With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
October 25, 2009 - 6:30 p.m.
I seem to have lost track of when I updated. I should have written this in the morning. Oh well, I'll just have to make up for lost time.
When I woke up yesterday I wasn't sure if I'd be able to go out, my stomach was still not right. I could hear and feel the food making its way through the constriction so I ate breakfast. When that didn't make me feel worse I decided to go out. Where did I go? I went to my Rotisserie Baseball League's party yesterday. How many parties have I been to this year? An awful lot for someone that doesn't go to parties.
This wasn't just any league party, it was our 20th. When we started the Patriot League back in 1989 I don't think any of us thought we'd still be in playing in it 20 years later. I say we but I was a total outsider when it started. The league was founded by a group of childhood friends who recruited some people that worked at ISO with Jim, the league's commissioner. One of those ISO employees was Marc, who I had couched on the first actuarial exam. He asked me to be his partner. I was the one furthest from the core of the league. I didn't know anyone but Marc and I didn't even know Marc that well. It brought Marc and me together and over the years I grew closer to everyone else. Over the years some people have dropped out and new people brought in. Of the 13 original owners (there were 12 teams but Marc and I were partners) seven remain; Marc, Joe B, Ira, Joe F, Angelo, Nick and myself. Marc and I are now longer partners; each have our own teams. Two of the current teams are owned by my friends; one by Larry and Diana and the other by Chris. I might not have known everyone since childhood but I've known everyone long enough that I'm no longer an outsider.
You might have noticed that Jim, the original commissioner is no longer in the league. He and his wife Jackie came to the party as special guests. Not only that but they brought a video of the first party which watched with rapt attention. Every single one of us had less hair, in length if not in coverage than when we started including the women (wives of owners). I have less even if you count my beard. There was a lot less of me overall. I've lost weight since then. Funny thing. Looking at the tape everyone seems to have aged just about 20 years. There were all these young men at the first party. What happened to them? I don't remember growing older, when did they?
We don't act that different than we did then. We still talk about geeky TV and movies. We had a heated discussion on the merits of the original Astro Boy and the relative merits of Supercar and Fireball XL5. We still do the guy thing of making fun of each other. No matter what the calendar and our grey hairs might tell you we're still 14 years old and everything else is an illusion.
Funny thing, having fun at the party I forgot I was sick. I ate plenty with no discomfort. My intestines knew better than to interfere with a 20-year-old tradition.
When I left my house I wasn't sure how long I'd stay. I stayed just about the average. Never let anyone tell you that I'm sick. I have issues but I keep how much it interferes with my life to a minimum.
Today I'm taking it easy. I really would have loved to go up to Yonkers for the festival there that so many of my friends are playing in. But I couldn't get myself up and out of the house to make the drive. It's Sunday and I stayed home and listened to John Platt, Car Talk and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and read the Sunday Times. Those are great pleasures too.
I started reading Xenophon and still haven't decided which edition to read. Here are the pros and cons of each of them.
The translators are W.H.D Rouse and Robin Waterfield. I know Rouse from his prose translation of the Iliad and Odyssey, the first one I read. I never heard of Waterfield and saw that he's a freelance writer, not a Greek scholar. I have a feeling that neither translation is the best available.
Rouse uses the Greek spellings of the name which I theoretically like but have trouble getting used to. I know Cyrus, not Cyros. He translates units of measure into English equivalents. That's good, I know what a league is not a parasang. Waterfield uses the ancient units. Waterfield uses the greek military terms such as hoplites. Rouse calls them men-at-arms. I studied ancient Greek history and I'm familiar with the Greek terms so prefer them. I know exactly what a hoplite is and how he is armored. When I hear Men-at-arms I picture someone from the middle ages. Rouse has notes where they belong at the foot of the page, I have to go to the back for Waterfield's. It isn't that one is better than the other, it’s a matter of taste and I really can't decide which I prefer. I think I'm going to end up with Waterfield because it's a paperback and easier to carry on my commute. I'm going to go back and forth for a while and see if one of the translations stands out as superior.
One thing. I was totally wrong about where the book takes place. I thought he went into Scythia. The "ten thousand" traveled from Sardis now western Turkey to the Persian Gulf coast of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) traveling along the Eurphrates and returned up the Tigris to the Eastern Black Sea. Here's the map. 
Before I move on to Xenophon I want to write a bit more about Catcher in the Rye. One thing that really struck me is that everything I had always heard about the book is wrong. I always heard it was about Holden puncturing hypocrites. It really isn't. He thinks that's what he's doing but that's just his mental illness. To me the whole point of the book is that he projects his phoniness on everyone else. He's a compulsive liar. He isn't straight with anyone he talks to. He always has a hidden agenda. He attacks a classmate when discussing his relationship with him but then defends him and says how great he is when another classmate attacks him. He just feels the need to be contrary to everyone. That isn't puncturing hypocrites; that's suffering a breakdown.
I felt reluctant to write that. I felt that I'm not an expert on this; who am I to naysay everyone. That's ridiculous. I read the book that makes me as much of an expert on its content as anyone. I never hesitated to say that the general impression people have of It's a Wonderful Life is wrong. Seeing it scores of times didn't let me see the film noir elements of it. People have the wrong impression because they base it not on the film but on other people's perception of the book. Why shouldn't the same thing happen with Catcher in the Rye? I'm interested, does anyone that remembers the book well disagree with my take on it? Let me know.
Lift Up Your Hands - October 29, 2009
57 Varieties - October 28, 2009
All Sales Are Final - October 27, 2009
Take Your Time - October 27, 2009
There is such a thing as too much chocolate - October 26, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile October 25, 2009
