11/24/08
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS THE LAST TEMPLAR BY RUGGERO MARINO
by Ruggero Marino
Translated from Italian by Ariel Godwin
Destiny Books
C 2005 Sperling and Kupfer Editori S.p.A.,Milano
English Translation 2007 C Inner Traditions International
CHRISTINE TRZYNA QUICK REVIEW
The author didn't convince me that Christopher Columbus was a Knights Templar, though said to have a Templar's values which, according to the author, was that Christians, Jews, and Muslims live in peace. What was most interesting about this book is the assertion that Columbus was actually not the nephew of a Pope, Innocent VIII, but his son and that the seafarer had access to maps housed at the Vatican that would prove to show that the North and South American continents had been "discovered" before. So the idea that he set sail and bungled a exploratory trip to "India" is set adrift, and instead a disinformation campaign began, which asserted Spain's rights to the new lands.
Innocent VIII is said to have had Muslim and Jewish ancestry himself, as well as many children, of whom only two he recognized. In color the book features art and portraits showing the pope and Christopher's likeness, as well as maps existing in Columbus lifetime that show the New World was known.
Always interesting, the idea of dangerous forces of Secret Societies...
11/22/08
EXCERPT from JACK - A LIFE NO OTHER by GEOFFREY PERRET (John F. Kennedy was an avid reader!)
by Geoffrey Perret C 2001
Randon House New York
In this book by Perret, we learn that the youthful J.F.K. was an avid reader, and that he did deserve the Pulitzer for his book "Profiles in Courage" which was criticized as ghost written.
page 32-33 covering his studenthood at the prep school Choat:
Jack's half of the room in Choate House, the one that he shared with young Godfrey Kauffmann, was a clue that no teacher could miss. Yet nearly every faculty member who had to deal with him, from the headmaster down, was convinced that young Jack Kennedy was not using the brains God gave him. It was their responsibility to cram enough self discipline into the bout o get him into an Ivy League college, but it seemed a thankless uphill struggle.
The clue they slighted was that Jack had tuned his half of the room into a shrine to the word. There were piles of books everywhere - on the floor, on the chairs, on the bed, on the dresser. And whether at school or at home, he invariably seemed to have a book in his hands.....
"I guess I read a lot," Jack replied, neither boasting nor being unduly modest. And as he explained to Horton, he did not simply read widely. He tried to memorize what he read, argued with it, summarized the writer's argument and filed the summaries away in his mind."
11/19/08
CARLOS CASTANEDA QUOTE from THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY
"We are beings on our way to dying," he said. "We are not immortal, but we behave as if we were. This is the flaw that brings us down as individuals and will bring us down as a species someday."
Don Juan stated that the sorcerer's advantage over their average fellow men is that sorcerers know that they are beings on their way to dying and they don't let themselves deviate from that knowledge. He emphasized that an enormous effort must be employed in order to elicit and maintain this knowledge as a total certainty.
"Why is it so hard for us to admit something that is so truthful?" I asked, bewildered by the magnitude of our internal contradiction.
"It's really not man's fault," he said in a conciliatory tone. "Someday, I'll tell you more about the forces that drive a man to act like an ass."
11/18/08
CHRISTINE TRZYNA QUICK REVIEW THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR by MARTHA STOUT, Ph.D.
by MARTHA STOUT, PH.D (Harvard medical School instructor, psychologist)
C 2005 by the author
Broadway Books New York
How do you identify the sociopath, the one in 25 people who can do anything to you - the most horrendous things - without regret, compassion, or even consideration for your feelings because they themselves have near none? This short but to the point book by Martha Stout may help you realize who is likely to have this frightening (to us) mental illness. Sociopaths are rarely in a jail cell but more likely in your workplace or own bed. Stout helps those of us who have been victimized by these characters realize that identifying them and eliminating them from our lives is about all we can do, since they can be as clever and charming as they are damaging. To help you, my reader, get to the point of it, here are some important excerpts from Stout's book:
Page 43...
"No, Skip was not consigned to eh edges of society, he does not drool, and he is not (yet) in prison. In fact, he is rich and, in many circles, respected - or at least feared, which masquerades brilliantly as respect. So what is wrong with this picture? Or perhaps the question should be: What is the worst part of this picture, the central flaw in Skip's life that makes him into a tragedy despite his success, and into the maker of tragedies for so many others? It is this: Skip has no emotional attachments to other people, none at all...
His mother is there to be ignored, or sometimes baited. His sister is there to be tormented. Other women are sexual plunder and nothing more. He has been waiting since childhood for his father to do only one thing - to die and leave his money to Skip. His employees are there to be manipulated and used, as his friends have always been. His wife and even his children are meant for the eyes of the world. They are camouflage,. Skip is intellectually gifted, and he's fabulous at the gamesmanship of business. But by far his most impressive talent is his ability to conceal from nearly everyone the true emptiness of his heart - and to command the passive silence of those few who do know...
pages 50-51
"Still, I believe that somewhere buried safely away from consciousness, there may be a faint internal murmuring that something is missing, something that other people have. I say this because i have heard sociopaths speak of feeling "empty" or even "hollow." And I saw this because what sociopaths envy, and may seek to destroy as part of the game, is usually something in the character structure of a person with conscience, and strong characters are often specially targeted by sociopaths...
Page 90
"Moreover, the shameless know us much better than we know them. We have an extremely hard time seeing that a person has no conscience, but a person who has no conscience can instantly recognize someone who is decent and trusting.... an easy mark...a caring person who could be counted on to assume more than her fair share of responsibility.
Page 91
"And sexual seduction is only one aspect of the game. We are seduced as well by the acting skills of the sociopath. Since the scaffolding of a life without conscience is deception and illusion, intelligent sociopaths often become proficient at acting, and even at some of the particular techniques employed by professional actors. Paradoxically, the visible signs of emotion at will can become second nature to the cold-blooded- the appearance of intense interest in another person's problems or enthusiasms, chest-thumping patriotism, righteous indignation, blushing modesty, weepy sadness.... Crocodile tears from the remorseless are especially likely when a conscious-bound person gets a little too close to confronting a sociopath with the truth. A sociopath who is about to be cornered by another person will turn suddenly into a piteous weeping figure whom no one, in good conscience, would continue to pressure...
Page 115
"Sociopaths sometimes exhibit brief, intense enthusiasms - hobbies - projects, involvements with people - that are without commitment or follow-up. These interest appear to begin abruptly and for no reason, and to end the same way.`
11/13/08
TOUCHED WITH FIRE by KAY REDFIELD JAMISON Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperment
Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
By Kay Redfield Jamison C 1993
The Free Press
Focusing on English poets and writers of renown, including a genealogy focus on familial mental illness (though perhaps not diagnosed as contemporary psychiatrists might today then), Kay Redfield Jamison links artistic talent and temperament with Manic Depression - now called Bipolar disease. How many of today's artistic and literary geniuses are too medicated to create, that's what I want to know!
Page 117
"Profound melancholy or the suffering of psychosis can fundamentally change an individual's expectations and beliefs about the nature, duration, and meaning of life, the nature of man, and the fragility and resilience of the human spirit. Many writers, artists, and composers have described the impact of their long periods of depression, how they have struggled or dealt with them, and how they have used them in their work. The influence of pain's domination fills novels, canvases, and musical scores; there is no shortage of portrayals. Poet Anne Sexton, for one, described the importance of using pain in her work: "I, myself, alternate between hiding behind my own hands, protecting myself anyway possible, and this other, this seeing touching other. I guess I mean that creative people must not avoid the pain that they get dealt... Hurt must be examined like a plague."
11/10/08
ROCKIE GARDINER of ROCKIE HOROSCOPE RIP
11/8/08
MEDIA and CELEBRITY and MADONNA
You may not think much of me for this, such a literary person I am, but I am absolutely interested in the Madonna - Guy Ritchie divorce which is making all the news in Britain and the Internet. At the end of my computer time I go check Yahoo news for the latest. I want to know if Madonna will be generous. If she will leave England. If she has a man waiting in the wings. And of course, how she will recreate herself for the next act of her life since she gets the PRIZE for BEST CHAMELEON. For all that, I recently read the book about his life with her by her talented in many things but for writing brother Christopher Ciconne. Click on the title above to be taken to "How Liz Rosenberg is Killing Christopher Ciconne's Book Tour" with her control of some television media...
Thanks to David Hauslaib's Gossip on the Internet
Q When does someone become public property?
A When they become famous - a celebrity.
Easily this means movie stars, but it can go like this. One day you talk to a reporter about your life, the article appears in People or another magazine, now "everyone" knows you, and so you are now public property, and so your life is not legally protected as private. If any NEWS happens to you, if you become NEWS, reporters and researchers and writers might find you and write about you in the media. Of course you might decline to comment or hire a Public Relations person to do a "spin" on you to help you fix an impression that you feel is erroneous even if it is the truth.
The truth is the key here because people are not committing libel or slander if they tell the truth and further, and getting at the truth is a fetish, and at least in America it is assumed that everyone is entitled to an opinion. Now adays there is even something called ADVOCACY JOURNALISM in which the journalist is not assumed to be able to keep his or her own opinions out of the story. Or let's face it, as an editor just the bit you choose says something about you after all. For instance if you pick and publish information that makes Madonna seem like the greedy and materialistic person she is - cheap with her family and hardworking sibling Christopher for instance - which is what he says - you might be expected to be a fan of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who in his book, reviewed here, spends pages using her as a bad example. So much for her leanings towards Kaballah.
Of course a way to become famous is to write your own memoir when in a sense you have no control over what you've lived but you do have control of what you want to say about it. If it gets on the best seller list people may be asking you about your life from then on. Or you will find your own book at a garage sale being recycled. I like to read the disclaimer statements some memoirists start out with.
Years ago journalists respected public figures like U.S. Presidents by not reporting what they knew about their private lives while celebrity oriented movie magazines did more than put a spin - they fabricated stories about their stars that were barely if at all true to give an impression.
Madonna, I feel, is probably not capable at this point of giving an interview or really saying anything spontaneously (even if it sounds like she is) and without an agenda. I believe she is quite the PR expert and knows how to play the media better than anyone. Which is why maybe it's exciting to see what actually makes it into the press about this divorce and wonder if she planted it there and what she's up to or if she and Liz Rosenberg are actually loosing some control!
I really loved that one article that said Madonna sleeps wrapped in plastic !
11/5/08
THE MAN BEHIND THE DA VINCI CODE by Lisa Rogak (2nd Posting)
An Unauthorized Biography of Dan Brownby Lisa RogakAndrews McMeel Publishing - Kansas City
See my previous post on this book by using the Google search feature above...
Page 55
"After learning the craft of constructing and writing a novel - one that was actually sold to a major New York publisher - Brown felt he had developed a good sense of what worked and what didn't when it came to commercial fiction. Setting for one, was crucial.... for his novels, he believed that location was perhaps the most important factor, since it would dictate the degree to which secrets could be revealed and present a unique opportunity to educate the reader about a topic they may know little about.
"If you're writing a love story, don't set it in the middle of a parking lot," he said, suggesting that the story be based in a location that is interesting all by itself. Once that is confirmed, he added, it's imperative to show the environment from a fly-on-the-wall perspective. "If you set a story in a private school and don't reveal any inside information about what it's like to work or study at a private school, then you've got a boring setting," he said.
Page 89"Beginning in the 1990's, international corporations saw money and prestige in book publishing companies - especially if they could tie them into other media outlets they owned to facilitate cross-promotion - and so they began snapping up privately owned publishers buy the carload....
"And they needed to make a profit. While publishers of old were primarily interested in producing good literature, the first concern of the conglomerates was financial. Whether a successful book had a literary bent or was more commercial in flavor didn't matter....
Book Expo is the largest trade show for the publishing industry there is.