In September 2025, I permanently lost my childhood home. They tore down the hundred and fifty-year-old brick schoolhouse where my brother, my sister, and I were raised to adulthood.
When I was five, back in 1947, my father decided to buy a one-room brick school house to remodel and make it the family home. The schools were all consolidating into larger new facilities and the commissioners in Darke County, Ohio had decided to sell off all the old single-room school properties on the cheap. Dad paid less than $4000 for the almost two-acre acre site with all the buildings intact.
250 years ago, the roads where the school was built were little more than wilderness paths. Arthur St. Clair and Anthony Wayne both marched their troops past that intersection, which later became the school. I found an old one-handed knife in the garden that had been dropped by one of the soldiers back in the 1780s.
The first settlement in Darke County was made a mile west of the school on Boyd Hill near Boyd Creek. I was lucky enough to live on that very spot when I returned from New York City to Ohio for a few years.
A marvelous Victorian-styled Children’s Home had been built at the turn-of-the-century for the orphans and hard-pressed families of school age children. It stood just north of us until that too was torn down in the name of progress and efficiency. The big old buildings were hard to heat and used coal. The Children’s Home had its own school . It could easily be seen from our home. Some of the children there became my playmates for many years,
One day it was there. The next day, it was gone.
The children walked to school in the old days as there were no buses or cars.The schools were situated every few miles. Many had a belfry and a bell to summon the kids from the neighboring farms.
When we became the owners, three or four grand pianos had been stored inside the school. They had been taken from other local schools. All of them were in terrible shape and had seen severe weathering. One of the first things Dad did was to take them out and burn them after saving the lead weights.
It seemed to me, though I was six, that burning these pianos was not a good thing. The pianos, like the school, had outlived their useful lives, but I could not understand that at that point. I had hardly any concept of time. Time was associated with functions like time to get up, time to go to bed. time to eat, and time to go.
The next unwanted objects to go were the inch-thick genuine slate blackboards placed on the north and south walls. They were carefully stacked near the two brick outhouses at the rear end of the lot. There was one privy for the boys and one for the girls. A path of cinders from the coal-fired stove led to the privies. As soon as the plumbing was installed, the outhouses were torn down. The old bricks were carefully stacked in patterns to keep them from collapsing.
The yard was like a beautiful little park. The grass was a thick, hearty bluegrass. There was room for a large garden. The yard was surrounded on both road fronts with a two-rail wooden fence. A wooden coal and woodshed was on the north side. Three tall elm trees – whose branches began twenty feet off the ground – graced the property. One of these stately trees stood directly in the center. It was the first to fall from the Dutch Elm disease.
Dad roped one of the tall elm branches for a twenty-foot rope swing. There were two buckeye trees, a shagbark hickory, two large oaks, and half a dozen maples trees, including at least one sugar maple that we sometimes tapped for syrup.
Above is a picture of another school about three miles east of our schoolhouse. This was called the Knick School and is presently owned by a coon hunting club. The construction of these buildings was much the same. Three-foot thick brick walls on a wedge-shaped limestone foundation that started eight feet deep. The interior walls were plastered with 14-foot high ceilings. All had a date plaque in the front, a recessed front door with the traditional rounded top windows, standing seam steel roofs, a wooden fence and a shed. The rafters were true 2×6 timbers and the ceilings were 2×12, all made from local hardwoods.
Our schoolhouse was built in 1885. It was called the “Mannix” school because it was named after the locals who lived nearby. Jim and George Mannix were neighbors in the 50s. Their farms bordered on the schoolhouse property. Jim was a tall, thin bachelor farmer who helped care for Matt Rife. Jim owned and farmed the land Old Matt occupied. Matt could be seen walking along Highway 127 most every night. He seemed to walk to town daily. Matt lived in an unpainted rural shack with a barn behind painted with a “CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO” ad. It was a Celina Road landmark. We often saw him in the dusk, wearing his gray overcoat and his Fedora, shuffling back home from town.
Half a mile to the east on the Children’s Home-Bradford Road, our neighbor, Pete McVay, lived in a leaning old two-story log cabin that looked like it would fall over at any time. He and his brother had a store on Broadway. Pete drove back and forth daily in his black 1920s Model T Roadster.
Dad enlisted my Grandfather–a bricklayer and stone mason–to help with the brickwork and to drop the ceilings to eight feet. To do this, they ran joists over the long windows, bricked up a few windows, and the front door. This removed any possibility of a later historical renovation.
I was not too upset about the loss of the front door, as this door was what introduced me to the concept of ugliness. The paint was scaly, twisted, gray lead paint that had been peeling off for years. The summer sun sharpened the image before my eyes, dust motes floated in the dusty air the smell of broken plaster invaded my nose––and I thought it was ugly––bad looking. I had never considered anything ugly before that.
Bonehead Allred, a cousin of my Dad’s, dug a false well for the pumps and pipes and ran pipes to the house. Even as a first grader, I wondered why anyone would call him “Bonehead”. He seemed friendly and smart to me. This was my introduction to type-casting social shaming.
The plumbing went in, partitions went up. drywall was crucified on the furring strips. We moved in long before my father’s original vision for the place was complete. We did have running water but the water heater had not been installed and the drywall was left unprimed. It seems like it took many years for Dad to get back into the remodeling mood. Much of the interior finish was left for me to do when I was old enough to do it.
Nevertheless, we made the place a comfortable home that lasted for thirty years. We still relied on an oil space heater. Winter mornings became a race to the stove to warm our clothing.
My mother never liked living there. It was a lot of work to care for the huge yard and gardens while still trying to finish the remodeling.
Friends visited and played croquet, badminton, and horseshoes in the great backyard. I would return many holidays after I left home and bring my New York City and Chicago friends to a sumptuous dinner at the country kitchen. They always had a wonderful time.
Dad finally realized he no longer had the energy to complete his vision and settled down to his historical research and cataloging old county cemeteries for posterity. My father died in 1974. My mother did not want to remain in Greenville. She sold the household items and antiques at a big estate sale in the backyard and moved to Denver, Colorado. Her sister had inherited her father-in-law’s home. It was empty and ready for Mom to occupy and start a new life.
The schoolhouse sat empty for twenty years while the family established Colorado as their new home. Finally, my mother decided to sell it. A real estate agent bought the land and let it sit empty for another twenty years.
I had hopes it cold be saved, It would be a fine museum. Others thought so as well. Time ran out as it tends to do on all. In late September of 2025, they tore the building down.
I knew it would happen, but I couldn’t live there or save it. Ten years before I had written a poem about what I envisioned.
“They are tearing down
my childhood home today,”
he said, wishing instead
he were already dead.
“I should not watch.
It is a sad thing to see,”
he thought, thinking softly of the past,
wishing it could forever last.
“I wish I could have done more to save it,”
he mused, feeling the blues
as it oozed from the news.
“I ate watermelon at the kitchen table,
sweet as summer’s breath,” he said,
tasting the juice that his mind reproduced.
“We had many a memory in that house,”
he understated,
watching as his
reality was castrated.
“I wonder it I was happier
back then than now,”
he exclaimed, unashamed
that he had no fame.
“Probably not,” he said to himself,
knowing he had not mastered laughter
in the face of disaster.
“Some folk’s homes become museums,”
he pondered as his thoughts wandered. “
I was never that important,”
he concluded, as he brooded.
The old trees were destroyed. The site was leveled like a parking lot. Now I feel even more regret. We live in an era where greed dominates, and the past, for many, is simply a quaint memory easily forgotten. Progress is shiny and new. The past continues to age as it deteriorates with time. The old school will join the great heap of forgotten histories and stories unremembered, as will we all.
Chapter 27: From Tribes to Nations, by Kenneth Harper Finton
ALFRED THE GREAT
Alfred, the fifth son of his father, Æthelwulf, was a child of unusual talent and bearing. He was a handsome lad, prematurely an adult from his earliest days. At the age of five, Alfred was sent off to Rome . There, Leo IV confirmed him and hallowed him as “king”. This was most unusual, since at the time Alfred had three living brothers older than he in line for succession.
At age fourteen, the lovely Judith became the second wife of Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf. When he died two years later, she shocked the country by marrying her stepson, Æthelbald, who was Alfred’s brother. Upon his death, after a very short reign, she returned to France.and, in 862, married Baldwin I [Iron Arm], Count of Flanders.
Queen Judith
During this time with hid mother in France, Alfred’s playmates were Charles, the boy king of Aquitaine, and his sister Judith, both children of Charles the Bald, Holy Roman Emperor and grandson of Charlemagne.
Again in 855 Alfred went to Rome with his father, possibly to secure some titles that were to be bestowed upon him. Two years later, his father died. Alfred’s older brother Æthelbald took the throne, followed shortly thereafter by Æthelbert who ruled until 866. Alfred the Great married Elsywyth of Mercia in 868. Elsywyth was born in 848 in Wantage, Berkshire, the daughter of Æthelred Mucil, who died on the 22nd of October of 899.
The Danes had occupied London and their army had been fortified at Reading. London was not the capital and bustling city of later years, but a town in the Kingdom of Mercia. From these points, the Danes moved forward and met the West Saxons on the Berkshire downs in January of 871. Here was fought the important Battle of Ashdown.
Though he was warned that the battle must be joined, Alfred’s brother Æthelred, the King, tarried for hours in his prayers. According to Bishop Asser, who left an account of Alfred’s life: “seeing the heathen had come quickly on the field and were ready for battle… [Alfred] could bear the attacks of the enemy no longer, and he had to choose between withdrawing altogether or beginning the battle without waiting for his brother. At last, like a wild boar, he led the Christian forces boldly against the army of the enemy… in spite of the fact that the King had not yet arrived.”
The battle lasted through the day. The King finally joined Alfred in the field. At last the Danes gave way and retreated, pursued by the Saxon forces until the whole length and breadth of the Berkshire downs [Ashdown] was filled with their corpses. One of the Viking kings and five of his jarls were found among the slain.
Though this battle did not break the back of the Danes, it takes its place in history for the significance of the issue. Had the West Saxons lost, all England would have fallen before the Danes. The victory restored the confidence of the West Saxons and gave Alfred the fame and support necessary to continue his resistance. When brother Æthelred died later that year, there was no debate as to whom his successor would be. At twenty-four, Alfred was King.
The Danes were strongly reinforced from overseas. Six or seven battles were fought and the Danes held their ground. The “summer armies” were difficult to beat and Alfred’s forces were whittled down through desertion and death. Alfred decided to come to terms while he still had an army left.
A treaty was signed whereby the Danes would make peace if the Saxons retreated and paid tribute. Alfred did so and enjoyed five years to consolidate his defenses and power. What led the Danes to make such a treaty is unknown, but a change had come over the Northmen. Those who had for centuries invaded and plundered had begun to take up the land. The sailors had turned soldier, the soldier turned yeoman. It was not that they wanted peace. They still desired all of England, but Alfred’s stubborn group had taken its toll. For now, they were content to settle the lands they already held.
Five years later Alfred’s truce ended. The Danes, under Guthrum, had developed a plan to take Wessex. Alfred sought peace and offered to pay a tribute for it. The Danes took the gold and swore they would keep the peace, but suddenly they seized Exeter.
Alfred and his troops were after them, but found them in a fortress where they could not be touched awaiting reinforcement. They lay siege for a month as the fortress ran low on supplies. The Danes finally decided to break away from the fortress by sea and sent more than a hundred longships to their rescue.
In those days, people believed that the weather was ruled by God and Alfred was fortunate to have God on his side. A dense fog followed by a frightening storm came over the sea. A hundred and twenty Viking ships were sunk and more than five thousand of the perjured Danes died before the storm’s onslaught. Alfred, watching safely from the shore, found the Danes in the mood for another treaty. This, they kept for five months.
In January of 878, Alfred’s fortunes reversed. While his army celebrated the Twelfth Night, the Danes swooped down on them in the dark, killing many. Most of his army fled to their individual homes and Alfred was left with a handful of officers and personal attendants, forced to take refuge in the swamps and forests of Somerset.
For some months he lived as did Robin Hood many centuries later. Here, Alfred found security in his wilderness retreat.
One day it was so cold that the waters were frozen underfoot. Alfred’s attendant shad gone out to find food enough to feed them for the day while Alfred stayed alone in the royal hut with his mother-in-law, Eadburga. The King always carried a writing tablet along with the Book of Psalms by David.
A poor man appeared suddenly at the door begging for bread. Alfred, in his usual manner, received the stranger as a brother and called upon Eadburga to give him food. She replied that there was only one loaf of bread and a little wine left in the pitcher, but Alfred insisted that he be given what was left. Alfred then fell asleep while reading. He dreamed that St. Cuthbert stood before him and said he had taken the form of the beggar. He told Alfred that God had noted his afflictions and assured him that his fortune was about to change.
When Alfred awoke, the beggar was not to be seen. The loaf of bread remained whole and the pitcher of wine was filled to the brim. Alfred recounted his dream to his mother-in-law. She said that she too had fallen asleep and had the same dream. While they still talked of the amazing event, the attendants returned with enough fish and fowl to feed an army.
Toward the end of Lent, the Danes attacked one of Alfred’s strongholds on Exmoor. According to Hodgson: “…in besetting it they thought the King’s thanes would soon give way to hunger and thirst… since the fortress had no supply of water. The Christians, before they endured any such distress, by the inspiration of heaven judged itto be better either to suffer death or to gain the victory. Accordingly at day-break they suddenly rushed forth against the heathen, and in the first attack they laid low most of the enemy, including their king. A few only escaped by flight to their ships.”
Eight hundred Danes were killed that day. Among the spoils of victory, the Saxons captured the sacred flag of the Vikings called “The Raven”. This enchanted banner whose lifelike bird fluttered in the wind was said to have been woven in one day by three daughters of Ragnar Lodbrok. According to Hodgkin: “…in every battle in which that banner went before them the raven in the middle of the design seemed to flutter as though it were alive if they were to have the victory.”
On this day, the wind did not blow and the raven hung lifelessly in its silken folds. News of this defeat was quick to spread. When Alfred heard of it he left his hideout and once again raised a call for arms. News that he was alive and well excited the masses and the warriors returned in great number. Soon, Alfred was again marching in front of a grand army.
They met the Danes on the downs at Æthandun, now called Eddington, and fought the culminating battle of all Alfred’s wars. Everything was at stake. Both sides dismounted their horses. The shield walls formed and the two armies clashed for hours with sword and axe. The Danes were routed and Guthrum found himself entrapped in his own camp. Desperate, he begged for peace, offering to give Alfred as many hostages as he desired if he would let him leave these lands forever.
Alfred, however, had other designs with a more farsighted point of view. He meant to make a lasting peace with the Danish king. They were in his power. He could have starved or slaughtered them to a man. Instead, he received Guthrum into his camp, entertained him for twelve days, convinced him to be baptized to the Christian faith, and called him his on. Realizing that East Anglia (a small territory north of London) was a Danish province, Alfred offered to divide the land with him so that both could share in the glory of the new nation.
“The sublime power to rise above the whole force of circumstances, to remain unbiased by the extremes of victory or defeat, to persevere in the teeth of disaster, to greet returning fortune with a cool eye, to have faith in men after repeated betrayals, raises Alfred far above the turmoil of barbaric wars to his pinnacle of deathless glory.” -Winston Churchill
Fourteen years of peace were to follow. Alfred began the gargantuan task of reorganizing his lands and brought culture back to his island nation. He restored London, rebuilt the walls and started the town on the road toward becoming the capital city. He reorganized the “fyrd”, dividing the peasantry into two classes which rotated service in forty day increments. Now the soldiers would not desert on long campaigns, knowing that someone was there to care for his lands and that he could return home and do the same shortly.
Next, Alfred’s attention turned toward the sea. He made great departures from the norms in ship design, building much larger vessels that rode higher and steadier than the others. His work was premature only due to the fact that the big ships were beyond the skill of the inexperienced seamen to handle.
He founded schools and universities and caused translations of great works to be made in the English language. Until his time the English had only written songs and epic poems. Alfred began the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to compile the history of the land, and English prose was born.
The Laws of Alfred, continually added to by his successors, eventually grew into the English Common Law. Alfred’s Book of Laws or Dooms attempted to blend the Mosaic code with Christian ethics and Old Germanic principles. “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you”, became in Alfred’s words: “What ye will that other men should not do to you, that do ye not to other men. By bearing this precept in mind a judge can do justice to all men. He needs no other law books. Let him think of himself as the plaintiff and consider what judgment would satisfy him.”
He gathered scholars about him. He used every spare hour he could to read. He also listened to books read by others. He carried with him a little handbook, constantly pausing to write down thoughts as they occurred to him. The singers in the court found Alfred to be a fellow troubadour. He loved to gather the old songs of his people. He taught these songs to his children. The children that he raised proved to be the most able leaders of their time.
Alfred drew up plans for buildings. He took care of the affairs of his court. Alfred instructed craftsmen in their workings with gold. He would pause in his travels to converse with strangers. He taught even the falconers and dog breeders new things about their business. It seemed there was little in the world of ideas with which he was not more than adequately familiar.
He spent many an hour soothing his depressions with the music of the Psalms. He wrote: “Desirest thou power? Thou shalt never obtain it without sorrows–sorrows from strange folk, and yet keener sorrows from thine own kindred… hardship and sorrow, not a king but would wish to be without these if he could. But I know that he cannot.”
Alfred took the time to translate books into English himself. Yet, he was more than just a translator. He was an editor for his people, omitting this, expanding upon that, changing the whole design of English literature.
One final war was Alfred’s lot. The Vikings had invaded France, sailing up and down the rivers with every device of war known to man. They laid siege on Paris; they invaded Germany. The Danes seemed to fan out in all directions. However, they faced resistance on too many fronts. It was more than they could handle. Once again Viking ships looked toward England. Guthrum died in 891, keeping peace with Alfred to his last breath, but with his death, Guthrum’s Peace ended. The next year, a hostile armada of two hundred and fifty Viking ships arrived. They landed at the edge of the forests near Appledore. A second force of eighty ships sailed up the Thames. Kent was to be attacked from two sides.
Alfred had prepared the country well. Food and wealth had been gathered again. Additionally, Alfred’s twenty-two year old son, Edward, had become an able commander. He could lead his father’s forces in the field. Alfred avoided war for several years. He preferred to pay some Danegeld to Haesten, the Viking king. This payment was for promises of peace. Alfred also convinced Haesten to have both his sons baptized as Christians.
In 893, a third force arrived and attacked Exeter. Young Prince Edward routed the raiders. He sent them swimming up the Thames for their lives. The Danes had fortified themselves below London. Edward and his brother-in-law, Æthelred, raised a strong army in London, then fell upon the Danes at Benfleet. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: they “put the army to flight, stormed the fort, and took all that was therewithin, goods as wells as women and children, and brought them all to London.”
Among the hostages were the Danish leader’s wife and two sons. Alfred sent Haesten’s wife back to him on humanitarian principles, an act unheard of and highly criticized for many years.
“As for the two sons, they had been baptized; he [Alfred] was Godfather to one of them, and Æthelred of Mercia to the other. They were therefore Christian brethren, and the King protected them from the consequences of their father’s wrongful war. People in the ninth century found it very hard to understand this behavior. During that time, the kingdom was fighting desperately against brutal marauders. However, this is one of the reasons why in the after-time the King is called ‘Alfred the Great’. The war went on, but so far as the records show Haesten never fought again. It may be that mercy and chivalry were not in vain.” -Winston Churchill
“So long as I have lived,” Alfred said, as death closed in upon him, “I have striven to live worthily.”
Most people honestly believe that we have left the feudal system behind us, though I cannot imagine why they believe this. They are correct only in the respect that the economics have changed and feudalism was not just one system, but many different systems in many different places.
We no longer have kings; we have presidents and prime ministers. These rulers are often elected to office, yet the system is set up so that the same principal families still rule the vast majority of the wealth in the world. Democratization has diminished the power of the elite, but only superficially. Lower classes may now join the elite in principle, but that is not something new, as rising from the ranks has been accepted for millennia.
We are still a world of lords and ladies. We still call our owners of land “landlords.” Lenders administer over the estates, both directly and with agents acting in their behalf. The sheriff still handles the land disputes and tenant problems. The vast majority of apartment dwellers and tenants of commercial buildings are still peasants, though we refuse to call them such. Their living conditions have improved dramatically, but their rights and social status have improved little.
Most of us are at the mercy of our respective lords for employment, a human condition equal to the right to work the land. Those of us who are self-employed enjoy a freeman status, often mixed with the duties of the lord. The retailers around us are still shopkeepers, but the trend is toward a mass merchandising economy that reduces the status of the in- dependent retailer to a managerial occupation, more akin to being man-servant to the lord. That lord, in turn, owes allegiance to a higher duke. Eventually, the money flows back to the lenders, who maintain a form of control through governmental policy and free market control.
Those of us who are talented or highly educated have become the modern versions of scholars and artists. Endowments from governmental and private sources still allow the caretakers of the wealth to control the direction of research and artistic expression.
We have a tendency to create kings and queens whenever the position is vacant. We refer to John Wayne as “the Duke”, giving his imaginary roles a place in our reality that was once taken by a noble warrior or knight.
The fact that he never lived any of his screen exploit does not diminish our need to believe in such a hero. The need for heroes is innately human, as ancient as the race itself.
Likewise, the need for kings and queens is a human condition. If the political system does not bring them forth, we crown heroes, actors, athletes, and entertainers. For a brief time in the early 1960’s, America had three kings––John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Elvis Presley. All had varying degrees of popularity and none were popular to all the population, but there is little point in denying that they were treated and referred to as “kings”. Everyone who lived in the 1960’s remembers Camelot.
The very act of enthronement changes the person who ascends the throne. Responsibility is a heavy cloak that wears the one who wears it. People of strong vision and personality, people capable of setting a course for the future, have always been plentiful. Each of us play our own role in this drama each day of our lives. Yet, great world shapers are swept by the tides of the time. Their importance is judged by future standards, in the light of yet another time.
Historical novels, romances, and science fiction combine to tell us that our human condition is essentially the same in any age. Jean Aul points to the basic humanity of the tribes soon after the Ice Age in her novels about “Earth’s Children”, Robert Heinlein divides parallel universes with different time lines where the details of historical events can differ in each universe. Other dreamers project their fantasies far into the future, but the basic humanity of the characters differs little from the projected future, to the present, back again to the ice-age brother.
Our self consciousness itself, in itself, sets were us apart from any other living thing, we all do little but pass time in many different ways. This flowering makes us individual, each one of us passing time differently, creating many diverse and individual legacies in our wakes. Thus, we create riches and distinctions, and these creations lead us to then illusory belief that we are important.
Our nature requires us to feel that we are important, despite massive evidence to the contrary. Each of is feel that we are right. Each of us need a positive self image to function in the world, even those of us who have committed heinous acts. We find ways to rationalize and excuse out behaviors to hat we may accept ourselves.
We stratify like rocks. We cling to one another. We combine like chemical reaction to produce yet another wonder. We build out neighborhoods like natural elements pooling into deposits. We seek out status like liquid gold pressed into veins.
The judgments of one era may be reprehensible to another. When we socially ban slavery and then continue to discriminate against the new class, we create a large class of the disenfranchised. We seem to often trade one form of slavery for another. We condemn genocide and the political systems that have used it, but we are often helpless to prevent its recurrence.
The passing of power and the combining of age are seldom smooth transitions. We see small examples of this in the conflict of the generations. Nature devises adolescent rebellion and discontent so that the species may propagate in different locales.We, like the beavers who build the dams, pride ourselves for learning to tame and harness the forces or nature. We prosper when we make nature work for our own ends. Often, we think of ourselves as a species that has risen above nature to a position of empowerment and control, but more and more we are learning that these are only the delusions of a lesser god.
In fact, we are rooted in nature and we are but a small part of it. Our cities have become a part of the natural landscape. Our smog has become a part of the environment. Our polluted waters have become a part of the natural setting, and our mastery over other forms of life has changed the ecosystem. We are possessed by nature and have, in turn, changes our possessor.
I love a great short story. Problem is, there are too few of them.
How many great short stories can you name out of the blue?
Perhaps you are better read than I, because I can only think of three.
1) “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. Scrooge is an icon. Dickens was paid by the word to run his work serialized in the newspapers. That is why so many of his works are tediously long.
2) “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway (more a novella than a short story). Even though I forget the Old Man’s Spanish name, I still smell the sea and the fish and feel the sting of rope on my hands as the big fish fight.
3) “The Gift of the Magi,” the great O’Henry story about the man who sold his watch to buy a fine hair brush for a his love while she cut off her hair and sold it to buy him a watch fob. Maybe that was not the story exactly, I do not remember, but that’s a decently good one the way I described it.
Short stories are easy to read.
They take more time than a blog or a post, so they require more time and effort from the reader. But when they are good, they are outstanding.
Many great television mini-series are really enacted series of short stories that follow the same characters. This allows for character development. Come up with a great character and anyone will want to know them––love them or hate them. TV dramas are simply short stories with added visual action. The script does come first.
Written short stories are often better than TV stories.
We get to visualize our own image of the character and the setting. We get the added sense of smell from compelling descriptions.
I believe that most novels could really be told in the time is takes to read a short story. I believe that every chapter of a novel could be––and perhaps should be––a stand alone tale that either leaves you wanting more or thinking about the implications of what that story means to you.
I think that a writer can serve themselves best by writing smaller works that can later be entwined and stitched together to make a larger work.
My grandfather was always an old man to me. He was nearly seventy when I was born, thirty five years older than my father. Grandpa smoked a pipe and cigars and always smelled of strong tobacco.
We would spend many hours on the back porch cracking hickory nuts and walnuts with a hammer. He and I ate raw hamburger on crackers together followed by thick slices of limburger cheese.
Grandpa played the fiddle well at one time, but arthritis slowed his movements in his later years. The fiddle sounded pretty squeaky to me, but the tunes he played stayed with me forever.
Grandpa told me tales about his turbulent school days. He related these stories with a crooked smile that exposed his tobacco-stained teeth below his bushy white mustache.
In those days, school ended for most rural folk in the eighth grade. With an eight-year education, students could take a teacher’s examination and become a teacher themselves. Some of the students were as old as the teacher.
One of his male teachers had a bad habit of tossing a knife at his students for any infraction of his rules. One day Grandpa turned around to say something to a classmate seated behind him and that teacher threw the knife at him. It stuck in his desk. Grandpa got out of his seat and attacked the teacher.
The pot belly stove was red hot and blazing. Over it went, stove pipe and all, along with the teacher’s desk and several stools.The fight boiled over to the outdoors and ended with the knife-tossing teacher being taught a lesson by one of his older pupils.
Grandpa told me a story about one lady teacher about his age who was “soft” on him. Evidently, this crush was a one-way street, as Grandpa didn’t give a whit. He had made a sled which consisted of a thick plank with a bevel on the front end. That day there was a heavy snow on the ground with a thick crust. Grandpa and some of his friends went out to slide down the hill. The teacher wanted a ride, so Grandpa agreed to let her take a ride. He headed her in the direction of a small stump that barely showed above the thick crust. When she hit the stump, the teacher rolled head over heels. Her skirt billowed up over her head and showed more than she wanted her students to see. When Grandpa sheepishly helped her back up she told him: “I’ve seen enough of you to know that you’re no gentleman.”
Grandpa replied, “And I’ve seen enough of you to know that you’re no gentleman either.”
He told me these stories with a crooked smile that exposed his tobacco stained teeth below his large white mustache.
* * *
In October of 1960, I saw Grandpa alive for the last time. I had graduated from high school and spent the summer remodeling the house. Dad never seemed to have enough time of energy to work on the house. He was busy with his historical research and tracing genealogies. Gradually, I learned some basic skills and did all the handiwork at home.
Grandpa had been in a sanitarium for several years after suffering a series of strokes. In his late eighties, he was a dimmed shadow of the man he used to be. He was unable to speak. His eyes were barely visible through slits in his fleshy eyelids. His abdomen seemed puffed. He tried to speak, but only a squeaky whimper came forth. His hands twitched like the paws of a dreaming dog. He tried to move from one side to another, but he was like a car stuck in the mud. His mouth looked like it was bound with wire. Death, I realized, would be a blessing to him. Finally, he passed on and we buried him in the family plot in early November of 1960. He looked peaceful and at rest, more like the man I had known most of my life.
William Kenneth Finton
My father was somewhat of a mystery to me. He was bright and literate. He supported me in most everything I wanted to do. He played his vast collection of sound recordings often, so I became well versed in music from the time that recorded music was invented. Dad has a booming bass baritone voice and often sang along, or showed me songs of his own making. Everything he did made lasting impressions on me.
My father had missed his calling somehow. He was the type that needed to love his work, but he had settled for working for others in a factory setting for a wage. He had tried self employment often, but he could not make enough money for the family in an independent workplace. Some might say it was his own fault for not trying hard enough, but I knew better. He loved his family first and foremost. The all-consuming drive that is necessary for great success eluded him by personal choice. It was his lot to put home and family before personal satisfaction and work.
I think I summed everything up in a poem I wrote about Dad twenty years after he died.
We lived in the country about two miles from town. Dad had purchased an old brick one-room schoolhouse in 1948 from the county when they built a new school for the country folk consolidated all the one-room schools. He and Grandpa immediately went about the business of ruining it as an historic landmark. They broke up the large one room into four square rooms 15×15 with a ten foot hall between the sections. Two of the squares served as bedrooms, one served as the kitchen and one the living room.
They took out the lovely front door and cut a hole for a back door, bricked up a few of the long church style windows and lowered the ceilings from sixteen feet to eight feet. Dad wanted it to look like a normal home with a columned porch and a horseshoe drive, but this never happened. After he put the wiring in and ran the water from the false well, he drywalled everything and taped it. He ran out of steam very quickly. The rooms did not get paint for seven to eight years. By this time the drywall was brown with age and nicotine. The taped joints and the spackled nail holes stood in tasteless contrast to the tanned gypsum board.
Dad smoked unfiltered Old Gold cigarettes until they came out with Winston filters, then he switched. Sometimes he would smoke a pipe. I loved the smell of a pipe and could not wait until I had my own pipe and tobacco. Dad smoked Carter Hall tobacco when he smoked the pipe.
Mom always hated the schoolhouse. She had been used to a more traditional housing and thought that camping out in a unfinished home was not dignified enough. She has a dour attitude all the time she lived there and moved out as soon as Dad died.
A quarter mile north of our place was the Children’s Home. When I was a small boy, I often went there to play with the kids. They has a stout playground with a tall steel slide, that burned your skin in the hot summer sun, swings made with thick chains and seats of steel, and a small old carousel that always squeaked. The older boys did farm work and were called “barn boys”. I was not really old enough to play with them, but they let me hang out with them anyway. I first learned to ride a horse in the pasture between our house and the Children’s Home
REMEMBERING MAXINE
DORIS MAXINE HARPER FINTON SACK
born October 18, 1919, died January 20, 2009
It occurs to me that when you are talking about the life of a person and the meaning of the time they spend on earth, you are entering a gray area—a scary place that not many people like to go. You are talking about the evolution of a spirit—the changes that a lifetime makes in a soul. At the same time, you are being judgmental, revealing your own values, beliefs and patterns of thought in your words and praises— judging how the other person stood up to your own peculiar beliefs and evaluations.
Maxine was one of those rare species of human beings that took pleasure from being in the service of others. Not that she was totally selfless, as few of us are. Not that she was a saint, as none of us have perfect love, perfect lives or perfect morals. Only the long dead folks are made saints—and even then, it is only after the life they really lived has been selectively forgotten.
Born in Salem, Oregon, October 1919 and living into January 2009 mathematically made Maxine 89 years old when she died, but the view outside the window of her person was truly remarkable. She never knew her father, Clinton Byron Harper. He died of Spanish Influenza before she saw the first light of day. She was raised by her mother, Cora Mae Gilmour, a descendant of European royal families that never had the slightest taste or knowledge of the diluted bluish blood that flowed in her veins. Cora took in washing and did people’s laundry during the Great Depression. She struggled hard to raise her three daughters, Florence, Ruth, and Maxine. Cora left Oregon shortly after Maxine’s birth to live in the middle of the Kansas prairie with her father, Hedron Walker Gilmour, a short, thin and dapper man who loved the arts and entertainment. Hedron was an amateur magician and painter who became another big influence in Maxine’s early years.
After Maxine graduated from the Minneapolis Kansas High School, she moved to Denver, Colorado to live with her older sister Florence. She went to beauty school, though she rarely practiced the trade, just as her mother had gone through optometry school and never practiced that trade. Instead, Maxine waited tables on roller skates and went dancing with her friends as much as she could. It was at one of these dances that she met Ken Finton, an indisputably handsome man with Titian gold hair and a baritone voice to match those golden locks. He would become her husband of over 30 years and the father of her children: Kenny, Billy, and Jean Marie.
Ken would move her to Ohio where they would spend their life together near his family. They were married November 15, 1941. Just a few short weeks later, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. This act changed the lives of every American forever.
Maxine did not follow in the footsteps of Rosy the Riveter and go out into the workplace to replace the missing men in the American factories during the war. Instead, she had a baby —namely me—and sat out the war on the sidelines, staying sometimes in small apartments in Cleveland and Greenville, Ohio and sometimes with Ken’s parents. For a while in 1944 and 1945, she lived in Gainesville, Florida while Ken was stationed in Fort Blanding. They returned to Greenville where Ken first found work delivering fuel oil for the space heaters of Darke County’s many farm houses. Afterward, Ken opened a small gas station with his Flying Red Horse Mobil Oil Company contacts.
Ken’s attempt at the independent life did not last very long. He was forced to take refuge in factory work when a new baby decided to come into the family. The money was not great, but the job was steady and not overly demanding. He worked in quality control inspecting taps and dies for a branch of the Detroit Tap and Tool company called Sater Products. This work lasted he until he retired at 64.
Around 1950, the schools in Darke County consolidated and left quite a few one-room brick school houses vacant. Ken was able to buy one of these abandoned schools and had the idea that he could remodel it into an ideal two story home with the help of his father and family. However, Ken was not a talented builder. The schoolhouse was divided into four 15×15 rooms with a bath and a hallway, but that is about as far as it went. This was much to Maxine’s dismay. She never liked the dwelling. It remains a schoolhouse on the exterior and a two bedroom home on the interior to this very day.
Maxine spent the 50’s raising her two boys. There were plenty of instruction manuals on how to do this. Dr. Benjamin Spock had written his famous book that took the world by storm. In 1946, Spock was given the chance to publish his iconoclastic views in The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Along with everyone else, Maxine and Ken read it, of course.
In the 50’s strange new gadgets appeared on the roofs of American houses as television became a household necessity. Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and The Nelson family’s The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet did not hesitate to show how child rearing in the 50’s ought to be.
None of these shows were much like our own personal lives, but that did not matter much. With TV in most homes, everyone had a living model of the way things should be. A woman’s place was definitely in the home for everyone but school teachers and nurses. Thus, Maxine stayed home to raise the kids most of the fifties, though she secretly would have preferred to be out in the workplace. Despite the social norm, Maxine did take temporary work as a cashier at some grocery stores and the five and ten cent store now and then. But in 1956, a new daughter that we named Jean Marie came as complete surprise to the everyone—fifteen years after the first baby—and once again life was changed for all.
As to religious views, the family was for the most part not serious about churches and religions. This changed a bit in the late fifties when Ken and Maxine started studying the Bible with John Timmons and his wife who were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I am not sure what swept them up into this strange, cultish group. It was probably the strong personality of John Timmons more than anything else, but I was young and impressionable and was swept up into this myself at the time. By the time I graduated high school, I had moved well beyond fundamentalist viewpoints, and developed interests in sciences, as well as philosophy, eastern religions, archeology, history, and music.
Ken died suddenly of a severe stroke in 1972. A few years later, Maxine sold off many of her Ohio possessions and moved to 1289 Clayton Street in Denver where she lived in a house that originally belonged to the Muckle family. Maxine’s sister Florence had married Paul Muckle. His parents had both passed away and the big old turn-of-the-century home sat empty at the time. Once again, like the time after Maxine’s’ graduation, her older sister Florence was there for her in her time of need and confusion.
Florence had come to Ohio when my brother Billy was born and we had visited her several times in Colorado—once by train when I was around six and several times by auto when Ken took his vacation.
HEDRON WALKER GILMOUR
THE GILMOUR PLOT, MINNEAPOLIS, KANSAS
The tombstone of Hedron Walker Gilmour is the foremost stone, Minneapolis, KS.
Hedron Walker Gilmour (called “Hede”) was born at the family farm in Illinois, but homesteaded the Kansas prairie when the opportunity arose during the land rush. He had two homestead claims where Minneapolis, Kansas now stands. In 1990, one of the frame homes he had built still stood in Minneapolis.
Hede was a man of many talents. When still a child, he developed an interest in magic. Once he decided to run away from home to join the army to become a drummer boy, so he hopped on a slow moving freight train near his father’s home. He was quickly caught by the railroad bulls and hurled off the moving train. Dejected, he had to walk the many miles back along the tracks to his father’s farm. Hede’s magic talents and interests lasted for his entire lifetime. He did work part time for the circus in his later years, finally fulfilling that childhood dream. During his adult life he entertained in his community, pulling rabbits from hats, handkerchiefs from ears, and cutting people in half with his magic saw and trunk.
It was said, “Hede loved the Indians and the Indians loved him.” At home on his Kansas homestead, Hede developed good relations with the nearby Indian tribes. When they traveled through his area they were allowed to sleep on his front porch without needing to ask. They always left some gift for Hede as a token of their appreciation.
Hede was inspecting his fields one day when he kicked up a large rock the size of a clod of earth by the roadside. He took it home, washed it up and was impressed with its hard beauty. The family used the rock as a doorstop for many years until a friend from Kansas City came to visit and talked them into having it assayed. Tests showed that it was practically a pure diamond. Hede had some of this diamond cut into rings for family members. Several of these rings served as family heirlooms.
Hedron Walker Gilmour was an artist and a horse trader. One story says that he traded diamonds for a banana plantation in Brazil, then traded the deed for a large gemstone made of jade. I am not certain of the truth of this rumor. He built a long, two-car garage on his homestead and painted the three interior walls with illustrations of prairie life. One portrait of an Indian with his hand to his brow, peering out against the sun was exceptionally beautiful. He also custom painted automobiles in his later years.
Hedron stood about 5’5″. He was a handsome, wiry man with a large mustache. Hedron and Emma Root had two daughters, Cora Mae Gilmour and Lura Berdina Gilmour, who later married Wallace Hake and moved to Tennessee. According to his granddaughter, Florence, Hede bought his daughter Lura a plantation near Dixon, Tennessee, which he purchased for back taxes. According to his granddaughter, Ruth, he simply loaned them the money to purchase the farm. In his later years he spent much time in Tennessee to get away from the harsh Kansas winters. Hede suffered from prostrate gland problems at the end of his life. A quack doctor implanted a goat prostrate when he removed Hyde’s prostate and Hede became delusional. The ailment eventually led to his confinement in an institution at Kansas City where he died at age eighty-two.
His son-in-law, Wallace Hake, went on to become a leading political figure in Tennessee. He served as speaker of the house and was often consulted on matters of state. Wallace Hake built one of areas first golf courses on his plantation, but his own golfing was curtailed by an accident on the premises. He was searching for eggs in the barn when he was bit in the thumb by a copperhead. Lura grabbed a bottle of whiskey, made him drink as much as he could, then cut the heads off five chickens and made him stick his thumb down the throat gullet of each of the chickens to draw the poison out while they loaded in the car and rushed to the doctor. On the way the necks of the decapitated chickens turned green with the drawn venom. The doctor in charge said that Lura’s quick thinking saved Wallace Hake’s life. Wallace’s thumb, however, was never right again.
Wallace Hake was addressing a graduation ceremony for the students at the University of Tennessee when he died of a heart attack while speaking at the podium.
Wallace Hake and son, Buddy Lura Gilmour Hake
1 The information on Hedron Walker Gilmour and family came from direct interviews with his granddaughters, Florence, Maxine and Ruth. Though they differed and argued on some details, the above is an approximation of the reality.
Cora Mae Gilmour was the daughter of Hedron Walker Gilmour of Kirkwood, IL and Emma Myra Root of East Mecca, Ohio. [Emma Root’s father, a minister, performed wedding in his home in Minneapolis, Kansas].
[See FROM TRIBES TO NATIONS addendum Emma Myra Root, Chapter 12, page 87]
Emma Myra Root was the daughter of George J. Root (b 1828 Trumbull County, Ohio, d Minneapolis, Kansas). She had a brother, Judson who lived in Trumbull County, Ohio. George Her father, George J. Root, a minister, married Lura Smith (3 Jul 1847).
Tired of living, spurned in loving, deficit in compassion, Andreas Lubitz and his crippled amygdala donned his smart uniform and climbed aboard the plane.
A pretty stewardess smiled at him, bid him a good morning as he passed. She smelled of a musky perfume. That reminded him of the sex he often craved with her.
He found sex to be an animalistic and ludicrous practice. Love had always been a dream that faded away to sorrow. He returned to her a faceless smile without meaning.
He took his place in the cockpit beside Patrick, his pilot. It was less that two hours to Dusseldorf from Barcelona. Patrick was loquacious, almost collegiate in manner.
As they bantered back and forth, Patrick’s banal conversation bored Andreas to death. He could only fake a smile for reply.
Andreas thought about how he hated God for giving him life. An aching desire for release from the prison of time had overcome him. A dull ache of depression swept over him as he remembered all the hideous assaults he had endured.
It was as though he wore glasses that saw only the evil of time and hid away the pleasant moments.
When Patrick left the cabin, Andreas pushed the button to lock the door so that he would not have to bear him any longer.
Alone in the cabin, with only the sky in his eyes and the engine noise in his ears, Andreas was at last alone with himself. He hated his aloneness. “Everyone is suffering in their meaningless lives just like I am,” he thought. The future brings nothing but more disappointment, times filled with melancholy, nights filled with helpless thoughts, days filled with foolish actions that try to mitigate the absurdity of living a desperately miserable existence. Dog eats dog, life eats life, panicked schools of fish swirling in circles as the sharks attack the outer layers of their being.
The images consumed him. The irrelevance of his very being and all those around him felt like the beating drum of a hated heartbeat Mushroom clouds raining death, pits with decapitated bodies killed by fools who thought themselves righteous appeared in the gray sky when he adjusted the course of the plane to fly at one hundred feet.
“It will soon be over,” he thought to himself. “I am finally on control.”
He heard a frantic knocking on the door as Patrick tried to gain the cabin. His gut tensed, his breath came hard and fast. He could hear the hysterical screams of the passengers behind him.
No sympathy for their plight crossed Andreas mind. “They are all going to die anyway,” he thought. “Today is as good a day to die as any other. Today is better. It will save them from through suffering their ignorant lives.”
Adrenaline rushed through Andreas veins as the mountain loomed before him and the nose of the aircraft. He felt like a soldier entering battle.
“It is a good day to die,” the voices around him exclaimed.
He remembered the stewardess with the sexy perfume who greeted him when he stepped onto the plane. Her voice was among those screaming behind him. “I will not fuck her,” he told himself. “She will not tempt anyone to fuck her now. I can make sure of that.”
There was power in the thought; power had always escaped him.
The remembered scent of her perfume hung in his nostrils. His own breath came hard and deep as he thought about having sex with her. Death, he thought, would be like conception, a one timeless contracting orgasm would begin the journey to another useless, meaningless and painful life. Another contraction would snap the miserable body away from experience and into the vast nothingness of the universe.
He could picture himself letting go after the shock of impact. It would be his final orgasm, his final statement, his final action.
For much of my life, I have been trying to understand cosmic origins. I have tried to relay by words, music, and verse concepts of the many visions have come to me over the years. It is a most difficult task to bring together––atheists and theists, true believers and deists. We are a divided people in more that our politics and religions. We are segregated by custom, sex, national borders, local borders, economics, levels of education, genetic makeups, intellectual levels, personality types and race. Hope, essential as it is in social interactions, seems to be sinking when it needs to rise. Our world needs a release from the web of existential anxiety the modern world has created.
Scientists tell us that the universe was born about 13.8 billion years ago. Through the aeons that passed, our modern lives evolved from nothing into the complex situations that we find ourselves immersed in and call the present time. Everyone seems to have a theory of why this is so. Some ideas seem much better than others, yet all lead that same demise that our emotional states want desperately to reject, the cessation of being itself.
We try to contemplate the nature of the world—develop ideas about the building blocks of nature that create this world around us—by looking into the atoms that make our physical universe searching for the smallest particles.
Is there such thing as the smallest particles? How could there be? Something would always be smaller than the smallest until it disappeared into infinity—which is exactly what matter seems to do.
Matter seems to be made of vibrating wave frequencies. Electrons have different states of energy. We see solidity in our immediate world, but the micro world seems to be a sea of informational energy that creates the appearance of solidity, while most of the manifest universe is a vacuum in space. We do not live in the micro world. We know that if we crash into these solid mountains of elemental rocks, it will injure or destroy us.
Donald Hoffman—professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine—wrote: “On the other side are quantum physicists, marveling at the strange fact that quantum systems don’t seem to be definite objects localized in space until we come along to observe them—whether we are conscious humans or inanimate measuring devices. Experiment after experiment has shown—defying common sense—that if we assume that the particles that make up ordinary objects have an objective, observer-independent existence, we get the wrong answers. The central lesson of quantum physics is clear: There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space. As the physicist John Wheeler put it, “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”
Hoffman continues: “Not only are they ignoring the progress in fundamental physics, they are often explicit about it. They’ll say openly that quantum physics is not relevant to the aspects of brain function that are causally involved in consciousness. They are certain that it’s got to be classical properties of neural activity, which exist independent of any observers—spiking rates, connection strengths at synapses, perhaps dynamical properties as well. These are all very classical notions under Newtonian physics, where time is absolute and objects exist absolutely. And then [neuroscientists] are mystified as to why they don’t make progress. They don’t avail themselves of the incredible insights and breakthroughs that physics has made. Those insights are out there for us to use, and yet my field says, “We’ll stick with Newton, thank you. We’ll stay 300 years behind in our physics.”
In other words, Hoffman thinks that the universe itself if a mental conception composed of independent conscious agents with varying degrees of complexity, all of which are but informational viewpoints that communicate with one another. From the smallest to the largest, all is composed of the same non-material—awareness and consciousness. Communicating conscious agents can merge to form other conscious agents.
DOES IT MATTER?
Does it matter much if the universe is a mental conception or a physical reality? Are the results not the same? Both lead to the same questions and dilemmas either way. Can understanding of the cosmos as a mental conception be an emotional solace to existential anxiety?
Life becomes one riddle after another for the thinking person. Solving one riddle creates many more to take their place. Debunking one myth leads to another, as the world is both mystic and mythic.
We peer into the universe with our telescopes and our probes and find awe-inspiring beauty of all kinds. Who can object to the beauty of Saturn’s rings set in the blackness of the sky or the wonderful things that nature provides for our eyes and ears to hear and see? At the same time, we wonder why these things even exist for us to see. Why should the beauty of the world go unseen and unappreciated for billions of years while life on Earth evolves enough to care about it? Who or what experienced these wonders before the dawn of time or the emergence of living things? What was the observer that brought our universe into view?
This is where the idea of a mental conception of the world is most convincing. In order for there to have been an evolutionary past through the birthing of elements in stars, there had to be an observer.
Many believe that God is the creator of the universe and experienced the void of the universe alone long before the world came into being, but everyone has their own conception of what this God might be. The Abrahamic religions give God a male gender, a father figure—though giving birth to the universe seems to be a female attribute. Cultures create their own myths to explain their existence.
In the long run, does it matter whether God created the universe (as some religions claim) or physicality came into being and evolved into the present (as some scientists believe). Either point of view is obsolete with quantum mechanics. Yet, both views point to an event from an undefinable zero dimension. Whether we call it creation or the Big Bang, we refer to the same event that came from beyond time and space.
Some assume our universe came from the remnants of a previous universe. Some think it came from nothing at all, and some say something cannot come from nothing.
I, for one, find it much easier to visualize timelessness than to envision the beginnings and endings of time. I also find it easy to visualize timelessness as having no concept of duration, but focused on experience instead. The timelessness of the dimensions above our own experience seems to perfectly balance our mortal experiences with the immortal potential of our existence. Duration is a concept stamped upon experience by intellectual branders. Someone dreamed up the idea of measuring time, but did not really comprehend the nature of timelessness and pure experience. How long the experience is felt is not nearly as important as the experience itself.
Where did our consciousness reside before we came to be born? Is it possibly the same non-place in which we dwell when we die? We have all experienced the place where our awareness of ourselves was blank and united with everything. Before we began to exist in this time and space, we all experienced a blank infinity of time and memory. On a personal level, eternity is that which your consciousness was before this life experience. Eternity can be pictured as a sleeping form of awareness that—when awakened—develops sensory experience such as touch and perceptions. In time, the subconscious and the self-conscious carry out the business of life and survival. As the universe is born from infinity, we are as well. Infinity is that which was before this life experience. The world about us is similar to a continuous dream that is made real by our consciousness awareness.
Because the zero dimension is static and unchanging, the first and second dimensional structures are also timeless in that they are everywhere at once. That there is structure in the lower dimensions has some experimental evidence.
“So far, there may already be one piece of experimental evidence for the existence of a lower-dimensional structure at a higher energy scale. When observing families of cosmic ray particles in space, scientists found that, at energies higher than 1 TeV, the main energy fluxes appear to align in a two-dimensional plane. This means that, above a certain energy level, particles propagate in two dimensions rather than three dimensions.” (https://phys.org/news/2011-03-physicists-dimensions-universe.html#jCp)
The emergence of first and second dimensions begin the structure of our physical universe. Time is of no concern in these dimensions. The second dimension creates space where energies can move and react, physical fields can form universally in this dimension. The third dimension ads depth and height and the fourth expands space by creating the duration that we know as time.
Everything in the universe is projected in three dimensions from its zero dimensional source. It has been called the Void, God, Infinity, First Cause, The Great Spirit, Universal Mind, or many other such name devised to express the idea of an unknowable non-thing that is beyond existence, being and conception.
Infinity, since it contains all things and all events began from within it, must be the source of the physical laws that we discover in nature. The finite is contained within infinity.
INFINITY AND THE UNIVERSE
There are those who cannot accept that there is such a thing as infinity. They consider infinity a simple conception or a mathematical symbol. For some people, the dogmatic religious world hurt them emotionally when they came realize that that the dogma the world fed them is false.
But it is not that easy to dismiss infinity. If something is finite, then there must be something that is not finite. That would be the infinite.
1 a: the quality of being infinite. b: unlimited extent of time, space, or quantity: boundlessness. 2: an indefinitely great number or amount such as an infinity of stars.
When we think about how the world about us came to be, we have only two choices. It has a beginning or it is endless and has no beginning. Having no beginning leaves us in a quandary, as the universe should have run out of energy and depleted itself long, long ago. There would have to be a continual creation of new energy to replace that which was lost to the entropy of dissipation for a universe to be eternal.
If no universe existed before the Big Bang, then what was there? What was in its place when there was no place? Nothing? But nothing cannot exist because it has no being. The ‘it’ we seek cannot be anything but infinite and boundless nothingness which cannot have existence.
The world, it is said, cannot come from nothing. ‘Nothingness’ may not operate under the same laws of physics by which ‘somethingness’ operates. We cannot assume anything about the physics within nothingness. We cannot really say anything about what nothing is.
However, there are potentially satisfactory answers to the puzzle of eternity, infinity and first causes. These answers are simple to understand by any person that is able to shed his or her preconceptions that have been fostered by the cultural experience.
That answer is that physical reality is built in dimensional layers. The first dimension is infinite and eternal—no beginning nor endings—no particular spot in space nor place in time.
The first dimension is an infinite point that contains all that is possible to exist within it because it is all that exists. It is much like the singularity that the Big Bang theorists posit as the infinity dense point from which all came. The universe always exists within this eternal first-dimension, but not in physical form.
The second dimension is a flat plane which spreads in all directions from the infinite point. Being infinite as well, this dimension has no beginnings and endings. This second-dimension is without the perception of time, but originates all further dimensional experience. It is the foundation for the concept of space.
Ultimately, dimensions are viewpoints. Viewpoints are mental constructions. Each dimension contains all the information from the previous dimension while adding important new perceptions.
The two-dimensional line, for example, is the point replicating itself over and over, appearing to travel in a straight line, a vector from the original infinite point. The universal lines that form the universal field is the repetition of the infinite point throughout space. The point is endless and timelessly recurrent. By the expansion of its being, the point fuses with those primal copies of itself to form space and a second dimension. That fusion releases vast amounts of virtual energy that radiates from the original point to form myriads of universal fields. As this radiation spreads there is an expansion of space in the second-dimension.
It is the second dimension that contains the blueprint for the three-dimensional world we see with height, length and width. The two-dimensional universe is flat, like a blueprint. The beginning of the universe is easily comprehended if we hold the view that the physical laws which determine the mathematics, probabilities and shapes essential to universal existence exists in the second dimension. We do not create these laws and principles. We discover them.
As a picture of the natural world can be recorded on flat surfaces like paper and film from the artists perspective, the second dimension can hold our three-dimensional viewpoint in an encoded series of digital bits.
The third and fourth dimensions limit the space of the second, changing its physicality to a closed, temporal space where duration, height, volume, and depth become apparent. The process can be visualized as similar to the Japanese art of origami where three dimensional space is unfolded from the two dimensional patterns. By the folding of space, volume, height, and width emerge in a three-dimensional universe, but some space is lost in the process, the same way that some paper is lost on origamic folds. The three-dimensional universe is finite.
The step to physical reality comes through events in four-dimensional space.
Four-dimensional space combines time and duration with three dimensional space. It is the basis for the theory of relativity. Time and space are fused and effect one another as the fourth-dimension emerges and posits another aspect to the third dimensional viewpoint.
In this simple explanation of dimensions, there is a missing ingredient of vital importance to the universe—the mental component of the observation.
THE MENTAL UNIVERSE
Awareness precedes physical existence . Awareness is invisible. It cannot be touched or measured, yet it is ever present even when we are not conscious of it. Awareness builds consciousness through the fusion of random information into organized information.
The cosmos is projected into being from a non-dimensional and timeless zero dimension. Even if the remains of previous universes should form the present incarnation, those first universes have to start somewhere. That somewhere is beyond time. It has to come from the non-dimensional.
What we experience comes from our personal consciousness—our awareness of being in the moment. What is this awareness? Is it a sense that arises from our human brains and nervous systems? If so, then awareness dies when we die. Are plants are aware? Are microbes aware? If you think they are not, perhaps you have the wrong conception of what awareness is.
Many people think that awareness emerges late in evolutionary history. To some, it is unthinkable that awareness should precede evolutionary development. Consider an unthinking rock or an ignorant chemical reaction. Where is this awareness in primal nature? What causes awareness to rise in the first place? Is it inherent in the natural order? Are reactions awareness, or are we mincing words? Are interactions aware?
In quantum physics an observer and an interaction is the same thing. Only objects interact. Even a particle colliding with another particle is an interaction and therefore an observation as well. Observations and interactions do not need to have to have concepts to produce effects and events. They are the events.
Our awareness uses the tools of perception to identity itself and the outer world. Were dinosaurs unaware? Are single-celled life forms unaware? A better question is to ask if they have any form of perception. Obviously, if they react to stimuli they have some form of perception. If they have perception, they have awareness—not on the grand scale that mammals have developed, but their reaction to observation and touch shows that they have awareness built into their systems.
Quantum mechanics posits that the universe is a connected unit, each part having an effect upon another. Everything in space and time has a cause and an effect. If it has no cause and effect, it is not in space and time. Quantum mechanics also posits that events must have an observer/interaction to be an event. The event itself would not happen unless and until it is observed. The interaction itself is an observation.
This is another clue that the world might be a mental system with a physical component. Observers are generally thought of as being people, but they can also be a system. An observer is person or a system that observes. In other words, before we can have a world, we need events. To have events we need an observer. To have an observation we need awareness of an object or an event.
The essential quality for an observation or an interaction is to have awareness of an object. Mental awareness, then, is essential for the existence of time and space. All things are not only produced by mental awareness in its myriads of localized forms, but all things are formed from the eternal and non-material awareness which has always been present in the eternal now.
Something has to be a first cause for the parade of time and space to exist. This first cause cannot be material, yet the material world was produced from it. Our dreams are not material nor real, but the fields involved in neural synapses produce what appear as images in our minds. This is similar to the construction of the universe as well.
Awareness is invisible. It is not something that we can touch or measure, yet it is ever present even when we are not consciously aware of anything.
Awareness is the observer that is awakened by reactions to objects from within and outside ourselves. These reactions to our inner and outer worlds create information that eventually organizes itself and becomes experience.
Awareness does not need the concept of time and space. It creates time and space when it awakens to stimulus from another.
Awareness is essential for the building of a universe.
Eternal awareness may be the proper name for the concept of the mind of God.
Nature is the child of awareness.
Science does not know precisely what a mind is or from whence intelligence springs. Physical theories surmise that it emerged from physical-chemical reactions deep in the remote past. However, we cannot deny the intelligence manifested by nature that experiments with form after form and drives evolutionary change. We cannot deny the subconscious that regulates not only our personal physical systems but the intelligent patterns found in nature. If the mind were made only of nerves and synaptic systems alone, evolution would not have produced our unique world. Plants and chemical bondings have no nervous systems at all, but come up with intelligent and elegant solutions to problems and events. The mind is not a material thing. It is a primal force.
The universe is eternally present even though it may not always be manifest as it appears to be in our three-dimensional reality. Reality takes shape in all dimensions, but we are primarily concerned with the third and fourth-dimensions where our experiences are realized.
Our experience is also recorded in the second dimension in an eternal and timeless form. One unique property of awareness is that it does not have to be aware of anything at all. It can be empty—void of content of any kind—and still be awareness. Awareness needs no physical objects of which to be aware. It does not even need to be aware of itself.
Even our personal awareness rests and ceases to be aware temporarily. It happens daily. Why cannot these lapses of awareness last for eons or epochs, perhaps billions and billions of years. In these empty spaces, universes cease to be. When they exist, the blueprint for reality exists infinitely in the second dimension which holds all time and events, potential or actual.
Then how does the world come to be?
Consider the dimensional foundation of the universe. Assuming that awareness is non-material, massless and infinite, then a universe without dimension is the zero dimension, an immaterial zone beyond time and space where primal awareness sleeps and dreams. Only when awareness awakens does the first dimension come into being. That first dimension is a point that exists everywhere and contains everything that is possible to contain. It is much like the singularity envisioned in the original big bang theory. This point is infinite. Quadrillions of copies of itself exist at this point. All are infinite and massless as they take up no time and inhabit no space.
When these points move to form a second dimension, as awareness awakens from its slumber, infinite fields and lines are formed and space is born. This space has no place in time, as time has not yet emerged. It simply expands from the first dimension, pushed in all directions by the radiating energy from the point. This virtual energy radiated from the 1st-dimension is not vibratory because there is no vibrational dimension until time emerges in the third dimension. Instead, this radiation is a homogeneous mass of timeless energy. Vibrations have duration. Radiating lines only have motion. They are not in time because they have no duration.
These radiating lines create two-dimensional quantum fields throughout the universe, fields which trace patterns for the actualization of that which comes to be physical in the third-dimension. These fields include electromagnetic fields, weak gauge fields, strong gauge fields, and gravitational fields—all flat two-dimensional fields that occur everywhere in the universe and regulates how matter is born from infinite virtual energy.
As vibrations emerge in these waveforms the saga of time begins. Duration differentiates one form from another through vibrational frequency (duration).
Mass is added from passing through the second-dimensional fields (the Higgs field) which is a filter that further limits the virtual energy. Mass emerges as particles that eventually form elemental hydrogen, and helium—the basic elemental building blocks of our three-dimensional physical reality.
Eventually, a primal soup of extremely dense gases is built up. As the elements interact, they form pockets of different densities—material lumps that are no longer homogenous. The inequality of the mass in their combined states react to the second-dimensional gravitational fields that regulate the influence of unequal masses upon one another.
As the material lumps grow larger they revolve about one another before fusing themselves with the larger mass. These gravitational fields attract even more elemental gas and the first massive stars appear in the universe, using the principle of fusion to form heavier elements and radiant energy.
Fusion is the process or result of joining two or more things together to form a single entity. The entity formed is greater than the sum of its parts and the extra energy is released as radiation from stars.
Fusion is even more than a factory for heavier elements and radiated energy. It is a process of assimilation of two lesser parts into one which is greater than the parts themselves. It is the abstract process that fuels change and ignites evolution. Even reproduction uses an abstraction of the fusion process to propagate.
Definition\: fu’sion: the process or result of joining two or more things together to form a single entity.” 2) a fusion of an idea from anthropology and an idea from psychology”
HOFFMAN NOTES: “Over the years, we have written extensively about why QM seems to imply that the world is essentially mental (e.g. 1990, 1993, 1999, 2001, 2007, 2017a, 2017b). We are often misinterpreted—and misrepresented—as espousing solipsism or some form of “quantum mysticism,” so let us be clear: our argument for a mental world does not entail or imply that the world is merely one’s own personal hallucination or act of imagination. Our view is entirely naturalistic: the mind that underlies the world is a transpersonal mind behaving according to natural laws. It comprises but far transcends any individual psyche.”
Recall Max Planck’s position: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.” (Emphasis added.
Our consciousness is formed from our awareness. Awareness is invisible. It is not something that we can touch or measure, yet it is ever present even when we are not consciously aware of anything. Awareness is the observer that is awakened by reactions to objects from within and outside ourselves. These reactions to our inner and outer worlds create information that eventually organizes itself and becomes experience.
Awareness does not need the concept of time and space. It creates time and space when it awakens to stimulus from another. That awareness precedes existence is essential for physical reality.
Before existence took place, there was pre-existence without time and without space, where no dimensions at all exist. Science can tell us nothing of this era. We are left to our own experiences to decipher our personal realities about from whence we came.
There is a point before time and space. Within that point is the property of physical awareness. That which is aware–call it the thinker, the cosmic dreamer, or if you prefer, the pre-universe–it is surely the precursor of information, as thought and ideas were all held in one timeless, yet geometric, point. The mental universe of pre-existence was one of potential. Potential does not possess a physical entity. Potentials are mental images.
“A” is present whether or not “B” is present. “A” then, is like potential energy that does exist without material content and without motion. The creation of motion is brought about by the existence of “B”. “A” can exist without time and space because or its property of being potential. In order for this potentiality of energy to be released, it must have a precise co-ordinate in space and a sense of awareness to duration in order to experience time. This is the data and it is provided by “B”. In other words, “B” is the informational content that co-creates the physical.
We know that physical awareness exists in the universe because we are ourselves aware. We do not doubt our own existence. It is one of the properties of human experience. I propose that it is also one of the properties of the universe. We can easily see these properties in life. Many living things are obvious to us, but we find it harder to conclude that there is an awareness in inanimate objects as well. Since all objects are made from an atomic structure, does physical awareness exists in atomic structure as well?
Pre-atomic structures experience some of the first events. Wherever events occur, physical awareness must record the change in the objects and codify the information. Before we can have a universe, we need objects and events. An event is an interaction between objects. To have an interaction we need awareness to identify an object or an event. Without awareness, there is literally no event, no data to record. All change contains information. Awareness is the left hand that interprets the information on the right hand. The essential quality for observation or interaction is having an awareness of an object. Objects consist primarily of information. This information is physically coded and eventually it is recognized by our senses. Physical awareness is the first cause for the existence of time and space. All things are objects that are formed by the non-material awareness which has always been present.
Living is not an illusion, nor is it real. It is more like a dream dreamt by a distant dreamer. Eternity is the time measure of space and space the place where time resides.
Temporal means temporary. This is not a curse nor a reason for despair because it is a dream dreamt by the dreamer that is neither real nor an illusion, certainty, or chimera.
This is a dream dreamt by a distant dreamer. We live it now, we lived it then, as we will live it on the morrow.
We call it truth, though it is not, as time and space are one–– once contracted into a point–– presently expanded and stretched toward infinity.
Truth cannot be found in one place for it is the combined knowledge of the sum of its parts. In order to be a truth, all known perspectives must agree. In order to be false, the charged point must disagree with known facts,
Reality is certainty, palpable, perceivable and solid, designed by a mind, for a mind. Reality is the evolution of a mind through space and time.
I think I can now understand more about what feels wrong in my life. It is a fairly simple thing. Writing is not a full-time job for me. For me to be creative requires a certain mood. I can never sit down and schedule my work unless something has already started. Even then, if I’m not inspired by that small spark of something, that germinal idea of what to say, nothing comes of it.
Yesterday, I did not go to the Manhattan office to pick up my paycheck. That money feels more like a chain that keeps me tied to New York City. Zita and I decided to try hiking on Fire Island. I asked my brother Billy if he wanted to go. That led me to ask my partner Gary if he wanted to go. Everybody jumped at the idea of doing something different, though it was really the idyllic dream of getting back to nature that we jumped at. We forgot, for a time, the realities of hiking through the sand, the constant sunshine, no respite or shade. Fire Island is simply a sandbar by the sea –– a primary dune of sand and secondary dunes covered with brush, reeds, and wild, low growth. It is on Long Island’s south shore.
It took us all day to get organized to leave, patiently waiting for everyone to get their gear and arrive. We got to the island at about four PM. It was the hottest day of the year. The temperature was in the high nineties and the sun hotly burned our backs.
We stripped to the waist, donned our packs, and began the long sandy trek. Zita struck out in the lead followed by me, then Gary, then Billy, and his wife, Bonnie. As time passed, the line became very thin and strung out. I dawdled a bit to wait for the others to catch up, but Billy and Bonnie were way behind and Zita kept forging ahead. Gary caught up momentarily but then lagged again while I hurried to catch up with Zita.
We stopped at the bloated carcass of a headless seal, stared for a brief moment, then passed it by. When Gary finally caught up with us, Billy and Bonnie were nowhere to be seen.
A fine mist hung over the sea and the sun busily melted it away. We speculated about where Billy was. Gary thought he was upset because we were so far ahead. I thought that was probably true, but I guessed his bedroll was too heavy and this was too much work for his taste.
Two lonely figures popped up on the horizon, then faded away again. Guessing that it was Billy and Bonnie, I finally turned back to get them only to find that he had returned to the car to drop off his bedroll, intending to hitch back to the city. “It was an ugly thing to do,” he said, because his bedroll kept falling apart and it was really work to hike in the sand. Besides, he felt that the day had started with hassles. He knew more were coming and would rather retreat back to the city. There had been too many arguments about delays and the “hurry-up-we’ll-never-get-there’s” had put an uptight bag around the sunshine.
I felt disappointed that everyone was not in the best of spirits. A feeling of time washed over me and hung heavy in my heart. The changes in my life were splitting both Billy and I apart. Billy became a symbol of the yesterday that never returns and the desolate beach a symbol of the future that we always trudge towards.
There truly was nothing there but sand and sea.
Suddenly two ideas sprang into my head. Two different visions of life were becoming apparent: Billy’s idea that this trip was all a gross absurdity and hard work and his desire to return to the comfort of lying about clashed with my idea that only through constant effort and movement could I find anything worthy of being the focus of my attention. There was nothing but sand and sea, yet there surely was something to be wrought from it. Optimism has always been my goal.
When I returned, Zita came walking down the beach to meet me. We met up with Gary and went back to the dune to smoke where there was no wind.
The heavy packs soon became stones on our backs. Raised in and accustomed to a subjective opulence, we had no real idea about what is superfluous to carry when every ounce counts. We had no mental conception of the bare minimum necessary for survival. The result was a heavy pack filled with too much food and heavy-weight versions of supplies that could and should have been lighter if we had known anything about hiking at all. However, no matter what one does or does not carry, walking in the sun and through the sand is never effortless. It was as if the earth would not hold my weight. As we crossed the spongy sand bars, I sank in up to my ankles.
The sea was forming a brand-new sand bar. A fledgling bay about a foot deep lay behind the waves, a refugee from yesterday’s tide. The village lay ahead of us. Fire Island villages have no roads to speak of, but rely on paths and concrete walkways that constantly are covered over with drifting sand. Only four-wheel drive vehicles can navigate, so the villagers use either Jeeps or boats to get around. It is an odd colony of summer homes and a few rugged naturalists who live in the windswept ravages of an Atlantic winter. Gary talked in his double-thought manner about how the villagers would react to our trudging through with packs on our backs. He speculated as to whether we would be stared at, asked to leave, or perhaps boiled in hot oil and eaten by a pre-pork generation.
Zita and I attempted to quell his fancy with realism, but to no avail. His double-think was contagious. Soon, I found myself feeling like an intruder in a private domain.
A Jeep pulled out onto the sand and entered the concrete path where we were now walking. Four men jumped out, as though on a signal, bent toward each of the four wheels, and then hopped back in the Jeep. They were disconnecting the four-wheel drive. They seemed to stare at us rather disturbingly as they passed.
Of course, nothing happened in the village. There was no mad ghoul in the lighthouse. In a way, it seemed a shame, but living nightmares are never pleasant. We bought some cold drinks at the village store. I got some tobacco for my pipe and dropped the burden of the packs for a moment.
We could not make it very far before darkness fell. Two villages come together and the area is inhabited for a two-mile strip, so we had to curve around a dune in an area that seemed more deserted than the others. After darkness fell, it was silent except for Jeeps running up and down the beach now and then. The moon was full and hung over the sea.
I found myself wondering if my conception of the Moon had changed now that man had circled it. Only a week ago, a ship had descended to within nine miles of the surface. I remembered the intense excitement of the Christmas Eve broadcast a few months ago when the first live television pictures of the Moon’s surface were broadcast to Earth. One in four of our Earth’s inhabitants sat mentally suspended before their television sets, their breath held short, commonly involved in the moment. Yet, with all we have learned of the Moon, my conception of it remains the same as I have always had. It is the most romantic light in the night sky. The mountains were darker than the valleys. The craters I saw on television were like science-fiction movies that had no bearing on the living luxury of the night sky.
I tried to imagine how Earth looked from the Moon. The pictures they beamed back to the planet lacked depth and comparison to the familiar sky. I tried to picture the Earth as large as a Sunday dinner dish hanging in space, colored with the now familiar blue and swaddled in unbelievably thick swirls of abstract cloud formations.
Though it was still light, the moon still hung like a distant quarter over the rolling liquid matter of the sea. I had Zita open her mouth so I could peer at the moon like a large chunk of Gouda cheese about to be devoured. I got my camera and shot a picture of her mouth attempting to devour the cheese moon.
Zita was tired. She wanted to return to the car and leave before the sun went down, but we decided to spend at least the night on the dunes and think about it in the morning.
In the morning, I saw things her way. We returned to the car.
Kenneth Harper Finton 