great minds Don't think alike

Whereas I don't participate in any social media circles (other than this one) what I do love about the internet is all the information to be found. The news is generally depressing but I do my share of 'witnessing' since I believe it's the responsible thing to do - with the caveat that it's necessary to exercise some judgement and discernment. In other words, I read but don't believe everything that passes by my sight.

Then there are all the other odds and ends - the latest news about discoveries, scientific, archeological, historical and too, some hopeful and some intriguing. I will read anything that catches my attention.

Many of the blogs I enjoyed during their heyday are gone now and while I regret having lost access to the ones that were deleted I'm happy some are still here to be read. One such was called 'The Big Study', a blog that proved to be a treasury of carefully collected anomalies and ideas hosted from 2009 to 2015 by 'The Professor'. If there was ever any solid information about his personal history I missed the post but it appears he is/was a teacher of physics. The following is an introductory one posted in August of 2009.

The Professor:

The old people have always known that there was more to reality than the stone which hits you in the face. There was the Self. There was the Soul of the friend, the lover, the child, the Other. There was GOD. There were the Spirits, the nature beings, even the things that "go bump in the night".

The foundation of this blog is that they were usually smarter than we are. They were generally right. All these were real. All these ARE real. We are letting them slip from our consciousness, and we are losing touch with half the world. You will not want to read this blog if you cannot stretch your universe to include the possibility that such things can be true. The Soul who writes here believes in Soul, believes in a Great Maker, believes in a many colored array of wonders, both material and spiritual. This soul believes that there are (often) factual events within which this "lost" part of our reality strongly shows itself.

There are "encounters", there are "anomalies", there are inspirations and guidances. They are all there, but rarely to the mind closed to them. The mind of a scientist can be a very productive thing. It usually knows a lot. It can analyze certain things amazingly--I once did a little of that myself. But the mind of a scientist (if that's all it is) has come to live in a very small world. It is a paradox. The culture's (alleged) truth-seekers are occupying boxes so small that the big study of what is has ended up outside their walls. And they ARE walls. They are walls that so forbid the exploration of "dangerous" areas (even of conversation let alone active seeking) that most of these powerful IQs are ashamed to speak of them.

This writer is an old retired member of that mistaken and wandering tribe. It's too late to care what the dogmatic tribal elders think. It's time to call out for the things that are, but which they say cannot be. And just breathe the free air. What will these topics be? GOD, Spirit, Free Will, Afterlife, of course. Angels, devils, spirits too. Nature entities, what the old folks called "the good people" and "the middle angels"--well lets at least see. Encounters with the strange, the weird, the "impossible". Lets forget the sayers of "can't", relax, and let be.

Posted by The Professor at 11:04 AM No comments:
Labels: Spirituality; Anomalies; GOD

Here is another favorite of his posted topics.

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The picture at the top is from this past weekend. Yes, it's been very cold and while the ground is still free from snow (likely not for long) everything is hard and colorless. Meanwhile, I continue to read.. and consider the possibilities.

some things remain

Rather than painting, drawing and writing blog posts these past few days I've found myself reading books and finding thoughtful passages here and there on the internet. Here's something I think is worth sharing:

From Keeping the Faith Without a Religion by Roger Housden:

"It seems to me that a materialist view of the universe is reductionist. It makes every kind of experience subservient to the laws of matter. It applies the tenets of the known to the mystery of why we are here at all.  It chases away not only the old gods and spirits and half heard whispers in the night; it chases away the mystery of life and being itself. For a materialist, there can be no mystery that will not eventually be made clear in the light of reason and critical intelligence.

"Ultimately, what is in danger of being excluded from the cultural conversation is not the old gods, but the quality of imagination that gave birth to them; an imagination that sees and feels humanity to be part of a living, breathing world with an intelligence that we will never fathom; full of qualities that our ancestors gave names to, but that live on as always even as their names have fallen away.

William Wordsworth gives voice to this imaginative faculty in this excerpt from his poem, 'Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey':

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of thought,
And rolls through all things."


The beautiful bones of Tintern Abbey (pictured here) rise from the banks of the River Wye on Welsh side of the English-Welsh border. The abbey was founded in 1131 for the White Monks of the Cistercian Order, followers of the Rule of St. Benedict, whose silent and austere way of life was devoted to prayer, scholarship, agricultural labor and self-sufficiency.

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Quote of the week:
“Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake” 
~W.C. Fields

pardon while I brood

Gradually, as we've been surrounding ourselves with boxes and the collapsed frames of collapsible bookcases, we've been amazed at just how much a single shelf can hold, and we have many shelves. The only place I know for sure that has more, aside from (possibly) the Library of Congress, is Powell's World of Books. This is a picture I took in the Red Room - home of books devoted to religions, cults, psychology, travel, foreign language, and their collection of maps, religious statues and travel accessories. Upstairs from there is the Pearl Room - art gallery, arts, architecture, and a beautifully constructed Rare Book Room with old glass windows, hanging lamps and fine furniture for the comfort of perusers.

I've started off describing areas deep in the store that many first time visitors never see. Shall I tell you about the others? Why not? I'm sitting here with a cup of tea and thinking about the place in this city I'll miss most of all. We've lived in Portland for the past 17 years and rarely has a week gone by that we haven't made a pilgrimage and left the appropriate donations on our way back out. Michael Powell probably isn't aware he owes a significant proportion of his wealth to us. Although it's situated on always busy Burnside, when we arrived it backed on a wilderness of old and crumbling railroad yards and warehouses. Parking was never a problem and walks in the area were frequently entertaining, especially because real estate rentals were cheap.

The Church of Elvis was on the upper floor of a building nearby - Elvis was known to be cranky and bad-tempered. I remember hearing loud yells and thumps one day we were near the church and seeing a frightened tourist running out the bottom door with Elvis swearing and waving his guitar in hot pursuit.

The Science Fiction Museum was just up the street. Nothing was for sale there but the guy who ran the place had an amazing collection of memorabilia large and small going back to the 30's. He'd even built a couple of space ships based on ones he'd traveled in himself and a room designed like the inside of one where you could recline on a starship couch and listen to theramin music. Yes, I tried it.

There was a fabulous record/music store called Django's across the street from Powell's and Spartacus further up that sold seriously exotic kinky gear. Django's had been a landmark for 25 years but when they tried to take their business on-line they failed badly and had to close; Spartacus is still there but looks like a Frederick's of Hollywood now. Comic book stores, vintage clothing stores, 50's furniture stores and all sorts of cheap eateries have disappeared but the real estate is valuable.. or maybe not.

But I was going to tell you about the other Rooms at Powell's. Have I run out of time? No. Have you run out of patience? Maybe, but I'll go through the colors anyway. I have time.

The Green Room is the entrance area off Burnside and is where they sell magazines, feature all the new arrival books in every category, and display cards, and maps and books about Oregon. The Blue Room, up a short ramp from Green, specializes in English Literature and poetry. Then there's the Gold Room where you can check out their huge collection of science fiction novels as well as mysteries, thrillers and Manga. If you feel like sitting down with a book or a stack of books while having a snack and a beverage the Coffee Room is right beyond the Gold and you can stay there all day and evening if you like. It's also where they keep the Romance novels, fashion and home decorating books. Did I mention the long balcony corridor that opens on to the Green, Blue and Gold Rooms? There are places to sit and spaces where they have journals, calendars, cups and t-shirts for sale and also staircases up and down (or an elevator). Down is the Rose Room with children's books, young adult books, a play area, toys and puppets and science books and doors to the Orange Room. It really is a very big store. Orange is the entrance from Couch (pronounced cooch) and 11th where you can sell your old books then look for cookbooks, craft books, gardening books, business books or find more cards and literary inspired knicknacks or chopsticks. The only one remaining now is the Purple Room. It's out the back door of Green, across the balcony and up the stairs if you're looking for books about history, political science, archeology, paleontology or books about those topics in foreign languages.

I know I've missed mentioning a few subjects and sub-subjects I've come across in the hundreds of hours I've spent there. I haven't even mentioned Powell's Technical one block down on 9th that overlooks the North Park Blocks. Across the park was a wonderful and enormous old fabric store called the Daisy Kingdom - the building is still there but it's been empty for more than 5 years because the owners could no longer afford the lease.

I'll miss Powell's but I've long been missing the little places that gave the heart of this city it's famous motto 'Keep Portland Weird'. It's still a beautiful city but we'll take our personal weirdness and our collection of books to a city that's one of the oldest in North America, one that is guaranteed to be new and strange to us.

for La Belette Rouge who will visit soon