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Richard S. Beam

​105     Halloween and Other Fall Stuff

10/28/2017

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It’s just about time for Halloween, so a certain percentage of “good” Christians can carry on about how this isn’t a “true and proper” celebration as it REALLY is all about worshiping the Devil, etc., etc., etc.  Of course, this is all really a bunch of nonsense.  It IS true that there is some sort of celebration to honor the “faithful departed” in most religions and many parts of the world at about this time of year.  This includes Judaism, Hinduism, some branches of Christianity and (of course) various neo-pagan groups.  There is apparently some debate regarding Halloween in Islam, but I suspect that this is more due to the “Christianizing” of what was a traditional celebration honoring the dead (see the Dia de los Muertos, Samhain, etc.).
 
Now when various Christian groups “discovered” these non-believers having such celebrations, they decided that they needed to put a stop to such “heathen” carryings on.  To accomplish that, they figured that they would create a Christian holiday to compete with the local celebrations, as they did with MANY other, earlier, non-Christian celebrations.  Thus, was born All Saints’ (Hallows’) Day.  Although a holiday in honor of the saints was first established by Pope Boniface IV about 609, the feast of All Saints, on its current date, is traced to Pope Gregory III (731-741).  It might be worth noting in passing that many Protestant groups have accepted the notion of All Saints’ Day, although some have modified it to include various religious leaders and ones’ ancestors.
 
Hence, it would seem, at least to me, that there is pretty wide acceptance of the idea that some sort of ceremony to honor ones’ ancestors has been a part of human religion for a rather long time.  There is also, about this time of year, a rather widespread appearance of celebrations in honor of the end of the “harvest” season and the approach of winter.  In the US, of course, we pretend that this was an idea which appeared with the Pilgrims of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but the reality is that harvest festivals have been around a long time and virtually everywhere in the world. 
 
My suspicion is that “Thanksgiving” is so widely approved of in the US because it’s a chance to pass off what is believed to be a Christian holiday as a National one.  Having studied a bit about the Plymouth Plantation, I think I am correct in saying that its settlers were, at least in large part, Separatists from the Church of England who, in their desire to separate themselves from what they saw as “Catholic” influences within that church, wished to separate themselves in every way possible and completely from the established church of the British Crown, including renouncing virtually ALL religious holidays.  The “Puritans,” who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony (near Boston) a few years later, were a bit less adamant about leaving all aspects of the established church behind.  The difference, as best I can determine it, however, seems pretty subtle today.
 
The legend goes, of course, that the “first thanksgiving” was celebrated as a religious observance in 1621 when the harvest had been successful (due at least in part to the assistance of local natives, some of whom were also invited).  The idea that this was any sort of major “celebration,” however, seems highly unlikely (at least to me) as the Puritans of the Plymouth Plantation were opposed to most “celebrations,” even of a religious nature.  They, for example, did NOT celebrate Christmas except by going to church.  They, apparently, did celebrate the successful first harvest, but only as an occasion to give thanks to God.
 
At the risk of sounding too negative about my ancestors (the ones who got caught up in the Salem Witch Trials), I wish to point out that the people of the (by 1692) united Massachusetts Bay colony did NOT believe in the separation of church and state, in fact, they established a government which depended heavily on religious leaders as the “proper” authorities.  They also did NOT practice religious tolerance, as Quakers, Anabaptists and anyone who didn’t follow their rather strict version of “approved” religion, were persecuted by law and occasionally even killed as a danger to the state.  They practiced slavery, which was not an exclusively “southern” phenomenon, although it was, eventually, abolished in the northern colonies earlier than in the southern ones.
 
Their lack of tolerance of “others” was not limited to religious differences, there was a lengthy history of intolerance of the people who were native to the land they “claimed” in the name of their religion and northern European superiority.  The clearest examples of this, at least to me, come from a few years later, closer to the time of the Witch Trials in Salem where “Indians” were simply assumed to be in league with the followers of Satan.
 
No, there is a lot we could learn about our earliest US ancestors.  They were NOT saints, nor were they completely sinners.  It’s not too hard to look back on what we see as their mistakes and condemn them as somehow less than we are today.  Then, if you turn on the news, you should realize that we may not have come so far.  We could all do with a little more knowledge of fact and a greater tolerance for those with whom we disagree.  That’s why (I think) the First Amendment begins with freedom of religion (which includes freedom FROM religion), then goes on to mention free speech, and a free press to report to us the best FACTS available.  Note: it’s not the job of the press to tell us how we should THINK about the facts, but it is their job to inform us OF the facts.
 
Oh, well, I am looking forward to having a happy Halloween.  I plan to dress up a bit, perhaps decorate the house and yard a little with “spooky” stuff, and I look forward to seeing a bunch of costumed munchkins at my front door looking for “treats.”  We didn’t have this happen too often when we lived in Sylva as we were not in a neighborhood with many kids.  Now, living in a “walkable” suburb we have gotten a reasonable number of “trick or treaters the last few years,” and Bonnie and I have enjoyed them a lot.
 
I hope your Fall is filled with reasons for joy, whatever you wish to believe about the honoring of those gone before, thanks for a good harvest, or whatever.  If nothing else, I hope your trees are filled with color….
 
LLAP
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#104   Football, Critics and Recent Reading

10/15/2017

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It’s fall, of course, so it’s getting colder, it’s football season (has been for a while), and I feel like I need to write something to post.  So, I gave some thought to things (besides the news), which interested me. 

Perhaps some of this will be of interest to others....
 
Football season in Nebraska is something which MUST be experienced to be understood.  Okay, I’ve never lived anyplace where the local football team (at least while I was there) was a particularly “dominant force of nature,” (Indiana going to the Rose Bowl in 1968 [while I was in graduate school] was a fluke, and, besides, I was too busy with the ITC and Brockett courses to notice, anyway)  Now, I was fairly heavily involved with the football team while I was in high school, but a life with a family and working in theatre education didn’t allow a great deal of time to make football a priority in my life.  In any event, I’ve never experienced anything quite like football in Nebraska.
 
Football (more than any other sport) seems to be a dominant concern here for much of the year.  Things DO slack off a bit early right after New Year’s Day, but only for a short time.  It seems as though “Husker” football is one of the major sources of conversation for most of the year.  Now, Nebraska has had a history of fair success in football over the years and, as is true in many places, the locals are proud of that, so it’s not too much of a surprise that there is some discussion of prospects for next year, etc., during the “off” season.  I confess that I am consistently amazed, however, at the almost complete domination of football in sports news throughout the year.  One is almost forced to accept the notion that “Husker” (the commonly used nick name of the “Cornhuskers,” the name of the teams of the University of Nebraska [Lincoln], the major university of the “Cornhusker state) is merely an alternate spelling of Jehovah, Allah, or Yahweh.
 
I confess that I have frequently encountered stores in malls, etc., which sell sports fan apparel having some items featuring the local college team, but here I find complete stores selling ONLY “Husker” stuff and at least a limited selection is to be found in many other stores (grocery stores, drug stores, big box stores, you name it).  And, even this “limited” selection often includes tailgating tents, chairs, stools, coolers, drinking cups, and other stuff in addition to tee shirts, jackets, hats, and the like.  It’s truly amazing!
 
I suppose that this may have become commonplace, so I could find it across the country (?), but it’s certainly new to me and I find it fascinating.  Somehow, the newspaper story about it being only 200 days to the kickoff for next year’s football season is one I look forward to with some amusement.  But, enough about that…
 
I’ve been doing some reading recently.  There is nothing unusual about that; I read a lot.  The other day, however, I was given a copy of srsly Hamlet by William Shakespeare and Courtney Carbone.  It’s a hoot!  It’s one of the OMG Shakespeare series published by Random House.  The complete series (to date) consists of Macbeth #killingit, by the same authors, and YOLO Juliet and A Midsummer Night #nofilter by William Shakespeare and Brett Wright.  If you haven’t seen these (or, perhaps, even heard of them); they are books which give “some of the bard’s greatest plays the 21st-century textspeak treatment.” 
 
That means, of course, that the plays are presented using text message abbreviations and emoticons as if the lines were being sent via cell phone.  There ARE drastic cuts, of course, but the resulting text does manage to capture the essence of the story and is VERY funny.  Of course, I would not suggest that this is a serious substitute for reading the original Hamlet, but (at least for “Hamlet nuts” like me) it’s quite a lot of fun.
 
I haven’t read the other “works” in the series (and I doubt that I would seriously consider purchasing them) as the gag does get a bit tired by the end, but I think it likely that some people would enjoy them.  I think that if one of the plays available is a special favorite of yours that you might well want to get a copy.  They aren’t expensive and may be available from your library.  Shakespeare is something which people should have fun with….
 
I also have just finished the new Dan Brown written “Robert Langdon” series book, Origin.  I confess that I have enjoyed these books and the movies I have seen of several of them.  Then again, I rather like “thriller fiction.”  My understanding, from some stuff I have read in the paper, is that the “critics” don’t think any more of this book than they have the others.  I can’t say that I’m surprised.  “Critics” seem to think that anything which can be seen, heard, read, etc., and enjoyed by the general public without the intervention of “experts” can not possibly be worthwhile.  After all, if we just let people judge “art” on their own, we (the “critics”) wouldn’t have jobs!
 
Personally, I’m not sure how much I care about some self-styled “expert” telling me what I am SUPPOSED to like.  I think I can make up my own mind.  Sure, I’ve read a lot of criticism over the years, especially criticism of drama.  I confess that I may have even acquired a greater appreciation of some plays through the advice and opinion of experts.  But, mostly, my opinion as to whether I LIKE a work (be it a play, a novel, or a work of fine art) hasn’t changed much.  I LIKE The Glass Menagerie and really can’t work up much enthusiasm for Streetcar Named Desire.  I think I can appreciate that Streetcar is truly a classic of the American theatre (as is Menagerie) but I just find it hard to get excited by an unpleasant story about a bunch of (mostly) unpleasant people in unhappy circumstances.  I think I can figure out what are most of the important ideas presented and what happens to the characters.  I just find it hard to really care a great deal.  A “Critic” is unlikely to change that no matter how much he/she goes on about the “poetic nature of the prose,” the “sensitivity of the character portrayal, or whatever claptrap she/he wants to come up with.
 
Are the Robert Langdon books great works of literature?  Probably not, although they are, for the most part, an enjoyable read, at least for me.  Apparently for a lot of other people, too, as they have been “best-sellers.”  Of course, being a “best-seller” seems to automatically doom a lot of things, books especially.  After all, the fact that J.K. Rowling had multiple of the Harry Potter books on the “Best Seller List” at the same time made the “critics” decide that they had to create a whole new “Children’s Best Seller” list because these KID’S books were keeping “serious” literature from it’s rightful place on the list. 
 
Do I think the Harry Potter books are “great” literature?  I’m not sure, but I have found them worthwhile for multiple readings and I understand that there are a variety of legitimate college courses (Yes, at REAL universities) being offered for studying at reputable universities and I KNOW that the books were popular enough with ADULTS that the paperback edition was published (in Britain) with both a “children’s” and an “adult” cover because many adults (who were reading them) were embarrassed to be seen reading a copy with the “kid’s cover.
 
Personally, I tend to choose to read whatever attracts my attention.  Often that means reading works by authors whose works I have previously enjoyed.  And, I’m pretty eclectic in my taste.  I enjoy some mysteries, some science fiction, some “thriller” fiction, some biography, and most of what I can find about Shakespeare or about the Salem Witch Hunt experience (these last tend to be a good deal more focused on “scholarly” stuff). 
 
Are my tastes exclusively towards that sort of thing which the “critics” call “good” literature?  Not a chance, although I have, and do, read some of that.  I LIKE A GOOD READ!  If I can get lost in a story for a while, that’s a GOOD thing! By the way, in addition to being the Shakespeare “nut” which my former students are well aware of, I’m also a bit of a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels.  Conan Doyle’s writings, like a good many other popular works, ARE a bit formulaic and even I get a little annoyed every so often about how hard he seems to be working to make Holmes seem brilliant when the evidence is pretty suggestive at least as to the general nature of what’s going on.  But, for the most part, the stories are a pleasant way to spend an hour, or two, being diverted and taken back to a time when as Vincent Starrett wrote in his poem,


221b
 
Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game's afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears--
Only those things the heart believes are true.
 
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.


I don’t think the Holmes works are “great literature,” but that really doesn’t bother me.  In fact, I don’t care.  There are times when it’s nice to read a story about two friends in foggy, old, gas-lit London simply because it’s not cold (or sometimes hot), snowy (or rainy), football driven Omaha (or Cullowhee). 
 
I’ve never really wanted to give others personal advice (especially when I haven’t been asked for it) but, if I were to do so, I would say DO read.  And read whatever you like.  You just might find that what the “critics” say doesn’t really matter.  After all, YOU are the expert on what you like when you are reading for pleasure!  You might join me in wandering about London about 1895…
 
LLAP
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    Just personal comments about things which interest me (and might interest others).

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