Deck Us All With Boston Charlie

There are a few of us boomer that recall the joy of getting the newspaper, after Dad finished reading it. My first stop was the funnies. Although I never caught on to the humor in Mary Worth. But I digress. Every year until 1973 I could always find my favorite Christmas song in those pages. So I now present it for you. You all know the tune, but you may not remember the correct lyrics. So sing-a-long with me: 1-2-3 and...

Merry Christmas

Remember Christ Our Savior was born this Christmas Day

Katonti

In Genesis 32: 9-11 we read:

And Jacob said, "O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O LORD who said to me, 'Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,' I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.

We all know the story about Jacob deceiving his father and stealing the blessing and birthright that was due to the first born son, his brother Esau. He was sent from the home by his father Isaac and mother Rebecca. His mother knew that Esau was plotting to kill Jacob.

Two decades later Jacob is a man of wealth and possessions. He has wives and servants, land and cattle. He is living in peace and comfort. God now calls him to return to the home of his youth. Jacob is frightened by God’s command. What would Esau do to him? Jacob obeys God’s command and begins the journey.

He has a strategy. We read that as he approached the land of his youth, he divided his people into two camps. If Esau attacked one camp, the others would survive. He also decided to impress his brother and divide his herds and flocks and send them “drove by drove” with a space between each drove. By doing this his brother would be impressed with the wealth and acquisitions of Jacob.

During the eve of crossing the Jordan rive Jacob speaks with God. We read this in the above verses. Jacob says “I am not worthy…” The Hebrew word is Katonti and literally means “I am small” or as some translate, “I have become unworthy because of the grace you have done for me.”

I feel the same way. God has done so much for me. I am not wealthy by any means. However I look back at my days and am amazed that I have managed to have such a blessed childhood, I met and married a wonderful woman, a woman of God. I have raised two wonderful daughters and now have four incredible grandchildren. I have embarked on my third career at the age of 50.

My parents were wonderful and giving people that instilled in me a sense of caring and nurturing. I was fortunate to devote my life at an early age to God through His Son Jesus. I have met and befriended so many wonderful people and learned so much. I have not had formal Biblical education, but through my love of reading and study I have been blessed. I have been given the gift of music. I have had the oportunity to study and find solace in playing guitar. Which is a wonderful way to decompress from life's issues.

In looking back I am amazed that I have come this far and know that I have not accomplished this through my own attempts. God has been there and been faithful in His Grace.


I feel that I am small.

Katonti.

Veritas - Alexander Solzenitsy speech to Harvard Class 1978

Text of Address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises

Thursday, June 8, 1978

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today's graduates.

Harvard's motto is "Veritas."

Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.

Three years ago in the United States I said certain things which at that time appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said...

A World Split Apart

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces.

The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom -- in this case, our Earth -- divided against itself cannot stand.

Contemporary Worlds

There is the concept of the Third World: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see.

Any ancient deeply rooted autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this category China, India, the Muslim world and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as compact units.

For one thousand years Russia has belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its autonomous character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in communist captivity. It may be that in the past years Japan has increasingly become a distant part of the West, I am no judge here; but as to Israel, for instance, it seems to me that it stands apart from the Western world in that its state system is fundamentally linked to religion.

How short a time ago, relatively, the small new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered peoples' approach to life. On the face of it, it was an overwhelming success, there were no geographic frontiers to it. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden in the twentieth century came the discovery of its fragility and friability. We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious, and this in turn points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests. Relations with the former colonial world now have turned into their opposite and the Western world often goes to extremes of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West, and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns will be sufficient for the West to foot the bill.

Convergence

But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick.

The real picture of our planet's development is quite different.
Anguish about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity; neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too, and this is hardly desirable.

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, examining the overall pattern of the world's rifts I would have concentrated on the East's calamities. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the West in our days, such as I see them.

A Decline in Courage [. . .]

may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations.

Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

Well-Being

When the modern Western States were created, the following principle was proclaimed: governments are meant to serve man, and man lives to be free to pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration).

Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the morally inferior sense which has come into being during those same decades. In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings.

Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development. The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leading them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment.

So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one's precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in a distant country?

Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.

Legalistic Life

Western society has given itself the organization best suited to its purposes, based, I would say, on the letter of the law. The limits of human rights and righteousness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting and manipulating law, even though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert.

Any conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the supreme solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint, a willingness to renounce such legal rights, sacrifice and selfless risk: it would sound simply absurd.

One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames. An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.

I have spent all my life under a communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society.

Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.

The Direction of Freedom

In today's Western society, the inequality has been revealed of freedom for good deeds and freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself; from the very beginning, dozens of traps will be set out for him. Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restrictions imposed by democracy.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and, in fact, it has been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases.

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society. (There is a huge number of prisoners in our camps which are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state resorting to means outside of a legal framework).

The Direction of the Press

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East where the press is rigorously unified: one gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment and there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

A Fashion in Thinking

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life.

There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.

I have mentioned a few trends of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world. The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a review, to look into the influence of these Western characteristics on important aspects on [the] nation's life, such as elementary education, advanced education in [?...]

Socialism

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world a way to successful economic development, even though in the past years it has been strongly disturbed by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. A number of such critics turn to socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it.

The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the United States.

Not a Model

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life's complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being.

Therefore if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

Shortsightedness

Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: we cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism's well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. Practical or occasional considerations of any kind will inevitably be swept away by strategy. After a certain level of the problem has been reached, legalistic thinking induces paralysis; it prevents one from seeing the size and meaning of events.

In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe because of it, the West has difficulties in understanding reality such as it is. There have been naive predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union's Vietnam or that Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special U.S. courtesy to Cuba. Kennan's advice to his own country -- to begin unilateral disarmament -- belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the Moscow Old Square [1] officials laugh at your political wizards! As to Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours.

However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?

I have had occasion already to say that in the 20th century democracy has not won any major war without help and protection from a powerful continental ally whose philosophy and ideology it did not question.

In World War II against Hitler, instead of winning that war with its own forces, which would certainly have been sufficient, Western democracy grew and cultivated another enemy who would prove worse and more powerful yet, as Hitler never had so many resources and so many people, nor did he offer any attractive ideas, or have such a large number of supporters in the West -- a potential fifth column -- as the Soviet Union. At present, some Western voices already have spoken of obtaining protection from a third power against aggression in the next world conflict, if there is one; in this case the shield would be China. But I would not wish such an outcome to any country in the world. First of all, it is again a doomed alliance with Evil; also, it would grant the United States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion people would turn around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall prey to a genocide similar to the one perpetrated in Cambodia in our days.

Loss of Willpower

And yet -- no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line where enslaved members of Helsinki Watchgroups are sacrificing their lives.

Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost, there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

Humanism and Its Consequences

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years.

Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer.

In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.

An Unexpected Kinship

As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation at first by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say in 1844 that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement turned out not to be entirely senseless.

One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorship; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. (This is typical of the Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century and of Marxism).

Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic.

Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism and socialism could never resist communism. The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

Before the Turn

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.
To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey.

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.
Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward.

Notes
[1] The Old Square in Moscow (Staraya Ploshchad') is the place where the [headquarters] of the Central Committee of the CPSU are located; it is the real name of what in the West is conventionally referred to as "the Kremlin."
Source: Texts of Famous Speeches at Harvard
Re-formatted in HTML by The Augustine Club at Columbia University, 1997
augustine@columbia.edu

President Kennedy - Inaugural Address

John F Kennedy - Inaugural Address

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You

Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy
January 20th 1961

Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens, we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom - symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning - signifying renewal, as well as change.

For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe - the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage - and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge - and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do - for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom - and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge - to convert our good words into good deeds - in a new alliance for progress - to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers.

Let all our neighbours know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house. To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support - to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective - to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak - and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course - both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.

So let us begin anew - remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us. Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms - and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce. Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah - to "undo the heavy burdens -. and to let the oppressed go free."
And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty.


The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe. Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are - but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation" - a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shank from this responsibility - I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

Obama's Words and Opinions

Does it matter who is elected President? Here is an excellent article. The Obama political machine scolds John McCain for voting 97% of the time for issues that President Bush wanted passed. After reading this article I must agree that anyone who respects the life that God has given them would have voted 97% or more with President Bush's initiatives.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/elections/consequences.htm


The Born Alive Infant Protection Act was first introduced in the Illinois legislature in 2001 after nurse Jill Stanek revealed that babies born alive in Christ Hospital in botched abortion procedures were left to die, unattended by medical personnel. Read the following to learn Barak Obama's actions regarding the bill. Remember he is a Senator from Illinois.

http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3989&Itemid=48

Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr., understood how the right to life is fundamental. “I and my deceased children are victims of abortion,” she has said. “The Roe v. Wade decision has adversely affected the lives of my entire family. I pray often for deliverance from the pain caused by my decision to abort my baby.”

This article includes quotes from Barak Obama such as: “Whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a child, a 9-month old child that was delivered to term,” he said. “That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.” I respectfully say to the Honorable Senator from Illinois, "So what's your point?"
http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/14928

Barak Obama is taking up the mantle from Ted Kennedy for Universal Health Care, unless of course you are a "pre-viable fetus" or perhaps disabled to the point of being totally incapacitated. We are so over whelmed by issues of the day. News comes at us quickly and then we forget since we have new problems with which to deal.



Do you recall Terri Schiavo? Her family wanted her to be maintained within a nursing home until she died a natural death. Her husband wanted her dead as after suffering a stroke, cardiac and respiratory arrest she became severely brain damaged and was unable to do anything but breath. Her feeding tube was removed and liquids withheld. She died 14 days later of starvation and dehydration.


This article contains Barak Obama's response to the Schiavo Bill when it came before the US Senate. In my humble opinion it hints at how unprepared he was as a junior Senator.
http://spectator.org/archives/2008/02/29/no-obama-care-for-terri-schiav

Think of the consequences before you vote.

hexakosioihexekontahex

In the midst of the war he offered us peace. He came like a lover from out of the east. With the face of an angel and the heart of a beast, his intentions were six sixty six.

He walked up to the temple with gold in his hand. He bought off the priests and propositioned the land. And the world was his harlot and lay in the sand, while the band played six sixty six.


We served at his table and slept on the floor, but he starved us and beat us and nailed us to the door. Well, I'm ready to die, I can't take any more and I'm sick of his lies and his tricks.

He told us he loved us, that was a lie, there was blood in his pockets and death in his eyes. Well my number is up, and I'm ready to die, if the band will play six. If the band will play six sixty. If the band will play six sixty six.

Get out and vote.

For more years than I can recall academia state the Bible is great literature, but come on! It's a work of myths and legends that only a fool would believe.

Like one of my favorite hymns says, "Farther along we'll know all about it, farther along we'll understand why."

There have been so many important and exciting archeological finds recently and with each discovery we come a little closer to discovering perhaps the Bible, The Torah, The Tenach is historically correct. Perhaps the judgement of academia is somewhat hasty.

By Carolynne Wheeler and Gil Rone in Jerusalem

The tiny shard was unearthed at the site where the Bible says the shepherd boy David killed the giant Goliath.

It is said to feature the oldest-ever Hebrew inscription, predating the famous Dead Sea Scrolls by at least 850 years.

Researchers have not yet been able to decipher the full text of its five lines but they have translated the words for "king", "judge", and "slave," suggesting it was written by a trained scribe in the king's court.

The lead archaeologist says the shard and the fortress-city in which it was uncovered are rare evidence of the biblical kingdom of David.

In Christian and Jewish tradition David became a great king of the Jews and founder of Jerusalem.

The experts said the latest finds suggested the area was home to a powerful civilisation rather than a small tribe of little importance.

"This is the revolutionary aspect in our excavations," Yosef Garfinkel, the lead archaeologist in the case and a professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, told the Daily Telegraph. "It is the first time in Israel that you have a fortified city from the kingdom of David. This has never been found before."

The pottery shard, with its five lines of inscription in a proto-Canaanite script that is a predecessor of Hebrew, was found during the excavation of the Elah fortress at Khirbet Qeiyafa, just south of Jerusalem.

The fortress is thought to have been a checkpoint guarding a main route between the Israelites and territory controlled by the Philistines. About 600 square metres (718 square yards) have been excavated, revealing the remains of a 10.5-metre-high (11.5 yards) gate and a city wall about 700 metres (765 yards) long.

The pottery shard has been dated to as early as 975 BC, based on burned olive pits found nearby that have been carbon-dated at Oxford University.

Professor Garfinkel said the discovery of the fortress, close to the large Philistine capital of Gath, suggests the Biblical tale of David and Goliath was in fact a metaphor for frequent battles between people of the Elah fortress and the neighbouring Philistines.

The text is written in ink on a pottery shard. It is made up of five lines of text in Proto-Canaanite characters separated by lines. The discovery, by archaeologists Prof. Yossi Garfinkel and Sa'ar Ganor of Hebrew University, is being hailed as one of the most important finds in Israel since the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Carbon-14 dates to King David. The writing predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by about 1,000 years.The writing on the shard seems to be a letter sent from one person to another and archaeologists have still not deciphered it completely.

Preliminary analysis shows that it contains the words "king" (melech), "judge" (shofet), and "eved" (slave), but the terms seem to be parts of names, as in "Achimelech" or "Evedel" (lit. "King's brother," "Servant of God").

Carbon-14 dating as well as chemical analysis of the pottery found at the site shows conclusively that it dates from between 1,000 and 975 B.C. – the time of King David's reign. David – who wrote the Psalms, unified the tribes of Israel and made Jerusalem the capital of the Israeli nation – is considered to be Israel's greatest King, whose reign ushered in the period in which the First Temple was built.

The writing therefore predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by about 1,000 years.

Suit against God thrown out over lack of address

I thought this story was blog-worthy. It addresses a several of what I refer to as Marc's Natural Laws.

1. Ignorance is bliss and there are an overabundance of very happy people

2. It's a darn shame someone left the cage door open.

3. Darwin may have been right, as some men behave like apes while others behave as asses.

So I have gleaned this from the Associated Press. Formulate your own opinion.

By NATE JENKINS
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator's lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn't properly served due to his unlisted home address. State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God.


He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."


Chambers has said he filed the lawsuit to make the point that everyone should have access to the courts regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

On Tuesday, however, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward.

"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Polk wrote.

Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, thinks he's found a hole in the judge's ruling.


"The court itself acknowledges the existence of God," Chambers said Wednesday.

"A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God's omniscience."
Therefore, Chambers said, "Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit."

Chambers has 30 days to decide whether to appeal. He said he hasn't decided yet.
Chambers, who has served a record 38 years in the Nebraska Legislature, is not returning next year because of term limits.

He skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/youare

Truth Is Truth

My wife and I spent yesterday at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

It would probably take a couple of days to really take in all the sights there. When they open some new exhibits it may take longer.



The first corridor is a collection of ancient Egyptian, Roman, Greecian and Asian objects.

My wife pointed out that each of these cultures had art works that depicted the afterlife. Each of these cultures depicted Angels with wings and demons.

Truth is truth.

As we went upstairs this was also depicted in the paintings, frescoes and statuary.



There was a large bronze statue of the Temptation of Eve that was hauntingly beautiful and at the same time the look of terror in her face that the artist captured was frightening. We discovered that even more frightening was wherever you stood the eyes of Eve looked at you.


Other cultures have similar tales of creation. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I don't really care if the story of Adamas is historically truthful or mythical.

But I will agree that Truth is truth.


The same thing holds true about The Flood.

This story is part of many cultures. And is known in the Epic of Gilgamesh as well as Genesis/Bereshit

Truth is truth.




In the Eastern section there was a collection of Hindu art. I wish I was able to take a picture of a small statue of the Hindi god Shiva Nataraj. He is known to Hindus as the Lord of The Dance.



Here all along I thought The Lord of the Dance was an Irish thing with Michael Flatley.




Anyway this four armed god is dancing on a little dwarf looking guy.


The sign next to the statue states the little guy is the god of ignorance.




It struck me funny that the god of ignorance was holding up his right hand with his middle finger extended.

I cannot count the number of ignorant folks that have given me this same salute.



Truth is truth.

Spiritual Revolution Day - Saturday March 6th, 1971

This was an auspicious day in Cincinnati. So many blessing happened on this day in Cincinnati.

This was the start of the Jesus Movement.



The Cincinnati Jesus Paper - Volume One - Issue One - by the Christian Information Committee



Standing on "New" Fountain Square - Do you recall the Albee Theater? It was where the Westin Hotel now stands.



Praying in the center of Fountain Square.



Rapping about Jesus. This was long before rapping meant obscene poetry punctuated by extremely loud repetitive percussive bass music.

On Playing Guitar

My first musical performance was in Miss German's second grade class when I played Somewhere Over The Rainbow on a Melodica. I moved on to play the clarinet in the fourth grade.

In the spring of 1963 I got my first guitar. It was a circa 1940's Harmony Patrician that had a bowed neck and the strings were at least an inch above the neck at the 12th fret. It was strung with Black Diamond Strings which came in one heavy duty size that was sure to induce bleeding of the fingers. Along with the guitar I got a pitch pipe and an extra set of strings. All for $20 from Wills Pawn Shop.

About a year later my Dad bought me a 1957 Fender Stratocaster for $150 and an amplifier from the local Western Auto store.

I traded the ancient Stratocaster two years later for a shiny new Gibson Trini Lopez Standard, which I still have.

I also saved up and bought a 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb which I also sold. I wish I still had it.

However I am more than satisfied with the instruments I currently own.

I think many of folks my age go through a period where they would like to get some of the things they could not afford when they were younger. Guitarists refer to this as G.A.S. or Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. I've been there and found it is less than satisfying. There are several magazines devoted to all the nice old guitars floating around that are currently priced beyond reason.

In fact that $150 1957 Stratocaster that I traded in 1967 is possibly worth around $20,000 in today's market, especially since it came with the original tweed case.

Instrument manufacturers have taken note of this and now produce affordable reproductions of older instruments. They also produce top of the line custom made instruments for wealthy musicians (which is somewhat of a misnomer).


Aside from learning more and more about playing the guitar, I have also learned how to adjust my guitars to respond to my touch.

One of my favorite guitars is a pieced together Stratocaster that I have assembled from parts. The body is from a Japanese stratocaster copy. The neck is from a 1980's American Stratocaster and has a roller nut. The tuning keys are Gotoh locking keys and the pickups, pickguard and electronics are manufactured by the Carvin company using 3 AP11 Carvin pickups with the center pickup wound in reverse to cut down on 60 cycle hum. The neat thing about the electronics is a switch that turns on the bridge pickup so I can use all 3 pickups at once or the neck and bridge pickup. This is not possible on a conventional Fender Stratocaster.

The other guitars that I own, aside from the Trini Lopez, are fairly low end but they are very playable.


I seldom use my 1974 Ovation Classical Electric Model 1613.




Likewise I seldom take out my 1971 Giannini 12 string Craviola.








I have a 1966 Hagstrom HII-B1/F400 bass that seldom gets played.





I also have an unidentifiable mid 1960's guitar that hasn't been out of the case in years. I modified that one with a preamp and some phase switches for the pickups.







I picked up an Epiphone Special II that is sort of a Les Paul thing for $75 at a music show auction. I put a string bender on that guitar. I don't particularly like it because the pickups are overwound and are made for distortion. At least it plays well.




When I turned 40 I got a guitar made for Willis Music Company by Samick. Willis used the brand name Yakima on this line of instruments, but I was assured from the staff at Willis it was manufactured by Samick in Korea. The guitar has lots of inlay on the neck and both sides of the slotted headstock. The top of the neck is carved. The top is solid spruce, but the back and sides are laminated. It doesn't sound bad, but it's definitely not going to compete with a solid wood guitar. It was discounted because of a blemish on the side.

My other six string acoustic is called a Seagull Grand. This is a parlor sized guitar with a regular sized neck that joins at the 14th fret. The top is solid Candian cedar. The back and sides are triple laminated Canadian cherry that run in oposite directions. The headstock is tiny. I've ground the tusq saddle down as low as I could. It is my favorite sitting on the porch/picking guitar. The sound is not loud, but it is very musical. Like some of my other instruments, it has a blemish in the top. There is a small crack in the wood grain that is not all the way through. It could be repaired, but it doesn't bother me.

I have another parlor guitar that dates back to the late 1800's which is made by a company called Harwood, From a city in New York state that bears the same name. The guitar's top is made from ancient spruce and the back and sides are rosewood. It needs to be repaired, so I seldom play it. The tuners are ancient and appear to be hand forged. The ivory buttons are disintergrating. The neck is V shaped. I imagine this is to eliminate warp. I don't know what wood was used for the neck. I imagine it is mahogany. The slotted headstock is squared off in Martin fashion. The back of the headstock has a strap button and the Harwood logo branded into the wood. The logo is also branded inside the guitar at the butt of the neck.

My other guitar that gets the most play is a DeArmond M-72 model that I purchased in 2004 during a close out. I really like this guitar. It wasn't what I ordered. I ordered a red guitar and the company sent out a grey guitar. But it grew on me. It has two DeArmond Goldtone pickups a tune-o-matic style bridge with a stop tail piece. The top of the guitar is flat and made from flamed maple, the back is mahogany and is chambered to cut down on weight. The neck is mahogany with Grover tuners. The single cutaway is rounded in Venetian style.


As far as amplifiers I have an old Yamaha G50-112 that is a solid state amplifier manufactured in the mid 1970's. It's in excellent shape. It has a 4 band parametric eq and a wonderful spring reverb.


A few years ago I purchased a Pignose G40-V. I do not like the internal 10 inch speaker at all as it is harsh and too bright. However when I hook it to a 12 inch woofer it brings out the warmth of the tubes.

My favorite amp is my mid 1970's Fender Vibrochamp. Fender makes the best amps in the world in my opinion.

The Vibrochamp is so simple and the sound is so musical despite the little 8" speaker. I hook the Piggy and the Vibrochamp to a Zoom pedal for reverb, delay and tremolo. It's funny I like the tremolo from the pedal better than the internal tremolo on the Vibrochamp.


If I could just get one of those Talent pedals to connect my guitars to I'd be all set.