Where have I been?

Why can I never stick with anything? I think about it but I don't do it.

Guess stuff just isn't important enough to me.

Currently reading The Bible Exposed or How To Be Happy In Your Disbelief by Rev. Luck Erinwhite. A. Dry tongue in cheek look at how the Bible is contradictory and based on stories that came before it from other cultures. 

Willa Cather's My Antonia

I've started My Ántonia by Willa Cather. And I like it.

Of course, I have never picked up My Ántonia for several reasons. First, the title alone turns me off. Without knowing anything about its place in history or much about Willa Cather, I just never picked up the book and read the summary.  Secondly,  it has never been thrown in my face, so to speak. If it was part of the High School Curriculum, I don't remember. I do remember the name Willa Cather. Finally, I assumed it was a mans name and the same as my previous husband, so I just didn't have interest.

In any event, there I am in the store, looking for a book to read. I like to shop Goodwill for books, by the way.  I see a plain copy of My Ántonia and pick it up. When I say plain, I mean beige with a darker beige ink and a black and white photo on the front of whom I assume is WC. So, I read the back cover and surprising the description intrigues me. I think mostly because I have been doing my genealogy and finding more about the early pioneers of the Midwest interesting. Also, there has been a new commercial on TV for Levis, I think, and the voice-over is reciting O Pioneers!...So, that's how I came to read My My Ántonia.

I jumped right in without Goggling anything about the novel or its author. The introduction had me thinking - Well no wonder! -- she goes right on into how she can't stand the wife of  a friend.  You see, I had assumed the intro was by Willa and not that if the "storyteller"  who is not the actual author who is Willa who is writing as the voice of the ..... well you get my point now, don't you.

Then, I read the first chapter of Book One The Shimerdas and I figure out that the POV is the friend with the wife that the storyteller dislikes who is not Willa writing as herself.  Now, I am set straight and enjoying the story. But by the third chapter, I start to wish I was reading the story aloud to my children.

I've put the book now for now. I need to do my research so that I can know what I reading.
Willa In A Nutshell
Born 1873 in Virginia, moved to Nebraska when she was 9. After graduating from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1895, she moved to Pittsburgh to begin a career in journalism and after 5 years she turned to teaching. While teaching, she wrote and didn't exactly wow every one. Then in 1918, she hit the big time, with My Ántonia, which is about living in Nebraska.  For the next 19 years she wrote a bunch of stuff and even won awards for her writing. She died in 1947.


Need to know more?  Try Sparknotes.


My Ántonia In A Nutshell


A fictionalization of Willa's youth in Nebraska -- vividly describes the prairie and life of Jim as he grows up and moves to the big city.  It's a classical piece of work, albeit a modernist novel, because during that time period, people were still reconciling the advancing industrialization of the modern world with their own world view.

How It Changes My World In A Nutshell
I suppose it gives a real face to the body of life I have created for my own ancestors in my head.  Some pioneered their way to Indian, then Iowa and Missouri.  Even my grandparents had the experience of moving from the Rural to the Urban.  Ántonia's family are immigrants and that pertains int the same manner. 


Finally, who can't resist a love story?

How Can So Much Time Pass?

Apparently, I am unable to be a blogger. I just can't get it together to type something everyday :)

Books That Can Change Your Life.... I Need A Reading List

Books are important to me. Not just Great Books, but most books -- every day, ordinary stories, DIYs, cook-books, you -name -it -I -want -it -on -my -shelf-books. (yes, I love libraries) I like books with tiny words, big words, pictures and indexes. Leather bound, cardboard, metal --- all good.

Did she just say metal? Yes, I did. I have a 1938 cook book which consists of a set of recipe cards enclosed in a metal six-ring binder.

I like old books, new books, and magazines. I like reference books. I like, most of all, that I can find meaning in a book that pertains to my life at any given junction. I don’t expect that I will ever write or publish my own book, although I would like to do just that. I don’t love to write as much as I love to read.

However, as part of my effort to keep the brain working and to understand myself, I write about what I read. I do this to help digest what I have read. I do this because when it was the time in my life when I was meant to read and absorb great ideas from great books by great individuals, I was too self-absorbed. I often wonder if my sense of failure as a human comes from not imbibing the knowledge back then……

I will not dwell on it. I have probably 50-60 more years to make use of and I want to do something great. So, I am starting from scratch in asking and finding answers to eternal questions. But the benefit of starting from scratch a second time, is that you remember the pros and cons, the benefits and drawbacks, what worked and what didn’t that you learned from the first time and if you are smart, you remember to use this knowledge the second time.

I took many things at face value for a long time. Maybe not the extent as some as I usually needed to know history or background as to why we came to a certain conclusion. But when it comes to the first eternal question asked by so many, I have already formed some of my answer. The question is God? Does God or do gods exist? What is the divine and does it care about humans?

By the way, these eternal questions asked by nearly everyone at some point were defined by Professor J. Rufus Fears from the University of Oklahoma. With a Ph.D. from Harvard, numerous awards and many books under his belt, I at least feel he is someone who can guide me on my quest for understanding as I make my way through a self-led course from The Teaching Company entitled Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life.

Question number 2 is about fate, number 3 about good and evil and the last question relates to discovering how we should live. In the history of civilizations, written language developed to pass the answers of these same questions from generation to generation. But I see where it has be perverted and used for evil to create people that are lost and with out a real sense of self --- those blinded by being unable to “think for themselves” or deceived into believing that they do think for themselves but are so brained washed. I don’t really know what I am trying to say here, but I am not be condescending. I just think there is so much more out there and that people don’t challenge the status quo because they just can’t. They can’t. They just can’t.

So… following Professor Rufus, I am off to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, along with some supplemental texts. Can’t wait to see where this takes me.

Why Do Women Have Sex? - Yahoo! News

Why Do Women Have Sex? - Yahoo! News

I was enticed to read this thinking I might learn something I didn't already know. Nope, one big fat DUH!

The more and more I think about it, the more and more the idea of Sin bothers me. Those who preach terror are fools.

We are human and sex is a very complicated emotional action. No big deal. So is just about everything we do from eating to shitting.

Just when you think you are the only one

Just when you think you are the only one to battle a particular thought in your heart and mind, all you have to do is Google it and VOILA!  someone has already figured it out.

Nothing I do or say seems to ever be original.  It doesn't matter though, does it? I mean, after all, we are all just the same atoms recycled over and over so why shouldn't our thoughts be the same?

I struggle with Religion. I mean modern day church-on-Wednesday-nights-and-Sunday-mornings-let's-all-be-too-judgemental-hyprocritcal religion.  I struggle with my own belief in God, Jesus and Christian thought. I yearn to understand more about Judeaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Naturalists --- any other alternative really.  I hold most true and close to my heart science. 

Paranormal.  Art. Health. Oddities. Extraterrestrial.  History. Oikology. Everything.

That spells Pahoehoe which is a type of lava flow.  From Wikipedia "A pāhoehoe flow typically advances as a series of small lobes and toes that continually break out from a cooled crust. It also forms lava tubes where the minimal heat loss maintains low viscosity. The surface texture of pāhoehoe flows varies widely, displaying all kinds of bizarre shapes often referred to as lava sculpture. With increasing distance from the source, pāhoehoe flows may change into ʻaʻā flows in response to heat loss and consequent increase in viscosity."   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava

That's my life and learning.  I just flow along, reading, watching, listening and thinking about everything and nothing.  If my brain weren't encapsulated in my skull, it would flow looking much like the patterns seen in Pahoehoe lava, don't you think?

I recently stumbled across a web site about how the Brain Cell looks like the Universe.  That pretty sums up my day.  It is a mouse's brain cell, but that is no matter to me.   It just proves we are repeating patterns.  It also served to show me what I have been feeling. Religion, spiritualism --- what ever name you give it exists in your heart and mind to give you a sense of belonging in a giant endless universe. 

I also found Scared Evolution.  I am still reading up on it but my first impression is this: How retarded.  I hate when people try to create something and they do it with such an immature design that their masterpiece comes off as laughable.  I know I feel this way partly out of that jealous thought of "Why didn't I think of doing that?" and partly out of thinking if you are going to do something, do it well.

You know what I realized just now?  I started this blog because I don't have anyone to talk to about everything and nothing.  I always think my thoughts and interests don't appeal to many others or that I am offending them.