Blog Archives - ROBERT E DUNN

teachers

3/31/2022

This repost from 3/8/2022 is dedicated to preK-12 teachers who are forced to comply with federal and/or state regulations and training regarding critical race theory and gender theory. Take heart in the words of the psalm every person of any religion or no religion.

There are schools that do not comply. Search them out. Look for a non-discriminatory policy at the bottom of the school website like the one below, which is taken from a Catholic high school. Other schools comply in form but not in the spirit of the law, or, at least, they permit their teachers to handle matters according to their own consciences.

[School name] has a nondiscriminatory policy as to students and therefore does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national and ethnic origin.

That should do it.

auburn symphony

3/31/2022

https://www.pbs.org/video/scaling-the-heights-the-auburn-symphony-jc7dso/

An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64, required over 100 musicians and many unusual instruments, including a wind machine made locally from scratch. Composer Richard Strauss based the piece on a journey into the Alps as a teenager. The venue for the Auburn, CA, orchestra was the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts on the UC Davis campus. The Mondavi’s are the wine people. The film is directed by Tommy Merry, an Auburn area resident, and features a young violin prodigy.

senator oil boom

3/31/2022

LNG is liquefied natural gas.
The current price of WTI crude oil as of March 25, 2022, is 113.90 per barrel.
www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/liquefied-natural-gas.php

infanticide

3/31/2022

If one does not accept Catholic dogma on life, one might want to know what natural law teaches. One explanation of natural law comes from Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the best explanation of all. His explanation stands against California AB 2223, a bill to legalize killing during the perinatal period. According to medicinenet.com, “Perinatal: pertaining to the period immediately before and after birth. The perinatal period is defined in diverse ways. Depending on the definition, it starts at the 20th to 28th week of gestation and ends 1 to 4 weeks after birth.” AB 2223 would permit legally killing babies after birth. This is infanticide.
www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2021/08/77294/

jefferson

3/31/2022

The video comes from a good friend. The party Jefferson founded was known as the Democratic-Republican Party, the Jeffersonian Republican Party, and the Republican Party.

austria-hungary

3/31/2022

Joe Ketzer said, “Written by Joseph Haydn, this is the old anthem of Austria-Hungary, and many British and American hymnals also contain this tune, titled, ‘Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken’. It’s a ‘Tantum Ergo’, which I often sang in church on special occasions. The Latin verses fit perfectly to the tune.”

You will see the source of many English words in the song. The origin of Kaiser is Caesar and sounds the same as the classical Latin pronunciation of Caesar, and the connection between the two becomes clear with an understanding of the title, Holy Roman Emperor. His chancellor was the famous Metternich.

telegram style

3/31/2022

Joe Ketzer referenced “telegram style” in a “Cogito” post comment 3/30/2022. That got me looking, and I found a copy of Orville Wright’s telegram, dated Dec. 17, 1903. Notice there are no pronouns, or articles the, a, an, which are used in Germanic languages, such as English, as Joe pointed out.

In the public domain. “Telegram from Orville Wright in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to His Father Announcing Four Successful Flights, 1903 December 17”, created 20 July 2013, 21:00:21, source http://www.wdl.org/en/item/11372/ author Orville Wright [***the source is not secure***]

bleeding

3/31/2022

loneness, our permanent state of earthly life, purposefully permitted
and perilously exchanged for something else

"View of Dresden by Moonlight" by Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857)

cogito, ergo sum

3/30/2022

“Cogito, ergo sum.” “Je pense, donc je suis.” “I think, therefore I am.”

Notice French and English require a pronoun: je and I. Latin, not so. Economical Latin is expressed in three words, French and English in five.

Did René Descartes (1596–1650), the father of modern philosophy, say it? Not exactly. “I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So, after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.” (AT 7:25, CSM 2:16f)

Per Wikipedia, “In 1607, late because of his fragile health, he entered the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Flèche, where he was introduced to mathematics and physics, including the work of Galileo. After graduation in 1614, he studied for two years (1615–16) at the University of Poitiers, earning a Baccalauréat and Licence in canon and civil law in 1616, in accordance with his father’s wishes that he should become a lawyer. From there, he moved to Paris.

“He said, ‘I entirely abandoned the study of letters. Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth traveling, visiting courts and armies, mixing with people of diverse temperaments and ranks, gathering various experiences, testing myself in the situations which fortune offered me, and at all times reflecting upon whatever came my way to derive some profit from it.’”

I prefer a student seek Descartes’s path over the worldly profitable and elitist notion of the straight line in academic and employment progress as graphed above.

Take a look at the Jesuit school Descartes attended. You will be stunned by the list of graduates, which includes Husain Bey, Crown Prince of Tunisia.

iron curtain

3/29/2022

Alexander (8) gave me a book to read from his library of approximately 400 titles, The Wall, Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, by Peter Sís, an artist born in Czechoslovakia in 1949 and an American citizen since 1988. The book is a memoir filled with photographs of family and American rock band culture, numerous drawings from his youth, and a timeline of events in the place of birth. I recommend the book, which is entirely in English, to children who are good readers and adults.

Alexander reads at 6th to 8th grade level. I believe his reading level is much higher. Telling his mother that the reading passages from the SSAT were easy, but the questions were hard, he scored 60% correct. We are working on that score. I’m just there to give him a bit of coaching. Unlike some American students, Alexander has a sense of urgency. Perhaps, that arises from the fact that his parents are immigrants.

Whenever the God subject comes up and I talk, Alexander gives me a I’ve-heard-it-before look. Who knows on which side of the scales of faith he will land? My other student is not Catholic, and I tease him, “I would be on your case in high school.” He knows that among the precepts of literacy is hope. As a tutor, for their sakes, I shan't live in a box.

1987 - I am thinking of a box as a cage, a prison, or a tomb.

kathy sends

3/29/2022

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hawaiitracker/permalink/2169589796540160/

promises

3/29/2022

What are the most important things in my life? Not writing. Not being loved or remembered. Loyalty and keeping promises. I hope I never fail these immortals, the Roman god, Sancus, and his Catholic better part, St. Expeditus.

clerihew

3/29/2022

Edmund Clerihew Bentley, a friend of Chesterton from schooldays, issued his first clerihew, which is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem that he invented, in 1905, on Sir Humphry Davy.

Bentley was also president of the Detection Club, a club for mystery writers, which included Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ronald Knox. Chesterton was its first president. Per Wikipedia, “In addition to meeting for dinners and helping each other with technical aspects in their individual writings, the members of the club agreed to adhere to Knox's Commandments in their writing to give the reader a fair chance at guessing the guilty party.” Knox just happened to be a Catholic priest, and Christie just happened to sign a 1969 letter requesting that the Latin Mass not be abolished.

This time period is called the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Most of the writers were British, but included are Americans Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner (of Perry Mason fame), Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler.

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

chesterton on the world

3/29/2022

crt exposed

3/28/2022

Critical race theory (CRT) teaches that all white people are racist, and who the hell are white people, anyway? They are people in a box to be checked on a questionnaire. The people behind CRT do not belong in any government position or on any corporate board of directors. Above all, they do not belong on any school board or in any school, and don’t they love their worldly goods.

On a personal note, I received communion and absolution from the hands of a Nigerian priest more than once. A brief romance many, many years ago had me staring admiringly into the face of an Asian refugee. Through the years, boys and girls of different backgrounds sat beside me as we did schoolwork.

Any Catholic who endorses CRT is not Catholic. Any American who embraces this evil theory that hurts children will face judgment in the end. What then?

bookmakers

3/28/2022

The Codex Book Fair in Richmond, CA, April 10-13, 2022, is for bookmakers, government, museum, and private collectors, and people who love the smell, feel, and sight of books, hearing paper pages turn or tasting a word as you might do or imagine doing, and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco has a department devoted to printmaking and the book arts. The book fair is the largest of its kind in the world. https://www.codexfoundation.org/codex-2022
https://www.academyart.edu/academics/fine-art/

san quentin convict

3/27/2022

The garbage media and entertainment are feeding black teenagers is a sharp contrast to reality. www.chicoer.com/2021/04/16/steven-crittenden-case-will-be-resolved-today-in-placer-county-as-defense-prosecution-reach-plea-deal/

reading list

3/27/2022

Altan (13) Reading List
June 2021 – March 2022

Short Stories
The Appointment in Samarra, Maugham (flash fiction)
The Watcher, Benson (ghost)
Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut (sci fi)
To Build a Fire, London (adventure)
Hearts and Hands, O. Henry (humorous romance)
The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry (dramatic irony)
The Ten Labors of Hercules, Ovid/Theocritus (epic)
The Cask of Amontillado, Poe (gothic)
Button, Button, Matheson (fantasy)
Examination Day, Slesar (sci fi)
There Will Come Soft Rains, Bradbury (sci fi)
Just Lather, That’s All, Telez (historical fiction)
The Lottery, Jackson (horror)
Red Letter Day, Fox (detective)

Genres help readers know story type, but what makes these stories great are the things they share in common.

It is a little hard to find Fox; here is the link -
https://www.gardnerfrancisfoxlibrary.com/a-manhunt-chiller-red-letter-day-by-gardner-f-fox/

chinese emperor

3/26/2022

Flag of the Chinese Empire under the Qing dynasty (1889-1912), details per the restoration of Beiyang fleet researcher, 2 May 2015, Original work: 1889. Own work. [Public domain in US, not everywhere]

Excerpt from Wikipedia -

Puyi (Chinese: 溥儀; February 7, 1906 – October 17, 1967), courtesy name Yaozhi (曜之), was the last emperor of China as the eleventh and final Qing dynasty monarch.

He became Qing emperor at the age of two in 1908, but was forced to abdicate on February 12, 1912, during the Xinhai Revolution. His era name as Qing emperor, “Xuantong” (Hsuan-tung), means “proclamation of unity”.

He was later installed as the ruler of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo during World War II.

He was briefly restored to the throne as Qing emperor by the loyalist General Zhang Xun from July 1 to July 12, 1917.

He was first wed to Empress Wanrong in 1922 in an arranged marriage.

In 1924, he was expelled from the palace and found refuge in Tianjin, where he began to court both the warlords fighting for hegemony over China and the Japanese who had long desired control of China.

In 1932, after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the puppet state of Manchukuo was established by Japan, and he was chosen to become the chief executive of the new state using the era name of “Datong” (Ta-tung).

Now my bit -

Qing is pronounced ching.

Puyi received standard Confucian education, reported his progress to his “mothers”, five former imperial concubines led by Empress Dowager Longyu, and had a British tutor, Reginald Johnston.

Wanrong, his wife, died at 39 (1906-1946) and had an American tutor, Isabel Ingram.

A 1987 film, The Last Emperor, starring John Lone, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, won many awards. It was filmed in the Forbidden City in China and in Italy, so visually beautiful, but I would have liked a more personalized story.

1924 reel of Puyi and Wanrong – fascinating
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWanrong_and_Puyi_in_1924.webm

1987 interview with John Lone – engaging

Politics plummets

3/26/2022

In the last few weeks, conditions here and abroad have deteriorated.

Deterioration:

Latin/French
de – Latin adverb or preposition meaning, “down from, off, away from,” and used figuratively as, “concerning, by reason of, according to”, also a French preposition in phrases or proper names

French/English
Deterioration is a noun meaning, “a growing or making worse”, first appearing in the 1650s, and possibly a native formation, or from French détérioration, a noun of action from the word, détériorer, which comes from the Late Latin verb, deteriorare, meaning, “to get worse; to make worse”.

There are many entries that are not political, but I make political posts because current events compel responses, and ignoring deterioration so damaging is cold-hearted.

Photo by João Marcelo Martins on Unsplash, Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Athens, Greece. Published on January 9, 2019, FUJIFILM, X10.

The Odeon is a Roman theater of stone, located on the southwest slope of the Acropolis of Athens, Greece. The theater was completed in AD 161 and renovated in 1950.

The theater has been the site of many music concerts.

The photo brings to mind the seats of power and echoes of the past.

Metabiota mess

3/25/2022

Pfizer is a pharmaceutical company with a facility in South San Francisco.

In July 2020, I wrote, “Apartment 19”, a short story with Pfizer in it. I did research on Pfizer at the time and thought I had landed on the right vaccine, and that was before substantive information about the vaccine had been released.

Metabiota is a biotechnology company in San Francisco. Its history is a little different but a little bit the same. Should I write a short story with Metabiota in it? Check this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10652127/Hunter-Biden-helped-secure-millions-funding-military-biotech-research-program-Ukraine.html

No, no, I would rather follow the progress of my students than the progress of suspicious global money transfers.

lockheed martin

3/25/2022

This is what Americans do to advance freedom.
No casualties on our side.

swticheroo

3/25/2022

Hail Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking space.

aphorism expanded

3/24/2022

Aut/aut, ambo/et non sumus. We’re not either/or, we’re both/and.
Both scripture and tradition. Both American founding documents and tradition.

writing challenge

3/24/2022

Ars longa, vita brevis.
Skillfulness takes time, and life is short.