The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant

I grew up in a family with lots of books. All 11 volumes of The Story of Civilization stood tall on my parents' bookshelves from my earliest childhood recollections. At that time I was puzzled by the title of the first volume: "Our Oriental Heritage." How could that be correct? To my young mind the Orient was China, or Japan, the home of Joe Jitsu, an Oriental cartoon character who appeared on The Dick Tracy show on WIPX Channel 11 in the New York area in the early 1960s, hosted by "Chief" Joe Bolton.

But the Durant's story of civilization defines "oriental" in broader terms. They start with "the beginning of humanity, when some freak or crank, half animal and half man, squatted in a cave or in a tree, cracking his brain to invent the first common noun." Then they move on to The Stone Age. Written history began some 6,000 years ago, and for half of that period "the center of human affairs was in the Near East....The Aryans did not establish civilization - they took it from Babylon and Sumeria." Ah, now I understand.

Further support for an Oriental heritage: the ancient city of Susa, located in what is now Iran. There  archaeologists found human remains dating back 20,000 years. Evidence of an advanced culture emerged around 4500 BC.  Arabic numerals and the decimal system "came to us through the Arabs from India." 

The Durants' Orient includes India. This is when the book really caught my attention It explains not just Indian history, but a deep dive into Hindu philosophy and religion as well. Above the pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses is Brahman, an ineffable concept "from which all existence proceeds, and to which everything returns, the cause of all that exists. Brahman is everywhere and inside each living being, and there is connected spiritual oneness in all existence."  

To the Hindu, if we have not lived a good life, our essence returns to Brahman when we die. Then it is reincarnated in a new life. We have another opportunity to do better. The cycle of birth, death and reincarnation continues until we achieve perfection and become one with Brahman. The Durants note that Hindu religion is much more complex than this brief description, but those are the thoughts that I took from this part of the book.

As for "the life of the mind" (as the Durants call it), to the Hindu "the purpose of knowledge and philosophy is not control of the world so much as release from it...the goal of thought is to find freedom from the suffering of frustrated desire by achieving freedom from desire itself." The Durants  magnanimously decline to judge such beliefs, "for our judgments in the West are usually based on corporeal experience and material results, which seem irrelevant and superficial to the Hindu saint." 

Still ahead lies Chinese and Japanese history. And that's just in volume 1. Ahead are 10 more volumes of more familiar western European stuff, such as "Rousseau and Revolution" and "The Age of Napoleon." I hope I live long enough, and retain my eyesight long enough, to read them all.

N.B. "The Story of Civilization" was first published in 1934. and was revised and updated numerous times before both Durants died in 1981. The version before me is dated 1954, which happens to be the year I was born.

Is Trump Building His Own Paramilitary Militia?

Our democracy is in danger. This article from The Economist (January 31, 2026) makes some excellent points. I agree with all of them.

ICE's Impunity is a Formula for More Violence.

Venezuelan Adventure

Today's news of the U.S. intervention in Venezuela sent me rushing to my search engine. How many times has the USA done such a thing in the past? The list is sobering. I remember when the USA invaded Panama and deposed Noriega. And Iraq, Afghanistan and Grenada. Not to mention Vietnam. I understand the reasons for those adventures, sort of. Now we can add Venezuela to the list. 

After watching today's Trump news conference, I have grave concerns about this incursion. At first I thought it was being done to stop drug smuggling into the US by deposing a corrupt dictator. But who gave him the authority to step in and kick over a sovereign nation's government?

I doubt today's action will have much effect on stopping illegal drug imports. The US is a huge market for high-stakes smugglers. Illegal substances have a way of finding new ways around barriers because there is so much demand, and so much money, in the USA. Despite the actions announced today, the problem of drug abuse and addiction will pop up again and again, even if we stop the outflow from Venezuela. How about attacking the demand side of this problem? More federal funding for drug education and help for the addicted? Our federal goverment doesn't seem to even consider a two-prong approach.

Even worse were Trump's statements that "we" (meaning him and his minions) are going to run Venezuela now, and U.S. oil companies will run the Venezuelan oil industry. That sounds like a takeover of the entire country, including its economy. I have the sickening feeling that Mr. President decided to make those sweeping statements on the spur of the moment, without first having a robust debate with his own advisors. I shudder to think of how that unexpected statement must have been received by Venezuelans. They're losing the right to rule themselves without foreign interference.

Trump's Decisive Leadership

Just noticed this header on the U.S. Department of the Treasury "Resource Center" web page:

"President Donald J. Trump has signed a Continuing Resolution through January 30th. Thanks to the President’s decisive leadership in the face of radical left-wing obstructionism, the Department of the Treasury has now resumed normal operations."

See for yourself here:

U.S. Department of The Treasury>Resource Center

King of Ashes by S.A. Crosby

I read this entire book on a 7-hour airline flight. Squeezed into a bulkhead seat in tourist class, it was a way to pass the time. 

I'm not a picky reader. After all, I am the guy who read all the way through Dividend of Death by Brett Halliday (reviewed elsewhere 0n this web site). But I found the first two-thirds of King of Ashes slow, meandering and overall disappointing compared to this author's previous work. 

Under different circumstances I might have tossed it aside. But I soldiered on, hour after hour. In the last third, things really start moving, so it was worthwhile in the end.

Trump says he’s firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook

There's disturbing news in today's Associated Press feed: 

Trump say's he's firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook, opening new front in fight for central bank control

By Christopher Rugaber and Will Weissert, August 26, 2025

We can safely assume that Trump wants to replace Federal Reserve Governor Cook with someone more sympathetic to his own ideas. That would set a terrible precedent. Packing the Fed with a President’s supporters is to be avoided, or so we were taught in our graduate school monetary policy class. On a personal level, the charge against Cook is almost nothing compared to the stunts I suspect Trump pulls with his real estate business. 

It’s outrageous. I don't dare put this in my social media posts. I'd lose friends. But still: sic temper tyrannis!

The Weaver's Answer

by Roger Chapman and Charlie Whitney 

Weaver of life, let me look and see 

The pattern of my life gone by shown on your tapestry. 

 Just for one second, one glance upon your loom 

The flower of my childhood could appear within this room 

Does it of my youth show tears of yesterday 

Broken hearts within a heart as love first came my way. 

Did the lifeline patterns change as I became a man 

An added aura untold blends as I asked for her hand 

Did your golden needle sow its thread virginal white 

As lovers we embraced as one upon our wedding night. 

Did you capture all the joys, the birth of our first son 

The happiness of family made a brother for the one 

The growing of the brothers, the manliness that grew 

Is it there in detail, is it there to view 

 Do the sparks of life grow bright as one by one they wed 

To live as fathers, husbands, apart from lives they've led.

Are my lover's threads cut off when aged she laid to rest 

My sorrow blacking out a space upon our woven crest 

A gathering for the last time as her coffin slowly lain 

Ash to ashes, dust to dust, one day we will regain 

Does it show the visits when grandchildren on my knee 

But only hearing laughter when age took my sight from me. 

Lastly through these last few years of loneliness maybe 

Does by sight a shooting star fade from your tapestry 

But wait, there in the distance your loom I think I see 

Could it be that after all my prayers you've answered me 

After days of wondering I see the reason why 

You've kept it to this minute for I'm about to die. 

Weaver of life, at last now I can see 

The pattern of my life gone by upon your tapestry. 

"Dividend on Death" by Brett Halliday (1939)

Published in 1939, “Dividend On Death” introduces private investigator Mike Shayne, who later appeared in some 70-plus novels written under the pen name Brett Halliday (birth name: Davis Dresser). That intrigued me. Halliday/Dresser must have been a virtual writing machine. Imagine supporting your family by churning out such material, book after book, year after year. And apparently readers liked the character, because people kept buying them. 

Based in Miami, this tale name-checks familiar places such as Jackson Memorial Hospital, Flagler Street, Biscayne Boulevard and the Roney Plaza Hotel. It also contains steamy passages such as: “A woman was descending the stairway, and she reached the bottom just as Shayne passed. She wore the white uniform of a nurse and carried a napkin-covered tray. She was a full-bodied blond of about thirty, with predatory eyes. Shayne glanced at her as he passed and caught a fleeting, almost animal look on her face. Her lips were pouted as though in assent, thought he had not spoken to her.” 

Later on, this woman appears unannounced at Shayne’s apartment and insists that he make love to her. I leave it to the reader to imagine how that turned out. 

At no time does this hard-boiled private investigator brandish a gun or beat up anyone. In fact, he himself is beaten up, his pain and suffering described in detail. But he solves the case, an elaborate swindle involving a Raphael painting. This is where the tale strains credibility. In a many-paged discourse at the very end of the book, Shayne explains to a room full of people who the real swindlers are and the diabolical plot they put into action. But how did he figure that out? There is little or no previous plot exposition to support it. But with this one exception, the book is well-written and I tore through it like a house on fire. I’ll read more of this author’s work.

Further Reading: Brett Halliday by Hal Charles. EBSCO. 2023. 

David Souter, Julius Caesar and Donald Trump

Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter died recently. This quote from his AP obituary caught my eye: 

"What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough...some one person will come forward and  say 'Give me total power and I will solve this problem.' That is how the Roman republic fell,  Souther said in a 2012 interview."

Associated Press obituary for David Souter, May 9, 2025 

After some digging, I found this:

"Having defeated all his enemies, Caesar was granted a 10-year dictatorship for purposes of restoring the republic. His solution was to reconstitute himself as a Roman form of Hellenistic divine king or ruler."

Purdue University Lecture 26: Fall of Roman Republic133-27 BC"

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

This was a terrific read. I'll definitely seek out more of this author's work. This one is a complex mystery set in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Beautifully written with believable characters who are fully developed, it also has much to say about relationships and conflict: between rich and  poor, boys and girls, husband and wife, parents and children. 

Both narrative and dialogue are nicely handled. The timeline is a bit unorthodox, beginning with the disappearance of a child in 1975. Then it shifts to earlier events in the 1950s and 1960s before coming back to the 1970s to resolve the disappearance and other problems the characters wrestle with. For those who want to know how the author managed to keep all those balls in the air and wrap it up with a satisfying conclusion, listen to this podcast on the New York Times' website.

Further reading:

New York Times, July 22, 2024

Kirkus Reviews, July 2, 2024

Washington Post, June 24, 2024

The New Yorker, July 15, 2024

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

This is the fourth book in the Cormoran Strike crime fiction series. It has an absorbing plot, believable characters, and well-written dialogue. For purely personal reasons I liked the setting - southern England  – and the author’s descriptions of London neighborhoods, a topic near and dear to my heart. The action moves along nicely, and the relationship between the principal characters - Strike and his employee Robin Ellacott - is  tense, deep and skillfully drawn. 

My one complaint is that I had difficulty keeping track of the secondary characters and how they're related to the plot, and to each other. There are so many of them. I often wanted to back up and refresh my memory. That would have been easy to do when reading on Kindle - just use the search for the character's name, and up pops a list of every time he/she is mentioned. But you can't do that with a hard copy edition, which is what I had in hand. I found myself wishing that Rowling would give us a list of characters right at the beginning, like Shakespeare did. I tried to scribble my own dramatis personae on my bookmark, together with the page number where they first appear. The list for the first 100 pages was 17 characters long. After that, I just gave up and went with the flow. It was well worth the effort.

N.B.  I read the second and third books in the series (The Silkworm and Career of Evil) 10 years ago. As to when I read the first, that is lost in the mists of time. I read most of the Harry Potter books as well. Rowling, aka Robert Galbraith, is a remarkable talent.

View all my reviews

Witch Wood by John Buchan

"Witch Wood," one of three novels contained in this volume, takes place in Scotland during the Anglo-Scottish War of 1650-1652. For those who aren't familiar with that war (I wasn't), there's a good summary in Wikipedia.

Plot summary: David Sempill is a newly ordained minister assigned to the isolated Scottish Border village of Woodilee. He discovers that his congregation includes a group who secretly conduct pagan rituals in a nearby forest, the Black Wood of Melanudrigill (thus, the book's title). The minister views this as witchcraft, devil worship and blasphemy, and vows to it stamp out. He finds few allies but embarks on his mission regardless. At same time, he is torn between his belief in God on one hand, and the rigid dogma of the Scottish Presbyterian church on the other. The church is more of an obstruction than anything, and he receives little or no support from church officials - quite the opposite, in fact. He frequently asks himself if he would be better suited to the life of a soldier.

This book was a very satisfying read. Characters are believable and well developed. Buchan's presentation of the gut-wrenching conflicts the minister faces give us empathy for the character. I found the historical background interesting, leaving me wanting to know more about what are known as The Wars of the Three Kingdoms. 

The plot proceeds at a leisurely pace, as books from this era do, with much more narration than dialogue. There's a nice love story subplot involving the minister and Katrine Yester, who personifies the benign side of nature and has no fear of the Black Forest. Some of the locals believe she is "the queen of the fairies." I also enjoyed the pastoral scenes, with fine descriptions of the landscape of the borderlands. It must have been a beautiful but harsh place to live in. 

I began with the Audible audiobook version. But in the spoken format, it was hard to understand the Scots dialect of some characters.  For example, Mark Kerr (one of the more interesting characters) remarks: "'The Kirk has made the yett of grace ower wide for sinful men, and all ither yetts ower narrow." (Yett is Scottish for gate.) Kerr is commenting on the Presbyterian concept of predestination: God has already chosen "the elect" for eternal life even if they sin, whereas everyone else can never enter Heaven no matter how virtuous they are.

Despite the dialect, I kept listening. About two-thirds of the way through I started reading it in book form (Kindle, actually), thinking that reading words rather than hearing them would make things more transparent. Indeed that was the case, and I read hell-bent-for-leather until the end. Now I'm re-reading my favorite parts on the Kindle. That's how gripping the story was. 

Further Reading:

Lin, Hsin-Ying. "That puts it not unto the Touch, To win or lose it all: The Moral Metaphor of Witchcraft in John Buchan's Witch Wood". Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture. 8 (2): 5. June 2015.

McCleary, Alastair: "John Buchan and the Path of the Keen." English Literature in Translation, 1880-1920. Vol 29:3. 1986.

Long Cool Woman In a Black Dress

This tune, a big hit for The Hollies, fascinated me back in 1972. I loved the two-guitar break halfway through, but the lyrics puzzled me -- partly due to the echo applied to Allan Clarke's vocals, but also because the lyrics seemed to mention working for the FBI, the DA man and a tall walking big black cat. Was that really what he was singing? Why would an English pop group would want to give us something so American? 

Recently I found a video of The Hollies performing it live. Sadly, that video has vanished from YouTube, but while extant it swept away all doubt. We clearly hear Clarke's vocal without the echo. And he's actually singing, not miming the words. So now, before it escapes my feeble mind, I offer the world what I believe to be the definitive lyrics to "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress." Read while listening to Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress - Official Audio (YouTube):

Saturday night I went downtown

Working for the F.B.I.
Sitting in a nest of bad men
Whiskey bottles piling high

Bootlegging boozer on the West Side
Full of people who are doing wrong
Just about to call up the D.A. man
When I heard this woman singing a song.

(Chorus)
A pair of 45s made me open my eyes
My temperature started to rise
She was a long cool woman in a black dress
Just a 5-9 beautiful tall
With just one look I was a bad mess
Cause that long cool woman had it all.

I saw her heading to the table
Well, a tall walking big black cat
Charlie said, I hope that you're able, boy
'Cause I'm telling you she knows where it's at

Well, suddenly we hear the sirens
And everybody started to run
Jumping under doors and tables
I heard somebody shooting a gun.

The D.A. was pumping my left hand
She was holding my right
Well, I told her, don't get scared
'Cause you're gonna be spared
I've gotta be forgiven if I wanna spend my living
With a long cool woman in a black dress
Just a 5-9 beautiful tall
With just one look I was a bad mess
'Cause that long cool woman had it all.

Seventeen by Booth Tarkington

I read Tarkington's Penrod novels when I was a young lad, but I never got around to reading Seventeen. Perhaps that was because I was less than 17 at the time. Now I have taken the plunge, and I loved it. 

Contemporary readers will find that Seventeen is written in an old-fashioned style, which is not surprising since it was published in 1916. It revolves around a 17-year-old boy who is infatuated with Lola Pratt (great name!), a stranger who visits his small Midwest town for the summer. 

The book has a major flaw in that it depicts black people in ways that are unacceptable by today's standards. But so did Huckleberry Finn. For my part, I was willing to endure what some will find offensive because Tarkington, like Twain, is simply a superb writer.  Tarkington does a fine job of depicting teenage angst in a way that one has to live through to understand. His descriptions of William's feelings for the young lady who has stolen his heart are spot on. I could cite any number of examples, but one will suffice. Describing William's heartache: 

"Alas! he considered his sufferings a new invention in the world... he passed through phases of emotion which would have kept an older man busy for weeks and left him wrecked at the end of them." (p. 186)

One of my favorite scenes is set at a party at which William struggles to get one single dance with Lola. Here the book is completely detached from today's world. Teenagers dance to live music supplied by "Italians with harp, violin and flute, promising great things for dancing on a fresh-clipped lawn" (p. 195). William's rival is indisposed (vomiting, as it would be called today), giving our hero the opportunity he has been waiting for all night:

"Then gaily tinkled harp, gaily sang flute and violin! Over the greensward William lightly bore his lady, while radiant was the clear sky above the happy dancers. William's fingers touched those delicate fingers; the exquisite face smiled rosily up to him; the undreamable sweetness beat rhythmically upon his glowing ears; his feet moved in a rhapsody of companionship with hers....So passed the long, ineffable afternoon away - ah, Seventeen!" (p. 201)

It takes a special breed of reader to plow through 324 pages of this sort of writing. But I am that reader. Call me old-fashioned if you will. 

N.B. Seventeen was originally a series of "sketches" appearing in Metropolitan Magazine, later collected and published in novel form in 1916. It was the best-selling novel of the year in 1916,  the second consecutive year in which Tarkington headed the best-seller list, preceded in 1915 by his novel The Turmoil. 

Donald J. Trump vs. United States, Supreme Court, No. 23-939

I don't dare to put this on my other social media platforms, but I must speak out, if only to vent my concern. Having read the opinion of the court, I am appalled. The court seems to have gone out of its way to define a new paradigm of presidential immunity.  

I'm not a constitutional lawyer, or any sort of lawyer. But this is discouraging to say the least. I tend to support Justice Sotomayor's dissent: the majority decision "invents an atextual, ahistorical and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law... This holding is unnecessary on the facts of the indictment, and the majority's attempt to apply it to the facts expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds.... Argument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force." 

I also concur with David French's opinion piece in The New York Times, which says: "The Supreme Court isn’t a policy-making body; it’s an interpretive body... I disagree with the Supreme Court’s rulings for the most basic reason of all — they do not square with the text of the document the justices are supposed to interpret, and that means they’re granting the presidency a degree of autonomy and impunity that’s contrary to the structure and spirit of American government." 

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

In terms of reader enjoyment and elegant prose, I'd give The Ferryman my highest rating. I congratulate the author on producing another fine novel that's somewhere between science fiction, fantasy and psychological thriller. 

So why is my Goodreads rating only three out of five stars? My one reservation is that Cronin's story contains a couple of wrenching plot twists. They're intriguing, but I'm still trying to reconcile some of the details. This is partly my fault, as I had to set the book aside for a couple of weeks while I attended to other priorities. To atone, I spent considerable time re-reading certain critical sections. Thank God for Kindle, which makes it easy to search for words like "Oranios" and "The Designer." Now I need a book discussion group to help me finish the task.

The theme of a "Designer"is key to this book. Readers with gnostic tendencies (a worthy lot) will recognize the concept of an artisan god separate from and subordinate to the original creator. But this book is not about theology. The Ferryman poses the question: what is real, and what is illusion? This brings to mind a favorite Moody Blues lyric, but let's not get bogged down in "Nights in White Satin." Instead, here are some of my favorite passages from The Ferryman: 

• "...it was and always would be impossible to know what was dream and what was not... all creation was boxes within boxes within boxes, each the dream of a different god."  
• "There is the thing... and then there is the echo of the thing, the shadow of the thing." Echoes and dreams play a large part in this book. Dreaming is almost deviant behavior in the world Cronin creates, but some people do it anyway. They can't help it.
• "So none of this is real, is what you're saying." "Oh, I wouldn't say that. More like a reality of a certain kind. A shadow kind, if you will." Cronin provides a nice synopsis of Plato's cave parable here.

This is heady stuff. Cronin also has a point of view on current events, including climate change and the increasing disparity between the rich and everyone else. Those who seek further analysis and commentary may want to follow the links below. 

External Links

• New York Times Book Review.  An Island Utopia Where Nobody Dies and the Living Is Easy." May 1, 2023.
• Kirkus Reviews. Twisty, Thrilling and Beautifully Written. April 11, 2023.
• Esquire. "How Justin Cronin Wrote the Ultimate Holy Sh*t Moment in The Ferryman." May 2, 2023.
• Washington Post.  Justin Cronin Returns with "The Ferryman", an Apocalyptic Thriller. April 25, 2023.

World War II Fiction: A Partial List

My father, born in 1930, was an avid reader of fiction about World War II. Too young to participate in the war himself, I suppose this was his way of experiencing it vicariously. 

Many of the titles listed below were stored in boxes in our attic during my childhood. The rest are books I picked up here and there as an adult.  They provided me with many hours of exciting reading. 

• The Caine Mutiny (Wouk) - one of my all-time favorites of any genre
• Once An Eagle (Myrer)
• Battle Cry (Uris) - I've lost track of how many times I've read it
  
• The Winds of War (Wouk; a trilogy)
• Catch-22 (Heller)
• The Young Lions (Shaw) 
  
• From Here to Eternity (Jones)
• The Naked and the Dead (Mailer)
• Von Ryan's Express (Westheimer)
• King Rat (Clavell)
• The Cruel Sea (Monserrat)
• Landfall (Shute)
• The Chequer Board (Shute)
• The Good Shepherd (Forrester)
• Tales of the South Pacific (Michener)
• The Big War (Myrer) - I may re-read this one; I scarcely recall anything about it.
• Don't Go Near the Water (Brinkley) - a humorous treatment
• Where Eagles Dare (Maclean) 
• Eye of the Needle (Follett)
• Jackdaws (Follett)

In several cases (Wouk, Uris, Shaw, Follett) the books listed above set me on a longer-term effort to read the author's other work that has been quite rewarding. Many of these novels became films. But don't judge these books by the movies.

Weaponizing the Federal Government

I don't dare post this on Facebook, because it will infuriate a certain percentage of people and lead to a series of messy, exhausting online arguments. 

Divided House Approves G.O.P. Inquiry Into ‘Weaponization’ of Government

New York Times, January 11, 2023

But this is MY blog. Mine, mine, mine. So brace yourself. I'm going to open my big fat mouth and unleash hell. 

I understand the need for openness and transparency in government. But at some point, the sheer number of investigations puts our country at risk. With everybody investigating each other, our elected representatives are becoming so tangled up in their underwear that they'll have no time to govern the country. 

Belief in God?

I asked Nancy that question recently. Her response: "If God doesn't exist, then how did we get here?" That's a useful way to phrase the question, because it helped me to articulate my own belief: God as depicted in The Bible is not necessarily the same thing as the creator of the universe, if there was one. I'm not sure about a creator, as I'll explain. 

Begin with the question: was the universe created, or has it always existed? Some (including Plato's Timaeus) would say that it must have been created, because it exists, and nothing can exist unless it is first created. I can accept the possibility of a creator. 

But a true creator -- a force that set creation in motion but was not itself created by anything --- would be an entity totally beyond our understanding. Maybe not even an entity at all. A force that acted, but was not acted upon? It's hard to even think about it. As Timaeus said, the father of all this (if there is one) is beyond our knowledge.

But assuming there was a creator, I have difficulty reconciling that entity with the God presented in The Hebrew Bible and The New Testament. 

I refer now to the God that spoke directly to early Biblical figures and intervened in human affairs; expects us worship him ("Praise ye the Lord", as the Anglican service puts it); who expects us to obey his commandments, and punishes us if we don't; who loves us and has a plan for us all; who sent his son Jesus to us and then took him away to atone for man's sins.

I struggle with the idea that the sort of creator I'm talking about would do such things. Such a creator would be so different from us that it might not even be aware of mankind, let alone bother to watch over and judge us.

I am aware that I'm applying human concepts to something that, if it exists, is beyond our understanding. As theologians tell us, it's a mistake to try to apply logic and reasoning to what is essentially a matter of faith. 

Still, I have to believe that the God of The Bible and other monotheistic religions is a man-made concept. It must have emerged as an attempt to answer the deepest questions. Why does the world appear as it does? Intelligent design, or evolution? How did all this come to be? Was it created? I never will know the answers, nor will any human being. The questions are too vast. They are beyond our capabilities.

There is much value and wisdom to be found in The Bible and the sayings of Jesus, and The Torah, and no doubt other religions as well. As well as some very eloquent writing. But I am left with little faith, just a series of questions. As I've said before, I do pray in times of crisis. But I'm not sure anyone is listening.

Valerie Leon: Signed Photos

This English actress is one of the reasons I like the "Carry On" films from Ealing Studios. Who could forget her in "Carry On Again Doctor?" She’s also a former Bond girl. And of course, the star of "Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb." 

For 20 pounds sterling, she’ll send you a signed photo with a “customized message" of your choice. Clever girl. Do I dare to order one of her photos? I envision it in my basement man-cave, near the pool table, bearing a customized message: “Darling…. All of my love, Val."

Valerie Leon and Jim Dale in "Carry On Again Doctor"