14. Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
15. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.
16. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
17. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbits. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered the radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers .
The mention of Charles Darwin reminds me of his "Origin of Species," one of my favorite books in which he attempts to explain who we are and how we got here...a question for the ages. Basically we have survived as a "species" because we are the "fittest". Another book which has had a great influence on my thinking is "The Story of Philosophy" written by Will Durant who deals with the lives and opinions of the world's greatest philosophers from Plato to John Dewey. When I took a course in philosophy at Columbia in 1948 it was an epiphany...it opened up a world I never dreamed existed. What interested me most was the concept of "epistemology"; which addresses the following questions: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?". According to Plato knowledge is a subset of what is true and believed. Durant offers a historical view of the odyssey of the Jews and our knowledge of this odyssey as both "true" and "believed". In my opinion the survival of the "fittest" of our species, and I believe Darwin would agree.
The story of the Jews since the Dispersion is one of the epics of European history. Driven from their natural home by the Roman capture of Jerusalem (70 AD), and scattered by flight and trade among all the nations and to all the continents; persecuted and decimated by the adherents of the great religions--Christianity and Mohammedanism--which had been born of their scriptures and their memories; barred by the feudal system from owning land, and by the guilds from taking part in industry; shut up within congested ghettos and narrowing pursuits, mobbed by the people and robbed by the kings; building with their finance and trade the towns and cities indispensable to civilization; outcast and excommunicated, insulted and injured;--yet, without any political structure, without any legal compulsion to social unity, without even a common language, this wonderful people has maintained itself in body and soul, has preserved its racial and cultural integrity, has guarded with jealous love its oldest rituals and traditions, has patiently and resolutely awaited the day of its deliverance, and has emerged greater in number than ever before, renowned in every field for the contribution of its geniuses, and triumphantly restored, after two thousand years of wandering, to its ancient and unforgotten home. What drama could rival the grandeur of these sufferings, the variety of these scenes, and the glory and justice of this fulfillment? What fiction could match the romance of this reality?
(The Story of Philosophy...Will Durant)
One of the greatest philosophers was Jewish and his name was Baruch Spinoza whose philosophy I have mostly adopted. His writings about God and the Universe led to his excommunication. I'll get to that in subsequent blogs.. G'nite y'all.
3 comments:
Very amusing discourse. I could picture the children as they wrote their responses.
The story of the Jews requires an in depth discussion and Spinoza is the perfect place to start.
Amazing! I thought I was the only one fascinated by episotomies.
Epistomies??? Did you say "epistomies"? You should see a doctor.
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