Of Human Bondage

But first the news:

Politics. Donald Trump and I have a lot in common, except I'm not rich, or mean, or crazy. Trump will be 70 on June 14, I will be 70 on June 25, so we are just the same age. But in other ways we are a lot different. I like to read books. He likes to build golf courses.... I wonder if he actually plays golf?
He says he only sleeps three hours a day. Good for him. I sleep eight hours plus an afternoon nap.
Otherwise, he's a human being like me and we live in the same country.
Headlines. Trump can get a headline anytime he wants. I was half-listening to his interview on Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos who was pressing him to reveal his income taxes. Trump said, "It's None of Your Business." I heard him say that -- it's none of your business -- and I knew that  bingo! he had just gotten himself another headline.
The New York Times dutifully wrote the front-page headline that Trump said, "It's None of Your Business."
So Trump marches on and I heard that recent polls show him ahead of Hillary Clinton in Ohio.
I have to check up on this. I have some friends in Columbus, Ohio, all ardent Democrats, and they read this newsletter. Hey fellas, is Trump gonna take Ohio?
Of Human Bondage. I'm on page 23 of this great novel by Somerset Maugham. He is a plot-driven writer. That's how he can get away with poor sentences like "It was a week later."

A lot of writers would try to smooth that out. But Maugham doesn't. He has a story to tell, so he just wrote that it was a week later  -- why try to be stylish?

I read a volume of his short stories this winter. Then I read the Painted Veil which was made into a 2006 movie starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts.  Another good movie, The Razor's Edge, starred Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney in 1946, also based on a Maugham novel.

Next Book. Hannah Arendt is best known for her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Her point was that Eichmann was quite an ordinary man and still capable of great evil.

But she has written on philosophy as well, so I checked out her two-volume work titled Thinking.  It's about thinking. I do a lot of thinking so I decided to read it.

Here's one sentence: "Aristotle's De Anima is full of tantalizing hints at psychic phenomena and their close interconnection with the body in contrast with the relation or, rather, non-relation between body and mind."

I don't understand what Arendt is saying in this book. I have made it to page 44 and it just keeps going, getting thicker and denser. The thing is -- I trust her and I believe she is not wasting my time, so I'm sticking it out.

Next Book. The next book is Consilience by E.O. Wilson. Wilson is the famous ant doctor. He knows from ants. That is his life's work. Isn't that the coolest thing in the world -- to be a bug doctor? He writes with authority on the social life of ants and humans. He explains the path of evolution, and he is so much easier to understand than Hannah Arendt.

Next Book. The next book has a very long title but it is quite an easy book to understand. It is called the Theological-Political Treatise  written in 1670 by Baruch Spinoza, the Dutch-Jewish philosopher.

You need to understand Spinoza because he was the foundation of Enlightenment thinking. Spinoza was the man who inspired the very non-religious thinking of our Founding Fathers. From Spinoza you get Thomas Jefferson.

God is Nature. Nature is God. Moses did not part the Red Sea, that is just a story. Jesus was a wise teacher but he did not rise from the dead.

Spinoza's thinking was very radical for the time, 1670, but he was fortunate to live in Holland, which tolerated this free thinker.

"Men should never be superstitious."  --- That is the opening sentence in the Preface to this work.

Next and Last Book. President Andrew Jackson got Zinn-ified and downgraded off the $20 bill  (Zinnified is where you get found out. Howard Zinn finds out that you were a bum and a tyrant and no hero whatsoever.)

Another statue gets torn down and so the mighty have been humbled. But I know so little about Andrew Jackson. He won the Battle of New Orleans after the war was over, and he drove the Indians out of the Old Dixie and over to Oklahoma.

There's to more to it, so I must read his history. I found a heavy 500-page volume with his stern visage on the cover. This would not be a good book to take to the beach. But next to it was a sweet and slender volume titled A Being So Gentle: the Frontier Love Story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson.

This slim volume lies before me on the coffee table. It seems he had a wife.  I have not read it yet. It might be good.

With that I wish you a restful and pleasant weekend.

Spring Subscription Drive.  In a response to overwhelming demand, I have decided to keep Frog Hospital going for another year. I believe I have goods worthy of your reception. I do not write when the mood strikes me, I only write when I have something to say that you might find interesting.

This is quite a political year, so we will have lots of that.  And be ready for surprises. Can you learn? It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how experienced you are, it only matters if you can learn. Frog Hospital will be making many regrettable errors in the coming year -- because we are learning as we go.

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Fred Owens

1105 Veronica Springs RD

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

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