Notes on a Blog

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/15/arts/15age.xlarge1.jpg

 

The title for this Page – Notes on a Blog – should not be confused with Notes on a Scandal, a movie dealing with a much more exciting topic.  (As shown above and as discussed below.)

Briefly, I created this page to shorten up the Home page.

As a side note, I generally I try to make the article-posts about “two clicks” long.  That’s about 900 words, and hopefully no more than 1,000.  That’s another way of saying that if you click your “page down” key twice, you should get to the bottom image.  That’s the ideal anyway.

The bottom image separates the main text from the notes in these blog-articles.  But when I finished creating the Home page, I saw that the notes themselves came to over 800 words.  That was much too long, so I created this separate post for the Home-Notes alone.

In the process I learned that the year 2006 saw three icky films on such “May-December” relationships, one of which was Notes on a Scandal.   The other two were Venus, starring Peter O’Toole as a “decrepit womanizer,” and The History Boys, with Richard Griffiths as a “venal and self-deluding” boy-stalker.  (Notes was the only film I saw, and for that matter I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain either, but we digress…)

I suppose there’s a lesson in all this.  One lesson could be that in writing these posts I tend to go off on tangents, which can be annoying.  But the other lesson could be that going off on tangents or “rabbit trails” can be a lot of fun, and also rewarding and instructive.  (See for example Meeting God Down A Rabbit Trail – Sermon Central.)

But enough of rabbit trails for now.  Here – without further ado – are Notes on a Home Page.

*   *   *   *

The first note from the Home Page told of a “previous lead-in image,” which led to a Wikipedia article on Pilgrimages.  The value of such pilgrimages are an ongoing theme of this blog.

The previous lead-in image, courtesy of Pilgrimage – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is one the reader may wish to visit.  The caption of that prior lead-in was “Pilgrimage to Kedarnath.”  Kedarnath is a Hindu temple in the northern Himalayas, with “extreme weather conditions that only allow the temple to open from the end of April to the beginning of November.  The temple is not directly accessible by road and has to be reached by a 14 km uphill trek…”  See also Kedarnath – India – Sacred Destinations.  (14 kilometers is about 9 miles.)

There followed notes on the “BCP,” Charlie Chan and carbon-copy Christians.

Re: Book of Common Prayer (BCP).  The quote on corporate and mystical sides is at page 339.

Re:  “one great philosopher.”  That would be Charlie Chan, as discussed at length in Some Bible basics from Vince Lombardi and Charlie Chan, and in “What’s in it for me?”

Re: “Carbon copy Christians.”   A carbon copy is a document made “when carbon paper is placed between the original and the under-copy.”  See Carbon copy – Wikipedia, which said the use of carbon copies “declined with the advent of photocopying and electronic document creation.”  Yet the term continues in today’s e-mail abbreviation cc or bcc (blind carbon copy).  As updated the term refers to  “simultaneously sending copies of an electronic message to secondary recipients.”  The term can also be used – as here – to refer to “anything that was a near duplicate of an original.”   See also Urban Dictionary: carbon copy:  “a person that has no personality and tries to emulate yours exactly.”

Then there are notes on a carbon-copy Christian being like “another brick in the wall,” and on copying painting masterpieces as a metaphor for learning from Bible stories.

Re: “Bricks in the wall.”  An allusion to the song(s) by Pink Floyd.  See Another Brick in the Wall – Wikipedia.  There were actually three songs, or parts, and “Part II is a protest song against rigid schooling in general and boarding schools in the UK in particular.”

Re:  “Copying masterpieces.”  There’s a book at Amazon.com, Copying Masterpieces (Watson-Guptill Artist’s Library), by Jose Maria ParramonThe site said:  “Every student of art has been encouraged to copy works by renowned masters to better understand the skill and spirit that inform a great artist’s vision.”  The same might be said of copying people like Moses and Jesus…

Then I expanded on the metaphor of the “vast, unexplored continent of the Bible” being like the vast American continent opened up by the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The lower image is courtesy of Discovering Lewis & Clark ®, and seems to best express a sense of both exploration and contemplation.  To see the original image click “The Expedition,” or see http://www.lewis-clark.org/sites/default/files/theexpedition.jpg, which added:

Since January of 2009 the ownership and management of Discovering Lewis & Clark® has been in the hands of the Lewis and Clark Fort Mandan Foundatio … to make this the most comprehensive and useful Lewis and Clark website on the Internet.

To extend the metaphor, the reader could consider me a guide or scout, not unlike those used in the great “Western Expansion” of the early and mid-1800s, after the Lewis and Clark expedition.  See for example  Westward Expansion – Facts & Summary – HISTORY.com.

On a more mundane note, see Amazon.com: Wagon Train: Season 1: Ward Bond, Robert Horton, and/or Wagon Train – TV.com, Wagon Train followed the trials and tribulations of pioneering families as they set out from the East to carve out a new life in the West soon after the American Civil War.  For some of the travellers [sic] it was a happy ending, but not for all, which only heightened the drama along the way…”  In the same way, in trekking the “vast unexplored continent of the Bible” you could find both a “new life” and a sense of “coming home.”   (It’s like a metaphor…)

Then I brought in Hebrews 11:14-16, LeShan’s book How to Meditate, and pilgrimages in general.

On that note see also Hebrews 11:14-16, a Daily Office Reading for Saturday January 5, 2015:

[P]eople who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own.  If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back.  But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.

(New Living Translation, emphasis added.)   That reading followed the one for Friday January 4, 2015, which included Hebrews 11:6 (GNT):  “No one can please God without faith.  Whoever goes to God must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”  (Another blog-theme.)

On the subject of seeking a “better country,” see also Lawrence LeShan’s How to Meditate[:]  A Guide to Self-Discovery (Bantam Books 1974), at page 1.  He was at a conference of scientists – “all of whom practiced meditation on a daily basis” – and asked why they meditated.   Various unsatisfactory answers were given until:  “Finally one man said, ‘It’s like coming home.

On the subject of pilgrimages in general, see also www.spiritual-wellness.org/pilgrimage.html and/or dancingspirittours.com/why-choose-us/spiritual-tours.

 


The upper image is courtesy of the New York Times review of the “2006 British drama/psychological thriller film” Notes on a Scandal, at nytimes.com/2007/01/15/movies/15age.  See also Notes on a Scandal (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Times review was titled “December and May: Desire vs. Ick Factor.” (Emphasis added.)  The caption for the lead image included above spoke of “Cate Blanchett as a teacher who has an affair with a 15-year-old student,” and contrasted that film with the “icky” Venus and equally-icky History Boys.  (See also Venus (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and The History Boys (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apparently 2006 was the year for such films, “whose target audience seems to be aging, upscale baby boomers,” as the Times noted.  As also noted, I suppose there’s some kind of lesson in all this…

 

The lower image is courtesy of the Grand Tour link in the dancingspirittours.com/why-choose-us/spiritual-tours website.  The “linked” Wikipedia article began:  “The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means … as an educational rite of passage.”  The Wikipedia caption reads:  “Northerners found the contrast between Roman ruins and modern peasants of the Roman Campagna an educational lesson in vanities.”

 

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