Lessons from Mars

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It’s a parable.  This week, on a planet weeks away, earthlings achieved heavier than air flight.  Considering that we flew for the first time on our own planet only 118 years ago (within feasible limits of a very successful human lifetime), the achievement is remarkable.  What I found most fascinating about the live stream provided by NASA, however, was the human element in the control room.  Not only did all the engineers look young enough to have been my children, I was cheered almost to tears to see several women among them.  We’ve come a long way.  And I don’t mean just to get to Mars.  There’s a lot of work yet to be done on the planet on which we evolved, but it does me good to see scientists recognizing the contributions women make to progress.

While many cultures worldwide still consider women the property of men, that scene showed that with women in leadership roles we can achieve remarkable things.  Only with the priorities of diversifying the workplace could we realize a dream that began long before Kitty Hawk.  People of all genders and all ethnicities have much to offer our growing sense of accomplishment.  Mars is millions of miles away.  Perseverance and Ingenuity are being controlled across this godlike distance by a group of humans that consists not just of angry white men who want to rule this world.  Although the palpable  excitement in the room was for what was happening far away, my spirits were buoyed by what was happening here.

Our biology defines us, but it becomes a sin when it confines us.  We are capable of more.  We’ve flown on another planet, and yet we still need to learn that on this planet all people deserve fair and equitable treatment.  It boggles my mind that on that reddish speck I can see on a clear night, a speck so small that my pinkie held at arm’s length can obliterate it, we have landed a car-sized rover and a helicopter.  The math involved staggers this old mind, but the imagination inspires it.  We come to moments like these when women and men of various backgrounds come together and dream.  Double-masked and socially distant, young people have shown us a world far beyond what angry white men could even imagine.  Watching the video of a helicopter taking off, hovering, and landing on another planet, looking at the people in the room, I realize there is a parable here.

Well Grounded

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Earth Day feels like it’s actually Earth Day for the first time in four years.  Many of those with more common sense than gullibility know that we have only one planet.  Even as we have achieved flight on Mars, any hope of going elsewhere (and some of us would rather not) is many years away.  Earth is our home and we can live on our planet without destroying it.  Other animals also change the environment, of course.  The problem arises when one species becomes unchecked and begins changing things for their benefit only.  Or what they perceive as their benefit only.  Life evolved on this planet deeply integrated.  The more we study nature the more we see how interconnected it is.  Thinking ourselves special, we’ve placed a wall between humankind and everything else.  It’s an artificial wall.

If you read about nature you’ll be amazed.  Trees, perhaps the true heroes of this planet, make our life possible.  They couldn’t exist without the fungi that partner with their roots in a symbiotic relationship.  If there had been no trees our ancestors would’ve been easy prey to larger predators and would likely not have survived.  Large industrial corporations destroy trees as if they’re a nuisance.  They are our life.  Even as governments with “strong men” leaders destroy the forests in “their” countries, we are losing the very biodiversity that makes life possible on this planet.  There’s room for humans to get along here without destroying the environment that supports our very life.

One of the hidden motives in this scenario is a strange development within Christianity.  A literalism that would’ve shocked even old Augustine developed around the turn of the last century.  That literalism was used by corporations that saw the earth as a resource to be exploited and claimed that we, unlike animals, owned the planet.  If you own a home would you destroy it just because you could?  What good would it do?  No, this Earth Day let’s take the time to consider our religion and its implications sensibly.  The Bible does not advocate destroying what God created.  It may have been written too early to comprehend evolution, but that was never a problem for early theologians.  When fused with capitalism, however, this religion provided everything greedy businesses needed to exploit the planet for its own purposes—the god Mammon.  Just this week we flew our first flight on an inhospitable planet far away.  Today let’s think of how we might protect the only home we have under our feet. 

He’s Dead, Jim

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So there’s this thing called Spotify.  Like most modern contraptions, I approach it warily.  I’m not sure how it works.  Do the artists get paid?  What’s the catch?  Is it only having to listen to a commercial for Amazon every three or four songs, like the radio?  I don’t have a lot of time to listen to music, but when I do have time I like to discover something new.  Then there’s the oldies.  And I can’t help but feel a deep sense of loss at the death of Jim Steinman.  I discovered Steinman earlier than I realized it when “Total Eclipse of the Heart” came out the year my first romantic relationship ended.  That song can still reduce me to a quivering lump of emotion.  All I knew at the time was that it was a Bonnie Tyler song.

Growing up fundamentalist, even album titles like Bat out of Hell, Meatloaf’s Steinman breakthrough, were enough to scare said toponym right out of me.  I never knowingly listened to any of the songs on that album until after earning my doctorate.  When I did I was hooked.  My research skills had grown by that time to include finding out who the writer of a song was.  I discovered that “Wagnerian rock” really spoke to me.  And the only guy who seemed to know how to write it was Jim Steinman.  Most kids, I suppose, settle into their music tastes much younger, but in my thirties and forties I found Steinman a most compelling artist.  I listened to his older stuff, and his newer stuff.  I found out some surprising things, such as that even Air Supply’s “Making Love out of Nothing at All” was a Steinman song.

I seem to be hopeless at playing musical instruments.  I’ve studied piano and taken guitar lessons, leaving bewildered teachers in my wake.  My wife tried to teach me the recorder.  Despite my failure as a player, music means a lot to me.  I don’t listen to it unless I can pay attention to it.  For me it’s not background noise.  When I learned to identify operatic rock, I soon came to realize that it was the work of a singular genius who was covered by a wide variety of artists.  No one else, it seems, could capture the feeling of being young like Steinman could.  Now he’s gone.  In my noodling around with this thing called Spotify, I wonder if I can discover any more of his songs.  Meanwhile, I’m thankful that I found him when I did.

Herd Not Heard

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When mass shootings become commonplace, you might think bipartisan efforts would be made to stem the violence.  If so, you misunderstand how little the pro-life party actually values life.  By pumping its adherents full of fear, they use the hand not waving a gun to pocket donations from the NRA.  Human life is only valuable to get yourself elected.  It’s difficult to remember days when I didn’t awake to hear of someone with more guns than restraint opening fire in a public place.  Mental illness, it seems to me, is fairly widespread.  It’s no deterrent, however, to purchasing military-grade weapons and using them when the stress levels get too high.  Meanwhile lives of those—whether fellow gun owners or not—are lost.  And Republicans argue that nothing should change.  You’d think the insurrection might’ve changed their view.

How does one go to bed secure knowing the next day they may be reading about another mass shooting?  Sure, the perpetrator will be caught, if not already dead, and families will be bereaved but we know our rights!  Funny how even the Bill of Rights can be prooftexted by those who do the same with the Good Book.  What is so hard to understand about “Thou shalt not kill”?  Coveting, however, and adultery, seem alive and negotiable, to gather by their support of 45.  Such selective reading generally turns deadly and constituencies become mere statistics.  What seems to be missing is a basic sense of social justice.  A social justice that applies to all.

The idea of wanting a country only for white men and their subservient wives is a relic that simply refuses to acknowledge that societies change.  We’ll never reach perfection, but that’s no excuse to stop trying.  Firearm regulation might be a rational place to start.  While party politics will get in the way of this the pools of blood will grow only deeper.  What seems to be missing is the acknowledgement that these are people we are losing to assuage one party’s ambitions.  Wouldn’t prioritizing education and providing mental health services be better?  Ah, but it might stop some of the wealthy from pocketing yet more money from those who are lined up against the wall.  Of course, you can be in the majority and still be gerrymandered into silence.  When the Gun Ownership Party begins saying aloud that it can’t win elections fairly, and makes noises about beginning to cull the herd, we should all be getting a little nervous.

Photo by Tanner Yould on Unsplash

One, two, three

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The danger of statistics is that they turn an individual into a number.  A few days ago an article in the New York Times addressed the rare blood clots that some women develop after receiving the Johnson and Johnson covid vaccine.  The response of the cited physicians was telling.  Many praised the decision to halt use of the J&J vaccine immediately.  Others, however, point to the numbers.  If a vaccine is halted many more could be exposed to and contract Covid-19.  It is better, they aver, to take the statically smaller risk and use the vaccine.  While I understand the logic here, I do wonder if the side effects occurring primarily in women has anything to do with the reasoning.  Why not save this vaccine for the men instead?

This raises once again the specter of consciousness.  Statistically the odds are small that a woman will develop a clot.  What if you are the woman who does?  This dilemma always bothered me while camping in the woods.  Statistically black bear attacks are rare.  How does that help you if your tent is one that looks like a candy wrapper to a bear of little brain?  You become a statistic instead of a living, breathing, feeling, blogging person.  Statistics.  There’s a reason some of us identify with the humanities, I guess.  I can imagine what it would be like to have your doctor say to you, “Sorry, this is rare, but look at the bright side—you now become a statistic!”

Photo credit: HB, via Wikimedia commons

The fact is we’re all statistics to strangers anyway, the government above all.  We are vote-bearing numbers to be gerrymandered and prevented from voting.  Beyond that we’re merely annoying.  This pandemic has introduced Stalin’s accounting with a vengeance.  542,000 is a big number.  Unless you know one or more of them personally.  Then the statistics seem to melt.  Life is full of risk, of course.  We’ve barricaded ourselves in our homes for over a year now, eating things that are likely more dangerous for us than a rare complication.  The virus, and perhaps some vaccines, are among various killers on the loose.  Nobody can declare with any certainty the correct course of action.  Actually doing something about the virus when it was first a known threat would’ve helped, of course.  We find ourselves on the brink, it seems, of getting Trump’s disease under control.  Would that we all could do so, without having to worry about lying down to be counted.

Whale Tales

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Photo by Richard Sagredo on Unsplash

Always I’m surprised when other people seem surprised, specifically about animal intelligence.  Then I have to remind myself that our culture has absorbed the biblical view that people are different so thoroughly that even scientists believe it.  I watch the birds out my window quite a lot.  What they do is intentional and often quite intelligent.  True, not all animals are college material, but they are far brighter than the “automaton” paradigm with which I grew up.  So when I saw a piece in The Guardian titled “Sperm whales in 19th century shared ship attack information” I kept the tab open until I could read it.  Then I woke up this morning wondering why one of my many open tabs had the header “Sperm” on it, only to remember that I was going to read about whales.

I’ve written about Moby-Dick many times on this blog.  Although Melville didn’t experience financial success with it, he managed to pen one of the most profound and memorable novels ever.  One of the things he stressed was the intelligence of the whaler’s prey.  The Guardian article describes how, due to the magic of digitized log books, researchers can now compare captains’ notes about whaling.  What this comparison makes clear is that whales shared the information about attacks and avoided the areas where they occurred.  Despite the massive size of their brains, researchers had supposed whales to be rather stupid—or automatons—simply waiting to get slaughtered.  Animal intelligence is visible anywhere as long as we’re not afraid of that bogeyman, “anthropomorphism.”

We’ve been taught that human beings are so special that we think other animals act like us only because we’re projecting onto them.  Since the Bible informs us that we’re special and they’re further down the food chain, we must assume that creatures who destroy their own planet believing that they’re serving the will of God are somehow smarter than animals living in harmony with their environment.  We’re so smart that we had to add an extra sapiens to Homo sapiens to show just how special we are.  I’ve long suspected that animals are far more intelligent than we allow them to be.  Philip Hoare’s article offers us yet more evidence that we’ve underestimated our non-sapiens companions time and again.  Ironically we can accept that evolution explains how life forms change over time, but we somehow can’t let go of the story that says we’re somehow different.  I think we need to get out more and simply watch how animals behave.

Naming Easter

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Today, for some, it’s Easter.  Others call the day Pascha, after the Hebrew word pasach, or “Passover.”  At its deepest roots it is a spring celebration timed around the vernal equinox.  The name “Easter,” however, has an interesting story.  All the more so for having missing parts.  There was apparently an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Eostre.  Since these Teutonic peoples didn’t have their own archives we only learn about the April festival dedicated to this dawn goddess from the Venerable Bede.  Being venerable, we tend to trust him.  He tells us that what is called Pascha used to be called Easter because of the goddess and her celebrations.  We’re often left, however, with not enough information about the deities of old Europe because, ironically, literacy had not come to them.

As we move into what publishers are calling post-literary culture, I have to wonder at the losses that will mean for the future.  We all know, deep down, that electronic media are ephemeral.  We just hope our bank accounts stay viable until we die so we don’t run out of money.  In any case, Easter is a good illustration of what historians and those interested in the development of ideas have to do when few written records exist.  We look at artifacts and images and make our best guess.  This is clearly evident in the field of studies of another goddess—Asherah—upon whom I lavished my dissertation.  We do have some written records, but for many scholars they aren’t enough.  We guess that this or that image might be of her, although they’re not labelled.  A similar problem applies to Eostre.

There is little doubt that a goddess named Eostre existed.  It makes perfect sense that she would be celebrated in April.  Before Daylight Saving Time was invented, it was light around 5 a.m. this time of year.  For early birds (historically we were in the majority) it would’ve been obvious.  The goddess of the dawn is coming back to us.  Shining in our eyes as we try to pry a little more slumber from a shortening night.  Early Christians tended to adapt rather than to reject  non-Christian celebrations.  The name of Easter is yet another of those conveniences.  Although it snowed a little around here on what some call Maundy Thursday, today Easter is here to remind us of resurrection.  Life does return and our daffodils, although they may be shivering, have bravely broken through the sod to greet the dawn.

Cherry Trees

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Today is the predicted peak blooming of Washington’s famous cherry blossoms.  Although the trees were a gift from the mayor of Tokyo (before the United States bombed two Japanese cities into oblivion) they perhaps reinforce the myth of a boy George Washington chopping down a cherry tree.  I’m sure you know the story: Georgie cut down the tree and when his aristocratic father asked about it, knowing that he’d get in trouble, our founding father nevertheless confessed.  The incident never happened, as historians have long assured us, but it is part of American lore.  And perhaps a key to understanding American gullibility.  We like things that make us look great.  If a story shows that we’ve been honest even well before independence from Britain, well, we must be honest now.

Perhaps this is why so many people believed Trump, a president with a well-established and fully documented lifetime of lies.  The biggest one being, of course, that he cares about anyone other than himself.  Not content to accept facts, such as a closely monitored and fairly lost election, he espoused lies that are still causing shudders through the nation.  I, like many Americans, live in a “purple” town.  A few doors down from our house is that of a rabid Trump supporter.  Just two days ago I had to walk to the drug store about half a mile from here.  I walked past this house that had hung huge Trump banners right on the siding, in addition to one phallically jutting out from a flag bracket.  Now the house has huge American flags upside down.  Such things never happened, I’m pretty sure, when Bush lost to Clinton.  Or ever before.

Nobody with the ability to read can doubt Trump’s actual record of deceit and lies.  It is fairly well documented that he ran for president to help his business and promote his image rather than out of any concern for any other human being.  After sentencing over half-a-million Americans to death with Covid (about which he simply couldn’t be bothered to do anything), his followers (who numbered high among the victims) still clung to the lies.  Today the cherry trees, it is said, are blooming in Washington.  I believe it because I can check the facts and see if it’s so.  When I do I know that I’ll be thinking of George Washington and his fictional cherry tree.  I know it never happened.  Instead, I’ll focus on the beauty right before my eyes.

Found and Lost

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After the year that was 2020, I decided that I needed to read some books that might make me laugh.  That can sometimes be pretty difficult, just as finding books that scare me (unless they’re nonfiction) can be.  Turning to the internet (where else can we turn in these days of rare vaccinations?) Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent came up more than once.  I think I may have read some of his other work, but this is one of his earliest books.  Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, but much of the humor seemed a bit cruel.  No doubt in America there are lots of things at which fun would be easy to poke, but we’ve become sensitive to others—perhaps overly so—perhaps to the point that even using the word “others” can leave you open to criticism. But still.

Bryson’s book is a classic travelog.  It’s the kind my family kept when we were able to travel.  We’ve still got a printed out copy of our journeys to significant places, stuck in an ersatz binder, awaiting notice perhaps.  We tried to keep it funny.  There’s something about travel that’s great for your sense of humor.  Bryson set out on two wings of a country-wide trip while back from England.  Starting at his home in Des Moines, Iowa, he drove south and east then up north and back to his starting point.  The second half of the trip, obviously, went west, to the south west before angling up through the high plains and back home.  

The book is hard to classify.  The cover on my copy says he was looking for the perfect small town, but mostly it just seemed to be driving around.  And hitting some big cities as well.  There were a few laugh-out-loud moments even for this dour reader, but mostly there were some smiles and a bit of sadness.  I had to keep reminding myself that this was the late 1980s.  In fact, I was living in the United Kingdom when the book came out, which is probably why I never really heard of it before.  I do, regardless of how well the humor works, enjoy a travelog.  You can learn a lot that way.  Many of the places Bryson visited I’d also been, but my impressions were somewhat kindlier.  As a kid I didn’t get to travel much (kinda like now) and seeing new places I was always awash in wonder.  Not everywhere is pristine, of course, but keeping notes always seems like a good idea.  And if you can get them published, you might even be able to make a living out of it. We all remember the freedom of the open road.

Story Over

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Despite my penchant for speculative fiction I tend to read a lot of what’s usually categorized as literary fiction.  These tales don’t fit into any genre and are often colored with realism.  More than one person had recommend Richard Powers’ The Overstory, not least the Pulitzer Prize committee.  In the style of novels these days it’s pretty long and that meant I had to build up the courage (and time) to get to it.  I support the environment.  I have a great respect for trees and try to support conservation any way I can.  The Overstory is, however, a bleak vision of what we’re doing to the planet and to other living beings.  It certainly helps to have read Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees first.  It helps to know the main premise of the novel is based on non-fiction.  There may be spoilers below.

The first part of the book, Roots, introduces us to the various characters—most of whom will interact in the remaining pages.  Most of them are marked by tragedy in their lives and come to realize the longevity of trees has a perspective that can make sense of what, to our lifespans, seems inexplicable.  Several, but not all, of them end up in a conservation group trying to defend old growth redwoods from the insatiable greed of lumber companies and politicians.  The novel ends happily for none of them.  Trees, however, have the ability to outlive us.  While we cause real damage, they have the ability to regenerate, but in ways that none of us will live to see.  Trees see beyond the short, tragic lives we lead, into what may be a more hopeful future.

The other sections of the book, Trunk, Crown, and Seeds, follow events chronologically as the people age.  Some notable deaths among the group have a great impact on the small coterie of those protecting trees.  An unfeeling state and the corporate nature of laws are clearly on display.  They serve the will of those who can’t, or won’t, think differently about the world and our place in it.  Although the novel doesn’t ever cite the source, one of the eco-heroes finds a verse from Job to be of tremendous consolation: “For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.”  I was glad to see the connection made, but the book left me emotionally exhausted.  With speculative fiction at least you can escape the real problems of this world for awhile.

Seussical Thoughts

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It seems that Dr. Seuss has fallen on hard times.  His estate is pulling six of his books from production because of hurtful race representations.  This has, of course, sparked the debate between period pieces and the clearly necessary reeducation that has to take place regarding race itself.  I don’t have a solution here, but children raised on these books are among those who realize the dangers of racial stereotypes.  In fact, even those of us who try to keep a weather eye on our own thinking process can at times get caught in the trap of thinking that “white” is “normal” and everyone else is a “variation.”  The truth is we are all variants and political power, with its not-so-subtle adjunct money, have embedded racist thinking throughout our society.

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Photo credit: Al Ravenna, via Wikimedia Commons

Theodore Geisel was a broad-minded individual.  His works often advocate for inclusion.  He was also a product of his time, even as we are.  The struggle to do right in the midst of a corrupt world is constant.  None of us, I fear, have risen to perfection.  The roots of racist thinking run deep and they re-sprout if just a fragment of a rhizome left behind.  We should all know by now that slavery was evil and that a system that devalued other humans for money was clearly wrong.  We should know that government policies that keep American Indians repressed and do so secretly are unethical.  We should know that people from Asia have as much right to opportunity as those whose ancestry lies in Europe.  Why is this so hard to learn?  Why do we still have to fight to dismantle systemic racism in this “land of the free”?

Dr. Seuss has taught generations of kids that “a person’s a person” and that persons deserve fair treatment.  He did it in the language and idiom of his own era.  Those making the decisions for his estate are not trying to destroy his legacy.  They are, however, asking us to look forward and to try to figure out where we go from here.  Half a century ago we knew that civil rights were the only fair way to live.  We’ve experienced globalization since then and we’ve been made better for having done so.  Yet we are mired in preconceptions that can only damage our collective sense of justice, often falling along party lines.  Dr. Seuss taught us well—shouldn’t we implement what we’ve learned?

one of many

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It’s been some time since I’ve read about the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  There are so many religions that I need to refresh my study on them periodically.  So it was that I received a mailing from the local Kingdom Hall.  You see, the very last people at my front door before the pandemic was declared were bearing the Watchtower and telling me the end is nigh.  We knew about Covid-19 at that point and were being urged to keep social distance, although the authorities were still dithering about masks.  They knocked nevertheless and we stood several feet apart on the porch as they tried in vain to convince me of their truth.  So now, a year later, they’ve reached out by mail.

You’ve got to have a soft spot for a religion that has its origins in Pittsburgh.  Well, maybe that’s the case for those who grew up where it was the nearest big city.  And I do admire that pioneering spirit that says “established religions just aren’t doing it for me.”  The great swath of NRM—New Religious Movements—shows that you shouldn’t feel lonely if this applies to you.  Even today’s Christianities bear little resemblance to the teachings of the carpenter of Nazareth.  He who said even to look upon a woman lustfully was to commit adultery, but whose followers support a president who recommends grabbing them by the, well, where the originator said not to look….  Religions evolve.  The literalism many associate with Christian belief is really only about a century old.  We have no business castigating religions just because they’re recent.

My mailing from the Witnesses included a personalized (somewhat) letter inviting me to a virtual commemoration of Jesus’ death.  Due to the pandemic it’ll be held on Zoom, of course.  The expected flyer with its Anglo-Jesus contains the details.  I did attend a Witness service back when I was in college.  Those days of heady explorations never really ended for me.  You have to settle into a tradition to get to know people, of course, but there’s a world full of ways of looking at our spiritual side and there’s more being propagated just about every year—even Jehovah’s Witnesses have splinter groups.  I suppose missionaries are something we’ll always have to put up with as long as people are convinced that their way is The Only Way.  Trust that others have perhaps quietly, perhaps deliberately, perhaps with a great deal of thought and reflection, have found their own way seems never to be good enough.  Still, an invitation is an invitation and those have been rare during a pandemic.

Who Says Suez?

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“Where was Moses when the lights went out?”  That’s one of the few sayings I remember from my grandmother.  She lived with us when I was a child and she’d say that when someone came in too late to help with something.  I always thought it a strange expression since Moses didn’t do miracles on demand, but I still remember it—kind of a miracle in its own right.  The expression came back to me when hearing about the MV Ever Given in the Suez Canal.  This massive cargo ship, buffeted by high winds, has choked the canal that links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean for days.  This shortcut means ships don’t have to round Africa to get to European and American ports.  While the problems of this one ship play out, over 150 others are waiting to pass through and goods could be delayed for weeks around the world.  I’m glad we have toilet paper.

Image credit: Ten Commandments trailer, via Wikimedia Commons.

Now Moses was known for have a role in the dividing of the Red Sea.  Of course, the name of the body of water is debated.  The Good Book actually says “Reed Sea” and nobody’s really sure where that is.  Besides, the miracle isn’t really credited to Moses.  God did the deed through, well, a strong wind.  If the waters could be divided perhaps present-day crews could figure out how to free the ship.  Photos of a bulldozer that looks like a Tonka next to the colossal freighter give an idea of the scale of the problem.  People building things so large that they can’t control them.  And the forces of nature seem happy to remind us that we’re not in control, right, Moses?

And everything, we assume, will go smoothly if left to its own devices.  How often do we really worry about the Suez Canal?  Or large ships, for that matter?  Theses things should go just as clockwork, we suppose.  Until our order from Amazon is inexplicably delayed.  The pandemic, Post Office troubles, and unexpected bad weather have caused major shipping delays around here over the past several months, and now we have no Moses when we need him.  According to Exodus, God lives right next door on the Sinai peninsula.  That’s where Moses first met him.  If we had a true prophet these days (let the reader apply wisdom here) there would be no concerns for something as simple as a wedged ship.  But we can’t even find Moses when the lights go out. 

Holy or un?

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It’s either brave or stupid.  Maybe both.  Writing about a movie you haven’t watched, I mean.  Multiple people (do I have a reputation, or what?) have pointed out to me that Good Friday (for some) is the release date for The Unholy.  Since Good Friday’s a week away I guess we’re getting an early start this year.  The Unholy is a new horror movie and although I try not to watch trailers before seeing a movie—too many of them show too much in advance—I already have a sense of what it’s about.  This post isn’t really about the movie, however.  It’s about the bigger issue.  The concern many have is that it’s being released on Good Friday.  One thing I’ve learned is that to get attention you have to shock people, no, Donald?  Getting noticed is difficult and outrage generally works.

Friday, for many, is movie night.  Good Friday is, for some Christians, a day for church.  I’ve yet to have an employer (other than Nashotah House) that recognized it as a special day at all.  Easter always falls on Sunday so there’s no need to give time off work, at least in this capitalist, Christian culture.  But if you try to release a horror movie that day, people notice.  Mel Gibson knew that crucifixion could make the basis of a horror film, and people noticed.  Sitting over here in the backwaters just outside academe, I took to horror as a means of keeping my book writing active.  One reason was that horror gets people’s attention.  (It also helps if your books are reasonably priced.)

As a young man I used to spend a good deal of Good Friday in church.  Since I was serious about school I’m thinking we probably had the day off in my district.  Attending a Christian college, followed by seminary, I suspect these also paid attention to the liturgical year.  Then in the real world I learned the truth—it’s just another day.  A day for going to work and increasing the profits for whatever company may have hired you.  When the day’s over you’ll be inclined to relax, and perhaps watch a movie.  Right now going to a theater opens the possibility for horror itself so I won’t be there on opening night for The Unholy, but I think there was some savvy thinking going on, in any case.  And it may just be that the movie was titled specifically to fit the occasion.

Horror Story

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Last week, according to an article a friend sent, Ronald DeFeo died in prison.  DeFeo was made infamous by the Amityville murders in 1974 that led to the Amityville Horror franchise, a series that I covered in Nightmares with the Bible.  Many of the other individuals in that famous haunting/possession have also passed away, including both George and Kathy Lutz, the owners who bought the house and brought it to the public notice.  Controversy still surrounds the story with some claiming it was all a hoax and others suggesting that the hoax doesn’t add up to the sum of what happened there.  DeFeo and the Lutzes were all considered unreliable narrators—DeFeo because he was mentally unstable and the Lutzes because they made money out of their misfortune.  If anything can complicate truth, it’s money.

Academics, of course, won’t touch the story.  Claims and counterclaims, all swirling around lucre, fog one’s vision.  The story illustrates just how difficult it can be to get at the truth.  Even allowing for exaggeration, it seems something happened there.  A worldview that dismisses any possibility of spiritual entities—however defined—will necessarily come up negative.  No doubt, considerable money changed hands.  The franchise is still going with no less than four movies being released last year with Amityville in their titles.  Getting at the truth involves decided which human beings you trust.  The one Lutz child that has been willing to talk, Daniel, has continued the claims.  How can we ever know?

I object to those who claim that such inquiry is a waste of time.  If such things as claimed in Jay Anson’s book do happen (even if exaggerated), it may be that they’re exceptionally rare.  Rarity of objects in the physical world is seldom in doubt.  Ask any auctioneer.  Getting into the accounts around the events, however, betrays a list of money-seeking individuals.  Just about anyone making a counter-claim had a book deal in mind, and given the phenomenal success of Anson’s original the possibility of getting to the truth after that would always involve wading through greed.  No wonder politicians so easily become crooked!  Money makes people do strange things.  Not surprisingly, those left with questions regarding the truth of the matter are left hungry.  It’s clear that Ronald DeFeo killed his family.  It’s a matter of record that the Lutz family moved into the house just over a year later and moved out without their belongings less than a month after that.  Beyond this what happened is less and less likely ever to be known.