Random Notes, 63

1. In the mountains about sixteen miles above us, in the Blue Lake Springs area, a couple of intelligent bears have been raiding houses when their owners are out. They rip open screens, climb into open windows, raid the refrigerator and freezer for ice cream and meats especially, and leave a mess behind wherever or in whatever room they choose to eat their stolen goods. One bear chose a gallon of fat-free yogurt over Dreyer’s ice cream, perhaps because she was on a diet. According to one authority, bears can smell things even inside a freezer. One woman’s reaction was that the bear had more right to be there than she did! Environmental teachings are sinking in!

2. One of the most decisive facts of our time is the growth of a radically amoral capitalism, ready at every turn to conform to the pressure tactics of any group, i.e., homosexual, humanist, etc. When Unitarianism began to capture the churches of New England, their steeples reflected the change. They were topped, not with a cross but a weather-vane. This had a practical purpose: it enables everyone to see which way the wind was blowing. In time, the people followed the winds of doctrinal change and heresy. Perhaps corporations should fly a weather- vane flag, and modern churches as well.

3. In this century, with help from Hollywood, belief in reincarnation has grown from next to nothing to considerable numbers. However, our European and American believers are cheaters. The belief in reincarnation, i.e., the soul being reborn in other persons, has as a logical corollary belief in the transmigration of souls. This doctrine of transmigration means a rebirth, or past births, as a rat, a flea, a donkey, or any other animal. Our reincarnationists like-a noble scenario: they were great somebodies in a previous life! They are certainly fools in their present form.

4. An interesting comment in Harry Truman’s diary in the 1930s, just before going to the U.S. Senate, and, later to the presidency, as reported in A.L. Hamby’s Man of the People, A Life of Harry S. Truman: “Some day we’ll awake, have a reformation of the heart, teach our kids honor and kill a few sex psychologists, put hoys in high schools to themselves with men teachers (not sissies), close all girls’ finishing schools, shoot all the efficiency experts and become a nation of God’s people once more.” Even for the 1930s this was a reactionary viewpoint! Perhaps it would be better to say it reflected Missouri’s spirit of independence to an extreme degree.

5. When Daniel Harris was here, he shared a delightful story with us, about a man’s questions of God. “What is a million dollars worth to you, God?”, he asked. God answered, “about a penny.” “And a thousand years?” “about a second.” “Then why not give me a million dollars?” “In a second!”

6. Last August Otto Scott was rushed to a hospital with a heart attack. The doctor was impressed by his calm demeanor, and, on discharging him a few days later, asked, “Are you always this composed when you are having a heart attack?” Otto Scott’s reaction: “Better composed than decomposed.”

7. Our Calaveras County Historical Society has a Quarterly Bulletin, Las Calaveras. In the October, 1996, number, there is an article about John McSorley, a prominent man of earlier years. During the Depression of the 1930s, some forty people lived in shacks around John and Nettie McSorley’s house because they were otherwise homeless. They were allowed also to pan for gold and to garden. When F.D. Roosevelt closed all the banks by federal edict, the lack of change and cash was wiping out many stores and also their customers. Oliver Adams said that McSorley asked him to drive him to the U.S. Mint, where he converted a gold bar into bills and change. He then stopped at Jackson, Mokelumne Hill, and San Andreas, and he went into several stores to leave $200 to $500 in each. After about six stores, Adams asked McSorley if he wanted him to record the amounts since he might forget. McSorley said, “I probably will but they won’t.” The thousands of dollars so distributed put both counties back into business.

I remember a similar incident in my home town. The widow of a once prosperous farmer had her power disconnected. Word got around quickly as to what had happened. In those days, a nickel was big money to us, and farm workers made 9¢ and 10¢ an hour if they got a job. Farmers stopped by with small sums (big then to them) to say, I owed your late husband $1.26, or 10¢, or a quarter, and so on and on, until she had more than enough to have electricity again.

Perhaps in California we were more “backward” and still Christian in those days, but I would be surprised if such incidents did not occur from coast to coast.

8. In Credenda Agenda, vol 8, number 8, p. 10, Douglas Jones has a brief and excellent article on “Scientists as Welfare Bums.” In the name of scientific research, scientists are receiving astronomical sums to carry on research in every kind of area, and yet they still whine for more.

The science establishment is a bloated bureaucracy living off the American people, and it is time that others joined Douglas Jones in a critique of this vast pilfering of our pockets.

9. In 1955, Maurice Chevalier commented, in passing, on a significant change in the world of Paris shows. “Big name” singers and entertainers were being supplanted by nude show girls. The world was changing rapidly, and for the worse, although Chevalier refrained from saying so. In the U.S., the Playboy era was about to begin.

10. A favorite comic strip of mine is Dik Brown’s “Hagar the Horrible,” about a Viking raider. In one occasion, Hagar climbs a snow-capped mountain to ask a holy hermit what the key to happiness is, and he is told, “Abstinence, poverty, fasting and celibacy.” Hagar asks, “Is there someone else up here I could talk to?”