Archive for the ‘History’ Category
I spent the first two hours of my day today in bed drinking coffee and watching a dozen or so TED speeches. If your not familiar with TED I’d recommend it to you whole heartedly. It’s a series of speeches from experts around the world on a diverse collection of topics. The anagram of TED stands for, “Technology, Education, & Design”.
‘It sure isn’t the Sistine Chapel!’’
My main topics for today concerned Creativity and the Arts. Listening to people from Bali who design green homes from bamboo or others from Europe who specialize in the creation of designs and art is exciting. It’s nice to know that Creativity is alive and well on this planet and not getting lost in the technological hustle and bustle of our societies.
I’ve always been a proponent and supporter of anyone or anything that creates something. The best times of my life are those spent where I’m relaxed, alone with my thoughts, and putting paper to pencil. Either writing, drawing, painting, or sculpting, it’s all good. With that in mind I thought I’d share a quick look at my lair. It’s my oasis filled with my things and represents my life in one small room.
For twenty years I saved every little doodad, birthday card, and memento from places I’ve been and people I’ve known. Then I began making a series of collages or “life panels” of those years. It started out as two small panels but grew to more than nine with some of them measuring 4’X4’.
‘This is what I call a workspace.’
I never had a sufficient amount of wall space and I had them in storage for twenty years. I moved them from place to place until I finally settled down here in Maine. I still didn’t have the wall space for them and finally decided to make them the ceiling of my so-called man-cave.
Now I can sit at my desk surrounded by things that make me happy. I can lean back in my chair and look up at the ceiling and see the people, places, and things that I’ve experienced in my life. The photos in this posting are a quick peek into the craziness of that space that I’ve had the pleasure of creating.
EVERYONE NEEDS A HAPPY PLACE
For most of my life I’ve been lectured about religion by an oh-so Catholic mother. Part or her lecture series was to make sure I kept the Sabbath, “A Day of Rest”. It wasn’t until this morning, 60 years later, that I decided to remember that. According to my Mom it was a day to relax, reexamine your week, and be sorry for every rotten thing you did or even thought about doing. I always had more than enough things to review that it usually took me the entire day.
Since I no longer do bad things or think bad things it puts me into a quandary. What do I do with my Sundays these days? Being a well behaved and sinless person really opens up my Sundays for other activities. One of which is posting more useless, uninformative, and silly items of trivia.
Some of these tidbits are really and truly interesting but the other 99% are a waste of time. If you’re a clean living person like me then you too will have plenty of time today to read this nonsense. Since I’ve been watching a lot of English historical programs of late, I thought we should begin with these.
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As a prince, King Edward VI had a “whipping boy” named Barnaby Fitzpatrick, who was beaten every time the prince misbehaved during his lessons.
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The sirloin was introduced when King James I knighted a joint of beef (a loin), which was particularly tasty.
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King Charles I’s favorite joke was to place his court dwarf, Jeffrey Hudson, who was eighteen inches tall, between two halves of a loaf of bread and pretend to eat him.
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King Edward III died of gonorrhea, which he caught from his mistress when he was sixty-five years of age. Henry VIII and Edward VI also died of venereal disease.
So much for so-called royalty. They’re just plain disgusting pervs like the rest of us. Now onto some strikingly stupid mis-statements released by the Media. This should convince you just how overrated and inaccurate they really can be.
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“And now the sequence of events in no particular order.” – Dan Rather
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“We are unable to announce the weather. We depend on weather reports from the airport, which is closed, due to the weather. Whether we will be able to give you a weather report tomorrow will depend on the weather. – Actual Arab news report.
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“Passive activity income does not include the following income for an activity that is not a passive activity.” – I.R.S. form.
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“The Supreme Court rules that murderers shall not be electrocuted twice for the same crime.” – Cleveland Daily News
Now a few miscellaneous items in no particular order of importance.
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More than 200 people in West Virginia returned their license plates to the Motor Vehicle Bureau because they began with the letters “OJ”.
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Henry Ford never had a driver’s license.
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A survey of career women who had tattoos revealed that they preferred to adorn their left breast rather than their right by a ratio of three to one.
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In the early days of Hollywood, Western sets were made to seven-eighth scale to make the heroes seem larger.
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There are now said to be more Samoans in Los Angeles than in American Samoa.
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When W.C. Fields was caught glancing through the Bible, he explained it with, “Looking for loopholes.”
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In New Mexico more than eleven thousand people have visited a tortilla chip that has the face of Jesus Christ burned on it.
And for all of you dieters out these, here’s my favorite food quotation from Miss Piggy. “Never eat more than you can lift.”
HAVE A PEACEFUL DAY OF REST
‘BELATED’
For the first time in many years I made it through an April Fool’s Day without being tricked or screwed with. I’ve never really understood why a specific prank day is necessary when everyday has potential for it.
The normal pranks that I’ve experienced were simple gags or tricks made by my ever so simple friends and workmates. Fortunately I was never subjected to anything too complicated for the most part.
I decided to list a few pranks played by individuals and companies that have become legends. To this day it still amazes me just how gullible the public can be when confronted with an obviously false story. Like P.T. Barnum always said "There’s a sucker born every minute". Let’s start with the famous Taco Bell entry.
The Taco Liberty Bell
April 1, 1996: The Taco Bell Corporation took out a full-page ad that appeared in six major newspapers announcing it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke. The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known, he said, as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
The Sydney Iceberg
April 1, 1978: A barge towing a giant iceberg appeared in Sydney Harbor. Dick Smith, a local adventurer and millionaire businessman, had been loudly promoting his scheme to tow an iceberg from Antarctica for quite some time. Now he had apparently succeeded. He said that he was going to carve the berg into small ice cubes, which he would sell to the public for ten cents each. These well-traveled cubes, fresh from the pure waters of Antarctica, were promised to improve the flavor of any drink they cooled. Slowly the iceberg made its way into the harbor. Local radio stations provided blow-by-blow coverage of the scene. Only when the berg was well into the harbor was its secret revealed. It started to rain, and the firefighting foam and shaving cream that the berg was really made of washed away, uncovering the white plastic sheets beneath.
Burger King’s Left Handed Whopper
April 1, 1998: Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own ‘right handed’ version." Left-handed products of various kinds are actually an old joke on April first, but Burger King’s announcement quickly became, by far, the most famous version of the joke.
The Body of Nessie of Loch Ness Fame Found
April 1, 1972: Newspapers around the world reported the sensational news that the dead body of the Loch Ness Monster had been found. A team of zoologists from Yorkshire’s Flamingo Park Zoo had come across it while working at the Loch. The researchers tried to take the Nessie corpse back to Yorkshire, but Scottish police promptly stopped them, citing an old law that made it illegal to remove "unidentified creatures" from Loch Ness. However, subsequent examination of the creature determined that it wasn’t actually Nessie. Instead, it was a large bull elephant seal from the South Atlantic. But how had it gotten to Loch Ness? This was revealed the next day when the Flamingo Park’s education officer, John Shields, confessed responsibility. The seal had died the week before at Dudley Zoo. He had shaved off its whiskers, padded its cheeks with stones, and kept it frozen for a week, before surreptitiously dumping it in the Loch, intending to play an April Fool’s prank on his colleagues. He admitted the joke got somewhat out of hand when the police became involved.
Not only are we Americans gullible, apparently everyone else on this planet is as well. I can’t wait to see future prank offerings that are sure to be accepted hook, line, and sinker by many of us stupid human beings.
It’s that time of the year again to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. It’s another one of those holidays that most people celebrate but they’re not entirely sure why. For most of us it’s just a reason to get out, drink a little too much and make fools of ourselves. Take it from one who knows.
Since my heritage includes a few folks of the Scotch/Irish persuasion I’ve been known to occasionally get a little crazy on St. Paddies Day. Truthfully it was just an excuse in my younger days to drink too much, dye my hair green, and dance a jig or two after swilling a couple quarts of green beer.
It’s been quite some time since I really celebrated the day but in the spirit of the holiday I’ll supply you with a quick primer explaining why it was originally created.
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Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, "the Day of the Festival of Patrick"), is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. AD 385–461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
Saint Patrick’s Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early 17th century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion(especially the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, and celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in general. Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, céilithe, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks. Christians also attend church services and the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol are lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday’s tradition of alcohol consumption.
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That has been your short history lesson for today, not that any of you really care WHY we celebrate. Every ethnic group has it’s holidays so why shouldn’t the Irish get on board as well. After spending many years in the Boston area I can tell you for certain this holiday is taken seriously there and celebrated heartily. It may not be the same celebration you’d see in Ireland but I can guarantee a few things. You will have green hair, you will have many new friends you may never see again, you probably won’t remember the entire evening or the parade, and you will have the mother of all hangovers that could last for days.
I can live with that.
‘Gaius Julius Caesar’
Today is the day every year that I remember good old Julius Caesar. The Ides of March will forever be known as an evil day thanks to him and all of his so-called friends. Stabbed twenty-three times upon arriving at his work place at the Curia he was left to die alone on the sidewalk. It just goes to show how far we’ve come as a society because these days we’ve made some major improvements on how to murder someone. If Caesar was to be murdered today it would be by two hooded gentlemen driving by in a mini-Fiat firing a couple of Tech-9’s at him. He’d still be just as dead but it would have been done so much quicker and efficiently. So for today “All Hail Caesar”.
Now let’s move onto something almost as interesting as a dead guy. SEX! I’ve been on a roll in recent weeks with trivia postings because I love trivial facts. I also love sex so it only seems right that I offer up some sex related information. Here goes nothing.
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The average size of an erect penis measures between 5 and 6 inches, while the average size of a flaccid penis is about 3.5 inches.
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Many of the ingredients in chocolate are proven to cause arousal similar in effect to sexual foreplay. In fact, some experts believe chocolate may be even more effective than foreplay for sexual arousal.
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Historical records show that even in 1850 B.C., women attempted to practice birth control. The most common method was a mixture of crocodile dung and honey placed in the vagina in the hopes of preventing pregnancy.
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Although nearly any body part or item of clothing may be an object of sexual fetishism, the shoe and the foot are the two most common fetishes in Western society.
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Just a decade ago, only 25% of women reported experiencing orgasm as a result of intercourse. In recent years, this number has risen to about 45%. In contrast, over 80% of women report experiencing orgasm though oral sex.
It’s no wonder I’ve been addicted to chocolate my entire life. Instead of foreplay just gobble down a handful of M&M’s and get busy. Also I will verify that feet can be sexually arousing. I’ve been a foot lover since day one and damn proud of it. And last but not least to both men and women I say “Hooray for Oral Sex” and “Boo!” to crocodile dung and honey. Yuck!
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The vibrator, a common sex toy for women, was originally designed in the nineteenth century as a medication to combat the anxiety-related symptoms of “hysteria” (now known as menstruation).
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Throughout the United States, approximately 4% of the population self-identifies as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
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During 30 minutes of active sex, the average person burns approximately 200 calories.
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On average, adult men think about sex every seven seconds.
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Approximately 1% of people worldwide identify as asexual (having no strong sexual attraction to either sex).
I think about sex every seven seconds? I might have to disagree with that fact. I think it’s way more often that that. Ask any guy! If I recall my basic facts on weight loss it takes a reduction of approximately 2000 calories to lose a pound of weight. If that’s true then having intercourse ten times would also work. I’m sure you could lose a lot of weight doing it that way but you might miss a few days of work here and there.
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Statistics suggest that approximately one in every five Americans has indulged in sex with a colleague at work.
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Approximately 70% of people in the U.S. admit to fantasizing about group sex at some point in their life, and more than 50% of those people actually follow through.
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One report states that 48% of women have faked an orgasm at least once in their life. Interestingly, an identical 48% of men also report faking an orgasm at least once.
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Since AIDS was first diagnosed in 1981, more than 25 million people have died as a result of the virus. Two million people died from AIDS in the year 2007 alone.
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Statistics show that approximately 90% of men and 65% of women masturbate from time to time.
Group sex appears more popular than I thought. The masturbation numbers were surprising. I thought you women out there were keeping up but I guess I was mistaken. Shame on all of you, so get to work ladies.
This is my favorite tidbit and could possibly explain my obsession with wine. After I drink enough of a favorite Chardonnay my behavioral responses can get pretty interesting. Especially if I eat a huge chunk of chocolate along with it. LOOK OUT!
HAVE A HAPPY IDES OF MARCH
SPAM . . . I’m not sure who coined that term for unwanted emails but it truly is an insult to such a delicious meat. As we all know you can’t spend much time on the Net without finding yourself inundated with SPAM. I always thought I was careful about filling out forms or taking stupid surveys, a sure way to get your name out to the spammers. I’ve come to find out that I failed miserably.
Six months ago in a moment of boredom I was sitting at my computer looking for something to do. Absentmindedly I inquired of a well known mortgage company about some of the new government programs. To say the least that was a huge mistake that I’ve been paying for ever since. Over the last six months I’ve had to unsubscribe from an endless number of websites for every product currently known to man.
I spend a few minutes of each day unsubscribing the current batch of SPAM with assurances that in a week I’ll have been eliminated from their call lists. The torrent of sites is finally down to less than two or three a day but overall it has totaled more than four hundred in the last six months.
I’ve tried to backtrack many of them to a source I could contact and threaten to no avail. It’s been a frustrating effort with no one to take my frustration out on. I’ve known a lot of people over the years but I’ve never met anyone who would admit to being a spammer. People will admit to being drug dealers before admitting to spamming. At least the drug dealer is selling a product and not simply harassing and endlessly annoying hundreds of thousands of people.
‘Just so you know this is the good SPAM.’
I’ll keep trying to discover one person I can take out my anger on. I could easily be persuaded to violence against anyone who has the balls to stand in front of me and admit to spamming. It would be worth a few days in the local county jail for assaulting that someone and I suspect there isn’t a jury anywhere that would convict me. Everyone hates spammers and that might be the reason those bastards keep themselves so well hidden.
As they used to say on Hill Street Blues
"Be careful out there."
Being a history buff has been a lifelong pleasure for me. I’ve always believed that individuals and governments have much to learn from their past mistakes and by studying those mistakes can improve their future circumstances. With that in mind I thought I’d step back in time to review and pass on to all of you a few interesting factoids on notable occurrences for March 1.
Some of you may find these items interesting and others not so much. My better-half will more often than not just roll her eyes and then turn up the volume of the music she’s listening to when I start spouting historical facts. I guess I can’t please everyone all of the time but I’ll keep trying. Here we go.
This Day In History – March 1st
1954 U.S.A. – US tests hydrogen bomb in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands.
1961 U.S.A. – President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps as a new agency within the Department of State.
1932 U.S.A. – The Lindbergh baby is kidnapped when stolen from his crib at the family estate in Hopewell, New Jersey,
1936 U.S.A. – The Hoover Dam ( Boulder Dam ) is completed and turned over to the U.S. government. It supplies hydroelectricity, irrigation and fresh water to homes in California and Nevada.
1941 U.S.A. – Nashville, Tennessee becomes the home of the very first FM radio station in the country. While the FM band had less static and more range, it didn’t become popular until the early 1960s.
1954 U.S.A. – Five U.S. congressmen were shot and injured during a House session today when Puerto Rican spectators who yelled "Free Puerto Rico" fired shots into the United States Capitol building.
1962 U.S.A. – On this day, 95 people were killed in a plane crash that occurred along the South shore of Long Island, New York. The irony of it all is that this plane crash happened after the end of a long stretch of bad weather (rain and fog) that had continued for about a week-on a clear day.
1966 Soviet Union – An unmanned Soviet probe called Venera 3 crashes on Venus in the pursuit of the conquest of space.
1971 U.S.A. – The radical left organization Weather Underground bombs the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971. A bomb was placed in the senate wing causing $300,000 damage and no injuries.
1972 Syria - This was one of the significant days of the attack by Israel against the Arabs. The Israeli army launched attacks against Arab Guerrilla camps that operated in southern Syria at this time. Fighting back and forth continued on at different times after this until the present day.
1973 Sudan – The Palestinian terrorist group Black September storm the Saudi Arabian embassy in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, taking diplomats hostage. ( This was the same terrorist organization that murdered nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics).
1978 Switzerland - The coffin of Charlie Chaplin was stolen from a small, unguarded village cemetery in Switzerland .
1997 U.S.A. – Massive flooding occurred throughout the state of Kentucky with thousands left homeless and more than 50 people dead.
2002 U.S.A – The possibility of water still existing on Mars was made known. According to NASA, a spacecraft called Odyssey had detected it on this planet.
2005 U.S.A. – Dennis Rader, accused of leading a double life as the BTK ( Bind, Torture and Kill, ) serial killer, was charged in Wichita, Kan., with 10 counts of first-degree murder between 1974 and 1991.. (Rader later pleaded guilty and received multiple life sentences.)
2007 U.S.A. – A series of 55 Tornadoes strike the southern United States that began in Kansas on February 28th, 2007 and included Alabama and Georgia, the tornadoes leave 20 dead with the worst effected area being Enterprise, Alabama where a section of the Enterprise High School was destroyed during the middle of the school day killing 8 and injuring many more.
2008 Afghanistan - Prince Harry who was sent secretly to Afghanistan with his regiment in December at his request is forced to return to Britain following the American website, The Drudge Report, making his deployment public.
2008 United States – People have been watching the naming of the warship that was built from parts of the steel salvaged from the World Trade Center. The families of the 9/11 victims were among the thousands of spectators at the naming of the U.S.S. New York, in Avondale, Louisiana. The bow contains 7.5 tons of steel taken from Ground Zero. It bears a shield with two bars to symbolize the towers, and a banner with the slogan “Never Forget”. The New York is an amphibious landing ship with a crew of 360, and complement of 700 marines.
‘Never Forget’
2012 United States – Thursday, 1st March, 2012 : The suspected gunman, TJ Lane, in a deadly school shooting will face charges as a juvenile in the US state of Ohio. Lane was suspected of killing three students and wounding two at Chardon High School.
There’s your history lesson for today. Whoever said that March was a slow winter month was badly mistaken. Just ask Julius Caesar.
What are two things that most people think about every day. My best guess would be death and sex. With that thought in mind I decided to supply you all with a list of global statistics about many things but mainly death. Many of these numbers are current up to and including today. Some of the information is shocking and some is simply unbelievable.
Global Death Rate
Statisticians have calculated the "mortality rate" for the world to be roughly .883 percent. This means that 1 out of every 113 people in the world died last year.
World Population:
- has reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011
- is projected to reach 8 billion by 2024
- has doubled in 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion)
- is currently growing at a rate of around 1.13 % per year
- growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at 2%
- growth rate is currently declining and is projected to continue to decline in the coming years
- average annual population change is currently estimated at over 80 million
- world population will reach 10 billion persons in the year 2056
As of Today
"This year" = from January 1 (00:00) up to now
"Today" = from the beginning of the current day up to now
"net population growth" = births minus deaths
145,641 Births today
60,991 Deaths today
22,888,972 Births this year
9,585,278 Deaths this year
84,650 Net population growth today
13,303,694 Net population growth this year
Technology
37,472,003 Computers produced this year
2,092,893 Cellular phones sold today
$ 74,559,389 Money spent on videogames today
3,316,866,142 Internet users in the world today
82,805,119,987 Emails sent today
229,774,292 Tweets sent today
1,711,619,570 Google searches this year
Health
1,621,694,128 Overweight people in the world people in the world
1,731,966,562 Water consumed this year (million L)
134,660 Deaths caused by water related diseases this year
661,570,850 People with no access to a safe drinking water source
Natural Resources
Quick Facts: Barrel = 42 Gallons = 159 Liters
31,340,762 Oil pumped today (barrels)
1,158,647,387,197 Oil left (barrels)
13,793 Days to the end of oil (~38 years)
Miscellaneous Deaths
1,215,470 Deaths of children under 5 this year
54,974 Deaths of mothers during birth this year
268,816 Deaths caused by HIV/AIDS this year
1,313,313 Deaths caused by cancer this year
156,851 Deaths caused by malaria this year
Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking
5,659,200,051 Cigarettes smoked this year
799,386 Deaths caused by smoking this year
399,945 Deaths caused by alcohol this year
171,477 Suicides this year
215,859 Road traffic accident fatalities this year
$ 63,971,038,394 Money spent on illegal drugs this year
How’s that for a quick and dirty summary of the human race. Chaos, death, destruction, confusion, and life goes just keeps rolling along.
IT’S MUCH MORE FUN TALKING ABOUT SEX
I decided to step away from a journal entry today and offer up some unusual tidbits of presidential trivia. Since the political winds are once again beginning to blow I thought it might interest some of you. This information has been chosen at random and I’m not picking on any one party. To be sure, there’s enough useless information coming out of both parties to make everyone happy. Here we go. . .
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Edith Wilson, the wife of Woodrow Wilson, often rode a bicycle in the corridors of the White House.
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Richard M. Nixon once worked as a carnival barker.
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Thomas Jefferson had a pet mockingbird that followed him upstairs to bed every night.
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First Lady Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, used to hang laundry in the White House East Room to dry.
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David Rice Atchison, a state senator from Missouri (1843-1855), was President of the United States for one day.
Who knew we had a president for just one day? I can think of quite a few others I would have loved to have for only one day.
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Calvin Coolidge, President from 1923 to 929, was the last President to write his own speeches.
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President Jimmy Carter was the first president born in a hospital.
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Ronald Reagan received over seventy-five thousand gifts, including three hundred seventy-two belt buckles, a dog house, a six foot long pencil, and a four-square-foot portrait made out of ten thousand jelly beans.
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When Zachary Taylor became President in 1849, he kept his horse “Old Whitey” on the front lawn of the White House.
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Ulysses S. Grant was once arrested near the White House and fined twenty dollars for driving a team of horses too fast.
I don’t doubt for a minute that Grant was probably under the influence of some unknown alcoholic beverage. That’s the same guy who once upon a time allegedly threw up on one of his officers .
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The middle initial “S” in President Harry S. Truman’s name didn’t stand for anything.
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John Tyler (1790-1862), 10th president, was unable to get a decent job after leaving office and worked at a village pound tending cows and horses.
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Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), once delivered a one-hour speech in spite of being shot moments before by a would-be assassin.
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President George H.W. Bush banned broccoli from the White House in March 1990, the California broccoli growers delivered nine tons of the vegetable to Washington.
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President Millard Fillmore, in 1851, became the first chief executive to use a bathtub in the White House.
Here’s a special bonus entry for JFK. He was known for a lot of questionable shenanigans but I’ll be nice and take the high road today. He was also the first President born in the twentieth century.
That should do it for today. More to come. . .
It’s 630am and I just finished watching Julius Caesar be murdered for the umpteenth time. What a bizarre way to start my day. I’m badly addicted to the late great HBO series, Rome, and watching it has slowly become my morning ritual. My fixation with all things Roman began in my junior year of high school with the reading of Julius Caesar and my three years of Latin language classes also helped. Later in college I became quite fond of wearing togas giving me a whole new appreciation for Roman ingenuity when it came to easy-removed clothing.
Over the years I’ve read almost everything I could find about that time period trying in vain to understand how such an advanced society could become so bloodthirsty and uncaring about human life. The history of the time gave me a great deal of respect for Spartacus and his minions who rose up and attempted to free themselves from slavery even though they were all killed in the process. I remain puzzled by the entire era which forces me to keep reading about it.
I’ve heard so many people over the years comparing the situation in this country to Rome’s decline and in some ways agreed with them. The only accurate comparison for me concerned the continuing lack of morality in Rome that seemed to increase year by year with their affluence. The United States seems to me to be in a similar rut but comparing the two in their entirety is like comparing apples with oranges.
I’ve been reading for the last few months a book written in the mid-1700’s by Edward Gibbons, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It’s a difficult read on a good day as are all books written by so-called intellectuals. There are as many footnotes as actual text in the book and I wanted to scream out loud before I made it through the first 100 pages. It became somewhat easier when I decided to completely disregard all of the footnotes and just read the actual text. I’ll probably finish reading this cumbersome tome in a few months but it won’t be easy. Unfortunately there’s just enough valuable information in it to keep me reading to the end.
I just finished my second cup of hot black coffee and I can feel my energy level beginning to rise. I’ll be spending some time today putting the finishing touches to a print I’ve been working on. It’s an abstraction of a family photo
taken last Christmas in front of the tree. It’s more of an experiment in the use of vivid colors while working with materials that are somewhat new to me. It’s preparing me for a more detailed and difficult project that I’ll be starting in the next few weeks using these same materials. As always practice and preparation make for a satisfactory completion of any project.
I’ll watch a few more minutes of Rome then get up to face my day. I should be safe since the Ides of March are still a few weeks away.
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