Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.
Some may perhaps recollect my posting at this website almost a year ago (in 2008) some poems,
compiled by Nurse Eleanor Place in late 1915-early 1916, and written by English, Scottish,
Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian soldiers then staying at the County of London War
Hospital. It just so happen that of late I learned about another volume of Great War verse
also by a common soldier; namely, Rhymes of a Lost Battalion Doughboy by "Buck Private"
Lee Charles McCollum from California, and first (self) published in Seattle in 1919. Although
some of the poems are of an amateur sort; some others, on the other hand, are quite good. But
it's the collection taken as a whole, however, which give this work its greatest shine, and
which provides us a touching, evocative, and sometimes amusing glimpse of an American doughboy's
wartime experience. Below then are two of his poems. The book itself is available as a free
.pdf or .html download at www.archive.org. It went through several reprintings and can also, if you are
interested in a paper copy, be found at the likes of bookfinder.com and amazon.com
Here's another little something that you might like also -- "Hushabye Mountain" from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" performed by cellist Julian Lloyd Webber (brother of Andrew) from his CD "Unexpected Songs" (you might consider turning the YouTube volume down on this one, again, to better the audio.)
The mysterious Bogey Man and his Heavenly angels.
The pearl for which he sold everything, as much as anything it might be, was his conscience. The houses built respectively on the high rock and below near the flooding river represent a person's soul. For without a conscience or without a soul what's left?
Thought some of you might enjoy this as much as I did.
Dr. Ruehl. Oafmore. I guess that's just how life is.
I'm so glad they finally got around to removing that Progressive auto-insurance ad on ebay, and which has been up at least since that last "Star Trek" movie premiered. (I felt sorry for the girl.)
Something can be put into your religion not unlike how something can be put into your drink. (But then who would do such a thing?)
As a practical rule of thumb (and without letting a bad temper get the better of you or unjustly directing your ire or resentment at the wrong specific individuals), treat the heaven of spirit people as the very curse and horror of life and existence as we know it; otherwise and if you don't do so (again, as a practical matter), devils will simply use that "heaven" as if it were a credit card to buy and pay for the evil that they seek or desire to do or perpetrate.
The following passage, for your pleasure, is taken from Curiosities of literature: and the literary character illustrated (1823) by Isaac Disraeli (1766-1848, father of the British Prime minster.)
"Enthanasia! Enthanasia! an easy death! was the exclamation of Augustus; it was what Antonius Pius enjoyed; and it is that for which every wise man will pray, said Lord Orrery, when perhaps he was contemplating on the close of Swift's life.
"The ancients contemplated death without terror, and met it with indifference. It was the only divinity to which they never sacrificed, convinced that no human being could turn aside its stroke. They raised altars to fever, to misfortune, to all the evils of life; for these might change! But though they did not court the presence of death in any shape, they acknowledged its tranquility; and in the beautiful fables of their allegorical religion, Death was the daughter of Night, and the sister of Sleep; and ever the friend of the unhappy! To the eternal sleep of death they dedicated their sepulchral monuments -- AEternali Somno! If the full light of revelation had not yet broken on them, it can hardly be denied that they had some glimpses and a dawn of the life to come, from the many allegorical inventions which describe the transmigration of the soul. A butterfly on the extremity of an extinguished lamp, held up by the messenger of the Gods intently gazing above implied a dedication of that soul; Love, with a melancholy air, his legs crossed, leaning on an inverted torch, the flame thus naturally extinguishing itself, elegantly denoted the cessation of human life; a rose sculptured on a sarcophagus, or the emblems of epicurean life traced on it, in a skull wreathed by a chaplet of flowers, such as they wore a their convivial meetings, a flask of wine, a patera, and the small bones used as dice; all these symbols were indirect allusions to death, veiling its painful recollections. They did not pollute their imagination with the contents of a charnel-house. The sarcophagi of the ancients rather recall to us the remembrance of the activity of life; for they are sculptured with battles or games, in basso relievo; a sort of tender homage paid to the dead, observes Madame De Stael, with her peculiar refinement of thinking.
"It would seem that the Romans had even an aversion to mention death in express terms, for they disguised its very name by some periphrasis, such as discessit e vita, 'he has departed from life;' and they did not say that their friend had died, but that he had lived; vixit!" [p. 322.]
What perhaps makes criminal spirit people so very dangerous, in fact potentially more dangerous than the very worst disease, is that they can and will set themselves up as authority, and people will believe them. Let's consider then some of the defenses, or as we might also put it, the network of fortifications that keeps them in power and protects them from harm.
1. Being spirit people many will take it for granted that on that basis alone they do have or possess higher authority.
2. People choosing displays and manifestations of raw power over correct and close reasoning as the measure of truthfulness; with the result that spirit people are made to seem superior to right reason.
3. It is generally not permitted to discuss them scientifically and seriously to begin with.
4. They have at their disposal myriad and various methods, tricks, and devices to influence and shape people's attitudes and behavior toward their serving criminal spirit people ends; a typical example of which being how they get regular people to blame each other while having them not give it a thought that spirit people might possibly or actually be most to blame.
5. Whether out of choice, or manipulative coercion of a superior, they are tireless and dogged in what they do. Alexander the Great, like many of the ancients, believed that a characteristic trait of a god was that a god never slept. If then someone should get you to think they never slept, odds are you might yourself very well think they were divine.
6. A great myth they employ is that spirit people live on a spiritual plane and hence are not physical. The truth is spirit people are physical; though possessing a body that is of a much lighter and physically finer sort than our own. This misunderstanding causes people to think they cannot be contended against.
7. As well as frighten and bully, they can sooth and cajole and this works for them with some people as much and more so than the former kind of tactics.
Impiety means offending your father (or mother), and if it is not your father that is or might be offended then it is not impiety. So that berating or cursing spirit people, whatever it might be otherwise, is not impiety (that is, unless the devil is your father.) Of course, your father is in the Holy Spirit -- the spirit of love and truth, etc. and it is this you are supposed to be looking and listening to.
[story idea "All You Can Eat"] When Oafmore takes over a chain of pancake houses, K-Pax, through the grapevine, lets it be known to common, everyday people that by eating at his pancake house restaurants they will be doing things a certain way. In response, and as a safe alternative to doing the wrong thing, people start visiting these restaurants in droves. Oafmore then comes to hear about the extraordinary and phenomenal success of his restaurants (not quite understanding the real reason for that success) as demand for his pancakes skyrocket. As always and ever at a loss of either quite knowing or finding his true identity, he then begins to start seeing and imagining himself as a popular and savvy pancake entrepreneur.
Yes, there is war, and yes there is peace -- both; but peace, at least relative peace, came first; as we see, for instance, in the history of this planet where the relatively mild and tranquil millions and millions of years of the carboniferous period antedated the famously violent age of the dinosaurs; as well, note how a person is a child and can only really be a potentially violent threat when he becomes more full grown. By contrast we don't see in nature peace following upon strife so vividly. If then there was a Big Bang there would have to have been a Big Silence preceding it. Peace then is first -- if there is any first; and the means and way of strife, and therefore strife itself, cannot exist but for peace, because, or at least some could reasonably assume, peace is logically necessary to generate them.
Even so, the alternative to this is to say there is and always was strife, and if there ever was any strife that itself proves there never really was any peace. So at last it simply becomes a matter of what you chose to believe. What ever it is, assuming it is in the first place, must pass the test of judgment -- otherwise it isn't, or at least not in the way you think, feel or imagine. But whether peace or strife is the thing, either way, thank goodness for harmony and justice. So that in this sense, and at the end of the day, judgment is the ultimate rule and measure of whether it is strife or peace.
(Having made recent reference to him) the subject of Chuck Berry came up talking with these intrusive and quarrelsome spirit people, and I said the thing about him (and people like him) is he really knows how and what it means to be a happy person. And if you don't really know how to be happy then how can and why would you (and do you) do anything else? He's as famous as anybody, but do you think he wouldn't know how to be happy if he wasn't famous?
I am reading the Book of Revelation again, and upon that and additional reflection my sense is that the author is genuine and sincere; but as far as his sources go the work itself is a master forgery. Some might perhaps feel this is a discouraging conclusion that impugns the Bible's authenticity; however, I think intelligent people will readily recognize that this is and need not be the case, for as we already know the letter killeth and it is the spirit that giveth life; such that it is the spirit of the thing that most matters and less so the finite details. Again, another reminder, things like pillars of fire, voices from beyond and angelic hosts, symbol laden visions and dreams, these are all things easily within the purview of a professional spirit person magician (i.e. if the money for it is there), and if you yourself ever happen to encounter such experiences, as always, great skepticism on your part should be assumed.
After watching and listening to those videos, I got to wondering and asking myself who after all (as far as really big names among rock pop artists go [i.e. & some greatness, naturally, is not always of the "named" sort]) was I so lucky and fortunate (in some cases multiple times) to see in concert down the years, and here, for the benefit of posterity, is my list: Moody Blues (including also Justin Heyward in an absolutely wonderful and gracious solo performance at Tower Records one time), Grateful Dead, Tina Turner, Al Stewart, Heart, Buddy Miles, Mitch Mitchell, Noel Redding, Chuck Berry, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Psychedelic Furs, Shakspear's Sister, Missing Persons, Rolling Stones, and Ray Manzarek (with Michael McClure.) There must be at least one or two more I am somehow forgetting (my fault not theirs) but that's most of them.
