After Carter won the White House, he
paid a visit to the then-CIA Director, George Bush. Carter had an interest in
UFOs ever since experiencing his first sighting sometime in 1969 while standing
outside a Lion's Club in Georgia. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/page1.aspx
His campaign speeches promising to
unravel the government's long held cover-up was the "Parting of the Red
Sea" for Ufologists not only in America but around the world. Here was the
one guy who would open up the "Promised Land" and lead them into Full
Disclosure.
Carter wanted the U.S. Government's
UFO secret documents declassified. George Bush more or less told Carter that
the President of the United States did not have the need to know the
information contained in those documents. Can you even begin to imagine that?
What lends even more mind-blowing credibility to this alleged event between
Carter and Bush is the credibility of the allegation maker: Daniel Sheehan.
Daniel Sheehan was born in1946 and
graduated from Harvard Law School. There, he was co-founder of the Harvard
Civil Rights and Civil Liberty Law Review. He went on to work for the American
Civil Liberties Union and became general counsel for a host of entities
including The Disclosure Project-a group dedicated to getting the U.S.
Government to allow full and unfettered access to what the Feds know about the
UFO-Alien phenomenon.
According to Sheehan, Bush Senior, who
was the CIA Director, refused Carter's request for disclosure of the UFO
documents, even to the President of the United States, because it was generally
believed in the halls and corridors of the secret, black-ops government that
Carter would then turn the truth over to the American people.
Director of a California think tank,
Sheehan's credentials are impeccable. Sheehan's career is a litany of
high-profile cases like, "legal counsel team for the New York Times'
Pentagon Papers case, defense of the Berrigan brothers, going after the
Kerr-McGee nuclear plant (Karen Silkwood), Three-Mile Island, Iran-Contra. At
the Disclosure Conference, Sheehan says the Bush-Carter story was relayed to
him in 1977 by Marcia Smith of the Congressional Research Service, part of the
Library of Congress."
Sheehan's interest in this phenomenon
came about when Sheehan met Marcia Smith through a mutual acquaintance. Smith
told Sheehan that she was involved in a research project for the Science and
Technology Committee of the Library of Congress that would address the issues
of the potential existence of extraterrestrial intelligence and make an
evaluation of the data on the phenomena of UFOs. When Sheehan queried Smith as
to who exactly wanted this study done, her answer was none other than Jimmy
Carter.
This all was with a view to
investigate exactly what could or could not be turned over to the general
public, according to Daniel Sheehan.
Smith asked Sheehan if he could, since
he was the then-General Counsel to United States Jesuit Headquarters at their
National Office in Washington D.C., get access to the records on the UFO-Alien
issue contained in the Vatican. Though Sheehan made repeated attempts to gain
access to the Vatican's documents through official channels, he was refused
each time. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/
This makes one wonder just why, if all
there is to this UFO-Alien issue is weather balloons, flocks of geese, and
swamp gas, would the Vatican (or any government on the earth, for that matter)
have top-secret, and highly unattainable records pertaining to a nonexistent
issue?
After telling Marcia Smith of his
roadblock with the Vatican Library, she asked if he could help with a team that
was lobbying Congressional leader to reinstate funds for the SETI (Search For
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program. Sheehan indicated to Smith that he was
glad to help out. Smith also later asked him if he could help out with an
investigation into "the potential theological religious implications of
potential contact with extraterrestrial civilizations."
This again begs the question that if
there's nothing at all to this phenomenon, then why this study?
Sheehan agreed to Smith's request but
insisted he have access to the documents pertaining to this issue that she had
garnered for an investigation she did for the Science and Technology Committee
in Congress. When asked what exactly Sheehan wanted to see, he indicated he
wanted access to "the classified sections of the Project Blue Book."
Astoundingly, Daniel was granted
access.
He was not allowed to take notes,
photos, or carry anything into the room containing the documents or out with
him when he left the Library of Congress where the documents were stored. After
proceeding through multiple layers of security, he was shown to the room with
microfiche machines. Before entering, he was told he could not take his
briefcase with him. Almost absent-mindedly, he had a yellow legal pad under his
arm that wasn't confiscated before he entered the room. He proceeded through
small canisters of film. It didn't take long to find proof.
He discovered photos of what appeared
to be a disc-shaped craft. It had crashed.
"It had hit into this field and
had dug up, kind of plowed this kind of trough through this field. It was
wedged into the side of this bank. There was snow all around the picture. The
vehicle was wedged into the side of this mud-like embankment -- kind of up at
an angle."
The men taking photos were
unmistakably, in Sheehan's mind, American Air Force personnel.
As Sheehan continued to review the
film, he discovered a close-up of the craft that revealed symbols or glyphs
written on the craft. He thought it was an insignia. He wanted to record what
he saw, but remembered he was not allowed to take notes. He knew it was likely
his legal pad would be discovered when he left the room and the guards would
examine it to see if he had taken notes. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/
However, since he wanted those
insignias, he had to find a way to record them. He decided to arrange the
cardboard backing of his legal pad in such a way against the microfiche screen
so he could trace the symbols. When he left the top-secret document room, he
was searched. His pad was taken and flipped through for notes. Finding none,
and not noticing the traced symbols on the cardboard backing of the yellow pad,
it was returned to him by the guards and Sheehan left.
Sheehan not only revealed to Marcia
Smith what he had found but he also revealed the information to his boss at the
Jesuit National Headquarters. Meetings and conventions were convened on the
issue. Reports were written. President Carter saw at least one of the reports
made by Marcia Smith, which included information from Daniel Sheehan's
discoveries.
Sheehan still has the yellow notepad
with the symbols but says no analysis has been done on the symbols.
Oh, are you wondering about the
reports Marcia Smith finished after Daniel Sheehan's discovery and what they
said? Well, Sheehan read them and according to Sheehan:
"The one report that Marcia
showed me on extraterrestrial phenomena actually stated that it was the
conclusion of the Library of Congress, Science and Technology Division, that
from two to six, at least, other highly-intelligent, technologically-developed
civilizations exist right within our own galaxy." [sources]
"The second report," says
Sheehan, "they had drawings of different shapes of UFOs that have been
sighted," continued Sheehan. "They didn't site any particular cases,
but they said that they believed there was a significant number of instances
where the official United States Air Force investigations were unable to
discount the possibility that one or more of these vehicles was actually from
one of these extraterrestrial civilizations. They put this together, and sent
it over to the President. I ended up seeing a copy of it."
The Carter Administration, though not
bringing about Full Disclosure, had a very busy four years of UFO phenomena. I
can't help but wonder if he had had another term in office, what could have
come of all of this?
If there's a skill or process you want
to learn or know more about, chances are there's an online video for it. These
days you can find a video that will teach you to cook, survive college, build
your own headphones or even become a better kisser.
This week, I took a look at just a few
Web sites that make finding these videos easy, including Howcast Media Inc.'s
Howcast.com1, WonderHowTo.com2 from WonderHowTo Inc. and eHow Inc.'s eHow.com3.
Howcast.com, which launched in February, encourages users to make and share
good-quality, entertaining videos by providing tools on its site, and has about
5,000 videos so far. WonderHowTo.com, launched in January, used a different
strategy by aggregating over 110,000 videos from various sources -- including
Howcast, YouTube and Scripps Networks -- rather than publishing its own
content. EHow, a site that started in 1999 with text-only content, contains
over 100,000 instructional articles submitted by its users or eHow editors, and
has a small catalog of videos. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx
Howcast videos can be seen in
full-screen mode using a player that illustrates step-by-step text instructions
beside video screens.
After testing each of these sites, I
found that my favorite how-to videos had steps that were clearly labeled and
numbered and the ability to fast forward to or play back specific parts in the
video -- tools that Howcast included in almost all of its videos. At least some
of the videos on the three sites simply illustrate things you could likely
figure out how to do without watching a video, such as "How to Make Green
Beer." (Add food coloring.) Howcast.com and WonderHowTo both require users
to sign in, which confirms their date of birth, before looking at what they
consider "mature" content.
These three free sites are
advertisement-supported, and Howcast's ads run alongside videos.
WonderHowTo.com runs ads at the top and side of its own site, on which it will
play certain videos. But because videos on WonderHowTo come from other sources,
those other sites can show video-embedded ads according to their rules. EHow's
videos run pop-up text advertisements displaying names and links of other
related (and sometimes unrelated) Web sites. But I couldn't get the pop-up ads
to stay closed.
Overall, I preferred the look of
Howcast's site and its well-organized videos. But its content paled in
comparison to WonderHowTo's 110,000 videos and even eHow's 100,000
instructional articles. WonderHowTo.com does a nice job of gathering content
from across the Web, though the inconsistencies of other sites (including
advertisements, layout and video player) were a bit frustrating. EHow's
articles were useful, as were its few videos, but I couldn't get over the
site's unyielding video pop-up ads.
Howcast.com's content was informative
with an amusing edge, including a video titled "How to Tell If Your
Boyfriend's A Psycho."(If he calls 50 times a day, for example.) Other
videos on the site are more serious, like "How to Make Sushi" by an
executive sushi chef in New York City.
The founders of Howcast Media formerly
worked in Google's video department, including during the acquisition of
YouTube. All of Howcast's content comes from one of four sources: written and
produced by Howcast in its studios; emerging filmmakers who apply and are
accepted into the Howcast Directors Program to receive $50 a video and 50% of
the advertising revenue generated from videos that generate over 40,000 views
on the site; content partners like Popular Science; and Howcast users' personal
how-to videos.
In order to make it easier for average
users to upload better-looking videos, Howcast provides an Upload and Enhance
tool that simply and quickly adds professional-looking graphics and printable
steps to go along with how-to videos. This formula makes videos more enjoyable
to watch. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/
Videos made in the Howcast Studios
include accompanying music, good narratives and actors who add humor to an
otherwise humdrum how-to. Among its helpful features is a video player that has
smart blue markers to show where facts are sprinkled throughout the video and
green markers to illustrate where tips appear. For example, the fact at the end
of a video for beginner guitarists called "How to Play a Basic Bar
Chord" is "The late Kurt Cobain claimed he was trying to rip off the
Pixies when he wrote 'Smells Like Teen Spirit. '" In full-screen view, users
can zoom in on any part of a video, and written-out steps and thumbnail stills
of the scene appear to the right of the screen.
Howcast tries to run ads alongside
videos that relate to the content. A video titled "How To Clean Your Dog's
Teeth" has an ad for PetSmart Stores running on its page.
WonderHowTo.com was developed by a
former television executive with the intention of using the site to produce its
own video, like Howcast.com. Instead, WonderHowTo.com opted to tap the vast
selection of how-to videos already available on the Web.
A Browse button pulls down 35
categories from which users can sort content, including Spirituality, Dating
& Relationships and Fitness. In the Fashion subcategory under Beauty &
Style, I found 290 videos including one on "How to Tie a Windsor
Knot" and another titled "How to Turn Old Underpants Into a Bra"
-- neither of which I'll be using anytime soon. Other categories include Clip
of the Day, Recommendations (for users who are logged in) and Fresh, where new
videos are listed. Users can grade videos to help others tell which they think
are the best, and a Top Grade category compiles the top-ranked videos.
WonderHowTo's content comes from over
700 sites, according to the company. I used the site to find a video on YouTube
about how to do a front-flip, clips on VideoJug.com that provided terrific
tennis tips from a coach, and a video from EasyBarTricks.com about how to stick
a beer bottle to a wall without glue or gum. (Hint: You'll need a corner and a
wall you don't mind marking up.) WonderHowTo made it easier to find these
videos than by performing a general search on the Web.
I submitted a non-how-to video to this
site by simply entering a URL, without logging in. I never found the video I
submitted on the site; WonderHowTo explained that it screens all videos prior
to posting them, so it must have found my video.
EHow.com uses its database of articles
to encourage people to watch videos, when they're relevant. This site uses
calm, pastel colors to give a relaxed feeling -- especially compared with
WonderHowTo, where banner ads surround the page. EHow's 26 categories include
Parenting, Parties & Entertaining and Weddings. Twelve subcategories within
Weddings led to 23 articles about Bridal Party Responsibilities -- a popular
topic was "How To Deal With a Bridezilla." Related videos, such as
"How To Get Rid of Wedding Day Jitters," ran along the right of the
page. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/page1.aspx
Videos can also be found on eHow
within a marked tab at the top of the page. But unlike the articles on eHow,
these videos weren't well organized or as easily searchable. I watched one of
eHow's Featured Videos called "How to Know if Your Toe Is Broken," but
after closing a pop-up ad for UPS during Step One of the video, another ad
popped up during Step Five. Neither ad had anything to do with broken toes.
But the eHow videos were
professional-looking and included quite a few tips that I didn't know. That
broken toe video was submitted by the eHow Health Editor, and a link at the top
of the page led me to hundreds of other health-related articles. I found
another video on "How To Remove Wallpaper," which was posted by the
Home & Garden Editor and included a list of things I would need to proceed,
along with numbered steps.
It isn't always easy to learn from the
information you find online, and how-to videos can be a big help -- especially
when they're well-made and easy to find using one of these sites. Howcast.com
has well-presented content that was enjoyable to watch, but WonderHowTo.com
offers a better variety of instructional videos.
Kim Cattrall has played everything
from a Vulcan in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" to an
Egyptian princess in 1987's "Mannequin," but her big break didn't
come until 1997, when she was cast in HBO's "Sex and the City." Ms.
Cattrall's portrayal of Samantha Jones in the series earned her five Emmy
nominations and a Golden Globe award. This month, Ms. Cattrall, 51 years old,
reprises the role in the new movie, "Sex and the City." She says her
comic timing can be traced to her love of black-and-white screwball comedies.
"I'm inspired by actresses like Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe," she
says. "You can't teach what they do." She spoke with us about her
favorite romantic comedies.
'My Man Godfrey,' 1936
In this comedy, Carole Lombard plays a
daffy socialite who discovers a vagrant (William Powell) in the city dump and
hires him as her butler. Before long, she is in love with him. "Carole
Lombard is so glamorous," says Ms. Cattrall. "Every day she wakes up
looking fabulous and somebody brings her breakfast. I haven't had breakfast in
bed recently enough."
'His Girl Friday,' 1940
Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell star
in Howard Hawks's remake of the 1931 newsroom comedy "The Front
Page." Ms. Russell's character, Hildy Johnson, originally was written for
a man. "She looked like a little guy, the way she would sit on the
desk," Ms. Cattrall says of the performance.
'Sullivan's Travels,' 1941
Preston Sturges wrote and directed
this film about a privileged Hollywood director, played by Joel McCrea, who
decides the only way he can understand the poor is to pretend to be one of
them. "Joel McCrea was such an underrated actor," says Ms. Cattrall.
"I could watch that movie over and over just for his delivery."
'I Married a Witch,' 1942
René Clair directed this film about a
witch who is burned in 17th-century Salem and returns in the guise of a
20th-century woman (Veronica Lake), only to fall in love with a descendant of
the man who killed her. "It's supposed to be a comedy about love between a
witch and a mortal, but really it's about accepting people as they are,"
says Ms. Cattrall. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/
'Woman of the Year,' 1942
Katharine Hepburn was nominated for an
Oscar for her portrayal of a self-absorbed newspaper columnist who falls in
love with Spencer Tracy's rumpled sportswriter. "My favorite scene is when
Spencer Tracy comes to the office to ask her to marry him," Ms. Cattrall
says. "The timing on that is impeccable."
Every winter, hordes of divers head to
the congested, overdeveloped scuba-diving destinations of the Caribbean and the
Red Sea. But there's a less-traversed option: Fly to Moscow, take the railroad
27 hours north, and drive two hours along snow-covered dirt roads to a village
almost on the Arctic Circle, along an inlet of the White Sea. Then, take a
snowmobile to a small black triangle cut into the ice.
Ice diving is one of the last great
scuba adventures. WSJ's Mark Schoofs ice dives in the White Sea in Northern
Russia and gives a peek into an underwater world full of sea creatures.
Ice diving is one of the last grand
scuba adventures. Popular destinations include Antarctica, Newfoundland and
certain lakes in the Austrian Alps. One of the best -- and least known -- is
Russia's White Sea.
There, diaphanous, rainbow-tinged comb
jellies (like jellyfish without the tentacles) float by. On rocks lie starfish
and related brittle stars of every description. There are ophiuras, whose thin,
spidery legs are striped wine-red and cream-white, and there are glittering,
ruby-red crossasters with stubby legs, each tipped with delicate, filament
tentacles. Luxuriant forests of large round anemones, each one ivory or
pink-orange, look like some 1960s hallucinogenic art installation. Among them
live multicolored sponges and algae, colonies of barnacles and tiny
neon-lavender skeleton crabs. Wolf fish hide in crevasses. On the sea bed
billow acres of low-growing kelp, whose undulation is as mesmerizing as a Bach
fugue.
Above it all is the ice, almost alive,
filtering sunlight into varying shades of emerald and gold. When one finally
ascends back up through the ice hole, or maina, one literally ascends into
light.
Marine life in the White Sea is so
rich partly because cold water holds more oxygen than warm water, and in
winter, the water is below freezing, about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. That means
divers need gear -- lots of it. A dry suit, unlike the more common wet suit, is
mandatory. With a zipper derived from a NASA design, and a seal on the neck, it
keeps the body perfectly dry.
On my recent seven-day diving trip
here with a Russian company, I wore three layers under a dry suit: a union suit
made of polypropylene to wick away sweat, thick fleece long johns, and an even
thicker Thinsulate-insulated undergarment that looks like a snowsuit. I wore
two pairs of socks and Thinsulate booties, plus chemical toe warmers that react
with air to generate heat. I used them on my hands, too, where I wore three
layers of gloves under rubber outer gloves.
My head was in two neoprene hoods, a
thin one underneath a thick one that tucked into a collar to protect my neck. A
mask covered the skin around my nose and eyes. Only my lips, which held the
mouthpiece connecting me to the air supply, were exposed directly to the cold
water. Lips have such good blood flow that they don't go numb but merely tingle
upon entry. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/page1.aspx
Donning all this gear, plus fins,
tank, and the lead weights that help a diver sink, takes about half an hour. We
suited up in mobile huts on skis, where gas heaters made me feel like a mummy
working out in a sauna. Slipping into the cold water was a relief.
How to Get There: Aeroflot flies to Moscow
nonstop from Los Angeles for around $900. Delta flies nonstop from New York for
around $1,000.Then it's a flight to Murmansk, or a train ride to Chupa.
Book a Trip: Peak ice-diving season is
February to April. In summer, there's no ice, but the scenery and 24-hour
daylight are draws. RuDive starts taking reservations a year in advance
(www.dive.ru/pages/page/show_lang/25.en.htm2). Early booking is advised,
especially for groups. Standard tours go from Sunday to Friday. Custom trips
can last longer or, as some Russians and Finns prefer, for a weekend.
Price: A week of ice-diving at the
White Sea with RuDive -- including lessons, a room with private bath and train
travel to and from Moscow -- is about $1,750 per person.
But the cold harbors danger. Valves
can freeze, either blasting a diver with free-flowing air or shutting off the
air supply altogether. Every air tank for ice diving has two valves, not the
standard one for warm-water diving, and the mouthpiece valve has a
freeze-resistant design. Even so, I encountered an emergency. I wore a vest
that inflated and deflated to control buoyancy, and a valve on it froze open,
ballooning the vest and sending me straight up. I was pinned against the ice,
unable to swim freely, with the air in my tank rapidly flowing out. The safety
of the terrestrial world was less than a foot away but walled off by
impenetrable ice.
This is the second danger of ice
diving: To ascend to the surface, one must return to the ice hole. Out of air
and wearing close to 100 pounds of gear, even 25 yards underwater can be a
long, even lethal distance. Each diver is secured to a rope connected to two
other people: a buddy in the water and a tender on the surface. My buddy saw my
trouble and gave the emergency signal: Four yanks of the rope, and our tender
hauled us in. We skated along the ice's underside, a sensation so fun and
beautiful that I forgot the danger. Up on top, our tender doused the valve with
hot water from a thermos, and we resumed our dive.
Living so intimately with ice, one
realizes it is anything but static. A brilliant sun shone during the first two
days. But then a heavy snow fell, and when we went to the maina, the water
seemed to have risen, forming a puddle on the ice. The weight of the snow had
pushed the ice down, forcing water up through the hole. On another day, we were
diving when a storm roared in. Our guides, concerned that large waves on the
open sea would create surges capable of cracking the ice, decided we would
leave.
Even without storms, the tides rise
and fall more than six feet, so the ice at the shore continually cracks,
refreezes and cracks again. Underneath, the constant friction sculpts the ice
into breathtaking forms through which light streams as if through a
kaleidoscope.
Topside, the muted light of a
snowstorm or a sunset brings forth the full range of color in arctic ice: every
conceivable variation of white and grey and a softly iridescent blue that seems
to emanate from deep within. At night, the wind sweeps stretches of ice clean
of snow, and they gleam obsidian black. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/page1.aspx
The underside of the ice is bubbled
like a sponge, and in many of the holes live tiny crustaceans. Blow scuba
bubbles, and they fall out like living rain.
Two former marine biologists, Dmitri
Orlov and Mikhail Safonov, founded the outfit that organized this expedition,
the RuDive Group, which offers world-wide scuba tours. In 1996, after the
Soviet Union crumbled and science funding dried up, Mr. Safonov and Mr. Orlov
began offering diving lessons, and in 1998 they began taking customers to the
White Sea.
Five years ago, they opened their own
diving center there, with comfortable wooden chalets offering accommodations
from hostel-style dorms with shared baths to private rooms. Meals are hearty,
often featuring local smoked fish, fresh vegetables and fruit and preserves
made from local berries.
About seven years ago, Mr. Safonov
recalls, a woman ice-diving with a predecessor company he and his partner
founded and ran died in a Moscow lake at a depth of about 10 feet. The exact
circumstances weren't clear, but spurred largely by the event, RuDive now
requires all customers to have ice-diving certification from the Professional
Association of Diving Instructors. Customers can get ice-diving certification
at the start of their trip. RuDive has added to the standard training to
enhance safety.
In 1999, Mr. Safonov participated in
what is believed to be the first successful scuba expedition to the North Pole.
The ice there forms underwater "castles," he says, and the water is
as clear as air. Last month, he returned from RuDive's fifth successful polar
diving trip. The cost: $40,000 per person.
RuDive's White Sea center has two
captive beluga whales, owned by a Russian aquarium and held in a netted sea
pen. The one-ton males circled in swift arabesques, then came straight at me,
playfully biting my leg and fins the way a dog would. It was amazing fun, but
the experience had traces of the amusement park. It was an escape from reality,
not an immersion in it.
By contrast, the maina, its black
water a portal between worlds, feels exhilaratingly real. When a snowstorm
transforms the topside into a swirl of white, it's the perfect moment to slip into
a winter of anemones and comb jellies and luminous green-gold ice.
If you were asked to list literary
classics, it is unlikely that "Little Red Riding Hood" would be the
first to come to mind. You might think of the Bible or Shakespeare, since they
are the two most widely owned masterworks of Western literature. But, as novelist
A.S. Byatt notes, "Grimms' Fairy Tales," which contains the popular
"Little Red Riding Hood," is probably third. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected
tales from folk sources, and published their "Children's and Household
Tales" in 1812. To make the stories more literary and more appropriate for
children, they made revisions throughout their seven editions, the last
published in 1857.
These fairy tales deal with the same
issues, such as love and death, as all great literature. They do so without
hiding violence, hate, or even lust, making them quite different from most
children's books of today. They set a standard for literary works -- Vladimir
Nabokov was right when he said that all great novels are great fairy tales.
The stories are presented both
concretely and magically, matching the child's manner of thinking. With their
great emotional and moral power, and with their being first heard at an early
age, they are more than literary. They suggest a model of living for the child.
"Little Red Riding Hood" is
about a beautiful girl leaving home to visit her sick grandmother. The heroine
starts down a path, carrying cakes and wine to make Grandma feel better. Along
the way, she meets a friendly wolf who asks her where she is going. The
charming Red Riding Hood all but invites him to meet her at Grandma's by
pinpointing the location of her house. The wolf thinks, "What a tender
young creature! What a nice plump mouthful."
The wolf persuades Little Red Riding
Hood to wander off into the woods to see the beautiful flowers, to hear the
birds singing and to enjoy the merry woods. This ploy allows the wolf to rush
off to eat Grandma, disguise himself as her, and wait in bed for the girl. When
she arrives, she questions the wolf about his appearance. And when she finally
asks about his big teeth, he famously replies "The better to eat you
with" and devours her.
Sated, the wolf falls asleep. Luckily,
a hunter walks by, checks on Grandma, and discovers what has happened. He cuts
open the wolf's belly, releasing Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood, both
unharmed. Then Red Riding Hood springs into action herself and kills the wolf
by piling rocks in his belly. http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.blogspot.com/
The fairy tale is fantastic, but that
is necessary because of children's magical thinking. Their thought is
illogical, impulsive and omnipotent. They are not surprised that a wolf talks or
that two people can be retrieved whole from his belly. The little girl hearing
the story does not simply identify with the little girl in the tale, as an
adult might -- she becomes Little Red Riding Hood. Some parents argue that
there is too much unreality in fairy tales. On the contrary, the narrative
resonates with a child's notion of reality. These tales speak directly to
children in their own language; by doing so, they exert their influence.
Another device in "Grimms'"
is the use of absolutes. In "Snow White," Mother is divided into the
entirely good queen who died and the unremittingly cruel stepmother who wishes
to kill the girl. In "Little Red Riding Hood," fatherly attributes
are split between the good protective hunter and the sinful, animalistic wolf.
Since children themselves think in absolutes, a clean division of attributes
makes it easier for the child to consider opposite qualities.
Violence and sexuality are, as the
Grimm scholar Maria Tatar says, "the major thematic concern of the tales .
. . at least in their unedited form." Rumpelstiltskin tears himself in
two, Snow White's stepmother dances herself to death in red-hot iron shoes, and
Hansel and Gretel are left in the forest to die. (If these scenes are
unfamiliar, you have read a bowdlerized version. These "retellings"
are to the Grimms what Cliffs Notes are to Shakespeare.)
But the Brothers Grimm cannot be
blamed for introducing alien thoughts into the child's mind. The child has his
own fears of and desires for violence before encountering the fairy tales. He
will never experience the precise situations that occur in "Grimms',"
but he does fear death and abandonment. He also has his own monstrous and
destructive wishes. All this is obvious from even the most cursory observation
of preschoolers' play. The genius of these tales is that they intuitively
address such wishes and fears -- and allow the child to use the narrative to
master them. Little Red Riding Hood not only survives the wolf's cannibalism
but she kills him -- she has become a more assertive person.
Sexuality is subtle in the Grimms'
telling of that story, but not in earlier versions. In one, a werewolf demands
that the girl strip and get in bed with him, but she escapes. In the Perrault
version of 1797, Little Red Riding Hood takes off her clothes and climbs into
bed with "Father Wolf." In the Grimms' story, she virtually invites
him to Grandma's house, where she is bringing treats that are ideal for a
party. The "old sinner" delights in conversing with her, gets rid of
Grandma, and waits for her in bed. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
Why is sexuality present? One answer
is that the stories are derived from bawdy folktales. A more compelling
explanation is that the tales include it because children are sexual beings.
Psychoanalysts have long held this view, which became popular through Bruno
Bettelheim's tendentiously brilliant analyses in "The Uses of
Enchantment."
Little Red Riding Hood is
unconsciously working through her attraction to her own father, who is never
mentioned in the story; instead, she becomes involved with the rapacious
"father wolf" and is later saved by the protective fatherly hunter.
In the end, she kills the wolf, thus renouncing her oedipal desires for her
father. The child who hears the story has learned about the dangers of loving
unwisely.
The dilemma for Little Red Riding Hood
is the extent to which she must keep to the straight path. Thanks to her
dallying in the woods, Grandma and she are eaten, but there is no overt
moralizing. By the time the story ends, Little Red Riding Hood has not only
taken action against the wolf but also makes a promise to herself to heed her
mother's warnings, and thus is better prepared to avoid the wrong partner in
the future. The Grimms allow the child to consider such issues unconsciously,
without being subjected to a heavy dose of didacticism.
"Little Red Riding Hood,"
like the other great fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, ends happily -- but not
with "they lived happily ever after." Red Riding Hood has more work
to do; she is not yet ready for her prince.
For adults, telling the story to a
child is the richest of pleasures. The storyteller revisits a classic and the
vital issues it raises. He can marvel at the fascination of the child. But most
important, the child's enchantment becomes the teller's too, and parent and
child join to share that enchantment. It is one of those rare moments in adult
life when one can recapture the magic of one's own early youth. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/
Louis J. Sheehan Esquire
At a time when the Cassandras of
finance are looking like realists, there is no gloomier prophet than Kevin
Phillips. The author of 13 previous books including at least one classic, “The
Emerging Republican Majority,” Mr. Phillips sees a perfect economic storm
coming. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
The final pages of his bleak new book,
“Bad Money,” tell of an “unprecedented” number of Americans planning to leave
the country or thinking about it. Readers of “Bad Money” may come away with a
similar impulse to flee.
Mr. Phillips begins with an overview
of the current debt debacle. The 1980s were the start of “three profligate
decades,” when the expansion of mortgage credit and the invention of financial
instruments like collateralized debt obligations (C.D.O.’s) led to an orgy of
leveraging and irresponsible speculation. The Federal Reserve kept the bubble
afloat with easy money, while regulators and ratings agencies looked the other
way.
By 2007 total indebtedness was three
times the size of the gross domestic product, a ratio that surpassed the record
set in the years of the Great Depression. From 2001 to 2007 alone, domestic
financial debt grew to $14.5 trillion from $8.5 trillion, and home mortgage
debt ballooned to almost $10 trillion from $4.9 trillion, an increase of 102
percent. A crisis in the mortgage market in August 2007 brought the party to an
end. Since then we have been living in a twilight zone of what a security
analyst quoted in the book calls “one of the slowest-moving train wrecks we’ve
seen.”
The second component of the perfect
storm is the upheaval in the oil industry. Domestic production peaked in 1971,
and there are signs that production worldwide is also peaking. (Mr. Phillips
cites experts who believe it already has.) http://louis-j-sheehan.net/page1.aspx
Louis J. Sheehan Esquire
And with the emergence of new economic
powers like China and India, demand has risen dramatically and prices have been
climbing steadily; by 2004 a rapidly growing China had become the second
largest oil consumer, after the United States. Despite the bad news at the gas
pump, however, America has actually been getting a cost break, because the
major suppliers price their oil in dollars. But with the dollar falling, OPEC
has been talking about moving into other currencies. Were that to happen, “the
effects,” Mr. Phillips
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