It's Thanks Giving time again

By SJ Otto

It's finally time to post something on this blog. And there is no better time than Thanksgiving for such an extravaganza. I don’t plan to travel or cook. I am visiting Cam at the hospital. I’ve been drinking my favourite herbal tea. I just can’t go wrong with that. I bought a 6 year old bottle of wine for today, a few days ago. It is hussonet, cabernet Sauvignon. It wasn’t very expensive, but it is not that impressive for a 6 year old wine. John MIGHT come over and we might buy a turkey dinner for something else to eat. John made a good point that we can just as easily have a dinner some other day than this and just pretend that day is the holiday. As I get older, holidays as this one just are not as important as they once were. I started to watch the Macy’s Parade, but I got side tracked and missed most of it. Mad Magazine used to make fun of it as “Messy’s Thanks giving Day Parade”—complete with a drunken Santa saying “Merry Christmas, Happy New Years, Happy Ground Hog Day, Happy Arbour Day!” And there are a bunch of booze bottles in the sled. It was a very funny spoof.

House hold pets- My newest fish- Mr. Orangy

By SJ Otto
A week ago I was out at the Walnut River when some guy gave me a small bluegill for my aquarium. I put him/her/it/etc. in my tank. He/she/it ate my two Zebra fish. But this fish is bigger, prettier and is more interesting. He/she/it eats out of my hand and is not shy. At first the fish hid for about two days. Then it came out but would not swim to the top of the tank to eat. Now it does come to the top, it is not afraid of me and it eats right out of my hand. It has turned out to be a really cool pet. This pix is kinda blurry. It seems to be the best I can do for now. I'll try some other pix later. I call him Mr. Orangy, because it has a lot of orange on its fins.

US—On the Death of Jim Erickson, Wichita celebrity, AKA Ol' Flick

Official Obit

By SJ Otto

A good friend of mine died yesterday, Jim Erickson. He was something of a local celebrity.  He used to do commercials, everything from used cars to potato chips. He used to introduce movies and TV shows. He was also an English language professor at Wichita State University (WSU). He also did movie reviews.

He was known to a lot of folks as “Old Flick.” At the KMUW radio station where he did movie reviews. I discussed movies with him many times. We did not always see eye to eye. For example on such movies A Clockwork Orange, he didn’t like that movie and I did. I liked The Killing Fields. He did not. He said they used a lot of tricks they got from other movies to make the battle scenes in The Killing Fields. He was very picky.

We agreed more on politics. While I’m a Marxist/ Maoist, he was more of a liberal. We despised many of the same politicians, such as Ronald Reagan and both Bushes.[1] But we occasionally did not see things the same. I had a Maoist friend, Charles Blackmon,

who is dead now, who at one time told Erickson that he admired a group of Maoist guerrillas, in a Latin American country, who did the local women, in a town, a favor and executed some prostitutes. Erickson was horrified at the idea. I did agree with him that executing prostitutes was a terrible idea. But he never wanted to see my Maoist friend again. I was willing to overlook that issue and Chuck and I stayed friends until he died. Erickson said he never wanted to see him again.

As an English professor Erickson threw a lot of students off, because he was very hard on them. Many thought he would be a pushover since he seemed so lackadaisical on TV, as his various personalities. But he took his work as a professor very seriously.

We haven’t had a party at my house in many years, but when we did we often invited Erickson. He often came early or on time. We considered him eccentric. He was one of a kind. My wife, Cam Gentry, liked knowing him. She also joked about the shorts and other close he used to wear when he visited the WSU library.[2]

We also went to his parties. He used to have about four a year. Then after a while he only had one a year and that was his Halloween Party. I used to look forward to his Halloween Party because I had many friends I only met once a year at this party. Every year I came up with an elaborate costume.

A few years ago he stopped having all of his parties. He kept complaining that people stole things from him. He had some really good antiques and collectables of all kinds. He had all kinds of movie paraphernalia and souvenirs. So I can understand why he hated it when someone took off with his things.

Erickson liked drinking for many years. One year the press came to his house before one of his parties and he was so drunk they couldn’t use the interview. Shortly after that he quit drinking. He told me that he kept reading these pamphlets on how to tell if you drink too much. He decided he would just quit drinking and he no longer had that problem to worry about.

He told someone in a press interview that he avoided relationships with women because he didn’t like the pain of breaking up with someone. Erickson was a proud supporter of Women’s rights and he had a good relationship with the local National Organization for Women. He supported many liberal causes and he used to wear a lot of different buttons on those various issues.

Erickson was quite a few years older than me. But all people die sooner or later. I knew that some day we would have to see Erickson’s life come to an end. That happened Wednesday morning. I will miss him. Many of us will. We all enjoyed his company and we were always glad when he came to our parties. Any party we have now will be without him and we will miss him.

---

[1] George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush.

[2] Cam was a librarian at WSU.

A Mother's Day Message from Yoko Ono

By urging us to celebrate the maternal love we experienced as children,
or perhaps much later in life, MY MOMMY IS BEAUTIFUL engages our most personal memories.

Let’s fill Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
with thousands of tributes to the love that nurtures us all. -Yoko Ono

Mommy, I’m sorry.How did I know
you were suffering silently?

Your touch, your warm voice and your smile
Will always be with me.

This is a tribute to you and

all mothers of the world
from each of your children.

We love you!
y.o. 2010

On Marx and Epicurus

I'm posting this because I have found it to be very interesting. I am fascinated by ancient Greek philosophy.-SJ Otto

Originally published: International Communist Current by ICConline (February 17, 2018)

Under the heading ‘Readers’ Contributions’ we aim to encourage our readers and sympathisers to write texts and articles which can go into greater depth than is possible in our discussion forum, and so stimulate a longer term reflection. These articles, while being broadly based on proletarian politics, need not fully represent the positions of the ICC, or may deal with issues on which the ICC does not have a collective view.

Some notes on elements of Marx’s 1841 doctoral thesis on The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature and the profundity of the Epicurean “swerve”

Given the fragments, literally, of the works of Epicurus available to Marx at the time, the materialist analysis that he manages to develop from them is pretty amazing. After Marx’s demise much more evidence of Epicurus’ philosophy has been found: on charcoal remains of papyri in Philodemus’ library in Herculeum, on the wall of Diogenes of Oenoanda and writings kept in the Vatican for whom Epicurus was strictly taboo. The mere mention of Epicurus (or Lucretius) led to torture or imprisonment by the Inquisition in Naples and all of their followers were consigned to the Sixth Circle of Hell. Marx was also assisted in this work on Epicurus by the poem On the Nature of Things and works of the aforementioned Roman poet Lucretius.

Titus Lucretius Carus was a great influence on the Enlightenment Italian materialist Giambattista Vico, and an even bigger influence on the workers’ movement. He developed the idea of descent with modification, and understood that energy could neither be created nor destroyed. His poem was the basis for Lewis Henry Morgan’s great work, Ancient Society… and thus Engel’s work The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State.  He laid out the tenets and philosophy of Epicurus in his poem. The renowned Epicurean scholar, Cyril Bailey who translated his work into English, said in 1928: “Looking back on his (Marx’s) work now it is almost astonishing to see how far he got considering the materials then available and he was probably the first person to see the true distinction between the Democritean and Epicurean systems“. And to a large part he did this by focusing on the meaning of the Epicurean swerve.

Epicurus’ study of the atom allowed him to delve into “the nature of human sensation and existence”. Benjamin Farrington, noted scholar of Greek philosophy, wrote: “Oddly enough it was Karl Marx in his doctoral thesis… who first took the measure of the problem and provided the solution… making Epicurus the deeper of the two (in comparison to Democritus) inasmuch as he laboured to find room in his system both for animate and inanimate being, both for nature and society, both for the phenomena of the external world and the demands of moral consciousness” (From Marx’s Ecology, materialism and nature by John Bellamy Foster).

Epicurus’ work removes the gods (almost entirely) and the fear and terror that they inspire in mortal man, opening the way for chance, possibilities and freedom: “That which is abstractly possible, which can be conceived constitutes no obstacle to the thinking subject, no limit, no stumbling-block”.  Continuing from this, only Marx could say from the fragments that he knew of: (that) “Epicurus therefore proceeds with boundless nonchalance in the explanation of separate physical phenomena” and this from the possibilities that brought them about. In contrast to Democritus, who also contributed to a materialist analysis, Epicurus posed the question of a tiny “swerve” in the atom against the straight, deterministic lines of the former. Cicero ridiculed this idea calling it “disgraceful” and said it was “entirely impossible” that the universe came about by “complexities, combinations and adhesions of the atoms one with another”. Hegel suggested that he had nothing useful to say; similar criticisms were levelled against Epicurus by the 17th century French philosopher Pierre Bayle, but the strange reality of the quantum nature of the atom is now beyond doubt. Lucretius understood this: “… if the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate” nothing would change, but this process does take place “in time unfixt, imperceptible to the senses and in the smallest possible space“. The further relevance to quantum mechanics is evident. For Marx the swerve represents “the soul of the atom, the concept of abstract individuality”.

Epicurus suggests qualities to the atom, size, shape and weight whose declination (swerve) opposes any determinism: (the atoms) “are therefore opposed to one another as immediate realities”. Marx agrees with Lucretius, saying that “the declination breaks the fati doedra (bonds of fate)”, and applied to consciousness “the declination is that something in its breast that can fight back and resist”. The declination lifts the atom out of the domain of determinism. If atoms didn’t swerve they could neither repel nor attract, and it’s from this repulsion and attraction that, according to Epicurus with Marx: “the world of appearance emerges“, appearance that is transformed by consciousness from essence. Repulsion and attraction go beyond Democritus’ determinism, just as the swerve of the atom goes beyond the relative existence of atoms falling in fixed lines. Democritus assumes an infinite number of shapes of the atom up to infinite size. But according to Lucretius, “it is rather by a definite and finite number of shapes that the atoms are differentiated from one another”, which is also another way of expressing the modern theory of the conservation of energy.

As for weight, in the view of Epicurus it exists only as a different weight and the atoms themselves are substantial “centres of gravity” with weight existing in respect of repulsion and attraction. In this way Epicurus anticipates the fact that all bodies, whatever their weight and mass, have the same velocity when they fall through space. Time is discussed by these Greeks in some ways similar to that of modern-day physicist Carlo Rovelli, and both Democritus and Epicurus agree that time is excluded from the atom. For the latter, infinite time exists within infinite space comprising infinite worlds, giving rise to free-will against superstition and fear of the gods. Following Epicurus, Lucretius writes: “… time by itself does not exist… It must not be claimed that anyone can sense time by itself apart from the movement of things or their restful immobility… accidents of matter, or of the place in which things happen”. Marx calls this “the ‘accidens’ of accidens”. Time is in opposition to space, time is change as change, and further for Marx, it is the “fire of essence” which can only be seen through reason: “… this reflection of appearance in itself which constitutes the concept of time, has its separate existence in the conscious sensuous. Human sensuousness is therefore embodied time, the existing reflection of the sensuous world itself”. 

There’s a chapter called “The Meteors”, by which Epicurus means all celestial bodies; and this is doubly important for the Greeks because their “philosophers worshipped their own minds in the celestial bodies” (like a “cult” according to Marx) and this was another factor in the elevation of the gods that Epicurus flatly rejected. Once the myth is removed from the heavens everything is possible, every explanation is sufficient. For example, there’s not one explanation to a lightning strike but a number of interacting properties and reactions, and the task for Epicurus is to “trace their cause and banish the source of disturbance and dread”. He takes comfort in the fact that everything is impermanent and unstable, not eternal and immortal. Marx says that Epicurus “in wrath and passionate violence” rejects those that propose one method of explanation of the Unique, Eternal and Divine in the heavenly bodies. The irregularity of orbits, the number of multiple possibilities involved in heavenly phenomena, the multitude of explanations is for Epicurus the road to calm, understanding and freedom. For Marx the contingency and freedom espoused by Epicurus, which before him was mechanical determinism, brought out the “active side”.

Marx’s materialism has strong roots in the swerve of Epicurus, showing that it could be an element in human emancipation from the material conditions of a world characterised by the development of human relations to its basic needs, from which consciousness develops. Chance and contingency play a part in this along with human ethical considerations. Marx wasn’t uncritical of Epicurus since he was only interpreting the world, but his interpretation gave the world a direction and in the thesis Marx builds on some of his contradictions. He criticised his ideas of too many possibilities and his individualism but, again, these were part and parcel of the outcome. Engels, up to his death, was, enthusiastically with Marx all the way on the materialism of Epicurus. Engel’s himself rejected much of bourgeois materialism in favour of the Greek “enlightenment”, particularly Epicurus and Lucretius. He continued Marx’s work on Epicurus and praised what he called the latter’s “immanent dialectics”. Epicurus recognised the estrangement of human beings from the human world in the shape of religion, now reinforced by the alienation of the labour-capital relationship, and had profound concerns about the well-being of the earth and the relationship of nature to man, points which Engels picked up and expanded on along with Marx.

A final quote from Marx in the thesis on Epicurus: “When human life lay grovelling in all men’s sight, crushed to the earth under the deadweight of religion whose grim features loured menacingly upon mortals from the four quarters of the sky, a man of Greece was first to raise mortal eyes in defiance, first to stand erect and brave the challenge. Fables of the gods did not crush him, nor the lightning flash and growling menace of the sky…. Therefore religion in its turn lies crushed beneath his feet, and we by his triumph are lifted level with the skies.

The difference between Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of nature which we established at the end of the general section has been elaborated and confirmed in all domains of nature. In Epicurus therefore, atomistics with all its contradictions has been carried through and completed as the natural science of self-consciousness. This self-consciousness under the form of abstract individuality is an absolute principle.

Epicurus has thus carried atomistics to its final conclusion, which is its dissolution and conscious opposition to the universal. For

Democritus, on the other hand, the atom is only the general objective expression of the empirical investigation of nature as a whole.

Hence the atom remains for him a pure and abstract category, a hypothesis, the result of experience, not its active [energisches] principle. This hypothesis remains therefore without realisation, just as it plays no further part in determining the real investigation.”

We are conscious now that far from being crushed, religion, particularly its fundamentalist versions in both east and west, has been fed and invigorated by decomposing capitalism. The task is to overcome this along with all the divisions that emanate from the breakdown of ruling class ideology and to this effect we have to salute the groundbreaking work of Marx on Epicurus.

Marx’s appendix on Plutarch

At the end of Marx’s dissertation is an appendix called: Critique of Plutarch’s Polemic against the Theology of Epicurus, of which, like much of the latter’s work, only fragments survive. Nevertheless, even here, Marx makes some significant points and looks at some new areas in these fragments that we can return to in the context of the whole. It’s also worth remembering that this work of Marx developing on Epicurus showed his gradual independence from Hegel and demonstrated to him in the process the importance of religion and the unfolding necessity to try to develop a profound understanding of what religion meant for humanity and its emancipation, while contending that “No good for man lies outside himself”.

For Plutarch, God was on the side of good against the wicked – the powerful nature of this aspect of religious ideology shouldn’t be underestimated even to this day. Against Epicurus, Plutarch argued that if there was no God there was no joy or happiness. According to him, belief in God, as well as bringing relief from pain, fear and worry “indulges in a playful and merry inebriation, even in amatory matters!” Marx responds on the proof of God that gods are like imagined money – in the end there will be a price to pay. And anyway, proof of ‘your’ God is a disavowal of others and vice-versa. Plutarch divides society into the good, decent, intelligent and the bad and uncivilised whereas, according to Marx, Epicurus deals with the “essential relationship of the human soul in general“. For Marx, Plutarch’s objection to Epicurus’ ungodly atomism poses the question of the eternal, unchangeable characteristics of man against those of change, free-will and self-consciousness. Plutarch’s view of religion is based on the reform of the wicked by, first of all an animal-like fear and secondly, sentimentality: “There is no qualitative difference between this and the previous category. What in the first place appeared in the shape of an animal fear appears here in the shape of human fear, the form of sentiment. The content is the same” (Marx). After talking about sentiment Marx goes on to briefly talk about the “… naked, empirical ego, the love of self, the oldest love…”.

Marx certainly has plenty of criticisms of Epicurus on the questions of mechanistics and “accidents” but wholly supports his view that events of human history are neither mere accidents nor merely arise out of necessity. Epicurus recognises and never denies necessity or subsistence but always insists that the bounds of both must be broken and this by the means of human reason and human consciousness.

In the dissertation Marx argues that Epicurus goes beyond the sceptical world of the Democratean atom and its “subjective semblance” by positing its “objective appearance”. “Implicit in Epicurus’ philosophy was the notion that knowledge both of the world of the atom (imperceptible to the senses) and of sensuous reality arose from the inner necessity of human reason embodied in abstract individuality and freedom (self-determination).” Marx’s Ecology materialism and nature, John Bellamy Foster.

In his appendix on Plutarch Marx also takes aim at the German idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, whose positions degenerated into a defence of religion and from this a cock-eyed vision of nature. Schelling’s appointment as Rector at the University of Berlin indicated the closing off of universities to the Young Hegelians and a definite turn by Marx into further profound applications of his work.

Marx took what was best about the enlightenment of Ancient Greece and defended and refined the analyses of Epicurus against the determinism of Democritus; and then he defended the materialism of the modern Enlightenment against the reactionary views of Schelling. Marx went beyond Epicurus while underlining his importance for a materialist analysis. He reined in some of his “exaggerations” and sharpened up his innate dialectics.

The Perfect Martini

From Liquor.com:
For a cocktail with such beautiful, aesthetic clarity, the Martini—that perfect mix of gin (well, traditionally) and vermouth—has a history that’s ironically opaque. “There’s no definite story as to the Martini’s origins. A very frustrating fact, I know, but that’s the way it is,” says drinks writer Robert Simonson, whose most recent book, “The Martini Cocktail: A Meditation on the World’s Greatest Drink, with Recipes,” takes a deep dive into that iconic cocktail. “It’s likely the cocktail came to be in several places at once, as soon as bartenders figured out that gin and vermouth went nicely together.”

Yet still, even today, one can’t take that two-ingredient recipe as a sure thing. Historically, there are myriad riffs and versions that layer multiple ingredients under that lovely sing-song name of fame. What is part and parcel to the Martini manifesto? These are six things we do know.

1. IT STARTED SWEET, NOT DRY

Dive into any old cocktail book printed in the 19th century, and you won’t find the one-two pop of gin and vermouth but instead sweeter-sounding ingredients listed. In the 1891 tome “Cocktail Boothby’s American Bar-Tender,” the ingredients for a Martini are listed as such: ice, 4 drops of Angostura bitters, 1/2 jigger of Old Tom gin, 1/2 jigger of Italian (sweet!) vermouth; a twist of lemon, stirred and strained. Which sounds a lot like the Martinez.

DRY MARTINI

GET RECIPE

2. THE MARTINEZ IS A VERY CLOSE ELDER COUSIN

Or is it really the Manhattan’s light-haired sister? Pick your camp, but certainly the Martinez was closely related to the Martini. Similar to the ingredients listed above, it also included the addition of maraschino liqueur.

3. YOU CAN GARNISH TO GRAZE OR GLORIFY

A twist? An olive? An onion? An olive stuffed with an onion? Or perhaps some blue cheese? While there’s certainly an abundance of opinions on which garnish is greatest, modern Martinis are truly player’s choice.

“In those early recipes, you would find a cherry as a garnish as often as a twist or olive. The cherry faded away by about 1900 as the drink got drier,” says Simonson. “Since then, it has been a battle between the olive and lemon twist, with the olive usually winning with most folks. I think that has as much to do with the way the drink looks with an olive in it as much as anything. That Martini-with-an-olive profile is an iconic one. People like the look of it. Lemon twists, I find, are for epicures, people who really appreciate the flavors in the gin.”

4. GIN IS IN

Yes, vodka remains a popular spirit—and, sure, if that’s how you like your Martini, then please do drink it whichever way gives you the most pleasure. But gin is the cocktail’s ancestral spirit, and with such an abundance of high-quality, exciting, delicious gins on the market, there’s no better time than now to indulge in and investigate that botanical booze.

MARTINEZ

GET RECIPE

5. IT’S STIRRED, NOT SHAKEN. REALLY.

Of course, you can do whatever you like, but shaking takes the drink’s aesthetic clarity and fogs it up (also known as bruising) with tiny shards of ice. The drink should be clear; it’s part of its pleasingly proper charm. Also, the ice shards continue to water down your Martini, which, if mixed correctly, should already be at the right dilution and temperature once it’s strained from a mixing glass. When mixing yours, add ice to your mixing glass, pour in your desired proportions of gin and dry vermouth, and stir for a solid 20 to 30 seconds.

“I always suggest 30 seconds. A Martini is a strong drink. You’re going to want that dilution,” says Simonson. “And worry not, it will still pack a punch even after all that stirring.”

6. PERFECT IS ABOUT PROPORTIONS

What’s the perfect Martini? Well, that’s a bit of a personal decision made between you and your bartender, but a true Perfect Martini is actually an official drink made of equal parts gin and vermouth, with the vermouth proportion an even split between both sweet and dry and with a dash of orange bitters for good measure

The 12 Pains of Christmas by Bob Rivers

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Christmas At Ground Zero

Peace and Social Justice Center, of South Central Kansas Annual Dinner

Save the Date! Our speakers this year will be Gretchen Eick and Michael Poage. Join us at our annual dinner to learn, eat, and hear about our plans for the future of the organization.

Details

Date:

December 6

Time:

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Cost:

$25

Laurie Mitchell was a great friend—she will be missed!

By SJ Otto

As we all get older, we lose friends. That is what has happened last week with my friend Laurie Mitchell. As with my friend Tim Pouncey, Laurie was 61 years old. Laurie had cancer, so I suppose the loss was more expected than Tim’s.

I don’t think any loss is completely expected. We never know how long a person really has.

I’ve known Laurie and her husband Steve Jackman since before Cam Gentry and I were married, in1984. Laurie and Steve got married just about 2 years later. They always seemed to be a happy couple. They used to love to travel and they had plenty of good stories to tell us about their various adventures. One of their favourite destinations seemed to be the British Ise. As with us, they also visted Mark Davis, our friend in Spain. They visited many countries including some real backward third world countries were poverty was overwhelming. No one can say they were wimpy about their travels. They were willling to check out those les than comfortable countries, in some very dark places.

One of their trips took them to China. They had plenty of interesting tales of that trip. I was especially interested in that trip since I am a Maoist.

Laurie and her husband Steve use to go to most of our parties. In our younger days we had lots of them. Laurie was never a drinker. She avoided alcohol and any other kind of intoxicating substance other than caffeine. She loved coffee drinks.

Her politics were liberal, much like Pouncey’s or my wife Cam. I’ve always been the token Marxist amongst our friends. After all, if I only hung out with other Marxists, I wouldn’t have any friends here in Wichita.

One thing Laurie and I had in common is that both of us got a book published. Her’s was "So... Is He Gay. The Single Woman's Guide to Whether He'd Make a Better Groom or Caterer at Your Wedding.” I don’t know how well it sold, but as with mine, War on Drugs or War on People?, we both took great pride in the fact that we did get our books published. That is no small task. It is something of pride and we both had the opportunity to take part in that process.

Laurie and Steve believed in their Church, Woodland United Methodist Church and their religion. They were Christians. Cam and I are not. We (Cam and I) do not believe in the afterlife. As for Laurie and Steve their religion gave them great comfort. It worked for them and at this point in time that is all that really matters. 

In Wichita, KS, we will all miss Gypsy Claar

From The Idiot Factor:

I first met Gypsy Claar (Tracy Elizabeth 'Gypsy' Claar/ her official name) some time after I began publishing my so call ‘counter culture newspaper’ called the Public Voice. I had modelled that paper off of a counter-culture newspaper called the Public Notice, in Lawrence, KS.

This was more than just a Marxist-Leninist newspaper. A lot of young Marxist-Leninist or socialist political activists don’t understand how it was to be a member of the 1960s-1970s counter-culture. For a while it was just a given that anyone who grew his hair long, wore “hippie clothes” or what we might call today “freak clothes” belong to a kind of counter-culture. It was mostly a cultural thing based on trendy ‘60s or ‘70s stuff. 

Not everyone who belonged to that counter culture movement was a leftists. In fact as time when on, for me, it was a shock to see how many right-wing “hippies” and “Freaks” there were around me.

But Gypsy worked with me and Tim Pouncey, who was as much a left-wing hippie as I am today. They (Tim and Gypsy) both worked on my newspaper, the Public Voice, with lots of articles and satire that was needed to defend the working class of Wichita and offend the right-wing ass holes we all fight against today.

I don’t know how many of my readers knew 'Gypsy' Claar. She was a political activist for the homeless. She was not as much a political person as she supported people’s human rights. And she was an old hippy, as some of us actually knew her and some of us actually are today. She died a little over a month ago. She was about 73. I knew her well and at one time she did some work for the old Public Voice Community News paper, of which I was the owner and Editor of.

I knew Gypsy from way back in the 1980s. I went to one of her parties in one of her ranch homes north of Wichita in the rural parts of Sedgwick County. It was one of the best parties I ever went to and I went there with my old friend Tim Pouncey. I also met up with her and her sister years ago when we lived in Hutchinson,KS.

I remember when she was taking journalist classes at Wichita State University. She did a lot of photography. Gypsy was a good friend. She got along with just about everyone she knew. She dated a few friends of mine. She will be missed by this community.

As her obit says:

“She is survived by: daughters, Elizabeth ‘Kathy’ Renner, Wichita, Christina ‘Teena’ Effenbeck, Mt. Hope, and Mariah Claar, Wichita; six grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

It is always difficult to loose an old friend, but we all have to die some time and at least she had a fairly long life, and she lived a life most of us would be proud to have lived.

Disturbed - The Sound Of Silence

I bought new fish and they are friendlier

By SJ Otto

Not long ago I bought some new fish. I haven't had any since my Cichlid died. He hated other fish and killed every fish I put in with him. Now that he is dead, I got some friendlier fish. I got three zebra fish (a type of minnow) and a Blue Gourami. I bought another Blue Gourami three days ago. I now have fish that don't want to kill each other. I think I'll name the Gouramis Blue and Blue #2. I haven't come up with a name for the zebras yet. That is OK because fish don't use their names very much.

I remember my mom, Joan Otto

By SJ Otto

My mother, Joan Otto, died in December of 2012. I usually write obituaries on friends and family members when they die. Maybe I forgot or I just can’t find it. But I’ve decided to write about her now.

I was always very close to my mother. There are few people I was closer to than her. Before she died I had a hard time imagining a world without her. But people get old and parents die. A year before she died, she deteriorated, both physically and mentally. When she finally died, I could hardly recognize her. She died of old age, pure and simple.

I had a lot in common with my mom. She was somewhat liberal. Not so much about free sexuality or using drugs, but she was against prejudism and racism. She taught me and my brothers to treat black folks with respect and equality.  She was against any kind of intolerance or racism. In later years my mom said “I may have over done it with teaching you tolerance.” That is because I occasionally made friends with some hard core street people or lumpen proletariats. One thing I learned from my mom was that standing up for what a person believes is right is a real important personal value.

My mom was a life long Democrat. She was a left of center liberal. She was not as far to the left as I was. While she believed in equality for all people, she did not share my beliefs on sex. She said that my dad and she were virgins when they got married. I had no reason to doubt that. She and my dad never smoked marijuana, as I used to years ago.  My mom often listened to the latest rock music, at least some of it. She wasn’t close minded. She didn’t like the Beatles at first. But over time she changed here mind and like some of their music. She was like that with a lot of new music and musicians.

She was also a devout Catholic. She told me she regretted that none of her sons followed in their parents footsteps when it came to religion. I could understand how she felt, but we all had to decide what we believed in and for most of us, it just wasn’t the Catholic religion. My dad died a few years ago and now Catholicism has simply died out in our family. Some of us chose no religion, others found different religions. One branch of our family is Baptist. They are definitely Christians and not Catholic. I consider myself an Epicurean. I got tired of telling people I was an agnostic or atheist. People kept saying “so you don’t believe in ANYTHING.” I believe in a lot of things. God and the afterlife just aren’t among those things.   

My mom tried her hand at several types of artistic pass times. She spent a year as a writer, about a year as a painter (she painted a portrait of my dad and a painting of all of us when we went fishing one year.) She spent a year as an actor. She worked for several years as a sales lady at Sears. If there is one thing she was really good at it was being a mom. She raised six boys and did a great job at it. When her and my dad got married, that was a time in the 1950s when a wife was expected to stay home and keep the house clean and raise the kids. She was a bit neurotic over her house-work. People did not understand how serious she was over her house-work. But my dad and us kids had to live with that.

But my mom was a person I often came to when I had a problem or needed advice. She always seemed to have an insight into things. She was a very spiritual person and I often enjoyed discussing things with her.

I miss my mom. Every person’s parents are different. Some guys are more close to their dads or their moms. I was very close to my mom and I miss her a lot. But life moves on, parents die and the rest of us live on until it is our turn to die. I have a son and I hope I can be as much of an inspiration to him as my mother was to me.

Obits: Legacy.com and Dignity Memorial.com

There is nothing like a four year old cabernet sauvignon

By SJ Otto

Lately I’ve taken up drinking wine. My favorite is red wine, specifically cabernet sauvignon. There are dozens of brands to chose from, but lately I’ve come up with a system to buying wine that I can be assured is pretty good. The average cabernet runs from $9 to $15. The price can be lower, or it can go up to $hundreds.

I’ve found that a lot of good cabernets cost as little as $9 or $10. But the real trick is the vintage year. A lot of cabernets are vintage 2017 to 2018. I’ve found that four years is a good way to choose a good wine. That is a vintage year of 2014 to 2015. A cabernet that is about four years old is as good as most wines get. There are often a lot of cabernets in the $10 range and if they have the vintage year 2014 to 2015, they are usually real good. I’ve read that a good cabernet can be anywhere from 10 years to 30 years old. But that requires storing them for up to 20 years, or paying $200 or more to buy them already aged.

So for me, four years is just right. The other day I found a seven year old wine. It was good, but I couldn’t really tell it from the four year old wines. I do notice that the two year old wines just don’t cut it.

I do like some non-red wines, Champaign, Sake, mead, etc.  But when it comes to red wine a four year old cabernet is my favorite.

The vintage year is 2015 for this wine.

CAN YOU BUILD A SOLID BUSINESS MODEL AROUND RARE SPIRITS?

Contributed by Kara Newman

From Liquor.com

The Last Drop Distillers

Every drop of booze The Last Drop Distillers sells is a limited edition—literally. The London company is known for buying and bottling parcels of rare spirits, often traveling the world to procure them from distilleries that have closed and even rejecting spirits that just aren’t exquisite enough.

“Our business model is unique,” says joint managing director Beanie Espey. “We only sell fine, rare, very old spirits. We don’t sell anything at a budget—everything we do is limited and exclusive.” She admits this is “both a privilege and a pressure,” since the pipeline for sourcing rare spirits can be uncertain. If a release is unsuccessful, there’s nothing to prop it up with,” she says.

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