Two things have been in my proverbial crawl this week regarding the use the editorial pen to seemingly not acknowledge our own history. In fact, the two matters I am thinking of not only do not seem to acknowledge the history, but in fact seem bent on the rewrite of our history, in which the ugly parts of it are white-washed under the rug so to speak. The two issues, briefly are the newest version of Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which the n-word has been replaced or eliminated. And of course, the reading of our most revered constitution on the house floor, but with things that reference the 3/5 counting of slaves and even the repelled prohibition of liquor were left out.
I am still going back through the posts that have been made over the years here on Mephistos and editing, mostly for grammatical correction, though there are a few photograph and video issues that I am cleaning up in the process as well. A particular post that caught my attention a day or two back was entitled twenty-five random things. The post consisted of, you guessed it, twenty-five things – but not just any twenty-five things. They were random things about me. I like the concept and decided to re-visit the concept. Not sure how many I will have, but I will give it a go and see what we have in the end.
Heard a little snippet on the radio (NPR of course) on the way home about a lady who had written an article or perhaps it was a how to for a recipe. The content of her article appeared in a magazine by the name of Cook Source, giving her a full credit as the author. Trouble is, she had originally published the article on a website and had never granted any sort of rights to Cook Source to publish the work. When she called the publisher of the Cook Source magazine asking for simply an apology in print and a $130.00 donation to a writers scholarship fund (or something of the nature), the publisher said she should be grateful that they even bothered to put her name in the by line, as they got it from the web and everything on the web is in the public domain. I nearly choked and sure would have if I had anything in my mouth at the time.
Believe in ghosts was the question that my wife asked me just a few days ago while were making our somewhat usual walk around the park. I suspect the question came up because it was an usually cold and dreary day, very late well past dark with the cloud clover and just felt like more a late October then early October. I think my quick and very definite answer of “No” took her by surprise just a little bit. But perhaps my follow up answer to the question of spirits existing being a yes then seemed contradictory. A bit of an explanation on my personal believes in the matter of spirits, ghosts and energies then ensued. As the conversation was somewhat interesting and I thought of a few clarifications that may have been missed in the previous conversation, I thought I would share it here on Mephistos.
Some belated thoughts on the ongoing controversy concerning the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero. Note my refusal to say on/in Ground Zero, as it is not even in that location. The absurdity of somethings being made an issue just amazes me at times.
