Walter Annenberg
April 27, 2003 by Bill
A window into the character and substance of a human being can often be measured by what literature moves them and forms their thinking. My friend Walter Annenberg had two that were very important to him and he quoted them often.
The first was from Emmanuel Kant…”Out of the crooked timber of humanity…no straight line was ever made.” Values and truth are relative; no straight line as in the Yin-Yang symbol of complementary opposites with only a waving line between them. It is Pascals “truth on this side of the mountain is falsehood on the other.”
No straight line. No absolutes. “Time makes ancient good…vulgar. They must upward and onward who would keep abreast of truth…” No straight line out of the crooked timber of humanity.
Walter quoted this so much that my wife made him a beautiful pillow with those words on it for his study at Sunnylands.
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The goddess of the dawn
April 20, 2003 by Bill
The word “Easter” does not appear in the entire bible. The word was not Christian, and was not even used in church literature until late in the church’s history. “Easter” is the name of the goddess of Spring. Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, the spring festival was celebrated honoring “Easter”, the goddess Eostre, or Ostara. The church borrowed the festival, mythological continuity, and kept the goddess’ name.
Even older than Easter as goddess of spring was a much wider worship and adoration of her as the goddess of the dawn. In our own language, the root of “Easter” is “East”…the place of dawn. In nearly all of the languages of Northern Europe the words for “Easter” come from a root meaning the dawn.
Three thousand years before Jesus was born, poetic and pious Hindus kindled their morning fires, made their morning sacrifices, and sang their morning song of praise to the Goddess of the dawn in ancient India.
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Michael Moore’s letter
April 13, 2003 by Bill
Dear friends…before any of you call me UNpatriotic…let me remind you that I flew as a U.S. Marine Corps pilot for 12 years in both World War Two and Korea…and was personally decorated by the Commandant of the Marine Corps for valor.
Now read one of the best letters I have yet seen by Michael Moore.
My Oscar “Backlash”: “Stupid White Men” Back At #1, “Bowling” Breaks New Records
April 7, 2003
Dear friends,
It appears that the Bush administration will have succeeded in colonizing Iraq sometime in the next few days. This is a blunder of such magnitude — and we will pay for it for years to come. It was not worth the life of one single American kid in uniform, let alone the thousands of Iraqis who have died, and my condolences and prayers go out to all of them.
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