BOTTOM OF THE NINTH

Bottom of the Ninth

Sure I struck out

More times than I hit

Some would say I was Minor league

Some say I shoulda played in the Majors

A bit light and short to get it over the fence

With the ninety mile pitchers

That would jar your spine if you could hit it

And I was fast, and I had a bitchin' slider

They just couldn’t see

Sometimes I wonder if this very game will ever end

And if the players are real

Early in the game I was confused

If I wanted to pitch or catch or play second base

Indecision benched me at times

But I played on, and now the bases are loaded

The game is tied and the pitch is three to two

They are all looking at me

My arm is hurting and I know I haven’t played

As good as I could have played this game

Always doubted if I was good enough, I was good enough

Been a pretty long game, with a middlin' record

In June 2011, I have played seventy six seasons this time around

And I have begun thinking of the next game

And how I won’t screw it up next time.

Quotes: Martha Graham and Pablo Picasso

Dear Reader:

Here are two quotes from two of the most creative people of our time, Martha Graham, dancer, and Pablo Picasso, artist. I am not so vain as to place myself in the company of these two giants, but I want to add my own, "A Song of You."

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"

— Martha Graham

“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”

Pablo Picasso

Spanish Artist and Painter, 1881-1973

A song of you

A light that is not a light but a torch that burns forever with a brightness that illuminates all.

A song that is not a song but contains all the music that there ever was or will be.

A power that is not a power, but a potential of unparalleled exquisiteness.

A promise that is not a promise but a future certain waiting to unfold in the fullness of time.

A joy that fills every corner of the universe with incomparable beauty and exhilaration of life.

A knowing that is a knowing of all, past and future, and certainty beyond certainty.

A truth that envelopes the allness of all, that reaches beyond the beyond unto infinity.

This is a song of you, all of this and more, a thing of infinite beauty.

By L D Sledge, written May 17, 2007, upon hearing L. Ron Hubbard's lecture Decision: Cause and Effect, 20 May 1952, from Route To Infinity series, transcript pages 52-53.

The Seed That's In Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnbMYzdjuBs&feature=related

The Seed That’s In Me

There is a seed

Within my breast

That cries for water

To be blest

A secret seed

Whose flower has blown

A blossom whose time

Has come and gone

And left behind

A seed forlorn

Awaiting now

To be reborn

I feel it’s heartbeat

Deep within me

Pulsing strong

To start, begin me

How I yearn

To let it grow

Burst it’s shell

And let it flow

Heed it’s need

A constant yearning

To sing its song

Set a burning

When I let it loose

And its gone a winging

Is that all there is

Or a new song singing?

There is a seed

A burning ember

In you and me

Something remembered

Of who we are

A thing unflowered

A majestic being

A thing of power

Robert E Lee and Hugh Hefner on the same page?

Sometimes reading The Writer’s Almanac strikes a poignant or odd lack of alignment to me as did today’s vignette on Lee’s Surrender and Hugh Hefner’s birthday which were juxtaposed side by side. The two men simply didn’t fit on the same page.

Robert E Lee, reserved, stiff and formal, long suffering, was the antithesis of Hugh Hefner, who, for whatever reason, felt he had to loosen some of the screws so tightly jamming the minds of our social structure shut on the issue of sex.

Having hit my virile and hormonal teens in the fifties when the closest look at the female naked form was in the lingerie section of Sears and Roebuck catalog, seeing Marilyn’s boozums and other parts so openly displayed was a shock to me. But I have always felt that things were too tightly wound, having grown up in the oh so frustrating fifties trembling on the lip of the door flung wide open. I knew that once the straps were loosened something new would happen. Elvis’s gyrations offended the Baptists and white anglosaxon protestant mores, and tight lipped narrow eyed closed mindedness. Any images or motion that would serve to stir the reproductive juices had to be squashed. Then “boom” everybody was doing it but me. I was born too soon.

I wonder at the virtue of anticipation, if there is such a thing.. When I learned recently that teenagers in high school were having sex so freely, I was floored. We didn’t. A girl who had opened herself to the thing I wanted so badly but was afraid to try had to be somehow ruined once she had submitted. When I learned she had “done it,” she became a thing of wonder and fear for I hadn’t a clue. Smooching in the car was all there was, though the girl was pleading for something more and I did nothing, terrified at the thing before me I had unleashed. Wow did I miss out. Looking back I cringe at the opportunities lost. If I had had just a little courage and hudspah with my particular libido I would have drowned in excess, or maybe on the other hand, having established my position in the balance of things just normalized and no longer have hung up in mystery and become its willing slave which did eventually happen.

Maybe there was something good in that. When it all happened in the seventies and suddenly doors and legs and arms were flung open wide I was already married with children and felt that somehow life had passed me in its very unfair fashion, leaving me ignorant and unused. Why couldn’t I have learned about this earlier and not have wasted my life so nervous and agitated about it?

It has taken me all these years to finally control the compulsion that I think was created by those early years of self imposed frustration. Whew! I didn’t think I would live long enough to wrest free of the cloying interference with my life. Hugh banged opened the doors that were locked, barred, bolted shut on old Gen’l Lee and me---too late for Bobby and Me. At least I finally reached a point of control, more than a standoff or a draw, with my nemesis, the old 2D monkey on my back. Thank God for small (or amazing) wonders. It is sweet to be free of it—I won. Knowing what I know of Bobby Lee, I think he went to his grave gnawing on it.

Here’s the article.

On this day in 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the Civil War.

They met at a private residence in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. General Grant was reported to have begun the conversation by saying: "I met you once before, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico... I have always remembered your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere."

To which Lee is said to have replied, "Yes. I know I met you on that occasion, and I have often thought of it and tried to recollect how you looked, but I have never been able to recall a single feature."

They talked over terms for an end of the war. Lee asked Grant to commit the terms to paper, which Grant handwrote on the spot. Lee accepted them on the spot. They shook hands. Before Lee rode off to inform his men, the two generals raised their hats to each other in salute.

The site is now a National Historic Park.

It's the birthday of Hugh Hefner, born in Chicago, Illinois (1926). He is the founder, editor-in-chief, and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy magazine.

He was brought up by strict Methodist parents. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he majored in psychology, where he reviewed Alfred C. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male for a student publication. He wrote: "Dr. Kinsey's book disturbs me ... our hypocrisy on matters of sex have led to incalculable frustration, delinquency, and unhappiness."

He was writing promotional copy for Esquire magazine when he got the idea for a new magazine that would be similar but more daring. He said: "What I was trying to create, quite simply, was a lifestyle magazine for single guys. There had never been anything like that before."

He financed the project with $600 of his own money and several thousand dollars from friends, including $1,000 from his mother. He produced the first issue out of his kitchen in Hyde Park, Chicago. It featured a nude calendar photograph of Marilyn Monroe, which Hefner bought from a calendar company for $200. The magazine reached the newsstands in December of 1953 and quickly sold out all of its copies.

He said, "Playboy was part of trying to make the case for a more liberal attitude ... suggesting that there was more than one moral purpose for human sexuality."

Heart attacks and hot water

This is a very good article. Not only about the warm water after your meal, but aboutHeart Attacks. The Chinese and Japanese drink hot tea with their meals, not cold water.
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For those who like to drink cold water, this article is applicable to you. It is very Harmful to have Cold Drink/Water during a meal because cold water will solidify the oily stuff you just consumed. It will slow down digestion. Once this sludge reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fat and lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.



French fries and Burgers are the biggest enemy of heart health. A coke after that gives more power to this demon. Avoid them for your Heart's Health.

Common Symptoms Of Heart Attack...
A serious note about heart attacks - You should know that not every heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting . Be aware of intense pain in the jaw.

You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack. Nausea andintense sweating are also common symptoms. 60% of people who have a heart attack while asleep do not wake up. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance we could survive.


A cardiologist says if everyone who reads this message sends it to 10 people, we'll save at least one life. Send to a friend. It could save a life. So please be a true friend and send this article to all you care about.


I JUST DID

Take charge of your health

I just bought and read "Over the Counter Natural Cures," Take charge of your health in 30 days with 10 lifesaving supplements for under $10.) By Shane Ellison. This is an easy to read and apply book that describes most of our problems and how they can be solved by supplements that are so cheap they are almost free. I have done a kind of summary which follows. But you should buy this book from Amazon, or wherever, and apply it if you value your health and life. Life is no good if you hurt, feel sick or just can't get up and get it done.

Summary:

Sleep and rest: Spring Valley Valerian Root Extract—Walmart $4.17

Cholesterol: Lewis Labs. Folic Acid—or Nutritional Brewers Yeast, $7-$20 Whole Foods

Beat Illness: Soloray Garlic---or garlic raw.

Obesity, Diabetes: Spring Valley cinnamon Walmart – Reduces appetite

Prostate: Puritan’s Pride Saw Palmetto (I got 3 for 1) Great source.

Detox-Life Extension: Rite Aid—Milk Thistle. (A must)

Blood Pressure-cardiovascular: GNC Hawthorne

Vision: Jarrow Formulas Carotenall—Vitamin Shoppe.

Cancer (to avoid and cure) Jarrow Formula turmeric-circumin 95

Avoid cancer by: (1) Avoid inflammation causing foods. Eat omega 3 and Omega 6 foods in balance. (2) Avoid sugar and alcohol (3) Get sunshine (4) Fresh Vegetables every day. (5) Exercise

Rules: read the ingredients in every food.

Avoid food from boxes and cans.

Eat more good fat, not less.

If it tastes sweet, spit it out.

Totally avoid aspartame .

Splenda (sucralose) originated as an insecticide, 600 X sweeter than sugar. Contains a nasty form of chlorine. Maltitol raises insulin and blood sugar.

High Fructose Corn syrup (HFCS) Made in lab. Spikes blood sugar and insulin, causing to overeat and causes wrinkles and aging process.

Safe sweeteners are agave and Stevia. (Watch out only get Sweet Leaf---the others contain maltitol!!)

MSG—monosodium glutamate. It seems to be in every food you buy. Sold as a flavor enhancer. Created in alab to convert healthy rats into diabetic rats to learn more about diabetes. Once consumed, MSG sets into motion a ravenous chemical cascade that begins with spiked blood sugar and insulin and ends with feel-good molecules known as endorphins. The brain then demands more and more overeating.

MSG--This white, crystalline amino acid is made in the lab and added to canned or packaged foods to “enhance flavor.” It only enhances overeating. Check for the aliases in the ingredients---hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, plant protein extract, sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, yeast extract, textured protein, autolyzed yeast and hydrolyzed oat flour. MSG under in disguise under other names.

My favorite authors

Mes Amis

I love to share authors. Here is a list of my favorites, along with suggestions from others some of whom I haven't read. The order given doesn't necessarily mean order of preference, as they are written from random memory.

Historical and historical fiction:
Will Durant, my absolute favorite historian. His 100 page, Lessons Of History, an awesome little book, and of course his XI volume Story of Civilization, Story of Philosophy, and numerous other historical stories of famous lives.

Bernard Cornwell. Learned about him from reader Tom Cummings. The Grail quest in Sharpe series, Starbuck Chronicals. All about English history in the 17th century, Recent finished The Archer.

Recently read the whole collection of Martin Cruz Smith--mostly set in Moscow after the wall fell and there is a new Russia run by the Mafia. Senior investigator Arkeny Renkov is an out of favor investigator always in trouble with the bureaucrats, and he always seem to prevail but it is a cliff hanger. My friend Mark Gould calls it "turgid," and I guess it is. My favorite is Rose, set in the coal country in Northern England, Stallion Gate--making of the A bomb including all of the main figures...but there are other great ones: Gorky Park, Stalin's Ghost, Three Stations---there are others, and I recommend them all.

Mary Stewart. Her king Author series, The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last enchantement.

Jack Whyte: Series on Author is fantastic. Start reading the Skystone. It is all about the Camoloud Chronicles, in 400 AD the Legions left the British Isles, leaving the Romans who had lived there for centuries, and their confrontation of invasion from all directions. Bloody times, but beautiful real history woven with the Authorian legend---unexpected stuff, for Merlin was actually a Roman Soldier. And the sword was made of a meteor.

Wilber Smith. His stories of Africa are fabulous. Follow from the beginning when the Boers and English settled Africa through to present time. Men of Men, The Burning Shore, they are all delicious. Read them all. Oh yes, there are his mystical histories of Egypt in the Seventh Scroll, River God, Warlock.

Michener. A treasure. The Covenant, another great story of Africa. Caravans, the Source, my three favorites.

Charles Frazier. cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons, set in post civil war. I underline his great phrases and descriptions, noting the page number on the back cover, so I can go back and have a little word snack. I do this with all great writings.

Jeff Sharra---you gotta read his historical fiction on the Revolution, the Civil War, the First and Second World war. He puts you in the head of generals and privates alike, and you learn politics as well as how it was in the trenches. Wonderful stuff.

Bill Bryson. Please read A Walk In the Woods. He and a friend treck the appalacian trail. Funny. A short History of Nearly Everything---I learned more about esoteric and arcane stuff than I could imagine reading this very funny writer talking about serious tech stuff like relativity, etc. Others are The Lost continent, Mother tongue, I'm A Stranger Here myself. Many others. Funny bright writer.

Stephen Ambrose: Undaunted Courage about Lewis and Clark, Jefferson and the opening of the west. Band of Brothers, To America. Wonderful reading.

Alfred Silver. Canadian writer. I stumbled on him buying Red River Story, thinking it was about the US Red River, but there is another Northern Red River, a story of settling the Hudson bay area by the Irish and French. He also wrote Where the Ghost Horse Runs, Lord of the Plains, Arcadia, Colony and Keepers of the Dawn.I read these like a starved man--a harsh time lived by tough harsh men and women in a freezing world -- enough romance to sustain any reader, and enough action to hold any man.

Fantasy and Science Fiction

JRR Tolkein. Perhaps my favorite writer of all genres. You know about him and the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I think I read them all three of four times through before the movies came out. You just get into his world of wonder and become it.

Robert Jordan. So prolific. Wheel of Time, progress through hismany sequels.
Roger Zelazny. The Nine Princes of Amber.
Raymond Feist. Rift war seies. The Magician, Krondor. I read this guy dry.
Orson Scott Card, the Ender and Maker series.
Anne McCaffrey. Pern Novels

Terry Pratchett. Fancy. Discworld series. Funny fantasy. Where's my Cow, the Wyrd Sisters, The Color of Magic. One of his books started with: "In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded." That is also my idea of the Big Bang silliness.

Neil Gaiman. I just got through Smoke and Mirrors, Stardust, (movie) Fragile things and am reading Good Omens where he collaborated with Terry Pratchett. He wrote the screenplay for Beowulf, American Hero. A real trip, this guy.

Tom Robbins. I put him into the fantasy category, because I can't categorize him anywhere else. I love his stuff. Totally random but makes wonderful sense all together. Jitterbug Perfume, my favorite, the story of a 1000 year old man. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (movie), Still Life with Woodpecker, Another Roadside Attraction. The others that followed weren't quite as good.

Larry McMurty Omigod I could not believe the extent of this guy's work known for Lonesome Dove, the Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment. I love his westerns---the Berryberry series of a wealthy aristocratic family on a several year jaunt into the american west in early 1800's, with their fine wine, servants and silver and outrageous standards---Sin Killer, Sorrow's River, The wandering Hill, The folly and the glory. Amazing prolific writer. I just finished Telegraph Days---hilarious story of an "Organized Woman," in the 1800's in the west during the days of Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, etc. He said that General Sherman, who paid a visit to the town and met her, said "an organized woman is a fright to the mind." Meaning, a woman who knew her own mind and was independent and did what she wantd.

Jim Harrison. Legends of the fall, the Beast God Forgot to Invent, True North, A Woman Lit by Fireflies, get his book of short stories, Just Before Dark. Tough, intellectual, sensitive, funny and a wordsmith who holds you page by page. A gourmet hunter fisherman with his main subjects always right there to discuss, women, love, sex, food, hunting. Oh yes Brown Dog can't be missed.

Gregory MaGuire. Wicked--life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Ursula LeGuin. Earthsea Trilogy
Agathy Christie--anything by her--specially the Hercule Poirot series.

Louis Lamour. I read every one of his books, the hayburner westerns as well as other real classics--The Walking Drum, 1700's adventures of a son's quest to rescue his father from Arab Kidnappers . Sitka, about Alaska. The Sackett series start with a man in Ireland falsely charged with a crime and he makes his way to America. The Hanuted Mesa is a great one also.

James Lee Burke. Great Detective stories set in Southern Louisiana and New Orleans. Tough ex alcoholic Dave Robichaux lives in a fishing camp near New Iberia with his wife and daughter, works for sheriff's office, ex N.O. Cop. Get his stuff, haunting, wonderful images and thrill packed pages--Neon Rain, Cadillac Jukebox, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.

CS Forester, Hornblower series.

Carl Hiassen. Set in Florida. Totally wild stories about wild people. Hilarious characters. Natuyre Girl, Skinny Dip, Lucky You, Hoot, Native Tongue. Always involve some stupid badass guy getting what he deserves.

James Patterson. Great mysteries. When the Wind Blows, books with nursery rhyme titles.
Bruce Wiseman---Mind Games. Bruce putme onto reading Sol Stein's Stein on Writing, the best book on writing I have read.
Jack Vance.

Eric Van Lustbader, the Ninja, White Ninja, The Bourne Legacy. Gutsy, great writing.
Ludlum. Bourne Series, Matarese Circle. Recently Lustbader took the Bourne series to a new level.
Michael Chrichton. Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Timieline, Prey,, Eaters of the Dead, the Thirteenth Warrior.

John Le Carre--Spy who came in frm the cold, the Night Manager, Constant Gardner.
Clive Cussler, Dirk Pitt series. Watch this one though, his name may appear on the cover, but another name in small print appears below his, who really wrote new stuff out there. I have been disappointed in these subliminal authors sliding in below the radar under his name. Clive is great though.

I have run out of authors as I sit here putting this together, but there are many others that I discover and read until I have "read him or her up." You can't miss reading these. I will supplement as I discover others.