BOOKS BY "D.M. MURDOCK" - aka: Acharya S.

Two books I've recently completed are by the aforementioned Acharya S. - a comparative religion scholar of some renown and a Bible critic par excellence.  The first is entitled "Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection" and details the numerous coincidences between the Jesus story as told in the New Testament (NT) of the Bible, and the older - by several millennia! - stories of Horus, related in The Pyramid Texts, The Coffin Texts, The Book of the Dead and as depicted on the walls of the ancient Egyptian pyramids and other construction. Again, these stories predate the writing of the NT (the exact dating, of which, is the subject of much continuing debate) by hundreds of years to thousands of years.  The second is "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold." Note: not "Told", as the Christians are wont to say; but "Sold", as it really should be noted. And that's "Sold", as in a "bill of goods". "Sold", as a tall tale to gullible illiterates who didn't know that the myths had been around for millennia before the hucksters decided to make them Canaanite instead of Egyptian.

The first mentioned tome details, in nearly 600 pages of well documented research, with the nearly line by line theft of the Egyptian myths by the early writers of the Christ myth. She shows how the Biblical myth is taken word for word from the ancient Egyptian texts, then nuanced or modified or explained away in a fashion that makes these tales seem "new" and "inspired".  They ARE inspired - just as any lie is an "inspired" version of the truth! 

Her thesis is the "Mythicist Position," which concludes that "As a major example of the Mythicist position, it is determined that various biblical characters such as Adam and Eve, Satan, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, King David, Solomon and Jesus Christ, among other entities, in reality represent mythological figures along the same lines as the Egyptian, Sumerian, Phoenician, Indian, Greek, Roman and other godmen, who are all presently accepted as myths, rather than historical figures." She concurs with noted mythologist Joseph Campbell that "myth has a very real purpose and meaning, which is in reality depreciated when removed from its context and placed into "history"."

As for The Christ Conspiracy, it should suffice to quote some of what is in the book's introduction.

Concerning how most people become involved in their 'faith', she says:

"...Born in a Protestant land, we are of that faith. If we had opened our eyes to the light under the shadows of St. Peter's in Rome, we should have been devout Catholics; born in the Jewish quarter of Alepp, we should have condemned Christ as an impostor; in Constantinople, we should have cried 'Allah il Allah, God is great and Mahomet is his prophet!' Birth, place and education give us our faith. Few believe in any religion because they have examined the evidences of its authenticity, and made up a formal judgment, upon weighing the testimony.Not one man in ten thousand knows anything about the proofs of his faith. We believe what we are taught; and those are most fanatical who know least of the evidences on which their creed is based." (as quoted from Albert Pike: The Morals and Dogma of Scottish Rite Freemasonry.) (italics mine: gb)

Quoting anthropologist Jules Henry, "Organized religion, which likes to fancy itself the mother of compassion, long ago lost its right to that claim by its organized support of organized cruelty." She continues, "To deflect the horrible guilt off the shoulders of their own faith, religionists have pointed to supposedly secular ideologies such as Communism and Nazism as oppressors and murders of the people. However, few realize or acknowledge that the originators of Communism were Jewish (Marx, Lenin, Hess, Trotsky) and that the most overly violent leaders of both bloody movements were Roman Catholic (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) or Eastern Orthodox Christian (Stalin), despotic and intolerant ideologies that breed fascistic dictators."

Supported by a solid packed 430 plus pages of erudite scholarship, she supports with detailed argument the chapters of her books, some of which are named "The Holy Forgery Mill", and "Further Evidence of a Fraud", and "The Disciples are the Signs of the Zodiac", and "The Patriarchs and Saints are the Gods of Other Cultures" and even throwing in "The Bible, Sex and Drugs" and finally "The Making of a Myth." 

These books are filled with references of some of the best Biblical scholars of all time - from the early Church "fathers" and their apologetic attempts to justify their take on the ancient myths they were touting as "inspired by God" to some of the most respected names in religious exposition; such as: John Allegro; Baigent and Leigh; William Bramley; Joseph Campbell; Lloyd Graham; Kersey Graves: Graham Hancock; Burton Mack; Elaine Pagels; Zecharia Sitchin; Merlin Stone; Barbara Walker; GA Wells; Ian Wilson; Robert Armour; C.K. Barrett; John Bell; John Henry Blunt; G. Johannes Botterweck; James Henry Breasted; E.A. Wallis Budge; Edward Carpenter; Walter Richard Cassels; the Catholic Encyclopedia; John Dominic Crossan; Thomas Doane; Earl Doherty; Raymond O. Faulkner; Edward Gibbon; Gary Greenberg; James Patrick Holding; Karen L. King; Barbara S. Lesko; Gerald Massey; G.R.S. Mead; Thomas Paine; W.M. Flinders Petrie: Robert M. Price; Madanjeet Singh; John Anthony West; and a hundred or more other noted scholars.

Opposing this scholarship is the Christian's mindless rant: "God Said It; I Believe It; End of Discussion." The only, ONLY, proof of the historicity of the Bible is in the Bible itself; and as we well know from our study of logic, a maxim cannot prove itself. There are literally hundreds of verifiable, provable, confirmable reasons to disbelieve the writings of the Bible as either Holy or Inspired; there is no valid argument in favor of these writings, except the belief of those who have compartmentalized their minds so they no longer question either the source nor the logic of their favorite myth.

And that is exactly what the Bible is: myth and fable, a monkey dressed up in a silk suit.

g

CHAPTER EIGHT: POTATOES: TEN CENTS A BAG

POTATOES: TEN CENTS A BAG

In later life I became an entrepreneur: A small business owner and operator. But I did this only after I had cut my operational teeth as a middle manager in corporate America.

Why didn't I just jump into my own business right away? It may have been because of the lesson I learned all too well in my first entrepreneurial venture.

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When my family returned to Anchorage, Alaska, after several years in Seward at the Jesse Lee Children's Home, we bought the house at 730 East 15th Avenue. I must have been ten or eleven at the time and the setting of the house was, for me, idyllic: East G Street lay nearly a full block to the west, and there was nothing but a garden and woods between the house and the street; 15th Avenue ran directly in front of the house, perhaps twenty-five feet away and separated from the house by a gravel driveway; to the back of the house was forest that extended nearly a hundred fifty yards straight back from the house, then dropped down a long, steep hill and ended in the muskeg of the valley known as Skunk Hollow; and two hundred feet or so to the east our closest neighbor was the house occupied by the Prator family from whom we had purchased our house. Some few other houses were interspersed amongst the trees along East 15th, but we were very much "in the sticks".

East G Street, in 1952, was a dirt, two lane, road that was tarred or oiled gravel in the summer, plowed snow in the winter, and deep mud at all other times. This was our main north/south thoroughfare into downtown Anchorage, some twenty-five blocks away. East 15th Avenue was anything but a main thoroughfare and was even less passable at all times of the year than was East G!

Heading north on East G would take you to the main street of town, 4th Avenue, just a little west of the city airport, Merrill Field. Heading south on East G took you down the long hill into Skunk Hollow - so named by the city's white kids because this was the shantytown area mostly occupied by the city's black families - across Chester Creek and up the other side of the hollow to Fireweed Lane. Fireweed Lane ran parallel to 15th Avenue, both of which met, on the far west of town, with Spenard Road. Continuing south past Fireweed Lane, East G Street became the Seward Highway.

It was at this house on East 15th that many incidents occurred which have become my fondest memories of life in Anchorage: Learning to shoot a bow and arrow; exploring old military hardware; learning to drive the family pickup; picking ripe Salmon Berries, Strawberries and Raspberries; and selling potatoes at ten cents a bag.

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My brother Ernie, nearly four years older than I and seemingly able to do all the things that I wanted to do, but couldn't, one day brought home the most beautiful weapon I had ever seen: A fiberglass bow that stood a full foot longer than I. Accompanying the bow was a quiver of arrows: Not just ordinary arrows with typical, blunt target points, but hunting arrows with heavy steel tips that had three razor sharp fins designed like the backside of a fishhook. These arrows, he said, were for hunting bear or moose; the fins were specially made so they would penetrate the heavy hide of these game animals but could not fall out. Once in, they had to be cut out.

He cautioned me about using the bow and arrows. This was a hunting bow, he said, not a toy. I could use it when I asked for permission first; but this was his pride and joy for which he had paid a handsome sum and I had to be very careful with it. Patiently he showed me how to string the bow, stepping through the curve on one end and bending the other end backwards to attach the string. Being considerably smaller than he, I could not bend the bow so easily. It required either greater strength than I had, or more leverage than my short legs and arms could achieve. So I learned to string the bow by putting one end in the slots in my bunk bed and pushing with all my body's weight against the other end. With all my effort I could just barely bend the bow enough to attach the string.

Happily, I took the bow outside the house to the forest and practiced shooting it. After some months of practice, always with his prior permission, I was able to shoot and hit a target some twenty-five or thirty yards away. Since the bow required so much strength to pull it, I could never shoot an arrow any great distance or with any great force. But I was extremely proud of my ability to consistently hit the inner circles on the paper target after several months of practice.

During this same summer that my brother brought home the bow and arrows my father acquired a female Beagle. This little dog, well known as a rabbit dog in our native Pennsylvania, was kept on a leash in our back yard. It wasn't long until her yapping and female charms had all the loose neighborhood male dogs visiting our house. Usually, it seemed, she didn't mind their attention. But their constant barking and yipping and thrashing around outside the house, especially early in the morning when I was trying to sleep, and especially when she wasn't ready for their attention, made me start thinking of ways to keep them away.

And it wasn't long until I thought of the bow and its steel-tipped hunting arrows.

The little bedroom that adjoined the kitchen was built more like a lean-to than the room of a house. It was perhaps seven feet long and four feet wide. The roof slanted from a high of not more than seven feet at the doorway to perhaps five feet at the far end. Outside that far end stood a spruce tree that towered above the spare bedroom roof; it made a perfect ladder for getting up on the rooftop and I quite often would climb the tree and stretch out on the flat, inclined roof and look at the sky.

From my vantage point on this roof, however, I could also see the doghouse out back some ten yards away. And I could easily see the visiting dogs, large German Shepherds, huge Siberian Huskies, lumbering Black Labradors, some Irish Setters, and the ever present Malamutes, when they came calling on our little Beagle.

Thus it was that one summer morning, very early, before anyone else was awake in the house, I got out of bed and slipped into my clothes, grabbed the bow and the quiver of arrows, and climbed the tree to the roof of the spare bedroom. I did not have to wait long until a stray Shepherd came to visit. He made all the usual advances and this morning the Beagle was not interested. She kept turning away from him, but after she got to the end of her leash she ran out of maneuvering room and he started to make his final advance.

Just as he raised up on his hind legs, his front paws on her front shoulders to hold her still, I raised the bow and took aim at his huge chest. As carefully and as quietly as I could, and knowing that I would have just one chance to shoot at him, I pulled the bow string back as far as I could.

I sighted along the arrow just as I had done the past months in practice, and let fly the steel tipped shaft. It struck him in the neck, passing through his throat and protruding out the other side. Without a bark or whine he quickly extricated himself from his lover and took off through the woods. I jumped down from the roof, loaded another arrow in the bow, and raced after him.

A full grown German Shepherd is a fearsome beast; I have seen packs of these roaming dogs attack another smaller dog in the street in front of our house and literally chew it to pieces in minutes. It seems that the smell of the blood drove them into a vicious frenzy. Even their owners wouldn't try to step in to protect the little dogs from the attack of the pack for fear of becoming their victim, as well.

Now I was chasing a wounded dog that could just as easily chew me to pieces, but in my excitement I didn't think that the last place I should be going - without even telling anyone that I was up - is into the woods after a wounded seventy-five pound dog. But the thrill of the hunt made my heart pound harder and my legs run faster. I chased it through the tall trees along the top of the hill, then down the slope towards the bog in the Skunk Hollow flats. Ahead, running slower now, I could see him struggling through the low branches and bushes as the spruce gave way to the alders of the creekside.

Finally he stopped, caught by the arrow between two small trees. As I approached I could see his head and upper body held high, his front legs pawing the air in desperation, his hind legs straining to push him past these obstructions. He wasn't conscious of my presence there and he continued his vain struggle, slowly losing energy and slowly sliding down the trunks of these two trees until, at last, he lay prone, and quiet.

I walked around in front of him; his chest was no longer moving, his body was motionless. Carefully, I took the arrow from the bow and, standing as far away as possible, leaned towards him and poked his nose with the sharp, steel point.

He didn't respond.

Believing him to be dead, I approached him as one might approach a lion shot on safari: Cautiously, quietly, intently. Trusting that, even if he were alive, he still could not get past the two small trees with the arrow still sticking out of both sides of his neck, I poked him again and again with the arrow I held in my hand.

Still no response.

OK, brave hunter, I thought to myself, now how do you get the arrow out of him and back into the quiver so nobody knows you were out here this morning? The tip and shank on the end that had pierced his throat were covered with dog hair and dried blood. To pull the arrow all the way through his neck would coat the whole shaft with this red mess; and because of the design of the tip I certainly could not pull the arrow out backwards.

I had created for myself a real quandary. But then I found the answer. In my pocket was my little pen knife, the kind kids always carried around for whittling or playing mumblety-peg. I wasn't a whittler, but I played a mean game of mumblety-peg. After being thrown into the ground so many times from the game the knife's blade was no long sharp, but it had to do the job.

Overcoming my fear that the dead dog would rise up and bite me, I grasped his neck fur with one hand and stretched it taut, and with the knife held in the other hand, sliced his throat from the arrow outward. Then I lifted his head and wiggled and jiggled the arrow through the tissue till it slid out.

How proud I was at that moment: No trophy head on any club wall created more pride in the hunt and kill than I felt while holding up this bloodied arrow.

Shortly after this incident occurred I was stringing the bow, with one end held firmly in the notch of the bunk bed and me pushing with all my might on the other end, and applied too much pressure on it. With a snap, the fiberglass splintered and broke. I was left holding a stubby piece of curved resin while the balance of this expensive weapon dangled ingloriously from the bedpost. My brother has most likely never forgiven me for breaking his treasured bow.

I never killed another living thing with this bow and its hunting arrows. Nor have I ever forgotten the feeling of power it had given me during that one, brief episode on the rooftop.

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From my hilltop perspective, the valley we called Skunk Hollow offered two areas of interest: The frequent police trips up the muddy main road, and the fenced storage yard of World War II military hardware.

Rumor had it that there were constant knifings, fights, rapes and beer bashes going on down below me, and I would often spend hours high up in a tree in which I had fashioned a sort of crow's nest, scanning the little community with my binoculars. While I saw a lot of adults walking about, fixing cars, hanging out laundry, chasing after kids and dogs and other usual activities, and saw a lot of little black children playing in the road and in the mire of the valley, and I often saw police cars slowly bumping their way up the narrow path of chuck holes and rocks, and even sometimes saw an ambulance maneuvering the road that was little more than a trail, I never saw anything that would substantiate the rumors of bashes, rapes, fights or knifings. And believe me, I spent hours of my youth looking for any evidence I could find.

Of course, I never went down into Skunk Hollow to look for any of this evidence first hand; all my research was done from the safety of my perch near the top of a tree a hundred yards from my back door.

But I did venture into the valley for another purpose: Stacked on a graveled lot, surrounded by a high barbed wire fence and the acres of sink holes and quagmire, was the greatest collection of old military jeeps, trucks, artillery, fighter planes and other hardware that any youngster could hope to see. While in my treetop lookout station I would scan the storage field, seeking out particular items of interest to me, then, early in the evenings when it was getting dusk, I would sneak through the woods to the edge of the wetland and, crouching and wriggling as I had seen Marines do in the movies, I would slowly make my way across the morass to the fence that separated me from my desire.

Often, on these evening forays, I would crawl under the fence and, ever alert for any guards or dogs, clamber over all this equipment. By the hours I would sit inside the cab of a truck, or the cockpit of a P-51, or behind the wheel of a 4 X 4 Armored Personnel Carrier. It was better than dreaming: For not only could I imagine myself fighting the Krauts or the Japs, but I was in the vehicle of destruction itself, shifting its gears as I climbed the mental mountains, or pushing forward on its stick as I raked the imaginary enemy with my wing mounted machine guns.

Walter Mitty never had it so good.

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Not everyone has warm and cuddly memories of grandmother. I know I don't. This is just one recollection of mine.

We lived in a very small house, even for those days, even for that place. The four main rooms included a cramped master bedroom, a pathetically small living room, a kitchen that saw extra duty as dining room and wash room - plus storage for all the tools my father needed to have 'at hand' and all the toys we kids wanted to play with - and the 'extra' bedroom which we three boys shared with our maternal grandmother. Jammed into this undersized nook were two sets of bunk beds and two old, dilapidated dressers. Another dresser or two occupied the front entry hall that would have been too small to walk in even if the dressers had not been there.

My brothers, being older than I, were lucky. They didn't have to go to bed early like grandma and I did, so they didn't have to hear her singing her church songs to herself or hear her scratching her legs after she took off her heavy, elastic stockings. I was told not to complain about the singing or the scratching because she was old and all she had left were her songs. And she had to wear the thick armor-like hose because she had varicose veins. I had seen her legs - the veins were blue and grotesque and I secretly hated her for having to wear those stockings that caused her to scratch every night.

I would try to go to sleep right away so I didn't have to hear her voice or the sounds of her ancient nails digging into leathery skin. But it never worked, and I would lie awake for hours it seemed, listening, and hating, and stifling my rage.

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Over the several years that our family lived in this house the neighbors were treated to the sight of an ever-changing collection of motor vehicles parked on and about our driveway.

My dad owned a maroon 1952 Buick Roadmaster four door sedan that he purchased from my brother Dick who bought it one year old from a friend. That car lasted us for many years and became my favorite car - to borrow for dates or showing off to my friends - when I first got my own license. If I ever told all the stories of what happened while I drove that car .....

My brother Ernie drove a 1953 green Buick Special four door sedan. This Buick had a three speed column mounted stick shift whereas the Roadmaster had an automatic transmission so my mother could drive it. On several trips I made with Ernie from Anchorage to Fairbanks in my pre-licensed years, I had the opportunity to sit behind the wheel of this fun car and grind my way through the gears.

Today, of course, you can leave Anchorage and fifty minutes later land at Fairbanks, 261 air miles away. But back then this was an arduous, 400 plus mile trip over mostly gravel roads that beat, shook and rattled your car and your body like a Shiatsu masseuse!

When Dick sold my father the Roadmaster he purchased an old Ford - might have even been a vintage Model T or Model A. I remember this car best for the fact that on one trip Dick and several other family members made down the Kenai Peninsula when that highway was all gravel, they blew out several tires and, not having enough spares to handle all the flats, fixed the tires with baling wire! Don't ask me how they did it.

In addition to the automobiles the family also had two pickup trucks: A 1952 Dodge half ton and a huge 1947, dark green Studebaker three quarter ton. The Dodge must not have made much of an impression on me because I remember little about it. But the Studebaker ... it was my obsession! It sat up so high on its oversized tires and reversed shackle springs that, even as a youngster, I could see over all the other cars on the road. The springs and shock absorbers - if it even had any! - were so stiff that with every bump I would bounce up and hit my head on the headliner. But that was small price, indeed, to pay for the joy of riding in this monster truck.

The Studebaker had big running boards that extended from the front fender to the rear and were wide enough we could have easily carried a dozen people on each one. The tailgate was secured by two metal chains that had, at one time, been covered in rubber. When we bought the truck these rubber covers had worn off, and as we drove over the graveled Alaska roads these chains banged and clanged noisily with every bump. Eventually, tiring of the constant racket, we covered the chains with pieces of garden hose. This worked just fine.

In those days, vehicles tended to be pretty utilitarian, and the Stude, as Studebakers were known, was no different. Wipers were vacuum powered and operated in reverse to the need for wiping action. That is, when you stepped on the gas to accelerate, the wipers slowed down or sometimes even stopped in mid-wipe. Headlights, while having a low beam and a high beam, were so underpowered that they seemed to be more a convenience for locating your vehicle at night when the lights were on than for actually seeing in front of you as you drove down the highway on a coal black, Alaskan winter night.

Studebakers were generally considered ugly: They didn't have the stylish lines of the General Motors cars, or the Ford trucks, or the top of the line Chrysler Imperials. The cars were bobtailed front and back and you couldn't tell which way the car was facing unless the headlights were on.

But every Studebaker, car and truck alike, had one feature that even few present day vehicles have: A hill holder brake. This was an extra brake cylinder that held the brake for you until the clutch was released, and kept you from rolling backwards as your foot hopped from the brake pedal to the accelerator. We found this hill holder to be worth its weight in sandbags on icy hills because we could gently release the clutch to avoid spinning the wheels without simultaneously sliding down the hill.

The regular, column-mounted three speed transmission had been replaced by a floor mounted four speed: Three regular gears and a "creeper". First gear, as well as reverse, was at such a high ratio that even with the engine racing the truck hardly moved. At idle the truck would "creep" forward at a slow walking speed. On occasions we would get out of the truck with it moving along in first gear and load branches or whatever we needed to into the truck bed, then climb on the running boards and into the cab, shift gears and continue on our way. As a youngster in total awe I was convinced that, in "creeper", this truck could have pulled our house down the street.

Above both running boards were mirrors; not the dinky little mirrors you commonly see on the pickups of today, but huge rectangular mirrors like you might find on a Freightliner. These mirrors stuck out a foot and a half, at least. From the driver's seat, though, you could see everything behind you for miles.

As a youngster I would sit behind the wheel of this beast as it sat in the driveway and "pretend" drive over every road I knew: The Richardson Highway to Fairbanks; the Seward Highway; the Kenai Highway; the road from Palmer to Wasilla Lake; Rabbit Creek Road; and on and on. No street in town or roadway on which I had ever traveled escaped my daydreaming when I sat perched on the edge of the seat, my feet barely touching the pedals, my line of sight below, not above, the top of the black steering wheel.

The rapture happened for me one summer day when I was thirteen and my brother Dick saw me sitting in the truck cab, mentally steering myself all over town, and asked me if I wanted to really drive. Really drive?! Did I ever!

My parents were at work and he said he would get the keys and let me back up and pull forward, just in the driveway. The prospect of getting to actually drive this truck, even if only a couple of feet, was overwhelming. I put the key in the ignition and tried to start the engine. But my foot wasn't long enough to reach both the clutch and the starter, and in this truck you had to have the clutch depressed when you pushed the starter, on the floorboard just several inches away from the clutch. Dick or my dad had no trouble using one foot on both while keeping the other foot on the accelerator pedal.

But I knew right away this would not work for me. So I moved the gear shift to neutral, put my right foot on the clutch and with my left foot, pushed the starter. The engine roared to life and my heart must have skipped several beats at the sound. I was actually going to drive my favorite truck!

Slowly, carefully, I shifted into "creeper" and let out the clutch. I didn't even touch the gas pedal because I knew from many years of "copiloting" in this truck that it would move ahead even while idling.

And it did. Inch by inch it crept forward. All the while Dick stood in front of the truck watching my slow progress. Then he shouted for me to stop and put it into reverse. I did this with no problem; again, because I had many years of watching and many years of repeating each one of these moves while I drove the truck in my daydreams.

Backwards and forwards I went, shifting from "creeper" to reverse and back again. After a little while of this I wanted more: I wanted to turn the steering wheel while creeping back and forth.

Putting it in reverse again I started backing out the driveway. But this time instead of just sitting on the edge of the seat and looking forward at Dick while I backed up, I did what real drivers do when backing up: I turned my body so I could see out the back window. Partly standing up so I could really see where I was going I slowly turned the steering wheel to begin backing around the edge of the house.

Ever had the feeling that something wasn't quite right but you couldn't put your finger on it? I had that feeling as I inched down the driveway in reverse. Something wasn't quite right, but what? I stretched even further so I could peer out the window to make sure I was turning around the corner properly, and everything looked all right. The side of the truck was about a foot from the house and I was turning the wheel more so I wouldn't back into the drain ditch that separated the front driveway from the road. Everything seemed just right.

And then I heard it.

Scrape. Scrape. Like something being dragged across lumber.

Creak. Creak. Snap! Like metal being strained to the breaking point, then breaking.

"Stop. Stop!" Like Dick shouting at me from in front of the truck.

The truck never slowed; it just kept creeping backwards around the corner of the house. Dick was now pounding on the truck hood and shouting at me to stop. I tried to think what to do but I had never had an emergency in all my daydream driving and I couldn't get my mind and body to coordinate. It was like I was in a trance. Or was having a dream. Or a nightmare. The truck just kept creeping.

Finally Dick jumped up on the right side running board, leaned in the window and knocked the gear shift lever out of gear. And by this time I had regained some semblance of consciousness and put my foot on the brake.

But it was too late. The damage was done. For while I was looking out the back window and feeling so good about my driving I had backed too close to the house and had caught the driver's side mirror on the wall, scraping the wall first, then breaking the mirror off the truck door.

I looked out the door window to where the mirror had been just moments ago - and no mirror. Slowly I opened the door and stepped onto the running board, then onto the gravel driveway. The mirror and its foot and a half long supports lay on the ground several feet in front of me.

And my life lay in ruins at my feet.

What do I tell dad? The words blasted in my ear and seared my brain. Over and over: What do I tell dad? Then I realized that I wasn't thinking this, Dick was on all fours on the truck seat and shouting at me out the open door. "What do I tell dad?" he screamed over and over.

I stood there dumbfounded. How would I know what to tell our dad - I had never before broken the mirror off our pickup.

Like our ’52 Buick Roadmaster model 72R (Photo taken from the Web.)

(Photo from author’s collection)

David L. Brown with ’47 Studebaker nose; in front of East 15th house c. early ‘50s.

(Not the author's photo: taken from the Web.)

(Not author's photo) A postcard of Anchorage in the mid-1950s.

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Our house was a very small two bedroom one bath modest home of shiplap construction. It had a kitchen that had a small eating area, and sported a front entry that was almost big enough to walk through without having to turn sideways. It had a half basement that could be entered from the outside or from the master bedroom; the cement basement wall had been cut through with a Star drill so we had access to the pipes under the rest of the house. This came in handy during the winters, as we would frequently need to take a blow torch under the house in the mornings and thaw out the pipes before we had any running water in the house. We also used this earthen basement all year long as a root cellar for storage of perishable foodstuffs.

To the east of us was the basement home of DC and Francis Prator and their family of four children: Daughter Melba who was one day my senior; daughter Donna who I think always had a crush on me; daughter Leah and son Mark who were both just tiny. They had cleared the woods not just where they built the basement - and where they also intended to build their permanent home - but for several hundred yards down the hillside also. And in this clearing they planted berries.

Thanks to their industriousness, I grew up around a wide assortment of high-bush, low-bush and runner-type berries: Strawberries, raspberries, salmon berries, high and low bush cranberries, blueberries, and currents. There were most likely many more varieties that I cannot remember. But the memory is very clear on one point: Along with Melba and Donna, I could squeeze between the tight rows of berries in late summer and feast on such a mixture of sweet and tart fruits that I would often end up sick from gorging too much.

We were always encouraged to eat the ripe berries right from the bushes, and it was many years later, when I had only store-bought berries to eat, that I learned the dusty grit I remember on the Prator's berries was not a part of the berry itself. Even today, berries don't taste right unless there's just a little brushing of dust on top!

When, at the end of the season, all these berries ripened, we would gather all the mixing bowls, pots, pans, jars, buckets and other clean, empty containers we could find and fill them to overflowing with ripe, juicy berries. The Prators shared their bounty with us each year, (or did we buy from them, I wonder) and both families had in our basement larders every winter the preserves and jams made from that summer's freshly picked berries.

- - - - - - - - - -

But the Prators were not always so generous.

The summer we moved into this house I immediately noticed the large vegetable garden planted on our property just to the west side of the driveway. Having been around a large farm at the Jesse Lee Home for the past several years I had all the knack and innate understanding of every sidewalk superintendent: At the Home I was too young to do any of the farming, but I got to watch the harvesting every fall, and I certainly knew how to eat everything from the garden!

All throughout the summer I watched the Prators, from whom we had purchased this house, tending the garden. Not realizing that this was their garden before we bought their house, I thought it most neighborly of them to tend our garden. And in amazement I watched the potatoes, carrots, cabbage and lettuce, amongst other delectables, growing noticeably every day. The growing season in Anchorage, while short in days, is extremely long in hours. Daylight hours that far north extend nearly around the clock in summer, and the plants really thrive on the long summer days.

Farther north, at the university in Fairbanks, some of the world's largest vegetables have been grown: Cabbages and heads of lettuce well over fifty pounds, and potatoes the size of footballs.

While in Anchorage we never saw our vegetables achieve such gigantic proportions, the speed with which everything grew was amazing even to the most seasoned farmer. But to a child, watching plants grow inches virtually "over night" made a lasting impression unequaled even by National Geographic's time lapse photography.

Now, while all this growing was taking place the city work crews were busy digging up the street in front of our house to lay water and sewer pipes. Day after hot, dusty day they labored before us. For several weeks we couldn't drive on East 15th to our house, but had to park at the corner of 15th and East G and walk along the piles of gravel the men had made as they dug their trench down the middle of the street.

One of the little neighbor girls who lived on the far side of the Prator's property delighted in helping me sell lemonade to the workmen. And I delighted in showing her just how smart I was in our dealings with these men. The smarter I was, the more she seemed to like me. I became delirious with her affection and did everything I could to make her like me.

As the summer progressed it was not enough to simply sell lemonade; I needed to earn big dollars and show her my true entrepreneurial spirit. I needed to hatch a plan that would ensure her continued devotion to my intellect and skills.

So I began asking the workers if they would like to buy grocery bags full of freshly harvested potatoes for ten cents a bag.

Would they?!

I was immediately mobbed by the whole crew. Everybody wanted as many bags as I could fill at ten cents a bag. Some guys even gave me a tip! The little girl seemed impressed, and I kept digging and selling the potatoes as fast as I could.

Within a few short weeks I had dug and sold every potato in the field and had made some incredible amount of money - perhaps nine or ten dollars.

Of course the purpose of all this digging and selling and getting paid was so I could take this little girl with me to the Piggly Wiggly market two blocks down East G Street and buy her a Popsicle or a bottle of Coke or Pepsi. And this I did every day. Or sometimes several times a day.

The money went out as fast as it came in, but I seemingly had an unending supply of dimes: The workers just kept buying potatoes.

Until they ran out.

Now the little girl didn't seem to come around nearly so often, and now, one evening, the Prators asked my parents to visit them next door. It seems that all their potatoes - the same potatoes I had seen them tend during the summer - which they had planned to store in their root cellar for consumption by their family of six throughout the long winter when vegetables are available only in a can, had somehow disappeared. In a land where everything that is sold on the stores' shelves arrives by boat at Seward and reaches Anchorage only at great expense after a long trip by truck from that distant seaport, in such a land the fruits of a family's farming labors might mean the difference between eating and starving. Or, it might make such a difference in a family's budget that they could afford more than just eating.

The Prators were not at all happy that their potatoes had disappeared in a matter of weeks.

My father confronted me about the potatoes. Proudly I admitted having dug and sold the potatoes and having made some fabulous sum of money from my endeavors. Then he told me that the vegetable garden belonged to the Prators, and that they might now starve because I had sold all their potatoes. He said that he had had to pay them for the value of the potatoes, and that I now owed him for the money he had paid them.

Of course, I was broke, and about to learn some lessons about property rights, repayment of debt, and the fickleness of young love.

Not having the money to pay him for the value of their foodstock, he told me that, from now until the debt was repaid, whenever the family had dessert - which was every night - I would get no cookies, no pie, no cake, no ice cream or whatever other dessert was served to everyone else. And whenever the family went out to eat and ordered dessert, I would forgo dessert then also.

For a boy with an insatiable sweet tooth this was a punishment worse than execution by firing squad. That evening after a dessertless dinner I told my little playmate what had happened and the punishment I was to receive for having lavished my every dime on her.

She was completely indifferent to my plight.

© 3/28/98 Gene Brown

IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO - MORE INSIGHTS FROM THIS GREAT BOOK

So far, we've learned that much of the Biblical "history" of the "Jews" is fiction; the supposed conquest of the area of Canaan didn't take place. The Jews were Canaanite sheep herders who peacefully built small villages next to their Canaanite neighbors.

But who were the Jews? Here's the answer to that: "....today's Jews and Palestinians  ... populations fit very closely together and that a majority of Arabs and Jews in Israel and the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, have common ancestors who lived in the region as much as 8000 years ago."

Common Ancestors!!

Not a race set apart, conceived in the mind of their God who ordained them to conquer and occupy a "Promised Land!"

In fact, is the God of the Bible even the god that the early Jews worshipped?  Likely not, is the answer.  "...the word Israel means 'fighter for El' and El was a Canaanite god. ... the commonest religious objects found in excavations throughout Israel are small female figures. So it seems the Israelites were worshiping God, Yahweh and Mrs. God, Asherah. (emphasis added by GB) A temple from the eighth century B.C.E. .... suggest(s) that gods, not a god, were being worshipped. Since the Bible tells us that Judah was remaining faithful to the true religion, maybe the true religion at that time wasn't the one we know from the Bible."

Now, this is very interesting. We know that the Hebrew Bible - what the Christians call the Old Testament - was written within the several centuries prior to the Current Era, the stories they incorporated, and the myths they canonized, were centuries or millennia old by the time they wrote them down. Just how much liberty did the numerous writers and editors take in incorporating these tales into their written manuscript? Considering the multitudinous contradicting stories in the O.T. (you can Google 'Bible Contradictions' to see a whole sheaf of them; I won't try to enumerate them here), it is evident that the writers had multiple and conflicting stories they had heard and that had been passed along for generations.

How they canonized the myths, selected competing tales, and created "The God" that all should follow is the gist of numerous books I have on my shelf. Yes, I say "created" the God - for that is but fiction derived from the mind of ancient man.

This current book is substantiating all of that with archaeological evidence.

So, even though the Jewish Bible lies, the rocks don't lie. And therein resides the truth about the Judeo-Christian religion.

A QUICK AND EASY, GOOD READ: IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO

Here's a recent book (Copyright 2001) by Matthew Sturgis that explores the archaeological history of the "Holy Land", exploring the dirt, the bones, the remnants left behind by the civilizations that occupied this land for the past two to three millennia, and seeking confirmation of the Biblical "history" as found in the pages of the books which supposedly chronicled the taking of this land by the early Jewish followers of Yahweh.

Not surprisingly to those of us who have been following these archaeological quests for some time (See: Reading List), his review of recent work in the area again discloses that the Bible is unreliable as an historical tool; the stories of conquest appear to be later figments of vivid imaginations; the Jews were peaceful, nomadic sheepherders who were of Canaanite stock and by no means a separate line of humanity.

And there is good reason to seek to confirm or deny the Biblical stories: after all, battle has raged in the Middle East for over two millennia over this "sacred" ground, all because the Jews have a "prior claim from God" to ownership of it. So, was it taken by Jewish warriors of old as the tales would have us believe, or not?

Well, examples abound of the error of the story as the Bible tells it. Firstly, we find this: "Is the Bible's account of events backed up in other written records? The answer, (he) soon discovered, is an emphatic 'No'. So far, only two external sources have been found that even mention Israel up to the mid-ninth century B.C.E." (Note: the stories of Joshua's Godly army destroying the walls at Jericho supposedly took place in the 10th century B.C.E.; same with David killing Goliath and establishing the capital of Israel at Jerusalem - all 10th century B.C.E.)

So, if no external written records are available (that is to say, the Egyptians who had supposedly enslaved the Jews, then lost an army in the pursuit of them at the Sea of Reeds and who kept records of Every Other Contact with a foreign nation or peoples, and of every military campaign, but kept No Record of any contact with the Jews!), what do the physical remains tell us?

Again, from the book: "When the site at Jericho was reworked in the 1950s (Kathleen Kenyon) for example, it was discovered that the walls had fallen down (most likely due to an earthquake: my comment) long before Joshua and his people were supposed to have arrived - and that at that time Jericho was almost certainly unoccupied." And further: "The fact that the archaeological evidence at Jericho - and at other sites mentioned in the Bible - refutes the conquest story, came as a shock." (Emphasis added by GB)

Now he states unequivocally: ".....not only was there no conquest of Canaan by Joshua and the Children of Israel (that was all a later invention) but that the Israelites were in fact Canaanites."

Let's swallow hard and read that sentence again, putting emphasis where it belongs:
   ... THERE WAS NO CONQUEST OF CANAAN BY JOSHUA !!!
   ... THE ISRAELITES WERE IN FACT CANAANITES !!!

Yet people have, for the nearly 2500 years of the existence of the Hebrew Bible, believed these myths, preached these myths, proselytized in the Name of these Myths, and fought and died for these myths! And they continue to do so right up to this very day: November 16th, 2010!!!

The book has so much detail it would be impossible for me to summarize it all in the time I have left to live, so please - get the book, read it actively (highlighting, checking its references, etc.) and ponder just what our world might look like now if these stories hadn't been created by the spin doctors of old, hadn't been rammed down the throats of innocent children in the Middle East for two and a half millennia, and hadn't been used as a pretext for the continuing battles that rage in the "Holy Land".

It truly boggles the mind.

gb

OP-ED PIECE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

Op-Ed Columnist


Tone-Deaf in D.C.
By BOB HERBERT

Published: November 5, 2010

It would be easy to misread the results of Tuesday’s elections, and it looks as if the leaders of both parties are doing exactly that.
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Bob Herbert

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are offering voters the kind of change that they seem so desperately to want. We’re getting mind-numbing chatter about balanced budgets and smaller government and whether Mitch McConnell and his gang can chase President Obama out of the White House in 2012.

What voters want is leadership that will help them through an economic nightmare and fix a country that has been pitched into a state of sharp decline. They long for leaders with a clear and compelling vision of a better America and a road map for getting there. That leadership has long been AWOL. The hope in the tumultuous elections of 2008 was that it would come from Mr. Obama and the Democrats, but that hope, after just two years, is on life support.

Tuesday’s outcome was the result of voters, still hungry for change, who either switched in anger from the Democrats to the Republicans or, out of a deep sense of disappointment, stayed home.

It was hardly a mandate for the G.O.P.’s way of doing things. Nearly 15 million Americans are out of work. The public does not want the next two years to be a bitter period of endless Congressional investigations of the Obama administration; more tax cuts and other giveaways to the very wealthy; and attacks on programs like Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance that offer at least a measure of economic security for ordinary people.

It would also be a mistake for the Democrats, a terminally timid party, to cave in to their opponents and start embracing a G.O.P. agenda that would only worsen the prospects of ordinary working Americans and the poor.

The Democrats are in disarray because it’s a party that lacks a spine. The Republicans, conversely, fight like wild people whether they’re in the majority or not. What neither party is doing is offering a bold, coherent plan to get the nation’s economy in good shape and create jobs, to bring our young men and women home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to rebuild the education system in a way that will prepare the next generation for the great challenges of the 21st century, and to reinvigorate the can-do spirit of America in a way that makes people believe that they are working together toward grand and constructive goals.

Great challenges demand great leaders. Marian Anderson once said, “Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.”

Americans right now are riddled with fears and anxieties of many kinds. They are worried about the economic well-being of their families, the cost of securing a decent education for their children, their prospects for a comfortable retirement, the continuing threat of terrorism, and the debilitating effects of endless warfare. They worry that America’s best days may be in the past.

Neither party talked about the wars during the campaign because neither party has anything satisfactory to say about them. And there was hardly any talk about education. We know that a quality education is more important now than ever, but we are firing teachers by the scores of thousands, not because they are incompetent, but because state and local budgets have hemorrhaged.

Our leaders in Washington seem entirely out of touch with the needs, the hopes, the fears and the anxieties of the millions of Americans who are out of work, who are struggling with their mortgages or home foreclosures, who are skimping on needed medication in order to keep food on the table, and who lie awake at night worrying about what the morning will bring. No one even dares mention the poor.

What this election tells me is that real leadership will have to come from elsewhere, from outside of Washington, perhaps from elected officials in statehouses or municipal buildings that are closer to the people, from foundations and grass-roots organizations, from the labor movement and houses of worship and community centers.

The civil rights pioneers did not wait for presidential or Congressional leadership, nor did the leaders of the women’s movement. They plunged ahead with their crucial work against the longest odds and in the face of seemingly implacable hostility. Leaders of the labor movement braved guns, bombs, imprisonment and heaven knows what else to bring fair wages and dignity to working people.

America’s can-do spirit can be revived, and with it a brighter vision of a fairer, more inclusive, and more humane society. But not if we wait on Washington to do it. The loudest message from Tuesday’s election is that the people themselves need to do much more.

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
Here's Gene:
I have said many times about this recent election that the Democrats didn't lose to the Republicans; they were beaten by their own party, their own lack of leadership, their lack of foresight. How many articles did I read where the Democratic loser said that he/she didn't realize what a sizable lead the Republican opponent had amassed - and THEN started to campaign in earnest.

We accomplished great things in the '08 election - and gave it all away due to what the editorialist, above, calls the spinelessness of the Democratic Party.

Perhaps if enough columns are written, if enough individual voters voice their frustration - just perhaps, the elected officials of both parties will see the light and begin to address the real problems in America.

g

CHAPTER SEVEN OF MY ONGOING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SHORT STORIES

LIFE AT JESSE LEE HOME

Jesse Lee Home, in the late 1940's and early '50's, was a Methodist church sponsored home for Alaskan native orphan children: Eskimos, Aleuts, Tlinket Indians, and so on. It was located several miles outside the town of Seward, Alaska. Seward, in those days, was a very small town known for its port - it serviced container ships from Seattle and other "South 48" ports - and was the southern terminus of the Alaska Railroad's Seward-Anchorage-Fairbanks trans-Alaska rail line. Seward sits on a tiny lip of flat ground between the mountains of the Kenai Fjords National Park and Resurrection Bay.

The bay was extremely deep, as are most bodies of water that butt against mountains, and therefore served well as a port. The highway from Anchorage, known appropriately as the Seward Highway, ran through several mountain passes on its way south, and as it approached its southern terminus it skirted the end of the bay before turning and heading along the narrow spit of land on which the town was built. At the point at which it turned, another smaller road headed away from town. This small road lead directly to Jesse Lee Home.

Named for an early Methodist missionary to the indigenous peoples of this northern territory, the complex itself occupied many acres, including a headmaster's house that sat facing the mountains, three large buildings, aligned in a straight row perpendicular to the mountains and connected by long hallways, several farm buildings, sheds, a barn and so on. The Home was as self-sufficient as possible, with a large vegetable garden and the normal edible farm animals - pigs, chicken, beef - that were for the Home's use as well as for sale in Seward.

Of the three main buildings, the two outer ones served as the dormitories: boys in the dorm closest to the mountain, and girls in the one farthest away. The center building housed the dining room and kitchen. Each building had its own heating plant, and the two dorms each had their own resident houseparents. The Home and all its surrounding farm buildings wore camouflage paint that had been applied in the early days of World War II when the Alaska Army Command feared attack by Japanese carrier-based aircraft. The camouflage was painted all over the exterior walls and roofs to look like pine trees and grass, just like the mountains to which the Home was immediately adjacent.

When I was perhaps eight, in 1949, my parents were active in the Methodist church and accepted positions as houseparents in the boys' dorm of the Home. Our family moved from Anchorage to Seward, and my two older brothers and I lived with the other boys at the Home. Only my oldest brother, Skip, then eighteen and too old to be a "boy" at the dorm, was exempt from dorm life. My next older brother, Dick, was fifteen and lived as an "A" boy. The brother next to me, Ernie, was eleven and was with the "B" boys. At my age, I was a "C" boy. Younger, preschool, children were not classified as such, and were lumped statistically and grouped physically together as "infants".

Although our parents were the dorm parents, we lived in the dorms just like the orphan boys, ate at the Home dining room with all the resident boys and girls, rode to church every Sunday in the Home's yellow school buses and did all the chores done by the other boys in the dorms. I was unaware of any resentment towards me by the other "C" boys (if it existed at all), and was accepted as one of them from the very beginning.

Over the course of the couple years we lived there several incidents made such an impression that I shall never forget them.

- - - - - - - - - -

A group of us children - "C" boys and girls mostly - were playing out near Walter, the bull. We were not supposed to be near the bull because we would taunt him and he “may break through the fence” and harm us. Or so we are told by the older "B" boys. But here we were. And we heard the bell ringing us in for lunch. We had barely minutes to get into the dormitories, wash our hands, and line up for the march down the long hallway to the dining room: girls marching in from the one side and boys marching in from the other. Of course, the girls' side is the closest to the bull, so we boys must run all the faster to be on time for lunch.

I was a fast runner. Faster than any other boy, and certainly faster than all the girls. As I streaked towards the dormitory's back door I went across, and not around, the kitchen's underground boiler room. The room's roof rises above ground by only inches so it's an easy step up for a young boy who is the home's fastest "C" boy! The boiler's one-inch galvanized steel relief pipe sticks straight up from the center of the roof, and at about forty inches above the rooftop it turns at a ninety degree angle and goes through the kitchen wall seven or eight feet away.

Speeding across the roof I turned to look over my shoulder at the other children - smug in my leading position - and turned back around just in time to SMACK! into the pipe with my upper lip.

BAM! THUMP! Out cold!

Of course I spent a couple of days in bed in the dormitory houseparent's room while my lip healed. And was treated ever so kindly for my injury.

And no one ever asked why I was running from the bull's pen.

- - - - - - - - - -

Behind the Home, far behind the farm area, past the deep woods that lay along the base of the mountain, and certainly far beyond the Home's property fence that marked the limit of our freedom, we boys found a special play area. For partway up the mountainside, possibly three or four thousand feet up, was a rock slide perhaps a thousand feet long. Known to all of us as "Devil's Slide", this area was visible only from the corner windows of the "A" boy's dorm. And since it was so obscure we boys, and some of the braver girls, could sneak up there and play without being seen.

I cannot say why it was called Devil's Slide, and whether this is its actual name or is only what we at the Home called it. For all I know it may have been named for the abundant Devil's Club that grew about the area. But it was the devil to reach and was a devil of a slide, this much I knew for certain!

The mountains on the peninsula were covered with tall pine and Sitka spruce trees that grew up the steep mountainsides to about four thousand feet. Above the tree line was rock and some hardy shrubbery. But the ground cover on the mountainside below the tree line was a jungle of fireweed mixed with skunk cabbage and a particular broadleaf briar bush, the Devil's Club. Climbing through this took courage and tough skin; the briars grew well over the heads of us smaller boys, and both the Devil's Club and skunk cabbage had thorns, thistles and prickly burrs that were sharp as needles and just as long. It was torturous climbing in forbidden territory.

And that made it all the more alluring.

On many occasions a group of us "C" boys would accompany some of the "B" boys in a climb up Devil's Slide. Most of us just enjoyed the thrill of climbing where were knew we weren't supposed to. But one day one of the older boys decided to climb to the top of the Slide, then slide down. The rest of us dug our feet into the loose shale and watched him slowly climb on all fours, like a human goat, up the rocky, nearly vertical, slide. Several times he would slip, sending sharp rock fragments raining down on those of us below him. But finally he reached the top of the Slide; he was so far above us we could hardly see him. Looking up at him made me dizzy.

Then, with a confident wave, he started to slide. He slid feet first, body tilted back, almost sitting down in the rough rock. But he quickly gained too much speed: The loose shale was creating a small avalanche that was taking him with it. He tried to dig his elbows and hands in, along with his feet, to slow his descent. But to no avail. He, and the shale, were sliding quickly down the steep mountainside.

The Slide area had some small clumps of shrubbery and an occasional large boulder sticking out, and he tried to guide himself into these rocks or bushes. But alas, he could not control his path, and continued his erratic course down the stony slope.

In desperation he tried turning onto his stomach, but in doing so he completely lost control and began tumbling. We watched in horror as he rolled and thrashed towards us. Scared as we were - both for him and for our own hides when we got back to the Home and had to tell what happened - we scrambled up the rocks as he had done just minutes before. We managed to dodge the falling stones and grab onto his clothing as he tumbled past.

He was filthy, cut, and bruised; his clothing was ripped and torn; he had lost one shoe; blood and tears covered his face.

We helped him the rest of the way down the Slide and into the woods. By now we were all crying - for him and for us! Too soon we emerged from the trees and started across the farm area towards the dorm. We wanted this trip to never end, because we all knew what that would mean.

But we didn't have to wait for the trip to end - for coming across the farmyard were several of the "A" boys who had seen our friend's tumble down the slide, and the dorm houseparents: My parents! If there were a God he would have granted my wish for a lightning bolt at that moment, but it didn't happen. Instead, I, and all the other boys, were given a good switching across our butts with one of those long alder branches that snaps at the end like a whip. I said all the other boys: the "B" boy who was all banged up from the fall got the switching too. Then, as the rest of us were running back to the dorm, trying to stifle our sobs so the other children would not see us crying, my father picked up the bruised "B" boy and carried him back to the dorm.

I don't know about any of the other children in the group that day, but I know that I, for one, never ventured back to Devil's Slide.

- - - - - - - - - -

I do not remember the first time I went up to the old sawmill: It must have been early in my stay at the Home. But it soon became one of my favorite playgrounds.

Old and run down even then, the sawmill was quite some hike up an overgrown trail perhaps a half mile from the boys' dorm. The trail had been a road when the mill was in operation, but now it had small spruce growing in it, and thousands - millions - of the omnipresent Devil's Club briar bushes and skunk cabbage.

While I always called this particular plant "skunk cabbage", I do not know what its actual name is. As I recall, it was broad leafed and had a thick, round tubular stalk. The stalk had very long, very fine needles sticking out. They were almost invisible they were so thin; but they stuck and pricked like sewing needles. The stalk, when broken, gave off a strong, pungent smell that was repulsive, yet somehow pleasant.

To us young boys, the smell was reminiscent of the wet toe jam one would find between his toes after a hard day at play: Repulsive, yet somehow pleasant.

The mill was surrounded by very dense brush and trees. Its main building was wooden and nearly rotted. But next to it was the ultimate toy for small Jesse Lee Homers: Sitting on a rusted steel framework was a long conveyer belt. The low end sat up about two feet, and the high end faced down the mountainside and was most likely twenty-five or thirty feet above ground. At its end was a huge pile of sawdust. The top of the sawdust pile was perhaps ten feet below the end of the belt. We boys would walk out the length of the belt, then jump down into the soft shavings and tumble down to the ground. Then, just like other children would do on a school slide, we would scramble up the hill, climb onto the belt and do it all over again.

The sawmill, with its damp, piquant smell of skunk cabbage, was my favorite area all during my stay at Jesse Lee Home.

I don't miss the life there, nor do I frankly remember all that much about it.

But I cannot forget the smell and the good times I had playing at the old sawmill.

- - - - - - - - - -

Being fully self sufficient, as it was, Jesse Lee Home afforded the residents with the opportunity to learn many skills to which they would not have, otherwise, had exposure. All the children, regardless of age or sex (and to which I most likely must now add race, religion or national origin) were required to do various chores around the Home. These included weekly cleanup, daily farm chores, periodic laundry and so on.

We "C" boys and girls were not too involved in farm duties and, in fact, were prohibited from being around most of the farm equipment and machinery. While we would have enjoyed nothing more than playing all day long on these contrivances there was justifiable fear that we would seriously injure ourselves. And the Home had the obligation to keep us healthy in body as well as in mind and spirit.

Cleaning equipment, however, was a different story. Every Saturday morning, after breakfast, the routine was the same: Read the posted cleaning assignment list outside the dorm door, grab your cleaning tool and get to work. We smaller boys usually had to dust with brushes and rags; older boys would sweep and damp mop; the oldest boys ran the electric buffer on the Army-green linoleum floors. All three groups had some share of the bathroom cleanup details, too. And with a large number of children working as quickly as possible on the cleaning it never took too long until we were done and on our way outside to play.

For the older boys and girls, the large laundry tubs and clothes dryers housed in an old shed out near the farm area were anything but playthings. Laundry was done frequently, and always under the watchful eye of one of the dorm houseparents. The washing was done by hand in any number of deep sinks, then placed in one of the two immense dryers.

The dryers had been made by Mr. McKinley, the Home's engineering superintendent. Each drum had a diameter at least as large as I was tall, and was easily five feet long. They were made of wooden slats that were spaced an inch or so apart so the air could circulate but the clothes would not fall out. In the middle was a latched door that could be opened for the loading and retrieval of the clothing. A gasoline motor was attached to each dryer by means of a rubber belt and, by use of gear reduction, the drums turned ever so slowly even with the motors running at full speed.

There were times, though, when the dryers needed to be turned without the motors. For those occasions each dryer also had attached a huge crank. We smaller children were never allowed near the dryers when they were in operation because the cranks always turned with the dryers, and we could easily be conked on the head as the crank turned. In fact, we were not even supposed to be in the laundry sheds at all, at any time. This was not a play area and the "C" children were not involved in the laundry work.

But this didn't stop us young children from sneaking into the shed when no one else was around and playing in the dryers. What more fun could there be for a seven or eight year old than to clamber through the loading door into the huge chamber, have a playmate close the latch, then tumble inside while several of the children turned the crank! As the drum turned we would lie flat on the slats and be carried partway up the circle until gravity pulled us down and we would tumble down the side, to be carried back up again as the drum continued turning.

Did we ever think that we might get hurt inside the dryer? Of course not! And some of the braver boys shouted for the cranking crew to turn the crank as fast as possible. Inside the drum the boy would tumble head over heels, laughing and squealing the whole time. How we loved our secret play area. And how we would have been switched with those unforgettable alder branches had the houseparents ever found out where we played so much!

- - - - - - - - - -

Most of the children at the Home were orphans. They came from all around Alaska; their hometowns were the forgettable names of fishing villages in Southeastern Alaska, or Eskimo villages on the slopes of the Brooks Range, or the Aleut villages along the Aleutian Islands. Who can now remember them all? But the children, while having a materially better life at the Home than they could have ever had in their own villages, were social misfits in Seward, and many of the older boys, in particular, could not bear to grow up away from their clans, their families, and their customs.

Many of them ran away.

I remember one Sunday after we had all returned to the Home in the rickety old yellow buses with "Jesse Lee Children's Home" painted in black on the sides and back door, one of the Aleut "A" boys was reported missing from his table at lunch.

Customarily we would go directly from the buses to our dorms, leave our Sunday School papers on our beds, wash our hands and line up for the walk down the long hallway to the dining hall. We each had an assigned seat: The boys sat on the side of the room nearest their hallway and the girls on the other. The service area was in the center, and that is where the staff tables were set up. They could easily see the whole dining area and take corrective action whenever one of their charges committed a breach of table etiquette.

This "A" boy didn't go to the dorm, and wasn't at his seat at lunch. After a quick search of the buildings, the male members of the staff - my father; Mr. McKinley; some of the other adult men; and several of the other "A" boys, plus my two older brothers - armed themselves with rifles, and set out to track him down. The rifles, we were always told, were in case the group encountered any black bear or moose along the way.

There was only one way off the peninsula: Follow the highway and railroad tracks through the mountain passes towards Anchorage. Many of the boys that ran away tried to hitch rides along the highway, and some were successful. Others would lie in wait alongside the tracks for a slow moving freight train to pass by. They would then jump aboard and head for freedom.

After the men left, none of us younger children could finish eating, we were so excited. Despite the frequency of its occurrence, a runaway was still cause for great excitement and consternation at the Home: excitement amongst the children and consternation amongst the houseparents.

Later that evening the men returned with the "A" boy, handcuffed and walking with his head down, held firmly by two of them.

I do not know what happened to him, or to any of the others that ran away. I only know that they felt they were imprisoned at Jesse Lee Home, and their talk was constantly of their escape and eventual return to their own kind.

I hope they all made it.

(Not my photos.) Seward, sitting on Resurrection Bay, with Jesse Lee Home to the right.

(Not my photo) Winter at Jesse Lee Home. These look like "C: boys - about the same age I was when at the Home.

(Not my photo) The Home as it now sits. The camoflauge has been whitewashed and it sits abandoned.
I have heard, via the Home's Facebook page, that a group of local Alaskan investors is seeking to
purchase the property and turn it into a museum. The group is led by a woman with ties to Jesse Lee.

(Not my photo) The Home as it looked in its prime. Note Devil’s Slide just to the right of center.

(Not my photo) The Home’s Balto Building, which served as the girls' dormitory.

(Not my photo) Scouts at Jesse Lee. Virtually all the children were Alaskan Natives, as evidenced here.

(Not my photo) "B" boys at Jewel Guard hall.

(Not my photo) Children playing inside a hallway at the Home.

(Not my photo) Flag raising on July 4^th, 1950.

(Not my photo) Girl Scouts at the Home. Again, note the predominant ethnicity.

(Not my photo) Girls with a Home bus.

(This and many of the other Home photos are from the Seward Community Library Association files.)

This is the Home staff, date unknown. Could be my mother on the far left, back row, with glasses. The Superintendent is far right in black jacket, white shirt and tie; his wife is far right, second row in the dark dress. Since my father is not shown, I'm guessing it was he who took the photo.

(Not my photo) Seward Methodist Church where all the Home’s residents attended.

 Our Ford 'woody' station wagon is in front.

(Not my photo) Our family’s ’47 Ford Woody station wagon at Jewel Guard, the boy’s dorm.

(Not my photo) Goode Hall.

(Not my photo) Infants being fed at Goode Hall.

(Not my photo) Children eating at Goode Hall.

(Not my photo) The Home's kitchen staff. Some of the older "A" girls worked there for a small stipend.

THE GIST OF DR. SAM HARRIS'S NEW BOOK: THE MORAL LANDSCAPE

I have highlighted a number of passages throughout his newest book: here I will try to capture the gist of the book by quoting some of the hightlighted passages. Note, however, that this may not capture the whole essence of his argument, nor provide complete justification for his thesis - all of which is available in the complete text itself.  (And I take full responsibility for all typos, misspellings and other glitches in the following text; the book reads correctly in all instances.)

His book takes to task the (general) assumption that all ideas of morality are God-based (or God-given, if you prefer).  His thesis, then, is the reverse of this: i.e., that ideas of morality can be reached through scientific methods, leaving any and all concepts of "God" out of the equation.

" .... our inability to answer a question says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer."

" ....morality should be considered an undeveloped branch of science."

" ... in any domain of knowledge, we are free to say that certain opinions do not count. In fact, we must say this for knowledge or expertise to count at all."

"My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may one day fall within reach of maturing sciences of mind."

" .... science can help us find a path leading away from the lowest depths of misery and toward the heights of happiness for the greatest number of people."  [Of course, he's speaking of all nations; the 6.7 billion of us on the planet.]

"Science simply represents our best effot to understand what is going on in this universe, and the boundary between it and the rest of rational thought cannot always be drawn. .... to think scientifically - ideas about cause and effect, respect for evidence and logical conherence, a dash of curiosity and intellectual honesty, the inclination to make falsifiable predictions, etc. - ...."

"Clearly, we can make true or false claims about human (and animal) subjectivity, and we can often evaluate these claims without having access to the facts in quesiton. This is a perfectly reasonable, scientific, and often necessary thing to do."

" .... truth has nothing, in principle, to do with consensus: one person can be right, and everyone else can be wrong."

"How have we convinced ourselves that, on the most important questions in human life, all views must count equally? Consider the Catholic Church: ... the Vatican is an organization that excommunicates women for attempting to become priests but does not excommunicate male priests for raping children." [emphasis added.]

"The moment we admit that we know anything about human well-being scientifically, we must admit that certain individuals or cultures can be absolutely wrong about it.  Moral relativism is clearly an attempt to pay intellectual reparations for the crimes of Western colonialism, ethnocentrism, and racism. .... the most basic facts about human flourishing must transcend culture, just as most other facts do."

 " .... the fact that millions of people use the term "morality" as a synonym for religious dogmatism, racism, sexism, or other failures of insight and compassion should not oblige us to merely accept their terminology until the end of time."

" .... there is a difference between answers in practice and answers in principle."

" .... it seems profoundly unlikely that our universe has been designed to reward individual primates for killing one another while believing in the divine origin of a specific book.  Because most religions conceive of morality as a matter of being obedient to the word of God, .... their precepts often have nothing do with maximizing well-being in this world. Religious believers can, therefore, assert the immorality of contraception, masturbation, homosexuality, etc., without ever feeling obliged to argue that these practices actually cause suffering.  They can also pursue aims that are flagrantly immoral, in that they needlessly perpetuate human misery, while believing that these actions are morally obligatory."

" .... certain moral questions could be difficult or impossible to answer in practice; they do not suggest that morality depends upon something other than the consequences of our actions and intentions." [My footnote:  in this section, as in a later section as well, he discusses the difficulties presented by "The Trolley Problem" as first expressed and explored by philosopher Philippa Rose Foot, who died October 3, 2010, on her 90th birthday.]

"My reasons for dismissing revealed religion as a source of moral guidance: (1) there are many revealed religions  ... (that) ... offer mutually incompatible doctrines;  (2) the scriptures of many religions .... countenance patently unethical practices like slavery; (3) the [mental] faculty we use to validate religious precepts, judging the Golden Rule to be wise and the murder of apostates to be foolish, is something we bring to scripture;  it does not, therefore, come from scripture; (4) the reasons for believing that any of the world's religions were "revealed" to our ancestors (rather than merely invented by men and women who did not have the benefit of a twenty-first-century education) are either risible [ludicrous] or nonexistent - and the idea that each of these mutually contradictory doctrines is inerrant remains a logical impossibility. Here we can take refuge in Bertrand Russell's famous remark that even if we could be certain that one of the world's religions was perfectly true, given the sheer number of conflicting faiths on offer, every believer should expect damnation purely as a matter of probability."

"What we can do is try, within practical limits, to follow a path that seems likely to maximize both our own well-being and the well-being of others. This is what it means to live wisely and ethically."

" .... human beings tend to make moral decisions on the basis of emotion, justify these decisions with post hoc reasoning, and stick to their guns even when their reasoning demonstrably fails."

"Just as people are often less than rational when claiming to be rational, they can be less than moral when claiming to be moral."

"The truth seems inescapable: I, as the subject of  my experience, cannot know what I will next think or do until a thought or intention arises; and thoughts and intentions are caused by physical events and mental stirrings of which I am not aware.  Many scientists and philosophers realized long ago that free will could not be squared with our growing understanding of the physical world. Am I free to change my mind? Of course not. It can only change me."

"Our sense of free will arises from a failure to appreciate this fact: we do not know what we will intend to do until the intention itself arises. To see this is to realize that you are not the author of your thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose. .... most voluntary behavior comes about without explicit planning."

" .... all human beings currently alive appear to have descended from a single population of hunter-gatherers that lived in Africa around 50,000 BCE.  Homo neanderthalensis laid claim to Europe and the Middle  East, and Homo erectus occupied Asia."

"The seventeenth-century philosopher [Baruch] Spinoza thought that merely understanding a statement entails the tacit acceptance of its being true, while disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection."

" .... those who are more knowledgeable about a subject tend to be acutely aware of the greater expertise of others. This creates a rather unlovely asymmetry in public discourse - one that is generally on display whenever scientists debate religious apologists. For instance, when a scientist speaks with appropriate circumspection about controversies in his fieid, or about the limits of his own understanding, his [religious] opponent will often make wildly unjustified assertions about just which religious doctrines can be inserted into the space provided.  Thus, one often finds people with no scientific training speaking with apparent certainty about the theological implications of quantum mechanics, cosmology, or molecular biology."

" .... political conservatism ... [was found] to be correlated with dogmatism, inflexibility, death anxiety, need for closure, and anticorrelated with openness to experience, cognitive complexity, self-seteem, and social stability. .... a belief system known to be especially beholden to dogmatism, inflexibility, death anxiety and a need  for closure will be less principled, less warranted, and less responsive to reason and evidence than it would otherwise be."

" .... if a person's primary motivation in holdilng a belief is to hew to a positive state of mind - to mitigate feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, or guilt, for instance - this is precisely what we mean by phrases like "wishful thinking" and "self-deception." Such a person will, of necessity, be less responsive to valid chains of evidence and argument that run counter to the beliefs he is seeking to maintain. .... the validity of a belief cannot merely depend on the conviction felt by its adhereents; it rests on the chains of evidence and argument that link it to reality."

"As it turns out, dopamine receptor genes may play a role in religious belief as well. People who have  inhereited the most active form of the D4 receptor are more likely to believe in miracles and to be skeptical of science; the least active forms correlate with "rational materialism."

"Despite the explicit separation of church and state provided for by the U.S. Constitution, the level of religious belief in the United States (and the concomitant significance of religion in American life and political discourse) rivals that of many theocracies." [emphasis added.]

"The poor tend to be more religious than the rich .... And on almost every measure of societal health, the least religious countries are better off than the most religious. ....religious commitment in the United States is highly correlated with racism.  .... as societies become more prosperous, stable, and democratic, they tend to become more secular. .... religious commitment "is superficial enough to be readily abandoned when conditions improve to the required degree." "

" .... several clinical conditions involving the neurotransmitter dopamine - mania, obsessive-compulsive  disorder (OCD), and  schizophrenia - are regularly associated with hperreligiosity.  Clearly, religion is largely a matter of what people teach their children to believe about the nature of reality."

"With respect to our current scientific understanding of the mind, the major religions remain wedded to doctrines that are growing less plausible by the day. As is often the case with religious apology, it is a case of heads, faith wins; tails, reason loses."

"What if mice show greater distress at the suffering of familiar mice than unfamiliar ones? (They do.) What if monkeys will starve themselves to prevent their cage mates from receiving painful shocks? (They will.) What if chimps have a demonstrable sense of fairness when receiving food rewards? (They have.) What if dogs do too? (Ditto.)  Wouldn't these be precisely the sorts of findings one would expect if our morality were the product of evolution? .... religious dogmatism presents an obstacle to scientific reasoning."

"The assumption that the mind is the product of the brain is integral to almost everything neuroscientists do."  [emphasis added.] 

"Imagine how terrifying it would be if great  numbers of smart people became convinced that all efforts to prevent a global financial catastrophe must be either equally valid or equally nonsensical in principle. And yet this is precisely where we stand on the most important questions [about morality] in human life. For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion - that great engine of ignorance and bigotry - a nearly uncontested claim to being the only universal framework for moral wisdom."

** End of my synopsis of his book. I hope all readers will take the opportunity to attend Dr. Harris's lecture in Seattle tomorrow, October 20th. **