Disturbing Hallowe'en Decorations

A house in our neighborhood is decked out with the most disturbing Halloween decorations I've ever seen. The theme: an insane asylum, possibly haunted.  Particularly troubling are the bedsheets stretched across the windows... from the inside. Scrawled upon them are the words "Danger -- Keep Out" and "Help" in ghastly red letters.

Something's not right. Apart from the obvious -- someone may be in danger -- those messages conflict with one another. If a person is being held in that house against their will, why would they create a sign that says "Keep Out" right next to the cry for help?

This has gone too far. Perhaps I should call the police. Or better yet, launch my own covert rescue operation....make a citizen's arrest, if necessary...tonight.

Further Reading
The Old Torrance Mental Hospital --  abandoned and reputedly haunted
The Truth About Halloween -- my post from last year

When Worlds Collide: X-Men/Game of Thrones Crossover

The next X-Men movie spinoff, The New Mutants, features Maisie Williams as Wolfsbane. This sets up an earth-shattering possibility. It has taken me some time to figure out how to explain this, but stay with me.

Ms. Williams is best known for her role in HBO's A Game of Thrones. Another young English actress, Sophie Turner, is in a very similar situation, portraying noblewoman Sansa Stark in A Game of Thrones and mutant Jean Grey in the X-men franchise (including the soon-to-be-released  X-Men: Dark Phoenix). The two are sisters in A Game of Thrones, but in the X-Men films..... who knows?

Let your imagination run wild. Imagine an X-Men movie in which Wolfsbane (Williams) encounters Jean Grey (Turner). They discover that each of them also exist in the  Game of Thrones universe. They have the power to move between these parallel universes. This would be a bit like those "crossover" issues of comic books, in which one character suddenly appears in another's story arc (e.g. Spiderman meets Thor, or Doctor Strange meets Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos).

Archie Meets The Punisher

This would be no mere combination of comic book characters. My fevered daydream envisions a crossover between a comic-based film franchise and a fantasy television series. Sansa Stark could appear in an X-Men film, or Wolfsbane could be in a Game of Thrones televison show.  What happens when these two worlds collide?

Yes, that's pretty far-fetched. But on the most mundane level, it would set the stage for sequels, a mind-numbing string of films stretching off into the distant future and ensuring job security for these two actresses. Envision Maisie and Sophie becoming confused between their dual characters, unsure which universe they're in, spouting Game of Thrones dialogue in the midst of  an X-Men movie or vice-versa, and driving directors insane.

In a way I feel sorry for these young actors caught up in comic book movies at such an early stage in their careers. I'm sure they're making plenty of money, but they become committed to multiple installments of films which may or may not be any good. It holds the potential to limit their careers and the way they are perceived by directors and audiences. Shailene Woodley had the same predicament with the Divergent films, and Natalie Portman with the Star Wars movies.

Further Reading:
The New Mutants
X-Men: Dark Phoenix
The Twelve Weirdest Comic Crossovers Ever
DC vs. Marvel Comics Crossover Series

The Lincolnshire Hoard

Metal detectorists recently found 282 Celtic coins in a farmer's field in Lincolnshire. This hoard is particularly interesting because the coins weren't Roman. Buried about a foot deep, they were of the Corieltauvi tribe, Celts who lived in Britain before the Roman conquest. Experts are still trying to determine when the hoard was buried. 

Courtesy of Coin World

Courtesy of Coin World

Further Reading

Brothers-in-law find ancient coin hoard ‘of national significance’,  Coin World, Oct. 16, 2017

Corieltauvi tribe, Wikipedia

The Bible-Reading Project

I recently decided to read a page of the Bible each day. Through this effort, I reasoned, it will take only 2,179 days to read the entire book. 

Before anyone finds out about this, I must clarify a few things. My friends (if I still have any) may jump to the conclusion that I have suddenly discovered religion, had a spiritual awakening, or worse yet, fallen under the influence of television preachers.  

Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not like the Bible schools and discussion groups that churches conduct for children and converts. When I began this effort, my motivation was not religious in nature. I am a skeptic in these matters, as readers of this blog (if there are any) are aware. My motivation was threefold. 

First, I was simply curious to see what is contained in this book that so many people live their lives by and accept as absolute truth -- even though I do not. Having survived for so many centuries, I reasoned, there must be something meaningful here. Now that I am retired, I have the time to explore this. 

Second, I wanted to read certain things in their original context. I wanted to track down the source of various church doctrines, as well as the anti-Semitism of the New Testament as outlined in the book Constantine's Sword. 

Finally, during my university days I learned that the Bible contains passages of great depth and beauty that are worth reading even by those who lack faith. That was one of the things I took from Dr. Russell Peck's course in classical and scriptural backgrounds of English literature. I took that course, which was required of all English majors, as a college freshman in 1972. I wish I'd been mature enough to fully appreciate it at the time.  

My page-a-day Bible reading project has already had an unexpected benefit. I keep coming across phrases I recognize from literature and everyday life. I had no idea they originated in the Bible. Here are a few examples.

The place name "Bethel" is found all over the United States. Bethel, or Beth-El, was an ancient city in Palestine described in Genesis 12:8 and 13:3. 

"Born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards" is a phrase I remember from a Herman Wouk novel. The source seems to be Job 5:7.

On a lighter note, Genesis 45:19 states: "You may live on the fat of the land." I clearly recall that phrase from an episode of the Dennis The Menace TV show (1959 - 1963). Dennis' long-suffering neighbor Mr. Wilson decides to go camping. Clutching a hatchet, he declares that he will live on the fat of the land. Dennis wants to go with him. Trouble ensues. 

Further Reading

• New Oxford Annotated Bible With The Apocrypha - New Revised Standard Version, College Edition. Annotations clarify the sometimes hard-to-understand phrasing in the original material.  Extensive commentary and background with an ecumenical attitude, including the supposed authorship of each book - the scholarly position, not church dogma.
• Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews - by James Carroll
• Dr. Russell Peck
• Bethel - Wikipedia
• Dennis the Menace - Internet Movie Database

Urim and Thummim

Among the pleasures of retirement is the freedom to research anything that arouses my curiosity. That is what led me to the Urim and the Thummim. These oddly-named and hard-to-pronounce objects came to my attention when I decided to read a page of the Bible each day.  That effort is further explained in a separate post, The Bible Reading Project. 

The Old Testament

The Urim and the Thummim are briefly and cryptically mentioned in Exodus 28:30, in which God directs Moses to make "a breastpiece of judgment," to be worn by the high priest Aaron:

"In the breastpiece of judgment you shall put the Urim and the Thummim, and they shall be on Aaron's heart when he goes before the Lord; thus Aaron shall bear the judgment of the Israelites on his heart before the Lord continually."

There is a similar reference in Leviticus 8:8. But apparently the Bible contains virtually no direct explanation of what the Urim and the Thummim actually are.  They seem to be objects, since they are put in the breastplate.  Based on 1 Samuel 14:41, scholars suggest that they were somehow used in divination by the high priest. These may have been objects (perhaps stones or bones) which were cast in attempting to discern God's answer to a yes-or-no question. 

I hasten to add that these are the findings of biblical scholars, not my own. But I will offer this observation: the names Urim and Thummim are vaguely disturbing. I can barely pronounce them. Thummim is particularly bothersome. It contains too many "m" letters. Those words sound ancient, far removed from any modern language. They remind me of Bifur, Bofur and Bombur, the dwarves in The Hobbit, or something from an H.P. Lovecraft story. 

The Mormon Connection

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), claimed that he possessed the Urim and the Thummim. He stated that this came about after he was visited in 1823 by the Angel Moroni, who had been sent by God. 

The angel, Smith said, revealed the location of the breastplate of judgment, with the Urim and the Thummim attached, and golden tablets revealing "the fullness of the everlasting Gospel." Upon looking into the Urim and the Thummim (two "seer stones" set in silver bows), Smith claimed to receive revelations from God. He also claimed that he used the Urim and the Thummim to translate the tablets into at least part of what ultimately became The Book of Mormon. 

There is much more to this story, involving magic spectacles, a sword, a second set of golden tablets, and the bizarre process by which the translation occurred (one witness claimed Smith dictated the words while gazing into his hat). The matter is complicated by conflicting accounts from Smith's associates, his wife and the prophet himself. Those with an interest can consult Fawn Brodie's excellent and objective biography of Smith. It reveals that in addition to Urim and Thummim, Joseph Smith had certain "peep stones" that enabled him to detect the presence of buried treasure of a very secular nature. 

The New Age

Among New Age mystics, interest in the Urim and the Thummim continues to this day. Authors have published entire books on the subject, despite the fact that virtually nothing is known beyond what I've summarized above. And to my dismay, I have discovered products for sale which are supposed to be replicas of Urim and Thummim and the breastplate of judgment. In fact, I was given one of the latter years ago as a housewarming gift, and did not even know what it was supposed to be. 

Further Reading

• No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith - by Fawn Brodie
• Urim and Thummim: A Guide for Using the Breastplate of Judgment for Decision-Making, Advice and Divination -  by D.W. Prudence
• The Breastplate of the High Priest: Unlocking The Mystery of The Living Stones - by Gwen Mouliert

Metaphysics

I read recently of the theory of the multiverse, which states that our reality may be just one of a huge number of parallel universes. Articles on this can be found all over the internet; this one is from one of the more authoritative publications.

The Case for Parallel Universes - Scientific American

Setting aside astrophysics, string theory and the like, I understand that some things are hidden to us, and always will be. They exist even though we are unaware of them. There are limits to what humans can perceive. What we do perceive cannot be the complete reality.

Suppose that there are an immense number of parallel universes, existing side by side, only one of which we can perceive. Close but not touching...beyond time, beyond reason, beyond comprehension. If so, who created all those different universes? The inhabitants of one of these bubbles would reason that something must have created what they believe is "everything." They would call that entity God, the supreme being. But what about all the other universes? Must each and every one of them necessarily have been created by the same God? If there are an unlimited number of universes, could there also be an infinite number of beings which created them? Must there be one entity which is supreme over all?

The very concept of a supreme being is imponderable. Every thing -- at least, every concrete thing - we can think of is exceeded by something greater. The largest number you can think of is always exceeded by something larger. You may be strong, or smart, or beautiful, but there is bound to be someone stronger, smarter, more beautiful. You may be the fastest gun in the West, or the best guitar player in the world, but inevitably you will encounter someone faster or better.

Where does it end? People of faith believe that there is something greater than everything, and they call that God. But if there are multiple realities, it is at least possible that each was created by a different being -- not supreme, but merely superior: an artisan, who like a watchmaker assembled that particular universe and set it in motion. Must there be a supreme being who created all those artisan gods and has dominion over them? Or is there no supreme being, just an endless series of higher and higher beings, each greater than the next, on and on to infinity?

Or perhaps there are no higher beings at all. If something exists, must it have been created by something else?

These are questions with no answers.

Unofficial Retirement

Such has been my status for the past three years. I never pictured myself as the sort of person who retired early. But somehow events and chance brought me to this point. Two corporate mergers in four years left me out of a job at age 60. At that age professional options narrow considerably, especially when you’re as specialized as I am and unwilling to relocate. 

At this point the relocation issue hardly matters. Most corporations don't spend tens of thousands of dollars to relocate a well-paid professional who is less than 2 years away from normal retirement age.

Interviews for several local jobs in my chosen profession produced no results, and also confirmed what I already knew: I have lost my appetite for corporate life, with the attendant stress, anxiety and long hours I endured for decades. 

I thought I was prepared for this situation. My fallback plan was to finish my working years in a less demanding job, or even a menial one: limousine driver, casino employee, night watchman, or something of that sort. But I can’t bear to think about the drudgery and poor working conditions of such a job, especially when there is no financial need for it. 

On a lark, I applied for a job with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). As I worked my way through the application process, I found myself warming to the idea of being an airline security officer (i.e. bag screener). I knew I would do that job properly and thoroughly. I pictured myself as a man doing important work, protecting our nation. A commanding figure in a uniform and badge,  directing air travelers to take off their shoes and step through the metal detector. I stated that I was willing to work nights, weekends, part time, full time, overtime and split shifts. But the TSA had no interest in my candidacy, as recruiters say. What’s the big deal? I’m only 63 years old. 

So, here I sit, weighing the remaining options: Community service? Volunteer? Start my own little business, doing God only knows what? I'd better begin by pulling  myself out of this funk. A trip to the gym would be a good place to start. 

The Gnostic Gospels

By Elaine H. Pagels
1979; Vintage Books/Random House; 182 pages
ISBN 0-679-72453-2

I wasn't seeking religious enlightenment when I started reading this book. I bought it mainly because I'm interested in archaeology and history. But I got much more than I bargained for.

First, as to the archaeology and history which so intrigued me: in 1945 an Egyptian peasant discovered a jar buried in the desert near the town of Naj Hammadi. In it were 13 papyrus books, bound in leather. Sold on the black market through antiquities dealers in Cairo, some were eventually acquired by a Dutch biblical scholar. The first line he translated was: "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down." 

He recognized this as the first line of the Secret Gospel of Thomas. Written by a gnostic Christian sect in the second century AD, this was one of many texts that early church leaders excluded from the New Testament. As Pagels put it:

"What we call Christianity – and what we identify as Christian tradition – actually represents only a small selection of specific sources, chosen from among dozens of others. Who made that selection, and for what reasons? Why were these other writings excluded and banned as 'heresy'?"

Pagels makes a convincing argument that what we know as Christianity was influenced not only by competing religious beliefs, but also by church politics in the first two centuries AD. What follows is a summary of Pagels' key ideas.

The roots of this conflict lay in disagreements over the nature of the creator, and how one gains  access to the supreme being. Some of the gnostic Christians who wrote these gospels believed that the self and the divine were identical. They believed that to know oneself at the deepest level is simultaneously to know God. 

The gnostic Christians believed in a supreme being who started the process of creation - brought the universe into existence out of nothingness. But they also believed that a lesser and imperfect divine being, the demiurge, took what the supreme being created and fashioned it into the form and substance of the universe - an artisan god, if you will. Since the demiurge was not perfect, this explained why the universe is not perfect.

Gnostics believed that orthodox Christians were mistakenly worshipping the demiurge, believing it to be supreme being. They also believed that the bishops and priests of the established church understood only the elementary doctrines. The gnostic Christians claimed to offer access to secret mysteries and higher teachings, which came from the supreme being. 

Thus, for the gnostics, the established church could not be the ultimate religious authority. The individual gnostic did not need the established church hierarchy in order to attain self-knowledge, and thereby to know God.  

This brought the gnostic Christians into conflict with the orthodox church, which insisted that there is only one God. Orthodox Christians believed their church's legitimacy came directly from the 12 apostles, who had direct contact with Jesus during his lifetime.  The apostles' successors, and the inheritors of their authority, were the bishops, priests and deacons of the established church. Therefore, according to orthodox church thought, theirs was the one true faith, and none could come to the father except through Jesus, who died to save the world from sin and thereby redeem all believers.

In contrast, gnostic Christians viewed Jesus as a spiritual instructor who came from the supreme being to show the path to God, which proceeded through self-knowledge. Once the individual had attained this gnosis (usually translated as "knowledge"),  Jesus was no longer the instructor, but an equal.

For these reasons, gnostic Christian beliefs represented a threat to both the doctrine and the authority and hierarchy of the established church at Rome. That, Pagels says, is probably why the gnostic gospels were called heresy, suppressed, and excluded from the New Testament.

I was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church. But I have never been a person of faith, because the church's concept of God has internal contradictions that I can't accept. I cannot accept the idea of a creator, king of the universe, who loves us but also stands ready to judge each and every one of us for doing or thinking the wrong things. I can't bring myself to believe that a supreme being with the power to create all things visible and invisible would also watch us and insist that we worship and obey him. But to this reader, what Pagels has written is nuanced and acceptable. History is written by the victors. Christianity is a doctrine shaped by the victors in a dispute over fundamental matters of theology. The gnostic scriptures put the early church in a less than divine light. 

Further Reading

The New York Times, June 14, 2003 - The Heresy That Saved A Skeptic (interview with Pagels)

Gnosis.org -  The Gnostic World View: A Brief Summary of Gnosticism 

The Catholic Encyclopedia - Gnosticism

Wikipedia - Catharism (two Gods, one good and the other evil)

The Internet Classics Archive - Timaeus, by Plato (demiurge as a craftsman who created the visible and tangible world as a model of something greater)

Bitches Crystal

I've long thought that "Bitches Crystal" is one of the best tracks on Emerson Lake & Palmer's 1971 LP Tarkus.  It has the familiar ELP formula, with a brisk tempo, a genre-bending piano solo, cool washes of synthesizer and interesting lyrics. It's hard to forget a line like "Heretic priestess dwells on the weakness she sees."

Heady stuff. But there are several issues here. First of all, the title: is there an apostrophe missing? Shouldn't the title be Bitch's Crystal or Bitches' Crystal?

And, as with Karn Evil 9, we face the old problem: what do the lyrics (written by Greg Lake) mean - if anything?

Bitches crystal notes how you twist all the lines
Fortune teller, future seller of time 

Chorus:
Tortured spirits cry
Fear is in their eyes
Ghostly images die 

Witch's potion mixed in the ocean of tears
Mystical powers emerge from the towers of fear
[Chorus]  

Evil learning, people burning
Savage blasting, no one lasting
Witchcraft, sadness, madness turn in their minds 

Ritual killings that swear in the [shillings?] to be
Heretic priestess dwells on the weakness she sees
[Chorus]

Groping for meaning, it occurred to me that the lyrics could be describing television. The bitch’s crystal is your television set. The song describes the programs shown thereon. When you turn off the set, “ghostly images die.”

But this is tortured reasoning. We must accept the possibility that the lyrics have no deeper meaning. Perhaps this is just a song about a witch looking into her crystal ball, the spells she casts, and the images she sees.  Or perhaps these are merely clever phrases strung together in free association, a loosely connected series of cool-sounding words that rhyme and fit the song's cadence, like some Moody Blues tunes.

That may be how the song actually came to be. But I have imagined a scenario that is much more satisfying. It's an extension of an experience I had some years ago at a late-night street fair in Las Vegas.

It was well after midnight, and the crowd was thinning out. The only street performer that interested me was a woman dressed like a gypsy, standing beside a cleverly painted gypsy wagon. She was darkly handsome, and looked haughty and cruel, and rather dangerous as well. Inside the wagon, I could see a small table and two chairs.  Stay away, my inner voice told me.

But had I entered that wagon, what might the fortune teller have seen in her bitch's crystal? She would be a heretic priestess that dwells on the weakness she sees. Her words would be dark and disturbing, foretelling suffering and a frustrated life of thwarted plans which never come to fruition.  In her crystal ball tortured spirits cry, fear in their eyes. Then the ghostly images die, and darkness overcomes me. I awake in an alley, with my watch and wallet missing and a pounding headache from the witch's potion (mixed in an ocean of tears) she slipped into my drink. Before the sun comes up, I stagger home and write the lyrics to Bitches Crystal.

There is in fact a gypsy fortune teller in Las Vegas on Fremont Street. I never went into the wagon, so most of this never happened. If you don't like this fevered fantasy, I challenge you to submit a better one.

Further Reading:

• Wikipedia - Tarkus
• Tarkus page on Emerson Lake & Palmer web site
• Discogs - Tarkus

Alien: Covenant

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. 

In the past week I've seen Alien: Covenant, Prometheus and Logan. The experience has left me feeling weary, overstuffed and over-stimulated, like a little kid who eats all his candy on the day after Halloween. I don't want to see any more sci-fi or films about comic book characters for a while. 

Browsing through the user reviews on imdb.com, I 'm surprised to see how many negative comments Alien: Covenant has attracted. But when you're Ridley Scott, it's possible to be a victim of your own success: if you make a film that is not absolutely wonderful and doesn't measure up to  Blade Runner  or Gladiator, a certain segment of the audience (fanboys, you might say) are disappointed. And a certain subset of that segment will go out of their way to write negative reviews. That's showbiz. 

I will leave it to others to pass judgment on whether this is a "good" movie. I don't pretend to the role of critic, nor do I require my sci-fi/horror films to meet Ingmar Bergman standards. I wiill say that I enjoyed all 122 minutes of Alien: Covenant.  Why? I suppose it's because it has a credible story, satisfying tie-ins to the previous films, great action sequences and beautiful visuals. But now I sound like a critic, so it's time to stop agonizing over why I liked it. I just liked it, and that's enough for me.  As for themes, deeper meanings and big thoughts in general: yes, there are some here. But somebody smarter than I will have to instruct me on that.

I'm a big fan of the first two Alien films, and Prometheus as well. This compares well to those entries in the canon. And it's brilliant compared to those awful sequels like Alien vs. Predator and so much else I see on DirecTV. So I guess the negative reaction from the fan audience just boils down to deflated expectations. As for me, I'm sure I'll watch it again on home video.  

Whatever format you choose, here's a word of caution: you might want to watch Prometheus before Alien: Covenant. This story arc is getting pretty complex. 

Drunken Man Sues Tavern

After a four-hour bender at a neighborhood tavern in Youngwood PA, including "shots of liquor," this patron became so intoxicated that he fell off his bar stool. In doing so, he suffered a painful 
shoulder injury. Aching and angry, he has decided to sue the tavern.

“They kept giving him drinks," said his attorney. "You're not supposed to feed people so much booze they fall off a bar stool." He has a point there.

I think I'll go down to this tavern  tonight. I want to sit on one of those bar stools and have a few shots. I'm pretty good at this sort of undercover work. 

Drunken man falls off bar stool, sues Youngwood tavern owners

Tribune-Review, Westmoreland PA, May 16, 2017

Self-Castration

When it comes to self-castration stories, this one tops this list. It's from The Latrobe (PA) Bulletin. Briefly: this person castrated himself and became a transgendered female. Then she (?) somehow convinced two of her six husbands to let her castrate them as well. I don't know what to say about this, except that life is full of surprises.  

source: The Latrobe (PA) Bulletin

Vero Beach Shipwreck Gold

Treasure hunters are still finding gold coins from a Spanish fleet that sank off Vero Beach, Florida in 1715. The most recent discoveries: over 200 coins recovered about 100 feet offshore, in only six feet of water.

Link:

Recently salvaged shipwreck gold from 1715 Plate Fleet reaches market

Coin World, October 7, 2016

The Truth About Halloween

A Christian friend once told me that he didn't like Halloween because it was "the Devil's holiday." That struck me as dreadfully misinformed, but when I tried to set him straight, I found I wasn't quite sure of the facts. Thus began my one-man crusade to uncover the truth about Halloween. 

Pagan Festival of the Dead
In the Catholic liturgy, Halloween is the same day as All Hallow's Eve. According to folklore scholar Joseph Campbell:  

"The day after Hallowe’en is All Saints’ Day, followed by All Souls’ Day. In Europe on these days people go to the graves of their beloved ones who have passed away. Hallowe’en, the eve of the holy days (that’s what the word means), is a festival of the ancient Celtic world particularly... In the Celtic world—the world with which Hallowe’en is associated—it is the dead who come to visit the homes. Hallowe’en is the night of the re-entry of the dead into their domiciles, visiting again the people with whom they had dwelled." (Joseph Campbell on the Roots of Halloween - The Daily Beast)

Looking further back, scholars believe the historical origin of Halloween lies in the Celtic festival of Samhain. Larousse World Mythology refers to October 31 as "Samhain's feast." In his monumental work The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer refers to Samhain as "an ancient pagan festival of the dead": 

"Halloween seems to have been the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter... when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them by their affectionate kinsfolk." (The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion, Sir James George Frazer)

Frazer states that on Samhain, the Celts used "manifold methods of divination... for the purpose of ascertaining their destiny in the coming year." He also suggests  that it may have been the Celtic new year.  Nora Chadwick's excellent book The Celts also describes Samhain as "the beginning of the Celtic year, when any barriers between man and the supernatural were lowered." 

Going beyond dead relatives, there was a further supernatural side to Samhain, as Frazer points out: 

"It is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be hovering unseen... Witches then speed on their errands of mischief... the fairies, too, are all let loose, and hobgoblins of every sort roam freely about." 

Chadwick puts this into perspective by pointing out "the naturalness with which men, women and the gods to pass in and out of the natural and supernatural spheres (in Celtic mythology). In many circumstances, there does not seem to have been any barrier." 

Based on the above, it's hard to make the case that Halloween is the Devil's holiday. Rather, Halloween seems more like a relic of an earlier belief system, in which looser rules were thought to be in effect on this one day of the year. 

The Lord of the Dead
A diabolical controversy erupted when I consulted The World Book Encyclopedia, the fount of all knowledge when I was a child. The World Book describes Samhain as "the festival of the Celtic god Samhain, lord of the dead." Could this "lord of the dead" be an earlier representation of Satan? 

A detailed treatment of that subject by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance maintains that there never was a Celtic lord of the dead called Samhain. Rather, they say, this was an 18th-century author's error that has been perpetuated by the popular media. 

Cernunnos, the horned god

That appears to be the case. After further searching, I found no scholarly source which mentions a Celtic god called Samhain. The Celts did worship a horned god, Cernunnos. He was the lord of wild things, according to The Encyclopedia Britannica. Some say he was the Celts' god of fertility, life, animals, wealth, and the underworld. To my mind, that description is too multi-faceted to support a belief in Cernunnos as an evil supernatural being.

What then was the original source of the connection between Halloween and the Devil? The most satisfying explanation I have found is that of tensions between early Christianity and the pagan religions which preceded it:   

"(The feast of) Samhain, with its emphasis on the supernatural, was decidedly pagan. While missionaries identified their holy days with those observed by the Celts, they branded the earlier religion's supernatural deities as evil, and associated them with the devil. As representatives of the rival religion, Druids were considered evil worshippers of devilish or demonic gods and spirits. The Celtic underworld inevitably became identified with the Christian Hell." (Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows by Jack Santino, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)

Here, perhaps, we have come to the heart of the matter: an ancient pagan festival of the dead returning from the underworld, later characterized by Christians as a night when evil beings from Hell are let loose. It's only one step from this explanation to that of "the Devil's holiday."  

The Old Devil
Unless my sketchy research has missed something,  it seems we safely can lay to rest the notion that Halloween is the Devil's holiday -- a conclusion made easier by the fact that I don't believe in "the ol' Devil" (as my granny used to call him) anyway. I welcome any information or opinions to the contrary. Just share your thoughts by leaving a comment in the space provided below. And have a frightfully happy Halloween.  

Further Reading

• All Hallows Eve - Catholic Education Resource Center
• All Saints Day - The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Cernunnos - The Encyclopedia Britannica
• Halloween's Celtic Roots - The Archaeological Institute of America 
• Halloween in Scotland, by Ben Johnson: article published in History UK - The History and Heritage Accommodation Guide
• Halloween, Samhain, All Saints Day - The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance 
• Samhain: Season of Death and Renewal, by Alexei Kondratiev: article published in An Tríbhís Mhór: The IMBAS Journal of Celtic Reconstructionism, volume 2, issue 1/2

The Stephen King Renaissance

Author Stephen King’s career has been marked by enormous output paired with repeated tragedy and recovery. His latest comeback is, to this longtime reader, the most surprising of all.

King has experienced a remarkable burst of creative energy in the last few years. His productivity alone is surprising -- six novels in three years – but what’s even more impressive is the quality of these recent books. I found them to be superior to anything he has produced for decades.

The King renaissance began in 2013 with Doctor Sleep, winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. In this sequel to one of his best-known works, we’re reintroduced to Danny Torrance, who escaped the haunted Overlook Hotel as a child in The Shining (1977). Danny is a troubled adult now, drifting through life in a series of menial jobs but with precognitive powers still intact. 

Also in 2013, King followed this strong performance with Joyland, the story of a college student who spends his summer vacation working in an amusement park. Naturally, the funhouse is rumored to be haunted. “Who dares to enter the Funhouse of Fear?” asks the teaser on the cover. King has said he built the entire 282-page story from a single image he carried in his mind for 20 years: that of a boy in a wheelchair flying a kite on a beach.

The amusement park theme reappears in King’s 2014 novel Revival. It’s the tale of a church pastor who conducts esoteric experiments on unsuspecting subjects culled from carnivals and tent revivals, becoming an amusement park attraction and evangelist along the way. A supernatural element appears at the very end, but even without this nod to his fan base King’s strong storytelling carries book tale along in fine fashion.

That same year, King published Mr. Mercedes (2014) a straightforward crime novel about a retired detective on the trail of a serial killer. Something of a bold departure for King, with no horror elements at all, this novel won the Edgar Allen Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America. The central character and his crew reappear in Finders Keepers and End of Watch, both published in 2016.

Six novels in three years. It’s a marvel that King can keep up this level of quantity and quality at this stage of his career. This is a writer who overcame multiple substance abuse problems in the 1980s, survived a near-fatal car accident in 1999, suffered chronic pain and Oxycontin addiction thereafter, and announced his retirement from writing in 2002. Now approaching age 70, the man is back with a vengeance.  

Listen to Stephen King’s 2013 interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross here. 

"Don't Mean a Thing" by Floating Bridge

The Seattle band Floating Bridge released the song "Don't Mean a Thing" in 1969.  I loved it back then, when I was 15 years old. After almost 50 years it stands up quite well to my mind, bouncing along at a jaunty beat with an eclectic blend of twangy guitars, plaintive country-tinged vocals and an old-time wah wah guitar solo.

Then there are the lyrics. Ah, those lyrics. Back in 1969, I assumed they told the tale of a guy who was feeling frustrated with a certain girl.  After all, this is rock and roll, so love and heartbreak are usually a safe bet. But listening now with my well-seasoned ears, I'm not quite sure what the lyrics are about.  

Click image to listen

In an attempt to unravel this mystery, I've gone so far as to transcribe the lyrics. Words which are unclear are in parentheses below.  

When you talked you didn’t make sense to me

You know I liked the way I thought you’d be

The tinted glass means nothing to me

And it don’t mean a thing to me

It don’t mean a thing to me

Looking back into the picture frame

I saw no point in your [unclear]  

Your [unclear] remains the same

And it don’t mean a thing to me

It don’t mean a thing to me

Looking for you [unclear] 

You know what appearances mean to me

You ain’t what I thought you’d be

And it don’t mean a thing to me

It don’t mean a thing to me

I especially like the progression of the phrases "I liked the way I though you'd be... you ain't what I thought you'd be...it don't mean a thing to me." There's parallel structure here. It's not what you'd expect on a 45 rpm single. But this was 1969. Envelopes were being pushed. Barriers were being broken, genres thrust aside, eardrums (including mine) permanently damaged.  If you have anything to add to my understanding of the lyrics, feel free to post a comment below. 

Links:

• Originally issued in 45 rpm format, this song was also a bonus track on a reissue of the band's only album, and  was included in several compilation albums, including Nuggets 8 - The Northwest  and Son of Gutbucket.
•  Band biography on Allmusic Guide.

Free Tuition for All!

After hours of watching the Republican and Democratic party conventions, I have a question. Many questions, actually.  

Some candidates want college tuition to be free for every student whose family earns less than $125,000 per year. How much will that cost taxpayers? Who will bear the tax burden, and what programs will have to be cut to avoid increasing the federal budget deficit? Would you prefer to have free tuition or universal health care, if you had to pick one or the other? Subsidies for renewable energy? Free solar panels for everyone, even people in Cleveland? Should we cut spending on defense, law enforcement and border control to accommodate these social policy objectives? 

Will the free tuition be available to students who have low standardized test scores and can't handle the class work? Students who don't go to class? Children of illegal immigrants? Or US citizens only? 

Is $125,000 the right threshold? Or should it be much lower, perhaps $50,000 or whatever the official poverty level is today? But wait, don't poor people already get help with college tuition? 

My opinions aren't important. But whoever we elect had better be up to the challenge of grappling with these issues. 

That's it. It's time to watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

Unfriended

The plot of Unfriended (available on HBO Go) is easy to grasp, but this film is unconventional to say the least. It takes place entirely on a teenage girl’s computer screen.

In this modern update of a time-tested formula, a girl spends an evening home alone, chatting with her friends on social media. A stranger joins their chat session, taunting them as tension builds. Who is this sinister stalker who won’t go away. He/she is a stranger who thinks they were involved in a cyberbullying incident -- but were they? Once the teens discover that the stranger cannot be "unfriended," it’s not long before hysterical, shrieking mayhem ensues.

For those who like messages in their movies, this one’s simple: if your children or grandchildren are online and unsupervised, they aren't safe, even in a quiet, guard-gated community like mine. 

Unfriended is unique in that literally everything is depicted through the lens of Skype, Facebook, Twitter and a dizzying array of other computer applications. The only view we have of the characters is through split-screen shots of young people staring at their webcams. There is spoken dialogue, but we’re also required to read the contents of web pages, text boxes and search engines.

At first I thought this was merely an opening gimmick. But to my surprise, it went on for the entire film. The fact that a film producer saw commercial potential here says a lot about how social media has infiltrated young peoples' lives.

Teenagers will like Unfriended for its cheap thrills, youthful characters and contemporary twist. Parents and grandparents will find themselves on familiar ground, because this film has its roots in the teen horror/slasher film tradition which began way back in the 1980s, with films like Halloween, Friday the 13^th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Ah, memories. A sequel, Unfriended 2, is planned. 

Gray Mountain

By John Grisham
Doubleday, 368 pp. 

• ISBN: 978-0-385-53714-8

• 
  

John Grisham is a novel-writing machine, having pumped out some 29 books since his first, A Time to Kill, in 1988. For such a productive writer, coming up with great plot ideas must be a challenge. His fans will not be disappointed with Gray Mountain, in which an inexperienced young lawyer takes on ruthless coal mining companies with deadly results. 

In Grisham’s tale, attorney Samantha loses her job with a prestigious New York law firm during the 2008 financial crisis. With nothing better on the horizon, she goes to work in a legal aid office in coal country – western Virginia, that is. There she learns of the evils of strip mining, mountaintop removal and black lung disease. Outraged, Samantha teams up with crusading environmental activists who fight back in unorthodox ways. 

Readers of Grisham’s past work will recognize one of his favorite themes: small-time lawyers struggle heroically against big, bad corporations who run roughshod through people’s lives. Throw in some colorful rural characters, vicious meth dealers and a rogue lawyer, and you’ve got another sure-fire page turner. I read most of this book on a plane to and from the east coast, and wasn’t bored for a moment. 

What drew me to it? Simple: I was seeking local color. The novel takes place largely in what Grisham terms “Appalachia.” I lived and worked in the region for seven years. Our western Pennsylvania town had its heyday 100 years ago, when the steel mills and glass factories were thriving. So were the coal mines, which provided the fuel both industries (and the electric utilities) needed. Nowadays most of the mines in western Pennsylvania are closed, but the evidence of them is all around if you know where to look, in place names, coal patch hamlets and the orange water that seeps out of abandoned mines. 

My fondness for the region is perhaps the source of my issue with this book: it contains too many sweeping statements as to how coal mining companies break every rule in the book. Surely they cannot all be as bad as he depicts them.

Links
Washington Post review
Kirkus review, 

Elusive Polish Treasure Train

According to this story in The New Yorker, there is a culture of treasure hunting in southwest Poland. With good reason: they keep finding abandoned tunnels.  

The Nazi Underground: Is treasure hidden beneath the mountains of Poland?

by Jake Halpern

The New Yorker, May 9, 2016

"Starting in 1943, the Nazis began building a series of underground bunkers beneath the Góry Sowie, or Owl Mountains, in Lower Silesia. All told, there were seven facilities...Historians believe that the Nazis intended to connect these facilities with tunnels; and some treasure hunters...insist that the tunnels were completed and then sealed off by the German military in the last days of the war. The problem with the tunnels, from the treasure hunters' point of view, is that they present a seemingly endless number of possibilities. Each new passageway, even if it is empty or a dead end, leads to a spot where another passageway may start."