X-Account-Key: account1 X-UIDL: 11e8-9f59-c24f630c-b158-00212800dfd6 X-Mozilla-Status: 0000 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-Mozilla-Keys: Status: U Return-Path: Received: from mx-lightning.atl.sa.earthlink.net ([207.69.195.186]) by mdl-journey.atl.sa.earthlink.net (EarthLink SMTP Server) with SMTP id 1FPnhL3jD3Nl3700; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 20:34:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: from elasmtp-mealy.atl.sa.earthlink.net ([209.86.89.69]) by mx-lightning.atl.sa.earthlink.net (EarthLink SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 1FPnhM5yT3Nl36O1 for ; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 20:34:10 -0400 (EDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=earthlink.net; s=dk12062016; t=1534206849; bh=Fx5AQdl7moQ3NDzTYOTCxYy8Wcj34MPg8CUk ne5UAAQ=; h=Received:To:From:Subject:Message-ID:Date:User-Agent: MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Language: Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; b=QTdoMU7 4TdVcrVzamAd7Jb0VZvIvjWIoviQKREFiNZG4tr1JtnTKzoLJYxK+67smp1j6UAdKtS oyH8jp941OO6aHdqmTqTAAUl+oWMfDRbxkLJbdVvF/oNdmDM5JX8ABjWviqb/Csd2j6 KreqVhIk+JIY7MrDb0xTThMIPAULStujqy+mjOLCwJJ6TEKuRB7V/KQaDOlRuuQH+f+ 2niiInQPshw2YR6EIex/w06jQNs3FqkeUCjqIQ46K5UQn74bTqe8KAokbB6c3bBsdBa 4knFyc2HvxQ/OHv1gKHdkqC8T8dncUlR/EvivqVQESvT3WfG55KotudwwsDx5OTF0BQ == DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk12062016; d=earthlink.net; b=BWXP6hcCeDeqDvR17qb5lS8dS3Xgj/lqe0VpXmBcHTRGikYS7kCk/x8nYsRbmzWPHA9wrRMK5qZFdIK1OAtYmLRIVS+lnyq2r5yu6nIdFu5Vu57GHr+Ynciqv/JJ1W4CFlJ3/FkFO6eftoIZLJuk+fWWLyvNNLxJXCBOs7/a2RVtB9eTOzE9p5QiX3Yvr9VaLXtUdsTQ6EjU8Glc1cXU7jjdLZxFTzrwGlYtc9UduL6sd4qRxuoDO9reSUaamfq1CS5FaaZkVU40j9qtlvMefn2jmJCIgMHS9YcVIEV6oQOsysnuaS5+CWx0MrMHuVWTNTM8lZfttIuWBNCsuJ61yg==; h=Received:To:From:Subject:Message-ID:Date:User-Agent:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Language:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; Received: from [96.252.35.224] (helo=[192.168.0.6]) by elasmtp-mealy.atl.sa.earthlink.net with esmtpsa (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:128) (Exim 4) (envelope-from ) id 1fpNHk-000FAH-P0; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 20:34:09 -0400 To: townsendfarm From: Ernst Meyer Subject: August 13, 2018 Message-ID: <6c8dd6f2-cb89-b278-f6c8-12a2f9eccd35@earthlink.net> Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2018 20:34:07 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: 6bf6b9ecace9557dc8ad50643b1069f8239a348a220c260925cb18400491d5d2f2e9f1e7833de956a8438e0f32a48e08350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c X-Originating-IP: 96.252.35.224 X-ELNK-TLSInbound: 1 X-ELNK-Received-Info: spv=0; X-ELNK-AV: 0 X-ELNK-Info: sbv=1; sbrc=-0; sbf=c0; sbw=010; Dear Alex, Again, thank you very much for your telephone call; again, I apologize for so much ineffectual talk. My life, and I assume that of everyone else, is sometimes shadowed with disappointments. One way of dealing with such disappointments is to bury them in silence, not to talk about them; that's what all the other members of my family do. Another way of coping with disappointment and despair is prescribed in the Bible: (Numbers 21) 6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. 7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. 9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. For many years now, I have considered the injunction "Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole:", especially in contradiction to the prior prohibition in Exodus 20:4 of making any image: 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. as a divine commandment authorizing, instituting art, not only sculpture and painting, but literature, prose and poetry which create a verbal image of what hurts or threatens me, as an anodyne protecting me from disappointment and despair. I consider my mentioning such matters in telephone conversations with you as an hypothetical first draft of a poem or of a story or of a novel which never materializes. This in respect to personal, professional, family and political disappointments which, rightly or wrongly, I deem like other illnesses, to be inescapable facets of human nature. I plan, if I live long enough, and if my mind, such as it is, holds up, to compose descriptions of the political processes by which Otis Air Force base on Cape Cod is turned into a Nazi style concentration camp to protect society against dissident thinkers. At the same time, I am much aware of how painful such a description would be to those who believe that engaging in the political process, participating in demonstrations, writing letters to the newspaper or to the congressman, perhaps oneself running for public office, is the constructive path to the betterment of our country. I have been reading a book by Albert Schweitzer which he started before the 1st World War and finished after that war, in which he laments the pitiful state of the world for which he blames the failure of philosophy (sic!) to address the world order (Weltanschauung). He argues that philosophy must become a popular pastime, - I suppose like jigsaw puzzles or computer games, so that the constitutent members of a democracy will learn to think, and having learned to think will elect a more virtuous government. To me the emblem of the hopelessness of all this, is Schweitzer practicing what he preaches not as president of France or Chancellor of Germany, not as a Professor at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge or at the Sorbonne, but as a quaint eccentric in the jungle of Equatorial Africa. Or should the Nobel Peace Prize be deemed to outweigh the fact that Schweitzer was otherwise ignored? Love, as always, Jochen