Essay

THE MOST FUNCTIONAL ENGLISH WORD

/ Ken Finton / 4 Comments

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from Rose.Aspinall@ficombc.ca

Well, it’s shit. That’s right, shit!

Shit may just be the most functional word in the English language.  You can smoke shit, buy shit, sell shit, lose shit, find shit, forget shit,  and tell others to eat shit.
Some people know their shit, while others can’t tell the difference between shit and shineola.

There are lucky shits, dumb shits, and crazy shits.  There is bull shit, horse shit, and chicken shit. You can throw shit, sling shit, catch shit, shoot the shit, or duck when the shit hits the fan.

You can give a shit or serve shit on a shingle.

You can find yourself in deep shit or be happier than a pig in shit.

Some days are colder than shit, some days are hotter than shit, and some days are just plain shitty. Some music sounds like shit, things can look like shit, and there are times when you feel like shit.

You can have too much shit, not enough shit, the right shit, the wrong shit or a lot of weird shit. You can carry shit, have a mountain of shit, or find yourself up shit creek without a paddle. Sometimes everything you touch turns to shit and other times you fall in a bucket of shit and come out smelling like a rose.

When you stop to consider all the facts, it’s the basic building block of the English language. And remember, once you know your shit, you don’t need to know anything else!!

You could pass this along, if you give a shit; or not do so if you don’t give a shit!

 

 

 

Life Alert Necklaces and the Dinosaur

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by Lee Ann Bledsoe

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CAMERA FOCUSES in on an old woman sprawled on her living room floor.

“Help me! Help me!” she cries. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Camera zooms in to capture the woman’s tear-stained face. She looks needy and helpless as she grovels on the floor. For God’s sake, I think, put her down! Euthanazia. A club. Find a zombie. Anything to get the whining to stop!

CAMERA PANS the room and captures the terrified faces of two young children as they run to grandma’s side. “Grandma, grandma, are you okay?” the youngest one cries.

Grandma repeats: “Help me! Help, me! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” The kids already know she’s fallen; grandma’s on the fucking floor for God’s sake! Evidently the old woman wants her grandkids traumatized for life as well as terrified in this moment.

Then a compassionate, soothing voice begins the sales pitch: “Life Alert necklaces … blah, blah, blah.”

I absolutely DETEST commercials that prey on our fears to sell stuff. So can you imagine how pissed I am that I’m probably going to have to buy a device that advertises to the world I’m so old and feeble I need a team of experts to help me survive my next fall?

I fell tonight. Two of my great grandkids were with me: Chrissy is three and James Mervin is 18 months. I tripped over Fancy Puzzles, a cat who lives with me but belongs to someone else. (Fancy’s another story.) Anyway, Chrissie was terrified. She panicked and screamed, then cried for 30 minutes. I felt horrible for scaring her so badly. And I wasn’t even hurt.

My three great grandkids spend a lot of time ay my house but the youngest two are with me five days a week. I don’t mean to brag–or maybe I do–but I am the best great grandmother on the planet. What would happen if I had hurt myself? What would happen if I had a stroke? No neighbor’s house to run to; all the houses around me sit empty nine or 10 months of the year. My internet and phone (a landline) are out as much as on during the stormy season.

Maybe I should get another cell phone? I have seven or eight of the damn things now, sitting in the bottom drawer of my desk. My kids and grandkids keep buying them for me. I’m always grateful for the new device; absolutely thrilled to own a gadget that would allow everyone  in the world to reach me, anytime of the day or night, anywhere I might happen to be. I can’t imagine anything more intrusive. How do people stand it? Nevertheless, I thank the kids sweetly, play around with the latest phone until the battery dies, and then add it to my growing collection. But I might have to reconsider; can a three-year-old kid use a cell phone? Or should I order one of those Life Alert necklaces? At this point in my life, I’d rather fitted for Depends.

Why couldn’t the commercial have the old woman climbing a ladder, preparing to clean her gutters? I do that twice a year. She could fondle the necklace, look squarely into the camera and say in a strong voice: “This will come in handy if I fuck this up.”

I could buy into a commercial like that.

 

– See more at: https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/25339#sthash.86EPv6x9.dpuf

https://scriggler.com/Profile/lee_aronson_lee_ann_bledsoe

 

Lee Ann Bledsoe says: “I was a fairly successful professional writer 100 years ago working as a columnist for “The Oregonian” and “The Columbian,” writing humorous verse for several greeting card companies, and freelancing for “Alcoholism” and “Health” magazines. Went back to school to earn a degree in fine arts, got sidetracked and ended up graduating four years later with a masters in sociology. For the next three decades I worked in community mental health, specializing in the DMIO (“dangerously mentally ill offender”) population. Fun group. One of those guys took a real dislike to me in May of 2011, effectively ending my career and the bleeding heart phase of my life. I’m extremely grateful he didn’t end me, as well. Now I’m writing again. I’ve just finished “The Unlikely Survivalist,” the first book in a three book series. Other than that, I hate liver–even smothered in onions–love dogs, gardening without gloves, reading and writing.”

SPOTLIGHT ON LAWRENCE KESSENICH

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Wild Turkeys

by Lawrence Kessenich

I watch them from my office window

pecking at pebbles on the blacktop,

pink heads, iridescent feathers,

stick legs moving with surprising grace.

 

Living in the woods behind the office

park, they tolerate our diurnal presence,

unmoved by creatures four times their size

invading in steel and glass.

 

Ben Franklin preferred them for our national

symbol, and they act as if they deserve no less.

 

How different would our nation be if we

had chosen these gentle grazers—who

nonetheless defend their nests—over

a bird who scours the earth for prey?

 

American though they are, these turkeys have

no allegiance. They only need a patch of earth

to scratch, a place to raise their pink young. And,

come to think of it, do any of us need more?

 

“Wild Turkeys” by Lawrence Kessenich from Before Whose Glory. © Future Cycle Press, 2013. Reprinted with permission.  (buy now)

 

Communion

During Lent, season of discipline,

I drag myself early out of bed, ride

to Mass with Mom and Mrs. Crivello,

warm in the front seat between their

woolen coats, soothed by familiar perfume.

Headlights carve the ebony darkness.

The women talk in low tones

about people I don’t know, the thrum

of their voices reassuring. I doze

for seconds that seem like minutes.

In the half-acre lot, we park among

a small band of cars huddled near

the entrance of St. Monica’s. Inside,

stained glass windows, a feast of color

in daylight, are black. The church is barn-cold.

Candles burn, bells ring, prayers are murmured,

songs sung. The church warms slowly. I sit,

stand, kneel between the two women,

rituals washing over me like soft waves

on Lake Michigan in August.

Later, I carry the sacred mood

out on my route, dispensing papers

like Communion to my neighbors.

 

“Communion” by Lawrence Kessenich from Age of Wonders. © Big Table Publishing, 2016. Reprinted by permission.  (buy now)

 

 

Becoming Bostonian

 

I hear the music of seven languages

on a four-block stretch of Harvard Square,

see the copper glow of the Hancock

Tower at sunset, feel the familiar

bump of cobblestones under my feet.

Mark Twain said people in New York ask

“How much is he worth?” while Bostonians

ask “How much does he know?” That burning

desire to discover keeps the city humming,

yet we’re grounded in history, too,

still treading on sidewalks made of

baked clay. I stand

one night on Beacon Hill, gaze up at the

few stars city lights allow to shine,

feel myself stretched between past and future

the pull of the earth on which

our forefathers stood, the pull of the moon,

which they could not have dreamed their descendants

would visit. Or perhaps they did.

One historian reports that

“there were books on Beacon Hill while wolves

still howled from the summit.” Perhaps some

Englishman closed his book one night and stood

where I stand, dreaming of what we’ve become.

 

“Becoming Bostonian” by Lawrence Kessenich from Age of Wonders. © Big Table Publishing, 2016. Reprinted with permission.  (buy now)

 

https://thisibelieve.org/essay/441/

In My Father’s Tears

Lawrence Kessenich – Watertown, Massachusetts

As heard on The Bob Edwards Show, December 17, 2010

My father and I disagreed vehemently about politics and religion in the late 1960s. He was a World War II veteran and a colonel in the Wisconsin National Guard. I was a long-haired student at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, helping to organize antiwar demonstrations. He was a devout Catholic. I was an agnostic. My younger siblings remember all too vividly the violent arguments he and I would have. There was nowhere to hide from them in the small home where we lived. Once, my father ended up chasing me around the kitchen table, intent on hitting me for the first time in his life—and then he broke down crying.

The memory of those tears says more to me about who my father was than the memories of our arguments. He was a man who cared passionately—about the people he knew and loved, but also about people in need he didn’t know at all. He taught me to care with the same intensity. I never doubted that he loved me, even in those moments when I felt least understood by him. And his life spoke eloquently about how much he cared for the less fortunate. He and my mother always did charitable work—preparing and serving meals for homeless people at St. Ben’s parish in Milwaukee’s inner city, for example—but after my father retired, he took his social action to a new level.

He was admitted to a lay ministry program sponsored by the Milwaukee Archdiocese, a program that introduced him to contemporary theology and the history of Catholic social action. This was heady stuff for a man who had never gone to college—one of the greatest regrets of his life, by the way. Suddenly, my conservative father sounded like someone from Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker Movement of the 1930s. He became incensed about how unconcerned the wealthy people in his suburban parish were about the plight of the less fortunate. When he graduated from the program, he became the Social Programs Coordinator for his parish, and until he died at eighty-one, he was a thorn in the side of his fellow parishioners, continually exhorting them to give more to, and do more for, those in need.

It is in large part because of the example set by my father, Arthur Kessenich, that I believe I have a responsibility to give of myself—not just to those I know and love, but to those I would never know if I didn’t seek them out: the poor, the disabled, the imprisoned. It is because of my father’s example that I try to tithe, to give 10 percent of my income to charity; that I spend two hours a week assisting a blind man; that I help lead Alternatives to Violence workshops in prisons.

I don’t do it out of guilt or fear of damnation, but out of love. Because I saw love in action, in my father’s tears and in the way he lived his life. Because of him, I believe in love.

Lawrence Kessenich was formerly an editor at Houghton Mifflin, where he encouraged W. P. Kinsella to write Shoeless Joe, the basis for the movie “Field of Dreams.” Mr. Kessenich now makes his living as a marketing writer while spending his free time writing poetry, essays, short stories, plays, and novels. He lives in Watertown, Massachusetts.

 

Lawrence Kessenich Reading Poetry on Poet to Poet Writer to Writer with Doug Holder

 

 

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Lawrence Kessenich

 

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HOMEWRECKERS

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“They are tearing down my childhood home today,” he said, wishing instead he were already dead. “I should not watch. It is a sad thing to see,” he said, thinking softly of the past, wishing it could forever last.

images-1“I wish I could have done more to save it,” he mused, feeling the blues as it oozed from the news.

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“I ate watermelon at the kitchen table, sweet as summer’s breath,” he said, tasting the juice that his mind reproduced.

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“We had many a memory in that house,” he understated,

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watching as his reality was castrated.

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“I wonder it I was happier back then than now,” he exclaimed, unashamed that he had no fame. “Probably not,” he said to himself, knowing he had not mastered laughter in the face of disaster.

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“Some folk’s homes become museums,”he pondered as his thoughts wandered. “I was never that important,” he concluded, as he brooded.

 

 

 

SAYING WHAT YOU DAMN WELL PLEASE

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by Erica Verrillo               Feb 14, 2016:  5 minute read

Saul Bellow (June 10, 1915 — April 5, 2005) was one of our most famed American writers. He won the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts; and he is the only writer to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times.

In spite of all the accolades Bellow received during his lifetime (and after) Bellow thought of himself as a “working stiff.”

“Celebrity interferes with the business of writing,” he said. “But it gives you a certain amount of confidence. Before, I said anything I damn pleased, and I did it defiantly. Now, I say anything I damn please, but I do it with confidence.”

Bellow was not afraid to say what he pleased, ever. At a PEN conference, he stated (like Churchill) that democracy was the worst form of government, except for all the others. Predictably, he “had a fight on his hands.” But Bellow was not one to back down. And, as it turned out, neither was I.

Developing judgment

One of the hardest things to learn during the publishing process is judgment. Writing alone, in your garret, does not demand anything from you other than time and thought. But once your work is exposed to the world, critics emerge from the woodwork. Everyone has an opinion. If they like what you have written, you feel confident that you have done a good job. And if they don’t, doubts creep in. The question you face is whether those doubts are justified.

My editor at Random House had a great deal to say about everything I had written — every word, every sentence, every paragraph, every chapter (some of which she crossed out in their entirety). We did revision, after revision, after revision.

At the start, I assumed she was right, and I did everything she told me to do. I eliminated anything she might remotely find objectionable. But, by the end of that three-year period, I learned not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of eliminating, I simply tweaked. And, in some cases, I outright refused to make the modifications she suggested.

What had changed?

I had finally learned to “say what I damn well pleased.” I had learned to block out the advice that wasn’t consistent with what I wanted to say. And my work was all the better for it.

The last book in my series was the one in which I finally learned to stick to my guns. It was published just as I wrote it, and it got the best reviews of any of my books. Critics remarked that my writing had “really come along.” What they didn’t know was the writing had been the same in all three books. The difference was that by the time book number three came along, I had developed enough confidence to tell the difference between a good suggestion and a bad one.

The trick is to develop that confidence early — before you sacrifice your integrity.

Integrity

What constitutes integrity for a writer?

Your first loyalty is to your manuscript. You must tell your story as best you can, realizing its full potential. You must ignore the distractions of what people say will sell, or what you think readers may like. You are not a panderer, you are an artist. Your job is to interpret reality through language.

Your second loyalty is to your readers. You have offered to tell them a tale. So, do it. Don’t try to impress them with linguistic gymnastics. Don’t point a finger at yourself. “Look at me!” is for actors, not writers. (Yes, I am thinking of Cloud Atlas.) Your readers shouldn’t even know you are there. You are your story.

Your third loyalty is to yourself. Nothing is more frightening than writing fiction. It lays you bare. So, don’t lie. Don’t shy away from emotions that are difficult, and from scenes that leave you raw. Tell the truth as only you can tell it.

Here is some of what Saul Bellow had to say about writing. I guarantee Saul will help you on the road to saying what you damn well please.

“You must either like what you are doing very much, either like your characters or hate them, you can’t be indifferent.”

“Your own natural, original voice provides the engine for your writing.”

“The Bible says, ‘Woe unto you when all men speak well of you.’ That’s where the critics come in.”

“The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions. He does this by opening another world.”

“When you open a novel — and I mean of course the real thing — you enter into a state of intimacy with its writer. You hear a voice or, more significantly, an individual tone under the words. This tone you, the reader, will identify not so much by a name, the name of the author, as by a distinct and unique human quality. It seems to issue from the bosom, from a place beneath the breastbone. It is more musical than verbal, and it is the characteristic signature of a person, of a soul.”

“The most pleasurable moments in writing are when you are either laughing or weeping, and scribbling at the same time. That’s what one lives for in this trade.”

 

Erica Verrillo has published five books. She blogs about the publishing world, posts useful tips on how to get an agent, lists agents who are looking for clients as well as publishers accepting manuscripts directly from writers, explains how to market and promote your work, how to build your online platform, how to get reviews, how to self-publish, and how to keep your confidence on Publishing and Other Forms of Insanity.

This collection is sister to The Curious Cat Project (CCP), a website that connects writers from all over the world. Follow CCP on Facebook.

 

7094134Erica Verrillo was raised in Syracuse NY, the daughter of classical pianist, Violet Silverstein, and noted psychophysicist, Ronald T. Verrillo.  At age seventeen Ms.Verrillo moved to England, where she performed in the Oxford Symphony Orchestra. On her return to the U.S. she attended New England Conservatory. She finished her undergraduate education at Tufts, where she majored in History.

Erica's website is ericaverrillo.com. Her blog, Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity can be found 
at http://www.ericaverrillo.com as well.

 

Erica is also the writer of Stella’s Star Wish found here in Helios. https://heliosliterature.com/2014/11/13/stellas-star-wish/

ANDREW AND JAMIE WYTHE

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CHRISTINA'S WORLD

CHRISTINA’S WORLD (1948)

 

The woman crawling through the tawny grass was the artist’s neighbor in Maine, who, crippled by polio, “was limited physically but by no means spiritually.” Wyeth further explained, “The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless.” He recorded the arid landscape, rural house, and shacks with great detail, painting minute blades of grass, individual strands of hair, and nuances of light and shadow. In this style of painting, known as magic realism, everyday scenes are imbued with poetic mystery.

WYETH, ANDREW AND JAMIE IN THE STUDIO, DENVER, COLORADO

On View through February 7

Hamilton Building – Level 2
Ticketed with member discount.
For tickets, purchase online or call 720-913-0130.

The Denver Art Museum presents a groundbreaking exhibition exploring the art of Andrew Wyeth and his son Jamie. Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio is organized by the Denver Art Museum and will feature more than 100 works created in a variety of media, including pen and ink, graphite, charcoal, watercolor, dry brush, tempera, oil, and mixed media.

This exhibition explores the connection between two American artists who shared artistic habits of mind while maintaining their own unique artistic voices. Never before has an exhibition displayed Andrew Wyeth’s and Jamie Wyeth’s work on this scale and in the shared context of their autobiographies, studio practices, and imaginations.

Whether you are new to the work of Andrew and Jamie Wyeth or are familiar with it, this exhibition will allow you to see their art converge and diverge over the years. The common thread that runs through their works as well as the distinctive practices of each will be apparent.

An exhibition catalog, published by the Denver Art Museum in association with Yale University Press, is available in The Shops.

 

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THE BILL OF RIGHTS

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Madison on government

 

December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified by the newly formed representatives of the United States of America. Two of the original points never made it to the final version. The gifted mind of Gorge Mason was the inspiration for not only Jefferson’s opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, but served as the basis for James Madison’s Bill of Rights. Mason was the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights which served as a blueprint for drafting the Bill of Rights at the Constitutional Convention.

Some at the convention believed that the Constitution would not properly protect the people and would only agree to the new Constitution is a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee basic rights to the American people.

Here is the original version followed by the ratified version:

Transcript

“Congress of the United States.

In the House of Representatives. Monday, August 24, 1789.

            Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses deeming it necessary, that the following articles be proposed to the several states, as amendments to the constitution of the United States; all, or any of which articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said legislatures, to be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the constitution.

Articles in addition to, and amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress and ratified by the legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the 5th article of the original constitution.

            Article I.   After the first enumeration required by the first article of the constitution, there shall be one representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred representatives, nor less than one representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred representative [sic] [the usual “nor less than one representative” is omitted either by mistake or for brevity’s sake] for every fifty thousand persons.

[First Amendment in the second draft: not ratified.]

            Art. 2.   No law varying the compensation to the members of Congress shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

[Second Amendment in the second draft: modified version ratified May 7, 1992 as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.]

            Art. 3.   Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall the rights of conscience be infringed.

[Part of Third Amendment in the second draft: modified version ratified as part of the First Amendment]

            Art, 4.   The freedom of speech, and of the press, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble and consult for their common good, and to apply to the government for redress of grievances, shall not be infringed.

[Part of Third Amendment in the second draft: modified version ratified as part of the First Amendment]

Art. 5.   A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.

[Modified version is Fourth Amendment in the second draft: modified version ratified as the Second Amendment]

Art. 6.   No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner prescribed by law.

[Fifth Amendment in the second draft: modified version ratified as the Third Amendment]

            Art. 7.   The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but [partly trimmed: upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and par-] ticularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

[Sixth Amendment in the second draft: modified version ratified as the Fourth Amendment]

Art. 8.   No person shall be subject, except in a case of impeachment, to more than one trial or one punishment for the same offence, nor shall be compelled in any criminal case, to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

[Part of Seventh Amendment in the second draft: modified version ratified as part of the Fifth Amendment]

Art. 9.   In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favour, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.

[Modified version is Eighth Amendment in the second draft: modified version ratified as part of the Sixth Amendment]

            Art. 10.   The trial of all crimes (except in cases of impeachment, and in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service in time of war or public danger) shall be by an impartial jury of the vicinage, with the requisite of unanimity for conviction; the right of challenge and other accustomed requisites; and no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment by a grand jury; but if a crime be committed in a place in the possession of an enemy, or in which an insurrection may prevail, the indictment and trial may by law be authorized in some other place within the same state.

[Modified version part of Seventh and Eighth Amendments in the second draft: modified version ratified as parts of the Fifth and Sixth Amendment]

            Art. 11.   No appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States shall be allowed, where the value in controversy shall not amount to one thousand dollars; nor shall any fact triable by a jury according to the course of common law, be otherwise re-examinable, than according to the rules of common law.

[Modified version is Ninth Amendment in the second draft; modified version ratified as part of the Seventh Amendment.]

Art. 12.   In suits at common law, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.

[Modified version part of Ninth Amendment in the second draft; ratified as the Seventh Amendment]

            Art. 13.   Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

[Tenth Amendment in the second draft: ratified as the Eighth Amendment]

            Art. 14.   No state shall infringe the right of trial by jury in criminal cases, nor the rights of conscience, nor the freedom of speech, or of the press.

[Dropped in the second draft. Modified version passed by Congress on June 13, 1866; ratified July 9, 1868 as part of the fourteenth Amendment]

            Art. 15.   The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

[Eleventh Amendment in the second draft: ratified as the Ninth Amendment]

            Art. 16.   The powers delegated by the constitution to the government of the United States, shall be exercised as therein appropriated, so that the legislative shall never exercise the powers vested in the executive or judicial; nor the executive the powers vested in the legislative or judicial; nor the judicial the powers vested in the legislative or executive.

[Dropped in the second draft.]

            Art. 17.   The powers not delegated by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively.

[Modified version is Twelfth Amendment in second draft: ratified as the Tenth Amendment]

            Ordered, that the Clerk of this house do carry to the senate a fair and engrossed copy of the said proposed articles of amendment, and desire their concurrence.

                                                                        Extract from the Journals,

                                                                               John Beckley, Clerk.”

 

THE BILL OF RIGHTS 

FULL REVISED TEXT

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

S.C. Hickman's avatarThe Dark Forest: Literature, Philosophy, and Digital Arts

darwin_s_greenhouse_by_amandabates-d5ixp7e

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as…

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The Universe from Nothing

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Scientific GOD Journal | November 2015 | Volume 6 | Issue 10 | pp. 655-657 Pal, H. S., The Problem with the Universe from Nothing (Part II) 

ISSN: 2153-831X Scientific GOD Journal Published by Scientific GOD, Inc. http://www.SciGOD.com

The Problem with the Universe from Nothing (Part II)

500px-Wormhole_travel_as_envisioned_by_Les_Bossinas_for_NASA

Himangsu S. Pal*

* Correspondence: Himangsu S. Pal. E-Mail: sekharpal1946@rediffmail.com

ABSTRACT 

Scientists have shown how the total matter-energy content of the universe has always remained zero. If the universe appeared out of nothing, initially there was no space, time, matter and energy. However, we are not satisfied with this explanation and want to know how the total space-time content of the universe has always remained zero. Otherwise, scientists will have to explain as to whence appeared the extra residual space-time that was not already there at the beginning.

Key Words: Universe, nothing, substance, space, time, energy, matter, gravity.

When scientists say that the universe can simply come out of nothing without any divine intervention, they think of the universe in terms of its energy content only. In the book ‘The Grand Design’, page 281, scientist Stephen Hawking has written that bodies like stars or black holes cannot just appear out of nothing, but a whole universe can.1 The message is very clear from this: The total energy of a whole universe is zero and that is why it can come out of nothing; but stars or black holes will fail to do so, because their total energy is not zero. But universe means not only its energy; universe means its space-time as well. So if we now apply the same logic to space-time as well, then we can say that the total space-time of a whole universe must also always have to be zero, because in that case only a whole universe can appear out of nothing. Here my question is: How does the total space-time of an ever-expanding universe always remain zero?

As the universe appeared out of nothing, so initially there was no space, time, matter and energy. Scientists have successfully shown how the total matter-energy content of the universe has always remained zero. But we are not satisfied with that explanation, we want something more. We also want to know how the total space-time content of the universe has always remained zero. And it should always remain zero if the universe has actually appeared out of nothing. Otherwise scientists will have to explain as to whence appeared the extra residual space-time that was not already there at the beginning.

If stars or black holes cannot appear out of nothing simply because their total energy is not zero, then can a whole universe appear out of nothing if its total space-time is not zero?

The last question above will further boil down to this one: Do the physicists think that energy cannot just appear out of nothing, but space-time can, supposing that the total space-time of the present universe is not zero? Scientific GOD Journal | November 2015 | Volume 6 | Issue 10 | pp. 655-657 Pal, H. S., The Problem with the Universe from Nothing (Part II) 

ISSN: 2153-831X Scientific GOD Journal Published by Scientific GOD, Inc. http://www.SciGOD.com

656

Or, do they think that like life, mind and consciousness, space and time are also emergent entities only, and therefore, not directly coming from big bang nothing?

Something can appear out of nothing provided that the totality of that something always remains zero. Actually anything can come out of nothing if this condition is fulfilled. This is the principle which some scientists have relied upon when they have proposed that our universe could have arisen out of nothing due to a quantum energy fluctuation in a void. They have found that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The total energy being zero, the total matter will also be zero due to matter-energy equivalence. If the total matter as well as the total energy of the universe is zero, then why should they have to come from anything at all? They could have come from nothing as well. So these scientists have proposed that our universe has simply appeared out of nothing. But when they have proposed this theory, they remained totally oblivious of the fact that universe means not only its matter and energy, universe means its space-time as well. So, if the universe has actually appeared out of nothing, then just like matter and energy, space-time also has appeared out of that primordial nothing. So like matter and energy, the total space-time also should always remain zero.

However, if it is the case that space-time has not directly appeared out of nothing, then the total space-time need not have to be zero. No sane person on this earth will ever say that the total number of human beings in this universe must always have to be zero, because no sane person believes that human beings have directly appeared out of nothing. However if ‘x’ has directly appeared out of nothing, then logic and common sense dictates that the totality of that ‘x’ must always have to be zero.

Here it may be objected that there is a law of conservation of matter and energy in science, but that there is no such conservation law for space-time. So there is no violation of conservation law if nothing generates so much of space-time. Even if it is conceded that this is a valid objection – here I must say that I do not think so – it can still be pointed out that there is one more reason that can be given as to why the total space-time of the universe should always remain zero. This reason we find in Einstein’s general theory of relativity. As per GTR space, time and matter are so interlinked that there cannot be any space-time without matter. Similarly there cannot be any matter without space-time. If there cannot be any space and time without matter, then the total matter of the universe being zero, the total space-time of the universe should also always be zero. So we can say that GTR alone gives us sufficient reason to conclude that if the total matter of the universe always remains zero, then the total space-time of the universe should also always remain zero. Here the question becomes quite irrelevant as to whether the universe has originated from something, or from nothing.

So from GTR we come to know that the total space-time of an ever-expanding universe should always remain zero, but we do not know yet how it does actually remain zero.

If science cannot give any satisfactory answer to this question, then the naturalistic world-view of modern science will prove to be inadequate for explaining the real world. Scientific GOD Journal | November 2015 | Volume 6 | Issue 10 | pp. 655-657 Pal, H. S., The Problem with the Universe from Nothing (Part II) 

ISSN: 2153-831X Scientific GOD Journal Published by Scientific GOD, Inc. http://www.SciGOD.com

657

Reference 

1. S. Hawking & L. Mlodinow (2012), The Grand Design, pg. 281 (Bantam Books: New York).