I discovered what’s going on with Rosetta Stone and libraries. They’ve decided to not license them any longer. So I was reading that a library, patrons being hooked, had ordered CDs to lend out. But the new Rosetta Stone license is for one computer alone.
The librarian had felt that Rosetta Stone had used them as only an advertising outlet.
Blowing a big raspberry at Rosetta Stone.
We use Cosmeo quite a bit and H.o.p. really enjoys it.
He really enjoyed the Brit show Maths Mansion which he discovered via Cosmeo, which was filmed about 2001 and is a math adventure game geared for 9 to 11 year olds (not to be confused with the Ms. Infinity’s Math Mansion).
Then suddenly the videos were gone from Cosmeo, not long after we discovered them and had begun making our way through them. I contacted Cosmeo and got no response. I contacted Cosmeo again saying we had really enjoyed them and were wondering if they would be getting them back and finally got a terse reply that said they’d done a search and saw no they were no longer available but could offer no reason why except for some perhapses such as perhaps the license had lapsed.
My question had been IF they would be getting them back. Instead I get, “Oh, yes, I see they aren’t there any longer.”
We already knew they were no longer there, which was why I was writing and asking if and when they might get them back.
There were 40 10 minute Maths Mansion shows and only 10 of them are available via Youtube.
You can purchase DVDs 1 and 2 from overseas via the Channel 4 Learning Shop but the cost is about $100 per DVD.
OUCH! $200 for 2 DVDs.
I don’t think so.
It’s too bad Cosmeo let the license lapse because H.o.p. was getting a lot out of the shows.
Raspberry on that.
BBC has an online typing program for kids ages 7 to 11, Dance Mat Typing. I thought I’d go ahead and give it a plug as it worked for us.
H.o.p. began the lessons last year but his interest collapsed. He started them again this year back in November or December and finished them, this time serious about it, on his own initiative. He would even have me drape a towel over his hands so that he would learn how to type without being tempted to look at the keypad.
He now periodically returns for practice, again on his own initiative. No, he’s no speed demon. In fact, he’s very slow at it. But how many weeks later and he hasn’t let any of what he learned lapse, his hands are always in position, and he doesn’t have to hunt and peck.
I didn’t pick up learning to type until I was around 11 and did it on my own as it was better than long hand, but it was a difficult trial of hunt and peck that turned into a two finger style until I took a year (or was it a half year) of typing in 10th grade, which was grueling and involved a lot of
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
The story is this phrase was chosen because it fills out a 70 space line.
Do you believe that is why?
I don’t believe that is why.
Seriously, we were a room full of kids typing every day (or every other day) for an hour, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country”, multiplied how many times over every day in how many classrooms.
Yes, yes, I know that it is said to be the sentence devised to test the speed of the first typewriter, in 1867, during a terribly exciting political campaign, and that it was originally, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party”, or so it was written by Charles E. Weller in his “The Early History of the Typewriter” in 1918.
But…
Is that REALLY how we got from a speed test on the first typewriter in 1867 to every child in America (probably) typing it repeatedly in typing class for how many years? Is that all there was to it?
“Men and women, this was the first speed typing phrase, kind of, and thus it is that from now until _________ the speed of typing shall be tested by this phrase.”
“Why?”
“Because it fills 70 spaces and we must all those 70 spaces fill with a phrase that uses every letter of the alphabet.”
“But it doesn’t use every letter of the alphabet.”
“Yes, well, blame it on the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog absconding with the rest of them.”
H.o.p.: Mom, there’s something I want to talk to you about. I have this problem that freaks me out sometimes. It’s about life. Sometimes when I think about life it’s like something I can’t escape. It’s hard to describe. How can I forget about it, mom?
Bad mom softly laughs.
H.o.p.: And I sometimes get freaked about the earth, too. Like scientists say in the future the earth will be swallowed by the sun. How can I forget this? I don’t want my great-great-great-great-great grandchildren to die from it. How can they escape it? It freaks me out thinking about how the earth is going to be destroyed. They talk about it everywhere. Even Tim and Moby at Brainpop talk about it. I can prove it to you, and you’ll feel the same way I do.
Mom (knowing this won’t help one bit): That’s billions of years in the future.
H.o.p.: I can prove it to you. Lots of scientists are talking about it. (Going to his computer and opening a browser window.)
Mom: I know. I’ve read about it many times over the years.
H.o.p.: So, I got here for no reason?
Mom (thinking he meant being born): What do you mean?
H.o.p.: So I opened my browser window for no reason?
I was lying there late last night listening to how the radiator goes click click gumph gumph gurgle gurgle as it starts up.
As far as I knew I was still awake, meditating on the click click gumph gumph gurgle gurgle, playing with it in my head, when I was suddenly, something to do with William F. Buckley’s death, maybe something about the way he talked, maybe the gumph, I don’t know, anyway, there we were, whomever and I, in the back room and we were pulling out these thin cardboard, oblong boxes, about 18 inches long, and opening the ends of them and sliding out these lightweight headdresses that unfolded like fans into elaborate headgear that was a cross between a Samurai helmet, a Darth Vader helmet and something vaguely Brian Blessed Flash Gordon, mostly very sci fi with a nod to some ancient time in Japan when, it seemed, the bulk of a helmet was the neck-protecting beadwork, translated into the now with a made in China gleam to the molded plastic parts. And though Buckley was quite dead he was standing erect and talking and they put one of these helmets on his head. My mind was rushing on wonderingly over the fact we had these marvelous boxes with this headgear and I was thinking boy will H.o.p. be excited about this, I need to dig them out rather than letting them lie around back there. At which point rational brain nudged me to let me know that I should think twice on whether or not this was in reality happening and to reconsider whether or not we had these helmets, and I brought myself back around and tried to remember just how this had started. How did my brain go from click click gumph gumph gurgle gurgle to samurai helmets and William F. Buckley, Jr.
His manner and speech fascinated me when I was a child and saw him on television, he seeming built from tip of toe to top of head for Sunday morning political shows, sneeringly erudite in an unpleasant way that made his words seem like spitballs lobbed by his bored uvula through disdaining clenched teeth, spitballs which passing his lips were so fatigued by contact with non-rarefied air that they willfully self-detonated, trusting in the wind to convey their essence, every single particle of them wafting delirious in the wonder they were the greatest thing since French mustard.
Sometimes he said things that sounded sensible and humane. Which made it all the worse rather than better. I don’t remember what those things were because I learned to ignore them in the way a dog ignores a biscuit it knows will be closely followed by a kick.
I have no clue why my mind, on its way to nod, paired him up with a samurai helmet much like one of the ones we saw on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art surrounded by other shogun ghosts.
Yes, I’m back to trying yoga after a year’s hiatus (or should we say a false start a year ago). I have been digging around and finding yoga instruction that was much better than what I had before. Not like a drill sargent. Have only been at it a few days but Monday night, with a cheap cheap audio I’d found online that day, via an emphasis on breathing into poses I was liking it, feeling like this was more what I’d been looking for, a chance to just be in a posture instead of it seeming like a series of disconnected stretching and balancing exercises, and was very surprised that I was even able to do a downward dog with heels on the floor the way this particular audio led into it. How did that happen? But there I was, despite my being a wobbly beginner, finding my heels on the floor by breathing and stretching that straight spine and sucking in the abdomen. And it felt so easy. And I’m doing my best to not push as the last thing I want to do is hurt myself. By the end of what seemed a very fluid practice I was blissful smiling and feeling so unexpectedly nurtured that, though I tell myself such an ancient art should be able to be pursued without making a money hog of it with unnecessary paraphernalia, I started thinking of things like a yoga mat and an honest-to-god pair of yoga pants. Charcoal gray. Not so I’d feel all yogi like but because my jeans, though I wear them big and baggy, were feeling constricting with some of my very basic beginner poses.
Anyway, Tuesday evening, after the 45 minutes of Hatha and lots and lots of breathing concentration I was feeling marginally more at ease after an out-of-kilter day. Things did feel slightly better though H.o.p., while I breathed and worked on postures, was continually calling to me to take a look at this and that and this and that, but at least not mocking me as he had done in the morning, which had, before doing our language and science and etc., sent me all disgruntled to stare instead at the kitchen sink which was, indeed, stopped up again, just like it was stopped up again yesterday, and unstopped, and the day before that and the day before that.
Though not writing (still), but feeling a little better after the 45 minutes of Hatha it had occurred to me that now was a good time to go ahead and get the vacuuming done as the floor was cleaned up.
Last week Marty remarked on how this vacuum was wearing well after our going through vacuums like crazy, one vacuum breaking after another. I agreed.
Tonight, I popped in the earbuds of the iPod and proceed to vacuum. Within ten to twenty seconds I smelled something funny…like something burning. Cut off the vacuum and flipped it over and there was one of H.o.p.’s old socks jammed up in it. And the smoke poured forth.
A sock. I guess it got sucked up when I pushed the vacuum under the couch/futon.
Long after I extracted the sock, the smoke continued to pour, and I sat and watched.
But it was one of those days, despite my uhm four days of endeavoring to find serenity via yoga. Off kilter and disjointed. Nothing productive happening. All effort for naught, for naught.
I’ve decided the yoga pants can wait but I may go ahead and get a mat.
The idea of yoga practice being a time of sacred space is going to have to include, as part of that sacred space, a ten year old laughing at my fumblings and doing his energetic best to distract. Even if I say, ok, you try this position out and see if you can do it, and he replies oh there’s no way he could do it, he still laughs uproariously over my efforts. “You’re wobbling! You’re wobbling!”
If I don’t cease to be high entertainment in a week, I’ll have to accept my yoga routine as a comedic act.
I will put a tip jar at my side.
I read the Bad Astronomy Blog and watch Phil Plait’s films, and sometimes read parts of the posts to H.o.p., like today’s which was on the age of the universe and how it was formed and the birth of hydrogen. “That is so cool,” H.o.p. said.
Hydrogen means something to us as we’ve purchased a couple of things on the Periodic Table of Elements this year. I’m not crazy about the materials I’ve forked out money for but H.o.p. likes the latest one, which has funky pictures representing the different elements, and likes to read it before going to bed. Honestly, he does. I don’t think he gets much out of it, but he enjoys it none-the-less.
Hydrogen, I guess, was the decision that novelty was the way to go. “Just wait uhm 13 billion years and see what this moment hath wrought.”
While I’m getting my butt kicked again by yoga tomorrow, I will meditate upon the birth of hydrogen (like sure, but a bit about it will probably pop up in my fiction, which means I will indeed be meditating upon it actually).
I really want the yoga thing to become a habit and don’t want it sneaking out the door one morning with the plea of, “yes, we really ought to get together again, give me a call some time”.
Anyway, I breathed a lot today. Intentionally. The kind where you’re supposed to constrict your throat and make yourself sound like the ocean in a seashell just like H.o.p. was listening to and experimenting with today because of one of Krampf’s science videos. But I didn’t sound so much like an ocean at first. I sounded like really bad sinus congestion. So I adjusted it some and came up with a sound like someone snoring. Eventually, I wound my way around to sounding a lot like a kind of phone call you hang up on. Would that be ocean breath if I added salt?
I’m not a Flybaby but I can tell who likely is because I’ve recently been reading her list with the same interest I had in Tammy Faye Bakker and her Fundie drones way back in the day. And there’s a lot of you Flybabies out there, open and closet, because when Flylady says, “Clean your closet,” suddenly people are blogging about cleaning their closets.
Flylady’s Yahoo group has over 469 THOUSAND members.
And people act like this is all cozy toes in the same tie-on shoe (I’ll get to that in a moment) and not a $4 million dollar business with at least 24 employees selling you on the notion you must buy her products to help you (oh the not very humorous irony of it all) to declutter your life.
“Declutter your unorganized life! Buy my stuff!”
Picture perfect irony.
It’s a fearful picture I get of all these women (yes, the list is geared for women folk) in their Flylady denim vests and Flylady key lanyards with their Flylady dusters cleaning house in concert with their Flylady timers, managing their lives via their Flylady calendars, fastidiously writing up their must-dos in their Flylady control journals with their Flylady Pens, ordering their business around their Flylady Office in a Bag, congratulating their kids with the Flylady pencils and stickers for doing their fair Flylady share, purchasing Flylady’s de-clutter kit in order to, you know, declutter, doing whatever it is they do with their Flylady Comfort Zone calendars that can’t be managed with the other Flylady calendar which is adhered to the refrigerator with your special Flylady calendar magnet, drinking out of Flylady water bottles, drying your hands with Flylady one-a-day dish towels, junking wallets and tote bags for Flylady’s wallet and tote bag, and putting on the Flylady purple and pink T-shirts all the better to fly in communion…with tie-up shoes.
And then there’s the Flylady doll you can buy for $8.
On the Flylady website is a photo of a little girl cuddling her Flylady doll in her sleep.
Despite 24 employees (I guess this includes the six people hired to reply to Flylady’s fan mail) the Flylady website has a hokey amateurish, “I don’t know much more about the internet than you do, can you tell me how to put up a photo?” feel. I guess all the better to foster the feeling of the accidental entrepreneur who’s down on her hands and knees cleaning the bathroom with you so she doesn’t have the time for CSS or HTML…and certainly she wouldn’t be hiring out the website or the housework despite the fact she’s got a four million dollar business with a road show and webcasts and a self-syndicated column…and the Yahoo list.
The first time I saw that cartoony graphic of the winged Flylady I immediately envisioned a fly swatter. It was my gut reaction and it’s stuck with me.
Now, I hold no malice against Flylady. I’m amazed by anyone’s ability to sell themselves. I marvel. I go, “How the hell do you do that?” I’m reading Steve Martin’s “Born Standing Up” right now and I’m amazed by how he had this seemingly natural sell-self muscle…
But I read Flylady and I know she has over 469 THOUSAND members in her Yahoo group and I have this vision of a future where all these kids are growing up with the It Must Be This Way Exactly knowledge that on Mondays you do this and on Tuesdays you do this and on Wednesdays you do this…and all over America in fifteen years will be these brainwashed kids marching out to run their households exactly like mum’s Flylady said to do it and the odd ball will be the person who vacuums on Tuesday.
“You vacuum on Tuesday? Everyone knows you should vacuum on Monday.”
And this damn shoe business. Flylady wrote the other day:
I don’t want to hear, well I don’t wear shoes in my house. Well you do now, sister! Buy or clean up a pair just for that reason. You can have a great pair of indoor shoes that are real shoes, not slippers or flip flops. Don’t get stuck in that perfectionist thinking “I don’t wear shoes in my house”, if you want change in your home, you are going to have to change your thinking on shoes.
Seriously. You’re really going to let someone tell you, “Well, you wear shoes, now, sister!”
Try telling that to the Japanese.
You must do it this way or you will never change. What kind of BS is that?
It doesn’t strike you as a tad bizarre and irrational that Flylady decries someone as having “perfectionist” thinking if they say they prefer not to wear shoes, but she can say that if you don’t do it her way then you’ll never change–and this is somehow not being, what, perfectionist and rigid?
Which is why I decided to go ahead and write this post. That and the whole, “declutter and throw out all the crap you don’t need and buy my stuff that I searched the wide world over just for you and anointed as Flylady perfect with my Flylady logo” routine.
C’mon, that bullyish, full-of-itself Well, you do now, sister! doesn’t grate on you even just a little? It doesn’t make you go, “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
If you’re conservative and the conservative Ed Morrissey’s “Heading Right Radio“–which hosted Republican Flylady in December of 2007–is the kind of thing you like to listen to, well, then, maybe you don’t mind people addressing you like that. A fairly recent Republican county commissioner, Flylady (her husband is a Republican judge) told Ed Morrissey his business is talking politics and hers is getting people to clean but maybe if people get their house clean then they’ll go out and vote.
I’ve been following her list, looking for any mention of politics. In 2000 she polled her group to see who they would be voting for and the results were over 60% for Bush and she crowed about a full Republican sweep in her county. She has been quiet on politics since then, but the appearance on Heading Right is interesting. She no doubt wants to keep her list as apparently bi-partisan as possible in the interest of her business, but she did say on Heading Right,
“Building the community is key because without my Yahoo group I don’t get the people to come listen to my radio show…I love cooperation and networking that we can do within ourselves because I can promote your show and I can promote my show…”
Whatever that means. It was very vague, this “building the community” idea and all that entailed. I didn’t notice her plugging “Heading Right” on the Yahoo list but she may have in her blogradio show.
Flylady, who happens also to be a Christian, is currently writing a book on Flylady spirituality.
I wonder if it’ll have a chapter on wearing your tie-on shoes for god.
Whew. Needing variety and looking for several yoga DVDs I can use interchangeably, I’ve, well, you know, ordered several. Yesterday, the first DVD arrived, Ana Forrest’s “Strength and Spirit”, which was great turn around time because I ordered it like two days ago.
You may ask, “What the hell are you, the classic 90 pound weakling beginner, doing ordering an Ana Forrest DVD?”
Well, uh, because there were two DVDs on the site and one was “sweaty” intermediate and the other was beginner-intermediate and, uhm, it had a preview that showed a class style situation with beginners to more advanced people, Ana walking around attending to individuals’ needs, giving lots and lots of fine tuning and talking a lot about breathing and that looked good and in those little itsy preview bits it looked inviting and again, it had a preview I could watch, and I liked the sound of her voice and it said “beginners”.
I had worked with several inexpensive internet downloads and realized that at least right now a person’s voice has an effect on my ability to concentrate. I realized there are voices that make me squirm and itch and there are voices that fit my ear. Ana’s was a firm, steady, nicely modulated voice that made me feel like following it into a pose and like if I couldn’t do it then perhaps eventually I could.
And, as I mentioned, it read “beginners”.
On a scale of 1 to 10 beginner, I’m like a 1.
Well, there’s no “like” about it. I’m a 1.
I can do a Lotus no problem and I’m a 1. There’s no reason to envy someone who can do a Lotus with no problem. I’m double jointed. I could walk on my knees in a Lotus if I wanted though my muscles are tight as can be these days. I can twist my arms every which way. That doesn’t mean I’m limber. Because I can do a Lotus no problem and know it’s pure double jointedness I at least don’t have the problem of imagining that with looking like a pretzel comes perfect mental and spiritual balance and the proverbial stairway to yoga heaven.
I had done lots of reading up on yoga DVDs and I had read one remark somewhere that Ana Forrest had some unconventional postures but what I had seen in the preview didn’t look unconventional to me. I hadn’t seen the videos online elsewhere of Ana demonstrating her yoga limberness and prowess which generate pages worth of argument that “This isn’t yoga, this is gymnastics” and “Who are you to say this isn’t yoga, her classes are yoga” and the occasional person attempting state-of-grace arbitration and saying the world balances itself, that what is is what is, and it is not for us to judge anything as in it’s not right to ever even offer an opinion.
Had I seen those demonstration videos, I’m not sure I would have ordered Ana Forrest’s yoga DVD. When I did finally see them yesterday evening, I watched a couple of minutes and no more because it did look like gymnastics done by a very fit woman and I’m just not interested in being a gymnast. Nor do I want to do yoga obsessively. I want yoga to be like a background velcro in my life that assists but doesn’t engulf. But I hadn’t seen those videos when I’d ordered the DVD, which I had decided to purchase based on the preview and her voice. And I’d heard what seemed an encouraging edge that I felt might get me through pessimistic hot spots.
Thursday was my sixth yoga day. I had a big (hah) five days under my belt with about an hour to an hour and a half of yoga each day. I wasn’t ready for anything. I’m not stupid. My side muscles were aching but not anything to keep me from doing some gentle yoga. H.o.p. and I having just finished science and taking a long break before language, I put the new DVD on my computer and got down on the floor. For the next 60 minutes yoga managed to completely empty this beginner’s mind of anything but…fear and dread.
It was…interesting. I don’t know if Ana’s style of deep breathing is more extreme but in the few other things I’d watched and listened to I’d not found breathing to be so rigorous and intense. Abdominal breathing is not natural for me, I’m still getting used to it, and with Ana’s style of breathing I found myself pushing it all up into my chest with the expansions and focusing on that rather than the abdominal. I can say that with Ana’s DVD and her style of keeping “active” I realized, “Gee, I’ve got parts of my body I never knew existed, damn, this is frightening”. She seems to be pushing for not just flexibility but supportive strength, which I like. And I know I need that because natural double jointedness without supportive strength is a real problem. But this done via some of the prolonged yoga postures is a bit much for my beginner’s status. I’ll try it again in a couple days and see if it’s something I might use once or twice or week, or if I’ll put it off for another couple of months.
At the end, lying supine in Savasana I believe I was more aware of the intention to relax. I say intention because I was now aware of how many parts there are to relax and what was standing out from the rest as not so very relaxed and trying to relax into alignment with the rest of those parts. I didn’t know yet that one should lie five minutes in Savasana for every thirty minutes of yoga practiced, but that’s what I read yesterday. I’ve not been doing that as it wasn’t included on anything I’ve done.
There now. Isn’t that boring reading about someone’s beginning yoga practice? And entirely unenlightening reading the experience of a total neophyte who should be expressing no opinion at all as they know nothing about the matter?
P.S. I now have a yoga mat. I didn’t buy it. Marty picked one up for me as an expression of support.
When I was a kid I would look at those variety packs of cereals on the grocer’s shelf and think, “Wow!” They were so attractive. And the idea of slitting open one side of a package of cereal and pouring in your milk and eating it straight from the box sounded very exciting. They had a diagram on the side showing exactly how it was done.
It’s odd what can be inviting and exciting to kids.
Earlier this week H.o.p. suddenly had a fixation on getting the variety pack of cereals. He doesn’t even like cereal, but he saw the variety pack in a movie and wanted it. He figured it would all have to be great. “You know how I don’t like Cheerios any more?” he said. “I bet I’d love these.”
I know H.o.p.’s tastes. “You will hate them,” I said. “You will love the boxes but hate the cereals.”
We purchased a variety pack for him.
He first tried one of the Fruit Loops and spat it out. Then he tried a Cocoa Krispie. And spat that out.
I see no harm in him opening every single box at one sitting and trying it out because I know he’ll hate each one.
He licked a Kellog’s Frosted Corn Flake. “Yuck!” I ate the rest of that box because I like frosted corn flakes but would never buy them for myself and haven’t had them in 25 years.
“Will I like these?” he said brandishing the Corn Pops.
“No.”
By now he trusted me on the matter.
“What about these?” he asked, holding up the Apple Jacks.
“No. You will hate those.”
“What about the Honey Smacks?”
“Hate, hate, hate. You won’t like them.”
“They do look barfable. Like raisins made out of honey.”
“Hmmm, I guess.”
“At least the boxes are fun,” he said.
I suck at Yoga!
But I made it 7 days at an hour to an hour and a half each day and at least I didn’t hurt myself. My flexibility may be ever so slightly improved and my sides weren’t hurting today. Stamina and strength leave much to be desired though. You wouldn’t want to be me.
After a week of doing this and looking around at online videos and reading a bunch, I think I’m getting an idea of some of the things I might need to practice.
Surya-namaskar (sun salutation)
Getting the requisite stamina, strength and flexibility for all these will help greatly.
Really need core strength, too, but I’d prefer to concentrate on a couple, three, maybe four things at first. And working on breathing.
One source I’ve been using for yoga is Yogadownload.com which has downloadable audios for a minimal fee. I’ve tried several and the one I’ve enjoyed thus far has been Jackie Casal’s Gentle Hatha Yoga #1.
Another source I’ve been using are the videos at Yoga Today. They put a new video up daily, which remains up for about a week. From what I read they are building an archive of the videos which will be available for purchase later either on CD or internet download. Perhaps the internet downloads will be for a reasonable fee.
I can’t vouch for how good they are because I don’t have a clue. Friday I used the all level’s “Relieve Fatigue” conducted by their instructor Adi Amar, whose style I’ve liked best thus far but then I’ve very minimal experience, only having watched three of their videos and being a one week newbie to Yoga. I wish they would include a description of the types of poses that are included, but not even most of the DVDs available through Amazon include this (so it’s nice there are often good souls who list the postures in the comment areas). At any rate, I think it would be even nicer if they did have a list of the postures.
They appear to be based out of Wyoming, but a number of these videos are being done in Sedona.
Sedona is beautiful. I don’t mind gazing at the red rocks of Sedona while doing this, except I’m not actually gazing at them, I’m on the ground trying to figure out what I’m doing.
Adi Amar suggested we have some kind of whatever to which to dedicate that days’ yoga practice. I dedicated it to my yoga practice ten days from now, that I may actually make it that long.
Earlier in the day Marty had come in with the ZBS (Zero Bull Shit) catalogue and plopped it down in front of me and said, “The Fourth Tower of Inverness!”
We’ve been planning a car trip, to be taken fairly soon, and the Fourth Tower of Inverness (we had some cassettes of it back in the 80s which wore out in the 80s) was a wonderful Jack Flanders radio series done in 1972 that is punch drunk with things like Ram Dass playing the Wurlitzer of Wisdoms…perfect material for a long drive through Texas.
So, I look it up and see they have the original series in mp3 download plus, it seems, a newer version (?) on CD. Must be a newer version because the original radio series is given as such whereas this other isn’t. I called Marty at the studio and said, “The radio version, right?” though I already knew what the answer would be, which is what I’d choose. “But they have it on CD,” he said. “Apparently not the same thing,” said I. “Original,” he said.
And then in walks H.o.p. who interrupts and says:
H.o.p.: Mom, what’s alchemy?
Mom: Where’d you hear about alchemy?
H.o.p.: I don’t know. What is it.
Mom: I’ll tell you as soon as I get off the phone.
So I got off the phone and downloaded The Fourth Tower of Inverness (took a little while) and tried to explain a little bit about alchemy to H.o.p.
H.o.p. has some radar.
I fired up the Fourth Tower of Inverness and we began to listen to the first episode, which begins thusly:
And now, kiddies, just like back in those days of yore, the whole family can once again huddle around that beautiful mahogany cabinet, slowly turn that great heavy dial, and stare blankly at the speaker as in your mind vague forms begin to shape themselves. Can you see the mad alchemist with the bent frame, Dr. Missoula…?
H.o.p. was hooked. We are now on episode 3.
Highly recommended!
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