Cautionary Tales

I watched the season premier of V last night--I liked it. But I kinda thought I was being hit on from the Right side, because the script could have dripped directly from the pens of Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. What with the Visitors from space sending out messages of Peace and Hope, and *gasp* Free Medical Care for everybody. "You mean, like, Universal Health Care?" shouts one of the actors.

And, yes, Virginia, the attractive, tall Visitors outwardly beautiful appearance belies the slimy lizards beneath their skins. It all kinda left me wondering if I had just been assaulted by a rather thinly-veiled Cautionary Tale directed at the Obama Administration.

Or am I just being paranoid in the aftermath of Republican victories in yesterday's elections? But I liked it. I'll watch it again.

AND. I am reading COSMIC CONVERSATIONS--Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality, by Stephan Martin,
featuring interviews with Brian Swimme, Fred Alan Wolf, and several others. The book begins, "On a clear night, step outside beneath the star-flecked sky and listen,"...and continues, "If you let the immensity of the silence speak to you, questions may spontaneously appear."

Well, yeah. Stephan Martin suggests:"What is the universe?" And I add "Where is the universe?" And, "Why?" To Where I would answer Everywhere and Nowhere. The Why seems easier, although there are so many answers offered by various philosophies and religions...the Hindu version probably comes closest to my Mormon Christianity, with its Tantric view of the universe as "thread, flow, and continuity," in that scripture tells me "worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose...The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof, even so shall another come, and there is no end...."

Stephan Martin asks questions concerning our relationship to the universe, and concludes, "We are Universe!" He quotes Clifford Matthews, professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois, saying that we can sum up everything we've learned through science about the universe in, just four words: "We are recycled stardust," that every atom of us, and of everything we know and see around us was created in the exploding bodies of stars. "WE are deeply interconnected with everything." We are them. They are us.

Maybe when it come right down to it, we really all do see things basically the same--whether our culture tells us the universe rides on the back of a giant turtle or is a thing created of Mind. As to what happened before, or outside the event point we've all heard about--that mysterious spark that began space, time, life--it's speculation. I'm with Bernard Haisch, who says that "Aristotle was basically on the right track when he said we need a prime cause...we might call it God." Why not?

WHatever you call it, when it comes to contemplating life, space/time, and the universe, I like what Albert Einstein said: we have to believe that everything is a miracle, or that nothing is. "We are process, not reality," says anthropologist/archeologist/poet Loren Eiseley (whose books I adore).

"Like a wave continually cresting from its origin," says Barbara Marx Hubbard, in Cosmic Conversations, "the universe has been engaged in an uninterrupted process of change that has surged from its beginning through atoms, molecules, stars, planets, cells, and now lately, humans. Of course, evolution does not end with humans, starfish, pine trees, or any of the life that surrounds us,...accelerating...with changes taking place all around us every day. After all, we ourselves change many time throughout the course of a lifetime, if not each day. WHere is it all going? you may ask."

Then why, I ask, is it so blasphemous to believe the old Mormon proverb, "As man now is, God once was. And as God now is, man may become." (?)

Anyway, whatever your philosophic persuasions may be, Cosmic Conversations is as its back cover describes it, "an eloquent but tough-minded" journey through "searching and heartfelt questions put to many of the world's leading scientists and spiritual wisdom keepers." A good read!

Up next: John Muir's Nature Writings.

Photo: The Crab Nebula from Hubble. Click it!!!
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God

Pickles, Brian Crane

Happy Halloween!

TRICK or TREAT

Here, see how
the pumpkins are fat
and ready for the knife,
the apples ready for the teeth,
their white flesh,
their golden flesh sweet
and ready for the pans.

See how our grins
and our toothy smiles are
their mirror,
their candled, fire-lit eyes
alive for a night
then dark, like ours,
pans-empty, bellies-full
of sweets, wishes, hopes,
and lies.


Jacob is going to dress up as a mummy for Halloween. Simon will be the Incredible Hulk (again). Nelson, in the comic strip Pickles is going as God. I LOVE Pickles! This Halloween, maybe I will be Ms. God. What d'you think?
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Try to Remember....

Just saw a delightful version of The Fantasticks last night at the Ampitheater in Layton--a perfect night, cool and starry, with a huge orange half-moon. We tried to see this charming play years ago when we were in NYC, at its original home in the little off-broadway Sullivan Street theater, but it had closed. The show ran there for 42 years. Jerry Orbach (of Law & Order) played the first El Gallo. Now both he and the theater are gone. They have since torn the old building down, and put in a new GAP store (which closed 6 months later). I don't know what is there now.

Michael Ballam, whose classes at BYU Education Week I am devoted to, and attended all eight faithfully, two weeks ago, said when he last saw the old Sullivan Street Playhouse they were in the process of tearing it down. There were huge garbage dumpsters out in front and they were tossing stuff in. He asked if he could rummage through them, and found a tambourine, which he donated to the Utah Festival Opera. Apparently the Smithsonian has the magic trunk, and some other institution has the girl Luisa's little blue dress.... Things change. We live in a time where we are entertained most often by big-budget films with lots of loud special effects. A quiet little musical like Fantasticks is overwhelmed, is something of a dinosaur, I guess, with no special effects but a little colored confetti, a magic trunk, and a cardboard moon....

Anyway, I went home humming Try to remember a kind of September when grass was green, and grain was yellow....

I also spent a week in blooming California with my son Chris and his family. They flew to Salt Lake, and rented a van. It's a l-o-n-g drive through lots of desert. When we finally reached a WalMart in St. George, my six-year-old grandson Isaac said, "Oh, thank goodness, there are people here!"

Let me tell ya, there were people at Disneyland! -- Hindus, Bikers, Goths, white-bearded Sihks in turbans, Muslims, Lesbians, Jesus-people, people wearing ball caps and Mouse ears, saris, T-shirts that said Out of Order, Lucky, Dead Men Tell No Tales, USA, FBI, Dodgers, STeelers, Michael Jackson Forever, Beatles Forever, Grumpy, Ezekiel, Chocolate Rain, Kids for King Jesus, I Piss Excellence, Sugar Water Purple, Marge in Charge, and Murder the Government. I thought I saw Wanda Sykes coming back on the ferry from Tom Sawyer's Island, and Alec Baldwin in the Toy Story gift shop, Carrot Top in the parking lot, and Sonja Sotomayor, and Santa Claus...but maybe not. Isaac defeated Darth Vadar handily with his light saber at the Jedi School, and Keenan mistook me for the witch who gave Sleeping Beauty a poison apple....

Let me tell ya, I saw more cornrows, and dreds, and beads, and frozen lemonades, and baby strollers, and wheelchairs, and more Jazzi and Rascal electric mobility chairs than I could count. I lost my red hat in the Haunted Mansion, my son lost his sunglasses at the Pirates of the Carribean...people, people everywhere, looking for water, looking for shade, for ice cream, for a place to sit down for a while. We threw pennies and made wishes, watched absolutely fearless sparrows gobble up spilled popcorn, and generally had A GREAT TIME! Fantastick!

Wish you had been there! (Photos in my FaceBook)

New Book

Here's my newest little book of sf stories (3), available for friends and family at Lulu.com, if you're interested!

Morning Dove, The Stars as Sheep the Void as Grass, and Too loose Toulouse--written a while ago for Orson Scott Card's Science Fiction class!

CATCERTO!

http://www.catcerto.com/cat_video.htm

Go ahead, CLICK on it! This will make your day!

Having Pi Forever!

Kim Peek is one of us, almost, but not quite. Born in Utah 57 years ago, Kim was something of a celebrity in 1988, when the hit movie "Rainman" came out, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Kim is what scientists call a mega-savant, remembering every word of the thousands and thousands of books he has read in the areas of literature, mathematics, history, geography, sports, and classical music.

Kim has not learned to button his coat, nor tie his shoes. He relies on his father to do these everyday things for him. Today,Kim is one of as few as 50 known savants in the whole world. According to the article written by Lois M. Collins in today's Deseret News, Kim and his father have a "symbotic" relationship. Kim says simply that he and his father "share the same shadow."

I've been reading "My Stroke of Insight," by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, who is a neuroanatomist affiliated with the Indiana School of Medicine. She studies brains, and how they work. The book's jacket describes it as "a fascinating journey into the mechanics of the human mind," of right-brain, left-brain functions, anatomical structure and cellular networks, the two hemispheres communicating with one another through "the highway for information transfer," the corpos callosum. When she suffered a massive stroke that bled profusely into her left-brain (the side that allows us to know where "we" end and "other" begins, the analytical side that controls language, and organization of things like numbers and letters, and speech, etc) she was left essentially with only her right-brain--that fluid, spiritual, euphoric, artistic, intuitive right-brain.

Apparently Kim Peeks brain lacks this "highway." the connective tissue that links the right and left hemispheres in your brain, and mine. It is entirely absent. When he readsa book, he reads the left page with his left eye, and the right page with his right eye, simultaneously. And he reads fast, and with total recall. He is a mathematical genius. He is a huge baseball fan. He loves music.

He is very literal, and, until recently, hasn't displayed much of a sense of humor. Now, reports the morning News, "A math genius asks him how far out he can calculate pi. He answers, "3.14159265, then dad takes me to Marie Callenders's and we have pi forever!"

Tribes

"...we have the whole tribe behind us and inside us, wherever we go."

A nice article by Orson Scott Card, about our tribal homeland, not our family home, but the homeland of our people. "These days," he says, "It isn't politically correct to talk about 'tribes.'--We're supposed to say 'ethnic groups.' But those are not exact synonyms. A tribe is considerably more than mere shared ethnicity....A tribe commands your loyalty. You look to the tribal homeland as the center."

On the 24th of July our tribe celebrates Pioneer Day with fireworks and parades and reunions and picnics. No matter where in the world your home is, if the tribal homeland is inside you, CELEBRATE!