Notes from Books

Book: Watership Down
Author: Richard Adams

Summary:
A small group of rabbits, sensing their warren is in trouble, venture out on a journey to find a new home away from danger.

Personal Notes:

-I really enjoy the inclusion of several mythical tales in this book thus far, including the prophet Cassandra whom no one believes and the lotus-eaters from the Odyssey.  In fact, the book seems to reflect the same type of journey Odysseus and his men traverse in the Odyssey as in Watership Down.  Also infused in this book are the themes of Anansi and his animal trickery. I especially enjoy hearing the tales of the ancient first rabbit; they remind me of both Anansi and mythological tales from India.

Book: The World Without Us

Author: Alan Weisman

General Summary:  "In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Warth without us.  In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrasturcture would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.
     The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations, and how, as the world's cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones.  It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, and how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities wouldperish without us.  Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from the rabbis to the Dalai Lama, and paleontologists--who describe a prehuman would inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths--Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us..."


Important Points:

p. 44  "It is now known that we walked on two feet for hundreds of thousands of years before it occurred to us to strike one stone against another to create sharp-edged tools."

p.44  "Olduvai Gorge and the other fossil hominid sites, together comprising a cresent that runs south from Ethiopia and parallels the continent's eastern shore, have confirmed beyond mush doubt that we are all Africans." 

p.46  "Yet scientists know it existed, because genetics show that we and chimps descended directly from the same ancestor.  The American physical anthropologist Richard Wrangham has given this undiscovered ape a name: Pan prior."

p.54  "Most exciting to him, though, were testimonies by Indians near the Kentucky salt lick, allegedly corroborated by other tribes farther west, that the tusked behmoth in question still lived in the north.  After he became president, he sent Meriweather Lewis to study the Kentucky site on the way to joining William Clark for their historic mission.  Jefferson had charged Lewis and Clark not only with traversing the Louisianna Purchase and seeking a northwest river route to the Pacific, but also with finding live mammoths, mastodons, or anything similarly large and unusual."

p.63  "...Wrangel Island's mammoths lived on, a dwarf species that lasted 7,000 years longer than mammoths on any continent.  They were still alive 4,000 years ago, when Egyptian pharaohs ruled."

p.74  "A flower, like a human, is two-thirds water."

p.77  "Until the late 19th century, when the British ended slavery, thousands of elephants and humans perished along the ivory-slave route between the central plains and Mombasa's auction block.  As the slave trail closed, construction commenced on a railroad between Mombasa and Lake Victoria, a source of the Nile, critical to British colonial control.  Tsavo's hungry lions gained international fame for devouring railway workers, sometimes leaping aboard trains to corner them.  Their appetites became the stuff of legend and movies, which usually failed to mention that their hunger owed to a scarcity of other game, slaughtered to feed a 1,000-year cavalcade of enslaved human cargo."

p.121  "In 1975, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences had estimated that all oceangoing vessels together dumped dumped 8 million pounds of plastic annually.  More recent research showed the world's merchant fleet alone shamelessly tossing around 639,000 plastic containers every day."

p. 249  "Both Pioneers carry 6-by-9-inch gold-plated aluminum plaques bolted to their frames, bearing line etchings by Sagan's former wife Linda Salzman that depict a naked human male and female.  Next to them are graphical deceptions of Earth's position in the solar system and the sun's location in the Milky Way, plus the cosmic equivalent of a phone number: a mathematical key based on a transitional state of hydrogen, indicating wavelenghths where we're tuned in, listening."

 Book: Sin in the Second City

Author: Karen Abbott

Summary:  "Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history--and the catalyst for a culture war that rocked the nation.  Operating in Chicago's notorious Levee district at the dawn of the last century, the Club's proprietors, two aristocratic (or so they said) sisters named Minna and Ada Everleigh, welcomed moguls and actors, senators and athletes, foreign dignitaries and literary icons into their stately double mansion, where thirty stunning Everleigh "butterflies" awaited their arrival.  Courtesans named Doll, Diamond Bertha, and Brick Top devoured raw meat to the delight of Prince Henry of Prussia and recited poetry for Theodore Dreiser.  Whereas lesser madams pocketed most of a harlot's earnings and kept a "whipper" on staff to mete out disclipine, the Everleighs made sure their girls dined on gourmet food, were examined by an honest physician, and were even tutored in the literature of Balzac.  

Not everyone appreciated the sister' attempts to elevate the industry.  Rival Levee madams hatched numerous schemes to ruin the Everleighs, including an attempt to frame them for the death of department store heir Marshall Field Jr.  But the sisters' most daunting foes were the Progressive Era reformers, who sent the entire country into a frenzy with lurid tales of "white slavery"--the allegedly rampant practice of kidnapping young girls and forcing them into brothels.  This furor shaped America's sexual culture and had repercussions all the way to the White House, even leading to the formation of the Fedral Bureau of Investigation."


Important Points:

"The Everleighs vowed never to deal with pimps, desperate parents selling off children, panders, and white slavers.  If you treated girls well, they would come begging for admittance.  A prospective Everleigh courtesan must prove she's eighteen in order to earn an interview, understand exactly what the job entailed, and know she's free to leave anytime, for any reason, without penalty."  p.12

"The sisters added additional rules to their list: no knockout powders, no thieving, no drugs of any kind."  p.13

"Banish anyone who spent less than $50, which was technically an entrance fee.  Elsewhere in Chicago, a man could enjoy a three-course meal for 50 cents, but dinner in the Pullman Buffet started at $50 per plate.  It would behoove them to open an account with Chicago's Chapin & Gore, allotting a budget of $2,000 to $5,000 a month for imported spirits.  Wine would be sold in the parlors for $12 a bottle and in the bedrooms for $15, but beer and hard liquor weren't availible at any price.  Servants would press a gentleman's suit while he was being entertained, and money would not be mentioned until his party was over.  All transactions would be handled discreetly, by check--cash was considered crass.  When a client looked over his bank statements, he would find his check endorsed by the 'Utopia Novelty Company'."  p.24

"From then on, Minna would refer to their girls as 'butterflies.'  And she had an idea: On special occasions, why not import swarms of the insects and release them in the conversation parlors to flutter and float among the guests?"  p.25

"The cake must be round, to assure eternal love.  The mere mention of a rectangular confection shocked Minna into dismissing the caterer.  The new chef draped her cake with blossoms to match her bouquet, and treasures lay hidden beneath the icing.  She cut the first piece herself; then, in turn, each member of her party cut a slice, hoping to find a lucky trinket.  There were sets of fourtune's tokens: a ring to foretell the next to be married; a dime to indicate the wealthiest (a custom from which Minna suggested John D. Rockefeller Sr. got the idea for his 'Rockefeller dimes'); a wish-bone for the luckiest and a thimble to signify the old maid.  The bridegroom had his own cake: dark chocolate, rich and laden with fruit.  To close the festivities, servants tucked pieces in small white boxes and handed them out as souvenirs."  p.39

Book:  Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century

Author: Mike Dash

General Summary:

"They called it Satan's Circus--a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway.  At the turn of the twentieth century, it was a place where everyone from the chorus girls to the beat cops was on the take and where bad boys became wicked men; a place wherean upstanding young policeman such as Charley Becker could become the crookedest cop who ever stood behind a shield."

Important Points:

-"Such placemen made possible the staggering corruption and graft that turned Tweed into a wealthy man.  Under the boss's rule, New York spent $10,000 on a $75 batch of pencils, another $171,000 on tables and chairs worth only $4,000 and $3.5 million on 'repairs' to the brand-new Criminal Courts Building behind City Hall that had already cost twice what the United States had paid for the whole state of Alaska.  By the time of his eventual exposure, in 1873, it was calculated that the total stolen by Tweed and his cronies had exceeded $50 million.  Of this, no more than $800,000 was ever recovered." p.35

-"Big Tim's most celebrated trait was his generocity.  He was known to rise at dawn to lead gangs of the unemployed uptown to find laboring jobs on public works, and he served a vast annual Christmas dinner to as many as 5,000 Bowery bums, on one occasion spending $7,000 to set out a spread comprising 10,000 pounds of turkey together with hams, stuffing, potatoes, 500 loaves of bread, 5,000 pies, 200 gallons of coffee, and a hundred kegs of beer."  p.38

-"New York's famous 'Broadway Squad' --a body of policemen assigned to patrol the most fashionable stretches of the celebrated street, made up entirely of handsome, physically imposing men--got several of its best recruits this way.  Since the chief purpose of the squad was to keep pickpockets and sneak thieves away from respectable citizens, escort well-to-do ladies across the street, and in general reassure New York's upper classes that the city was properly policed (thus, hopefully, blinding them to excesses elsewhere), such apparent indulgences were no doubt considered investments."  p.41 

Book:  Why I Am Not A Christian and other essays on religion and other subjects

Editor:  Bertrand Russell

General Summary:  " Dedicated as few men have been to the life of reason, Bertrand Russell has always been concerned with the basic questions to which religion also addresses itself -- questions about man's place in the universe and the nature of the good life, questions that involve life after death, morality, freedom, education, and sexual ethics. He brings to his treatment of these questions the same courage, scrupulous logic, and lofty wisdom for which his other work as philosopher, writer, and teacher has been famous. These qualities make the essays included in this book perhaps the most graceful and moving presentation of the freethinker's position since the days of Hume and Voltaire."

Important Points:

-"What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all.  Most poeple believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason.  Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you.  That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desire for a belief in God."  p.14

-"For one thing, He [Jesus] certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time."  p.16

-"You will find that in the Gospels Christ said, 'Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell.'  That was said to people who did not like His preaching."  p.17

-"You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the state of affairs.  In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion."  p.20

-"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.  It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes.  Fear is the basis of the whole thing--fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death."  p.22

-"We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.  A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.  It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence.  It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create."  p.23

-"The worst feature of the Christian religion, however, is its attitude toward sex--an attitude so morbid and so unnatural that it can be understood only when taken in relation to the sickness of the civilized world at the time the Roman Empire was decaying.  We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women.  This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make.  Women cannot enjoy a tolerable position in society where it is considered of the utmost importance that they should not infringe a very rigid moral code."  p.26-27

-"It is not only in regard to sexual behavior but also in regard to knowledge on sex subjects that the attitude of Christians is dangerous to human welfare...the artificial ignorance on sex subjects which orthodox Christians attempt to enforce upon the young is extremely dangerous to mental and physical health, and causes in those who pick up their knowledge by the way of 'improper' talk, as most children do, an attitude that sex is in itself indecent and ridiculous."  p.28

Book:  Letter to a Christian Nation

Author: Sam Harris

General Summary:  "Thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God.  The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians.  This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own.  The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ's love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism.  While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such  hatred draws considerable support from the Bible.  How do I know this?  The most disturbed of my correspondents always city chapter and verse." 

Important Points:

-"It was even possible for the most venerated patriarch of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas).  Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches."  p.11-12

-"The Bible also makes it clear that every that every man is free to sell his daughter into sexual slavery--though certain certain niceties apply: 'When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do...'"  p.15

-"People have been cherry-picking the Bible for millennia to justify their every impulse, moral and otherwise."  p.18

-"There are obvious biological reasons why people tend to treat their parents well, and to think badly of murderers, adulterers, thieves, and liars.  It is a scientific fact that moral emotions--like a sense of fair play or an abhorrence of cruelty--precede any exposure to scripture.  Indeed, studies of primate behavior reveal that these emotions (in some form) precede humanity itself."  p.21

-"Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: 'Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.'"  p.22-23

-"Let us look at the details.  A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst.  There are, for the sake comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly.  The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons.  Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all.  It is worth remembering, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (providedhe has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground.  If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat blastocyst as such.  If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst."  p.29-20

-"While you believe that bringing an end to religion is an impossible goal, it is important to realize that much of the developed world has nearly accomplished it.  Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on earth."  p.43

-"...the United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious adherence; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy,  sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality."  -p.44

-"Countries with high levels of atheism are also the most charitable both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world."  p.46

-"There is another possibility...the biblical God is a fiction, like Zeus and the thousands of other dead gods whom most sane human beings now ignore.  Can you prove that Zeus does not exist?  Of course not.  And yet, just imagine if we lived in a society where people spent tens of billions of dollars of their personal income each year propitiating the gods of Mount Olympus, where the government spent billions more in tax dollars to support institutions devoted to these gods, where untold billions more in tax subsidies were given to pagan temples, where elected officials did their best to impede medical research out of deference to 'The Illiad' and 'The Odyssey', and where every debate about public policy was subverted to the whims of ancient authors who wrote well, but who didn't know enough about the nature of reality to keep their excitement out of their food."  p.55-56

Book: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

Author: Jon Krakauer 

Summary:
Jon Krakauer's literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits.  In Under the Banner of Heaven, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders.  At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by a pair of Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims.  Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, and unyielding faith.  In the process, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America's fastest growing religion, analyzes the abduction of fourteen year old Elizabeth Smart (and forced 'marriage' to her polygamous kidnapper), and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.


Important Points/Quotes:

-Mark Hofmann was a once devout Mormon but lost his faith while on a missionary trip.  He began to create 'authentic' documents for the Mormon church and sold them to collectors.  "Many of Hofmann's forgeries were intended to discredit Joseph Smith and the sacred history of Momonism; more than four hundred of these fraudulent artifacts were purchased by the LDS [Latter-Day Saints] Church (which believed they were authentic), then squirreled away in a vault to keep them from the public eye."  Prolouge, p.10 

-"Control of the LDS Church resides in the hands of fifteen men.  At the top of the hierarichical pyriamid is the 'President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator,' who is believed to be God's direct mouthpiece on earth.  The LDS president appoints two trusted apostles to serve as his first counselor and second counselor; collectively these three men function as the First Presidency.  Immediately below the First Presidency is the Quorum of the Tweleve Apostles, and, together, these fifteen men (they are always men; women are excluded from positions of authority in the Mormon Church) hold sway over the institution and its membership with absolute power."  p.4

-"Mormon Fundamentalists passionately believe that Sainst have a divine obligation to take multiple wives.  Followers  of the FLDS faith engage in polyamy, they explain, as a matter of religious duty."  p.6

-"Polygamy was, in fact, one of the most sacred credos of Joseph's church--a tenet important enough to be canonized for the ages as Section 132 of the 'Doctrine and Covenants', one of Mormonism's primary scriptural texts.  The revered prophet described plural marriage as part of '"the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on earth" and taught that a man needed at least three wives to attain the "fullness of exaltation" in the afterlife.  He warned that God had explicitly commanded that "all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same...and if ye abide not that covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory."  p.6

-"...ninety-two-year-old tax accountant-turned-prophet named Rulon T. Jeffs..."  p.10

-"His [Uncle Rulon] sermons frequently stress the need for total submission.  'I want to tell you that the greatest fredom you can enjoy is in obedience,' he has preached.  'Perfect obedience produces perfect faith.' ...Uncle Rulon likes to remind his followers of Brigham's warning that for those who commit such unspeakable sins as homosexuality, or having sexual intercourse with a member of the African race..."  p.12

-"Investigators from the Utah attorney general's office have documented that between 1989 and 1999, Tom Green and his dependents received more than $647,000 in state and federal assistance, including $203,000 in food stamps and nearly $300,000 in medical and dental expenses."  p.20

-(On Joseph Smith's personality) "An ernest, good-natured kid with a low boredom threshold, Joseph Junior had no intention of becoming a debt-plagued farmer like his father, toiling in the dirt year in and year out.  His talents called for a much grander arena.  Although he received no more than a few years of formal schooling as a boy, by all accounts he possessed a nimble mind and an astonishingly fecund imagination.  Like many autodidacts, he was drawn to the Big Questions.  He spent long hours reflecting on the nature of the divine, pondering the meaning of life and death, assessing the merits and shortcomings of the myriad competing faiths of the day.  Gregarious, athletic, and good-looking, he was a natural raconteur whom both men and women found immensely charming.  His enthusiasm was infectious.  He could see a muzzle to a dog."  p.55

-"These and other details of Joseph's monry digging were revealed in affidavits and other documents generated by a trial held in March 1826, 'People of the State of New York v. Joseph Smith', in which the young scryer was hauled into court and found guilty of being 'a disorderly person and an imposter'."  p.57 

-(On the story of Joseph Smith on finding the Golden Plates) "Moroni [the angel] was nevertheless willing to give Joseph another chance to prove his worthiness.  The angel commanded the boy to return to the same place each year on September 22.  Joseph dutifully obeyed, and every September he was visited by Moroni on what would later be named the Hill Cumorah to receive instruction about the golden plates, and what God intended for him to do with them.  On each occasion Joseph left empty-handed, to his great disappointment.  During their annual meeting in 1826, though, Moroni gave him reason for renewed hope: the angel announced that if Joseph 'would Do right according to the will of God he might obtain (the plates) the 22nt Day of September Next and if not he never would have them.'  By gazing into his most reliable peep stone, Joseph further learned that in order for him to be given the plates, God required that he marry a girl named Emma Hale and bring her along on his next visit to the hill, in September 1827."  p.58

-"As history, moreover, 'The Book of Mormon' is riddled with egregious anachronisms and irreconcilable inconsistencies.  For instance, it makes many references to horses and wheeled carts, neither of which existed in the Western Hemisphere during the pre-Columbian era.  It inserts such inventions as steel and the seven-day week into ancient history long before such things were in fact invented.  Modern DNA analysis has conclusively demonstrated that American Indians are not descendants of any Hebraic race, as the Lamanites were purported to be.  Mark Twain famously ridiculed 'The Book of Mormon's' tedious, quasi-biblical prose as 'chloroform in print', observing that the phrase 'and it came to pass' is used more than two thousand times."  p.68

-"The LDS Church forbids abortions, frowns on contraception, and teaches that Mormon couples have a sacred duty to give birth to as many children as they can support--which goes a long way toward explaining why Utah County has the highest birth rate in the United States; it is higher, in fact, than the birth rate in Bangladesh.  This also happens to be the most Republican country in the most Republican state in the nation.  Not coincidentally, Utah County is a stronghold not only of Mormonism but also Mormon Fundamentalism."  p.78

-"In July 1833 an armed mob of five hundred Missourians tarred and feathered two Latter-day Saints and destroyed a printing office because an LDS newspaper had published an article deemed overly sympathetic to the antislavery viewpoint.  Three days later the same mob rounded up nine Mormon leaders and, under the threat of death, forced them to sign an oath promising to leave Jackson County within a year.  That autumn, thugs razed ten homes, killed one Saint, and stoned numerous others."  p.98

-"The Missourians ignored his (the commander of the Mormons) pleas for mercy and kept shooting, inciting panic among the Saints.  Many of the Mormons scattered into nearby thickets, but three boys and fifteen men sought refuge inside the settlement's blacksmith shop.  There were wide, unchinked gaps between the logs that formed the walls, and shooting the Mormons through these gaps was no more difficult for the Missourians than plinking hogs in a pen.  As more and more Saints were killed, the Missourians walked right up to the shop, poked the barrels of their guns between logs, and fired at the heap of groaning bodies from point-blank range."  p.101 

-"As an unintentional consequence, Illinois set Joseph up as a de facto emperor of his own autonomous city-state.  He had himself officially anointed 'King, Priest, and Ruler over Israel on Earth'."  p.106

-"Outspoken by nature, Emma (Joseph's first wife) despised polygamy and did not hesitate to make her views known to the prophet.  At one point she even threatened to take a plural husband if he didn't give up his plural wives...Emma harangued Joseph so relentlessly about is philandering that the original intent of the revelation canonized as Section 132 seems to have been simply to persuade Emma to shut up and accept his plural wives...For example, in the revelation's fifty-fourth verse God warns, 'And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else.  But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.'"  p. 124

-"'Clear the way and let us see old Joe, the prophet of God.  He's seen the last of Nauvoo.  We'll use him up and kill all the damn Mormons!'" p. 130

-"Prompted by Onias's instruction, throughout February and March Ron received approximately twenty revelations.  Some he recorded on Brady's computer on the spot, as they came to him; more often he kept the revelations in his head for a while before committing them to print..."  p.163

-December 25, 1832 Joseph Smith had a revelation which almost perfectly predicts the Civil War; beginning with Fort Sumpter, the North vs. the South, and slavery.

Book:  How Did It Begin: Customs and Superstitions and their Romantic Origins
Author: R. Brasch

General Summary: To explore the origin of our customs and superstitions is a great adventure and its reward a goldmine of fascinating information.  Everyone wants to know how it all began.  We are anxious to discover the reason why we do certain things and why we express our attitudes, feelings and convictions in definite prescribed ways...The story of our customs is not always easy to trace.  Frequently they go back into the obscurity of the most distant past.

Important Points:

"(Spilling Salt)  Salt purifies.  Hence it became a symbol of incorruptibility.  That is why the Greek philosopher Pythagoras saw it in an emblem of justice which had to belong to every table.  It was to remind all those participating in the mean of this essential virtue.  To upset the salt was seen already then as a forewarning of an injustice." (p.2)

"(Spilling Salt)  An explanation frequently given, though confusing cause and effect, relates to the famous painting of the Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci.  On his canvas the salt, facing Judas, is depicted as being upset.  The scene captured the moment when, according to the Gospels, Jesus startled His Apostles with the announcement that one of them would betray Him.  Their faces vividly show consternation and grief.  But Judas, to appear as innocent as the rest, whilst clasping in his right hand the bag with 30 pieces of silver, raises his left hand as if in a gesture of horror.  By that very movement he upset the salt.  The fact  that this Passover meal immediately preceded the betrayal of Jesus made people assume that there was a casual connection between the spilling of salt and Jesus' crucifixion." (p.3)

"(Number 13)  That 13 is unlucky, and especially so at table, is a superstition which also goes back to pre-Christian days.  Fear of the figure 13 is found in Norse mythology.  It stems from the fable about a banquet held in Valhalla, to which 12 gods had been invited.  But Loki, the spirit of strife and evil, gate-crashed, making the number 13 and as a result Balder, the favorite of the gods, was killed." (p. 3)

"(Knocking on Wood)  The usual explanation associates it witht he cross of Christ.  Churches all over the world treasure pieces of wood which, they believe, once were part of the real cross.  To touch them would assure sustained happiness.  Touching any kind of wood, in memory of the cross, was an obvious further development of the custom." (p.4)

"(Left-side)  The ancient Romans already had identified the left side with the 'evil one'.  Therefore they considered it unlucky to enter a house with their left foot first.  To avoid any such possibility, noble families employed a servant whose sole duty it was to ensure that guests entered his master's home right foot first.  Appropriately, this slave's office became known as that of a footman.  We still retain the title but have forgotten its original meaning."  (p.9)

"(Stork and Babies)  Several factors combined in creating the belief in the stork as bringer of babies.  First, there was the bird's remarkable tenderness towards its young and old.  Legends grew up which described how the young ones looked after the aged, blind and weak parents; how they carried them around on their own wings and fed them...Finally, there was the fact that storks loved water and frequented swamps, marshes and ponds.  Ancient tradition held that it was in those watery places that the souls of unborn children dwelt." (p.22)

"(Blue for boys..)  From the days of antiquity it was believed that evil spirits hoovered menacingly over the nursery.  It was thought further that the evil ones were allergic to certain colors, of which the most potent was blue.  It was considered that the association of blue with the heavenly sky rendered satanic forces powerless and drove them away...European legendary tradition suggests another beautiful explanation of the color scheme for babies.  This tells that baby boys are found under cabbages whose color--in Europe--was mostly blue.  Baby girls, on the other hand, were born inside a pink rose."  (p.23)

"(X for kiss)  The use of an X to signify a kiss began in the Middle Ages, when the majority of people were illiterate and unable to sign even their own name.  Haveing to testify documents, they put a cross in place of a signature.  Without it a contract or agreement was considered invalid.  And to affirm their sincerity, they solemnly kissed it, in the same way that they used to kiss the Bible when taking the oath." (p.28)

"(Spooning)  Far from being slang, the term recollects a beautiful custom.  Young men in Wales used to carve a wooden spoon which they presented as a token of love to the girl of their choice.  Often this took the place of an engagement ring.  If she accepted the spoon, it was as good as a promise of marriage.  The spoon itself was elaborately carved.  Frequently it was decorated with intricate floral patterns, both on handle and bowl.  It was stained and embossed with the lovers' initials, suitable interwined."  (p.28-29)

"(Red flag incites bulls)  Wide0spread and general is the belief that a red rag infuriates a bull.  Therefore to enter a paddock with anything red where there is a bull would be foolish and dangerous...It is certainly ture that, from the earliest days of this Spanish pastime, the torero employed a red cloak.  Yet that the bull's anger was roused by its colour is completely fallacious.  A bull is not affected by any colour.  Like most animals, it is colour-blind.  It is the motion of the cloth, not its hue, that annoys the bull.  A waving white cape would make it just as angry.  Red was chosen only as a spectacular colour."  (p.143-144)

"(Cat out of the bag)  For the origin of the phrase we have to look at marketing methods at the country fairs of old England.  There, sucking-pigs were frequently sold ready wrapped in a sack.  Trichsters bent on taking advantage of trusting customer, would hand over a sack containing, not a piglet, but a cat, and the deception would not be discouvered until the purchaser open the bag at home.  The wary buyer who insisted on opening the bag at the fair to examine the non-existent pig, let the cat out of the bag and exposed the cheat!" (p.146-147)

"(raining cats and dogs)  This goes back to 17th century England, where numerous cats and dogs ran wild.  After a cloud-burst, many of them were found drowned, their corpses floating in the filthy torrents that rushes down the streets.  People seeing the dead animals, and unaware of their unfortunate fate, imagined that they had actually come down from the sky with the shower and that--believe it or not--it had rained cats and dogs." (p.149)

"(ship = she)  Many people wonder why a ship is referred to as a 'she'.  The explanation is that it was customary in early days to dedicate a new ship to a goddess, under whose protection she sailed.  The ship carried the deity's carved image on her bow not as a decoration, as later generations imagined, but as an aid to finding the way." (p.223)

"(card suits) Hearts depicted ecclesiastical powers, the very heart of the community--the bishops and the clergy.  Though, another interpretation sees in them the Knights' shield of nobility...The miliarty class was symbolized by the points of spears, which came to be called spades in Britain...The club has its roots in the picture of a clover leaf.  Obviously this was chosen as the emblem of farmers and peasants...The simple shape of the diamond was chosen to represent the rest of the citizens, the middle-class.  This was mostly made up of merchants and tiles of diamond-shape are said to have used to pave their exchange." (p.255-256)

Book: Real Men Don't Eat Quiche: A Guidebook to All That is Truly Masculine
Author: Bruce Feirstein

General Summary:  "In the past, it was easy to be a Real Man.  All you had to do was wage war, cheat at poker, drink yourself blind, and find someplace to dump the toxic waste.  But today Real Men are expected to cope with things like the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit, low-tar cigarettes, women who demand meaningful relationships, and restaurants that spin."

Important Points:

"In true, Real Man fashion, thousands of live trees were sacrificed in order to make this book.  Real Men, after all, couldn't possibly take anything seriously that was written on recycled paper."

"'Just look around the world today.  The Japanese make better cars.  The Israelis better soldiers.  The Irish better violence.  And everybody else is using our embassies for target practice.  All things considered, it's no wonder the rest of the world thinks we can't topple a simple banana republic without going to an encounter session about it first.  I mean, if you really want to see how bad things have gotten, just look at the products America is building today.  We used to create things like  the Panama Canal.  The Hoover Dam.  The 'fifty-seven Chevy.  The interstate highway system.  The front line of the Green Bay Packers.  But now?  We're building hot doggers.  Electric hair-curlers.  FryDaddy.  FryBaby.  SelectaVision.  At least the pharaohs built the pyramids.  It worries me to no end that ten million years from now we'll be remembered as the civilization that created frozen yogurt, 'Eight is Enough,' salad bars, cruise control, restaurants that spin, surf'n'turf, and the 'Phil Donahue Show'."

"If you really want to see what's happening to us, look at today's movies.  Instead of having John Wayne fight Nazis and commies for peace and democracy, we've got Dustin Hoffman fighting Meryl Streep for a four-year-old in 'Kramer vs. Kramer'.  It's no wonder things are so mixed up.  Thirty years ago, the Duke would have slapped the broad around and shipped the kid off to military school.  But not anymore.  I'm convinced things were better off in the past.  Men were men.  Women were sex objects.  The rest of the world understood: One false move and we'd nuke 'em."

"In the past, it was easy to be a Real Man.  All you had to do was abuse women, steal land from indians, and find some place to dump the toxic waste."

"A Real Man today is someone who can triumph over the challenges of modern society."

"Real Men do not worry about the diminishing ozone layer...Real Men don't floss...Real Men don't eat brunch...They don't trust the French...They don't contribute to PBS."

Book:  Manly Traditions: The Folk Roots of American Masculinities
Editor: Simon J. Bronner



General Summary:
"Men’s "manly" traditions have been shaken in an age of "sensitivity." Some observers have even referred to a crisis of masculinity for a new generation of boys. In Manly Traditions, established scholars in the fields of folklore, men’s studies, and gender studies identify the folkloric roots of what it means to be a man in America. In a lively volume they examine the traditions men inherit and adapt for their own purposes in contemporary life."


Important Points/Quotes:

"Symbolic associations for men continue to be perpetuated within American culture, such as the  colors blue and black, machinery such as trucks and guns, and animals such as wolves and bears.  One can point to folklore  for longstanding values embedded in saying such as 'talking man to man' to represent forthright honest dialogue or 'being enough' to signify courageous action...One may also hear in various contexts the declaration 'be a man!' suggesting gendered behavior as constructed rather than inherited, for it is often used in reference to the perceived need to perform manliess by being strong and aggressive or avoiding crying."  (Introduction, 15).

"As a rule, an organization with a large majority of men and only a few token women has a markedly different culture and set of expectations from an organization that is gender balanced.  When women are in the minority , the are more likely to need to adjust their behavior to that of their own preferred styles.  This is a reality that has proven difficult to alter."  (p.64)

Types of 'Manly Men':
-The Sturdy Oak;  Men should be stoic, stable, and independent.  A man never shows weakness.  Accordingly, boys are not to share pain or grieve openly.
-Give 'em Hell:  This is the stance of some of our sports coaches, of roles played by John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Bruce Lee, a stance based on a false self, of extreme daring, bravado, and attraction to violence.  This injunction stems largely from the myth that 'boys will be boys'...the misconception that somehow boys are biologically wired to act like macho, high-energy, even violent supermen.
-The Big Wheel:  This is the imperative men and boys feel to achieve status, dominance, and power.  Or, understood another way, the 'big wheel' refers to the way in which boys and men are taught to avoid shame at all costs, to wear the mask of coolness, to act as though everything is going all right, as though everything is under control, even if it isn't...
-No Sissy Stuff:  Perhaps the most taumatizing  and dangerous injunctions thrust on boys and men is the literal gender straitjacket that prohibits boys from expressing feelings or urges seen (mistakenly) as 'feminine' --dependence, warmth, empathy.  According to the ideal of 'no sissy stuff' such feelings behaviors are taboo.  Rather than being allowed to explore these emotional states and activities, boys are prematurely forced to shut them out, to become self-reliant. (p.160)

(In relation to Freud's Oedipus Complex)
"First, the theory insists that humans are by nature bisexual.  This was Freud's view.  The flexibility and world-opennes of human beings makes it possible for them to respond sexually to male or female.  Society's project is to turn male infants into heterosexual male adults and female infants into heterosexual female adults, but a range of in-between possibilities tesifies to the plasticity of human sexuality." (p.216)