Discoveries

Contents
Discoveries
Weekly Puzzle
Spring Question
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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Carl Sagan
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Hello La Paz, Bolivia. May you grow wealthy on good crops.
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I find great pleasure in discovering things, new things, new things about old things and old things I'm rediscovering. That "there is nothing new under the sun" may be true as far as the sun is concerned, but in all the parcels and possibilities of our lives there is a multitude, probably a infinite number, of "new' things, things that have always been there patiently waiting for someone to uncover them.

When I was a lad I was a good swimmer and I liked to dive down to the bottom of Long Island Sound to see what was down there. There was no scuba diving around in those days in that area, so I stayed down for as long as I could hold my breath and brought things up to the surface with me.

I love music and will listen to it for hours appreciating and learning new things about the harmonies, counterpoints and orchestrations. I am learning more all the time about how to listen behind the tones and melodies to find the truth that only music can speak.

At 21 I hitchhiked across the country, from Boston to Los Angeles. I had seen pictures, but I wanted to see for myself what the pictures tried to tell me, to hear, smell and feel the country for myself and to see things that weren't in the pictures. That two week journey was one of the most profound experiences of my life.

In my career as an actor there were always discoveries to be made about the story, the character I was playing, the intricacies of the plot and even about the art of acting. I learned new and improved ways of performing and of communicating the ideas and the realities of human life.

At one time I thought a lot about the act of communication. I took three plays by Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, King Richard the Third and Romeo and Juliet and studied each play carefully to find some statement about human communication. I uncovered some real gems of wisdom in every scene that might be missed in the tumble and passion of performance by an audience and even by the actor himself. I wonder what happened to all those notes. Somehow they fell by the wayside in my vagabond life.

When I began to study at the Art Students League in New York, drawing and painting, I was soon learning amazing things about the human body, the bones, muscles and other organs and seeing them in their metaphorical contexts. I was learning how the body can communicate thoughts and states of mind by its positions and poses, why the muscles looked the way they did and worked the way they did and what the pencil and the paint brush were able to tell me if I listened to them.

Living for a while in New Hampshire I was an avid hiker in the White Mountain National Forest. That gave me the joy of discovering the vast and complex creations of nature and how they related to each other, the riches of rocks, trees, ferns, brooks, wild flowers and wild animals. I think walking softly among those mysteries and imbibing their character was some of the happiest moments of my life.

Now in my senior years my explorations and travels are through the great literature of the world, especially the philosophers. It is a surprising journey because it takes new/old ideas that touch every aspect of our lives from psychology to cosmology.

There are many modern philosophers who simply tread back and forth over the same field and point out the flaws in each other's foot prints. But in every age and nation true thinkers are born. I am looking forward to knowing the next one.

DB - The Vagabond
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No fooling around, here is this week's puzzle.
These are all legitimate movie titles in translation.
Your task, if you wish to survive, is to translate them back into their original titles by the end of next week.

Several Saints
Uprising Over The Thanksgiving Dinner
How One Murders An Imitator
Swept Away In A Breeze
The Lion Is Burning It's Feet
What The Flute Makes
The Insects' Messiah
She Married The Monster
Mr. Summerfall Winterspring
The Chimpanzees Live There
Confessing When Drenched
He Paid Very Close Attention, Unfortunately
Boiling When It's Dark
Misplaced Religious Artifact Stolen
Trees Around The Little House
Leo's Secret Message
Ultimate Spanish Dance in France
Country In A Maternity Ward
Instructions In Stone
Creepy Creatures Aloft
The Bitch Is Domesticated

1 entry so far.

Good luck
dbdacoba@aol.com

DB
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

4 answers so far

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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