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More Mindlit
I just completed several paragraphs when the computer ate it up; so I’ll try again. Man and his Gods by Homer Smith (1952), a medical doctor, and with a preface by Einstein, is a masterful take on the fables we believe in, our religions. Piece by piece he demolishes the fanasty shards they are constructed with. He is calmer than Christopher Hitchens’ god (not a typo) is not Great. Although Hitchens is savage when it comes to Mother Teresa (charlatan), and can make you laugh out loud, Smith demolishes religion in orderly fashion. In fact, I used the book’s title…
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My Days of Reading Are Over
I am of a mind and time of life when reading no longer counts as much. No, I am not counting on my personal literary treasure trove to last forever, drawing upon old memories of fabulous words and remarkable pages. I find it more intensely meaningful to grasp my life from moment to moment free of the written word, other people’s smarts. Living is not to be learned from books. Living has to be lived and learned from second to second. Memory is not living; recall is just a mnemonic device. I struggle to put away books and to go long…
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Reading Poets and Writers
Jane and I were perusing the most recent issue. I was looking for contests to enter with my latest book. Jane was reading selected poets. I scanned an article by a pontificating ass. We soon agreed that the poetry was dreadful; I composed a poem at the moment which reflected the existential and pompous in not a few of the poems. I concluded, given my background as a therapist and naughty human being, I would have a tough time of it in a writer’s workshop — or they with me. The cant and pretentiousness is too much to bear among…
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I Am More Than Convinced
Watching Obama orate, speechifying with flair and gospel tinged repetition, I see the suckers lining up. What has he really done that prepares him for the presidency or, for that matter, what has Hillary done that prepares her for that office. By the time one runs for the presidency, the truer aspects of character are debrided, and what is left is husk. Americans “hunger” for change, they also hunger for more — of anything. We have gone beyond the Gilded-Age, for we are now saturated in the fats of excess. We are Roman. It is essentially the old saw that…