|
Our friend Natasha industriously nurtures a conceit she is “allergic” to exercise. When I sang the praises to her of the Greek ideal of bodily excellence joined to a clear and incisive mind, the lady told me, “Damn the Greeks!”  Now great Ajax and Achilles grimly frown. Almighty Zeus from Mt. Olympus thunders wrathfully. Athena the Grey-Eyed and Bright Apollo are in tears. All Hellas mourns, and even Stony-Hearted ’Hannes grieves. Yet there was a better and more winsome way I could have offered my appeal. Because the Greeks prized Beauty. Our Natasha owns and travels with a store of lovely clothes to all parts of the world. For she is a pretty princess, and I think she knows it.  So, let me recommend – with humble duty – exercise as BEAUTY-TREATMENT. Yr. Obednt. Servant,   This year, as always, if I like a candidate, I will give that candidate my vote, and numbers of my fellow Americans will do the same. The conventions and the campaigns to follow may clear away some misgivings and some doubts. So far, however, both anticipated party choices are exceptionally ill-received by the electorate.  Hence, too many citizens may avoid the polls. Please don’t do that – instead consider: a “WRITE-IN VOTE.” Let that be Humphrey Bogart, or Maureen O’Hara, or Kamehameha the Great, King of Hawaii 1810-19, or name your favorite niece. This will do little good in 2016. But a notable count of “write-ins” will mean a powerful message – and a painful – to the loser. For they will thus learn they likely would have won, had they offered a person better able to win the people’s trust. But keeping ourselves at home will never do, because that will mean we do not care. Therein lies exceeding danger.   A difficulty has this month arisen interfering with the continuity of the log. We hope you will continue reading our product in the future. We are and will be grateful for your attention.   The panorama of the world ranges all about me – I am the unimportant midpoint of the whole. Millennia ago a dwarf, my ancestor, faced four main tasks. 1. For mutual benefit, life in community with others. 2. To gather experience and to learn. 3. Productive creativity – craftsmanship. 4. To render care to personal love.  Around this sparse field of action lay – imagined infinite and eternal – a domain of spirit beings. The best known became the Indo-European sky gods and the single deity of revealed religion. From occasions of good will and fellowship in the community and particles of time of happiest love, the dwarf reasoned – not provably but quite logically – a perfected heavenly abode. That land “unknowable” is not the modern dwarf’s chief concern. His once tight field of endeavor has expanded by community growth, research and study, and by manufacture. A widening belt of philosophy, learning, and of know-how now separates me and fellow dwarfs from the transcendent realm.  Nature has set us bodily into the center of our world. Through Renaissance and Humanism, Enlightenment and Modernity, we have made that our own resolve.  |
Johannes
|
| von Gumppenberg | Johannes Speaks |
RSS Feed
|
|