He who thoughtfully and with a searching eye investigates the laws of Nature in all their immense variety is stricken with astonishment when he stumbles upon a wisdom he was not aware of.
Immanuel Kant
****************************
Hello Ernie
****************************
When I was a lad I loved reading the novels of Jules Verne. He was a Science Fiction writer but as with many such writers he was also a prophet. Many of his stories were about events that literally happened years later. He wrote "20 Thousand Leagues Under The Sea" before there were submarines, "Around The World In 80 days" before there was air travel and "From Earth To the Moon" before there was NASA. One book I remember well, "Trip To The Center Of The Earth" has yet to happen. It seems totally improbable. But when and if geologists discover more about what is under the Earth's surface, who knows what may occur?
Now George Church, a geneticist from the Harvard Medical School, is cautiously discussing the idea of cloning a Neanderthal baby from DNA extracted from fossils. He claims that he's not ready to do it right away, if at all, and the he's not looking for a surrogate mother.
The child would be one that was not born over 40,000 years ago before the Neanderthals were overcame by the early Humans. There are social, ethical. scientific and philosophical questions involved in such an enterprise and many opinions pro and con. There is no question that a successful result would be of enormous benefit to science. So far all the argument I've read against the idea are pitifully silly.
A surrogate mother would have be a very adventurous woman. But considering the "immense variety" of Human Nature such a person may appear. It would need to be someone who was experienced in child bearing and the gestation period would have to be carefully observed. But the possibilities have set my imagination and my memory to spinning.
My imagination because I wonder if the child is healthy and survives, is taught to learn and to communicate, what vestigial wisdom might exist in the collective consciousness of the individual, what lost knowledge may be lodging there and what might we learn about the evolution of ourselves? If the babe survives, is healthy, grows into a ripe age, male or female, and wants to mate, what then? If the Neanderthal girl or boy mares with a Human what will be the result. Sound preposterous? I have read that the Neanderthals mated with the Cro Magnons before they disappeared. They must have mated with the Humans of 40,000 years ago. Who knows, we may be carrying Neanderthal genes around with us right now. The Neanderthal kid might feel right at home with some of us.
It stirs my memory because a few years ao I was working on a novel about the same subject, a Human man mating with a Neanderthal woman and having a child. I never got to finish it because the computer gobbled it up one day. Maybe in the sense it was being prophetic in the Vernesian sense I should try to reconstruct it.
The cloning of a Neanderthal baby will probably happen some day. If we don't do it, China or some other scientifically advance nation will.
If a thing can be done, it will e done.
******************************
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*********************************
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
Places
One way or another I already know everything, and yet, I find this life beautiful and rich in meaning. At every moment.
Etty Hillesum
******************
Hello Jon
******************
If I ever became inexcusably arrogant enough to write my autobiography I would entitle it "Places." The few friends and acquaintances who have heard me say that have expressed the opinion that it isn't a good title. But I disagree (naturally).
The alternative titles others have come with for me display, I think, a gross misunderstanding and in some cases an unpleasant underestimation of me.
It has been suggested that I use the title of this blog, "Vagabond Journeys" but that title implies a life of adventures and discoveries still being lived, windmills still needing to be attacked.
Someone suggested "My Life In Art" but Constantine Stanislavski did a very good job with that title and I don't think I could match up.
One person even suggested as a title "The Actor Who Escaped Broadway." Now if that doesn't sound like a lolly-pop title I don't know what does.
No "Places" is the word. In the theatre "Places" is the last call you get from the Stage Manager after you've been given "Half Hour," "Fifteen" and "Five." "Places" means the performance is about to begin and if you're on at the beginning you'd better get your talented and highly gifted self to your place or the curtain will go up without you. When the show closes you don't hear that word again, until the next time. I don't know how many hundreds perhaps a thousand or so times I've heard that word in the 50 years of my career. In a very big way it has defined my lite.
When I was 4 years old my father died. 2 years later the family began a slow slide from a reasonable middle class life into poverty. From the age of 6 until I graduated from high school we moved 26 times and I don't even remember some of the places we lived. As a result of that itinerant childhood I never got into the habit of settling down somewhere and calling it home, or the opportunity. I also don't remember some of the places I've lived as an adult. I had a small meager hotel room in New York for 20 years but I seldom lived there. I lived with someone else or a theatre I was working for put me up in an apartment somewhere. But I do remember that some of those places hold ghosts of a former life, a record of events that formed and shaped me for good or not. An autobiography would have to name names, events and places.
I've been where I am now for almost a year having moved from a very uncomfortable environment of 10 years duration. This is by no means a home or a permanent situation. It's more like a clearing in the woods. But over the past decade or so I've discovered a different journey facing me with different places to explore. I awake from dreams and visions in the night to find a mind which has been used as a tea kettle, something in which to boil ideas. The mind is powerful, of course, to imagine, plan, create and make things happen. But released from such menial obligations it leads me to mountains that must be climbed, seas to be crossed, jewels to be dug out of its own ground and stars to be observed shining in its own night sky. I listen for the rhythms of things that exist in space and wait to see the bubbling source of agelessness. Those are the Places my heart sings to know.
Let another write of me if they choose. My life is written in the disappearing parchments of time.
***************************************
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
**********************
Etty Hillesum
******************
Hello Jon
******************
If I ever became inexcusably arrogant enough to write my autobiography I would entitle it "Places." The few friends and acquaintances who have heard me say that have expressed the opinion that it isn't a good title. But I disagree (naturally).
The alternative titles others have come with for me display, I think, a gross misunderstanding and in some cases an unpleasant underestimation of me.
It has been suggested that I use the title of this blog, "Vagabond Journeys" but that title implies a life of adventures and discoveries still being lived, windmills still needing to be attacked.
Someone suggested "My Life In Art" but Constantine Stanislavski did a very good job with that title and I don't think I could match up.
One person even suggested as a title "The Actor Who Escaped Broadway." Now if that doesn't sound like a lolly-pop title I don't know what does.
No "Places" is the word. In the theatre "Places" is the last call you get from the Stage Manager after you've been given "Half Hour," "Fifteen" and "Five." "Places" means the performance is about to begin and if you're on at the beginning you'd better get your talented and highly gifted self to your place or the curtain will go up without you. When the show closes you don't hear that word again, until the next time. I don't know how many hundreds perhaps a thousand or so times I've heard that word in the 50 years of my career. In a very big way it has defined my lite.
When I was 4 years old my father died. 2 years later the family began a slow slide from a reasonable middle class life into poverty. From the age of 6 until I graduated from high school we moved 26 times and I don't even remember some of the places we lived. As a result of that itinerant childhood I never got into the habit of settling down somewhere and calling it home, or the opportunity. I also don't remember some of the places I've lived as an adult. I had a small meager hotel room in New York for 20 years but I seldom lived there. I lived with someone else or a theatre I was working for put me up in an apartment somewhere. But I do remember that some of those places hold ghosts of a former life, a record of events that formed and shaped me for good or not. An autobiography would have to name names, events and places.
I've been where I am now for almost a year having moved from a very uncomfortable environment of 10 years duration. This is by no means a home or a permanent situation. It's more like a clearing in the woods. But over the past decade or so I've discovered a different journey facing me with different places to explore. I awake from dreams and visions in the night to find a mind which has been used as a tea kettle, something in which to boil ideas. The mind is powerful, of course, to imagine, plan, create and make things happen. But released from such menial obligations it leads me to mountains that must be climbed, seas to be crossed, jewels to be dug out of its own ground and stars to be observed shining in its own night sky. I listen for the rhythms of things that exist in space and wait to see the bubbling source of agelessness. Those are the Places my heart sings to know.
Let another write of me if they choose. My life is written in the disappearing parchments of time.
***************************************
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
**********************
Thursday, January 24, 2013
When You Grow Up
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
*****************************************************
Hello Val
******************
I have written in this journal before about the elementary school science teacher who ridiculed me for wanting to be the first man on the moon by telling me man could never go to the moon. I wonder where Neil Armstrong went to school.
I won't visit that story again today. Instead I'll tell you about an 18 year old boy I got to talk to one day about his future. He was about to graduate from high school and go on to college, but he said he didn't know what to study, he didn't know what he wanted to do with his liofe. I gave him the usual adult-type advice about not needing to know at 18 years. I assured him that at some point in his life he will probably have a bright moment of realization about himself which would lead him into a life's work that would be satisfying and endlessly interesting to him.
I told him not to try to force the issue. I said it may happen in the next five days, or the next five months or the next fice years or even longer. I told him about two businessmen I knew who both in their fifties completely changed their lives. One became an ob/gyn and the other a baritone, the first because he wanted to deliver babies and the other because he wanted to sing opera.
I told the boy to do the things that interest him and whatever comes along and then measure the relative importance of them. and gradually something will emerge from all the rest and when the bell rings you'll know it's what you want to do for the rest of your life and there will be no question about it.
The answer to the quest is not This is what I want to be, nor This is what I want to do. The answer is This is what I am. 55 years ago, while struggling and stumbling with the same problem confronting this boy, I awoke from a dream one day with a flash of light that said "You're an actor." I accepted that fact because I suddenly knew in my heart it was true and I never looked back.
On the basis of that realization and following thorugh on it my life has expanded into painting and writing. And I hope someone day it will expand into composing music. But the greatest step of all from the school of self fulfillment is into the real world of understanding ourselves, the realization that whatever you have done or are doing in life is a master blueprint for getting to know who you really are.
What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a man who knows himself.
******************
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
************************
*****************************************************
Hello Val
******************
I have written in this journal before about the elementary school science teacher who ridiculed me for wanting to be the first man on the moon by telling me man could never go to the moon. I wonder where Neil Armstrong went to school.
I won't visit that story again today. Instead I'll tell you about an 18 year old boy I got to talk to one day about his future. He was about to graduate from high school and go on to college, but he said he didn't know what to study, he didn't know what he wanted to do with his liofe. I gave him the usual adult-type advice about not needing to know at 18 years. I assured him that at some point in his life he will probably have a bright moment of realization about himself which would lead him into a life's work that would be satisfying and endlessly interesting to him.
I told him not to try to force the issue. I said it may happen in the next five days, or the next five months or the next fice years or even longer. I told him about two businessmen I knew who both in their fifties completely changed their lives. One became an ob/gyn and the other a baritone, the first because he wanted to deliver babies and the other because he wanted to sing opera.
I told the boy to do the things that interest him and whatever comes along and then measure the relative importance of them. and gradually something will emerge from all the rest and when the bell rings you'll know it's what you want to do for the rest of your life and there will be no question about it.
The answer to the quest is not This is what I want to be, nor This is what I want to do. The answer is This is what I am. 55 years ago, while struggling and stumbling with the same problem confronting this boy, I awoke from a dream one day with a flash of light that said "You're an actor." I accepted that fact because I suddenly knew in my heart it was true and I never looked back.
On the basis of that realization and following thorugh on it my life has expanded into painting and writing. And I hope someone day it will expand into composing music. But the greatest step of all from the school of self fulfillment is into the real world of understanding ourselves, the realization that whatever you have done or are doing in life is a master blueprint for getting to know who you really are.
What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a man who knows himself.
******************
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
************************
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
More Craziness
CRAZY CHRISTIANS
****************************
Hello Lily
****************
So Wes Breedwell showed up for work wearing a T shirt that read "I Support Same-Sex Marriage" His Christian employers fired him for it because IN THEIR OPINION it was anti-Christian behavior.
So they fired him, thus depriving him of his right to Freedom of Speech without interference, which was a very anti-Christian thing to do and anti-American at the same time. When are the crazy Christians going to get it?
People like that who are locked up in a mental box need to be set free. In short, they need more Christ in their lives.
***************************
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*****************************
****************************
Hello Lily
****************
So Wes Breedwell showed up for work wearing a T shirt that read "I Support Same-Sex Marriage" His Christian employers fired him for it because IN THEIR OPINION it was anti-Christian behavior.
So they fired him, thus depriving him of his right to Freedom of Speech without interference, which was a very anti-Christian thing to do and anti-American at the same time. When are the crazy Christians going to get it?
People like that who are locked up in a mental box need to be set free. In short, they need more Christ in their lives.
***************************
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*****************************
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Morality
THE NEW MORALITY
*********************
Hello Kate
*********************
These days it's OK to lie, cheat, steal, bully kids, shoot people who get in your way, be cruel to animals, get drunk, take drugs, be unfaithful to your spouse, molest children and brag about all of the above. Other people do those things, don't they? I heard an interview with a sociologist who claimed that in today's freer more libertine society things which would have been considered reprehensible 100 years ago are more acceptable. So what happened to the moral high ground some hypocrites are fond of talking about?
The sad fact is that one has to be as compassionate with the perpetrators as much as with the victims. Those thoughts and urges that reside in our minds and emotions are only potent when they are believed. I don't have enough money so I have to steal. I will play my music as loud as I need to and to hell with the neighbors. Seeing pain and suffering is a catharsis that cleans out my system. I have strong sexual desires and need to find outlets for them. I will trash the son of a bitch next time I see him.
Those thughts are from the proverbial biblical serpent: snake talk. It worms its way into our thinking, moves in and takes residence. It finds the vulnerable places in our inefficient understanding of ourselves and starts talking. It creates lies. It convinces us of needs and how to supply them. It convinces us of lack, loss, lust, addiction, injustice and superiority over other people. And it convinces us that all those thoughts are our own thoughts.
If we try to pull ourselves together morally we begin by struggling against the results of the snake talk. That takes will power, something the snake talker says we don't have enough of. So then we start struggling against the false talk itself which we are convinced is our own thinking.. But ultimately the only way to gain the moral ground is to rid our minds of the snake talker itself. That takes courage and alertness.
A wise person once said "Think before you think." The thoughts, urges, impressions, plans, intensions, intuitions and needs should be examined to determine if they come from our own true hearts or from some reptilian influence. It isn't easy, but it is essential.
I am enough of an idealist to believe in the natural nobility of the human being. I want to know less from the immoralists and more from the noble.
************************************
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
*********************
*********************
Hello Kate
*********************
These days it's OK to lie, cheat, steal, bully kids, shoot people who get in your way, be cruel to animals, get drunk, take drugs, be unfaithful to your spouse, molest children and brag about all of the above. Other people do those things, don't they? I heard an interview with a sociologist who claimed that in today's freer more libertine society things which would have been considered reprehensible 100 years ago are more acceptable. So what happened to the moral high ground some hypocrites are fond of talking about?
The sad fact is that one has to be as compassionate with the perpetrators as much as with the victims. Those thoughts and urges that reside in our minds and emotions are only potent when they are believed. I don't have enough money so I have to steal. I will play my music as loud as I need to and to hell with the neighbors. Seeing pain and suffering is a catharsis that cleans out my system. I have strong sexual desires and need to find outlets for them. I will trash the son of a bitch next time I see him.
Those thughts are from the proverbial biblical serpent: snake talk. It worms its way into our thinking, moves in and takes residence. It finds the vulnerable places in our inefficient understanding of ourselves and starts talking. It creates lies. It convinces us of needs and how to supply them. It convinces us of lack, loss, lust, addiction, injustice and superiority over other people. And it convinces us that all those thoughts are our own thoughts.
If we try to pull ourselves together morally we begin by struggling against the results of the snake talk. That takes will power, something the snake talker says we don't have enough of. So then we start struggling against the false talk itself which we are convinced is our own thinking.. But ultimately the only way to gain the moral ground is to rid our minds of the snake talker itself. That takes courage and alertness.
A wise person once said "Think before you think." The thoughts, urges, impressions, plans, intensions, intuitions and needs should be examined to determine if they come from our own true hearts or from some reptilian influence. It isn't easy, but it is essential.
I am enough of an idealist to believe in the natural nobility of the human being. I want to know less from the immoralists and more from the noble.
************************************
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
*********************
Sunday, January 20, 2013
News
Where's the news?
**************************
Hello Jen
**************************
I am not a compassionless man. I care very deeply about a lot of things. And I believe in the freedom of the press. Is it therefor a flaw in my character that I don't care to watch some athlete confess to using drugs to win races. Athletes have been doping up for a long time. They are still doing it.
And I don't care about the so-called death of some other athlete's phantom girl friend. I don't care who the father was of Michael Jackson's children. I don't care to listen to the NRA's juvenile propaganda. I'm tired of reading about the adolescent wrangling among the members of Congress. I don't care where or when President Obama is inaugurated, just so long as he is. And I don't care what movie star won't talk to another one or why.
What I mean is this. One group of people were taken hostage by another group of people in Mali and some of those people died. It was just one tick on the time line of extreme danger for the world. The danger is not going away by bombs, guns raids and arrasts. It's not going away because the reasons for it are embedded in the hearts and minds of a large group of very angry people. The entire world, all legitimate governments, and the free press of every nation should be focused on this problem and looking for a solution
No, first we have to wade with rubber boots through all the scandalous mud pits of the world before we get to the battle fields. In my youth I remember when on the front page of the daily paper there was a map showing the positions of the Americans and the North Koreans during the Korean war. We were bottled off into a small area until the invasion happened and we gradually gained ground. It was news, big news, and everyone followed those maps. How many people today even know where Mali is? Exactly, not somewhere in Africa? Does your congressman know? Do you know?
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*****************************
**************************
Hello Jen
**************************
I am not a compassionless man. I care very deeply about a lot of things. And I believe in the freedom of the press. Is it therefor a flaw in my character that I don't care to watch some athlete confess to using drugs to win races. Athletes have been doping up for a long time. They are still doing it.
And I don't care about the so-called death of some other athlete's phantom girl friend. I don't care who the father was of Michael Jackson's children. I don't care to listen to the NRA's juvenile propaganda. I'm tired of reading about the adolescent wrangling among the members of Congress. I don't care where or when President Obama is inaugurated, just so long as he is. And I don't care what movie star won't talk to another one or why.
What I mean is this. One group of people were taken hostage by another group of people in Mali and some of those people died. It was just one tick on the time line of extreme danger for the world. The danger is not going away by bombs, guns raids and arrasts. It's not going away because the reasons for it are embedded in the hearts and minds of a large group of very angry people. The entire world, all legitimate governments, and the free press of every nation should be focused on this problem and looking for a solution
No, first we have to wade with rubber boots through all the scandalous mud pits of the world before we get to the battle fields. In my youth I remember when on the front page of the daily paper there was a map showing the positions of the Americans and the North Koreans during the Korean war. We were bottled off into a small area until the invasion happened and we gradually gained ground. It was news, big news, and everyone followed those maps. How many people today even know where Mali is? Exactly, not somewhere in Africa? Does your congressman know? Do you know?
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*****************************
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
New Contest Results
NEW CONTEST RESULTS
To what do the following numbers refer?
5, 8, 17, 33, 69, 2010, 2300.
------------------------------------------
On the 5th of August. 2010, 33 Chilean miners were trapped 2300 feet underground. They were there for 69 days and for the first 17 days there was no communication from the outside world.
I consider the story of their rescue one of the most remarkable stories of all time for the courage, fortitude and ingenuity of the miners and their rescuers.
The first correct answer came from George Lord Millenbach of the Alphabet City Miilenbachs. So he wins the grand prize of a bag of genuine South American desert sand. Good going Sir George.
DB
*****************************
To what do the following numbers refer?
5, 8, 17, 33, 69, 2010, 2300.
------------------------------------------
On the 5th of August. 2010, 33 Chilean miners were trapped 2300 feet underground. They were there for 69 days and for the first 17 days there was no communication from the outside world.
I consider the story of their rescue one of the most remarkable stories of all time for the courage, fortitude and ingenuity of the miners and their rescuers.
The first correct answer came from George Lord Millenbach of the Alphabet City Miilenbachs. So he wins the grand prize of a bag of genuine South American desert sand. Good going Sir George.
DB
*****************************
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