Visitors and palm trees
August 31, 2003 by Bill
For all of you Labor day weekend tourists and visitors, you may have noticed that you are surrounded by thousands of palm trees. Hey, that’s why we are called “Palm Springs”. And, for all of you reading this column in other cities than Palm Springs, this will give you a new appreciation of a palm tree anytime you see one.
Palm trees have been very special in the history of religions, mythology and cultures.
In the Babylonian myth of the primal garden (the biblical garden of eden) the Palm tree was the Tree of Life, a dwelling place of the Goddess Astarte. The Hebrew name for her was Tamar, meaning ‘palm tree’. Her male counterpart was Baal-Peor, or Phoenix, the god of Phoenicia whose name meant the ‘land of the palm’.
As a phallic deity he was symbolized by a palm tree between two large stones. Sexual celebrations honored his union with the Goddess in Phoenicia and also in Israel.
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Wrens and steer skulls
August 24, 2003 by Bill
I call my study the center of the universe. That is very American Indian. In their cosmology wherever they are is the center. It is a beautiful concept. I am in my study now, typing thoughts as my muses forward them on to me. I am surrounded by three walls filled with books and artifacts from the American Indian mixed in with momentous from my grandparents little ranch in West Texas; branding irons, steer, bull and longhorn skulls. Georgia O’Keeffe would have loved my study.
I am trying to concentrate on writing by am almost mesmerized by what is happening outside my window. One wall is solid glass leading out into my private patio. Above a wagon wheel is a steer skull where a pair of wrens nest each year. They are there now, flying in and out, with nest materials and “following their bliss” in Joseph Campbell’s phrase. I like that.
If we are true to ourselves we move toward our highest enthusiasm, a word that means “the god within”. This is what it means to be alive and “follow your bliss.” The month that I spent with Joseph Campbell put this in focus for me and changed my life. You really can stop worrying, or being concerned about, whatever it is that other people and the rest of the world are doing and thinking, as well as whatever it is that other people want YOU to be doing. You can actually do what you feel is right and good for you.
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Steven Weinberg
August 17, 2003 by Bill
Dr. Steven Weinberg is one of the true, authentic, Renaissance men of our time. He has been called the “Einstein” of our day. He won the Nobel Prize for uniting the electro-magnetic and the weak nuclear forces into a single force. He is a founding director of the Jerusalem Winter School of Theoretical Physics; is on the Council of Scholars, the Library of Congress; he holds honorary doctoral degrees from major universities all over the world. He taught at MIT and Harvard. Nobody since Loren Eiseley and Lewis Thomas has written so beautifully turning science into poetry.
He recently was awarded the Lewis Thomas prize, given to the scholar who “best embodies the scientist as poet.”
He prefaced his acceptance speech by saying…”what a joy to be at a meeting that doesn’t start with an invocation.” He went on to say that the great passion of his life, with science, is to free human beings from the superstition of religion” and he continued:
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Science should be taught ignoring religion. One of the social functions of science is to free humans from superstition.”
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