the eclipse along that path. That group was successful. In the interim, Einstein had had time to recalculate his predictions and revise his mathematical formulae.

On Monday, April 8, 2024, there will be a total solar eclipse visible in North America along a curved path roughly from the northeast quadrant of the US of A to the upper segment of Texas, at 18 degrees of Aries, for the astrologically inclined. Caution against looking directly at the sun applies, because of the potential for eye damage. Now international scientists and their electronic and other fancy gadgets will have numerous opportunities do their thing(s), but I doubt even then they will be able to control the earth, moon and sun.