From Inside The Sane Asylum...back on the road.

Back on the road with my two ole friends. Check back in a few days. Headed South. Always head south if you have a choice...only go North when it's absolutely necessary to do so. Especially in the winter...:)

I will leave you with a scribbling about my two ole friends from The Archives.

Be well, have reasonable thoughts and grin like you mean it...Doc

Two ole friends...

Two Ole Friends...

Some of you have seen this ole back sack and cap of mine. They have been with me for a while and they are special. They make every trip with me. They listen to all my bull shit, never say a word. Carries three pair of underwear, one pair of socks in case I have to wear socks to impress someone. Two linen shirts, a black hoody, just in case, and the basic hygiene stuff and a pair of old blue jeans, just in case I have to impress someone. A pair of sunglasses, lip balm, small binoculars and my favorite flip flops, a pair of fold up reading glasses, a note pad, a stick of sunscreen, a jar of cashews, my iPad, phone and an old first generation Nano. Carries all that for me and never complains, ..amazing. 

The cap now is a different story. About seven years old I would guess. Covered up a lot of bad crap for me...gray hair, trust me, a lot of bad hair, not just days. It can last an entire season. I liked the message that this cap gave me when I picked it up the first time from the counter. Relax...and on top of that, if your look inside there are directions for mixing The Cool Operator bar drink. Never tried it, but it's good to know its there. Just in case I have one of those blank moment emergencies and can't order my drink, I can just hand the bar keep my hat. Yep...This cap... always with me.

By the way, if you think you might need that Cool Operator recipe, let me know. Just in case you have to impress someone...after all, what are friends for?...Doc and ole friends

From The Road...The Old Barn

From The Road...The Old Barn

TK,  they call him. He lives to the north side of Bernice. I went to visit TK on my last trip into those parts. He gave me the following directions to find his house;

If you are coming from the south, turn right at the only red light in Bernice. Go over the railroad tracks and take the fork to the left. Drive until the black top turns to gravel and dirt. About two miles you will come to some dogs laying in the road. Make your way through the dogs and take the first dirt lane on the left.  As you round the curve you will see my house down in the pasture. You will find me in the old barn...

Sure enough, he was in the barn grooming a skinny ole paint horse he rescued from the grips of Horse Heaven.

I've known TK all my living days. We played in the woods, made pine top forts, explored small ponds and even double dated sisters on one occasion when we were still wet behind the ears. TK could write a dissertation on the Game Of Dominoes, simply because he claims to be the worlds foremost expert on the fine art of the game. Said the only time he loses a game is when he has to donate a game for the aid of  personal pity or use it as a long range strategy.

Tall and spry, dressed in faded Big Mac overalls with a loud welcome of, "look what the cats dragged in; see you found the dogs in the road!" He is always quick with a joke and a philosophy on just about any subject you can conjure up.

I don't even know how we got off on the subject of Dominoes. Never my intention. I only wanted a pint of his famous corn liquor. May have been the sampling from the pint Mason Jar. He tasted it first, said he wanted to make sure it was still good. Guess it was still good, he passed it over to me for my liking. Yep, it was that sampling that begged my first question. "Is it true TK, that you are the best Domino player in the world?"
"Y no," he said. "But I beat the hell out of the best that said they was."


Domino is a good game. A game of skill. I would say it is about 10 percent luck. It requires a lot of concentration, thought, and plan smart ass grit. Not like golf or chess where silence is required of spectators and competitors alike. A good player must shake off any heckling remarks. A Domino player has much more on his mind. He is working on his style of play. TK for example said he played with an Amateur Style. As he describes it; "Amateurs play not knowing their next play. Just random, not following the expected strategy. It makes my competitors try and figure out what I'm going to do next. I know, if I don't know, then they couldn't know either." See how the moonshine brings out the best in logic?

TK plays most mornings at Hoot's Barber Shop. A gathering of the towns finest men, doing their part to keep the moral and social fabric of Bernice alive. A lot of social bonding and lies being exchanged. They call it therapy and gossip . I call it a reason to get out of the house. I always thought it would be great to host a live daily radio broadcast from Hoots Barber at the time of these gatherings. Maybe sell cassette recordings of the Therapy sessions...:)

There was an old straight back chair leaning against the wall. TK introduced the chair as, the retired in honor chair, of old man Pete Alford. As the story goes, Pete sat on that chair every Friday morning for five years, in this barn to best TK's Amateur Style.

"Alford was a nice feller, a fine upstanding citizen and looked reasonably good in his clothes for a man of his age. He just didn't understand the game of Dominoes very well." TK continue to spout, "I feel it is my duty to report that I beat him sober, not so sober, whittling whist I whistled, and even left handed. Beat him four out of five times when we played...well maybe three out of four." As he looked up and grinned. "Alford retired from Dominos in 1993 the same year the chair retired."

TK is known for his Wisecracking Psychology game strategy when he wants to humiliate his opponents and destroy their confidence. Here are a few techniques he shared with me:

.laugh as if you didn't intend to, while your opponent is studying the board.
.play fast for those that ponder and hesitate.
.ponder and hesitate for those who play fast.
.after you choose your rock to be played, pause with your arm in midair, purse your lips as in thought then lay it ever so softly on the table.
.each time after you win, idly say to your opponent, "one day I sure would like to know why you played that way." This implies stupidity and gives them something to think about.
.before you begin each game, let your opponents know that 50% of your foes seek mental health counseling after playing you.
.never appear to doubt the tale of your opponents, no matter how improbable. Except for Champions, and they have no need to gild the lily. They all are liars and braggarts. Smile, nod, and politely mumur as your opponent tells of humiliating ole Joe or Bob. Just say in admiration. "Gee Pete, you must have been really good...back then...gimme twenty-five."

We even played a game or two. After getting soundly whooped, I commented to him that I wished I were a good Domino player. He quipped, "Yep, I wish you was too."

You see, the Game of Dominoes is just like life. Confidence is no problem...keeping it is...


Be well, play your doubles when you can and always take the dirt Lane past the dogs in the road. You just might enjoy an afternoon therapy session with an old friend...I got a pint of good moonshine and more...Doc

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Therapy

There is an Old saying..."you are only paranoid when you are wrong.

But if you stay paranoid long enough, you will be right."

Made Me Grin...Aunt Delmer

Aunt Delmer...

Now the name Delmer can be used as a boy or girls name. As strange as it seems, it has a meaning of one by the sea. Some Spanish twist to Delmar. The name reached its popularity in the 1930s and rose to number 430 on the most named list. In recent years, you don't run into many Delmers or Delmars for that matter.

I had an Aunt Delmer that passed many years ago. She was a feisty ole soul. Raised chickens for their eggs and on special occasions might sever the head of one she no longer admired. I remember her chicken and dumplings mostly. I think it was because she would ask, "how did we like the taste of Chicken Lips?" Or some other name as odd, much like Delmer.

Chickens go to roost at dusk, but that was not soon enough for Aunt Delmer. She usually ran the chickens to roost well before sunset, just before she went to milk her Jersey Cow. Her chickens always seemed a little nervous around her.

She did her wash on Thursday mornings just before daylight. She would build a fire under her black wash pot. Bring it to a boil and give the clothes a good stirring in lye soap.  Her son bought her a brand new Sears & Roebuck washer for Christmas one year. She would have no part of it and claimed it did not get the clothes as clean as a good boiling.

Aunt Delmer could not read or write and would not have known her name written if she saw it. She was Half Indian and a little crazy like her full blooded daddy. He had a peculiar behavior. Usually when no one expected it,  he would jump to his feet and pretend he was driving a team of horses.
I always watched in amusement how he cracked his imaginary whip and yelled horse orders at the top of his lungs. Well this is not about him but about Aunt Delmer. Just thought you might get a little of her flavor as she ran her chickens to roost.

There is this story about Aunt Delmer I would like to share with you:

Seems the preacher came calling on her one bright morning. Trying to save her soul is my guess.
She was a religious sort but did not frequent the pews of the church very often. That in itself required saving...:)

Well, the preacher told her that she was getting of the age that she should be thinking of the here after.
She said, "Oh, I do all the time preacher, no matter where-in the kitchen, outside in the barn or yard- I ask myself...What am I here after?"

Be well, think reasonable thoughts and for Pete's sake, let the chickens go to roost on their own...
Doc

Front Porch Psychology..anatta

"There is no consistent self...so why should we take everything so personally?"

 What is this thing we call the mind, and how can we use it to make ourselves a little less miserable and a little happier? Maybe even just 10 percent happier. If there is no consistent self, it is at least my intention that my ever-changing self be equanimous and, well, 10 percent happier. No matter who I am.

Scribblings From Inside The Sane Asylum...a personal matter

From Inside The Sane Asylum...A personal matter.

The wisest person could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, brave, true,
Safe from the many, honored by the few;
To count as naught in world, or church, or state;
But inwardly in secret to be great.

James Russell Lowell

My grandfather was quiet a character. I think about his character often as I have done throughout my long life. What makes character?  What is that "thing" that defines another? As I think back, I never saw my grandfather out of control and never heard him complain. Mostly saw a grin on his face. One of those S--- Eating Grins. If you know what I mean?

Never really saw him sad but once. The day I went into his hospital room and told him that the funeral service for my grandmother was beautiful. Small tear ran down the corner of his left eye. They were married for over seventy-five years. He died two months after her death. "Nothing more to tend" as he expressed.

He always greeted others with a crazy comment about life. Usually a little cynical in tone.  "Did it to get a rise out them," he would say.  It was his way to engage in conservation. Before the conversation was over, he would always turn to story telling. Some with a lie or two just to give them their money's worth. He never cheated a man, even in a good story.

I went into town with him one day and as he stepped off the curb, a young man in a truck almost hit him. The young man slammed on his breaks and yelled, "watch out!". My grandfather yelled the reply, "why you coming back?" Funny old man. He could never remember all the grandkids names so he just called us some critter from nature. Horsefly, horse collar, jack rabbit or even bumblebee comes to mind. I have always defined his character as a man who seemed to have made peace with himself and just got along with it all... Well it seemed that way to me.

Character. It's a noun. Stands on it own. The mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.
That is a nice sentence. Character traits are all the aspects of a person's behavior and attitudes that make up that person's personality. Everyone has character traits, both good and bad. Even characters in books have character traits. Character traits are often shown with descriptive adjectives and idioms like, chip off the ole block, fuddy duddy, sour puss or just plain deadwood. I tend to favor descriptive phrases like, he didn't give two hoots and a holler about what you thought.  Or, his daddy didn't raise no fool.

Ever given much thought to what your descriptive phrase might be? It's kinda like being asked what's  your sign. I always just say my sign says "slippery when wet." Now a phrase about your character needs to be more serious. One of those with Socrates qualities of moral character. "He had a disposition to behave in the right manner."   That may have been Aristotle? But a good example. It has a moral virtue kinda tone. Moral virtue requires habit and practice.  I had a habit of playing golf once, but found that practice was not proportional to getting better. At least in my case. Maybe the same for my moral virtue. We do have a tendency to practice our bad habits. Don't you think?

Listen, I'm not asking you to think about this as some grand deepening of your consciousness, I just needed something to write about, and one thing has lead to another until we got to this question. I think it's a personal matter to describe yourself in a single sentence, but I will give you a few examples. "She is a sad ole soul" or "he always aims at doing the right thing"...How about, "he was a cantankerous ole son of b----" and "It takes all kinds to make a world"...meaning different than most.  I think you get the idea. Give it some thought. You just might land on a few descriptive adjectives that defines you well. Print it on a tee shirt and wear it around for all to see. It would kinda be like wearing your personality on your sleeve, so to speak.

I recall on my fiftieth birthday, my staff gave me a t-shirt that went something like this, " Therapy in progress, do not disturb any further." Still wear it around, as Therapy is still in progress. As you get older you will find you are not looking for something to wear on your sleeve but what will your tombstone wear? For me..."he has nothing more to say."

Wadsworth wrote a poem on character and described the nature of one as being, "such an odd, such a happy, kind creature as he." Maybe we won't become a limerick poem, or song, but surely we can try and just be a kind creature like he.

From Inside The Sane Asylum...motivation

Yep, no post for a few days. For some reason I am highly 

motivated today to do nothing. Going up to Shit Creek Paddle Store.

Seems there may be a good domino game about to happen.

Check back in a few days...Doc

Lemme Think About It...

"How do you decalcify your pineal gland?"

Sunday Morning...The Wall Cloud

Sunday Morning...The Wall Cloud

The Wall Cloud

Walter Thederahn

With the ebbing of time

It will take me back to the sea.

Scorpion, the Norseman's life

Aurora Borealis,

No, Eldorado.

Yet, August eyes

But to see the wall of clouds,

Dark, black clouds,

Holding the thunderbolts,

With echoing thunder- electricity.

The unfolding clouds,

Lighting flash,

White wall of clouds,

Of awesome might.

Still air then sudden rain,

Hail falls, this freezing vapor,

From the sky.

The windrose turning clouds,

Sets twister from the sky...

Dr. Ego-ology

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day."

...........

"Another thing, as you get older, it's much better to fall

on your butt and not on your face."

Thanks for introducing me to billy botts +Moik Zephier 

From The Road Series...the old sea captain

From The Road...The Old Sea Captain

The craggy-faced captain stopped and placed a pinch or two of tobacco in his ole scrimshaw pipe.

He wears faded blue overalls and a Greek captains hat. Early mornings, along Oyster Creek, you just might find him lumbering down the road towards the old wooden pier, carrying a old cooler filled
with ice, and a fishing rod slung over his beefy shoulder. Tackle swings like a pendulum behind his back until he reaches his favorite bench, close to the end. He pulls out a bag of shrimp from the cooler, baits his hooks and casts his line as far as arthritis allows—sits there until noon, either catching fish or not; it’s all the same to him. It’s the sun and wind and rain he’s come for—the view of shrimp boats headed out to sea, crews tiny as toy soldiers. He can hear the cries of hungry gulls, feel each vessel’s pitch and toss. He is captain of nothing now, save his own soul. And what his soul wants, is to keep his body close to water—until the moon captures him in her net and pulls it with cool, white hands into asunder.

I watched him today. Quiet, deliberate and some what sullen as he made his way. What words might fill his head, what thoughts left unsaid. He has loved both storm and calm, the flapping sail was his soul's applause, and his rapture was a roaring main. But now like a battered hulk he seems to me, cast high on a foreign strand...in port as it need must be, gives him yet another round of listless hours.

The smoke from his pipe lingered in the languid air...the grass, the trees and the garden flowers, and the strange earth everywhere. At times he seemed restless there without the hail of a passing sail, nor the surge of an angry sea.

He quits his pipe, and snaps head as if to speak, but coughs instead, then paces the pier like as if a quarter deck. With a reeling mast o'er head, the old captains cheeks were glowing warm. His eyes gleamed grim and weird, as he muttered about like a thunder-storm.

Then came the stay of a daughters hand and his grandchild 'twixt his knees. And so betimes he is restless here, his daughters home is a peaceful vale...but never the hail of a passing sail nor the surge of an angry sea...so it seemed to me.

Dr. Ego-ology...safety first

"Do you look both ways before you cross a one way street?"

.............

"Another thing, people who ask you for advice and don't follow it 

are called Askholes."

Inside The Sane Asylum...Altered State

Another epiphany...so to speak

Ego: "You see Jess, our brains are so automatic because physical tissue carries out what we do. How could it be any other way? The brain does it before our conceptual self knows about it. But the conceptual self grows and grows and reaches proportions where the biological fact makes an impact on our consciousness but does not paralyze us. The interpretation of things past liberates is from the sense of being tied to the demands of the environment and produces the wonderful sensation that our self is in charge of our destiny. All our everyday success at reasoning through life's data convinces us of our certainty. Because of that, maybe we can drive our automatic brains to greater accomplishments and enjoyment of life."

Jess: "Ego, did you know, generally speaking, a person does not learn much when their lips are moving? NEVER PASS UP A GOOD CHANCE TO SHUT UP!"

Lemme Think About It...are you?

"Are you still you if everyone looks at you differently?"

Dr. Ego-ology

Life is short, so smile while you still have your teeth.

Reflections From The Road...Stanford

I will not torture you with a tale about the history of mathematics. I will not beat you with the origins of numerators, denominators, ratios, fractions. I will only let you know that in the main, mathematics aren't negotiable. I will not pretend to tell you that as you get older time goes faster. I will tell you that a year is always a year. It is one and only one. However, I will also tell you that when you are four years old, one year is one quarter of your life. When you are 60, one year is one sixtieth of your life, so it feels smaller, and moves faster, in your mind.

Time can be comforting, or it can be cruel. Mathematics tells us that when you are over the hill, you don't really pick up speed—but the fractions change.

When you walk the streets every morning making pictures, the fractions become even smaller. Depending on your settings and the light, it can take fractions of a second to make a picture. A fraction of a fraction of a day, of a year, of a life.

Sometimes, you see the same people every morning, for even ten years or more. You chat, or not. But you acknowledge each other. You are familiar. Then one day the groundskeeper in the park tells you that a person was found dead, in a puddle, in an alley, in the French Quarter on Christmas morning, and it is that person with whom you were familiar. However loosely, you felt like he was part of your tribe. He was a fraction of your life. He was a part of you, he lived on the street for years, and then he died in a dirty alley, alone. In a fraction of a second, a heartbeat, it was over for him. That's how it is.

Rest In Peace, Stanford. No more troubled mind.

Stanford, pacing the levee
New Orleans, LA
2016

Photo and storyline
Christopher Bryson...

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Therapy...

"Doc, I knew who I was this morning, but I've changed a few times since then."

Why Didn't I Think Of That?...epigenetics

"If I only had a brain."

Epigenetics hypothesizes that a parent who experienced a trauma could have certain changes in their brain which might lead to epigenetic changes that are passed on, inhabiting the neurons of their children’s brains or even their grandchildren. That rumination bore an entirely new field, behavioral epigenetics. That means if you had a parent or grandparent who lived through a genocide, war, saw someone murdered, or who suffered a different trauma, say at the hands of an abusive or neglectful parent, you carry traits for that emotional impact in your genes.

Discovering Ourselves...trust

The human need for trust and attachment was initially studied and developed as a psychological construct in the 1950s, when John Bowlby tracked the reactions of small children when they were separated from their parents.  In a nutshell, he found that infants, toddlers, and young children have an extensive need for safe and reliable caregivers. If children have that, they tend to be happy in childhood and well-adjusted (emotionally healthy) later in life. If children don’t have that, it’s a very different story. In other words, it is clear from Bowlby’s work and the work of later researchers that the level and caliber of trust and connection experienced in early childhood carries forth into adulthood. Those who experience secure attachment as infants, toddlers, and small children nearly always carry that with them into adulthood, and they are naturally able to trust and connect in healthy ways. Meanwhile, those who don’t experience secure early-life attachment tend to struggle with trust and connection later in life. In other words, securely attached individuals tend to feel comfortable in and to enjoy the human rat park, while insecurely attached people typically struggle to fit in and connect.

Lemme Think About It...

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Dr. Ego-ology

                       
                                "I'm not arguing with you! I'm only trying to explain why I'm right."

From Inside The Sane Asylum...when I'm gone

A Pinch Of Me When I'm Gone

Put a pinch of me in things I like.
Maybe my desk drawer
or on the spokes of my ole bike.

I like my tote bag
that travels on my back.
It never brags or talks back.

And how can I forget the Sea.
To North, South, East and West.
Fling a pinch to what life might be.

Maybe send a pinch to China
and mix me with bone.
Fine China I will be known.

Kaolin, Feldspar, pegmatite
Mix me according to alchemy
And you will know my might.

Maybe a set... I will be.
Strong and durable
to hold fine tea.

Sit me at a table between friends to be.
Let me listen to their soft words
Hold me close so I might see
the mist above the fine tea.

Appears for a little while...then it's gone...Doc 1/12/17

Lessons From The Sane Asylum...values

"The essence of who we are does not lie in our strengths. It does not lie in our talents, our accomplishments, or the things we do well. The core of our being lies in our values".

The most basic human value must always have been life itself. It must have been the first and oldest basic human value, for today we still see throughout the whole of nature, any living being is in a continuous struggle for survival.

However, respect, is the most basic social standard, from which all other social standards can be derived...

Footnote:
Essentially, we’ll never truly be able to distinguish between “right” and “wrong” actions. At any given time in history, however, philosophers, theologians, and politicians will claim to have discovered the best way to evaluate human actions and establish the most righteous code of conduct. But it’s never that easy. Life is far too messy and complicated for there to be anything like a universal morality or an absolutist ethics. The Golden Rule is great (the idea that you should treat others as you would like them to treat you), but it disregards moral autonomy and leaves no room for the imposition of justice (such as jailing criminals), and can even be used to justify oppression. Moreover, it’s a highly simplified rule of thumb that doesn’t provision for more complex scenarios. For example, should the few be spared to save the many? Who has more moral worth; a human baby or a full-grown great ape? And as neuroscientists have shown, morality is not only a culturally-ingrained thing, it’s also a part of our psychologies.  At best, we can only say that morality is normative, while acknowledging that our sense of right and wrong will change over time.


           

Stopped To Ponder...

Where You Will Or Won't...

Sometimes that thing
you are afraid to do,
is the change to set you free.

Makes little difference
where you will or won't,
can't change if you don't.

You see...in life
it's just a choice to make,
where you will or won't ...Doc

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Therapy...compassion

"Compassion is understanding the basic goodness in all people and then seeking to discover that basic goodness in specific people. Because of this, it helps you from going through the often mental torture we experience because we don’t understand the actions of others."

Scribblings From The Study...before language

"I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries." Charles Darwin, 1871. The Descent of Man

Before language, man would still have felt the need for food. He wouldn't have had a word for it. He would have just felt it. He would also have known that particular feeling meant he must find food. Again, he wouldn't have thought the words "find food", he would just have known instinctively what to do.

Now, what happened in a group of prehistoric people if one of them was injured and felt hungry? He may not have been able to go find food for himself. Somehow he had to let the others in the group know. Sign language was the answer. He possibly pointed to his mouth, rubbed his tummy, made eating movements with his jaw, or whatever. There would still be no words, no verbal language - but sign language is a language nonetheless.

But surely, by the time man reached that stage, he would be thinking - although without words - that he had to inform the others he needed food. That thought surely must have preceded the concept of making signs to convey his need.

Thought is not much use without language, and language is not much use without thought. So, it seems to me that thinking and language probably developed in tandem as a response to the need to communicate with other members of the group.

Commonly, modern man thinks in language (according to such as Chomsky) not pictures; although this is not always the case. Autistic Savants can sometimes be an exception - Kevin Peet being an example. He is a genius at math, but he doesn't think numbers. Instead he sees colours, and those colours coalesce and intermingle to give him the answers to incredibly complex math in an extraordinarily short time.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language is a straight-jacket for thought. That could indeed be true. Many times, our thoughts or communications with others are stifled because we can't put our thoughts into words. Misunderstandings are commonplace. How much better would communication be if we could send pictures & emotions to others instead of having to use words? Oh...guess we do...👍👎✌️🙏.

Footnote: I personally think language evolved out of the need to gossip...:) Doc

Let me tell you a story...a gathering of old men, part 2

                                                                Marshall Plantation

Part two...

While Mapes was trying to make sense of the killing and confessions of all the old men, Gil Boutan, a star football player at LSU and Beau's brother, gets the news that his older bro has gone to meet his Maker. Confused, angry, and hurt, Gil heads on back to the Boutan home and has a heart-to-heart with his not-so warm and cuddly daddy. Gil begs Fix not to do anymore of the evil things that he's done in the past, and Fix agrees—after he disowns Gil, that is.

Gil is pretty upset in more ways than one, but Luke Will—one of Beau's drinking buddies with a whole lot of hate, not a lot of brains, and ties to the Ku Klux Klan—is angry for a completely different reason. He promises that bad things are going to happen to Black folks in Marshall, whether Fix is there himself or not.

The next thing you know, it's back to Marshall Plantation, and Sheriff Mapes is just about as happy as a five-year-old on his sixth birthday when he finds out that Fix isn't planning on showing up. When he tells everybody the news, Mathu agrees to head over to the station and go down for killing Beau. Most of the old men are pretty upset, because they'd been secretly loading fresh ammo into their shotguns this whole time, and were planning on either taking Fix out, or going down in a blaze of glory.

That's when Big Charlie shows up. He admits to killing Beau in self-defense, and says he's ready to take his medicine and take his chances with the law.

But Charlie isn't the only unexpected guest who shows up late to the shotgun party. Luke Will and some of his redneck pals show up too, drunk and armed with guns of their own. When one of them wings Mapes (who's too fat to get up afterwards), a firefight kicks off. At the end of it, one of Luke's pals is wounded, and Luke and Charlie are dead. When the case goes to trial, the judge gives every surviving member of the battle at Marshall five years of probation. Mathu and his pals head back to Marshall, leaving Candy and Lou holding hands and watching the dust clouds that the truck kicks up as it leaves.

The author, Earnest  Gaines was among the fifth generation of his sharecropper family to be born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. This became the setting and premise for many of his later works. He was the eldest of 12 children, raised by his aunt, who was crippled and had to crawl to get around the house. Although born generations after the end of slavery, Gaines grew up impoverished, living in old slave quarters on a plantation.

Gaines' first years of school took place in the plantation church. When the children were not picking cotton in the fields, a visiting teacher came for five to six months of the year to provide basic education. Gaines then spent three years at St. Augustine School, a Catholic school for African Americans in New Roads, Louisiana. Schooling for African-American children did not continue beyond the eighth grade during this time in Pointe Coupee Parish.

As of November 2013, Gaines lives on Louisiana Highway 1 in Oscar, Louisiana, where he and his wife built a home on part of the old plantation where he grew up. He had the church he grew up with moved to his property.

From The Far Side of The Glass...Kissing Cousins

Observations from behind the glass...my time with my cyber family has really evolved since I started about two years ago. I have collected a great circle of friends. I have a special name for my friend circle. I named you Kiss...ing Cousins. Remember the ole Elvis movie in 1964, same name. Relatives you feel close enough to greet with a kiss or hug...

To be technical, that kiss thing should make us at least second cousins. You see, in the south second cousins are as far back as we go in really knowing another layer of our family. Second cousins represent the fourth generation. Seems we can't retain to much more than about four generations of linage.

So here is my reasoning. The people that know more about me than my best second cousin should be on equal liner space of kinship...there you have it my Virtual Kissing Cousins...smile on occasions...it might make you feel about half not bad on a good day.

Scribblings From The Sane Asylum...whistle

I was watching a football game today and they delayed the game while the Referee unfroze his whistle. Did make me grin realizing just how important that whistle really was. Seems there are not a lot of extra whistles laying around. You would think the Ref. would just grab a spare one from a warming cabinet. Who makes whistles anyway? Looks like the company would advertise, like Nike. Some nifty little whistling commercial. You know a happy little tune. Whistle while you work kind of thing...

Wet your whistle or is it whet your whistle? Easy to get that confused. Whet your appetite comes to mind as being correct, but I have not used that term in a number of years. I've been around three score and ten, and my guess, I could count the times I've used the term on one hand.

I’ve  seen both “whet your whistle” and “wet your appetite,” and neither correct. Most people’s lips don’t need to be any sharper, and appetites aren’t aroused by giving them a good soaking.

Wet Your Whistle...Seems this phrase has been around for a while. Don't really think there's a hidden meaning in wet—probably some ole Saxon word meaning moist, quench or liquid. Whistle is a little harder to decipher. It may refer to a person’s lips or throat. I think it came from a time when pub regulars used whistles to order more drinks.  I would bet a whistle was part of the mug, built into either the rim or handle. I went digging on the web and could find no example of Ye Olde Whistle Mug. I'm sure one wet ones whistle before one whistled? I know you just can't whistle with dry lips. A word of caution, don't wet your whistle in freezing weather.

Now to whet your appetite is almost the opposite. Whereas wetting your whistle quenches your thirst, whetting your appetite, sharpens. Whet, probably another ole Saxon term. Blades are whetted by whetstones. Appetites are whetted by tasty morsels or glimpses of interesting or desirable things. Like...bring me some corn nuts or moose jerky to whet my appetite. Another word of caution. It's best to eat coconut while you still have your teeth. I know that has nothing to do with what we are discussing, but it did cross my mind.

I did a very unsophisticated test on the Internet and Googled “wet your whistle” and had 426,000 hits, the majority directed towards drinking. “Whet your whistle” resulted in 421,000 hits, the majority of the answers related to stimulating further thought or experience processes. Now you have a good basis to go scratching around for more information and draw your own conclusion on this important discussion.

I asked my friend Jess B Rambling about this subject, as I often do on the more puzzling aspects of life.  Jess is anal about placing language in its proper order and knowing when to use whom. He said "whistle was a metonym." "Kinda started out as one meaning and just morphed into another." Makes a lot of sense to me...just an ole Saxon morphing-ism.

I was around this crazy ole uncle years many years back. I recall when he used the term " I'm going to whet my whistle", it meant he was going to relieve himself. See how I'm being appropriate and not using the word pee? I'm just that way. Don't want to offend anyone...:)

Did you know the opening in a whistle where you blow is called a fipple ? Hell I didn't. Never thought of it. I know I'm glad the ref's whistle had so much spit it froze up. Learned something new, got to talk to an old friend, explored the deep recesses of my mind, even pondered on Uncle Rufus for a spell. Hell, I think I will design a little whistle koozee warmer. Jess, how do you spell Koozee?

Not half that bad on a good day...Doc

Discovering Ourselves...the pain of an unlived life

The Pain Of An Unlived Life...

The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unlived life worth examining? It seems a strange question until one realizes how much of our so-called mental life is about the lives we are not living, the lives we are missing out on, the lives we could be leading but for some reason are not. What we fantasize about, what we long for, are the experiences, the things and the people that are absent. It is the absence of what we need that makes us think, that makes us cross and sad. We have to be aware of what is missing in our lives — even if this often obscures both what we already have and what is actually available — because we can survive only if our appetites more or less work for us. Indeed, we have to survive our appetites by making people cooperate with our wanting. We pressurize the world to be there for our benefit. And yet we quickly notice as children — it is, perhaps, the first thing we do notice — that our needs, like our wishes, are always potentially unmet. Because we are always shadowed by the possibility of not getting what we want, we learn, at best, to ironize our wishes — that is, to call our wants wishes: a wish is only a wish until, as we say, it comes true — and, at worst, to hate our needs. But we also learn to live somewhere between the lives we have and the lives we would like.


"We refer to them as our unlived lives because somewhere we believe that they were open to us; but for some reason — and we might spend a great deal of our lived lives trying to find and give the reason — they were not possible. And what was not possible all too easily becomes the story of our lives. Indeed, our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless tantrum about, the lives we were unable to live. But the exemptions we suffer, whether forced or chosen, make us who we are." Adam Phillips, Missing Out: In Praise Of An Unlived Life..

The Human Conservancy Field Office

Field Notes...

Today's psychology, as a collection of theories, concepts, and techniques, has attempted to help individuals and the society realize relief from mental problems solving methods that do nothing to increase ones understanding of the role of thought. This has led to the misperception that rituals, techniques or other placebos are the route to change. Thus, by creating the illusion of change through altering the form or formate through which people express their insecurity, negative feelings, and dependencies, psychology has unwittingly contributed to its own inability to progress as a science and as a field of study. There is nothing to be found in studying and explaining the attributes of placebo sugar pills, water injection, or psychotherapeutic rituals, because in the end it is the human beings level of understanding and ability to think that brings results.

The field of psychology will take a new and exciting direction when we begin to look directly toward the mental power we as humans possess. Once this new wisdom is formulated and shared with people, the benefits will spill over into our society to help many people looking for relief from emotional dis-ease. Mostly from their own fear anxiety and recurrent life of self destructive behaviors that seem just out of individual control. Life Adjustment issues I call them.

This direction is also the one that will help the most people in the long run become better humans. Whether they are talking about improving the quality of their own individual reality, or possibility that of a society or even an  entire humanity, the principle is the same. The only barrier to accomplishing these feats are those of thought. It is the knowledge of this fact that will allow human beings to successfully break the perceptual, emotional, and behavioral barriers that we all struggle with.

It's a beginning...but now the idea must mature into a reality. Our evolution of humans being human as a science will emerge. After all, consciousness is now being studied as a mass, something akin to gas and other quantities that cannot be seen. Our evolution will emerge as a willingness to accept something new, to listen to someone saying that the world is round rather than flat; that the earth is not the center of the solar system; that energy, matter, and space are alloted. Or perhaps by shifting our focus away from the manifestation of people's problems and move to the principles of thought, reality, consciousness, and emotions we will see our connection to mental well being. Society may just find the route to its own wisdom.

Human Ecology, The Human Conservacy, a new way of being human, a new humanity...it's time, it's a possibility...well that's what I'm thinking on this day...Doc

From The Road...Rosie

                                                             

Walking through the dark and fog, this morning I ran into Rosie, in the French Market courtyard. We talked about Christmas, her hat collection, the weather. She told me her boyfriend gave her an iPhone for Christmas and she would take my picture if she knew how to use it. I told her we could take her picture if she wanted. She said, "Sure, but I have to hurry or John will be around." (Rosie collects the small cans from the big cans in the early hours. John, another pal, is her competition for the cans: whoever gets there first gets the gold. The recycling business is intense, and it starts over every morning — especially in festival and holiday season.

We hurried. This is her picture.

Rosie, recycling, in a hurry
From The Labor Suite
French Market
New Orleans, LA   2016

Thanks Christopher Bryson...Doc

Let Me Tell You. Story...a gathering of old men.

A Gathering Of Old Men...
Earnest Gaines

How It All Goes Down...Part One

It's just another quiet day near Marshall Plantation. Old Aunt Glo is feeding her little nieces and nephews a healthy little meal. Then Candy Marshall shows up, and things get a whole less quiet.

She tells Glo's nephew George—whom everybody calls "Snookum"—to get a hold of Lou Dimes—a big city reporter and Candy's main squeeze—and Miss Merle, the owner of what remains of another plantation. Along the way to Miss Merle's place, Snookum's also supposed to tell Rufe and pretty much every other African American male in the place to get over to Mathu's quick. Beau Boutan's corpse is getting ripe in the grass outside Mathu's house—and everybody knows Fix's (Beau's dad) unhealthy obsession with revenge, destruction, and murder.

A few hours later, literally every male member of the Black community around Marshall has shown up at Mathu's house, along with a few women and children, including Candy herself. Oh, and all the men are carrying shotguns with at least one empty shotgun shell—the same type of shotgun and caliber of shell that killed Beau. Not long after the Gun Club for Men starts hanging out around Mathu's front porch, Lou Dimes shows up—with Sherriff Mapes, and you had better believe that Mapes is not thrilled by what he sees. He's also more than slightly afraid of what might happen if Fix Boutan jets down to Marshall with some of his redneck pals and sees a group of elderly, shotgun-toting Black men in the wake of his son's killing.

Mapes tries to get to the bottom of all of it and get it all over with before Fix has a chance to do the kind of awful hideousness that he does best, but the old tried-and-true scare tactics that Mapes has used in the past aren't flying that day. Everybody there is taking credit for sending Beau on a one-way trip to that Honky-Tonk bar in the sky.

                                                                      Mathu's house

Entry Note To Self...faith in humanity

Steinbeck writes on January 1, 1941:

Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty… So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded.

Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man. I asked [the influential microbiologist] Paul de Kruif once if he would like to cure all disease and he said yes. Then I suggested that the humanity he loved and wanted to cure was a product of all his own filth and disease and meanness, his hunger and cruelty. Cure those and you would have not man but an entirely new species you wouldn’t recognize and probably wouldn’t like.

Entry Note To Self:

So when we witness evil, punctuate the line of our moral and humanitarian progress, as we periodically do, and may we remember Steinback’s sobering perspective and lucid faith in the human spirit.

Christopher Bryson...French Quarter

The French Quarter...by Christopher Bryson

Automotives. When we talk at all, we talk about cars. Mostly, it's the 1950s and 1960s models, out of Detroit. The ones that were there for us when we were young. Proof that we were there at that time, having our formative car dreams. Maybe proof that we were young.

Just the Americans. We never talk about Porsche, Mercedes, Triumph, Fiat, and the rest. No exotics.

We discuss lines, the color combinations, how they sound. Their shape, trim. How they look from the front, the side, and going away. How they look when they move. How they might feel, the ones we have never ridden. How they smelled when they were new, or used. Leather. Cigars. Dream cars: Buick, Lincoln, Cadillac.

We talk about these cars as if we are talking about women we do not know—women we have only seen, or heard about, or imagined, admired, but never met. Women we have dreamed about, maybe. We find common ground. That's how it is when we talk.

Angelo, on the corner
Governor Nicholls Street
New Orleans, LA  2017

The Human Conservancy Field Office...

Notes From The Field...

Every person has many different and often contradictory emotional dispositions, desires, and ways of responding to the world. Our emotional dispositions develop by looking outward, not inward. They are not cultivated when you retreat from the world to meditate or go on a vacation. They are formed, in practice, through the things you do in your everyday life: the ways you interact with others and the activities you pursue. In other words, we aren’t just who we are: we can actively make ourselves into better people all the time.

Entry Note To Self...here and there does not matter

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning...T.S. Elliot

From Inside The Sane Asylum...Dumb Ass Reflex...

For the last few days I have been watching more football than my brain can enjoy. But what the hell, everyone else seems to be enjoying so why not join in. There is a lot of talk about the coaches...mostly about how much they make and second guessing their play calling. What I noticed most was the dumb ass mental mistakes by the players. Case in point. The Off Side call. The lineman execute this down set before you snap the ball thousands of times, but every once in a while they just jump off sides before the ball is snapped for no dump ass reason. The brain just makes a dumb ass reflex.  Can't explain it. The reflex just happens. Grown men slapping their helmet in disgust and lip syncing "What the ----".

The other day I was backing out of my garage. I thought I put the car in reverse but guess it was a dumb ass mental mistake and I dropped it a notch or two lower into drive. Now when you accelerate and you sense you are going in the wrong direction your brain wants to help out and slam on your breaks. It knows how to do that, but the brain makes a big dumb ass reflex and presses the foot harder on the accelerator rather than withdrawing. "What the ----", I thought as I sat in my storage closet looking at the rake and hoe hanging on the wall. Never use them but there they were, hanging neatly just outside my car door. Ended up off sides in my storage closet.

Now I must say, Ms. Ego was not very happy, even after I tried to explain to her that it was a big dumb ass mental mistake followed by a dumb ass brain reflex. "It was only a mental mistake and a brain reflex, can happen to anyone", I pleaded.  I even tried to explain to her that older people's response time is much slower and it never occurred to me to take my foot off the accelerator.  A lot like my recall lately. Things just don't occur to me like they use too. I went so far to explain that the average reaction reflex time to a visual stimuli is .025 of a second and .017 to an audio stimulus, and if she would have been watching she could have yelled at me and maybe I would have stopped sooner...She's not happy!

Reflexes come in all kinds. Conditioned, unconditioned and just the ordinary kind when an action is carried out through the mediation of the nervous system but not requiring the cooperation of the brain for its execution. Just a response of a perturbing stimulus that acts to return the body to homeostasis. The reflex arc, the receptor at the end of a sensory neuron, the afferent neuron, the efferent neuron traveling up the efferent pathway. I know all that crap but it was of no value in explaining how I ended up in the storage closet due to a dumb ass reflex.

I needed some deeper insight on this reflex subject, so I called my good friend Jess Ben Rambling and related how I had been hit hard of recent by "dumb ass reflexes".  Now I don't  know what I was expecting to hear. Maybe some sympathy followed by "it can happen to the best of us". Or maybe, "are you ok?". Hell, I would have settled for, "that was a real dumb ass reflex". He was silent for a moment trying to make contact with his deeper self, I suppose, then responded..."Many times I reflex while I reflect on past memories and friends."

What the ----!

Somewhat-not-half-bad-on-a-good-day...Doc

Discovering Ourselves...Emotions

The concept of ‘basic’ or ‘primary’ emotions dates back at least to the Book of Rites, a first-century Chinese encyclopedia that identifies seven ‘feelings of men’: joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, disliking, and liking.

In the 20th century, Paul Ekman identified six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) and Robert Plutchik eight, which he grouped into four pairs of polar opposites (joy-sadness, anger-fear, trust-distrust, surprise-anticipation).

It is said that basic emotions evolved in response to the ecological challenges faced by our remote ancestors and are so primitive as to be ‘hardwired’, with each basic emotion corresponding to a distinct and dedicated neurological circuit. Being hardwired, basic emotions (or ‘affect programs’) are innate and universal, automatic, and fast, and trigger behaviour with a high survival value. So much can hardly be said of more complex emotions such as humility or nostalgia, which, for example, are never attributed to infants and animals.

The other day, I opened a cutlery drawer on a large lizard, which, of course, I had not been expecting to find. As the critter darted off into the blackness behind the drawer, I unthinkingly jumped back and slammed the drawer shut. Having done this, I suddenly discovered myself to be feeling hot and alert and primed for further action. This basic fear response is so primitive that even the lizard seemed to share in it, and so automatic as to be ‘cognitively impenetrable’, that is, unconscious and uncontrollable, and more akin to a reflex than a deliberate action. One of high survival value I suppose.

Reflections From The Sane Asylum...

I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody too?

Then there’s a pair of us... don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be a somebody!...Emily Dickenson 

Scribblings From Another...transcendentalism

Transcendentalism...now that's  a long word. Felt it deserved some thought, so I found this nice piece written by Mitch Horowitz. Good history describing the period of independent thought called Transcendentalism or the individual search for meaning. Just thought you might enjoy a different perspective to start the New Year.

Why Thoreau’s Walden Matters Now More Than Ever

By MITCH HOROWITZ

December 30, 2016


Why should anyone still read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, a classic that seems to belong to grade-school reading lists, and whose author is sometimes targeted by hero-toppling literary critics?

Because Walden created a culture of rebellion and independent thought that reflects the best of American life, especially at the current moment when coarseness, unlearned opinion, and groupthink threaten to overrun us.

The philosophy called Transcendentalism, as shaped by Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and their collaborators, reflected America’s sharpest break with the religious dogma and intellectual conformities of the Old World. Transcendentalism embraced inner experiment, personal experience, and the individual search for meaning.

The New England Transcendentalists rejected the idea of rewards in the afterlife as the aim of religious practice. Instead, they believed in living out your highest potential in the present, deriving power and purpose from a palpably felt relationship to God. The Transcendentalists embraced mystical ideas from the East to which they gave a practical and can-do tone, familiarizing Americans with concepts of meditation, karma, and nonattachment. Thoreau and Emerson drew upon esoteric ideas from Hermeticism – the Greek-Egyptian philosophy that flourished in the decades following Christ – to suggest the creative and causative powers of the human mind, and how to apply them in the here and now.

"To ask, to seek, and to experiment – these are the most radical acts a person can undertake today." Thoreau

Thanks in part to Thoreau, the idea of the individual spiritual search now seems like a national birthright. In polls, most Americans agree that spiritual truth can be found outside of allegiance to any one faith or tradition. “Unaffiliated” is the fastest-growing category of religious identity. In recovery groups, twelve-step movements, and other nontraditional forms of spiritual search, we are encouraged to seek our own conception of a Higher Power. Even those Americans who affiliate with the traditional faiths are taught to believe that their own paths to the Divine are many – that the gates of prayer and forgiveness are always open; that the house of God, the seat of the ineffable, exists all around us. A spark of divinity, many believe, exists within.

Such concepts were foreign, if not heretical, in the hierarchical Christendom of Europe’s past.
Consider, for example, the physical structure of the fourteenth-century Pope’s Palace in Avignon, France. In the enormous church that dominates the palace’s ground floor, the front pews were, naturally, reserved for aristocracy. A few rows back, space was reserved for those who served the powerful, such as merchants and teachers. And the remainder of the enormous cathedral was designated for everybody else. Here was a structure built in the name of a man who taught, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” resembling nothing so much as an emperor’s court.
Thoreau and Transcendentalism upended that. Today one can visit Concord, Massachusetts, and walk to Walden Pond where Thoreau built his tiny cabin. Nothing remains of the physical structure, aside from the hearthstone. There is just open air where the cabin stood. But that empty space is, in a sense, Transcendentalism’s greatest monument, and perhaps America’s, as well. One can stand in this space and feel that this is a place in which one individual lived, determined to learn what it means to be a real human being, to look inside life and discover what really penetrates the human psyche. It is an invisible monument to the quest to know oneself. It is America’s sphinx. And that was Transcendentalism.

Read Walden not because it is old and venerated – but because it summons us to all that is new within ourselves. To ask, to seek, and to experiment – these are the most radical acts a person can undertake today. These are the tools of Thoreau.