Monday, March 29, 2010

A New Day is Dawning

.....Oh, yes, I do have a few words to say about the passage of Obama's health reform bill and about the reaction to that event by the Republican Party who could find nothing at all in this bill that would conjure up at least one vote from one brave member of that party. Instead, there are wringing of hands, pulling of hair, self-flagellations, rising of gorges, and visions of doom. Sen Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, called the new law a "house of cards...a Ponzi scheme ...(that will) blow up the deficit." Also, he doesn't like it. Now, what is it that makes these politicians think they know better than the Democrats who worked long and hard for a year trying to put forth some legislation that would allow every American to have affordable health insurance. Some of their attacks of this bill are ludicrous and laughable coming from the mouths of American legislators. Since their failure to assist in the process of designing a health reform bill, even when invited to do so indicates something entirely different from their loathing of the bill. Their reactions are too incredible for belief. The obvious reason for the Republican Party's intransigence is that they do not want the Obama administration to succeed. They do not want to see the Democrats in power for eight years. Can you blame them? Yes, of course you can, because they were sent to Washington to do a job and they haven't done a damn thing, except to complain and expound on their theories that the bill is a disaster for the country. Now they are threatening to repeal this bill when and if they have the votes. Well, let's see how the people who are being served by it now react if they try to go through with their threats. Let's see if they want to allow insurance companies to cancel policies when someone gets sick. Let's see if they want these companies to turn away people because of pre-existent afflictions. Let us see if they want to eliminate the law in the bill that allows children to be on their parents' plan until the age of 26. Let's see if they cancel the part of the bill that provides for $250 for seniors to help with the cost of their medications. During his campaign, Obama promised to pass legislation that would reform health care in this country, and it was no doubt his leadership made it come to pass.

.....I still have residual effects of Bronchitis and of hip surgery with twinges of pain now and then here and there. Nothing I can't handle, although I wish all this "stuff" would stop. I just would like to feel well. HAPPY PASSOVER TO Y'ALL.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Sick..so sorry.

.....Dear Readers: I've been remiss in writing my blog because I've been afflicted with bronchitis, and a writing mood doesn't strike me. However, it won't be long now. I don't think you'd care for me to write about bronchitis. Well, how about that Obama!! Is not that leadership? Did he deliver what he promised? Oh, well, I'm still sick.

Back soon, I hope: Baron

Friday, March 19, 2010

"Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part and I am out..." (Coriolanus)

.....The Theatre Workshop is putting on a "Showcase" next Thursday; basically a review type program with a few skits and a few monologues by people in the class. Though I attend the classes, I haven't been in any mood to perform. The hip injury on top of all the other problems I've had in the past year dropped me into a blue funk to the point where my anti-depressants have had little impact. However, Gloria Slobin, the "producer" of this theatrical venture was insistent that I do something "Shakespearean", and in order to help the show, I decided it wouldn't take much preparation to do "The Seven Ages of Man" monologue delivered by the misanthrope, Jacques, to his buddies in the Forest of Arden from the play, "As You Like It.". It is a classic. I'm a little rusty on that one, but it won't take very long to re- memorize the words, although my memorization skills have suffered with age. Last Thursday, in rehearsal, I just blacked out on the first line and Gloria had to feed it to me! A sterling moment in my theatrical career.

.....I explained to Gloria that I wasn't sure that the two o'clock audience would appreciate a monologue from Shakespeare, but she thought it would somehow raise the level of what we were doing. No tickets are sold for this event, and following it, refreshments will be served--consisting of cookies and beverages. Some people simply come for the refreshments. Some people even come to be lulled into napping; but that is not the fault of the performers. A few of the skits are very funny, and the thespians do them very well. The monologues also are read with some skill. One of the "students" in the class will be going to the Huntington Lakes Board with an appeal to put on an "in-house" show next year titled, "Seniors in America Have Talent". It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how that show will run. In fact, I might audition for it, cane and all. After all, the cane makes one look distinguished--like Charlie Chaplain.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

"A good life is the only religion." (Thomas Fuller)

.....In my blog the other day--or yesterday--I mentioned that the line, "....and lead us not into temptation," from The Lord's Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount that begins, "Our father who art in heaven...." is not very complimentary to God who is not supposed to lead people thusly. That's Satan's prerogative. However, I did receive a lesson about this problem from Cousin Ruth Grimsley in England, and I will share it with all who read this blog, and thus immortalize her once more:

.....The main purpose of my writing to you now is to acquaint you with the long debate about the meaning of "lead us not into temptation." It is to your credit that you have identified a real theological and philological difficulty here, all by yourself, without any knowledge of previous debate on the subject.
The first thing you must know is that Latin is the language of theological obfuscation: Greek is the language of enlightenment here, and the New Testament was written in this language. (By the time of the New Testament, the language is no longer called Ancient Greek (golden age - 5thC BC) but koine (common) Greek, as it was by then a lingua franca. Basically it's the same language, however - it's a bit simpler, and has lost some of its character, but you'd expect that.) So we must go back to it. The original Greek does NOT mean "temptation." We have a mistranslation, or at any rate an inadequate translation. The word is "peirasmos" which comes from the verb "peiromai" meaning to try, or test. (We get our word "pirate" from this: the best - but still not brill - English translation of this word has to be "chancer.") So the prayer really means "do not bring us to the time of trial," or it is sometimes translated as "do not bring us to the time of hard testing." (These are in modern translations of the New Testament.)
However, there are even more interesting aspects of this prayer. My koine Greek lexicon, which concentrates on the words of Jesus as being well within the Jewish tradition, states that the word originates in Hebrew, and refers to a state of trial into which God brings his people through adversity and affliction, in order to stimulate and prove their faith in him. (Btw, I don't know Hebrew - YET! It's next on the list!) Additionally, by metonymy, adversity, affliction, and sorrow. So, another reasonable translation would be, "do not place afflictions on us." And that, I think, wraps it up.

.....Yes, but the line still reads, "Lead us not into temptation...". Yep, I think that about wraps it up. Except that originally I called this prayer, Psalm 23, which it is not. Psalm 23 begins, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..." I simply confused the two but I have since corrected the glitch in the blog.

.....On a more personal note, the Boomers Club held a picnic today which began at 11:30 and where hot dogs and hamburgers and soda were served. There were about 200 people there--I'm guessing--I couldn't count them all. I didn't go for the food served at that hour, so before we got there we stopped at Dunkin' Donuts and I ordered a bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee--to go. Before I stuff myself with hot dogs, I do have to have some semblance of a breakfast. (I wonder if they have Dunkin' Donuts in England??). Not only was picnic fare served, but raffle tickets were sold, clowns wandered among the tables, and games and entertainment was part of the $10 ticket sale. We didn't participate. We went home and Rhoda went to the Flea Market to get batteries for three of her watches. Remember--Beware the Ides of March!

Friday, March 12, 2010

"The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?" (Measure for Measure)

.....I'm still at reading selections from the Bible; it may take me longer to read it than it took the scribes to write it; and as I went through the gospels of Matthew it became pretty boring because with each one there were so many repetitions in the writing it was hard to keep up with it; except when I came to the Sermon on the Mount which was beautiful and which surprising to me, at least, contained "The Lord's Prayer". I was amazed because I surely remembered this being used in a prayer in the synagogue--or at least something similar to it. "Hallowed be thy name" is reflected in the Kaddish; "Lead us not into sin" is echoed in other Jewish prayers. The purpose of the sermon was to teach the people how and where to pray. It seems that God was angry with the people because they prayed openly, and sometimes in the street, just so people could see them praying and think them wise and without sin. So, Jesus delivered this sermon to his disciples and to a multitude of followers. Sometimes this psalm is known as "Our Father"; in Latin it begins, "Pater Noster qui es in caelis...". Is that how I got the idea to title the volumes of my blog, "Pater Noster in Condoland"? It's interesting to contemplate, anyway.

.....One of the problems with this psalm, it seems, is the line, "...and lead us not into temptation." This goes against the the teachings elsewhere in the Gospels that God does not lead people into temptation--that's Satan's job. However, Abraham was tempted to sacrifice his son--which I suppose is called infanticide. And David also was lead into sin when God got angry with the people again and asked David to count the people of Israel and of Judah. (2 Samuel 24). So David asked Joab, the General of the army, I gather, to go and count the people--to what purpose is not clear to me--perhaps for conscription. At any rate, it took him nine months and twenty days to do it and the people of Israel numbered 800,000 and of Judah, 500,000. After Joab reported this, David petitioned God to relieve him of his iniquity. Why counting the people was a sin, according to David, I don't know...but the bottom line is that God had lead him into this "temptation," if that is what it was.

.....I am writing about this in my blog because it is what is most interesting to me in my life these days. I am still going to physical rehab for my hip twice a week, and that is less of an interest than anything else I can come up with at the moment. I thought that the Theatre Workshop class would capture my interest, but it's quite the disappointment. There is infinitesimal interest there in teaching people how to act. People get up and read monologues, but the diction leaves a lot to be desired, and there is no real attempt to make any reading that's done, dramatic. And for some reason, there is very little critique of these readings--perhaps not to embarrass the reader which is a lousy reason if the reader is there to be taught.


The Lord's Prayer Words


(traditional)


Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,

the power and the glory,

for ever and ever.

Amen

(King James Bible AD 1611)


Tuesday, March 9, 2010

"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." (Measure for Measure)

.....I'm still at it--reading selections from the Bible. I got through Noah and the ark, Davie and Goliath, and Danny in the lion's den; he was lucky. Then there was Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego in the fiery furnace just walking around in it with a fourth man--I suppose a messenger from God who was seeing to it that the three young men survived the hot stuff. That's what they were called in the Bible--the three young men. I remember there were several songs about these guys who came from Judah to see the King who was astonished to see that the guys he threw into the furnace did not burn up. He put them in there because they wouldn't worship his statue. How come we don't see any kids with names like that? When I go into IHOP I see kids with all kinds of strange names, but none like Shadrack. The book I have unfortunately did not include Jonah and the whale. I ran out of the Old Testament and just started the New. The first part apparently written by Mark...no surname. So far Jesus has made the rounds of cities and has cured a blind man and a leper by just touching them and removing their sins. Then, apparently he went on a ship to get away from the multitude who were afflicted and needed his help...and apparently he obliged, going around and curing lots of people of their sins and illnesses...especially ridding them of their sins. It was like an unlimited Yom Kippur...also, no co-pays. I hope I don't get excommunicated for blasphemy, (like Spinoza) because of this blog.

.....I'm now going to "outpatient" rehab at the doctor's gym. I'm still not fully cured of the broken hip thing...probably because I just "fell by Virtue" (see title) or I picked up a few sins since the last Yom Kippur--Unfortunately they seem to be easy to pick up. Of the Ten Commandments I have no clue as to which ones I have violated. I know adultery is definitely not one of them--impossible, even with Viagra or Cialis. I have dropped the walker, and now I am back on the cane, but can't go too far with it before the pain begins. Then I look for the walker again. I have two Harley-Davidson stickers on it that Bobby sent me and people really believe it's a Harley walker. I tell them that the motor dropped out. I don't believe I'll ever walk without a cane, and I know I'll get no sympathy from Jesus. I'll just grin and bear it--perhaps drop the grin.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

"There are few die well who die in battle." (Henry V)

.....According to a recent Time magazine article, Tom Hanks who made the film, "Saving Private Ryan" is now engaged in a new history making project --a 10 hour epic HBO film, "The Pacific". Whereas "Ryan" and the "Band of Brothers" documents WWII in Europe, "The Pacific" recounts the hellish war in the vast Pacific against Japan and people we thought were "different'' from us. With the production of his newest venture into American history, Hanks, like Brokaw, has turned into a spokesperson for the Greatest Generation. The strange thing is that Hanks was never interested in history; at school, all he remembers learning about WWII was that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese and that American revenge came when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. But Tom, while making "Private Ryan" realized just how immense was his deficit in the Pacific theater history.
....To Hanks, a classic baby boomer, born in 1956, WWII was just a black and white mystery. His father was a U.S Naval mechanic in the war and wasn't the type to tell his son tales of bravery and sacrifice. He had nothing nice to say about the Navy; he hated the Navy. So Tom's interest in WWII was and is an anomaly. In all the films that he and Spielberg made, they wrestled with the question of how, from the barbarity of war, could young American men be asked to indiscriminately kill a shadowy enemy and then return to order groceries in WalMart and merge back into a Coca Cola society. The answer is, they can't. Even Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in WWII suffered from PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. During one episode of that disorder, he held his wife hostage at gunpoint.

.....I have been afflicted with PTSD ever since my discharge from the Naval service in 1945 when I returned to a world that I had forgotten and couldn't cope with. I spent five months in a VA hospital, suicidal and depressed before entertaining the idea that I could go to college, not only to learn things I had never known, but also as a hiding place from the real world. Just recently, my daughter, Robin, decided that she would visit Rhoda and me for a weekend, and then on a Sunday fly us to Virginia where we would have lunch with my two sons, Joel's wife, Barbara, Bobby's friend Alice, and my grandson and his girlfriend, Molly. After lunch, the plan was to then fly back to Florida in the private plane that Robin leased for this venture--an enticing one--except for the fact that I never want to climb into a plane again in my life. I want to eliminate every stressful venture that I can at this point, and flying has been stressful for me since 1945. I flew 2000 hours in WWII; I've had enough of that.

.....We now have three people in the family that have published books; Robin's "Patriot Dreams" about her husband's capture in Lebanon; Joel's "Phases of the Moon," about his experiences in Israel and Panama; and my "Memoirs of a Tail Gunner." But now, we have another "child" who is starting his own blog at:
Check it out--it's different.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

"A friend should bear his friend's infirmities..." (Julius Caesar)

.....I received an e-mail from son, JR, containing the following message from a former student, Magda Machado (now Garsol) at present living in Hong Kong. She was an exchange student from Brazil and when she had problems living with another family, we took her in. This message posted on Facebook was probably in response to a question asked about me from a friend.

The following message about you was posted by Magda on her Facebook page:
"...Yes, he has been a great father to his children. To me, he's been a wonderful friend, one who invited me into his home when my own father  and brother were sitting in a Brazilian military jail. He and Thelma allowed me to be a young person again. I lived in their home for two years (a little less),  and without him I would not have gotten the full scholarship from Post College. Then, through the years, our friendship grew, matured, aged as good wine,  and it is one of the most beautiful relationships that I have experienced in my life. I am delighted, proud and grateful that I know him."
In previous blogs I pondered about whatever accomplishments and failures I have had in my life...and gratefully, it has been a long life.  I suppose my career as a teacher must be considered an important accomplishment evidenced by the fact that I have had an influence on so many students.  It is very satisfying to still hear from many, many of them through the wonderful device of e-mail, and to learn from them how I touched their lives.  Now, if I've had this kind of effect on young people, have I had some of the same effect on people and friends that I have met in my life?  Well, perhaps not the same kind of effect, but what other kind?  I'm not the most sociable person on the planet. What I do know is that I have had many good friends.
....Last night we had an event down at the swimming pool and little clubhouse called, "Dancing under the Stars" except that it was chilly and not a very good night for dancing.  I couldn't and wouldn't dance anyway.  The last time I tried, I broke my hip and am still suffering from that mistake.  The "dance" was held at 6p.m. and sandwiches, cold slaw and potato salad were served along with cold beverages like wine and soda to wash it down.  There were in attendance about 100 people and a DJ at the pool.  The good souls who ran this event were mostly friends and neighbors from my building.  I did not see too many people that I knew from the nine buildings in our section except for friends and fellow thespians from the times that I appeared and performed in shows.  Those days are now gone, and whatever happened to that old gang of mine?

Monday, March 1, 2010

"Genius does what it must..." (Bulwer-Lytton)

.....For several years I taught a class here in our clubhouse called "Fun with Shakespeare." We spent an hour and a half reading and discussing a play for six weeks. Participants were asked to pay $35 for the privilege of having me teach them! Well, I never got fewer than 20 people and when I taught "The Merchant of Venice" sixty people signed up. I guess they wanted to find out if Shakespeare was anti-Semitic--which he wasn't. They also were curious as to whether or not Shakespeare really wrote the plays and not some other guy. The evidence that Shakespeare actually was the writer is sufficient to satisfy all but a few doubters. How could a man who only went to grammar school do what he did?? The answer is "genius".

.....Unfortunately, I can't teach a class like I have done here anymore. Takes too much preparation and requires lots of energy in the classroom. I'm 86 and my body is broken, but my mind is not. However, I thought about it, and it's possible that I can conduct a class which I could call, "The Wisdom of Shakespeare." In this class we could discuss themes from Shakespeare's plays such as justice, love, marriage, honor, heroism, age, children, God, grief, suicide, and many, many other themes that would lead to open and heated discussions. I would first read passages from the plays that deal with these themes. This type of class would require very little preparation and very little in-class energy. And it would allow me to get back to doing something for humanity! A great teacher is not one who imparts knowledge to his students, but one who awakens their interest in it and makes them pursue it for themselves. Well, it would be interesting to see how many people would register for a class like this. There are many classes offered here, but none of them deal with things "cultural". I know St. Patrick's Day is coming this month, but a couple of days before that, beware the Ides of March. Of course everyone knows that Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15, 44 B.C. or B.CE if you prefer. Personally, I like B.C.

.....Today I got discharged from in-house physical rehab. I'm thankful for that because I was getting really bored with all the exercises. Next week I'll be seeing the surgeon once more and I'll begin "outpatient" therapy which involves working on machines like a bicycle or a rower. One of these days I'll burn my walker and get back to the cane. The cane's OK. Makes me look distinguished. Maybe like Sherlock Holmes--although I don't think he carried a cane. Getting back to Shakespeare and/or culture, I've also been thinking about the poetry I like the best. It's hard to pick one out, but "The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock" has to be one of them. "Paradise Lost" by Milton is another. And anything by George Gordon, Lord Byron...particularly, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." And then there is "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" by Fitzgerald. Only genius is responsible for the writing of these poems. Baron suggests you run to the nearest library and pick up a book on English literature. Then read; it doesn't hurt. Really.

.....