Author: Ken Finton

BITTERSWEET

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by Kenneth Harper Finton

Bitteresweet

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe I am jaded now

or just too old to cry.

All the tears I’ve shed before

Have left my eyes quite dry.

Friends have come and friends have gone, 

how bittersweet is nature.

Work is really never done,

wars are really never won, 

lives are always left undone,

success is never measured.

Blisters used to pain my hands

’til callouses replaced them.

Caring always filled my days,

’til lack of it displaced it.

Friends have come and friends have gone, 

how bittersweet is nature.

Work is really never done,

wars are really never won, 

lives are always left undone,

success is never measured.

Living always pleasured me

and sorrow seldom ailed me,

but Father Time has dried me out

and left no room for wailing.

Friends have come and friends have gone, 

how bittersweet is nature.

Work is really never done,

wars are really never won, 

lives are always left undone,

success is never measured.

Anti-Islam Propaganda

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It is not so much that Islam is a peaceful religion designed to co-exist with others, but outright misrepresentations such as the above are making their way around the world. Remember, Christians’ war against Christians and all religions that believe they are the only truth are false ideologies.

Verse by verse, you can see the result of the attempt to make was on Islam. See: http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=3&verse=85

At the above site, you can read seven parallel translations of each verse and see the original Arabic in a word-by-word translation. This mistranslated propaganda is obviously created to provoke tension and war.

Verse (2:191) – English Translation

As above: “Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.”

Shakir: And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.

Verse (3:28) – English Translation

As above: “Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.”

Shakir: Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends rather than believers; and whoever does this, he shall have nothing of (the guardianship of) Allah, but you should guard yourselves against them, guarding carefully; and Allah makes you cautious of (retribution from) Himself; and to Allah is the eventual coming.

[Editorial note: Ir is quite common for sects to stay within their own congregations and ethnic populations to pocket in foreign areas.]

Verse (3:85) – English Translation

As above: “Any religion other that Islam is not acceptable.”

Shakir: And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be one of the losers.

Verse (8:12) – English Translation

As above: “Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam.

Shakir: When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

Verse (8:60) – English Translation

As above: “Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.”

Shakir: And prepare against them what force you can and horses tied at the frontier, to frighten thereby the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them, whom you do not know (but) Allah knows them; and whatever thing you will spend in Allah’s way, it will be paid back to you fully and you shall not be dealt with unjustly.

Verse (8:65) – English Translation

As above: “The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.”

Shakir: O Prophet! urge the believers to war; if there are twenty patient ones of you they shall overcome two hundred, and if there are a hundred of you they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they are a people who do not understand.

Verse (9:5) – English Translation

As above: “When opportunity arises kill the infidels wherever you find them.”

Shakir: So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Verse (9:30) – English Translation

As above: “The Jews and Christians are perverts, fight them.”

Shakir: And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!

Verse (9:123) – English Translation

As above: “Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.”

Shakir: O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil).

Verse (22:19) – English Translation

As above: “Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies.”

Shakir: These are two adversaries who dispute about their Lord; then (as to) those who disbelieve, for them are cut out garments of fire, boiling water shall be poured over their heads.

Verse (47:4) – English Translation

As above: “Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them.”

Shakir: So when you meet in battle those who disbelieve, then smite the necks until when you have overcome them, then make (them) prisoners, and afterwards either set them free as a favor or let them ransom (themselves) until the war terminates. That (shall be so); and if Allah had pleased He would certainly have exacted what is due from them, but that He may try some of you by means of others; and (as for) those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will by no means allow their deeds to perish.

INSULTS

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INSULTS

by Kenneth Harper Finton

The definition of a verbal insult is to disparage and speak with abuse and disrespect. People in the public eye are often insulted. You write song and you can be sure there will be those who doe not like it. You paint a picture and you can be sure some call it terrible. You write an article and someone calls you a hack. Receiving insults are part of being known by your peers. The adage is that we must develop ‘thick skin’ so that we remain unaffected by verbal and indirect defamations.

Unknown-1There are many ways to deal with insults and disparaging remarks. Some work better than others. Anger is probably the worst way to deal with an insulting person. It shows the insulter that we take them seriously and suggests that there is some truth to the insult.

When we are insulted, we are forced to judge the person doing the insulting. Do they have a valid point? Is their remark worth a retort? Is the insult really a statement of fact that we can learn from?

The first reaction to being insulted is to return it. This is the famous “put down” approach. The problem with this is that we must be very clever to do this. There is a problem with this approach in that is tends to raise the insulter to higher level and can add credence to the accusation. Very clever minds can come up with wonderful retorts. Winston Churchill, for example, said to a woman who called him a drunk said: “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”

“Put down” reactions are best made with humor and among friends. Few of us have the ability to be so clever as this in an instant. Dorothy Parker was an exception. When a drunk told her that he could not bear fools, she replied:  “Apparently your mother could.”

As we can see, humor is possibly the most effective retort to an insult. It not only mitigates the seriousness of the situation, but mocks the insulter. If there is an audience, they are brought to  your side, not the side of the disparager.

Those who are not so quick might find that ignoring the insult might be the best imagesremedy. The down side there is that when someone throws mud at you, some of it is going to stick. Ignoring an insult is also likely to show that you are not in control any longer. This turning of the other cheek might me the Christian approach, but repeatedly ignoring a barrage of insults is harmful to your self-esteem. “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” does not rid the world or your persona of evil. It might be better to study a few clever retorts and have them at your fingertips.

Most people who bully and throw insults do so out of personal insecurity. They are trying to cover up their own inadequacies. Developing ways to point that out is a good defense. If someone calls you a fat pig, you can say, “I love pigs. Don’t you think bacon is the greatest.”

If you chose to say nothing at all, you can walk away freely and say, “You have crossed the line and I have nothing more to say.”

UnknownDeepak Chopra has it right. You cannot go through life and not be insulted. The pain caused by insults are symptoms of a more universal human condition. In the social hierarchy where people have the need to be among people, insults will surely result. Wolves and other predators fight to establish an order for their pack. Humans more often use words. As children we are taught that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

Unfortunately, that is not so. Words do hurt. We are naturally wired to seek social acceptance and we feel good when we get it. A jibe from a good friend might not hurt us, but we feel we lose status when strangers do the same.

It all comes down to not taking ourselves and the world so seriously. When we do, we feel bad and get depressed. It is better to listen, evaluate what we hear and see if there is any truth to the mud that is slung at is. Those who speak bullshit will always have a trace of it on their lips.

Antidepressant Studies Found Tainted by Pharma Company Influence

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Docs and Big Pharma

BIG PHARMA CONTROLS THE RESULTS OF THEIR OWN STUDIES. THIS CONFLICT OF INTEREST NEEDS TO BE REGULATED.

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”  – Arnold Seymour Relman (1923-2014), Harvard Professor of Medicine and Former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal“

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine” Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and long time Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ) 

SEE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-antidepressant-studies-found-tainted-by-pharma-company-influence/

By Roni Jacobson | October 21, 2015

After many lawsuits and a 2012 U.S. Department of Justice settlement, last month an independent review found that antidepressant drug Paxil (paroxetine) is not safe for teenagers. The finding contradicts the conclusions of the initial 2001 drug trial, which the manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline had funded, then used its results to market Paxil as safe for adolescents.

The original trial, known as Study 329, is but one high-profile example of pharmaceutical industry influence known to pervade scientific research, including clinical trials the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires pharma companies to fund in order to assess their products. For that reason, people who read scientific papers as part of their jobs have come to rely on meta-analyses, supposedly thorough reviews summarizing the evidence from multiple trials, rather than trust individual studies. But a new analysis casts doubt on that practice as well, finding that the vast majority of meta-analyses of antidepressants have some industry link, with a corresponding suppression of negative results.

The latest study, published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, which evaluated 185 meta-analyses, found that one third of them were written by pharma industry employees. “We knew that the industry would fund studies to promote its products, but it’s very different to fund meta-analyses,” which “have traditionally been a bulwark of evidence-based medicine,” says John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine and co-author of the study. “It’s really amazing that there is such a massive influx of influence in this field.”

Almost 80 percent of meta-analyses in the review had some sort of industry tie, either through sponsorship, which the authors defined as direct industry funding of the study, or conflicts of interest, defined as any situation in which one or more authors were either industry employees or independent researchers receiving any type of industry support (including speaking fees and research grants). Especially troubling, the study showed about 7 percent of researchers had undisclosed conflicts of interest. “There’s a certain pecking order of papers,” says Erick Turner, a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University who was not associated with the research. “Meta-analyses are at the top of the evidence pyramid.” Turner was “very concerned” by the results but did not find them surprising. “Industry influence is just massive. What’s really new is the level of attention people are now paying to it.”

DREAMS

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I often wish that dreams were more useful. I am talking about the dreams found in sleep that mix the past and present together in ways that can never exist in our reality. I am talking also about the recurring themes of dreams that form the outline and background of nightmares and sleep disturbances.

No one, in all the ages of mankind’s existence, has ever found a satisfactory explanation for dreams. Freud tried, but many think he failed miserably. Dreams are often so divorced from our daily routines that they appear to be random fantasies of a brain desiring content. Dreams do take us on an emotional ride, especially when we wake up and remember them vaguely. Yes, they can be positive and they can be negative to our emotional being.

Most often our dreams have some basis in experiences that we have lived and places we have been or called home. These dream experiences are distorted and take on extra dimensions, as though we are eternally reinventing our past and re-visualizing someone or some place based in our experience.

I have noticed that I am almost always young in my dreams. Aging, as yet, has never been a part of my dreams. I also dream of places that were at the cusp of great changes in my life. I can dream of my hometown dressed in bejeweled glamor, places I have lived or worked rewritten in seemingly endless fictional dramas––people and family that I have known are often present, even though they no longer live or are close to me.

Above all, dreams are emotional. They come with intense feeling and awareness. Sexual dreams may involve a person that we may or may not know. It is as though all our sensuality is wrapped in a longing for a person who is more a symbol of our desire than a real person, even if that dreamed person is someone we knew or know presently. Often, the object of a sexual dream is an unknown fantasy that embodies that which we desire. For this reason, some think that dreams serve the purpose of wish fulfillment, but many dreams can take us to places we have no desire to go.

Try as we will, we cannot find a real purpose for our dreams. This is likely that they have no real purpose. Like life itself, the purpose is simply the experience. They most often have no value or reason. The mind is restless and invents images and stories filled with emotional feelings that seem more real than their counterparts in our waking lives.

Vivid dreams tend to waken me from sleep and leave me restless and emotionally confused. Often I cannot get back to sleep right away after a vivid dream. Rarely does the dream continue after falling back to sleep. Vivid dreams are characterized by rapid eye movement and is a state of sleep called REM. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.

Most people have rather vivid dreams for several hours during the course of a night’s sleep. More often than not, these dreams are nor remembered upon awakening. Dreams with REM can be measured with an electroencephalogram (EEG) and last for a few minutes to a 20 minute maximum.

Sleep is necessary to repair body functions. All animal and some reptiles are shown to have dream episodes. Who has not seen a dog sleeping and moving their legs spasmodically in short bursts, sometimes emitting a muffled bark as though they are on the chase of running from a predator? Sleep deprivation is used as a technique for torture. Severe deprivation can actually harm the body tissue.

Déjà vu

Then we have déjà vu, the feeling of having experienced something before that becomes manifest in the waking state when simulated with a real event or place that mysteriously feels quite familiar. Two-thirds of the human population experience déjà vu at some time. No one has found any reasonable explanation for the phenomena.

It is easy to speculate that dreams could be connections with multiple unseen dimensions that exist within the mental universe. Since time and space is a product of dimensional awareness, there could well be other dimensions in the eternal now where we tap into electrical stimulus that awakens alternative dimensions. In other words, it might be possible that we live our personal existence many times during the illusory course of time and connect with them in our dreams. However, some dreams are so divorced from our waking reality that is seems impossible that these fictional visions have any actuality at all.

And then there are the productive dreams that inspire and can be built into waking realities. There are man examples of inventors, composers, writers, and makers of films using their dreams for creative purposes that become actuality. Horror films, for example, are filled with black dreams filled with fear and loathing. Some movies and literature describe the dream state,attempting to show that the dream state is the precursor to something real. The line between dreams and really become blurred in many a pop culture film. These dreams are not symbolic so much as an expression of the dreamer’s desires and fears.

Yet there are symbolic dreams. We recognize the symbolism when we wake and remember them. The disliked relative or acquaintance takes on a forbidding and villainous quality. A failed romance from the past becomes a sexual fantasy and we rewrite our lives in vivid visions.

Obviously,we need these dreams. They serve the purpose of making us think and contemplate. Just as sleep renews our energy and body functions, dreams  can heal our emotional pains and help us re-envision a future that is more in tune with our desires.

THE PERPETUAL SEARCH FOR TRUTH

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Source: THE PERPETUAL SEARCH FOR TRUTH

QUEEN ISABELLA, THE SHE-WOLF OF ENGLAND

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Ken Finton's avatarKenneth Harper Finton

Isabella of Angouleme, queen of king John

 Queen Isabella was ripe for romance. She was a passionate woman in her late twenties, a striking beauty with plaited blonde hair. Furthermore, she had endured the loveless marriage with Edward since she was thirteen.

Roger de Mortimer, 8th Baron of Wigmore, was serving a life sentence in the Tower. His hair had grown long, his cheeks pale, and his eyes glowed with desperation. One glance at the handsome prisoner was enough to strike romantic interest in Isabella. It is not difficult to believe that the queen, her emotions stirred by the prisoner’s dark eyes, had made an opportunity to see him.

On the night of August 1 it was customary for the prison guards to celebrate the feast of St. Peter with food and drink. This time, the drink was drugged by the sub-lieutenant of the guards, Alspaye. When all the guards had fallen into a stupor, Mortimer dug…

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REUNION

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Ken Finton's avatarHELIOS

REUNION

by Kenneth Harper Finton

Who in 1960 could imagine life in 2015? Those who did try  to visualize the future were horrified by the novel 1984 and the dictatorial police state that it portrayed. For the generation that grew up in the shadow of nuclear war, their expectations for their own futures were cloudy and uncertain.

The turn of the each century has aways brought grave change to the American landscape and culture. The year 1700 brought to the world the seeds of revolution against monarchal tyranny and religious repression. 1800 heralded a new spirit of expansion into unknown lands with the promise of greater freedom for all than the world had ever known before. 1900 brought dreams of industrial expansion as the railroads opened up the western regions. Capitalists conceived of factories that could bring a better life to all and great profits for those whose dreams and ambitions…

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THE SUCCUBUS

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by Kenneth Harper Finton

She must have come out of the dark of the night, for I awoke one morning and simply found that she was there. Did I wake at all, or did I dream her into my life?

Whether a dream or a mystical succubus, she haunts me to this day. My loins ached for her. As I remember, her parents had been old-time friends of my parents. They stopped for a day to catch up on time that had been lost for a dozen years.

A lassie named Cassie, a vision of grace and elegance. Her very name was a rhyme that rolled off my hungry lips. Had I known where she went I would have crashed the gates of hell to find her, but she came and left like a storm that bent my soul in the winds. Could she still be lazing in the sun or is she standing in the midnight dark waiting on a day that never breaks.

I remember how her father smoked his pipe at breakfast on the day that they arrived. He told us about his work engineering new roads in the West. She said she never stayed the length of time necessary to call a place home. The last place that felt like home was on a desert far to the West among the cactus and the prairie pack rats that stole a birthstone from her dresser top.

Her brother Jess was my age, a tall boy with gangly legs, a wiry frame and short-cropped hair. His husky voice spewed out words fast as an auctioneer. I was sixteen and she was fifteen, every inch of her bursting with the enchanting charms that I desired so much.

In the afternoon the folks all went to town. Cassie and I climbed the creaking stairs to the attic and I brought out a tattered picture album. The thick black pages were loose and filled with dust. She ran back down the stairs and I followed, but she suddenly was gone.

I ran around the house calling out her name, opened a closet door and found her hiding there. She came out of hiding with a laugh and a smile that sent shivers down my spine. Our feet not even touching the ground, we flew straight to the sofa in the hall. She laughed musically and smiled breathlessly as told me that she had never felt like this before. We looked at pictures in the old album for an hour, her head bobbing toward my shoulder, her rounded hips touching my own sun-bronzed leg.

The hour passed as though time has stood still. The light streamed through the window and her hair fell softly down her neck, highlighted by the streaming of the sunlight.

We came upon a picture of a desert plain where steamrolled landscapes were pocked with time-eaten rocks that rose up from the bowels of the earth in grotesquely-shaped tormented forms. She said the the desert looked like that back home and spoke of roaming the sands at night looking up at the ancient stars embedded in a cold desert sky and wondered who her love was meant to be. Silently, she leaned her head my way until it came to rest against my arm. I felt like an angel had lost her cloud and came to rest upon my soul.

Our day was short, just seconds in an hour.

We walked the fence rows with the clinging vines and walked by some malformed trees that were cut long ago with stunted branches flaring up from the stumps. We followed the trail along the brook and sat down on the banks to watch the minnows stir a mist of mud along the bottom of the silver stream. As we edged our way along the hanging suspension bridge, she pretended that she was afraid of falling headlong down into the stream that churned cold over the green, moss-covered rocks.

We brought a picnic lunch and stopped between two pines that stood high on a knoll behind an abandoned house. The cloth she spread is still in place. The shaded spot was cooled by the evergreen and the rumpling, gentle breeze hummed a tune and whispered songs of love in the prickly needles of the pines. I looked into her perfect, loving face––her moist, light lips red as the blood of life.

I hardly dared to kiss her, but I did.

When we walked together back to the house, we knew our moment of separation was near. These precious moments we had shared would become just memories of what once was, something to cherisg while still young and fresh as Spring.

That night the raindrops splattered on the roof. I heard an engine start. a door slam shut, a car pull into the gravel drive and as the sound of the engine slowly disappeared and faded in the night. I knew that she had been swallowed up forever in that swollen mass of people and forgotten dreams. I felt a hollowness within. An emptiness that could never be filled enveloped me.

I promised that I would never forget this memory, this short time that was ours alone forever. For many nights thereafter I lay in awake in bed, wondering if somewhere in a western land, someone stands alone staring at the black and empty sky and wonders who her love was meant to be.

These words were written long ago. The day that stood out like a cat’s eyes at night was choked in the vastness of the days before and the greatness ofd the days to come. Until I found this story on an old trunk, my promise has been broken.

I forgot.

BEAR’S MILL

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When I was a child I lived about twelve miles from Bear’s Mill. In the  summer I would occasionally ride my bike down the gravel backroads that led from my home to the mill. I would spend some time sticking my hot feet in the  cool waters and watching the waters fall hypnotically over the dam.

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At that time, the mill was still a working mill run by a miller that got to know me and my bike from the frequent trips I made. I had one of the first thin-tired Schwinn bikes with three gears in the county. They were called English bikes at the time. The narrow tires made the bike hard to control on the graveled roads.

I know that 99.9% of the people will never get to Bear’s Mill. It matters little, as it is worth knowing about. That is why I write this. I will probably never get to the pyramids, but I still find them of great and abiding interest.

BEAR'S MILL

It is not that Bear’s Mill is one of the great wonders of the world that everyone needs to see. It is simply an historic grist mill in Darke County near Greenville, Ohio, the oldest existing industrial building in the county. It was built in 1849 after settlers had cut the trees out of the Ohio wilderness and grew crops on the newly cleared lands. Before it was put into operation it was purchased from Manning Hart, the builder and contractor, by Gabriel Baer. The stones used for grinding the grains were not hard enough, so Baer traveled to France to purchase high quality milling stones that fit his purpose. The original name was Baer’s Mill, but somehow along the way Bear’s Mill became the referred spelling.

The wood siding on the mill has been in place since 1849. It is a hardwood lap siding made from American Black Walnut and has served the building for over 165 years. In the 1970’s the miller retired and turned the mill over to a non-profit organization called Friends of Bear’s Mill. They still use the mill occasionally to grind a limited amount of grain. The bottom floor now contains a gift shop and an art gallery for local midwest artists to show their works. In 1975 the mill was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is both a museum for milling history and a stopping place for tourists who are as fascinated with the mill race and the dam as I was as  a child.

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Remnants of the old Indian Toe Path run for half a mile along the creek. The visitors to the mill can take a mild, cooling walk in the summer sizzle where the pioneers and animals walked the hard nine miles to  the settlement at old Fort Green Ville.

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An overlook has been built along the creek by the ancient pathway where deer and panthers once roamed and fed.

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The steeple of the Darke County Courthouse failed and was replaced in the 1980’s. The old steeple was moved to Bear’s Mill to serve as a memorial to the Viet Nam veterans that died in that horrible war.

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The names of the men who died are tagged on the plaque, including one classmate of mine, Gerry Greendyke who never made it home. My classmates and I owe a debt to Gerry and the others that we can never repay. He took our place in the war. He was the one that was killed while we went on to live our own lives. Some came home and many did not. So it is with wars and the young men who fight and die in them.

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Away from the memorial, the  woods along the creek remain as they have been for many thousands of years. A cleared path allows the visitors to walk unobstructed in the same spots as ancient mound builders walked ten thousand years ago when the ice sheets were melting and the rivers of Ohio took shape. The birds tweet and the young folk Twitter. And the water, as always, flows forever to the sea.

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Click to make the water run on the video.