Category Archives: …and other stuff

miscellaneous postings by Lawrence R. Spencer

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, MOVING PICTURES, PICTURE POEMS, POETIC NONSENSE, SOUNDS, UNIVERSES

REMEMBERING

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Here is another astonishing video of a 3 year-old piano virtuoso! This is one more PROOF that reincarnation is a FACT, in spite of the “stupor-stition” and lies of religion and psychology that demands that you “believe” that we are ONLY biological bodies who “evolved” on Earth! In the United States this child would be “diagnosed” as “hyper-active” and FORCED to take Ritalin or Prozac, or some other form of psychiatric mind-poison designed to KILL the vitality, intelligence, energy and ability of this being!

It is obvious that it is IMPOSSIBLE for any 3 year old child to play the piano like this. So, we must ask ourselves: where and when and on which planet did this Immortal Spiritual Being develop this level of technical and artistic expertise? In order to do this, we must REMEMBER WHO WE REALLY ARE!

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, INSIDE THE BOOK, LIVES, READING MATTER

CHARLES DICKENS AND WHY I LOVE AUDIO BOOKS

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This is my recent review of the audio book David Copperfield, written by Charles Dickens and performed by Mr. Simon Vance:

“Charles Dickens defines the English language in application to the environs and inhabitants of his contemporary life with perfect eloquence and poignant emotion. David Copperfield, the novel, describes and embodies England and the English language at the pinnacle of its cultural power in the mid 1800s.

The narrative performance of this audio book by Mr. Simon Vance, of the myriad characterizations of persons and scenarios described or diverse diatribes of conversation conducted therein, cannot have been exceeded by the most eloquent thespian on any Shakespearean stage! Bravo, Bravo, Bravo Sir!

If you consider yourself a proponent of the English language this audio book is essential to sustaining your use of it and of expanding your appreciation of it mastery.

The delimitation of “rating” this book to “5 Stars” is a desecration of the monument and memory of Charles Dickens which shines eternally in The Heavens of Literature.”

You can download a copy of this book FREE HERE:

https://www.audible.com/pd/Classics/David-Copperfield-Audiobook/B002V8LEW2

from Wikipedia:

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.[1] His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.[2][3]

Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors’ prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens’s literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.[4][5] The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience’s reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback.[5] For example, when his wife’s chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features.[6] His plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.[7] Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha’pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.[8]

Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age.[9] His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.[10]

...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, FREE ADVICE, LOUD ZOO, READING MATTER

MURDERED AT THE POLLS: EDGAR ALLAN POE

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

poe pollsIf you think elections in the US are crazy now, read the true story of the death of the Edgar Allan Poe,  father of the modern “horror” novel:

“…it was raining in Baltimore on October 3, 1849, but that didn’t stop Joseph W. Walker, a compositor for the Baltimore Sun, from heading out to Gunner’s Hall, a public house bustling with activity. It was Election Day, and Gunner’s Hall served as a pop-up polling location for the 4th Ward polls. When Walker arrived at Gunner’s Hall, he found a man, delirious and dressed in shabby second-hand clothes, lying in the gutter. The man was semi-conscious, and unable to move, but as Walker approached the him, he discovered something unexpected: the man was Edgar Allan Poe.

poe sanityOn September 27—almost a week earlier—Poe had left Richmond, Virginia bound for Philadelphia to edit a collection of poems for Mrs. St. Leon Loud, a minor figure in American poetry at the time. When Walker found Poe in delirious disarray outside of the polling place, it was the first anyone had heard or seen of the poet since his departure from Richmond. Poe never made it to Philadelphia to attend to his editing business. Nor did he ever make it back to New York, where he had been living, to escort his aunt back to Richmond for his impending wedding. Poe was never to leave Baltimore, where he launched his career in the early 19th- century, again—and in the four days between Walker finding Poe outside the public house and Poe’s death on October 7, he never regained enough consciousness to explain how he had come to be found, in soiled clothes not his own, incoherent on the streets. Instead, Poe spent his final days wavering between fits of delirium, gripped by visual hallucinations.

Poe fell victim to a practice known as cooping, a method of voter fraud practiced by gangs in the 19th century where an unsuspecting victim would be kidnapped, disguised and forced to vote for a specific candidate multiple times under multiple disguised identities. Voter fraud was extremely common in Baltimore around the mid 1800s, and the polling site where Walker found the disheveled Poe was a known place that coopers brought their victims. The fact that Poe was found delirious on election day, then, is no coincidence.poe love

Over the years, the cooping theory has come to be one of the more widely accepted explanations for Poe’s strange demeanor before his death. Before Prohibition, voters were given alcohol after voting as a sort of reward; had Poe been forced to vote multiple times in a cooping scheme, that might explain his semi-conscious, ragged state.

Around the late 1870s, Poe’s biographer J.H. Ingram received several letters that blamed Poe’s death on a cooping scheme. A letter from William Hand Browne, a member of the faculty at Johns Hopkins, explains that “the general belief here is, that Poe was seized by one of these gangs, (his death happening just at election-time; an election for sheriff took place on Oct. 4th), ‘cooped,’ stupefied with liquor, dragged out and voted, and then turned adrift to die.”

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Extracted from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/still-mysterious-death-edgar-allan-poe-180952936/#twWUf4BeoOSM924V.99