Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.
Whether dressed in the guise of seeming glorious heaven or else overt and evil hell (or something somehow in between the two), note how although spirit people are supposed to be so all-knowingly cocksure and self confident that the vast majority of the time they are forced to hide and conceal themselves. Try then to learn not to take them so very seriously; or at least no more seriously than a medical disease.
And now Brittany Murphy has passed away prematurely. Reminds me of Lynne Frederick's death. I wish I could die myself -- I hate these people that much. But as it is, I have the cat to take care of.
Later Note. After writing the above, out of curiosity I went to enter Lynne Frederick on Google to see what would come up, and found this most startling and bitchy obituary which you may read at http://www.victoriamaryclarke.com/articles/Frederick%20The%20Lynne%20%20Story.html Why such rancor? Observe also once again how it is the deceased in such cases who is invariably at fault for their own demise. Of course, the far more believable story is that the person was not cooperative and duly respectful of their "betters." Those betters then make their life impossible; so the individual expires either through either murder or suicide. For you see, that's the way the "Big Boys" play (otherwise they don't get to be "Big Boys" -- or so decrees the ghoulish one.)
"Tell us by what authority you are doing these things," they said. "Who gave you this authority?"
He replied, "I will also ask you a question. Tell me, 'Howard the Duck' -— was it from heaven, or from men?"
They discussed it among themselves and said, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will ask, 'Why then didn't you like the film?' But if we say, 'From men,' then how will we be able to account for why it was produced -- and by George Lucas no less?"
So they answered, "We don't know where it was from."
He said, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things."
I expect people who are good to act like good people. And even if the Bible speaks of an angel as being from God, and yet that angel does not behave like a good, honest and decent person would, rather than place my trust in such an angel I will say the Bible more than likely was tampered with at that point, or otherwise make some very qualifying explanation for the passage's acceptance.
We had directed you earlier to Machpelah, located outside Hebron, that is the burial site of Abraham and some of the most important patriarchs and matriarchs of religious faith. But did you know also about the resting place of some of the first dozen or so imperial Caesars and their family members? That would be the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome. Quite remarkably, the urns with ashes it once contained remained intact there for centuries till 410 A.D.; when Alaric the Goth sacked Rome. (Now you will never forget the year Rome was first sacked [i.e. since the time of the Republic and Empire.])
Food and medicine without love are, or at least can be, enough except when those feeding and healing are in league or partnership with an ideology that dismisses love as a merely empty, incidental, or hypocritical sentiment; while routinely contemplating social disunity and disintegration (including involuntary separation), a widespread decline in active literacy, moral decay, and mass extinction without objection and without murmur (except for when the need arises to feign a conscience.) For when that happens the hungry, sick and in want merely become sacrificial victims to be groomed as cattle for some voracious spirit person. Besides, so such benefactors will reason, if the world is going to end anyway then the harm I've done or do can't be all that blameworthy, and at least people think I am doing good. So what else matters?
Thus speaks the oracle:
"Ten times the suffering of your victims;
Ten times the pain --
If you don't stop living the life
of 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?'"
Later Note. Some will take his being characterized as "Baby Jane" as only a joke, but in his personality, his vain and preposterous movie career, his spitefulness, his mocking and sarcasm, and his resentment of others success and good fortune that is what he is really like.
During the time I was doing the "Recommendation of the Week," I had listed Henry Purcell's (1659-1695) "King Arthur" and Heinrich von Biber's (1644-1704) "Battalia." With a mind to following up on these, I thought I would make mention of some additional works and recordings for the benefit of those who might else miss out on them. Respecting Biber, there is, as of fairly recently, a nice live performance of his "Battalia" now on YouTube. Although the conductor perhaps took on too much by playing first violin at the same time as he was conducting, the rendition is lively and definitely worth a view and listen. Unfortunately I can't embed it here, so that in order to watch it you will have to travel over to the YouTube link (it's not very far) at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC2oaSAToRE ["Spinosi: 'Battalia', Heinrich Ignaz von Biber; live 2000"] For further exploration, some will find Biber's violin sonatas also of interest.
With regard to Purcell, he has so many superb songs and other musical pieces that we'll have to settle here with listing just a few of them of note. The first of these is his "Let Us Wander," from "The Indian Queen" with (in this instance) lyrics by John Milton.
"Let us wander, not unseen,
By the elms, on hillocks green,
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
"And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And the shepherd tells his tale,
Beneath the hawthorn in the dale."
I used to have a professionally done and recorded version on LP of this air, but do not any longer; nor on CD. The best then I could find at the moment was this on YouTube; done by some Hungarian ladies from Budapest: Mónika Mezei and Júlia Sárkány. The tempo is a little too swift; and the audio and video are far from pristine. Yet the duo give a sprightly enough and, if I may say, "cute" go at it; while at the least the video gives you the idea of how the song sounds.
Next we have the very famous "lament" from "Dido and Aeneas," here sung by soprano Tatiana Troyanos (1938-1993). This recording comes from the Raymond Leppard and the English Chamber Orchestra rendering; that I have had for many years, and which album is available on CD at: http://www.amazon.com/Purcell-Dido-Aeneas-Henry/dp/B00005OBRE -- highly recommended.
Last are some individual airs and dances from John Eliot Gardiner's version of Purcell's "Fairy Queen." If you get or already have the whole double album, you naturally will not need these separate amazon.com mp3 downloads. This said, some tracks I would bring to your attention from this very fine recording are:
As I sat chatting in conversation with a friend, the topic of holiday movies arose, and one likeable film which came up was Jim Varney's "Ernest Saves Christmas." The "Ernest" movies in general, and aside from some occasional sophomoric humor, were pretty good, and even a bit of a wonder for their time (that is, illustrating as they did that films could still be funny.) As for Mr. Varney himself, last I heard, he apparently ended up as another one of those Hollywood people who, in recent years, died at a surprisingly and relatively young age.
