June in the Rear View Mirror

 

 

Is it that time already? Has the first third of the summer triad glided from “The Present” into “The Past” so soon? Is it really six weeks since my oldest became a college graduate, my youngest a high school graduate, and me an aging man facing an empty nest around the corner?

 

Sadly, yes. I now can confirm, through experiential rigor, that time does indeed flow faster as one gets older.

 

Anyway, June was a pretty decent month. A bit of downside, yes, but overall a plus.

 

Let’s start inwards and work outwards, but saving meself for last.

 

Little One, the college graduate, has kept herself busy for the first half of summer in various nanny and babysitting gigs. I must admire her hustle. Why, last night alone she received a last minute request to babysit at a house 20 minutes away. After a brief phone interview she took the assignment and returned home four hours later $90 richer. She’ll be working full-time in less than a month preparing her fourth grade classroom for her first year of teaching math. Couldn’t be prouder.

 

Patch began the month with a triumph: she obtained her driver’s license. We’d been practicing since Labor Day, a total of 32-plus hours behind the wheel, going out over 60 times putting over 350 miles behind us. That was a Big Win. Since then she’s continued work at a boutique across town, though her hours have been cut during the summer. To compensate she’s selling more clothes through Depop and to various local thrift shops and is weighing the option to return, on a case-by-case basis, to the balloon company she worked for as a sophomore and junior. She leaves for college in upstate New York in six weeks. And wouldn’t you know it, time picks this moment, right now, to start accelerating.

 

The Mrs. is facing challenges through work, though nothing she hasn’t handled in the past. She’s weighing lateral moves to another company to give her options and leverage. She is the hustler who has given the hustle to her children. (Hustle, however, continues to elude me.) She has a bustling social life down here in Texas, and has made an amazing transformation of herself in other, non-blog ways.

 

Me, I’ve been plugging along at my accounting job, at my bible study, in my reading. Still at a loss for finding a passion that 1) I’m good at, 2) the world needs, and 3) someone will pay lots of money for. Perhaps that is my cross to bear. I make up for it in other ways. The girls let me know on Father’s Day. Heck, the made-from-scratch meal alone, Italian meat loaf, tells me I’m loved and valued more than I realize.

 

I’ve been making incredible progress with my guitar playing. I’ve been focusing on learning guitar solos, and have a nice arsenal. Among the more recents are the solos from “Lights” by Journey, “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty, and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen. Why was this plateau not conquered in my late teens? Had it been, you wouldn’t be reading this; you’d be paying $250 a ticket to see me and my band’s latest Farewell / Reunion tour.

 

My reading has been hit and miss. Read and dropped what will most likely be my Worst Fiction book of the year, plus another one that was so damn boring. Since time is traveling by quite fast, I must be very judicious in how I spend my time. However, I read a neat little thriller and am working my way though a nice epic. Which is a nice way to manage stress and wash the day away.

 

I’ve been in a decent stretch of working out (i.e., lifting weights at the home gym) and walking 1.5 miles a day in the modest Texas heat (mid-90s). I know I’ve lost a few pounds, but I’m avoiding the scale, and I feel my torso start to tighten. A lot of mirrors at work, full-length mirrors near the bathroom especially, so I want to like what I see when I walk past. Not vanity, mind you, just health and well-being and a touch of confidence.

 

The bible study is fascinating to me – how Jesus is concealed and revealed in the Old Testament. It’s led by an older man who was in seminary for a time, back in the day when I was lugging my guitar and amp to various garages. I’ve learned a fair amount regarding Old Testament typology, and am thinking about a master post here. I know I haven’t been posting, but perhaps this might jump start me back into putting things up that interest me for future reference, and might interest you. Also among that is a weird but incredible pull to re-open my college calculus textbook. I think after losing my car keys and wallet a couple of times I want to – no, need to – sharpen those synapses. We’ll see about that.

 

Anyway, thus was June. Hopefully more, with more frequency, in the future.

June is Dedicated to the Sacred Heart

 

Manic May

 

Oh, man, what a month! I’m only now beginning to recover from the dual graduation festivities of the past two weeks.

 

Let’s see. May began easily enough. At least for the Mrs. and me. The girls were under a bit of pressure, finishing up papers and projects and such, though it seems to me Patch took a lot of senior days off. Little One was fielding job interviews and secured that rarity of rarities for 2026 college graduates: a full-time position beginning at the end of July. The Mrs. had a week touring with higher-ups out in southern Texas and had to juggle booking restaurants. Me, I had to cope with the threat of the upcoming social engagements and the looming empty nest.

 

Let’s leave those thoughts apart for now.

 

Little One’s college graduation came first. She finished her degree in education cum laude and interviewed and accepted a position in a local grammar school teaching Fourth Grade math. Couldn’t be more proud of her. The risks she took and the successes she attained in the past four years I’ve never seen before. She’s a completely different woman – confident, assertive, decisive. And we chose her college wisely, because it didn’t transform her into a blue-haired bull-ringed lesbian who hates everything her parents believe in. In other words, she’s a normal kid who transitioned into a normal adult.

 

Her celebration started off on Friday the 15th with a mass with the Archbishop of Dallas a few towns over. The wife, Patch, and myself attended with my sister-in-law and Little One’s boyfriend. Little One herself was somewhere in the hundredsfold of graduates in the center pews. We only glimpsed her as she went up for communion. Afterwards we all went to a trendy local place for dinner (I had fish tacos, for anyone keeping score). It was loud and raucous and I had trouble hearing. But that, too, is another story.

 

Saturday was her graduation ceremony. We drove into the city where it was held and discovered said city was simultaneously holding a 5K, 10K, and a marathon. Traffic was brutal. Police would not let us in to the arena, so we had to find street parking a half-mile away. And I had to trudge with Patch and the Mrs. in my suit in 80+ degree weather. Ugh. But the ceremony, while lengthy, was quite touching. The keynote speaker was retired Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan. While not a fan, he gave a personable, rousing speech. And when I saw Little One go up on stage to receive her diploma, my eyes watered and I felt a huge lump in my throat.

 

After that we went to brunch at a French bistro. Everyone from the prior night attended, as well as her boyfriend’s mother, sister, and grandparents. There I had a burger that was quite delicious as only the French can make it. An interminable round of photos at the back of the bistro followed, then an hour’s reprieve at home, where I changed out of my grungy suit and got into shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. In the evening we visited Little One’s roommate and her family, who flew in from Vermont and rented an Airbnb in a Dallas suburb. I had another burger as we all ate around the pool until it got dark and a foraging opossum chased us all inside. We left around 10 pm and fell asleep exhausted once home.

 

Next Friday, the 22nd, was Patch’s high school graduation ceremony. I took a PTO day and lifted some weights and went for a walk, before helping to tidy up the house and hang up Happy Graduation decorations. Little One and her boyfriend came over in the afternoon and we all carpooled to the Dallas Cowboys practice facility where the ceremony was being held. We got pictures of Patch on the jumbotron as she accepted her diploma. I held it together pretty much, until the very end when all the graduates threw their caps into the air. Then it hit me. After sixteen years, I will no longer have a child in a nearby school. In August Patch will be going to college 1,500 miles away.

 

We went to a favorite local hangout to celebrate with drinks and dinner. In addition to the Hopper family we had Little One’s boyfriend, Little One’s roommate, and Patch’s best friend from high school in attendance. We ate, drank, and were merry. I had a spicy shrimp and pasta dish. Afterwards we drove to Handel’s for some top-notch ice cream cones, then returned home to relax and refresh for the long holiday weekend.

 

The wife gifted the girls with some hand-me-down sentimental jewelry, as well as supplementary baubles from Tiffany. I wrote a heartfelt paragraph in each of the goofy cards I got them. The wife wrote a lengthy epistle in one of their cards that could’ve began with, “Call me Ishmael.”

 

This past week Little One moved home from her college apartment, so now I have piles and piles of clothes, toiletries, and small pieces of furniture laying about. Oh, in addition to Sweet Potato, her seven-month old orange tabby cat. Charlie is stressing out adjusting to that. She’s planning on moving out into another apartment with her college roommate before she starts her teaching gig in seven short weeks.

 

Patch and I have been driving several times a week. Her driver’s test is scheduled for mid-June. Two days ago we started parallel parking. She got it down by the fourth attempt, but still needs a lot of practice to fine-tune it. So I have that drama to look forward to in three weeks.

 

All drama that I will miss as summer looms, and with it, the end of summer and the girls beginning their life journeys outside my home.

 

Men at Forty

 

by Donald Justice

 

Men at forty

Learn to close softly

The doors to rooms they will not be

Coming back to.

 

At rest on a stair-landing,

They feel it moving

Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,

Though the swell is gentle.

 

And deep in mirrors

They rediscover

The face of the boy as he practices tying

His father’s tie there in secret,

 

And the face of that father,

Still warm with the mystery of lather.

They are more fathers than sons themselves now.

Something is filling them, something

 

That is like the twilight sound

Of the crickets, immense,

Filling the woods at the foot of the slope

Behind their mortgaged houses.

 

 

Justice (1925-2004) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980. He wrote this poem in 1967. Know next to nothing about him; might check out his work. Then again, might not, as the poem above, though sounding some tones with me, is of a pitch too bleak for me, as my sonar attempts to navigate this existential leitmotif which fills the woods behind my own mortgaged house.

 

Limits

 

(Some random math humor found without attribution on the internet ...)

Anniversary

 

Yesterday the Mrs. and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. A quarter of a century. Damn, that’s a long time. We went out to one of our favorite restaurants last night and had a good time. I treated myself to lobster fettucine; the wife had sea bass over risotto.

 

We’re kind of tapped out financially. There are college and high school graduation parties and gifts on the horizon, as well as air fare and car rental fees to move my youngest in to her college in the northeast, dental and eye surgery for the dog, heavy duty maintenance on my Corolla and my daughter’s Accord, necessary home repair and bills, bills, bills. So we decided that next year, our 26th, will be our REAL 25th Anniversary. We’re going to take four or five days off and drive out west a couple of hours. Find a nice B&B where there’s history to explore, good food, and relax and get away from it all. Something to look forward to.

 

A lot’s happened in that quarter century. Two children, both now young adults, both on their way to their vocations and living and thriving with varying degrees of independence. Most importantly, both healthy. We’ve lived in three states in two apartments and two houses. Ten or twelve cars. The Mrs. has held four or five  jobs, always onward and upward when she moved on. Me, with my health issues 15 years ago, haven’t been so lucky. I’ve been treading water with 9 jobs and left each one due to layoffs or geographical relocation.

 

There have been times of plenty and times of scarcity. New friends and old friends, friends that came and friends that, sadly, have left. I wrote two manuscripts and 15 or 20 short stories that reside on a flash drive. I’ve written three or four album’s worth of songs. I’ve done a couple hundred workouts and walked a couple hundred miles. More importantly, I’ve read just shy of a thousand books, more than a handful being exceptionally moving and beautiful and changed me profoundly.

 

We’ve seen several close loved ones pass on, and have weathered many, many storms, personal, private, and public. We’ve had arguments big and small, but never went to bed angry with each other. We’re on the same page with most things, and though I find that the Mrs. and I seem to be drifting apart in various ways as we get older – for example, our tastes in entertainment have been changing, with mine becoming more and more conservative and hers become more and more liberal. But despite this, our love has become stronger, cemented in the years and accomplishments we’ve achieved.

 

When I started the Hopper in March of 2009, I was married just under eight years, with a four-year-old and a six-month-old toddling about the house. Now, I’m looking at an empty nest in a few months. Time goes by so so fast. Yes, I’ve distracted myself turning many hundreds of pages over the years but I’ve also reflected a lot on what was happening and recorded many such slices of life here at the Hopper. Every now and then I peruse the archives and reminisce. It’s not a bad way to pass the time.

 

Now, to figure out what to do for the next 25 years …

10 Movies to Get to Know Me

Saw this going around on the Internet recently, and thought I might use it as a jump-start to overcome my negligent lack of posting this year.

 

10 Movies to Get to Know Me

 

(in order that they came to me…)

 

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Signs (2002)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Watership Down (1978)

Ben Hur (1959)

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

Rear Window (1954)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

 

Not necessarily my favorites, but movies that I see myself in, movies that exemplify me in whole or just significant parts of me, in various ways, shapes, and/or forms. Find out their commonalities, and you have a nice Platonic ideal of your host here at the Hopper.

A nice exercise to try at home in your down time.

The Ark IV

 

Okay, last one.

 

Yesterday I went with some friends to their Baptist church to visit its “Good Friday Experience.”

 

Inside the church lobby there was a huge line which meandered over the course of an hour, until we reached the “Experience” entrance. Over the next hour we moved through darkened corridors from one room to another, each room holding museum-quality exhibitions describing some key events of the Passion: the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Cross and the instruments of torture, the cloth and perfumes to anoint His body. And this, the Ark of the Covenant:

 

Now, as we know, the Ark was lost to history in the year 586 BC. The Ark was included in the exhibition to show us how the curtain inside the Temple – the one that separated the Holy of Holies, the Ark, from the outer Temple – was torn in two, from top to bottom. I took this stealth pic, and in hindsight I should have also taken one closer up from a side angle so you could sense its height and depth. If I stood on the stage, my hips and lowered hands would be equal to the poles extending from the sides. The ark in this picture, to the best of my reasoning, had the same dimensions and same design as the historical Ark.

 

The exhibitions really triggered your tactile senses deep down. I held a replica of the whip which scourged Christ – felt its weight and heft, touched the barbs of bone and stone tied to leather straps that tore into His flesh. I tried lifting the surprisingly heavy Cross. In the Garden a cool night breeze touched our skin – and the soft hooting of owls and other wildlife echoed past. It was an intriguing and worthwhile experience, and something that really furthered my understanding of the Passion.

 

Would definitely recommend.

The Ark III

 

So what happened to the Ark of the Covenant? Where is it, and if we don’t know where it is, well, what was its fate?

 

The short answer is that it’s been long lost to history, around the time the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah in the year 587 BC. Though it is not specifically mentioned during the passages describing the fall of Jerusalem and the pillaging of the Temple artifacts, one can make a good case that the Ark was taken to Babylon.

 

That’s the first possibility. And in Babylon, it could either have been destroyed (if God allowed such a thing), hidden, or transferred somewhere else. The trail runs cold.

 

Second, perhaps King Josiah from the previous post hid the Ark yet again as the Babylonians advanced on Jerusalem. Maybe in the First Temple, or in a catacomb or some other underground chamber beneath it.

 

Third, there is a mention in the Book of Second Maccabees 2:4-10 that the Prophet Jeremiah hid the Ark in a cave on Mount Nebo, the mountain where Moses overlooked the promised land before he passed on.

 

Fourth, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims that the Ark is housed in the northern city of Axum in Ethiopia, at the Church of Out Lady Mary of Zion. No one is allowed inside to view it, so we have little choice but to take them at their word.

 

Fifth, the Lemba people in southern Africa state that they posses the actual Ark, and keep a replica in Zimbabwe. The Lembas trace their lineage back to Yemeni traders and do practice a form a semitic religion.

 

Finally, there is a Samaritan tradition the holds the Ark is kept at a sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, about 35 miles north of Bethlehem. (However, there is also a Samaritan tradition that Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Gerizim, when most biblical scholars believe the sacrifice was to take place on Mount Moriah).

 

So, in summary, the six most plausible (if such a word can describe the fate of a holy object lost nearly 2,600 years ago) locations for the Ark of the Covenant appear to be:

 

1)    1) The ruins of Babylon in Iraq

2)    2) Beneath the location of the First Temple in Jerusalem

3)    3) Mount Nebo in Jordan

4)    4) A church in Ethiopia

5)    5) A undisclosed location in southern Africa

6)    6) Mount Gerizim in Israel

 

But I’d like to think of a seventh possibility:

7)    7) A nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. …

 

(In all seriousness, my amateurish opinion probably lies with #2)

The Ark II

 

There are five “time periods” I used to sort the historical appearances of the Ark in the Bible:

 

Introductory Period

The Ark of the Covenant first enters history a year after Moses communes with God atop Mount Sinai after it is constructed by two master craftsmen under the direction of God through Moses. There is no way of scientifically dating this event, with scholarly estimates ranging from 1450 to 1250 BC. The Ark is with the Hebrews throughout their 40-year period of wandering in the wilderness.

 

The Promised Land Period

The Ark accompanies Joshua into Canaan, the Promised Land. When first crossing the Jordan, the river dries up as soon as the priests carrying the Ark touch its water, and it remains so bound until they leave the riverbed. During the Battle of Jericho, the Ark is carried around the city once a day for six days, preceded by armed men and seven priests sounding seven trumpets. On the seventh day, Jericho’s walls fall down and the Hebrews take the city.

The following battle at the city of Ai (ay-EYE) is a defeat and Joshua laments before the Ark. After the conquest of Canaan, the Ark is kept at Shiloh, then moved to Bethel, and later returned to Shiloh.

 

The Conflict with the Philistines

 

The Israelites are defeated by the Philistines at the battle of Eben-Ezer, losing 30,000 men – but worse than that, the Ark is captured. When hearing this, priest Eli falls dead and his daughter-in-law, in labor with a son when hearing the news, names the child “Ichabod” – “the glory has departed Israel” – and dies in childbirth.

The Ark is carried by the Philistines to their city of Ashdod and stored in the temple of their god, Dagon. After the first night the statue of Dagon is found prostrate and bowed down; upon being restored it is found broken the following morning. The people of Ashdod are smitten with tumors and a plague of rodents overwhelms the land. The Philistines move the Ark to the cities of Gath and then Ekron, but the affliction follows.

After the Ark was with the Philistines for seven months, they return it to the Israelites. It is set in a field and the people there offer sacrifices and burnt offerings. It remains in the city of Kireath-Jearim (KEER-ee-ath ye-REEM) for twenty years.

 

The Ark during the Kingdom

 

King Saul was with the Ark when he first confronts the Philistines, but he is too impatient to consult it. Later, King David removes the Ark from Kiriath-Jearim amongst great rejoicing.

On the way to Jerusalem, Uzzah, one of the drivers of the cart that carried the Ark puts out his hand to steady it and is struck dead by God for touching it. David, in fear, keeps it in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite, where it remains for three months. When David finally brings the Ark to Jerusalem, he dances in front of it. His first wife, Saul’s daughter Michal, scornfully rebukes him for this.

David puts the Ark in a tent he has prepared for it and uses the tent as a personal place of prayer.     

Solomon worships before the Ark after his dream in which God promises him wisdom.           

During the construction of the Temple, a special inner room, the Holy of Holies, is prepared to receive and house the Ark. When priests emerge after first installing the Ark in the Holy of Holies, the Temple is filled with a cloud, “for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD.”

When Solomon marries Pharaoh’s daughter, he has her dwell in a house outside Jerusalem, as Jerusalem is consecrated because it contains the Ark.        

 

In Later Times

 

During a time of possible conflict with the Assyrians, King Hezekiah may have hidden the Ark and other treasures from the Temple in an unidentified spring or cistern.

King Josiah has the Ark returned to the Temple, from which it appears to have been removed by on of his predecessors. Josiah is the last biblical figure mentioned as having seen the Ark.

In 567 BC the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar conquer Jerusalem, possibly taking away the “vessels of the ark of God,” though the Ark itself is not specifically mentioned.

The Ark of the Covenant is lost to history.

 

 

Next post: the possible fate and current location of the Ark.

The Ark I

 

Last Monday, during my bible study class, we discussed the Ark of the Covenant, introduced to the study in Revelation 11:19 (which immediately segues into the famous Woman clothed with sun in Revelation 12, which Catholic teaching regards as the Blessed Virgin Mary, the new Ark of the Covenant).

 

As a little extracurricular work, I decided to research the Ark itself. I am ashamed to admit most of what I know of it comes from Raiders of the Lost Ark, for the last time I read the Bible books that address the Ark it was sometime during the Wu Flu in 2020.

 

Anyway, I’m going to break up my simple research into three parts. This part will address what the Ark is. Part II will be what happened to the Ark in the Old Testament, and Part III will cover the speculative fate of the Ark.

 

*   *   *   *   *  *  * 

 

The Hebrew word, aron, used to describe the Ark, refers to something like a small wooden chest as opposed to a large construction, such as Noah’s Ark. Moses received instructions on how to build the Ark of the Covenant during his communion with God atop Mount Sinai during the Exodus. It was fashioned about a year after the Hebrews left Egypt by two highly skilled craftsmen, Bezalel and Oholiab.

 

Translating cubits to the English measuring system, the Ark was about 4 feet 4 inches long, 2 feet 7 inches wide, and 2 feet 7 inches deep. It was made with acacia wood, a durable and dense wood known for its strength and water resistance, having a rich coloration ranging from light brown to deep red. Over this was laid sheets of purest gold. A lid, called the Seat of Mercy or the Propitiatory, was laid atop it, and was likewise golden gilded. Two cherubin with outspread wings and facing each other were fastened onto the Seat of Mercy. When Moses communed with God before the Ark, the LORD would appear in a cloud between and above the cherubim. (This cloud is sometimes referred to as the shekinah.)

 

At each corner of the Ark a ring of gold was attached, into which staves of acacia overlaid with gold were to be inserted (and continually kept in place there) to carry the Ark. The length of the staves are not specified in the Bible. When the Hebrews were on the move, the Ark was carried about 3,000 feet in advance of the people when they marched. And when they camped, the Ark resided in the Tent of Meeting, inside the Tabernacle.

 

The Ark housed the tablets of the Ten Commandments, given to Moses atop Mount Sinai. Aaron’s rod, the staff which blossomed and budded, was also placed within it, along with a pot of manna, the bread-like substance supplied daily by God to the Hebrews in the desert during the 40-year wandering period. (Think of the Ark of the Covenant holding a pot of manna and compare that to the Blessed Virgin Mary with Christ in her womb…)

 

Some early commentators state that the books of the Law written by Moses were also placed within the Ark, but scripture does not explicitly state this.

 

The Ark of the Covenant is the name most familiar to Christians, but throughout the Bible it had other names:

 

   - The Ark of the Testimony (Exodus 25 and 26)

   - The Ark of the Testament (Exodus 30)

   - The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord (Numbers 10, Deuteronomy 10)

   - The Ark of God (1 Samuel 3)

   - The Ark of the LORD (1 Samuel 4)

 

The next post will be a summary of the Ark’s role in the Biblical story.

 

To Read History

 

I’ve come up with a new epigram:

 

HISTORIAM LEGERE EST TRISTE ESSE

 

In my native tongue, that translates to: “To read history is to be sad.”

And that’s my conclusion.

 

In the second third of my life I focused the majority of my reading in the field of history. Whereas it used to be science and math and philosophy and entertainment, since 2012 I’ve spent most of my nonfiction perusal in the Dewey Decimal 900s. “History.”

 

It began with the Civil War, then sidestepped to World War II (with a brief foray to the “Great War”). The Space Race, ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, the Crusades, the Catholic Church, nations such as China and India, Napoleonic France and all the continental conflicts involving the little emperor, just to mention the more significant phases. Even the history of Baseball. I’m sure there were a couple other “History of …” books I’m forgetting.

 

I’m writing this not so much to brag as to lay a foundation for why I believe HISTORIAM LEGER EST TRISTE ESSE.

 

Consider:

 

We live in a fallen world. This is my view based on the teachings of Catholicism. Other religious beliefs offer comparable starting points.

 

Strife and striving are the constant companions of men in specific and Man in general. Depending on who you consult as an authority, out of 5,000 years of recorded human history, there have only been around 300 years entirely free from major warfare. Thus, the history of Man is the history of War.

 

War necessitates suffering, and the more “civilized” we become, the more “innocents” suffer in conflict.

 

Since the Endarkenment, we have seen a receding of the influence of the teachings of Christ, Who offers the only true solution to Man’s fallen state of being. And that recession arguably has increased more and more, almost exponentially so, as the Western world actively seeks detachment from Christ and a return to a greater state of fallenness. A progression toward regression.

 

Thus any serious volume of history will necessarily document suffering.

 

Hence, to an inquirer with a heart, even a heart of stone, “to read history is to be sad.”

 

Quod Erat Demonstrandum. (Q.E.D.)

 

Now, I’m not certain that biography falls into this category. Strictly speaking I assume it does, but since it addresses the struggles of a specific individual, there could be a few drops of wisdom one can squeeze out to lessen one’s own battles. Perhaps I’m looking for a loophole, but for now biography sits in acceptable position for me, i.e., “to read the personal history of an individual does not necessarily necessitate sadness, but can provide personal enlightenment.”

 

I recognize such a loophole can be applied to my main argument. Hey, I’m just an armchair philosopher who may have too big an opinion of himself. (May?)

 

Anyway, the bottom line is I think it is time to switch my interest out of the Dewey Decimal 900s. I have some ideas where to channel my downtime so that it’s not depressing me. Perhaps in the near future I will elaborate. Now I’m going to exercise that loophole and read about Sinatra, a conflicted and often troubled man who attained highs and lows the average person could only dream about. (Or nightmare about, I suppose). After that, the dissertation on Tolkien. And after that …

 

Book Haul

  

Well, its been nearly two months since Christmas, and I was looking for a reward for my accomplishments this year. I’ve been to five bible study meetings so far (we have eleven scheduled, set to end right before Easter) and have learned a lot. I’ve kept with the meditation, having done my 57th sitting this morning, for a total of 14 hours and 20 minutes. I am noticing a “smoothening out” of my personal shortfalls. And there’s a third personal goal that I’m also making progress on, a big, tough one, which falls outside the purview of this blog.

 

So when I want to reward myself, nine times out of ten it’s treating myself with new (used) books. In this case, I went to the local book shop and scored these two awesome finds:

 

 

I’ve been looking for a good biography on Frank for a couple of months now. This one, Frank: The Voice, starts at the very beginning and ends around the time of his Best Supporting Actor award in 1954 or soon thereafter. The follow-up, Frank: The Chairman, takes it from then to his death in 1998. If you google “best biography of Frank Sinatra” these books by Kaplan will come up, so I considered myself quite lucky to find it.

 

Over the past few years I’ve been reading more and more musician biographies. Geddy Lee and Led Zeppelin last year, Mozart in 2024, a book on various classical music composers in 2023, biographies of the bands Yes and The Rolling Stones the years before that. I do remember way, way back in those hazy days a quarter of a century ago living in Maryland of starting a Sinatra biography, but never finishing it. I’ve been listening to a lot of Frank these past few months, so I’m looking for a greater understanding of the man and his music.

 

The other, Mount Doom: The Prophecy of Tolkien Revealed, found me completely by accident. It looks self-published (or at least published by a minor house), but it’s a dense, 562-page dissertation on the Tolkien mythos with lots of mention of Thomistic philosophy and, I’m hoping, a challenge to post-modernism (yuck). There’s charts, diagrams, mentions of the neurology of the brain, the harmonic series in music (maybe also in math), and what they promise to be something like a revisionist explanation of The Lord of the Rings.

 

This has me almost, but not quite, frothing at the mouth.

 

I’ve made two abortive attempts to re-read Tolkien in the past two years, from the Silmarillion to the twelfth volume of Christopher Tolkien’s edited The History of Middle-earth. Perhaps, hopefully, this will jump start that desire and I can notch my sixth reading of Tolkien. Last time was in 2021, right before we moved down to Texas, so its kinda overdue.

 

The dilemma now is which one to start once I’m finished with the English Civil War book …

 

Anyway, happy reading all!

The Doors

 

On a whim last week I decided to listen to all the Doors releases with Jim Morrison singing, in chronological order, one album a day.

 

Why?

 

Well, way back in the day I was really into their music for about nine months, beginning in the winter of 1987. Back then, Morrison had only been dead for 17 years, so it would be like one of my daughters doing a deep dive into the music of Michael Jackson today. I had a couple of cassettes, some recordings off the local FM station, and No One Here Gets Out Alive, a biography of Morrison Santa brought me two years earlier.

 

In addition to the nostalgia factor, I wanted to see if the music still held up. Every now and then I hear “Light My Fire” or “Soul Kitchen” from the Alexa in the upstairs bathroom when occupied by my daughters, and I scratch my chin and say to myself, “I should listen to some Doors.” So I did.

 

Additionally, there was the possibility that I might uncover a hidden gem or two. Over their six studio albums they recorded 62 songs. I could probably name 20 off the top of my head, and probably 20 more I’d recall on re-hearing, but there still would be about a third of their total song count that could sound fresh to my ears.

 

So I listened to six albums over five days, some while working and some while walking, and enjoyed it immensely.

 

What did I learn?

 

In a little over four years, from January 1967 to April 1971, The Doors released six studio albums. Jim Morrison died on July 3, 1971, two and a half months after their final, L.A. Woman was released, and the remaining three members reworked semi-finished songs and released them as Other Voices in August of 1971, and followed that with the album Full Circle in August of 1972. I did not listen to these albums.

 

Of the six “canonical” Doors albums, I rank them in this personal preference:

 

   L.A. Woman (1971)

 

   The Doors (1967)

 

   Strange Days (1967)

 

   Morrison Hotel (1970)

 

   Waiting for the Sun (1968)

 

   The Soft Parade (1969)

 

 

 

But it’s only a ranking for the sake of making a ranking. Every album has great songs; every album has mediocre songs.

 

My favorite tunes have not changed. I think I’ve posted about them here at the Hopper, but for the record, my top tens would probably be something like

 

   “LA Woman”

 

   “Soul Kitchen”

 

   “Strange Days”

 

   “Moonlight Drive”

 

   “When the Music’s Over”

 

   “Waiting for the Sun”

 

   “Peace Frog”

 

   “Hello I Love You”

 

   “Five to One”

 

   “Wild Child”

 

 

 

I came away with three uncovered gems, “gems” in this case being songs I didn’t recall hearing before that stuck with me after the music was over. They are

 

   “Summer’s Almost Gone” off Waiting for the Sun

 

   “Wishful Sinful” off The Soft Parade

 

   “Hyacinth House” off L.A. Woman

 

 

 

Of the three, I find “Hyacinth House” unusually haunting. There’s that A-minor chord, there’s Morrison hitting some really low notes, there’s a neat little organ solo, and there’s kind of a plaintive cry for help as the chorus wraps up at the end of the song. I can’t shake it for some reason.

 

It was an enjoyable experience. If you like to do similar things I recommend it. The Doors were never my favorite band, but I did have a phase right after high school and I associate a lot of fun memories with their tunes. The more I grew musically the more I realized how Morrison totters along the fine edge of just staying in tune, and the older I get the more cringy I find his whole “lizard king” schtick to be. But it all worked. The faux poetry, the baritone tightrope, the carnivalesque keyboards, the jazzy drumming, and Robby Krieger’s superb and underappreciated guitar work (mostly done on a Gibson SG, my first true love in my life). It works.

 

I started doing a similar thing with Johnny Winter. I had his 1973 blues album just after this Doors phase, given to me by my lead guitarist way back then, that I listened to it a lot that summer. But I never really got into the man and his music. So I’ll do a walk through his catalogue and write down any songs I like and thoughts I come across, to be posted at a later date.

 

Happy listening!