Torture is NEVER Justified

You've heard the arguments some people are making to justify the use of torture. They make the hypothetical case of something like a bomb placed in a school or hospital or some other place where innocent people or children will be killed unless the suspected bomber tells where the bomb is. They feel this justifies torture of this one person if it will save the lives of the many more people in the school or hospital or other location. So. Torture is justified in their minds because of the relative numbers. Well and good, except that allowing torture to be performed by authority means it will be used, never doubt it. And the fact is, the number of people tortured will vastly outnumber the wholly hypothetical number of imaginary 'victims' whom the torturers feel they are protecting. The surest thing about authority is that it will be misused and abused. Does anyone really think that they can be sure that torture will be justly and carefully used? Can't people ever learn from the past? Cruel and unusual punishment is forbidden to us by the constitution of our country, the MAKEUP OF OUR COUNTRY, which is what constitution actually means. The men and women who were behind the structuring of our country, this United States of America, lived in a very different world than we who are their descendants. They lived in a world, and fought against tyrants, in wars and courageous arguments, that contained and used torture regularly and without much thought. Institutionalized torture and cruelty is BAD, it is truly EVIL, and it is deserved by NO ONE, FOR ANY REASON! Kill people in battle if they are fighting you, restrain them and judge them in OPEN COURTS, but never allow government or their servants to secretly spirit individuals away in the dark of night, and de-humanize and degrade them in your name. And not in MY name! I would rather see a school full of children blown up, than have none of us safe from such acts as are performed in places like Guantanamo, or the secret prisons that President Bush, that immoral fool has 'authorized'. He doesn't have MY permission to do such things in my name, and no one should cravenly seek the 'protection' that creatures such as he offer. What has happened to americans, that they are so afraid that they have lost their minds, and their morals, in this way? Remember the brave men and women of our past, who knew that no life is completely safe, but that the greatest protection for all exists when all of us do what is right to our fellow man, and nothing excuses torture, NOTHING! All of us will die, it is the nature of living things. It is how we live, and the way we treat those around us that is of prime importance. That is what makes us human, that is what gives us worth.

Death and the Fear of Death

The reason coins have two sides and not three is because the universe presents us with a lot of twos. Two hands, two eyes, two feet, two nostrils, two ears, I could go on and on...and I will. Until, of course, the day, or night, that I no longer live among you. The time will come when I am no longer available for others to speak with, or at least if they do speak with me, the conversation will be one-sided. I will be, as they say, dead. The dead do not fear death. They spend a lot of time being dead as well. They will continue with that rather dull occupation until the universe of matter and energy runs out of steam, and everything else. The best way to die is peacefully. I have seen this happen many times, to other people of course, but from what I can tell they don't seem to mind dying any more than they seem to mind being dead afterwards. So WHY is it such a big deal. WHY do we fear death so much? WHY do we avoid thinking about it, while at the same time spending most of our living moments avoiding it with all our powers. We must arrive at the answer to this question while we are alive, because answers we arrive at after death are pretty much useless. As are we. Except perhaps as fertilizer. Some Roman poet put it this way, "Dead, we are the lumber of the world." So true. And he also pointed out that death was no more than "the utmost limit of a gasp of breath." So true again. I love poets, and their poetry. Cogito, ergo sum. Well, perhaps. At least sum gives us something to cogito about. If you are still with me, understand the comfort that arises from dying is as great as, or even greater than, the discomfort of living in fear of it. The sensible person lives and loves it, but realizes that it's a temporary condition, and that's all there is to it. A life spent preparing for another life is a life misspent, but the result is the same to the person when they die, because there is no result. The value of life is in the living, and the loving you do while alive. I think the ancient Beatles said that. So, live, love, and die peacefully my friend. And by the way, on the theme of twos, listen to this poem by my favorite poet. She is extremely spiritual and I do not doubt that she believes in the gods in some way, but there is much more in the poem that follows, which is from her dying mother to Edith...

The Two Tides
To E.M.

CHILD,I beheld thee, one night, swept in by the Tide
on this known shore of Being;
Naked thou wert, and unfain to be here, and thine eyes
were averse to all seeing;
Bitter and small was thy first uttered cry, and filled with
unnamed desolation--
Thou, so encompassed by Love and by Joy in their mar-
veling proud salutation!

Child, in thy turn, thou shalt see me, rapt by the refluent
tide swiftly flowing;
All sound shall be stopped from these lips save only the
last sigh of breath in outgoing;
The face thou shalt watch will grow strange, the word
thou wouldst hear--it shall not be spoken!
Then shalt thou sweep the dim seas for a beacon, and
storm the locked heavens for token!

O child, in that hour of the Ebb, left alone on the ignorant
shore, crying, "Whither?"
I charge thee, Remember, naught didst though know of the
Tide that once brought thee hither,
Loath to thine heritage--thou, the darling of Life, whom
the banquet invited;
So much, and no more dost thou know, what awaiteth the
outbound pilgrim benighted,
What sovereignty royal--what dream beatific fulfilled in
Youth's restoration--
What galaxy crowding in welcome--what guest-rites--
what marveling proud salutation!

One Fine Afternoon

One of my favorite writers is a man who was named Charles Williams. He wrote a series of books which are sometimes called 'mystical thrillers.' I suppose that is as good a description as any. The first one I happened upon I found down in the underground tunnels of an old hospital on one of the islands of Boston Harbor called Long Island, and the hospital Long Island Chronic Disease Hospital. It has since been closed by the city after a long and fascinating existence. But this blog post is about Charles Williams. People donated books to the hospital for the patients, and they were kept on shelves down in the tunnels. One night on my break, around three in the morning, I picked up a book with the cover torn off and read about two pages. I was hooked. The writing was incredible in its complexity and instant fascination. The title was 'The Greater Trumps' and it was about a deck of cards which happened to be the original tarot cards, imbued with great powers but incomplete without a magical table upon which danced tiny golden figurines. The gypsies had concealed the secret of the table, and carried it about with them in search of the original tarots for centuries. I won't go more deeply into the plot in case you should like to read it.
Charles Williams wrote several of these novels. Many of them, in fact most, were more closely concerned with the theology of the Anglican Church of England, but none of them are in the least 'preachy'. You would think that as an atheist I would be put off by this, but I am not. The spiritual side of mankind is often abused by charlatans, but I do not deny it exists. I just deny that the gods do. Don't worry about it, I'll go over it in other posts. Anyway, back to the afternoon I am about to describe. One book which Charles Williams wrote, but which he did not manage to finish due to his early death, was to be called the Figure of Arthur. Anyone who has read the works of C.S.Lewis titled Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength would feel at home reading this work. In fact C.S.Lewis was a close friend of Charles Williams. One Fine Afternoon Charles Williams read this chapter, or fragment, to two close friends as they sat with him in his rooms at Oxford College in England. Picture the scene from this quote from the introduction written to the book 'Arthurian Torso' by C.S.Lewis which he wrote at the request of Charles Williams' publisher, There was a third figure present in the scene to follow, whose name you will surely recognize, and who was also a close friend of Charles Williams...
-------'The first two chapters had been read aloud by the author(Charles Williams) to Professor Tolkien and myself. It may help the reader to imagine the scene; or at least it is to me both great pleasure and great pain to recall. Picture to yourself, then, an upstairs sitting-room with windows looking north into the 'grove' of Magdalen College on a sunshiny Monday Morning in vacation at about ten o'clock. The Professor and I, both on the chesterfield,lit our pipes and stretched out our legs. Williams in the arm-chair opposite to us threw his cigarette into the grate, took up a pile of the extremely small, loose sheets on which he habitually wrote--they came, I think, from a twopenny pad for memoranda-and began as follows:---the book follows, and I recommend it and all of Charles Williams' works.

I found this book just recently, and just thought I would share this otherwise forgotten moment with you. Two of the people in that room are well known today from the movies, something they could scarcely have imagined. Lewis for the Chronicles of Narnia, and Tolkien for the Lord of the Rings. I hope you are moved to look for the works of Charles Williams. Search for him(put eerdmans in the search box for publisher to get the correct charles williams) on http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchEntry?the most amazing used book source on earth. By the way, a chesterfield is a kind of couch for those americans who might be confused by the term.

Dogs and Why They Live With Us

Anyone who lives with a dog, or, heaven help them, with more than one, knows that their life is no longer their own. So think about this. For around twenty thousand years or so, dogs have lived with human kind. Think about what we mean by the phrase, 'a dog's life.' Of course, dogs don't have it all their own way. In some cultures they are seen as a food source as well as companions, the American indigenous peoples put them to work pulling things, dogs in Europe gave this up some time ago. Dogs in the USA have given up working for a living almost entirely. They make great companions though,but they continue to shape human society by their very presence. I long ago lost track of how many times I have opened and shut the back door for my buddy Miguel. I would add some more thoughts, but I have go let the dog in...

Edith M. Thomas- forgotten poet

Just a word about edith, my favorite nineteenth century girlfriend. I am relatively sure that you have never heard of her, or read any of her works. Before they cut me off, I used to check out her books from the Brookline Public Library. In almost every case, the last time the books had been checked out was in 1927. Edith died in 1925, after a long and productive life as a poet. During her lifetime she was very well known, but as she was relatively without connections or wealth, she faded quickly from the conciousness of the american public after her death. I came across her by accident, using the power of serendipity, and in a strange way, fell in love with her. I have collected most of her published volumes, and you can read her works in the old Century Magazine if you search her name in the Cornell University online project called the Making of America. The collection of old magazines and journals there could occupy you for days, it does me, and you will get a great first hand impression of what our country was like before the horrible twentieth century took place. Her gentle and sad poetry is an echo of that earlier time. Edith Mathilda Thomas was born in Chatham Township, Ohio, in 1854. Among other things, this made her a seven year old girl at the beginning of the Civil War, just to give you a grip on her time line. Let me quote you one of her most beautiful poems, written in the memory of the garden created by her beloved mother, who raised her alone after her father died when she was just a girl. This is one of the few poems by her which you will find online.

FROST TONIGHT BY EDITH M. THOMAS

APPLE-GREEN west and an orange bar,
And the crystal eye of a lone, one star...
And, "Child, take the shears and cut what you will.
Frost to-night--so clear and dead-still."

Then, I sally forth, half sad, half proud,
And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd,
The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied,
The dahlias that reign by the garden-side.

The dahlias that I might not touch till tonight!
A gleam of the shears in the fading light,
And I gathered them all,--the splendid throng,
And in one great sheaf I bore them along.

In my garden of Life with its all-late flowers,
I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours:
"Frost to-night--so clear and dead-still..."
Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill.

Hope you love her as I do. I'll post more of her in days to come. So that she will not be forgotten. Bye for now.

To Begin With...

My name, given to me at birth by my parents, is Paul Calvin Maybury Jr. From this you may conclude that I was named after my father, so in reality, it was picked by my grandfather back in 1920. He was an admirer of President Calvin Coolidge, although he never told me why. Calvin actually means bald, and Paul means small, so Paul Calvin is entirely appropriate as a name for any small bald person, which most babies are. To continue the mini tradition, I named my own son, in 1982, as Paul Calvin Maybury III. He is living proof of many truisms, such as 'third time's the charm', or 'if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.', and so on. His success has dragged me on to the first page of google searches for Paul Maybury, and I unashamedly link my page to his. I did this originally to help out all the people trying to find him, but it has turned out that it just helps me to be found. Oh well, I have always loved serendipity, a word introduced to me by Miss Tedricks, my seventh grade Biology teacher.
My grandfather, Byron Harris Maybury, was a minister in the Church of the Nazarene, what you would have to call a fundamentalist. When I was in first grade I made a hit with him by informing him in my piping little voice that 'we all come from frogs.' this inspired him to give me the first of many tracts. This one was titled '50 Reasons that Evolution is Wrong.' I derived great pleasure over the years picking apart the 50 arguments, and it confirmed my belief in evolutionary theory at an early age.
My father was one of those distant kind of fathers. He was a chemist in the field of Physical Chemistry, and he gave me a lot of science toys for which I must thank him. I had a subscription to Things of Science, which was a little kit in a blue cardboard box which came once a month, filled with little things like magnets, prisms, surplus pieces of plastic, and other items which were accompanied with a little booklet of experiments which could be performed with them to demostrate different scientific principles. I loved them and probably learned more from them than anything I was given in school. For many years now I have been a subscriber to the weekly magazine called Science News, and I was surprised and pleased to learn a couple of years ago that Science Service, the publisher of this excellent magazine, also put out Things of Science. I highly recommend Science News to anyone with an interest in science, or anyone with children.
Well, that's a little about me, just posted to give you a reference for what might come later. I love to talk about science, philosophy, the past and the future of mankind. I hope having a blog will give me a chance to meet you, or at least exchange some views. Till then...