On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:02:02 +1000, Herodotus
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:04:01 +0700, wrote:



However, as a good Moslem you are allowed four wives. Of course, If I
remember correctly, you must treat each wife equally so if you built
another boat......


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

Bruce, Bruce, don't even suggest it. Another Englishman, Oscar Wilde
said that "The definition of bigamy is one wife too many; monogamy is
the same thing."

Sorry that you have missed out on reading any D H Lawrence. Surely you
must have heard of "Lady Chatterly's Lover', "Sons and Lovers" and
"Women in Love"? I know that I meet few Americans who have read any of
Hemmingway or Mark Twain apart from "Tom Sawyer", but I imagined that
you were of an earlier generation. A great American, Carnegie, gave a
lot of money to build libraries in places such as little N.Z. I used
to believe as a kid that therefore (kid logic) Americans were a very
well read people. This was reinforced when I was about 10 and somebody
bought me the 52 volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica - 'Great Books
of the Western World" - produced, not in the UK, but by the University
of Chicago. everything from Homer to Freud including Plato, Euripides,
Descartes, Shakespeare, Euclid and so on including my own Uncle
Herodotus after whom I named my boat. At 10 I believed that Americans
must be reading these. Pretty dumb huh!

cheers
Peter

Ah Peter, the last work iin morning after remarks, "I'd like to marry
you but I'd have to build a boat first...."

Probably in self defense, my mother introduced me to the public
library as soon as I could read. My Goodness, there was a lot of
information in that building and right on the way home from school --
if I took a bit of a detour. At one time I was the youngest person in
my home town to possess a "library card".

I guess I have read D.H. Lawrence, at least the more lurid parts of
Lady Chatterly. Really hard core stuff in my youth.

Hemingway, is good and bad. Most of the bull fighting books were great
on detail but dwelled, and dwelled, and dwelled, and dwelled on the
tension and fear building up before the matador enters the ring. I
found them tedious. On the other hand the old man and the sea, was, I
believe, one of the best books about small time commercial fishing
that has been written.

Mark Twain (which, by the way, is 12 feet) is a writer that I enjoy as
I do Kipling. Neither of them would be published in the present day of
"political correctness" which seems a puzzle as it is neither
political nor correct, but that is another story. I keep a copy of Kim
and re-read it at least once a year.

Most of my reading lately is trash. I work on the boat; I eat supper;
it's too early to go to bed; I read a book, the last thing I want to
do is read a good book because I've got to get up tomorrow and do it
all again, so I read trash. Science Fiction; Fantasy; Detective
stories, etc.

Well, given that you have a boy in high school it might have been
correct, when you were ten, that Americans read, but it certainly
isn't true now. I have no contact with the U.S. except for the
internet so can't say from experience but when I read some idiot's
remarks about something he saw on TV that is physically impossible it
really makes me wonder.

But then have political leaders who are old enough to remember the
last time we got ourselves into a situation where we didn' know how to
get out of it and did it again. Truly, Those who cannot learn from
history are doomed to repeat it.

Enough for this evening.


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)