In the Days Before Seuss

Be ever so glad that you were not a child in 1700, when, among other miseries, the likes of James Janeway were the vanguard of children's literature. His "A Token for Children" contains this dismal bit of advisory doggerel for young sinners to contemplate:

"When by spectators I am told
What beauty doth adorn me
Or in a glass when I behold
How sweetly God did form me
Hath God such comeliness bestowed
And on me made to dwell,
What pity such a pretty maid
As I should go to Hell."

Hooray for Europe

Hooray for the wise decision of the European Parliament last month to award the Sakharov Prize, its top human rights prize, to jailed Chinese dissident Hu Jia.

"We express strong dissatisfaction to the decision," hissed the tyrants that hold the Chinese nation hostage, through their lackey, Liu Jianchao.

Well, some of us don't give a damn about the tender feelings of tyrants. And for once, Europe stands with us.

According to the Associated Press, "Hu was initially an advocate for the rights of HIV/AIDs patients, [who] expanded his efforts after the government gave little ground and he began to see the country's problems as rooted in authorities' lack of respect for human rights."

Sure, China today is not the backward swamp it was under the late ungreat Mao. It has a steadily developing middle class. Perhaps that middle class is the nation's only hope for finally shaking off the shackles of moldy Marxism and taking its place among the free peoples of the world.

Misdirected Energy

Concerning the measure that recently passed in California, imposing limitations ...

Stealing is bad.

Beating up people is bad.

Locking children in closets is bad.

Setting fire to occupied dwellings is bad.

The enemy is cruelty. The enemy is deception. The enemy is breach of promise.

A whole coalition of churches spent a lot of time and money attacking an imaginary enemy. Two consenting adults who want to be married are not the enemy. If you disagree, please help me to understand the reason why.

Vere Childe -- Australia's gift to archaeology

For sheer adventure, Indiana Jones might outdo the late Vere Gordon Childe. But Indiana is Hollywood. Vere Childe was for real.

I’m supposed to be studying Austria this month but that doesn’t mean I can’t still learn a little more about places of past months and the people therein.

So I will muse momentarily on this man, who was born in Sydney, Australia in 1892 but did not stay put. He spent time in England, Greece, the Balkans, the Orkney Islands, Iraq, India and the U.S. Tragically and ironically, after all that, he died back in his homeland -- falling from a cliff in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

Mr. Childe is considered one of the twentieth century’s most important archaeologists … and one who brilliantly synthesized available knowledge of Old World history. He had a gift, a keen ability to discern and illuminate the main currents of prehistory, as shown in one of his best-known works, “The Dawn of European Civilization.”

Aussie, be proud!

Your name on the lips of others, your footsteps in forgotten sand

Have you ever typed your Blog name in a search engine?

Every now and then, I do that with mine, eastcoastdweller.

Mostly, it dredges up my visits to my regular blogfriends. Sometimes it reminds me of blogs that, for whatever reason, I only visited once or twice, long ago, and I think about who I was then and wonder if I should rekindle the friendships.

But the strangest thing is to find your name, your blog, mentioned in places to which you have never been. It happens.

Continuing with the alien theme

Okay, so you have an incredibly advanced life-form, the vanguard of some civilization that has figured out how to cross the vastness of interstellar space, something that Earthlings still can only dream about.

Why is it that in so many shows -- from Cocoon to ALF to ET, that amazing creature, having reached Earth, becomes virtually helpless,hiding out, in constant danger from puny Earthlings with delusions of grandeur?