A Delightful Day!

I had a really enjoyable email this morning, from an old buddy I haven't seen for something like 35 years.

Hi Jaimes!

I won't do the stories here yet, as I haven't even had time to exchange stories with him, but we were friends through 1966 - 1969 or so, before he went to start a new life in the USA.

A year or so later I turned up on his doorstep in California, thinking it would amuse him if I dropped around for coffee. This was possibly funnier in the conception than execution, as he had already put up with me sleeping on his sofa in London...but he sheltered me for the first few months before easing me out into the big wide world to have my own adventures. I have never looked back, and owe him more than I can say.

I never have had that many men friends, or buddies, but he remains one of them in my memories at least - so, even if I may often say cynical things about Friends Reunited, etc (I certainly have little desire to meet old school friends, say) - this put a real spring in my step.

Check out the poetry website he set up and/or inspired. The Alsop Review

Time for a re-evaluation

I have to admit that I don’t really know why I write a blog. Just as with the website I wanted to learn about the new digital interactive world, and prefer to learn by trial-and-error rather than in theory only.

As far as I can tell, I mostly use it to reflect my state of mind. Occasionally world news, or work news, or home gossip slips into the mix, but I don’t feel the right to involve other real people too much, without their permission. I mean, shall I publish a photo of friends around the table at a party, or would they prefer not to have their picture on the web? During my life I have known draft dodgers, illegal drug smugglers, fathers not paying support, people on the run from abusive partners, illegal immigrants, freelancers who don’t pay taxes in the country they are passing through, etc. I have no idea whether I have the right to blow anyone’s cover.

Privacy, and all that...

At times it works brilliantly, like when I found a rare comedy album by Murray Roman on vinyl, and I mentioned here that I didn’t have any way to clean up scratchy old records.

Someone searching for the same obscure comedian found my blog through Google, and contacted me, offering to make clean digital versions if he could keep a copy, too! I gave him the vinyl – no use to me. Three Kinds of Highs - proof that other blogs occasionally remember him.

That’s the good stuff. Unfortunately, some of what I post also annoys people. I don’t do that on purpose. Whether a throwaway line about Buddhism, or a snide comment about dogs, I can get myself into trouble with readers (no excuses accepted for sloppy writing and thinking). Anyway. I can always come back and edit, although re-writing history slightly removes the fun of being able to scroll back through the diary years to see how things change. I never intended it as an 'accurate record' of anything more than my mood swings and passing fancies.

The main website needs re-designing and refurbishing, but that huge job may have to wait.

This blog, and the parallel one (focussed on my magic hobby), and the MLA one (started as a supplement to the Quarterly magazine), and the Circus Arts Forum (paid work) keep me pretty busy. Getting around to writing an article for the next magazine, or writing ‘the book’, still seem quite difficult to fit in around a day job.

The ever-diminishing time-slot doesn’t help. For all the dreams of life extension, etc – most guys don’t make it much past their mid-70s. (We just lost RAW at 74, same age as my dad got to). I don’t really expect much progress in life extension in the next decade (unlike many of my friends) – especially for old and misused bodies like mine – so I got 13 years or so, maybe.

That seriously concentrates the mind on what might seem important. Of course, if you think we hit The Singularity before then, or that the Mayan Age of Revealing, or global warming, or a nuclear war, or the plague, or whatever should absurdly interrupt my little life, then I have even less time. Hey ho.

Here's the little fellow, Dandy, that greets me in the morning. Sorry to have implied I don't like cleaning up after a crappy little chappie.

He'll probably keep us fit in the summer, and prove a great excuse to get down to the beach (with plastic bags in our pockets).

I just growled at him (like any old dog) because he seemed too new and bouncy for me. So it goes.

The Great Man

I was delighted to see that the Academy of Motion Pictures has an exhibition of WC Fields memorabilia. I reckon he seems long overdue for rehabilitation of his movies. I also heard a rumour of a release of a new DVD set, which includes at least one hard-to-find treasure, The Man on The Flying Trapeze! Although it looks as though the Pre-order only exists for people in the USA (doh!)

Anyway - sooner or later I may get The Old Fashioned Way, Man on the Flying Trapeze, You're Telling Me!, Poppy and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break - Whoopee!

A Quiet Week

Well, sorry, it all went quiet for a week. Apart from my birthday (which passed serenely) I helped launched a new website on Wednesday, so have anxiously nursed that along for a few days. Circus Arts Forum. A little freelance work for Arts Council of England. I remember when I used to work as solely as a freelance (all 32 years of it) - and 'they' didn't consider circus as an art requiring funding, respect and support back then. Things changed (but too late for my own performing career).

I didn’t get to The RAW Wake last weekend (all over the planet people did farewell events for Robert Anton Wilson – “who RU calling a cult?”) because my subconscious slept through the alarm to catch the train, perhaps resisting the idea of a day-off with heavy drinking, so I had a doze under the duvet for Bob instead. :-)

[UK news] Even a right-wing, conservative paper like the Daily Express has finally realised (acknowledged) that theoretical (notional) house prices do not really mean true wealth. If you own your house, and house prices go up, then you really could consider yourself better off (assuming you sell at the high point) but if you have promised to pay for it indefinitely then (in my mind) you don’t own it until you paid it off. This becomes significant when House Prices go up so much that your monthly payments go through the roof! Far from getting ‘richer’, you actually end up trying to buy a house beyond your means…or, as the Express had it:

“Mortgage Costs Are Crippling”.

Hilarious! It will hardly stop so long as everyone buys (sic) the idea that property values display the wealth of the country. You can’t lower the interest rates without people borrowing more, and demand going up. Someone has to reverse it – the music stops, you end up living on your current step in the ladder – and you stop paying out ¾ of your take-home pay just for a roof.

Imagine going into the bookshop for a book costing £10, and then before you can get out the door they tell you what a bargain you have as that book now has a value of £23, so would you mind paying the other £13 before you go?

What else this week? Ah, I just got invited to join some creative team to continue developing the Maybe Logic Academy campus/collage/complex/website/thing.

Solar Returns (many happy)

Have You Seeen the stars tonight? Not a lot of planets up there, just Saturn (order and limitations), nearly everything else in opposition, or in a placatory trine. What do I know? I know the Sun has conjoined with Neptune (myths and dreams) in its Opposition to Saturn. Take that as you will.


Many thanks to Astrodienst for a totally free, but powerful tool online. It takes the left brain out of astrology (although I used to quite enjoy the maths and the 3-D imaginings). Now I just snap my fingers, and bypass that 'scholar by candlelight with his tables' stage completely - and go straight to the dreaming.

My left-brain reminds me that this pattern got given the name "The Bucket" by someone in my readings so long ago...I don't remember what it means exactly, I can't quite get a handle on it!

A gale of laughter

I can hear people in Canada and Northern Europe laughing themselves silly. A couple of inches of snow, and the UK grinds to a halt. Actually, here in Cardiff it didn't seem much, but I guess it might fall much heavier up in The Valleys (or mountains, as you might say).

I suspect the Council sold off the snow ploughs (not having used them for a couple of years, and with rumours of global warming) and the gritting lorries couldn't get out 'because there was snow on the ground'.

A cartoon on the front of The Telegraph had a puzzled man standing outside the Climate Change Research Bureau, reading a notice pinned to their door:

CLOSED DUE TO HEAVY SARCASM

Snow - Louis Macneice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Separated at birth

Since I got on the internet I find I watch less and less television (I guess you only have so much screen time). I do try not to miss Channel 4's "Shameless". Not only does it have great scripts, and an excellent set of performances, but it manages the difficult trick of seeming both over-the-top slapstick and realistic...

[Frank's voice over]
Now, nobody's sayin the Chatsworth Estate is the Garden of Eden, but it's been a good home to us, to me - Frank GALLAGHER - and me kids, who im proud of! 'Cause every single one of them reminds me a little... of me. They can all think for themselves! Which they've me to thank for. Fiona! Who's a massive help. Lip, who's a bit of a gobshite, which is why nobody calls him 'Philip' anymore. Ian - a lot like his mam which is handy for the others 'cause she's disappeared into thin air. And Carl! We daren't let him grow his hair for two reasons; 1, it stands on end and makes him look like Toya and 2, nits love him. Debbie! Sent by God, total angel. You've to check your change, but she'll go miles out of her way to do you a favour. Plus Liam! Gunna be a star! Once we've got the fits under control. Steve; Fiona's boyfriend. The truth is out there... NOT. Fantastic neighbours, Kev and Veronica! Lend you anythin' - well, not anythin'. But all of them to a man... who knows first and foremost the most vital necessity is this life is they know how to throw a PARTY! Heh heh... Scatter!

Returning to Jedi

The Star Wars phenomenonenonenon rolls on 'n on 'n on...

I just heard from Jambe Davdar, who contacted me last year. We never did get to Skype an interview, and did it solely in writing, but he produces definitive 'making-of' DVDs, and asked for help with 'Returning to Jedi', which he has now completed.

I look foward to seeing it (small sample available on his Blog - Building Empire), which refers to his first such project.

You can find links to reviews and trailers, etc. on the blog.

You Become Your Secrets

Growing up in the 50s meant that psychology either saw you as a Behaviourist rat (army training, school indoctrination, etc) or as some murky realm of unconscious horrors that would need endless therapy to disentangle (Freud started that).

A Third Force in psychology had started in the USA, studying healthy people rather than damaged ones, looking at our potential not our flaws, and when I bunked off school to read imported books in Foyle’s bookshop I came across Maslow, Jourard and others who sounded immensely attractive, modern and realistic to me. I even figured I would go on to university (as my mother hoped) to do Psychology and Philosophy, but at the interview for Bristol University it became clear that they didn’t have any sympathy with all that Californian nonsense about Zen and humanism…so we went our separate ways (I dropped out, along with many in my generation). My later attraction to Leary and Wilson comes from this interest in human potential rather than human damage and limitation...

This came up today because I realise that sometimes in these diaries I may occasionally make disclosures that could make others uncomfortable. I edit myself a lot, but if I edit people out of my everyday life I create an illusion and an untruth.

However uncomfortable, I still carry an idea I got from Sidney Jourard, in The Transparent Self, when he said that we tended to become our secrets. In short, all the grooming in the world, and smiling, won’t hide twisted insides from others (George Bush, anyone?) And equally, some people who appear to live in dire circumstances, and may even ruefully put themselves down, have an inner glow. He concluded that it seemed healthier to admit our faults and flaws to others, and hide our good deeds. And when he talked of ‘confessing’ he didn’t mean secret absolution like the Catholic confessional, but declaring your weaknesses before your fellows, as he claimed early Christians had done, and as Alcoholics Anonymous (and all the other such groups) do. Equally, he said, most of us try to cash in our good deeds for merit points (I gave a homeless man ten pounds today) rather than simply do them and ‘store up our treasure in heaven’.

I also liked the idea that before Huichole Indians take peyote they have to ‘clear the air’ by passing around a string and and tying a knot in it for each of their failings and sexual transgressions admitted before the tribe. They then burn the string. No-one wants weird vibes when taking psychedelics, and paranoia often comes from getting lied to…telepathy (if we can say such a thing exists) can only happen between people who do not hide behind their lies.

Of course, having said I prefer honesty and straightforwardness, I often fail – and have even found myself cheating or lying on tiny insignificant things for no apparent reason. (Freud may come in handy here, or the Behaviourists!) And equally, people can misuse this ‘honesty trip’ to merely act in a cruel way - “I am telling you this for your own good!” - but the general principle of not bullshitting people still seems good to me (especially around the young), and equally “doing good by stealth” still gives me a little glow (I could hug myself) that often sustains me better than telling people about it, in the hope they’ll think I am kind and generous – not easy to do without sounding like showing-off!

I quite like the models of Random Acts of Kindness – (Pass It Forward) – because such acts rarely come back to reach the ears of your friends and family, and you can savour the secret glow. You can even consider the possibility that such stuff may come back to you by another route (if you still believe in the ‘karma’ inherent in a ‘whole system’ worldview).

Information wants to be free. Stewart Brand

Happy Birthday to The Great Man!

W.C.Fields remains one of my heroes. Several of my friends have spent dull times watching him with me, and not 'getting it'. Julie positively dislikes him.

I love the body language, the juggling comedy, the wonderful vocal delivery, etc.

Admittedly, he comes from the 19th Century, and if you don't like the history of comedy, or black and white films, then he may leave you cold (he certainly seems completely out of fashion - try buying anything other than a couple of DVDs).

I got this lovely picture from Doctor Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans. If you follow the link you can see another few high quality prints, and even some film clips. For a tiny glimpse of his wonderful mime, try the clip from Sally of The Sawdust. I don't think D.W.Griffiths (director) quite knew what to do with him... If you want to know more, I recommend "W.C.Fields - Straight Up" - a special made for US television by one of the men behind "Curb Your Enthusiasm" - which you can buy from Whyaduck Productions here. Check out his other productions, too, on the Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, his film of Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut). Robert B. Weide seems like a class act, to me.

And a Happy Birthday, too, to the fabulous Nelly Gareau - two weeks older than me, and now back in France, after many years in the USA. She and I travelled around Paris, the USA and Mexico together (for better or worse) in the early 1970s. We seemed like astrological twins (Aquarians), and people often mistook us for brother and sister (it confused them to find out I came from England, and she from France). I heard from her last year, but we may not get to meet up again. I just feel better when I realise that ex-partners can bear no ill-will, in fact can wish each other well - the way it should be, but all too rarely is.

Rabbit food!

One of the oddest things about growing up as a vegetarian (before that became fashionable) remains the idea that you will end up somehow malnourished. The other side of that appears as - if you intend to become a vegetarian, then you have to obsess about nutrition. I rarely cook, have spent a lot of my life on the road eating erratically (partly from financial reasons, and partly from restricted choice in meat-eating countries), and yet I have done energetic and physical work most of the time, and people say I don't look my age.

I particularly dislike the association with meat-eating and macho. Certainly you may find a correlation, but I suspect it arises from belief systems (red meat, killing and violence, etc) rather than nutritional content. I find it particularly annoying to hear my food called 'rabbit food'. Actually, with very little thought, you may realise that only some vegetarians (and prey) use the small and fast, run away and hide tactic. Others use camouflage, tasting bad, etc.

One of the most common strategies remains being too big to mess with. So my vegetarian heroes include the elephant, the gorilla (mild-mannered, and nothing like King Kong, but still deserving respect), the rhino and the hippopotamus (both thick-skinned, surprisingly agile - they can run at 40 mph, too, so don't try to outrun them if you manage to annoy them!) In fact Hippos apparently kill more humans in Africa than lions do (for instance). Just because I have vegetarian habits doesn't mean you can necessarily rile me and get away with it.

I do have a slight moral element to my veggie practice (I don't want to eat other animals) but I don't judge people too harshly if they do choose to eat other people (sorry, beings), but most of my choice comes from the aesthetic side. I prefer the way fruit and vegetables and grains look and smell and taste. On the road, I have had to sometimes accept that a cheap hotel room perches over a steak house, I can't avoid neighbour's barbecues - but I have always lived in veggie houses when I have settled for any length of time.

Where I live has changed in the last year, as my previously veggie partner tried the Atkins Diet and liked it. For a while I hoped it would prove a passing fad, and for a while it remained occasional chicken and fish, but now it has escalated to daily food, to mammal-eating, etc. Now that it also looks like the situation will remain this way I have to work out how to deal with it.

Not only do I find the cooking smells horrible and pervasive, but I hate seeing the 'bits' in the fridge (aesthetics, you see). I have no desire to irritate her by commenting every day, but sometimes it slips out, however careful I try to act - after all, I have 60 years of sarcastic veggie one-liners in the store, although I try not to lecture people the way newly-converted vegans do. If it all stayed in a room I didn't visit I could almost deal with it, but of course the smell and the sights are found in the kitchen where I also go to eat, and it puts me off my food - a dilemma I have not quite solved yet, except by avoiding the ground floor during and for a while after cooking, and/or simply neglecting to eat myself.

These don't seem perfect solutions for the long-term. I can't actually think of a solution to this, as I can't see the situation changing. Like an allergic reaction, though, I do not feel I can do much about the queasiness...that physiological response remains pretty well outside my control. I try to think back to when I have had cats and dogs, looking cheerful and enthusiastic at the prospect of meat, and try to see things through their eyes (or rather, experience things through their noses).

I often remind people that the Dalai Lama (for instance) does not live a vegetarian lifestyle (the buddhist cliche) as Tibetans live in mountains and have relatively little arable land. He tried it for a while (well, tried living on nuts and milk, not a good plan!) but it made him ill.

So, again, I do not intend any of this as a judgement - I fully accept that only a minority of humans live like me - the accidents of birth set me up for it (unless you believe in reincarnation, in which case I chose suitable parents to go with my preferences). But that doesn't solve my problem of feeling hungry until I get to the kitchen, then going off the idea and grabbing a glass of wine and a cigarette and disappearing back upstairs.

We also rarely eat together, which I miss, as well.

Hey ho.

[later] Talking tonight I realise that not everyone understands (even now) that my vegetarian position remains an ethical/religious choice. It dawned on me when I understood that my partner doesn't know the history of my alignment with the vegetarians of the past - the Cathars, the Jains, the Pythagorians, the Hindus (and many, but not all, of the Buddhists, who, after all, got their stuff from the Hindus in the first place), etc.
http://www.vegsoc.org/news/2000/21cv/ages.html

Because of general food shortages during WW2, the British were encouraged to 'Dig For Victory' and grow their own fruit and vegetables. A near vegetarian diet sustained the population and the nation's health was to improve vastly during the war years.

In the 1950 and '60s, the general public became increasingly aware of the truth behind intensive factory farming, introduced following the war. Vegetarianism also appealed to mid 1960s counterculture, as Eastern influences permeated Western popular culture.

Lucky old me, that even my mum bought that philosophy, just for fresh food, rather than Spam...

When you read the history - that my dad smuggled to me...

More radically, it appears that that the Middle Eastern groups we loosely call 'Christian' (Essenes, etc) shared that belief until the 'pagan' Romans took over the church and argued for their own habits.

The total suppression of this idea in the West (that involves realising and admitting that religions of the Middle East had strong influences from the older cultures of India and China) means that I go back into the heretic class. Check out this kind of site for the news (only a few centuries old) that taking this stance got you killed. Was Jesus a Vegetarian?

The Emperor Constantine would have made me drink molten lead. Cathars got burned at the stake or hanged for refusing to kill a chicken to prove what 'good Christians' they were, etc. Even 'dear old St Francis' (so called 'lover of animals') loved a pig's foot...

Hey ho. I determined not to become a zealot, a ranting vegan, or adopt a belief just because I inherited it from my dad - so I tried to break away, and try the damned stuff, but it made me feel ill in mind and body.

Boy, they did a good job of air-brushing us out of history...

Yet another incarnation

On June 23rd 2004 the Academy threw open the doors to Robert Anton Wilson fans, and Bob started running four online courses simultaneously. I did three of them, and felt tired, he said he felt like a "one-armed wallpaper hanger"!

Still - we had loads of fun. I have spent more than two years here, now, and other tutors have arrived. We have a hardcore of longterm students, some oldies who come and go, plenty of new people.

Of course, I realise that few people have even heard of RAW (sadly) and although his influence permeates modern media he gets little credit for it. Hey ho - he died a couple of weeks ago, so he could care less!

Anyway - his legacy - an intelligent, mostly courteous online forum - has gone through various experimental stages, it has generated a magazine and a blog, and it now has reached version 4.0 - which includes an area where members of the public can come in, look around, eavesdrop on the regulars, etc.

So why not come and visit us? MLA Forum v.4.0

Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen Hapus i chi’i gyd!

Happy St. Dwynwen’s Day to you all!

People who know me realise that I don't have a religious bone in my body, so may feel puzzled at my celebrating a Saint's Day (Catholic!)

Recently in Wales people have begun celebrating this day more than St Valentine's - as St. Dwynwen has the role of patron saint of lovers (and sick animals).

When I looked her up, I found her quoted as saying something that sounded exactly like my favourite author, humourist and thinker (who just died) - Robert Anton Wilson. It seemed appropriate.

Nothing wins hearts like cheerfulness

1428!

Happy New Year to Muslims everywhere – 1428!

Just to show that I don’t bear any grudge against religions (they count as ‘cultures’, too) – and I like alternative calendars (so you don’t mistake Pope Gregory’s calendar for ‘reality’). I have a lot of respect for the early Muslims who approached the world in a scientific and humanist way, who disapproved of the worship of graven idols (love those mosaics!), who found marijuana less reprehensible than alcohol, etc.

Doesn’t time fly when you find yourself stuck in the Middle Ages…


Calendars and Numbers, hey? On the Gregorian (Christian) calendar most of us currently use the number '1428 AD' to point to the time of England invading France, and confronting Joan of Arc…At that point in time, the graceful architecture and tolerant, intelligent, multicultural civilization in Southern Spain, ruled by Muslims for nearly 800 years, must have seemed the height of culture. A few years later (1492), the Catholic Christians threw out Jews and Muslims and Gypsies and the country reverted to ignorance and intolerance.

Of course, back in 1428 they still used the Julian calendar, and Pope Gregory’s corrections only got accepted in Catholic countries in 1582. The Protestants held out longer - the UK finally accepting the current calendar in 1752. The 11 day adjustment needed led to superstitious people believing that they had lost eleven real days of their lives (confusion of measuring systems and ‘reality’). When you put the clocks back you don't gain an hour of anything...(except sleep, maybe).

RIP RAWing

I got involved in a flurry of other stuff, mostly arising from hearing of the death of my favourite author – Robert Anton Wilson.

It still seems amazing to me that he appears so little known. I didn’t think I belonged to a cult!

He wrote on such a wide range of subjects that it baffles me that his funny sci-fi writing doesn’t put him up with Douglas Adams, and Kurt Vonnegut, his paranoid modern fiction doesn’t align him with (say) William Gibson, Neal Stephenson or Philip K Dick, and his psychology texts, his Joycean work, his Fortean material, his quantum speculation, doesn’t get him any kudos. The whole Holy Blood thing, the Dan Brown schtick, the 9/11 and Diana conspiracy material, the X-Files – have clear roots in his earlier works.

Perhaps the mainstream see him as New Age, but the New Age see him as a sceptic/cynic/debunker. Half the conspiracy buffs think he started the revelations, the other know he spent his time teasing True Believers, etc.

More family stuff

As this seems like a time of year for thinking about families, and particularly those we can no longer meet up with, I have decided to put my mother's Essays on Voice online.

She hoped to get them published, I suspect, but got turned down. At the time she worked alongside Patsy Rodenburg, and Patsy's books did seem to fit the publishers' needs. Her books got sold not only to actors, but to anyone who could use such skills in everyday life (that means almost all of us!)

Perhaps her style may appear a little old-fashioned now, but it represents many years of experience, and it seems a shame to let them sit in a box here in my den.

For now, I have put up a page with the Synopsis, and have even added a tiny (and very noisy) sound sample of Sheila coaching actors for the nightmare situation of 'the audition' - which for most of the rest of us might translate as 'the interview'. I had bits of tape from her old tape-recorder, but they only contained the sound of students practicing (either newsreading or Shakespeare, etc) but Tom Lee [who now works as a story-teller] kindly sent me a cassette he used to grab her notes in 1983, and although I miss the laugh, and other aspects of her voice, it gives you a glimpse of her at work. Thanks, Tom!

As well, as the essays, I may try to put a little more of this rare bit of sound up later... The page under construction you can find here...



While doing family, I'll just add in a Christmas card from my dad from 1956 (they could both write beautifully...)

Ah me...

Time Enough

Well, locally, people will celebrate midnight. I got invited elsewhere to celebrate. Julie has to work overnight, so I don't know if I will go join the circus.

After all, Australia started the New Year (Gregorian) about 9 hours ago, New York has another 7 hours to go, and San Francisco about 10 hours more, etc. I use ZoneTick to co-ordinate myself, so all four clocks show on my Desktop. It makes it difficult for me to run out and party...

I have just listened to a great radio show on Time, that Crissie sent me from the USA. It includes reference to the ECOlogical calendar, devised by a guy in California who also arranges theatrical/spatial happenings through Antenna Theatre; an interview with the woman who wants to construct an amazing sculpture in London, powered by The Thames, and indicating the phases of the moon and tides, etc, which you can find out about here at Aluna; and some great stuff about body clocks - and the effects of night-shift working, as well as the time of day we take medicines affecting their usefulness. They call it Chronobiology now, but it sounds like Paracelsus and other astrologer-healers might say "Duh!"

Thanks, Crissie!

Family Trees

Ah the joys of digging through old records! [Who says I don't do things appropriate to the time of year?]

As the library offers free access to Ancestry.Com and the databases it contains, I have had to learn how to use it (to help members of the public) and the best way seemed to do real research into the family.

I found my way back to Great Grand-Parents on my mother’s side, and feel pretty convinced by all the evidence – but the Philpott family have proved more elusive. Apart from anything else, this surname gets spelled so many different ways. I remember when still getting my name in the papers (!) how rarely anyone spelled it ‘correctly’ (and when they did they often called me ‘Tony’!)

So anyway, my Great-Grandfather, Richard T Philpott becomes a perfect example.

The 1881 Census has him as Richard T Phillpot
The 1891 Census has him as Richard T Philpott
The 1901 Census has him as Richard T Philpot

He seems to have died in 1908 as Richard T Philpotts

And I just found him, getting born in about 1841 as Richard Theophilus Phelpots

Now I have to search Phelpot, Phelpots, Philipott, Phillpath, Phillpotts, Phillpots, etc – you name it!

I reckon I got his parents (unconfirmed) but data runs out about 1837, and you have to start going around looking at parish records, etc. And a tree like this doesn't begin to trace brothers and sisters, cousins and downright lies (!)

Calling all Sentient Beings...

Nice to spot a Comment from old friend Crissie...I don't get a lot of feedback, which explains why I work hard at this blog, and then lapse at times.

Actually, I don't ever stop posting/writing - I just move around. For instance, on Buddhism, you can find me reporting as Godfrey Zone over in OM.

[use the Index, if you don't wanna use the new option to Search Blogs with the control bar at the top]

That post links to Bobby's great bit about Nagarjuna’s Claim, philosophy which sounds incredibly modern to me (having grown up in a culture inhibited from actual thinking by the threat of getting burned at the stake...

You'll find me both discussing stuff, and purely pontificating (or musing to myself), all over the place - and I try to keep it all linked up, but finally my brain probably represents the only complete collection of thoughts. ?!?!?!?!?

Comments really do work, too! I get notified of them, and try to respond to all and any...

Change afoot for 2007

Given the season, I figure I can slip God in here without anyone noticing... Leonard Cohen wrote novels, not just songs, and I found this wonderful piece in one of them. Buffy Saint-Marie later set it to music, as she said:

Leonard Cohen's book "Beautiful Losers" stole my heart in 1963 and so did the idea of electronic processing on a vocal record.I had a recording session scheduled and Leonard was in town. I propped two pages of his book up on a music stand and I just sang it out, ad libbing the melody and guitar music together as I went along. I've always wanted to re-record it, as I love the way the power of the words obviously commands the music and drives it beyond any consideration of time signature.

God is alive, magic is afoot God is alive, magic is afoot God is alive, magic is afoot God is afoot, magic is alive Alive is afoot, magic never died God never sickened Many poor men lied Many sick men lied Magic never weakened Magic never hid Magic always ruled God is afoot, God never died God was ruler Though his funeral lengthened Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled Though his shrouds were hoisted The naked God did live Though his words were twisted The naked magic thrived Though his death was published Round and round the world The heart did not believe Many hurt men wondered Many struck men bled Magic never faltered Magic always lead Many stones were rolled But God would not lie down Many wild men lied Many fat men listened Though they offered stones Magic still was fed Though they locked their coffers God was always served Magic is afoot, God is alive Alive is afoot Alive is in command Many weak men hungered Many strong men thrived Though they boast of solitude God was at their side Nor the dreamer in his cell Nor the captain on the hill Magic is alive Though his death was pardoned Round and round the world The heart would not believe Though laws were carved in marble They could not shelter men Though altars built in parliaments They could not order men Police arrested magic and magic went with them Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry But magic would not tarry It moves from arm to arm It would not stay with them Magic is afoot It cannot come to harm It rests in an empty palm It spawns in an empty mind But magic is no instrument Magic is the end Many men drove magic But magic stayed behind Many strong men lied They only passed through magic And out the other side Many weak men lied They came to God in secret And though they left Him nourished They would not tell who healed Though mountains danced before them They said that God was dead Though his shrouds were hoisted The naked God did live This I mean to whisper to my mind This I mean to laugh within my mind This I mean my mind to serve Til' service is but magic Moving through the world And mind itself is magic Coursing through the flesh And flesh itself is magic Dancing on a clock And time itself The magic length of God

© 1966- Leonard Cohen.