tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78334546490938780952024-03-12T21:46:00.432-04:00Navigating The FiniteSextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.comBlogger215125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-78800692925479300782022-03-31T18:25:00.006-04:002023-01-03T13:48:30.129-05:00Book Blab (it's really not a review) Thy Neighbor's Wife by Gay Talese<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgCUAXZRrX__V4UB-U0EnvfzzBcczQbbbt9Ylai1STFausXPqKF6qhtkT--SOKuw7Ra7Pq80KKD1eSVTiDRLeeA3eu8FGPMV-CmBZZGqSP6zwi6IWDDkWvFObDoSzZEaJ_6PvrafgN4a7fJYkpH26B9NDQzIMR_bTr2XnFw-xGJ40hiYY10jehrC_6B6w" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="185" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgCUAXZRrX__V4UB-U0EnvfzzBcczQbbbt9Ylai1STFausXPqKF6qhtkT--SOKuw7Ra7Pq80KKD1eSVTiDRLeeA3eu8FGPMV-CmBZZGqSP6zwi6IWDDkWvFObDoSzZEaJ_6PvrafgN4a7fJYkpH26B9NDQzIMR_bTr2XnFw-xGJ40hiYY10jehrC_6B6w" width="159" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the late spring of 1972, while I was in the Air Force stationed in the Mojave Desert, I pulled into a scenic overlook not far from the Mount Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains. I looked down on the twinkling expanse of Pasadena in the deepening twilight and wondered how many people were in love and making love right now below me? I felt a bittersweet feeling of grief for my own loneliness and yet a joy that people love each other and express it with sex. Mostly I felt an envious melancholy, sorry for myself that everyone was getting laid except me. Little did I know that if I had simply gone another 32 miles west, to the Santa Monica Mountains, to one of the overlooks on Topanga Canyon Road, I could have possibly looked down on pure bacchanalia.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhrt-6Xrr9Je-HqFDkrcbVt_mRlX4ak8uujwvY4oBxCrVyw6t92VD8QhZ8XHUb4HhXOikXw03pUmwSbo_n74vG2RaXICJmYomw_Ku98DB4us6gl_hi6o7jS9--S19lreSaBhSXB94B8bc5Wgm2FbMj0lSdVdOZmDIUo5mje3NyfwqSP8c1qP1rdNo6SzA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="1920" height="58" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhrt-6Xrr9Je-HqFDkrcbVt_mRlX4ak8uujwvY4oBxCrVyw6t92VD8QhZ8XHUb4HhXOikXw03pUmwSbo_n74vG2RaXICJmYomw_Ku98DB4us6gl_hi6o7jS9--S19lreSaBhSXB94B8bc5Wgm2FbMj0lSdVdOZmDIUo5mje3NyfwqSP8c1qP1rdNo6SzA=w400-h58" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Topanga Canyon Image Credit Wikipedia</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-e1f59d76-7fff-0b05-285f-87332d9c774e"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Sandstone Retreat was located about 3 miles west of Topanga Canyon Road, which was one of my favorite scenic routes, although really, I was probably on the road only a half dozen times. Yet there I was living two hours away and I never heard of Sandstone Retreat until I read about it in Talese’s book, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thy Neighbor's Wife</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> three weeks ago. Alas!</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alas? Not really, even if I could have afforded the membership fee, I doubt that the Williams would have wanted the likes of me, a skinny, lonely, callow Air Force buck sergeant mooning over the lack of love in his life. Even if they had taken pity on me and allowed me entry, I doubt I would have found what I was looking for. Oh sure I would have been wowed temporarily by the sex, but I think I would soon have discovered what I suspected then and know about myself now…it is not sex that makes a person like me happy. It is Love. Sex is a Sacrament of that Love, but without Love, sex is just a celebration of lust. If that is your thing, fine, I hold no great moral convictions regarding sex. As long as everyone is 100% informed and 100% on board, an enthusiastic yes, then do what floats your collective boat. Just don’t hurt anyone in the process. But I have come to learn something about myself, I am an oxytocin junky not a dopamine addict, and Love gets the oxytocin squirting for me. Warm, messy, plugged in, loving, fragrant post-coital bliss with my wife and I lying in a pool of oxytocin is Heaven on Earth for us, not the thrill of the novelty of yet another partner. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel personally indebted to the sexual revolution (what ever it is), and I enjoyed reading </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thy Neighbor’s Wife</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> because I have an almost hobby like interest in sex and sexuality like some people have for model trains or astronomy. I have never quite got over the awe struck dumb founded fascination for the tales I heard as a 9 year old boy about the games that big people play. “He sticks it where???? No way!!!!” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So reading </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thy Neighbor’s Wife</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was sort of a cheap thrill of reading about the games that the really big people play. Ok I read this four decades after it was written so there was no great surprises of what goes on, yet with the quality of Talese’s writing, the level of detail that he went into, and his admission that not only was he an observer but a willing participant sort of got the lust hairs on the back of my neck to stand up and go woo-woo. I thought they had wore out from pure exhaustion over the onslaught of sexual imagery and innuendo of modern life. But when I finished the book, I got the uncomfortable, well actually for me a comfortable, feeling that none of this applies to me. It was like a trip into a weird amusement park that is somewhat thrilling while you are there, but you are more than happy to leave and never come back. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not quite sure what Talese’s goal was for this book. What was his point? To show how morality changed in America? To celebrate the Supreme Court decisions that now allow me to buy a copy of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fanny Hill</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on my Kindle for 99 cents, or Henry Miller’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tropic of Cancer</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for $1.99. Years ago possessing these books would have got me arrested. So yes, I am glad I can purchase sexually suggestive if not downright filth and not worry about the likes of Comstock seizing my Kindle and burning it and tossing my ass into the klink. But I also find that I am a hell of a lot more grateful for the Supreme Court decision known as Griswold Vs Connecticut…from Wikipedia:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The case involved a </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0645ad; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Connecticut</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_law" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0645ad; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Comstock law</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" that prohibited any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception". The court held that the statute was unconstitutional, and that "the clear effect of [the Connecticut law ...] is to deny disadvantaged citizens ... access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control." By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. This and other cases view the right to privacy as a right to "protect[ion] from governmental intrusion".</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1964 it was illegal to use a condom in Connecticut. Amazing! Yes I may enjoy reading </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fanny Hill</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but believe me back in the day prior to menopause, I was far happier to be able to buy a box of condoms hanging out on an open shelf in the grocery store rather than whispering in the local pharmacist’s ear while judgmental old biddies stared and thought about writing their congressman over the lack of morals in our state. I was even happier to whisper in the pharmacist’s ear to get birth control pills which for a time were even covered by my employee hospitalization plan. So yes, I feel indebted to the sexual revolution. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel far more indebted to David Reuben than Hugh Hefner. Yes, I looked at my share of Playmates of the Month before I was married. But I never recall seeing a detailed photo or diagram of a vulva in Playboy with an arrow pointing to the clitoris with an explanation of the importance of it to a woman’s sexual satisfaction. Yes, I am sure that somewhere along the line Playboy had an article on how to pleasure a woman, but if you want to find out this afternoon and not wait for several years until Playboy got around to addressing it along with cars or polo clothes that I could never afford to buy, then maybe y<b>ou needed a book like </b></span><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Everything-Always-Wanted-Know-About/dp/0060192674/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1648655846&refinements=p_27%3ADavid+R.+Reuben&s=books&sr=1-2&text=David+R.+Reuben" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex: But Were Afraid to Ask</b></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>. Was the book perfect? Did it have biases? Were gays ignored or treated poorly? (See edit below.) </b>Yes. But still it was far better than the marriage manuals of my parent’s era that spoke of the proper way to engage in sex (penis in vagina, in the missionary position with the goal of mutual orgasm) and warned of dangerous perversions that lurked around any act that went beyond that narrow definition. Here is a favorite:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have seen how body kisses may play an exaggerated part in sexual relations so that what should be part of the normal effort to induce pleasurable excitement in the partner becomes the whole, such kisses thus comprising the complete act. For those who replace coitus by the form of partial intercourse, cunnilinctus [sic] is often an act of self-abasement. It is the sign of a dog-like devotion. A masochistic male, one with the tendency towards finding pleasure in suffering and humiliation, moves by way of the perfectly normal body kisses to one of the byways which lead him away from normality. Eventually, he cannot enjoy full normal union. The part has replaced the whole.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Page 251. </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is an excerpt from a book titled ironically </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Love Without Fear</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Eustace Chesser. Well, call me a dog-like devotee! I don’t know about Eustace, but I tend to feel like the conductor of a massive orchestra and choir playing the final movement of Mahler’s Symphony number 2 during such activities. Masochism and humiliation for rocketing my wife down the yellow brick road off to Oz in paroxysms that shake the house? I have never had an orgasm that came close to the power of hers…I enjoy her orgasms far more than my own little putt putts. Perhaps proof that I am the big sissy the Chesser suggests. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So yes I feel a deep indebtedness to the sexual revolution that allowed my wife and I to have proper information and communication skills so that we were not fumbling around in the dark, or in fear or putting ourselves in a poor house with too many mouths to feed, or engaged in some sinful perversion that would anger God. I feel indebted to feminism that give women a voice and the beginnings of equality. So I feel indebted to the likes of Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem (one of Hefner’s favorites), Estelle Griswold, David Reuben, Shere Hite, and yes in more indirect way even Betty Dodson. Most of these people, except Dodson, got little or no mention in “Thy Neighbor’s Wife.” All of them had their personal foibles, prejudices, and weidicities. People are victims of their times, yet they are the heroes of the sexual revolution to me, not Hugh Hefner or John and Barbara Williams. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To illustrate my point further, before Masters and Johnson the process of vaginal lubrication during arousal was not understood. Even after Masters and Johnson, the true size and shape of the clitoris was, depending on how you want to look at it, either unknown or forgotten. I find it incredible that William Masters, a gynecological surgeon, believed the clitoris to be the small external bud. Indeed when </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thy Neighbor’s Wife</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was published in 1980 more was known about the dark side of the moon than the true topography of the clitoris. Helen O'Connell (another hero in my estimation) revealed the extensive internal structure in the mid 1990s. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So yes I feel an indebtedness to the sexual revolution, but felt very little appreciation for the facets that Talese discussed in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thy Neighbor’s Wife</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It dimly occurs to me, that while I have rambled through a garbled description of my feelings of the book, I have stated very little about the book itself. For an excellent review of the book, may I suggest Matt’s review on Goodreads:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73625966?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73625966?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The weird thing I have found with Matt, he knows and can write down in a review more about how I feel about a book than I am aware of. I often find myself seeking his reviews after I have read a book, to clear the cobwebs and tell me how I really feel about it. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Edit 1/3/2023: </b>I just re-read </span></span><i style="background-color: white; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif;">Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask. </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif;">I have no idea why this book holds such an exalted place in my memory. Not much how to and a lot of information that while perhaps interesting reading at the time was more of a sexuality and society type of thing. Reuben's opinion of LGBTQ issues, especially gay males, is horrific. It is actually a pretty crappy book. Books are always prisoners of the attitudes and thinking of their time. But Reuben went over board on gay bashing even considering the time. I also didn't find Reuben's opinions of women to be very enlightened. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i> </i></span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-37675094332412517912021-08-28T18:13:00.077-04:002021-08-28T18:42:04.286-04:00Book Review, The Technology of Orgasm, by Rachel Maines<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348538061l/395906.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="252" height="400" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348538061l/395906.jpg" width="252" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I read this book not long after it was published (back around the turn of the century), and yes, let’s get this out of the way, I read it for the salaciousness of its content, that a cottage industry of doctors and midwives existed to treat women for hysteria by giving them external vulva massages to induce a paroxysm, a physical reaction which would move the uterus back to its proper position, relieve congested humors, and thus free the woman of the pelvic discomfort and disturbing dreams and erotic thoughts. Then the electric vibrator was introduced and was hailed as a great advancement for this industry because it could attain a paroxysm in a matter of 10 minutes versus the often wrist numbing hour required by manual methods. This treatment was purely medicinal, not at all sexual because no penetration occurred. The book was peppered with illustrations of some of the ghastly devices used in the treatment of hysteria. </p><p>I loved this book, I gave it 5 stars. I recommended it to friends. I have had the Kindle edition on my wish list forever hoping that it would appear on sale. </p><p>As I mentioned I was more driven by titillation than historical or technical accuracy, so I did not read this with a critical eye. I am a layman who has an interest in sex like some people have an interest in model trains. I didn’t fact check the book. Good grief, why should I, it is published by John Hopkins University Press. I just enjoyed the book and patted myself on the back for having a superior knowledge of sex, the female anatomy, and how to bring it to orgasm thus sparing my wife the horrors of hysteria--a medical condition no longer recognized. I swallowed the information presented in the book, as they say, hook, line, and sinker. </p><p>Well apparently I was not the only person who didn’t read it with a critical eye. With few minor exceptions no one seemed to question the content of this book and it became instilled in the popular culture as fact. </p><p>Well today, I ran into an article published several years ago that disputes most of the content of this book, in fact it shreds it almost line for line: “A Failure of Academic Quality Control: The Technology of Orgasm” by Hallie Lieberman Eric Schatzberg both of the Georgia Institute of Technology was published in <i>The Journal of Positive Sexuality</i>. You can read a PDF of the article at:</p><p><a href="https://journalofpositivesexuality.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Failure-of-Academic-Quality-Control-Technology-of-Orgasm-Lieberman-Schatzberg.pdf">https://journalofpositivesexuality.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Failure-of-Academic-Quality-Control-Technology-of-Orgasm-Lieberman-Schatzberg.pdf</a></p><p>It is 20 pages of text and 4 pages of references. So I read the entire article, again not fact checking any references. I am layman, not an academic, fact checking is beyond my paygrade. I read it in disbelief. Surely they are making a mountain of a molehill. OK, maybe Maines got a little sloppy with some of her research. Surely the whole book couldn’t be questioned. </p><p>Liberman and Schatzberg even addressed folks of my particular ilk:</p><blockquote><p>Yet the book’s appeal isn’t just sexual. Maines’ story fits narratives of progress in sexual knowledge, allowing readers to see themselves as <b>worldly sophisticates</b> in contrast to the clueless, desexualized Victorians. Physicians look particularly ignorant in this account, having no clue what the clitoris was, let alone an orgasm. Maines also portrays women as victims of profit-hungry physicians. Such victim narratives were a staple of feminists critiques of medical care in the 1970s (e.g., Frankfort, 1972). Women have no real agency in Maines’ account, as the historical actors are all male physicians, and women’s voices are completely absent. However, readers can still view the female patients as heroes who subvert patriarchy by procuring orgasms under the guise of medical treatment. The story is thus paradoxical—women are victims, but the tools used to victimize them bring them orgasms, a delicious irony. </p></blockquote><p> </p><p style="text-align: left;">Emphasis mine. Yes, that is me, a worldly sophisticate! How dare these eggheads smear one of my favorite books. </p><p style="text-align: left;">So when I finished the article I tried to Google a refutation by Maines. I didn’t do an extensive search just a quickie. I found this article in <i>The Atlantic:</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian-vibrators-orgasms-doctors/569446/</p><p style="text-align: left;">In this article Maines offers up this reply:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>In an interview, Maines said that she has heard variations of the paper’s criticism before—and that her argument in The Technology of Orgasm <b>was really only a “hypothesis,” anyway. “I never claimed to have evidence that this was really the case,” she said. “What I said was that this was an interesting hypothesis, and as [Lieberman] points out—correctly, I think—people fell all over it. It was ripe to be turned into mythology somehow. I didn’t intend it that way, but boy, people sure took it, ran with it.”</b></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p> Maines added that she was a little surprised it took so long for other scholars to question her argument, given how admittedly “slender” the evidence she gave in The Technology of Orgasm was. <b>“I thought people were going to attack it right away. But it’s taken 20 years for people to even—people didn’t want to question it. They liked it so much they didn’t want to attack it.”</b></p></blockquote> Emphasis mine. Ha! Ha! Ha! Worldly sophisticate? Sextant you dipshit, you “fell all over it.” Not only did I “run with it” but it took me 20 years to find out that it is just an “interesting hypothesis.”<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Well fine Ms Maines. A factual book on <i>The Technology of Orgasm</i> will earn you 5 stars. But a poorly researched “interesting hypothesis?” Two stars (only because I liked the illustrations) not that I imagine you give a damn what a yahoo like me would think anyhow. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Oh, and I removed it from my Kindle wish list. I see no need to refer to it any longer. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>References:</b></p><p style="text-align: left;">Hallie Lieberman, Eric Schatzberg. “Failure of Academic Quality Control: The Technology of Orgasm.” <i>The Journal of Positive Sexuality. </i> Volume 4, Issue 2, August 2018.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://journalofpositivesexuality.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Failure-of-Academic-Quality-Control-Technology-of-Orgasm-Lieberman-Schatzberg.pdf">https://journalofpositivesexuality.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Failure-of-Academic-Quality-Control-Technology-of-Orgasm-Lieberman-Schatzberg.pdf</a></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Robinson Meyer, Ashley Fetters. “Victorian-Era Orgasms and the Crisis of Peer Review.” <i>The Atlantic.</i> (Online). September 6, 2018. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian-vibrators-orgasms-doctors/569446/">https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian-vibrators-orgasms-doctors/569446/</a></p>Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-83081068991476703942020-12-27T00:46:00.002-05:002021-02-16T11:47:37.382-05:00Familiar Birds by Émile Friant, 1921<span id="docs-internal-guid-566107b3-7fff-4f12-155f-33218f2d8dd4"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have become too old and cranky to bother much with blog posts any longer. It is easier to sit back and read a book, but every once in a while something grabs my attention. And such it was when I saw the painting for the December 23, 2020 post on the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That Is Priceless </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">blog:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/2020/12/masterpiece-2606.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/2020/12/masterpiece-2606.html</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The painting is titled </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Familiar Birds</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Émile Friant. It is oil on canvas and was done in 1921.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/%C3%89mile_Friant_-_The_Familiar_Birds_-_1921.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="578" height="400" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/%C3%89mile_Friant_-_The_Familiar_Birds_-_1921.jpg" width="289" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before reading the discussion below, I recommend opening this large scan of the painting. It provides a better view of the detail:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/%C3%89mile_Friant_-_The_Familiar_Birds_-_1921.jpg" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/%C3%89mile_Friant_-_The_Familiar_Birds_-_1921.jpg</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oh my goodness, look at her, she is magnificent!</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OK dear reader, I suspect at this junction you are thinking what the hell is with this guy, he is getting himself worked up over a breast. Indeed yes, a quite lovely breast, and yes I like it, but dear reader the internet is loaded with lovely breasts. My wife has lovely breasts. Do you honestly think that I am going to come out of a 20 month hiatus from posting on this blog over a breast? The breast, albeit lovely, is just the icing on the cake. Here is what I love about this painting. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I love <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts)" target="_blank">realism</a> in paintings. As such, I have always been a fan of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William-Adolphe_Bouguereau" target="_blank">William Adolph Bouguereau's</a> works, and this painting puts me in mind of a Bouguereau. So being a work in realism, our young lady is very real, no tawdry outfits or over sexualized poses and pouts of a pin up. She is just ecstatic to be alive and sitting here with all these lovely birds. Look at her expression, she is just really happy and it makes me happy looking at her. She has that wholesome girl next door look, maybe a little too wholesome. Hell, she looks like Shirley Temple's </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Heide </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very much grown up. </span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I love the detail in her hair, you can almost see the individual strands. At first glance she appears to be young, but if you look at the larger and more detailed scan (see above) you can see there is some maturity in her facial features and she is a little dark around the eyes. She is young but not too young. The cleft in her chin is quite charming. A very lovely spot is directly below the bird on her right shoulder where her jacket is pulled back. The dark hollow above and below her collarbone and the rounded softness of her exposed shoulder ache to be gently caressed. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her casual posture is given some authority by her left hand placed on her hip. I like her garments which I assume are some manner of French early 1920s casual lounge wear, something of the equivalent to a house coat with trousers although perhaps considered a bit more elegant. Alas the high waist, it obscures what I am sure would be a most exquisite belly, yet the curious bunching of the material with taught downward V shaped lines suggest the sacred feminine triangle and gives her a subtle suggestion of female eroticism further emphasized by the curve of her derriere. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What really thrills me about this painting is her crossed right leg with the raised pant leg exposing her calf and ankle. This is no girl, she has a woman’s calf, there is nothing delicate about it. In fact it is so ordinary that I find it absolutely erotic. I revel in the subtle coloration difference between her shin and calf. You can follow the line of her shin bone right into her ankle. The front surface of her shin appears to have some mottled depressions, old healed wounds. She is a real woman, and she bangs her shins now and again in her life. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And now, pause for a deep breath. Her bare right foot, artfully up turned. Another deep breath. Oh my, my! Yes I confess to a minor foot fetish, and hers is so heartbreakingly real, it thrills me. Look at it, it's dirty. This is no Athenian goddess, ethereally hanging in airy gossamers. Her foot is dirty. This is a flesh and blood Goddess who walks the Earth, but a Goddess nonetheless, and far more real than any resident of Olympus. I love the coloration on the ball of her foot and her upturned toes. The curvature of her instep demands a one fingered caress.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The damned cockatoo! Why didn’t he steal her other slipper also. We have been denied the beauty of a bare left foot by a lazy cockatoo. Alas our loss. But what we can see is enthralling, Are those hints of veins that I see on the front and side of her ankle? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Roland Barthes describes the concepts of studium and punctum in a book on photography, called <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Camera-Lucida-Reflections-Roland-Barthes/dp/0374532338" target="_blank">Camera Lucida</a></i>. I assume perhaps due to my ignorance, that the concepts would apply to paintings and other forms of imagery and not just photography. Studium is the physical, cultural, and political aspects of the photograph. A young woman, birds, slippers, her green outfit and colorful sashes and pillows are elements of the studium of this painting that apply to anyone including myself. The punctum of the painting would be that which pierces one’s heart. For many people there would be absolutely no punctum in this painting. For some perhaps the bared breast or her wonderful smile would pierce their hearts and be the punctum for them. For me, the punctum is that this lovely young woman reminds me of a woman that I never knew.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I was cleaning my mother’s house after she died, I found a photograph of her that I had never seen before. My father took the picture when they were first married before I came along. It showed a happy young woman that very much had a sparkle in her eye. What this woman seemed to be saying was “I just got laid, and I am about to get laid again, and I can’t wait.” If such thoughts about one’s mother seem unsavory, again, I remind you, I did not know the woman in the photograph. And if you think that thoughts of your parents having sex are somehow unseemly, you should try the reality of a childhood that witnessed a father that was habitually drunk and an extremely unhappy mother that fought him tooth an nail over his drinking and the almost daily violence that resulted from this union. I would have loved to have heard the bed springs squeaking. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wept when I found that photograph. It indeed pierced my heart. I never knew the woman in that picture, she was long gone by the time I was old enough to understand the interactions between woman and man. My mother was once a vibrant and erotic young woman, and I never knew that woman. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the punctum in this painting for me is not that the woman looks like my mother, a minor resemblance perhaps, mostly in their similar hairstyles, but that the woman in the painting (and yes the bare breast helps in this regard) seems to be saying “I just got laid, and I am about to get laid again, and I can’t wait.” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is a review of the painting by someone that actually knows something about art:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://rauantiques.com/blogs/canvases-carats-and-curiosities/birds-of-a-feather" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Familiar Birds by Émile Friant | Canvases, Carats & Curiosities, Fine Art - From the Library at MS Rau, Since 1912.</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can find more works by Friant at the following two sites:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://thewomangallery.com/emile-friant-1863-1932/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://thewomangallery.com/emile-friant-1863-1932/</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://eclecticlight.co/2018/03/11/the-last-naturalist-emile-friant-2/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://eclecticlight.co/2018/03/11/the-last-naturalist-emile-friant-2/</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <b>Post Script:</b> Ok, maybe the breast has more bearing than I give credit. Ten years ago, I wrote a blog post on John Waterford’s painting, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Soul of the Rose. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://navfin.blogspot.com/2010/08/soul-of-rose.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://navfin.blogspot.com/2010/08/soul-of-rose.html</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the time, I yearned for a peek inside the woman’s heavy robe. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Image credit: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%89mile_Friant_-_The_Familiar_Birds_-_1921.jpg</span></p><br /><br /></span>Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-76179865334569542672019-04-14T15:19:00.001-04:002019-04-15T01:38:41.397-04:00Book Non-Review, Enlightened Relations: The Life in a Day: A Couple Enjoys Spiritual Enlightenment Together<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38112460-enlightened-relations" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Enlightened Relations: The Life in a Day: A Couple Enjoys Spiritual Enlightenment Together" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1516511368m/38112460.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38112460-enlightened-relations">Enlightened Relations: The Life in a Day: A Couple Enjoys Spiritual Enlightenment Together</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15037153.Richard_Dietrich_Maddox">Richard Dietrich Maddox</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2786100572">3 of 5 stars</a><br />
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The reader bought the book. Most readers would have an expectation of learning, or being entertained, or perhaps both, the great goal of edifying and entertaining, as Robert Pirsig set out to do with his concept of the Chautauqua in the book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37761234.Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance" rel="nofollow" title="Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig">Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</a>. But not this reader. For this reader, having attained a great and seemingly eternal Mediocrity of Spirit--caught some where in a mythical stage of 4.8 to 5.1 on Fowler's Stages of Faith--knew that the book could only be but a ripple on the surface of the deep ocean of Being. So the reader read with neither joy nor disappointment for such emotions would indicate a differentiation of one moment from the next. But time as most people know it, does not exist. It is a great illusion of the four dimensional material Universe, and for the All Being Consciousness, there is only the great and Infinite Now. The reader knew that one book like one moment could never be greater than another book...the <i>New York Times </i> bestseller list or a toothed gold "Amazon #1 Bestseller" medallion on a book cover being but a mere false construction of the ego which has become blinded from eternal Love and the magnificence of Soul by profit and fame. <br />
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The reader read great paragraphs of Whitmanian poetic descriptive prose which some readers would say contain a phenomenal thesaurusitic beauty that out thoreaued Thoreau and yet other readers might say the paragraphs were overwrought and perhaps infused with too much desperate wonder and veneration. But the reader felt neither beauty or boredom because the reader knows that words are but mirrors of the great Bliss, the deep Consciousness, the All Knowing All Eternal. Some readers would note a constant repetition of the idea of the Deep Consciousness having neither positive or negative views on a topic, but this reader was neither vexed or delighted with the repetition, but realized that IT is what it IS. <br />
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So the reader neither enjoyed nor disliked the book as most readers would, but yet maintained a great empathy for the author whom the reader realizes not only means well but perhaps is indeed far more Enlightened than the reader himself...who recognizes, however vaguely, that many future incarnations still remain for him. As such, the reader could neither give a good review nor a bad review. For what is a review? A Judgement! And should not the Enlightened avoid judgements in the deep ocean of Eternal Being?<br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3770266-henry-le-nav">View all my reviews</a><br />
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-16504309410709036222018-11-18T17:24:00.001-05:002019-01-05T15:12:50.601-05:00A Blue Collar Interpretation of a 90 Million Dollar Painting<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures)<br />
Image Credit: <a href="http://www.alaintruong.com/archives/2018/11/15/36870428.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">http://www.alaintruong.com/archives/2018/11/15/36870428.html</span></a></td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I have always found David Hockney’s art visually interesting. Eye catching. Striking. He has a paradoxical simplicity that seems to obscure a deeper complexity. To me, more of an admirer of realism, Hockney’s paintings are borderline cartoony, yet with an implication of something deeper. They seem to ask a question, but not answer it. I always find myself wondering what am I missing in this painting. But that has not been the case with his painting <i>Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), </i>which just was auctioned at Christie’s for $90.3 million on November 15, 2018. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/how-record-setting-art-auctions-are-ruining-the-old-neighborhood/2018/11/16/9dec2d7c-e9cf-11e8-b8dc-66cca409c180_story.html?utm_term=.f5edecc477cf"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/how-record-setting-art-auctions-are-ruining-the-old-neighborhood/2018/11/16/9dec2d7c-e9cf-11e8-b8dc-66cca409c180_story.html?utm_term=.f5edecc477cf</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wow! Ninety million for a painting of the prelude of a rich 70’s Hollywood executive about to counsel his teenage son about off roading in the Mercedes and leaving a roach in the ashtray. “And furthermore, young man, I did not appreciate the beer cans on the floor, the melted Sugar Daddy stuck to the console, and the soiled condom under the seat. You are grounded for a week.…”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is why blue collar slobs are never art critics. The real meaning behind this painting involves love and loss that totally evades me even after reading two articles about the painting:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.christies.com/features/David-Hockney-Portrait-of-an-Artist-Pool-with-Two-Figures-9372-3.aspx"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">https://www.christies.com/features/David-Hockney-Portrait-of-an-Artist-Pool-with-Two-Figures-9372-3.aspx</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.alaintruong.com/archives/2018/11/15/36870428.html"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">http://www.alaintruong.com/archives/2018/11/15/36870428.html</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nope, sorry, I just see a teenager about to get his ass chewed. Maybe I should stick to Normal Rockwell. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I do have a favorite Hockney, <i>Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. </i></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PQnFjir1lC0/W_HlNd6pBUI/AAAAAAAACQE/BZ_egI8J3nwUpTW17oVKeGFRfC772DAMQCLcBGAs/s1600/T01269_10%2BMr%2Band%2BMrs%2BClark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1078" data-original-width="1536" height="280" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PQnFjir1lC0/W_HlNd6pBUI/AAAAAAAACQE/BZ_egI8J3nwUpTW17oVKeGFRfC772DAMQCLcBGAs/s400/T01269_10%2BMr%2Band%2BMrs%2BClark.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy<br />
Image Credit: <span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy-t01269" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: start;">https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy-t01269</a></span></td></tr>
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</i><a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy-t01269"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy-t01269</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I like this this painting. It reminds me of when I was young, not that I was ever as seemingly wealthy as Mr. and Mrs. Clark, but I can identify with the time period. I like the interplay of light from the window. The notes on this painting tell us that we are in the Clark’s bedroom. They also tell us that both Mr. and Mrs. Clark are looking at the viewer of the painting. Does that put me in the Clark’s marital bed, perhaps with their house sitter? They don’t look very happy with we viewers. If indeed, we are nothing more than just viewer in a gallery, they seem to be saying “Do you mind! W</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e are trying to have a conversation here. Move along to the next painting.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The last piece of Hockney’s art that I would like to mention is <i>Pearblossom Highway #2. </i></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pearblossom Highway #2<br />
Image Credit: <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hockney/hockney.pearblossom-highway.jpg" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hockney/hockney.pearblossom-highway.jpg</span></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is not a painting but a collage of hundreds of chunks of photographs that Hockney took in Antelope Valley, California. I spent two and half years in the Air Force near here and Hockney captured the essence of the Mojave although for me in a somewhat irritating fashion. Its a weird piece. It almost shimmers mirage like. I find myself thinking, this would be a lot better if it stopped jiggling. Again, blue collar slobs should never be art critics. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">http://www.david-hockney.org/pearblossom-highway/ </span></span></div>
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-82246830723515284302018-09-14T17:39:00.001-04:002018-09-15T00:25:02.651-04:00Sensate Focus<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34449123-sensate-focus-in-sex-therapy" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Sensate Focus in Sex Therapy: The Illustrated Manual" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488468147m/34449123.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34449123-sensate-focus-in-sex-therapy">Sensate Focus in Sex Therapy: The Illustrated Manual</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1412296.Linda_Weiner">Linda Weiner</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2529327541">5 of 5 stars</a><br />
<br />
I was both delighted and dourly disappointed with this book. The delight? At last someone has taken Master’s and Johnson’s Sensate Focus seriously and written up a comprehensive procedure for it. You no longer have to rely on M & Js poor description of it spread across several books or look for some article on the internet that is either blocked by a professional pay wall, or be bamboozled by a self proclaimed sexperts that have little real knowledge of how Sensate Focus really works. Here is a comprehensive set of procedures that will benefit both clinicians and their patients. The book separates the various dysfunctions and provides detailed instructions for each. It also contains treatment plans geared for diverse populations such as LGBTQ clients, the elderly, those who suffer from substance abuse, the disabled, clients with serious psychological problems, and clients on the autism spectrum.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uyayYs00d0k/W5wsi1UYtKI/AAAAAAAACPQ/ZaVACTfkdX8UCvhdN9z5L7RigNcWUVRxACLcBGAs/s1600/Sensate-focus-improves-intimacy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="626" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uyayYs00d0k/W5wsi1UYtKI/AAAAAAAACPQ/ZaVACTfkdX8UCvhdN9z5L7RigNcWUVRxACLcBGAs/s400/Sensate-focus-improves-intimacy.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">Image Credit: Institute for Sexual & Relationship Therapy & Training<br />
https://www.isrtt.org/what-is-sensate-focus/<span style="background-color: white; color: #bababa; font-family: "source sans pro" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "lucida" , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left;">. .</span></td></tr>
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The book has tasteful illustrations that are based on the idea that Hellen Singer Kaplan incorporated in her <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/665508.The_Illustrated_Manual_of_Sex_Therapy" rel="nofollow" title="The Illustrated Manual of Sex Therapy by Helen Singer Kaplan">The Illustrated Manual of Sex Therapy</a> from four decades ago. The authors quoted Kaplan's thoughts on the illustrations in her book:<br />
<blockquote>
<br />
The drawings will, apart from merely illustrating specific positions, also, I hope, convey the beauty and humanity of sex, fundamentals to successful sex therapy.<br />
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Weiner, Linda. <i>Sensate Focus in Sex Therapy: The Illustrated Manual</i> (p. 3). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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All in all for clinicians and their clients this is an excellent book. Five well deserved stars <br />
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For the do it yourself couple that maybe just wants to tune up their sex life…not so much. Hence my disappointment. Quite early in the book the authors make it a point to define two types of Sensate Focus: <br />
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<blockquote>
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Although we have been using the general term Sensate Focus to identify the hierarchical touching suggestions, we make a distinction between two phases of Sensate Focus, as we have suggested. What we have been describing thus far is more accurately referred to as Sensate Focus 1. However, there is also another phase that we call Sensate Focus 2. This is because just as there is more to sex than natural responses, so there is more to Sensate Focus than touching for your interest. While we will be discussing Sensate Focus 2 in more detail at the end of this manual, we are emphasizing the components of Sensate Focus 1 in order to underscore the importance of mastering sex as a natural function, and mastering its attitudinal and practical applications of touching for your own interest, before moving on to Sensate Focus 2. Sensate Focus 1 involves mastering skills for people who are having sexual difficulties. Sensate Focus 2 is for people who are not having difficulties, or who have resolved their difficulties, and who want to enhance sexual satisfaction.<br />
<br />
Weiner, Linda. <i>Sensate Focus in Sex Therapy: The Illustrated Manual</i> (p. 14). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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OK great! I lick my chops in anticipation of reading about Sensate Focus 2 which will take may wife and I to a transcendental state of sexual satisfaction. So I wade through 9 chapters of dysfunctions and diverse populations. I enjoyed it and I learned a lot but for the most part it doesn't really apply to me. So finally I get to Chapter 10 Sensate Focus 1 and 2. There are some basic definitions and then we get to this paragraph:<br />
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<blockquote>
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However, there is one additional characteristic of Sensate Focus 2 that is perhaps even more important than these relationship enhancements. Clients do not talk about it directly, perhaps because it crosses over into the realm of indescribable experience. However, over the years we have come to appreciate it as the ultimate, if unspoken, goal of those who come in for sex therapy. Kleinplatz refers to this as transcendence. It goes by many names, none of which do it justice: “‘peak experience,’ … ‘magical experiences,’ and ‘spirituality’ … ‘a portal to an alternate reality’ … ‘expansive and enlightening’ … ‘it leaves you bigger than you were before’ … ‘flashes of illumination’ … ‘It [is] revelatory – an epiphany’” (Kleinplatz & Ménard, 2007, pp. 75–76). Noted analyst James Hollis refers to it as “the god to be found in sexuality” and suggests that clients who want to enrich their sexual lives “follow what [the poet] Rilke called the dark ‘river god of the blood’ … The higher power are powers, indeed, but so are the lower ones … [and] sexuality, the dark river god of the blood, is sacred” (1998, pp. 91–92). This spiritual or transcendent dimension of sexuality requires entering into the radically self-focused mindset of Sensate Focus 1 but this time through a deeply sensorial, sensual, and emotional relationship with the partner that characterizes Sensate Focus 2. This is when absorption in the sensations moves into absorption by the sensations and ultimately into an altered state of consciousness that is transcendent sexual responsiveness to which we refer in Chapter 2 (Why is Sensate Focus Based on Touch?). This sensorial, sensual, sexual, emotional, and relational integration leads not only to the enlargement of each partner but also to the enlarged intimate connection between the partners.<br />
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Weiner, Linda. <i> Sensate Focus in Sex Therapy: The Illustrated Manual</i> (pp. 122-123). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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I had to stop reading. I clasped my Kindle to my pitter pattering heart, stared off into the distance, and sighed. At last, at last! After years of being confused by tantra, failing to give up our addictions to orgasm induced dopamine through the use of karezza, of never knowing the mystical energy flow between Divine Lovers, at last we will follow “the dark river god of the blood” to the sacred transcendent dimension of sexuality through Sensate Focus 2! As tears of joy for soon to be found portals of alternate reality flow down my cheek, I lower the Kindle from my beating heart and with trembling hands begin to read the next paragraph:<br />
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<blockquote>
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<b>Suggestions to enhance sexual satisfaction and enrich intimate communication will be the subject of subsequent publications.</b><br />
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Weiner, Linda. <i>Sensate Focus in Sex Therapy: The Illustrated Manual </i>(p. 123). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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<br />
What? Subsequent publications? I have to wait for the next book? What the hell is this the <i> The Game of Thrones?</i> Emphasis, obviously mine. <br />
<br />
Hence my dour disappointment. For me the book was still worth while because I have an interest in sexuality like some people have in astronomy or model railroading. But for the average couple that is finding the magic of those first years are slipping away and they would like to tune up things a bit, I am not sure I can recommended this book. I hope in the future to be able to recommend the “subsequent publications,” but for now, I think it would require an extremely devoted couple to benefit from this book without the aid of a professional sex therapist. <br />
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As such I do have a concern about Sensate Focus. Will it ever be available for the average do it yourself couple? The thing I like about Sensate Focus is that it is simple and it can be done by the couple seemingly without a sex therapist looking over their shoulder. I really love execises that a couple can do together and build a deeper intimacy. But somebody has to write the book that couple can use for themselves. For a devoted couple, I believe they could sit down, wade through this book, and come up with a program, but why can’t there be a book on Sensate Focus for just that couple? All sorts of arguments can be made that without a sex therapist, Sensate Focus won’t work…and I believe that is true for the couple that are plagued with the dysfunctions described in this book. But what about the functional couple that is trying to avoid getting to the point of dysfunction? Many couples don’t have the financial resources or the time to be heading off to a sex therapist. There are a ton of books on the market about improving orgasms and trying some fantastic positions, but I am not aware of any that give a concise program for Sensate Focus. Rather than adding to the anxieties that a couple’s orgasms are not good enough or in the right spot or that they are having enough of them, why not show a couple how to get lost in sensation and all that other stuff will take care of itself? My personal belief is that Sensate Focus should be a lot of fun to do in its own right and that it could easily be adapted for couples who are not dysfunctional and just want a reliable program to find that “river god of the blood.” <br />
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So while my rating remains at 5 stars, because the book is an excellent resource for clinicians and their clients, for the average couple I can only rate it at 3 stars. It can be useful especially for describing what Sensate Focus is and what it can do for you, but it will take some work on the couple’s part to figure out their own program and how they want to implement it. I sincerely hope that the subsequent publications will have have a program of Sensate Focus 1 and 2 for our functional couple that is looking for more out of sex, love and life.<br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3770266-henry-le-nav">View all my reviews</a><br />
<br />Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-20212523433156953352018-08-27T01:48:00.003-04:002018-08-29T14:42:12.871-04:00Book Review, Night Thoughts, Reflections of a Sex Therapist, Dr. Avodah K. Offit<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33855478-night-thoughts" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1)" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1484397206m/33855478.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33855478-night-thoughts">Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/454134.Avodah_K_Offit">Avodah K. Offit</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2504552410">5 of 5 stars</a><br />
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The first thing I enjoyed about this book is its title. "Night thoughts" bring to my mind a romanticized vision, perhaps fitting for a Edward Hopper painting. I see the author sitting in an over stuffed chair in the library of her Upper East Side brownstone home. Dark paneled walls and lovely floor to ceiling book shelves are dimly lit from a banker’s desk lamp with traditional green glass shade from across the room. Barber’s Adagio for Strings softly plays on the stereo. Dr. Offit holds a Perrier in her hand, while outside a gentle autumn rain lightly taps on the window. She stares off into the dimly lit room, while thoughts of the larger meaning of her work goes through her mind:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>At night, questions become more abstract. I try not to let them get out of hand. I know I can’t answer the larger ones. I simply ask why we behave as we do. Why, for example, do some people thrash about miserably in the chains of their unreleased passion while others feel grateful to be undisturbed by any sexual emotion? What accounts for the patterns of difference I detect between the desires and expectations of men and those of women? Are the differences chemical or cultural? How can people change their sexual attitudes --and should they be asked to? </i><br />
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Offit, Avodah K. <i>Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist </i> (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 64-68). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover Image: Henri Rousseau, The Snake Charmer, 1907<br />
Image Credit: <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 13px;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rousseau</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 13px;"> </span></td></tr>
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To get a better understanding of what this book is about, one should read the sub-title <i>Reflections of A Sex Therapist.</i> Reflections is key. This book is not a how to manual, there are no plumbing diagrams, no descriptions of positions, no technique for mind blowing orgasms, or 10 steps to better sex in one week. There are no discussions on avoiding STDs, how to date better, or contraceptive methods. Nor is it a listing of sexual dysfunctions or the specific cures for them. No, there is none of that, nor does there need to be, there are a zillion books that tell us the basics of the birds and the bees, how to have better orgasms, and the dysfunctions and their cures. Rather, these are her reflections of Dr. Offit’s experience practicing the art and science of sex therapy. Offit provides a standalone essay on a specific topic. For most part, you can read these in any order, or skip those in which you have no interest and it would really not affect your overall understanding of the book. You don’t have to read the first four essays to understand the fifth. The topics are varied and not necessarily what you would expect…Morning sex, Menstruation and Sex, Nymphomania Reconsidered, The Matter of Smell, Postcoital Feelings, to name a few. <br />
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The essays often don’t go the way you would expect. For instance she starts the essay Morning Sex:<br />
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<blockquote>
<i>I ASSOCIATE MORNING sex with camping. Although I have never gone camping, I own a pair of new summer hiking shoes. I fantasize backpacking as a romantic experience the way some people dream of New York: gourmet restaurants, vintage e me wines, a box at the opera, a carriage ride through Central Park have at midnight, and love between silken sheets at the St. Regis. The best part of camping must be to open your eyes in the morning, that. see the sunrise, the sky, and the trees--and feel the warmth of a lover there with you in your double sleeping bag.</i><br />
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Offit, Avodah K. <i>Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist</i> (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 92-96). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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Offit then discusses her observations of her patients reactions to morning sex, it's controversial...men like it, women often don't...exceptions abound. <br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Image Credit: Sidney Offit and The Avodah K. Offit Papers, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Archives & Special Collections, Hunter College Libraries, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Hunter College of The City University of New York.</span></div>
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I was happy to see that Offit did not continue the extensive cataloguing of the various personality types and the particular sexual neurosis that each type exhibited with each of the other types as she did in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33743930.The_Sexual_Self_How_Character_Shapes_Sexual_Experience__Avodah_Offit_Memorial_Series_Book_3_" rel="nofollow" title="The Sexual Self How Character Shapes Sexual Experience (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 3) by Avodah K Offit">The Sexual Self: How Character Shapes Sexual Experience</a>. This smacked too much of a Viennese purple velvet analytical chaise with Freud stroking his goatee while asking me questions regarding my mother's emotional rejection of every girl in which I had showed any interest, strongly paralleled to questions regarding premature ejaculation. While I take a certain level of pride in being a somewhat neurotic INFJ, or a Negotiator/Director in Helen Fisher's personality types, and even a Mature Soul in the Scholar role in my unicorn riding, New Age flakery, for the life of me I couldn't determine if I was a passive, a passive aggressive, schizoid, paranoid, or a compulsive. I was pretty sure that I was neither a histrionic or narcissist. Blue collar slob, didn't seem to be one of the personality types. <br />
<br />
One area she discussed that I was quite taken with was Postcoital Feelings. Most books I have read on sex have a few sentences on the afterglow or a paragraph on postcoital pillow talk. Dr. Offit devotes an entire essay to the subject and she mentions the difference between men and women. She offered this observation with a bit of humor:<br />
<blockquote>
<i><br />The troubles people have during sex cause them to flounder about the bed after sex in various degrees of unrest. Many couples fail to discuss their immediate reactions to sexual dilemmas. While these need not be dissected immediately like a cadaver on the postcoital bed, they can be touched on delicately. In any case, it's well to discuss them sometime between one lovemaking experience and the next. </i><br />
<br />
Offit, Avodah K. <i>Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist</i> (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 2662-2665). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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<br />
<br />
Also in Postcoital Feeling Offit discusses a phenomena that I have never heard of and yet have suffered in a minor way. So it was with great interest that I read the following passage:<br />
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<blockquote>
<i><br />After sex, women more than men tend to be in touch with "postcoital tristesse, " feeling sad without precisely assigning a reason. In therapy, women most often trace this sadness to feelings of loss and separation. The closeness of intercourse is over. When a person feels sad about one parting, all other separations and losses seem to join the procession. People who have lost a significant relative, friend, teacher, or even another lover often mourn this loss after sexual intimacy. The reduction of boundaries when naked bodies merge may release conscious or unconscious memories. Some people are perfectly aware that they are remembering a grandmother's caress or a parent's tenderness; others are bewildered by the mystery and do not know what they are lamenting. The French expression for orgasm is "the little death." And after such a death we have the opportunity to mourn at our own gravesites. Resentment or depression can result when a lover ignores these feelings, runs away from them, negates them as "irrational," or tries to be cheery in the face of our penchant for grief. </i><br />
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Offit, Avodah K. <i>Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist</i> (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 2764-2772). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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Never one to miss an opportunity to feel a lovely dose of melancholy, I have over the years often felt, while entwined with my wife in a postcoital bliss, the cool wind of mortality blow across my bare and sweat beaded behind. “One day, all this will be taken from you. Either you or she will survive the parting of the other, and lie in this bed alone.” To counter this postcoital tristesse I at times have a fantasy of the furnace exploding right at the moment of a mutual orgasm when she is 100, and I am 104, our bodies melted together and orgasm faces forever branded on to our countenances. <br />
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Dr. Offit strikes me as though she was a very private person, most likely an introvert. That coupled with a non-emotional professional air of stoic impassivity while discussing topics highly fraught with emotional and cultural expectations and norms, one could expect a certain level of clinical detachment to her writing. Yet I found a high level of warmth and humanity to her writing. She at times would give us an entertaining overt glimpse of Avodah (verses Dr. Offit) such as this description of one of her patient's perfume:<br />
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<blockquote>
<i><br />A third [patient] wears a preparation whose molecules are so arranged that they inspire me to want to don the high heels that I never wear except as a sexual indulgence. I haven't asked her the name of her mixture. It might be dangerous.</i><br />
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Offit, Avodah K. <i>Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist</i> (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 1882-1884). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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Another time she tells us of a postcoital dispute that she and her husband had when they were first married:<br />
<blockquote>
<i><br /><br />He would sometimes accuse me of being heartless. "You actually roll over and go to sleep!" he would say. "Just like the legendary man." Imagine--I, who had been with him for the past forty-eight hours, and doing unspeakable female things! "I need to close my eyes and think for a while, that's all," I would reply. "Besides, I like to be held while I'm sleeping. That's not like a man.” </i><br />
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Offit, Avodah K. <i>Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist </i> (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 2653-2656). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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<br />
I immediately thought of the narrator’s wish in the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6055617.The_Grapes_of_Wrath" rel="nofollow" title="The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck">The Grapes of Wrath</a> regarding the sins alluded to in a revival meeting, “Wisht I knowed what all the ‘unspeakable female things’ was, so I could ask for ’em" (adapted from quote on page 388). <br />
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At other times, her revelations are more covert. Every now and again I would detect a certain wistfulness in her more explicit descriptions. I could almost hear her sigh, rub her eyes, and long to set down the pen, wake her husband, and gloriously do what she had just been writing about.<br />
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There are three negative things which I think should be mentioned regarding this book. The first is that the Kindle edition does have some formatting and typographical errors. You can see some in the quotes I provided. I don’t get my knickers in knot over such errors but if you do, you may find it better to buy a paperback copy of the book (although I can't vouch for the fact they may not have the same errors). The second thing is that one must remember that books are always victims of the culture and social norms of the era in which they are published. When reading this book if you find ideas that may seem dated or a little less enlightened than current thought, think back to how you felt in 1981 when the book was first published or when she revised it in 1995. Almost a quarter century has passed since Offit expressed her “night thoughts,” as such one may have to exercise some tolerance when reading this. The last thought that occurs to me is that I don’t imagine the Dr. Offit found many plumbers or waitresses from Queens among her patients. If there is a certain “first world” aspect to some of her patient’s problems, I think it may be in the nature of the type of people who are inclined and can afford to go see a sex therapist. <br />
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I immensely enjoyed this book and as such, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Stephen Snyder who mentioned and quoted Avodah Offit's books in his excellent book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36854770.Love_Worth_Making_How_to_Have_Ridiculously_Great_Sex_in_a_Long_Lasting_Relationship" rel="nofollow" title="Love Worth Making How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship by Stephen Snyder MD">Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship</a>. Had I not read Snyder's book, I may very well had never heard about Offit's books. Both Snyder and Offit have done much to enrich my understanding of love and sex. <br />
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In probably what amounts to a classic case of therapist/reader transference, when I completed this book several days ago, I fell into a bit of a depression. I finished <i>Night Thoughts</i>, now what? I could read her third book, the novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40189660.Virtual_Love__Avodah_Offit_Memorial_Editions_Book_2_" rel="nofollow" title="Virtual Love (Avodah Offit Memorial Editions Book 2) by Avodah K Offit">Virtual Love</a>. But no I wanted more <i> Night Thoughts.</i> I felt like I had lost a friend. I moped about the house and found myself being dragged back to reread certain passages. Years ago a reviewer in the The New Republic called her the Montaigne of human sexuality. I agree but to me Avodah Offit is something far beyond an accomplished essayist. I have read that sex is God's joke on humanity. Perhaps Avodah Offit through not only her work but also her writing was something of a Divine Comedian. Knowledge and understanding are the underpinnings of wisdom. Perhaps Offit was able through that wisdom and her faith in love, in some small way, turn that joke back around on God. I imagine them now, God and Avodah, having a drink in some Bohemian dive out on the seedier edge of Heaven, well away from the righteous, laughing like hell about male frustration over multiple female orgasm. Then God in an unusual display of humility asks with a glint in his eye "So Avodah, what were those unspeakable female things?"<br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3770266-henry-le-nav">View all my reviews</a><br />
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Dr. Avodah K. Offit passed away in January of 2015, here is her obituary that appeared in the New York Times: <b>http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=avodah-offit&pid=174000565&fhid=2086</b><br />
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Cover Image: <b>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/HENRI_ROUSSEAU_-_La_Encantadora_de_Serpientes_%28Museo_de_Orsay%2C_Par%C3%ADs%2C_1907._Óleo_sobre_lienzo%2C_169_x_189.5_cm%29.jpg</b><br />
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Dr. Avodah K. Offit: <b><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue";">https://library.hunter.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/documents/archives/finding_aids/Avodah_K_Offit_Papers.pdf</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue";"> </span></b><br />
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<br />Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-1628794398671295732018-03-22T03:44:00.000-04:002019-07-02T10:57:39.810-04:00Book Review, Love and Trouble, A Midlife Reckoning, By Claire Dederer<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34740065-love-and-trouble" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1490934091m/34740065.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34740065-love-and-trouble">Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4113888.Claire_Dederer">Claire Dederer</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2335696492">5 of 5 stars</a><br />
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I enjoyed the frank discussion of her past and her struggle with mid-life crisis. I also liked her struggle with what she felt was the cause of her youthful promiscuity. But the part I found most compelling was chapter 21 On Victimhood, where she provides a short albeit brutally honest analysis of her desires, her discomfort at being a woman, and her deep need for sex:<br />
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<i>But there’s a deeper truth as well: I’m still freaked out (still!) simply by being a woman. I dress butch; I can barely stand to put on a skirt. It makes me feel like I’m in drag. The trappings of womanhood embarrass me utterly. At the same time I’m riven by my outsize sex drive. I hate being a woman, and yet I yearn to be fucked as a woman. I yearn to be dominated by a figure of incontestable authority, who will make me become what I never wanted to be: a woman. I don’t know how make myself a woman; you do it for me.</i></blockquote>
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Dederer, Claire. <i> Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning </i> (p. 222). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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I have by comparison had a rather tame and by modern standards a rather boring sexual life. Prior to marriage I had rare, unsatisfying, and mostly drunken sexual encounters, which I would now prefer never happened...even rare as they were. With my wife I found a deeply satisfying sexual relationship that is tightly intertwined with our love for each other like the snakes on a caduceus. We have been together for 43 years and married for almost 41 so boring or not I think we did something right. Yet I take none of this for granted. Sex is something that I contemplate a great deal about and I have often thought about this notion of the dominant male and submissive female, and as such, it is what I found so compelling in the above quote. Always fearing a lack of sexual equality, I prefer to think of this in softer terms than dominant and submissive, although good words seem to evade me. Yin and yang I think is closer to the truth. Perhaps penetrative and receptive. But my observation especially in our younger and more spry days, is that love making may have started out with me dominating her but it ended with the roles reversed where I was hanging on for dear life, having my back pounded and scratched, and often trying to keep from descending into helpless giggles over the pure fury of it. While my orgasms have always been paltry affairs, my wife's are these Wagnerian throes of gotterdammerung where the skies roar with thunder and lightening and the Earth rends and threatens to swallow us live. It is a magnificent gift from a Divine Feminine Goddess to mortal man. Boring? I don't think so. <br />
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The other aspect that I have observed, especially in long sessions of afternoon delight is that there comes a point where the borders of male and female, dominant and submissive, and even lust falls away and we become innocent genderless children involved in a very serious form of play.<br />
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So I enjoyed Dederer's thoughts and her ability to put them into meaningful words. It made me think of my own life and what sex has meant to my wife and I. All that said though, I am a bit disappointed with the book. Sex seems to be something that is removed from love for Dederer. I am sure she loves her husband and she acknowledges they have sex. But they seem to be two separate functions, or maybe I missed something. But for my wife and I, we make love, we don't fuck. It is just a matter of semantics? The sentimentality of old age? Perhaps, but while I can objectively call it sex, coitus, copulation, fucking...emotionally when I think of her and not so much of the act, no, it is love making. Sweet and perhaps a bit violent--but wonderfully so. <br />
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I also enjoyed Dederer's prelude to this book, an article she wrote in <i>The Atlantic:</i><br />
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<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/why-is-it-so-hard-for-women-to-write-about-sex/357574/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...</b></a><br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3770266-henry-le-nav">View all my reviews</a><br />
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<b>EDIT: July 2, 2019.</b> Here is an interesting review of <i>Love and Trouble </i>by Laura Kipnis that appeared in the Atlantic:<br />
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<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/screw-wisdom/524487/" target="_blank"><b>Kipnis, Laura. Screw Wisdom, <i>The Atlantic</i>, June 2017</b></a><br />
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-62863669035101989722018-02-23T13:15:00.001-05:002018-02-23T13:15:49.280-05:0045 Hears You Yugely, Bigger Than Anyone Else, You Will Get Tired of Thanking Him<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He even wrote a note to himself to remind himself:</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo Credit: Washington Post</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read the article: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/02/21/this-photo-of-trumps-notes-captures-his-empathy-problem-better-than-anything/?undefined=&utm_term=.d09d09e483dc&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1" target="_blank"><b>Washington Post, Aaron Blake, This photo of Trump's notes captures his empathy deficit better than anything, February 21, 2018</b></a></span>Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-81102576784724244942018-02-20T18:08:00.001-05:002019-01-06T17:10:30.032-05:00Now is not the time...BULLSHIT! <br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Emma Gonzalez was just a high school kid like a lot of other high school kids but not any more. This fiery young woman gave an emotion filled speech that has gone viral, and she intends to change the gun control conversation in America.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I am sure that that the various pro-gun lobbies have an army of experts picking over her speech looking for technical inaccuracies, questionable data, and the imprecise use of words. They will make great hay about how she has her facts wrong, and the usual pious dog faces will get on television and remind us how they are sending their "thoughts and prayers" and "now is not the time to discuss gun control." Emma and her fellow students call that bullshit. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here are a few incontrovertible facts:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This young woman and her peers are pissed off.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">She and her peers do not believe that mass shootings have no solutions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">She and many of her peers are old enough to vote.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Young people are quite adept at using social media. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Beware hand wringing, platitude offering, do nothing, bags of hot air, these kids have your number and they are coming after you. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ms Gonzalez, you have made more sense to me than any of the bullshit that has come out Washington in a very long time. You called it right...BULLSHIT. You have restored my faith in humanity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Is it not ironic that high school students have more common sense than our elected leaders? Is it not sad that they can't be just high school kids, with no worries? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>CREDITS: </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">CNN, YouTube video: </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Florida student to NRA and Trump: 'We call BS'</span><br />
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxD3o-9H1lY&t=138s<br />
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<br />Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-14454240380293232142017-09-08T02:30:00.002-04:002017-12-26T10:48:08.158-05:00Book Review, The Joy of Sex, by Alex Comfort <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18908549-the-joy-of-sex" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Joy of Sex: The Ultimate Revised Edition" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1385225916m/18908549.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18908549-the-joy-of-sex">The Joy of Sex: The Ultimate Revised Edition</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/39373.Alex_Comfort">Alex Comfort</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2112802963">5 of 5 stars</a><br />
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I finally got around to reading this book, which has been a strange oversight on my part due to my interest and love for the subject. I really enjoyed this book and I must caution that my rating is based more on my enjoyment of it rather than the value of the content. I think some modern readers may find the book a bit too fuddy duddy, too heteronormative, too monogamous, too vanilla, too romantic, too quaint and sentimental, and perhaps even a bit too love oriented, all things that I love because I am a 68 year old heteronormative, monogamous, vanilla, romantic, old fuddy duddy who is too quaint and too sentimental, and very much in love with the woman that I make love to, my wife of 40 years. <br />
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This is not a beginner’s guide, it is billed as “gourmet love making.” As such the book assumes the reader or preferably readers are experienced with sex and are in a committed loving relationship:<br />
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“ we take some things for granted – having intercourse naked and spending time over it; being able and willing to make it last, up to a whole afternoon on occasion; having privacy; not being scared of things like genital kisses; not being obsessed with one sexual trick to the exclusion of all others; and, of course, loving each other. As the title implies, this book is about love as well as sex: you don’t get high-quality sex on any other basis – either you love each other before you come to want it, or, if you happen to get it, you love each other because of it, or both.”<br />
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Comfort, Alex. The Joy of Sex: The Ultimate Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 244-249). Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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For those who may be concerned with love or “the feelings” as they seem to be called these days, the book does not dwell excessively on love but it is mentioned in first, and last chapters, and a three page chapter titled Love. One thing I was pleased with was that the parallels to a cook book were rather minimal. It didn’t get overly cute with cook book analogies. <br />
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The other thing that should be noted is that this edition was revised in 2008 by Susan Quilliam. As such it has been updated so the book recognizes that the Internet exists and has had some of the more recent research applied to the techniques, but the book is not going to give you tips on how to use Tindr or other dating sites nor is it going to explain the latest trends in the statistics on sexual demographics. One is not overwhelmed in modernity. Other than a few technological and cultural mentions, this book would still fly back in 1972.<br />
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There are no plumbing diagrams or descriptions on how the plumbing works. You are supposed to know all that and basically have experience with sex. The original drawings of the hirsute 70’s couple (based on a real couple) have been replaced (some, but not I, would say to its detriment) with tasteful color and sepia photos of an average attractive young couple in various states of undress and embrace. The explicit illustrations are water color paintings of what appears to be the same couple. All the illustrations are in good taste and get across the point without wallowing in it. The couple seems to demonstrate intimacy, tenderness, and indeed joy instead of lust. <br />
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The ideas presented in this book are for the most part just that, idea suggestions giving a framework for an activity rather than a detailed set of instructions…“put this here for three counts and stroke that for seven seconds” type of thing. The reader uses their own imagination to build an activity on the framework. Entries are relatively short, some only a page long. Cautions are provided where appropriate but for the most part the book relies on the couple having experience and common sense. <br />
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The book is not hierarchical. You don’t have to read chapter one before you read chapter two. Actually the chapters are not numbered, and they are really not chapters but rather I suppose the sexual equivalent to recipes. To me they were more like articles or encyclopedia entries…although not to imply they are boring. Again the book relies on the reader’s experience. For the most part you can read any section you wish in any order and have no difficulty understanding the concept. There are some articles that some readers may find kinky or well beyond things that they want to try. No big deal, just don't read those sections. It won't affect the rest of the book. Where appropriate, the book (Kindle edition) has hot links contained in the text that will take one to other articles of similar interest. The book has a hot linked index and a section listing resources. <br />
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The book had a section on tenderness. I have never seen that in a sexual book before. I found the section intriguing: <br />
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Tenderness is shown fully in the way you touch each other. What it implies at root is a constant awareness of what your partner is feeling, plus the knowledge of how to heighten that feeling, gently, toughly, slowly, or fast, and this can only come from an inner state of mind between the two of you. No really tender person can simply turn over and go to sleep afterwards.<br />
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Comfort, Alex. The Joy of Sex: The Ultimate Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 335-338). Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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Of course, I have seen this concept before perhaps not stated as succinctly, but I have never seen it labeled tenderness. But I also found the section in want. It sort of teased me with the concept of tenderness but didn’t satisfy me. There is this feeling I get for my wife often during or after love making, but other times too, where I feel this tingling in the center of my chest. It is a craving for union, a desire to engulf her and be engulfed by her, extreme affection for her. It is an overwhelming lust of my heart to become one with her. Tenderness seems like a good word this feeling. <br />
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Another concept I liked in this book was that sex is a form of play: <br />
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It is only recently, as ethology has replaced psychoanalytic theory, that counselors have come to realize that sex, besides being a serious interpersonal matter, is a deeply rewarding form of play.... One of the most important uses of play is in expressing a healthy awareness of sexual equality. This involves letting both sexes take turns in controlling the game; sex is no longer what men do to women and women are supposed to enjoy. Sexual interaction is sometimes a loving fusion, sometimes a situation where each is a “sex object” – maturity in sexual relationships involves balancing, rather than denying, the personal and impersonal aspects of arousal. Both are essential and built-in to humans. For anyone who is short on either of these elements, play is the way to learn: men learn to stop domineering and trying to perform; women discover that they can take control in the give-and-take of the game rather than by nay-saying. If they achieve this, Man and Woman are one another’s best friends in the very sparks they strike from one another.<br />
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Comfort, Alex. The Joy of Sex: The Ultimate Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 136-145). Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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More than anything else though what I liked about this book and especially having it in a Kindle version is that it inspired a lot of fond memories for things that my wife and I have tried and sometimes failed at during our love life of the past 42 years. I highlighted many passages and wrote many steamy and loving recollections and of some of the awkward foibles in the form of Kindle notes that are now embedded in my copy of the book. I could have never done that with a paper copy. All in all I had a wonderful time reading and writing notes in this book. In some ways I have personalized the book in such a way that it is now almost a private journal. I really regret that I had never read it sooner. <br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3770266-henry-le-nav">View all my reviews</a><br />
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-83644357626924949232017-04-27T12:11:00.000-04:002017-04-27T12:11:21.620-04:00Robert M. Pirsig (September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017)<br />
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From <i>Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:</i><br />
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What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important. </blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert and Chris Pirsig </td></tr>
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<b>What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua</b>— that’s the only name I can think of for it— like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks <b>intended to edify and entertain, </b>improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.<b> </b>The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. “What’s new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and “best” was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.</blockquote>
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Pirsig, Robert M.. <i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</i> (pp. 7-8). HarperTorch. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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<b>In memory of Robert M. Pirsig (September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017)</b></div>
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I didn't understand most of what Pirsig tried to get across in the story within a story within the story of the motorcycle trip with his son Chris in <i>Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, </i>far too lofty for my puny intellect. But I did understand and love his concept of the <i>Chautauqua</i>...a talk intended to <i>edify and entertain.</i> Think of it, what are the books, movies, lectures, even chats with friends or lovers that you enjoy the most? Are they not those that not only entertain but also edify? Indeed, I read the last page in <i>Zen</i> with the very uncomfortable feeling that I just read something profound but most of it slipped past my thick skull. But, I did grasp the Chautauqua...worth the price of the book and the bigger opportunity cost of reading it alone. </div>
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For an interesting memorial to Pirsig: </div>
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/robert-pirsig-dead-wrote-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.html?_r=0" target="_blank"><b>Robert M. Pirsig, Author of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,’ Dies at 88, By Paul Vitello, <i>New York Times</i>, April 24, 2017.</b></a><div>
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<b>Photo Credit: </b></div>
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<a href="https://roberthoodwheels.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/riding-in-the-tracks-of-pirsigs-zen/" target="_blank"><b>MotorcycleBlog, Riding in the tracks of Pirsig's Zen</b></a></div>
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-28346311380582090572017-03-25T01:23:00.000-04:002019-01-05T15:13:13.095-05:00Nobody knew<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-37426932364889134342017-01-22T12:38:00.000-05:002018-01-02T15:29:25.601-05:00Real Men<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In honor of the millions of women and men world wide who marched in the Women's March on Washington and sister marches, January 21, 2017.Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-81445427542915859482016-12-31T17:16:00.001-05:002016-12-31T17:27:30.758-05:00Merry New Year<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I have posted this before so this is somewhat of a repeat performance but with my dearth of posts in 2016, perhaps I can be forgiven wasting space on the servers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I am a new years Scrooge and I ascribe to the tenet:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If I could work my will every idiot who goes about with "Happy New Year" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stem of a martini glass through his heart.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Historically New Years to me was never anything to celebrate. The end of the holidays, a return to poopy old school, crappy old work, and at times both...sailing off into January's dreary gloom with nothing but a heavy heart and despair for another period of time off. Well retirement for most part has abated that bitterness, but like the end of August when I hear the cicadas drone in the trees, I still get a bile of back to school pervading my thoughts. I am indeed a New Years Scrooge. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Then there always Guy Lombardo's Auld Lang Syne. Good grief was there ever a piece of music so hideous? </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yet as I get older, I must admit a certain weakening of my Scrooginess. I perceive that beyond the excuse to go get drunk, a habit I gave up when I started going with my wife, and the stupid party hats, kazzoos, and glasses frames depicting the new year, there is a common thread of hope. Quite possibly vain hope, but hope none the less. We are pretty much helpless to the winds of fate, so can we be blamed if for one day a year we throw caution to those winds, and say damn the torpedoes full speed ahead? </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If nothing else I have found a better rendition of Auld Lang Syne:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Alas, having not been visited by the ghosts of New Years Past, Present, or Future, I am still inclined to say New Years, Bah Humbug! So to avoid my own curse I shall wish you and your's a</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Most Merry New Years! </span></div>
Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-59933723060147339932016-12-28T00:18:00.000-05:002016-12-28T01:54:57.604-05:00Book Review, Sex Without FearGee, I haven't posted anything for a year. Well this will have to do for 2016.<br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13419423-sex-without-fear" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Sex Without Fear" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327107336m/13419423.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13419423-sex-without-fear">Sex Without Fear</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6444460.John_Gilmore">John Gilmore</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1852571689">4 of 5 stars</a><br />
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My rating takes the publication date of 1951 into consideration. It is woefully inadequate for today, and I would rate it only two stars. I would caution readers to read this as a historical artifact of the times rather than an informative manual. The book is brief, 121 pages, but actually fairly informative for the time, something of a very basic instruction manual for the (then) newly married. Naturally in 1951 it is heteronormative and is heavy on the intention that this information is for married couples or those about to get married. Homosexuality is not mentioned at all, ergo there are none of the negative judgements that were often found in other sex manuals of that era.<br />
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The book is well illustrated for a description of the plumbing, and a rudimentary discussion of pregnancy. It has some illustrations of which I question the value, dissection slices of testicle tissue, for instance, that seems to give the book a patina of scientific validity but otherwise seems extraneous. Somewhat surprising, it also had an accurate hairless illustration of the external vulva, I believe to emphasize the location of the clitoris. Lacking, however, was the same for the male genitalia, the book relies on the old hacksaw method of cross sections and the penis being flaccid. With the tales of brides fleeing the bridal chamber shrieking at first sight of an erect male member (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2588343.Love_without_Fear" title="Love without Fear by Eustace Chesser">Love without Fear</a>, pg 166), perhaps a similar external illustration of an erect penis would have been useful. Remember in 1951, one could not do a Google Image search of "erect penis" and get 2.7 bazillion photos in a tenth of a second. <br />
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It provides a simple description of coitus, warns the husband of the need for extended foreplay for arousal of the woman, and surprisingly informs the husband that stimulation of the clitoris is required for the wife to have an orgasm, and thus states that the couple should attain a position that allows clitoral stimulation by the thrusting penis or manually stimulate it with his fingers during coitus. It also provides some rudimentary sexual positions...but alas no illustrations of such. <br />
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There is a surprisingly good section on the then available contraceptive methods, again with some illustrations, and a frank discussion of the methods that don't work very well.<br />
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There is also a discussion on abortion, not the morality, but the need to avoid it because at that time it was illegal, very dangerous, and performed under terrible conditions (with the exception of abortion for health of life of the mother done in hospitals). The conditions described plus the dreadful descriptions of drugs sold to restore "delayed menstruation" should have been an argument for legalization of abortion at that time. This is something that society may want to think about before rushing to overturn Roe vs Wade. <br />
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There was a short brief and by today's standards very incomplete discussion on Veneral Disease. V. D. the letters seemed to scream off the page like a WWII poster for the troops. Actually it was very nonjudgmental....<i>"They [the public] have learned that V. D. is not a disgrace but one of the most wide-spread of human ailments." </i> Pg. 115. <br />
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There was even a brief discussion on how to tell your children about sexuality which seemed very enlightened for the time. Disappointingly it had little to say about teen sexuality other than some severe warnings about juvenile delinquency...that seemed to be a huge worry back in the early 50s. I think it odd that nothing was mentioned about masturbation. <br />
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As I mentioned before, the book was surprising nonjudgmental, it didn't excessively warn of perversions or lose its mind over the proper maintenance of virginity until marriage. Yet it did have an odd (for today) atmosphere of "this is for married people." There were weird little line drawings of wedding rings scattered through the description of intercourse and a bride and groom dancing at a wedding. Also sprinkled here and there were quotes from the Bible which seemed to be thrown in to sanctify a sex manual. This sort of thing I just write off as an artifact of the times and think it wise for modern readers not to get their knickers in a knot. It wasn't long before that sex manuals were considered pornographic and that people disseminating sexual information were jailed. So one can understand a publisher putting in a little window dressing to give the book a patina of wholesomeness required for good strong marriages that would promote truth, justice, the American way, and discourage juvenile delinquency. <br />
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All in all, I think this was a pretty good book for the time that it was published. <br />
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For my review of a similar title, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2588343.Love_without_Fear" title="Love without Fear by Eustace Chesser">Love without Fear</a> see: <br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/853996710?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3770266-henry-le-nav">View all my reviews</a><br />
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-756051671679969712015-12-21T19:26:00.000-05:002017-12-09T12:17:33.158-05:00Happy Solstice<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There seems to be some confusion about when the Solstice (winter if you are in the northern hemisphere, summer if you are in the southern hemisphere) is going to take place. Google says that it will be on December 22nd but quite actually for those of us in North America from the Eastern Time Zone and west to the International Date Line, it will be on December 21st. So why the difference. The first thing to realize is that unlike New Years Day celebrations which occur 24 times, one hour apart, the Solstice is a particular astronomical event that takes place at one particular instant in time. There is only one solstice and it is independent of time zones. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The December solstice is the globe on the far right. Note<br />
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Image Credit Wikipedia</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Due to the inclination of the Earth's axis, and the fact that the axis of the Earth points at the same direction in the sky, as the Earth orbits the sun through out the year, the apparent motion of the sun follows a path in the sky called the ecliptic. On a star chart the ecliptic forms a sine wave. The December Solstice occurs when the apparent motion of the sun reaches the most southern point on that sine wave. At that point the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. </span><br />
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As such the solstice doesn't happen on a date per se like new year's day, it happens at a specific moment in time. That moment of time usually happens on the 21st or 22nd of December, but it can vary out to the 20th to the 23rd although rarely. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So the question comes to mind, how long does the solstice last? The ancients would have declared hours if not days. The apparent motion of the sun as it reaches it most southern point becomes difficult to discern and it appears to stop moving...always a source of concern. However everything is moving and if you consider the solstice to be defined as when the precise center of the disk of the sun is over the precise line of the Tropic of Capricorn then the theoretical time of transit is an infinitely short instant. The center of the sun has no dimension nor does imaginary line of the Tropic of Capricorn. They are mathematical entities of points and lines with no physical dimensions and as such there is no transit time. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Max Planck 1858 - 1947 <br />
The Father of Quantum Mechanics<br />
Image Credit: Wikipedia</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ahhh but in our universe, there is no infinitely short instant. If you had a fine enough stopwatch, it would register the Solstice lasting one Jiffy...a slang physics term for Planck's time. Now if the Tropic of Capricorn was a painted line exactly 6 inches wide, the there would be a transit time. The exacter center of the sun would pass over the 6 inch line, well actually 3 inch line because we would have to assume that the painted line was centered over the theoretical line which has no dimension. So three inches of the painted line would be south of the actual Tropic. So in a theoretical sense the moment is infinitely short. In a real sense it lasts a Jiffy a discreet chunk of time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Planck's time which is the amount of time it takes a photon traveling at the speed of light to travel the length of Planck's length. Plank's length is the shortest possible distance in our Universe. We would like to think that we could take a ruler and start cutting it in half. Twelve inches cut into 6, then cut 6 into 3, 1 1/2, 3/4, 3/8, 3/16.........3/<img alt="\infty " class="CToWUd" height="10" src="https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/QrPlJm6rhKBJdLg2BcJMul83cOV7ZIMdcu-2ZnakZp3YUbhAEibIZXmb26StLl1hniCKWVn2oJnFvy7ujt5p-nAPKYC2GTk3RLwVsZA4tM-frdoQPd4BfRoyOZYvzAauUPs=s0-d-e1-ft#https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/d/2/4/d245777abca64ece2d5d7ca0d19fddb6.png" style="border: none; color: #252525; display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="18" /><span style="color: #252525; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;"> </span><span style="color: #252525; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;"> </span>...that is keep cutting in half forever. But you can't. When you get down to Planck's length, a further cut smaller and you are out of the Universe and into the quantum foam. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So this moment, the Jiffy, is the shortest measurable time in our universe, any shorter and you are again out of the universe and into the quantum foam. I have no idea how Planck figured this out, or even if he did. But anyhow the fabric of the universe has discreet chunks, it is not a uniform fabric that gets progressively smaller the finer you look and like wise the clock has specific tics that you can't get any shorter. So the solstice lasts exactly one Planck's width. How long is that? From </span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></b></div>
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<dl style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.2em;"><dd style="color: #252525; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img alt="t_{\mathrm {P} }\equiv {\sqrt {\frac {\hbar G}{c^{5}}}}\approx 5.39106(32)\times 10^{-44}\ \mathrm {s} " class="CToWUd" src="https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/2O17hEMLF7jHfFCPBSjiKae25vNRDiAQE60rrTJ76Ovq0TcDLBrhkXeQEsXNV4mePHUVkeQJJOvy-yvkYSzyrk1_cIg0YNXZer0ZJ69W_4PkHwOVinwTTecJ-1AQESeoy2g=s0-d-e1-ft#https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/e/7/a/e7aa2541028ee86971233f3d22fbce21.png" style="border: none; display: inline-block; vertical-align: middle;" /></span></dd><dd style="color: #252525; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #252525;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Just round that off to 5.4 times ten to the minus forty-fourth power of a second. No use getting lost in the details. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #252525;"><span style="line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></span></span></dd><dd style="color: #252525; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So anyhow the Solstice is going to happen at a moment and that moment is tonight on the 21st somewhere around 11:49 PM in EST. The reason Google says it is on the 22 is that they are using universal coordinated time, which when you are asked what time is it on the planet Earth, this is the time you use. It is virtually the same thing as the old Greenwich Mean Time except it has atomic clocks applying leap second corrections every now and again. The term Greenwich Mean Time now only applies to the time zone that surrounds the Prime Meridian going through Greenwich England. It is no longer the label for the universal standard. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></dd><dd style="color: #252525; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I don't know if anyone actually knows the precise moment...measured out to some fraction of a second, but according the website <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/december-solstice.html"><b>TIME AND DATE:</b></a></span></dd><dd style="color: #252525; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><div style="color: #252525; line-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #454545; line-height: 21px;">December Solstice in </span><a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/time/aboututc.html" style="color: #176db3; line-height: 21px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Universal Coordinated Time</a><span style="color: #454545; line-height: 21px;"> is on</span></span></div>
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<strong style="color: #454545; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 04:49 UTC</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yet I have also seen some predictions for 04:48 UTC. Why the difference, I have no idea. In any event I suppose that we could say it lasts 1 minute long. <span style="color: #454545;"><span style="line-height: 21px;"><b>I </b></span></span><span style="color: #222222;">would also think from a practical sense that you could say the the solstice lasts as long as a typical sunset into the ocean. That is allowing for the radius of the sun to pass over the tropic line stop and then reverse direction and pass back. It should be roughly the amount of time for the diameter of the sun to slip past a horizon. </span></span></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">Regardless of how long the it takes, it is happening tonight at either 11:48 or 11:49 PM Eastern Standard Time in the US. So go out and build a bon fire dance and howl at the moon and welcome the first day of winter and the return of Sol. </span></span></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">For an excellent article see: <i><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/12061231/When-is-the-shortest-day-of-the-year-the-winter-solstice-2015.html">T<b>he Telegraph,</b></a></i></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/12061231/When-is-the-shortest-day-of-the-year-the-winter-solstice-2015.html"><b><span style="color: #222222;"> </span>When is the 2015 winter solstice? Everything you need to know about the shortest day of the year</b></a></span></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></dd><dd style="color: #222222; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><br /></dd></dl>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-60590021885748718962015-12-17T14:46:00.000-05:002015-12-20T08:18:22.687-05:00Loss of Innocence Part 3<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The old: my Merkur 38 C HD Barber Pole<br />
Per Alicia's request</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Note! </b>This is Part 3. Read <a href="http://navfin.blogspot.com/2015/11/loss-of-innocence-part-1.html" target="_blank"><b>PART 1</b></a> and <a href="http://navfin.blogspot.com/2015/12/loss-of-innocence-part-2.html" target="_blank"><b>PART 2</b></a> first. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As much as I liked my Barber Pole razor, I must admit that I was getting no where with it, I was in sort of a stasis of lousy shaves. I decided the razor was too aggressive and broke down and bought the Merkur Progress 510 C. This is the adjustable razor. Amazon had it on sale for $65. So I finally got the razor I wanted, but instead of spending $75, I spent $105 ($40 for the Barber Pole and $65 for the Progress)…smart Sextant! </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Merkur Logo embossed in the bottom plate is bas relief.<br />
Like chrome valve covers with a Hemi name, very cool. </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While I like the looks of the Progress, I have to admit it is not the beauty that the Barber Pole is. The handle has straight fluted design that is not as attractive and more difficult to grip. The adjustment knob is ivory colored plastic which bothers some folks to the point that a small artisan company modifies the razors with metal knob and calling the result the <a href="http://www.leesrazors.com/razors-and-blades/safety-razors/mergress-safety-razors/" target="_blank"><b>Mergress</b></a>. I actually kind of like the plastic knob. It gives it a 50s retro (junky?) look, and there is good old Merkur’s head embossed in the very end of the knob and the base plate. High culture indeed. The Progress is not as heavy as the Barber Pole, weighing in at 100 grams. Actually I think it has a bit better balance. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gap adjustment on the Merkur Progress<br />
Image credit: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/dkspihd.gif" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: start;">http://i.imgur.com/dkspihd.gif</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: start;"> </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />The razor is adjustable by elevating the blade from the bottom plate while still maintaining tension on the blade. This allows the gap and angle of the blade to become wider or narrower by twisting the knob. Merkur has stamped in some very difficult to see numbers on the metal collar of the knob so that one has a numeric reference for the gap. For fellow presbyopes (ignore that red squiggly it is the noun for one who suffers from presbyopia which my dictionary in an effort to make me feel better states the origins as: late 18th cent.: modern Latin, from Greek presbus ‘old man’ + ōps, ōp- ‘eye.’ ) use of the Merkur Progress means that you now shave with your glasses on if you intend to make on the fly adjustments. <br /><br />So now I had the solution. I set the razor to 2 for the first pass and 1 for the second. AND…I got just as crappy of a shave as I was getting with the Barber Pole. How can I get a less aggressive razor than this. I tried using only the lowest setting. No better. So I was starting to get a bit disillusioned with the great DE shaving that everyone else on these shaving forums rants and raves about. Then one day I tried setting the razor to 3. Voila! I didn’t need a less aggressive setting, I needed more. It is counterintuitive but setting the razor gap wider gave me a far closer shave with less irritation and no nicks. At last! I am still miles from the legendary BBS (Baby Bottom Smooth) but at least I am not nicking myself or causing a lot of razor burn. I haven’t developed a steady enough hand for around my lips so I still finish off with a swipe in that area with the Gillette Sensor Excel. I think of it in terms of a weed whacker verses a lawn tractor. Strictly verboten by the purists but then again the purists probably don’t have MS. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new: Merkur 510 C Progress<br />
Also new, Vie Long Cachurro Horse Hair Brush</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />So here is where I am today. Using the Merkur Progress 510 C with Wilkinson Sword blades on a setting of three or four on the first pass with the grain, two on the second pass across the grain and slowly experimenting with a third pass against the grain in non problem areas. I use the Sensor Excel on the problem areas. It takes three times as long to shave as with the Sensor Excel but there is a certain joy to using a quality razor, albeit not the orgasmic Zen experience described on the shaving forums. The BBS will remain most likely an unattained goal, but the shave is acceptable by my standards. In real world terms, it is somewhere between a hack job and a DFS. DFS? That is shaving forum speak for Damned Fine Shave. Something less than the BBS but quite acceptable by ordinary standards. <br /> <br /><br />I use Van Der Hagen Unscented Luxury Shave Soap in my beloved cheap dark green Van Der Hagen bowl. I tried Mitchell’s Wool Fat, an medium priced soap from England enriched with lanolin (hence the wool fat in its name). The scent of this stuff is right on the border line for me. One degree stronger and it would be in the trash. Unfortunately while it gives a good shave, the stuff irritates my skin leaving my face glowing red and burning. So I retired it to a ziplock bag and I will try it again in a few months. I still have too many variables…new brush, new razor, new technique. The soap may not be the culprit, although as soon as I went back to the VDH Unscented the irritation went away. I then tried Williams Mug Soap again. This is the cheap lemony scented stuff that my father used and was the inspiration for this entire wet shaving fiasco. Hmmmm, second time around after using the VDH Unscented, I decided shaving with lemon Pledge just wasn’t hacking it. Also the stuff dries very fast. I had to lather one side of my face at a time. I vowed to make 10 shaves with it, but I got to where I hated it so much that after the fourth shave I said to hell with this. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption">My razor collection from top left to bottom right:<br />
Gillette Sensor Excel with wire tie nubs.<br />
Merkur 45 Bakelite.<br />
Merkur 38 C HD Barber Pole.<br />
Merkur 510 C Progress.<br />
Dorco Pace, unhappy experiment from the past.<br />
Top right: Norelco 6948XL/41 cheapie but not bad if I am in a hurry. </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Still convinced by the shaving forums that I need a better soap, I ordered and received some Proraso Sensitive Shave Soap from Amazon. It is claimed to have a mild fragrance. Alas, I disagree. It is way too smelly for me. It has an odd combination of pine, soap, with a hint of wood ash. Quite actually, it smelled like I was shaving with a pine scented air freshener from a spray can. It also seemed to cause some irritation, and I did not like the menthol effect. Too smelly and gooey for me. I won’t be trying it again so if I can’t give it to anyone, in the trash it goes. At 10 bucks a tub, it is expensive trash. The lesson here is that I have to quit trying other soaps. I just have no tolerance for the smell of fragrances and apparently they irritate my skin. <br /><br />Being a fragrance intolerant cretin, after shave for me has always been rubbing alcohol. It works fine and leaves no scent behind. Spend a few minutes on a shaving forum an you will find out that I am crazy doing that for a variety of reasons none of which I remember. As you can imagine there are an endless list of pricey post shave balms that one should use, and, of course, many of them are smelly and gooey. So my aversion to smelly and gooey spares me from spending untold sums on preps and post shave balms. But I did read about one post shave product that is not smelly, heals razor burn, provides antibacterial protection, stanches blood flow from nicks, and tightens your pores. Plus it has been in use for 2500 years. An alum block. What the hell is an alum block? I never heard of one until about month or so ago. <br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B2gdXyga8IU/VnL4Ve9vpDI/AAAAAAAAB_E/_xVgPsQpFTE/s1600/Osma%2BAlum%2BBPO_FB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B2gdXyga8IU/VnL4Ve9vpDI/AAAAAAAAB_E/_xVgPsQpFTE/s320/Osma%2BAlum%2BBPO_FB.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Osma Alum Block, it looks like a block of quartz<br />
Image Credit:<br />
<a href="http://www.laboratoiresosma.com/upload/BPO_FB.jpg" style="text-align: start;">http://www.laboratoiresosma.com/upload/BPO_FB.jpg</a></td></tr>
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<br /><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alum" target="_blank">Alum is potassium aluminum sulfate</a>.</b> It is the same stuff that is used in pickles and as an ingredient in baking powder. It is also one of the main ingredients of a styptic pencil. It has antibacterial and astringent properties. Zero odor. After rinsing the lather from your face, you wet the block and rub it lightly all around the shaved areas of your face and allow it to dry. You then can either leave it be or rinse the slight residue off. Best thing since canned beer. Of course like all things in life you can get a good alum block or junky ones. The good ones are cut straight from a large deposit of pure natural alum. The junky ones are blocks fabricated out of loose alum used in other processes or from less than pure alum deposits. Well nothing but the best for me, so I bought a pair of Osma alum blocks cut from the pure deposits in France…bla…bla…. <br /><br />Hmmmm! The jury is still out of that one. I have tried using it only once. It feels odd on my face while wet, sort of like cool water that is evaporating rapidly. It does burn on any place where you shaved a bit too close or on nicks. I didn’t mind the burning, I get about the same from the alcohol. It was the sensation left on my skin for hours after the stuff dried. My skin felt very tight and dried out. My face knew what a grape feels like when becoming a raisin. The best I can describe it was sort of like being wind burnt in very cold weather. I left it on for about 15 minutes and then decided to rinse it off. That unpleasant tightness lasted for hours. I have had the blocks now for about a week and I have not been tempted to use them again. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y9EO3TTrnRk/VnL66XaomzI/AAAAAAAAB_Q/BdnNqeCo5Jo/s1600/41dr4OcrAaL%2Bcachurro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y9EO3TTrnRk/VnL66XaomzI/AAAAAAAAB_Q/BdnNqeCo5Jo/s320/41dr4OcrAaL%2Bcachurro.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vie Long 04312 Cachurro Horse Hair Brush.<br />
Cruelty free, horse hair is collected during grooming.<br />
Image Credit: Amazon.com </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />I have upgraded to a Vie Long 04312 Cachurro horse hair brush, To be honest I love my cheap Van Der Hagen boar bristle brush. It is stiff, has a lot of “scritch” (a shaving forum terminology for a rough scratchy feel) and lathers acceptably. But alas a boar was “harvested” to provide the hair for my brush. That doesn’t fly well with my animal loving wife. Horse hair brushes are made with hair from the mane and tail of horses that are collected through normal grooming, not the slaughter of the animal. So Vie Long sends agents out to all the equestrian barber shops in Spain to collect hair for its brushes. Well that is what I have read and tell my wife. For those who like a softer brush, the horse hair is much softer than boar, but not as soft as badger. I have a fake badger hair brush using synthetic bristles and I hate it. Way too soft. The horse hair is too soft for me, but it keeps peace in the house. I have to admit that part of the reason I chose this particular brush was the metal collet retaining the knot. Very manly! It gives the handle a nice weight. Alas, one has to use care not to chip the ceramic shaving bowl when swirling up a lather especially when the soap wears down. <br /><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0mP-w5b6rg8/VnL8YaqhdZI/AAAAAAAAB_Y/G6XeQmalsjI/s1600/IMG_4208.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0mP-w5b6rg8/VnL8YaqhdZI/AAAAAAAAB_Y/G6XeQmalsjI/s400/IMG_4208.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My brushes: left Van Der Hagen Boar Bristle.<br />
Center: Simply Beautiful fake silver tip badger hair.<br />
Right: Vie Long Cachurro horse hair.</td></tr>
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<br /><br />I did buy one razor just for the hell of it, a Merkur 45 Bakelite razor. It is made from the first manmade plastic, Bakelite. Weighing in at 15 grams it is very light. It gets surprisingly good reviews. A woman reviewer on Amazon liked it because it did not get hot in the shower. I bought it mostly because I think it looks cool in a very tacky sort of way plus Bakelite appeals to my love for Mahjong sets. Bakelite was a commonly used material for the classic American made Mahjong sets in the early and mid years of the 20th century. So far I haven’t used the razor. <br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-39iX9rzDkt0/VnL_vfXgY7I/AAAAAAAAB_k/ll6sTjGtME8/s1600/th2_4259_bakelite_45_030.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-39iX9rzDkt0/VnL_vfXgY7I/AAAAAAAAB_k/ll6sTjGtME8/s320/th2_4259_bakelite_45_030.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Merkur 45 Bakelite with travel case and blades.<br />
Image Credit:<br />
http://www.shavershop.com/shop/images/th2_4259_bakelite_45_030.jpg</td></tr>
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<br /> <br />Well I have sort of run out of things to buy. I am fed up with trying “lightly scented” soaps. I have more razors than I need. Aversions to smelly and gooey spare me from trying all the various preps and after shaves. So about the only thing left to play with is blades. The Wilkinson Sword is my blade of choice, but once I get my technique further refined maybe I will try the Feather again perhaps buy a blade sampler. <br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />So there is only one thing left to do, build a “shaving den.” This is something on the order of exclusive gentleman’s club in London built right into your house for the purpose of pursuing the art and zen of shaving. Centered in the shaving den of my dreams would be a oversized vanity with an acre of counter space to display my fine collection of razors new and antique, many shelves for the various brushes, bowls, preps, and after shave balms, and of course a toilet (tastefully off to the side and equipped with a reading light) would be available for the essentials. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iWDYdgpRfpI/VnMD2LgkOsI/AAAAAAAAB_4/8WK2-id_O1M/s1600/IMG_1199%2Bshaving%2Bden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iWDYdgpRfpI/VnMD2LgkOsI/AAAAAAAAB_4/8WK2-id_O1M/s400/IMG_1199%2Bshaving%2Bden.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Shaving Den<br />
Image Credit: [URL=http://s1262.photobucket.com/user/Obie41/media/IMG_1199.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1262.photobucket.com/albums/ii617/Obie41/IMG_1199.jpg[/IMG][/URL]</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> One wall would be devoted to library shelves containing the classics and the Encyclopedia Brittanica in leather bound editions. A 60’s style stereo system would occupy another wall. Another wall would have a writing desk with a well appointed desk top computer with a fast internet connection and a large screen for viewing YouTube tutorials and on the fly emergency consultations to the shaving forums. Another wall would have a small couch with a coffee table laid out with recent issues of <i>Scientific American, Field and Stream, Hot Rod, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Esquire</i> and the latest Art Of Shaving catalog. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bg-2MK79mBM/VnMEstPWX_I/AAAAAAAACAA/I0gzMJ15Fag/s1600/Pin%2Bup%2B7efdbd52565418910a1b72dee402758a.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bg-2MK79mBM/VnMEstPWX_I/AAAAAAAACAA/I0gzMJ15Fag/s320/Pin%2Bup%2B7efdbd52565418910a1b72dee402758a.gif" width="242" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not exactly what I had in mind <br />
but you get the idea. Image Credit:<br />
<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/7e/fd/bd/7efdbd52565418910a1b72dee402758a.jpg </span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another wall would display a tasteful Vargas girl pinup shaving her legs with a 1959 Gillette Fat Boy Adjustable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">T</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">he walls, all eight of them, would paneled in the finest mahogany veneers, counter tops all black granite, and lighting a combination of overhead track lighting and Tiffany floor and table lamps. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /> Well so much for my dreams. In practical terms I believe that most shaving dens are simply the act of commandeering a powder room and installing good lighting, a good mirror, a bunch of shelves to hold all your gear. This then is where you go to become one with the lather and blade. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Alas back to reality, being a retired factory worker and not an investment banker, the cracker box of a house that I live in has no powder room and no place for a powder room. So that leaves the bathroom. One thing I have learned in almost 39 years of marital bliss is that the bathroom, especially when you only have one, is a woman’s province. Space will be provided grudgingly for a few manly health and beauty essentials but there is no way my wife is going to tolerate a major invasion of a ridiculous macho shaving den. Hmmm. That leaves the laundry tub in the basement right next to the washer and the cat litter boxes. The cat litter aroma would add to the zen of the experience, take me back to basics, and perhaps mask the fragrance of the stinky shaving soaps! The simple fact of the matter is that I have no place for a shaving den. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-b6rHl6pV_Is/VnMJxRPHqjI/AAAAAAAACAY/d4LFt9x_ork/s1600/IMG_4240%2Bcopy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-b6rHl6pV_Is/VnMJxRPHqjI/AAAAAAAACAY/d4LFt9x_ork/s320/IMG_4240%2Bcopy.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Shaving Temple</td></tr>
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Being spiritually inclined and four dimensionally challenged on this Earth plane, I decided to make a shaving temple. This sits in the (waterless and drainless) corner of the small area that I have claimed for my man cave. While it certainly falls short of a shaving den, being close to the computer, it does provide instant access to all my shaving goods for when I am posting on the shaving forums. <br /><br /><br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally, It occurs to me that most of my readers are women, (except for one notable gentleman in the northern realms who respectfully wishes to remain bearded). </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rvNt6n0HBXk/VnMK0yuujNI/AAAAAAAACAg/uVB93ULi-b4/s1600/SHARP_header.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="157" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rvNt6n0HBXk/VnMK0yuujNI/AAAAAAAACAg/uVB93ULi-b4/s400/SHARP_header.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Shaving Queen<br />
Image Credit:<br />
http://sharpologist.com/2014/09/top-resources-ladies-shaving.html</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Lest you feel left out, there is a small but devoted contingent of women wet shaving enthusiasts. The Sharpologist has an article by the Razor Queen, Tiffanyanne Pisarcik which lists a variety of wet shaving resources for women. <br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /><b><a href="http://sharpologist.com/2014/09/top-resources-ladies-shaving.html" target="_blank">Sharpologist .com, “Top Resources For Ladies Shaving.” by Tiffanyanne Pisarcik</a> </b><br /><br />Pisarcik AKA Tiffany Kosma also appears at the blog <b><a href="http://ritualshave.com/" target="_blank">What’s Your Ritual</a> </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well there you have it. A long journey in a few short months. Last July I was blissfully ignorant scraping Gillette Foamy red spray can cheapy forumula from my face with a two bladed cartridge Gillette Excel razor. Now I am shit canning 10 dollar tubs of Proraso because it is too smelly. I take three times as long to shave, go around with razor burn 50% of the time from my latest failed experiment, and Amazon is raking in a young fortune off my shaving habit. Ha ha but I am no fool. Gillette and Schick are not robbing me blind with those expensive 5 bladed cartridges. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well off to the forums to see if I can find an unscented prep. </span><br />
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-15087442850989530832015-12-03T14:11:00.000-05:002015-12-17T17:19:36.888-05:00Loss of Innocence Part 2<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica;">
<b>NOTE! </b>This part 2. Read <b><a href="http://navfin.blogspot.com/2015/11/loss-of-innocence-part-1.html" target="_blank">PART 1</a> </b>first. <br />
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I have been trying to write part 2 of my loss of innocence without much luck. I have gotten into too much detail about shaving crises in the past. My posts are too damned long anyhow and nobody wants to read about a half century struggle with removing hair from my face. Well that is an exaggeration. Since the early 90s I have been using a Gillette two blade Sensor that has worked well. I have resisted the urge to go with ever more blades and more expense. The Sensor always gave me an acceptable shave, and while the cost went steadily upwards it was still reasonable compared to the many bladed behemoths that were starting to look like a harrow on handle. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M9KgJhwCDwY/VmCHzwdOYyI/AAAAAAAAB8Q/E0fwjeOwk1c/s1600/100628.featuritis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M9KgJhwCDwY/VmCHzwdOYyI/AAAAAAAAB8Q/E0fwjeOwk1c/s400/100628.featuritis.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Credit: <a href="https://marketoonist.com/2014/06/technobabble.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; text-align: start;">https://marketoonist.com/2014/06/technobabble.html</a></td></tr>
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Then about 2 years ago I got a bunch of bad cartridges. After one shave they were shot. Hmmm a two dollar shave! I will spare the details of that battle but I now have a Norelco electric shaver and a Dorco three bladed cartridge razor collecting dust (well the Norelco is useful when I am in a hurry). Then I happened across the Gillette Sensor Excel blade. Sort of a high tech Sensor blade that would fit my existing handle. While I was not happy with Gillette for having charged me $30 for the last 15 shaves, I was getting a bit desperate. So I tried them. Voila! They work great. I was getting over a month (I don’t shave every day) out of a cartridge. Far better shave than I got from the Sensor. They are a couple of bucks more for a 10 pack than the Sensor but well worth the difference. The only complaint (aside from cost) was that they seem to easily clog between the blades, especially because I don’t shave every day. The Sensor did as well but they seemed to flush out easier. The Excels extract a certain amount of shaving time devoted to rinsing the razor but otherwise a good acceptable shave. So all was well in the shaving world until I lost my innocence a few months ago with wet shaving. </div>
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Hang around any wet shaving forum and you will soon get exposed to the idea that real men shave with double edged safety razors. To me this is something of a cop out of convenience (and perhaps sanity). It would seem to me that if you are rejecting modern </div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">expensive high tech shaving systems then one should gravitate to the true original…the straight razor (affectionately AKA the cut throat razor). Let’s not be fooled by King Camp Gillette, a true shave can only be delivered by a well honed and stropped straight razor like my father used. He could shave himself while falling down drunk and not have a nick. </span> </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mkfDsdwIdhg/VmCI1_MVQvI/AAAAAAAAB8Y/96y5-j17JF0/s1600/feature-shaving-article.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="195" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mkfDsdwIdhg/VmCI1_MVQvI/AAAAAAAAB8Y/96y5-j17JF0/s400/feature-shaving-article.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Credit: <br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">http://www.smokingpopes.net/want-shave-like-real-man-follow-step-step-guide-using-straight-razor/</span></td></tr>
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Truth be told, if the only way to shave was with a cut throat, I would sport beard. I can’t bear to even look at photographs of these treacherous devices being used. How one ever gets up enough balls to drag that thing across their face is beyond me. Apparently I am not alone in that line of thinking. So the shaving enthusiasts (wine snobs pale in comparison) have embraced the double edge safety razor as being a sufficiently low tech and traditional method of shaving. Let’s face it, using a straight razor could result in some catastrophic injuries. So sanity has prevailed and the double edged safety razor is considered the instrument of choice on the shaving forums. </div>
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Yeah, yeah. To hell with all that nonsense. I was quite happy with my Gillette Sensor Excel even if I am a damned fool for paying way to much per shave. But then I got my brush and razor stand. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ahhh! The pride of my shaving den!</td></tr>
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You have to store your brush with the bristles down. Otherwise the water runs into the handle and deteriorates the bond of the knot of the bristle to the handle. Leaving a brush with the bristles upright shortens the life of a brush. So I find a great stand that will also store my razor. As mentioned in part one, my razor would not stay in the stand. So I end up with a cheap ass hideous looking soap scummed cartridge razor being supported in a beautiful chrome shaving stand by wire tie nubs. </div>
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Nah the shaving forums are not affecting my judgement. But what can it hurt to have a look at some of these DEs (the “in the know” term for double edged safety razor). I was captivated by a company I never heard of, Merkur (German for Mercury). Hmmm. Shiny. Precision machining. Engine turned styling. A classic bust of Hermes for a company logo. These things are works of art. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zRndBz8_Xkw/VmCLFSc8F1I/AAAAAAAAB8k/J6EqE5DMdzE/s1600/Merkur_Solingen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zRndBz8_Xkw/VmCLFSc8F1I/AAAAAAAAB8k/J6EqE5DMdzE/s400/Merkur_Solingen.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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Don’t be an ass Sextant, you used a double edged razor until you went in the service and they sucked. Ohhhh but look at this one with a “barber pole” handle. Ooooh solid brass core handle, spiraled knurling. What a manly looking razor. And let’s face it with my plummeting testosterone levels, I can use all the manly that I can get. Don’t be ass Sextant, DEs suck. </div>
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Ahhh but wait, look at this one, its adjustable, you can adjust how “aggressive” you want your shave. Don’t be an ass Sextant, you had an adjustable Gillette DE in 1966 and it sucked. Oh but look, the Merkur logo is embossed bas relief on the base of the head. This thing is a beauty. Adjustable, beautiful German engineering and craftsmanship, charming ivory colored plastic adjustment knob that is reminiscent of the 50s with yet another Hermes logo embossed in it. (Believe it or not many do no like this feature thinking it tacky. There is an outfit that makes modified Merkur Progress with metal adjustment knobs.) Ahhh this is the razor I want. Why you idiot? You are perfectly happy with the Sensor Excel. No I am not, it looks like a piece of shit in my beautiful stand. </div>
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And there you have it, like a teenage boy unhappy with perfectly serviceable painted valve covers on my V-8 engine, I want something that is shiny and macho. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T01hkUePgwk/VmCMP5Eg0oI/AAAAAAAAB8s/6up5_tU2dU8/s1600/jim_s472hemi190.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T01hkUePgwk/VmCMP5Eg0oI/AAAAAAAAB8s/6up5_tU2dU8/s320/jim_s472hemi190.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Chrysler Hemi with painted valve covers.<br />
Image Credit:<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <a href="http://www.hemihaines.com/Hemiphotos.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; text-align: start;">http://www.hemihaines.com/Hemiphotos.html</a></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mvOqpkJIIZY/VmCNAvkI-ZI/AAAAAAAAB80/MqdLLW1Xw-U/s1600/user-Ron_Pekovitch_1183.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mvOqpkJIIZY/VmCNAvkI-ZI/AAAAAAAAB80/MqdLLW1Xw-U/s320/user-Ron_Pekovitch_1183.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Chrysler Hemi with chrome valve covers.<br />
You can see the difference shiny chrome makes.<br />
Image Credit: <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: xx-small; text-align: start;"><a href="http://www.hemihaines.com/Hemiphotos.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: start;">http://www.hemihaines.com/Hemiphotos.html</a></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "helvetica";"> </span></td></tr>
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So the process of converting to a DE begins. And the rationalizations start. Gillette could screw you at any time raising the price or reducing the quality like with the Sensors, or simply take them off the market forcing you to a 17 bladed Lazer Guided Fusion Rotary Vibrato model. You wouldn’t have to spend so much time with flushing out clogs between the blades (that one is actually true…it is just that you spend so much more time with everything else that the time savings is negative). You will save a lot of money on blades (also true if you can ever make up your mind). These razors are made with a sense of craftsmanship and precision…oh boy the bullshit we tell our selves. Imagine the Merkur razor factory…elfin like craftsman dressed in lederhosen and pince-nez, leaning over an ancient lathe with a micrometer carefully measuring the diameter of brass handle singing strains from Wagner’s Ring. Having a quality shaving instrument (nah I haven’t been hanging around the shaving forums too long) will make shaving more fun and exciting, a morning male zen ritual. I imagine myself sitting in the lotus position in a mist shrouded cave, chakras aglow, dipping my shiny precision Merkur into a geothermal heated mineral pool at the precise temperature for opening my pores and softening the whiskers for the perfect shave while strains from an unseen sitar play mysterious soul soothing tones at the precise frequency to make one’s whiskers to stand erect and vibrate in anticipation of the meeting their fate to a precision teflon coated, ceramic over platinum plated, ice tempered stainless steel blade gliding over my face lathered with the pure creme from Tibetan mountain goats combined with triple milled soap hand pressed by virgin maidens. Now imagine that same scene with a Gillette Sensor Excel razor with wire tie nubs on the handle. </div>
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Ahhhh so I slowly convince myself that a DE will make my shaving life better, and SNAP! The LET’S BUY relay in my brain snaps from the sensible quiescent don’t be an ass, you don’t need that particular bobble state to a red flashing BUY, BUY, BUY state, and thus flooding the pair of nucleus accumbens in the left and right hemispheres of my brain with a pleasurable charge of dopamine. </div>
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Ha ha! I am going to BUY and improve my shaving life! Tah dah! So then I get off the review websites and go on Amazon. The Merkur Progress 510 C costs $75!!!!!! What? Now the cheap bastard circuitry in my brain gets energized. Dopamine is diverted to be absorbed in my liver (I don’t know if that is how it works or not but you get the point.) You idiot, 75 bucks is a lot of money to pay to hack yourself up for a week, toss the damned thing in a drawer, and never look at it again. The LET’S BUY relay may operate in a digital, zero/one, off/on, don’t buy/buy state, but the cheap bastard circuitry is strictly analogue. It thrives in shades of grey. If the razor that I really want is too much then why not buy an “entry level” razor and give it a try. So let’s see I could buy a Lord razor for $9.75, a Van Der Hagen for $17, a Feather for $12, a Perfecto for $13, and the list goes on and on. These razors all use the same standard DE blades that my 75 dollar Merkur would use, so why not just go cheap and see how you like it—because if you remember right…you were never too impressed with DEs fifty years ago. Well all those razors, while being, yes, a DE safety razor, are cheap hunks of cast pot metal. POT METAL (what ever that is). Not objects of precision German craftsmanship and beauty crafted from solid brass and plated to an absurd thickness that I have convinced myself that I need. Now bear in mind, my thinking on this at the time of want is not this clear. Everything is a murky war of new fired want verses a life time of studious parsimoniousness. I want a Merkur Progess not a Lord pot metal piece of shit. Its like having the hots for a new Mercedes Benz and going to look at a 15 year old Jetta. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Merkur 38 C HD<br />
The Barber Pole<br />
Image Credit: Amazon</td></tr>
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So the cheap bastard circuitry whirs and buzzes between want and cheap and like all good analogue computers a compromise is reached between the Progress and pot metal. I will get the Merkur 38C HD Classic Barber Pole. Great ratings, good beginner razor, mildly aggressive, long solid brass core handle fashioned after a barber pole (but I think reminiscent of a classical Roman Tuscan architectural column…yes I am in control of myself), top rated razor at one of the shaving forums, hefty—weighing in at a whopping 120 grams, and well balanced. It is precision German craftsmanship for only $40, almost half of the cost of the razor that I really want. But it is a beauty (which is true, I think it a more attractive razor than the Progress). </div>
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OK, so I ordered the razor from Amazon and received it with one Merkur stainless steel sample blade. Hmmmm. No matter how much hype you read on a shaving forum, at some point it comes down to you, the lather, the blade, the razor and your face…its rug cutting time. So I have my beautiful Merkur Barber Pole (or Roman Tuscan in my mind, a main support in the temple of shaving) and with a trembling hand, remembering all the tips…don’t press, let the weight of the razor do the work, short strokes, rinse often, do not take a second swipe on unlathered skin…etc etc etc. and…it sucked. </div>
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WTF did I expect? It is a double edged safety razor employing technology that King Camp Gillette developed at the turn of the century (19th to 20th). The best it is going to do is give you a good shave, not some orgasmic zen experience that is blabbed about on some of these shaving forums. I surveyed my bleeding face and realized that maybe I allowed myself to fall victim of the hype. But I was warned, a favorite saying on the forums is YMMV (your mileage may vary) and one is consistently told that it takes a month to learn the muscle memory for a good shave with a DE. OK so my initial run wasn’t so good, common enough experience, consult the forums. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Pride of East German Automobile Technology<br />
The Trabant 601, AKA The Little Stinker, Image Credit:<br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: xx-small; text-align: start;"><a href="http://www.automobilposter.de/images/postkarten/classics/200891218379-p8303-c.jpg" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; text-align: start;">http://www.automobilposter.de/images/postkarten/classics/200891218379-p8303-c.jpg</a></span></td></tr>
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First thing that is evident is that while Merkur may make the Mercedes Benz of razors, their blades are strictly a Trabant. It is one of those curiosities in life, the maker of first rate razors produces lousy blades. Really p<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">oor shave.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I would recommend Merkur sending a sample of some other company’s blades. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">So I bought some Van Der Hagen ice tempered blades at Target.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Not bad.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Sort of a mild shave but better than I thought they would be. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">So the next leg of the journey is blades.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">One would think that one razor blade is as good as another but not true.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Some are very sharp and provide a much closer shave but at the risk of razor burn and nicks.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Blades are definitely a case of YMMV.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">You have to experiment and find the best blade for your skin, razor, lather and technique.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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So now a new adventure, finding suitable blades. Brick and mortar stores offer very little selection of traditional DE blades. You either have to go to a specialty shaving store or an internet shop. There are a variety of blades samplers on Amazon and some of the Internet shaving shops. But I decided not to go that route just yet. Blades vary quite a bit. I thought that being a newbie, I should learn technique using the same brand of blade. Keep the variables down. Once I get my technique down pat, I would then try different blades. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Standard Double Edged Razor Blade<br />
Feather, the ninja sword of DE blades<br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I have a rather tough thick beard, and it lays flat but somewhat sensitive old man skin and lots of old man wattles on my neck.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">So I read the reviews for the various blades and two stood out that I wanted to try.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Feather and Wilkinson Sword.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Feather, the ninja sword of DE razor blades, are Japanese platinum coated stainless blades that are widely agreed to be the sharpest blade on the market.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It seems one either loves Feather or hates them, they are sharp and they are very aggressive.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The Wilkinson Sword is a blade that I have a bit of history with.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Before I went in the service, I used a Gillette adjustable with Wilkinson Sword Blades.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">At the time they were unique in that they were stainless, had a great edge and lasted longer than other blades.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I had my father try them, and he converted from a straight razor to a double edged.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">He raved about them.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">So I wanted to try them for historical reasons.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The Wilkinson Sword blade now is made in Merkur’s home town of Soligen Germany, the City of Blades.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It is a stainless steel blade “improved by Wilkinson's famous triple coating process of chromium to resist corrosion, ceramic for added durability, and PTFE for less irritation.” </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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My blades finally arrived from Amazon (again I ganged up the purchases so I exceeded $35 but had to wait for the slower shipping…patience will save you money). I placed a Feather blade in my Barber Pole and with great anticipation of finally attaining the holy grail of wet shaving world, the legendary BBS, Baby Bottom Smooth, began to shave. I will say one thing for Feathers, they are sharp, I removed beard and hunks of face without feeling a bit of drag, pull, or pain. The result was something that resembled being on the receiving end of ultra fine bird shot fired from both barrels of a 12 gauge shot gun. Nicks too numerous to count and razor burn on my neck wattles and chin. Not a good experience. I allowed my face to heal for several days with no shaving and then returned to the mild mannered Van Der Hagen blades for a week. Then I tried the Wilkinson Swords. They are not as sharp as the Feathers but far more aggressive than the Van Der Hagens or the Merkurs.</div>
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And there I remained. I didn’t seem to be improving. Every shave resulted in a some nicks and razor burn. The razor burn I attribute to the second pass. Wet shaving with a DE usually dictates three passes. The first with the grain of your beard. That is the whiskers have a natural way of laying. With the grain is shaving in the direction that they lay. It is the least irritating direction. Think of petting a cat. When you pet from head to tail, your petting with the grain of the cat’s fur. The second pass should be across the grain, and the last pass against the grain for the BBS. I am no where near the skill required for against the grain and as such on a different planet from the legendary BBS. My beard is coarse and lays very flat. </div>
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So I had arrived at a lousy shave stasis. I was getting no better at shaving, the promised muscle memory seemed to evade me. It was taking three times a long and my face remained sort of a war zone of nicks and razor burn. I had not yet arrived at the right combination of preps, bowls, brushes, soaps, blades, razors, techniques, and after shaves. I remained in wet shaving limbo. </div>
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I promised to conclude this shaving business in two posts. I lied. It is just far too fascinating to limit to two posts. Yeah right. I pity you poor reader. In any event you will have to wait for Loss of Innocence <a href="http://navfin.blogspot.com/2015/12/loss-of-innocence-part-3.html" target="_blank"><b>PART 3</b></a> to find if I have my happily ever after ending and the legendary BBS. <span style="font-size: 11px;"> </span></div>
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-8971995603925746422015-11-08T00:51:00.000-05:002015-12-17T17:01:25.550-05:00Loss of Innocence Part 1<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It started innocently enough. My can of Gillette Foamy shaving cream (Regular grade, red can, ultra-cheapo, no swilliness, and no fragrance) got to the end where, in a sad diarrheic death spiral, it spit out gas and a watery soapy slop resembling cream more than whipped cream. My past experience has always been that the slop at the end of the can was not worth the aggravation of using it. Having the slop drip off my face and the razor did not justify the money saved by squeezing out 5 more sloppy shaves. As such my usual practice was to toss the can at the first spit near the end and start a new can. On this particular morning, I was running short on time and was too damned lazy to go down in the basement to retrieve the next can. So I used the slop, but bearing in mind something that I had recently read, you only need a little bit of shaving cream. It doesn’t have to be an inch thick like they show in the ads on TV. So I applied it sparingly and I was pleasantly surprised. The slop although drippy, gave a much better shave than the foam. Hmmm! So instead of throwing it out, I used it to the very bloody end and decided I liked the shave from the slop much better, especially after I started using the next can and got back to shaving with the relatively dry foam. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This got me thinking about when I was a kid, my father shaved with a straight razor (the thoughts of which still makes me shiver), shaving mug, and a brush. He used Williams Mug shaving soap. So I got to wondering, does that stuff still exist? Indeed it does. </span></div>
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<b><a href="http://www.williamsmugsoap.com/products.asp" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Williams Mug Shaving Soap</span></a></b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">A quick glance at Google indicated that it was available at Walgreens.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Well this was all sort of a day dream, a blast from the past, and I put it out of my mind.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">A few days later I found myself riding past a Walgreens and a wild hair struck me…what the hell give it a try.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I wasn’t going to bother with a brush and mug, just get the soap and apply it with a wash cloth just to try it out.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Walgreens did not have Williams Mug soap, not even a place for it ( a second look at the web revealed that Walgreens only carries it as an Internet sale). They did, however, have a Van Der Hagen Premium Shave Set that included a dark green ceramic shave bowl, a boar bristle brush and premium shave soap. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><a href="http://vdhent.com/index.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" target="_blank">Welcome To Van Der Hagen</a></b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Credit:<br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><b><a href="http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/van-der-hagen-premium-shave-set/ID=prod6048053-product?ext=gooPersonal_Care_PLA_Shave_Cream_Soaps_Foams_ampersand_Brushes_prod6048053_pla&adtype=pla&kpid=sku6046693&sst=15e2e708-d967-4d24-b6f9-28379a129bbd" target="_blank">Walgreens.com, Van Der Hagen Premium Shave Set</a></b></span></div>
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All for 11 bucks. They also had another Van Der Hagen set with a badger hair brush for about 34 bucks. My animal loving wife would crown me for the boar bristle brush but at least I could make the argument that it came from a slaughter house, much like leather. The notions of badgers being trapped for a badger hair shaving brush would never fly. Besides 11 bucks is much more palatable than 34 and I loved the beautiful dark green ceramic bowl. I have been a sucker for dark green in the past 20 years and I don’t know why. So I bought it and entered unwittingly into a new phase in my life. </div>
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So now being a proud owner of soap, bowl, and brush, what exactly do you do with this? Yeah I know, you wet the brush, slop it around the soap, and then smear it on your face, but surely there must be proper techniques? How do you ensure you get the lather you want, how exactly do you use the brush? So in these modern times, what does one do when faced with an unknown? Consult the Internet of course, and fear not there has to be 700 bazillion Internet sites, shaving forums, and YouTube videos showing you how to use your bowl, brush, and soap in the most effective way…and hence I lost my innocence in the world of shaving even though I have been practicing this art in one form or another for better than a half century. </div>
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Welcome to the world of wet shaving. Yes, there is an entire subculture out there devoted to the ultimate shave. It is hardly visible to the shoppers of the brick and mortar stores with their preponderance of Gillette and Schick shaving products. Simply Google “wet shaving” and stand back. </div>
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My particular favorite is The Sharpologist</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://sharpologist.com/" target="_blank"><b>http://sharpologist.com</b></a></span></div>
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He has a very informative blog and some great how to shave videos. </div>
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I loved the bowl and the brush, but the soap while giving an excellent shave is smelly, a sort of a rose smell. My wife gets migraines from fragrances so we have both become fragrance averse. I found the whiffs of rose throughout the day to be annoying. Besides why would they give a man’s product a rose fragrance? I am wussie enough without smelling like a rose on top of it. I looked around at the various drug stores but couldn’t find William’s Mug soap. So I looked on Amazon, not only did they have Williams, they have a myriad of other brands some of which are quite expensive. I also noted that Van Der Hagen made a unscented luxury soap. I ordered some Williams and the Van Der Hagen Unscented from Amazon. But being a cheap bastard, I needed to buy some other stuff to get the order over $35 for free shipping. I don’t belong to Prime. </div>
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As noted above there is this entire subculture residing on the Internet about wet shaving, so I started reading about this stuff. In fact, it became something of a hobby. Shaving a hobby? I have to be nuts. Anyhow, the general consensus is that the only shave brush worth owning is a silver tipped badger hair brush. Yeah right. My wife will divorce me for animal cruelty. So I opt for a “faux” silver tipped badger hair brush made with synthetic fibers. That will fly with my wife. I also read that a brush must hang bristles down when not in use or eventually the water will damage the knot inside the handle. So I should buy a shaving stand that holds the brush and razor. So I ordered the stand, the brush, and two types of soap. Yepper, I am well over the $35 mark for free shipping. This is indeed turning into a hobby, a bit of a costly one. </div>
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When my shipment arrived, I popped out the smelly Van Der Hagen soap from the bowl and set in a cake of Williams. With my new brush, which is quite beautiful, I lather up the Williams. It is fine except that it smells like you are shaving with lemon Pledge furniture polish. But after you rinse it off, there is no lingering smell. The synthetic brush is wimpy and I don’t like it. I like the stiff bristles of the junky boar brush better. I used the Williams for about a week. I like the Williams despite the Lemon Pledge smell. It gives a good shave and I liked how it rinses off clean and leaves no residual smell or greasiness. From my readings, my acceptance of Williams Mug shaving soap makes me something of a cretin in the world of wet shaving, I may as well be using Fels-Naptha. Also from my reading, I was anxious to try the Van Der Hagen Unscented Luxury soap. So I popped out the William’s, stuck it in a zip lock bag and put in a cake of the VDH Unscented. Absolutely wonderful! No fragrance. It takes a bit longer to whip up a lather, and it leaves a slightly greasy residue, but very slight. It shaves good and ITS NOT SMELLY! This is my soap.</div>
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The stand? </div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Perfecto-Deluxe-Chrome-Razor-Brush/dp/B00KO46CTA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8" target="_blank"><b>Amazon.com, Perfecto Deluxe Chrome Razor and Brush Stand</b></a></span></div>
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Perfecto? Surely I jest! No that is the brand name. It is beautiful. Good chrome plating, sturdy, heavy weighted base with a neoprene scuff pad on the bottom, well made, not a bad price. It worked great for the brush, but not so well for my razor, a two blade Gillette Sensor. This razor has a wedge shaped head. It ends up sitting on two diametrical points across the wedge on the legs of the stand. With the slightest vibration, the razor would rotate in the stand and fall between the legs. I solved that problem by installing two wire ties on the upper handle and placing the nubs 180 degrees apart. The razor now sits in the stand on the two nubs. It works good but looks like hell. My eventual plan for a solution was to install an o-ring across the legs of the stand and use it as a rubber band to force the razor back into the end of the slot where it can’t fall. However further reading on the internet invalidated that need.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Perfecto Shaving Stand with the beautiful albeit wimpy fake silver <br />
tipped badger brush and Gillette Sensor Razor jury rigged with wire ties.</td></tr>
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Oddly enough, this crap isn’t just shopping for shaving supplies. It is turning into something of a hobby. I start reading about brushes, bowls, various soaps. Well reading any kind of shaving forum you get exposed to the idea that Gillette and Schick are two corporate behemoths pushing off excessive technological wonders in the form of cartridge razors that are totally not needed and raping your wallet in the process. A real man shaves with a double edge safety razor and bleeds a bit and saves tons of money on blades. Quite actually I rather believe that a real man would shave with a straight razor finely honed before each use with a leather strop…but let’s face it, it takes a lot of balls to put one of those things to your face. So I think the double edged (abbreviated DE) aficionados are opting for an old time traditional solution but one in which you probably will not slit your throat if a car backfires out on the street. So because this has become something of a hobby and because my Gillette Sensor looks so sucky sitting in its chrome plated stand with a pair of wire ties for supports, I start believing all the claims that double edged safety razors are the way to go. </div>
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In <a href="http://navfin.blogspot.com/2015/12/loss-of-innocence-part-2.html" target="_blank"><b>PART 2,</b></a> which will come soon, we will investigate my further loss of innocence (and blood) in the world of fine German razors and the ninja sword of double edged blades, the Japanese Feather Double Edged Blade. </div>
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-23972075571685820372015-08-10T07:13:00.000-04:002015-08-10T07:13:09.044-04:00The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating by Andy Stanley<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24529914-the-new-rules-for-love-sex-and-dating" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1437255438m/24529914.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24529914-the-new-rules-for-love-sex-and-dating">The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/30954.Andy_Stanley">Andy Stanley</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1359724036">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
The Kindle version was cheap, $2.99 so I bought it out of a curiosity for what the loyal opposition is doing. While I am a rather poor excuse for a Christian (I like Christmas Trees) with a one way ticket to hell for some matters involving lusting over a bare thigh (in church no less) for which I refuse to ask forgiveness, I am a rather dyed in the wool monogamist. So for the price, I thought I would see what the good pastor has to say. <br /><br />Actually I was pleasantly surprised. The book starts out fairly secular. Later chapters he drags out the sin and purity and starts thumping the Bible, but if you can get around the rhetoric, for the most part the suggestions in this book are good and would apply to non-religious folks as well as the religious. Let us say that I agree with most of his methods. <br /><br />His main tenet is that instead of looking for the right partner become the right partner. Become the person that you are looking for. Pretty good advice. He goes a little overboard in my estimation on premarital sex...the sin and purity stuff that doesn't set well me. That said however I will admit that I think he is right, jumping into sex prematurely blinds one to the relationship flaws. Sex is a powerful binding element in human relationships, but it does not guarantee longevity in a committed relationship. He states the way to resolve your relationship issues is with a clear head before you get involved with sex. I agree, but I don't think waiting until your wedding night is a good maneuver for determining your sexual compatibility. But then again I don't find premarital sex conducted in a committed loving relationship with the aim of marriage to be sinful. Am I willing to bet my Soul on that? Yes, but I am not willing to bet yours so read what he has to say and decide for yourself. <br /><br />While I didn't agree with all he had to say and perhaps the theology behind it, I have to say if you can ignore the churchy hype, this guy has something important to say about love, sex, and marriage. <br /><br /><br />
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-22831403947019539692015-05-28T14:33:00.000-04:002015-06-25T23:26:15.631-04:00Grapes of Wrath<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6055617-the-grapes-of-wrath" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Grapes of Wrath" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1372553832m/6055617.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6055617-the-grapes-of-wrath">The Grapes of Wrath</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/585.John_Steinbeck">John Steinbeck</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1291799830">5 of 5 stars</a><br />
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With the flood of ink over the years regarding the<em> Grapes of Wrath,</em> I sort of regard my opinion about the book to be much on the order of Ma's reaction to Rosasharne's worries about sin:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Rosasharn, you’re jest one person, an’ they’s a lot of other folks. You git to your proper place. I knowed people built theirself up with sin till they figgered they was big mean shucks in the sight a the Lord.’’<br />
“But, Ma——’’<br />
“No. Jes’ shut up an’ git to work. You ain’t big enough or mean enough to worry God much. An’ I’m gonna give you the back a my han’ if you don’ stop this pickin’ at yourself.’’</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Steinbeck, John (2006-03-28). <i>The Grapes of Wrath </i>(p. 367). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. </blockquote>
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I ain't big enough or smart enough to worry the literate much with my petty views. I think the best thing I have seen on this book was a comment by RitaSkeeter in the Classics For Beginners group discussion at Goodreads. See message 104 at: <br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2352361-the-grapes-of-wrath-by-john-steinbeck?page=3" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...</a><br />
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I wonder if the difference for me, is that East of Eden was a definite story about people and their lives. Whereas, with GoW it feels more like Steinbeck is trying to capture an era, a period of history. So the dialect, the essay chapters, all become necessary for helping him re-create that period and show the lives of many different people, in a way that a straight saga focusing on a particular family, like that East of Eden - wouldn't be able to achieve. </blockquote>
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The book struck me as being overly theatrical (especially when listening to the Audible version) yet still there is something about this book that speaks to the Soul directly. As Rita stated above, Steinbeck captures the era and as he himself wrote<br />
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"I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]." He famously said, "I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags." <br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grap...</a> <br />
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And rip your nerves to rags he does. The feeling of desperation at the end of the book is just overwhelming. It is sort of like the paintings of Thomas Hart Benton, they are cartoonish and often over sexualized and yet you find yourself staring at them in awe, gleaning the truth they contain.<br />
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While I don't have much to add to the mountain of reviews for the book, I would like to point out some nice features in the Penguin Classics edition for Kindle and the whisper synched Audible version.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Grapes-Wrath-John-Steinbeck-ebook/dp/B001BKTEZA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/The-Grapes-Wrat...</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Grapes-of-Wrath/dp/B0055WXT56/ref=tmm_aud_title_0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/The-Grapes-of-W...</a><br />
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NOTE: CURRENTLY, if you buy the Kindle version first, you can get the Audible version at a considerable discount. <br />
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These two editions are synched so that you can maintain your place across devices, and if you have a device that supports it (Kindle Fire Tablet), you can do the Immersion Reading. Immersion reading is where you read the Kindle book and listen to it simultaneously. The pages flip automatically and a moving cursor highlights the exact text as it plays. I find this feature to be really nice when reading the classics, and with much of the conversation written in dialect, it was very helpful with the Grapes of Wrath. <br />
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This Penguin Classic version has an extensive introductory essay by Robert DeMott that explains the book and Steinbeck's motivations and goals for the book. It also contains numerous automated footnotes that explains a terminology or reference that may not be apparent to the modern reader. <br />
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An example:<br />
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"He’s a nice sort of a guy when he ain’t stinko.“ 1<br />
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1 stinko: U.S. slang meaning intoxicated with alcohol.<br />
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I have read the Penguin Editions for some of the other classics, and while they are generally more expensive than the other editions (older classics often have free Kindle versions) I think the benefits of these explanatory footnotes are worth the extra cost. <br />
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Regarding the Audible version, it was nothing short of magnificent. The narrator, Dylan Baker, gave a wonderful performance. <br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Baker" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Baker</a><br />
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In my mind Baker captured the voices and the atmosphere of the novel perfectly. Some of the other versions I sampled sounded like a high school play in comparison. My only complaint with this version is the few bars of harmonica music that ends each chapter. If you like harmonica music, you may find this a big plus. To me it was irritating at first but I got used to it. I would imagine it would neither make nor break the book for most people. <br />
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If <em>Grapes of Wrath</em> is on your list of reads, I would highly recommend both of these versions. Even if you do not own a device that supports Immersion Reading, you can still listen to the Audible version on a MP-3 player and read the book on any Kindle device or even a DTB. You just have to flip the pages yourself. Excellent book, excellent written version, and an excellent Audible version. Five Stars Plus! <br />
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It is also the source of on of my favorite quotes:<br />
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“Wisht I knowed what all the sins was, so I could do ’em.” pg 388. <br />
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I read this back when I was a teenager...it is amazing what you can forget in 50 years. <br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3770266-henry-le-nav">View all my reviews</a><br />
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<b>Thomas Hart Benton:</b><br />
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<b>Note: </b>Click on image to see full size.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PUjzisf5W_s/VWdhgwLgWGI/AAAAAAAAB4I/BZw3dc2M5Cg/s1600/Thomas_Hart_Benton_-_Achelous_and_Hercules_-_Smithsonian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="91" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PUjzisf5W_s/VWdhgwLgWGI/AAAAAAAAB4I/BZw3dc2M5Cg/s400/Thomas_Hart_Benton_-_Achelous_and_Hercules_-_Smithsonian.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Somewhat cartoonish: <i>Achelous and Hercules 1947</i>"Thomas Hart Benton - Achelous and Hercules - Smithsonian" by Thomas Hart Benton - This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of a cooperation project.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Hart_Benton_-_Achelous_and_Hercules_-_Smithsonian.jpg#/media/File:Thomas_Hart_Benton_-_Achelous_and_Hercules_-_Smithsonian.jpg</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C_i5hqFsYs4/VWdlFHj8fNI/AAAAAAAAB4U/v-YBplrwhcw/s1600/persephone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C_i5hqFsYs4/VWdlFHj8fNI/AAAAAAAAB4U/v-YBplrwhcw/s400/persephone.jpg" width="313" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And sometimes overly sexualized: <i>Persephone, 1939</i><br />
Image Credit: University of Virginia, Benton Gallery<br />
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~am482_04/am_scene/bentonimages.html<i> </i></td></tr>
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<br />Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-21178771599081010392015-04-30T11:46:00.000-04:002015-05-28T17:45:23.255-04:00Look For A Blue BoxThe first thing I would like to establish is that to the best of my knowledge, I am of sound mind. I am not senile, well not totally, and not yet. I recently commented on a review of <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8874379-great-expectations" target="_blank"><b>Great Expectations </b></a></i>by Charles Dickens over in Goodreads. In my comment, I stated that I was forced to read <i>Great Expectations </i>at least 137 times when I was in junior high and high school. Every year, once again we suffered through Dickens' boring, stuffy and many worded account of Pip saving the escaped prisoner down in marshes, then being invited to Miss Havisham's broken down mansion where time had literally stopped on the hour of her wedding day when she was left at the altar, Pip having the hots for Estella, and becoming a gentleman with great expectations, and finally living the life of an over extended dandy in London. Suddenly it occurred to me that I could not have possibly read <i>Great Expectations </i>137 times. As dumb as I was, I didn't flunk any grades so therefore I spent exactly 6 years in junior high and high school. How can that be? Only 6 years! So in a semi-honest accounting of <i>Great Expectations,</i> I was forced to read it more than once. I would estimate three times, but it was at least twice. The trouble is that the memories of reading <i>Great Expectations </i>resides in "seems that" memory, as in: "It seems that I read <i>Great Expectations </i>137 times as a kid."<br />
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<i>Seems that</i> memory has several variations: I seemed to have... Surely I must have...When I was a kid, I.... <i>Seems that </i>memory is measured in half lives, not exactly like radioactive elements in which a half life is a fixed physical measurement, the amount of time that half the mass of the element will decay. No, <i>seems that </i>half lives are psychological and are subject to Einsteins theory of relativity. The easiest example I can provide is compare the amount of time you spent doing something you find enjoyable, eating chocolate cake, watching re-runs of Gilligan's Island, having sex...to the last time you sat in the dentist's chair. The passage of time in your mind is relative. So it seems that I spent half my life in grade school. It seems that I spent half my life working. It seems that I spent half my life in the Air Force. It seems that I spent half my life as a virgin. None of these things are true, it just seems that way in my <i>seems that </i>memory. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K-QxNLlWRWE/VUJUp9K480I/AAAAAAAAB2Q/ItdKmuzKKak/s1600/VW-62_63panel_diaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K-QxNLlWRWE/VUJUp9K480I/AAAAAAAAB2Q/ItdKmuzKKak/s1600/VW-62_63panel_diaper.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For extra points, Bussman, what year is this?<br />
Image Credit: http://www.curbsideclassic.com</td></tr>
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So it seems that I spent half my life in the dark ages of the Eisenhower Administration. Sex did not exist during the Eisenhower Administration. That was invented in 1968 by my generation, the baby boomers! The most self indulgent generation known to history. "Ha!" you say, "Sextant, you fool, where do you think all those babies in the baby boom came from?" Well hell everyone knows that. The stork brought them. There were storks all over the damned place during the Eisenhower Administration, on pickle jars, on diaper trucks, in department stores. Ahh the 50s, men were men, they saved the world from the fascists, and women were women, they riveted the planes and welded the tanks and ships that saved the world from the fascists. Every one was wholesome, good, God fearing, men were dads and women were moms, and babies were brought by the stork. Married couples on TV had separate single beds. Indeed it was the stork. <br />
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Yet there were these troubling rumors. There was this dirty game that big people played. The man and the lady would take off all their clothes and the man would stick his thing in the lady's thing. In one variation of this story, he would then fart. There was even a horrible tale that this was where babies came from. One kid said that he saw a picture of a baby sucking on a woman's kooty in his mother's magazine called Red Book. That kid was full of shit, he claimed his uncle was Warren Spahn, and that his dad had a Thompson machine gun up in the attic that he brought back from the war. But when we contemplated these stories, certain things didn't quite add up. There were some reports from some kids of locked bedroom doors, rhythmic squeaking of bed springs, and muffled cries. What was with those covers on the paperback books in the drug store? They always had naked ladies on them. You never got to see anything but their backs and a little bit of their bums, but they were naked and they had this look on their face...we never saw our mothers look that way. Why were there girls and boys? Why did women have kooties, but girls didn't. Why did we have balls? No body knew what they were for, except to hurt like hell if you got hit there by a baseball, and you got in trouble if you asked about them. There was a lot of mystery during the Eisenhower Administration, and like most things, we young lads would discuss this with great curiosity and then move on to the really cool caterpillar that was on the tomato plant up in the garden, or go read a comic book. <br />
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Anyhow along with these wild stories, we kept on hearing about Kotex, usually in the form of some dumb book title joke like "The Red River Valley by the Kotex Kid." We laughed at these jokes because it was important to not be a rube, but we didn't know why they were funny. The Yellow River by I. P. Daily and The Cat's Revenge by Claude Balls made sense. The Kotex Kid? What the hell is that? Well it seems that I spent half my life wondering just what the hell is a Kotex and why these jokes were supposed to be funny. We heard enough about them that we knew that girls needed them and it was something dirty. Exactly what they were and why they were needed remained unknown. So one day several us lads, set up a commission for the study of Kotex. We theorized like theoretical physicists about what these things could be, and why they were so mysterious. You would think that the easiest thing to do would be ask our parents. Oh no, no, no! You never approached your parents about dirty stuff. They would get all nervous and start sputtering. If you persisted, it was a dandy way to find yourself hooked up to some chores. "A young man who has time to think about such things, has time to go weed the garden." Oh hell no. Parents were strictly off limits about anything dirty. I think at one time we may have even stooped to ask a girl, but girls seemed to take great pride in them being smart and keeping us lads dumb, and there was always the chance that she would squeal to her mother and then there would be hell to pay. It was best to keep our scientific investigations limited to the members of our inquiry board. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NUimvpifPJg/VUI4T6-2I7I/AAAAAAAAB2A/OFwNjtgoj_0/s1600/kotpd59b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NUimvpifPJg/VUI4T6-2I7I/AAAAAAAAB2A/OFwNjtgoj_0/s1600/kotpd59b.jpg" width="286" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look for a blue box with a white rose.<br />
Image Credit: http://www.mum.org/kot59.htm</td></tr>
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So three of us lads on the Kotex Commission were up under the oak tree holding a theoretical discourse. Along comes Billy, Warren Spahn's nephew, he was two years older than us and my dad called him a wisenheimer. He was also the kid I did my naked dance for the girls when I was 7 years old under <b><a href="http://navfin.blogspot.com/2011/06/tough-old-tree-of-treachery.html" target="_blank">The Tough Old Tree of Treachery</a>. </b>Now Billy was a natural born bullshitter, so we didn't always believe him. That business about the baby sucking on the kooty had us laughing for weeks..."he thinks we are so dumb, like we will believe any of his bullshit. Ha!" So he asks about the topic of inquiry. Kotex. "Oh Kotex. The Red River Valley by the Kotex Kid." "Yeah, yeah, Billy, we heard that one, but what the hell are they?" "I don't know, ladies use them." "What for?" "Don't know, but look under your parent's bed. They come in a big blue box with a white rose on it."<br />
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Billy puttered off to more interesting pursuits. But now we had something concrete...a blue box with a white rose, either that or another one of Billy's bullshit stories. OK so we all decided that we would each look under our parents' beds for the big blue box, and report our findings the next day. It seemed that it had to be weeks before I finally had the house to myself. My dad was at the bar, my mother took my sister across the street for coffee with the neighbor lady. I have about an hour! I look under the bed. Some shoes but no big blue box, grrrr, that Billy! But wait what about the closet? I look in and there were a bunch of shoe boxes piled up in the corner on the floor, quite a few actually sort of stacked like building blocks. Hmmm! So I carefully part the boxes. A patch of blue! My heart starts racing. I carefully move the boxes out of the way remembering the order. There it is, the blue box with the white rose just like Billy said! Holy Shit! It says KOTEX!!!! Right on the box! How can they do that? You can't put swear words on a box! I pull the box out. Fem-a-something napkins! What the hell! Holy shit again, they are made by Kimberly Clark! Kimberly Clark makes Kleenex, not dirty stuff like Kotex. The top of the box was ripped open. I carefully peer in. What the hell are those? I reach in the box and pull one out. It was a nondescript cotton pad about 6 or 7 inches long, 3 inches wide and maybe an 1 1/2 inches thick, wrapped in a layer of gauze with an odd blue line, like from a fountain pen, down the middle of it. I stood there, my hands trembling with excitement. I am holding a Kotex! Holy shit! <br />
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It seems that I spent half my life in that house before I went in the military when I was 21, living with a mother and sister. I never once seen a Kotex go in or out of that house. If it hadn't been for Billy's blue box, Kotex would have remained a purely theoretical object. Of course by the time I got out of the service, Kotex was then advertised on television. A young, attractive, athletic woman, wearing a pair of white short shorts, was always doing the most amazing splits with her legs. Yet even then, a young lad would not be able to discern what they were or their purpose. He would only know that they were for those special days of the month and that you could remain fully active, even swim, which would then switch to the young woman with a white bathing suit diving into a pool "with confidence." If the young lad was observant, he might deduce that this product had something to do with the nether regions from the camera angle and the ability to spread one's legs without embarrassment. Embarrassment of what, who knows? <br />
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I don't know, it seems that I now spend half my life watching cartoon bears wipe their asses on TV and talk about enjoying the go, young English women talk about how fresh your bum feels, and sultry ladies discussing Viagra (and seeking medical attention for erections that last over four hours*), and his and her KY intimate lubricant. I kind of long for some mystery in the world. It seemed that I spent half my life during the Eisenhower Administration when such products did not exist, but it seems the other half of my life is now spent having them jammed in my face. <br />
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Anyhow I give thanks that it seemed that I spent half my life during the fifties, when kids were still allowed to be kids. We had our own societies, we had our own rules and laws, and we had a hell of a good time figuring out great mysteries like Kotex, kooties, and the dirty games that grownups played.<br />
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*Post Script: Erections lasting longer than 4 hours. Have you ever wondered what they do for this condition? I imagine doctors rushing in with some high tech crash cart, slapping electrodes on to the errant member. "Clear!" Zap! "Oh thank God doctor, it was 3 hours, 59 minutes and 50 seconds! You saved my life with 10 seconds to spare." Hmmm, perhaps, but actually it reminds me of a story that I seemed to have spent half my life hearing when I was a lad. A young man goes in for a hernia operation. They bring in a young candy striper to shave him for his surgery. Well of course she has to move his pecker which is conveniently to the story, laying across the bulge in his groin. At her touch, he naturally gets an erection. The candy striper runs out of the room and comes back with the head nurse, always the head nurse...as if the head nurse has nothing better to do than correct way ward hard ons. The head nurse then sizes up the situation and applies a highly accurate two fingered karate chop to head of the young man's penis. The erection immediately becomes flaccid, and the young man can not attain another erection for two weeks (always two weeks). Actually I don't know what the big deal is, it seemed that I spent half my life, (well, OK, two decades) with an erection from puberty at age 11 to well into my 30s. <br />
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<b>Links:</b><br />
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For everything that you ever wanted to know about sanitary napkins but were afraid to ask, check out this site:<br />
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<b><a href="http://tranquilheart.hubpages.com/hub/Overview-of-menstrual-pads" target="_blank">Hubpages.com, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Overview of sanitary napkins (menstrual pads) of past and present,</span></a></b><br />
<b><a href="http://tranquilheart.hubpages.com/hub/Overview-of-menstrual-pads" target="_blank">By Tranquilheart </a></b><br />
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You have to admire Kimberly Clark for their social responsibility. They provided helpful hints for picnics, dinner on a train, and remembering names: <br />
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<b>http://www.mum.org/InTheKn2.htm</b><br />
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VW Diaper Bus: <span style="font-size: xx-small;">The photo is labeled VW-62_63panel_diaper</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/VW-62_63panel_diaper.jpg">http://www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/VW-62_63panel_diaper.jpg</a></span>Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-28598600587962583012015-03-16T08:06:00.000-04:002015-03-21T11:23:48.968-04:00 Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity, by Diannna Anderson<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24565446-damaged-goods" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1423369335m/24565446.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24565446-damaged-goods">Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/194293.Dianna_Anderson">Dianna Anderson</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1228703839">4 of 5 stars</a><br />
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I wished I could have read this book when I was in ninth grade (which was over 50 years ago). <br />
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I approached this book as something of an outsider. I left the church and Christianity, indeed 50 years ago, over shame and guilt about sexuality. I was forced to go to Lutheran Catechism. Sex and purity was mentioned but not hammered into our heads like the evangelical purity culture. But none the less there was a tremendous emphasis on SIN! SIN! SIN!. Unlike the narrator in <i>Grapes of Wrath</i> who said after a traveling preacher had attempted to save his soul:<br />
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"Wisht I knowed what all the sins was, so I could do ’em." </blockquote>
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I really had no desire to do any of the sins except that one that a young lad wants to do with a young lady. I was pretty good on the 10 commandments. Well most of them anyhow, but I burnt (as St Paul said) with a desire for loving sexual union with a woman. I was also pathologically shy so the actual chances of me committing such a sin was almost nil, but the Lutherans had me covered on that. Yes, there are three ways to sin, by: thought, word, and deed. The deeds (other than those of a solitary nature...which will also earn you a free trip across the River Styx) I was good on. Even by word I didn't do too bad. There was no use of a pimply faced, skinny, awkward dwebe like me making any claims of getting laid...I had a red V painted on my forehead. To even remark on the desire to do so would start a bunch of stories...everyone in 8th and 9th grades was getting laid except me. I knew it was 99% bullshit but still these guys were convincing bullshitters because they had the muscles to back up their claims against 98 pound weakling doubters like me. <br />
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That leaves thought. Oh my yes, I entertained many an impure thought and after a time quit asking for forgiveness. Repent and promise that I would not do that again? Hell I was lusting in church. I remember of praying about it...nothing, well that is because I was not genuine or some how not good enough.<br />
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Then one day I got pissed off and said enough. I didn't feel this way when I was 9 years old. Prior to puberty, girls were fascinating but I wasn't damning myself to hell over them. I couldn't help the eroticism that burned within me. I didn't ask for it, and I was sick and tired of feeling guilt and shame over it...especially considering I wasn't even getting laid. I quit the church and have never since asked for forgiveness of my many impure thoughts. <br />
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That was child's play compared to the situation that Anderson describes. I have to admire her courage to stand up against her culture and protest. She makes some excellent points in the book especially about God not shaming us. I was a little disappointed in the later chapters which seemed a bit general, diaphanous, and repetitious. She wants us to do a lot of "honoring." It got trite after a while. Never the less, this was a very good book and one that I think would be helpful to those who have endured the difficulties and shame of the purity culture.<br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3770266-henry-le-nav">View all my reviews</a><br />
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<b>Links:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>For those who actually want to read a review of the book instead of my tales of personal, teenage, marinated in sin, sexual angst, here is an excellent article: <br />
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<b><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/christian-feminist/386609/">http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/christian-feminist/386609/</a></b><br />
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Here is the article written by the author noted in the above article:<br />
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<a href="http://www.thefrisky.com/2014-09-09/girl-talk-what-losing-my-virginity-taught-me-about-faith/"><b>http://www.thefrisky.com/2014-09-09/girl-talk-what-losing-my-virginity-taught-me-about-faith/</b></a><br />
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Author's website and blog: <b><a href="http://diannaeanderson.net/blog">http://diannaeanderson.net/blog</a> </b><br />
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7833454649093878095.post-42125662421571282422015-03-14T17:57:00.000-04:002015-03-21T08:50:47.691-04:00The Pi Moment 3/14/15 9:26:53 And No Google Doodle! Heresy!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yIvDKW6BNO8/VQSCvSP2oZI/AAAAAAAAB1E/S2sqvXSwdws/s1600/pi%2Bday%2B2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yIvDKW6BNO8/VQSCvSP2oZI/AAAAAAAAB1E/S2sqvXSwdws/s1600/pi%2Bday%2B2010.jpg" height="228" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Pi Day 2010 Google Doodle<br />
Image Credit: Google</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Pi = <span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; white-space: nowrap;">3.14159</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">26535</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">89793</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">23846</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">26433</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">83279</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">50288</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">41971</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">69399</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: 0.2em; white-space: nowrap;">37510...</span></b><br />
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Today is the most accurate Pi Day we will have in this century. 3/14/15 and Google chooses to ignore the day. Some people's children! As such, in honor of the day I dragged out the Doodle from 2010 which as far as I know was no great shakes of a day for Pi, so why a Doodle in 2010 but not in 2015 when it is really cool. But what is really cool today is that if you measure time with a 12 hour clock (verses 24 hour clock), you will have two very accurate Pi moments, seconds actually:<br />
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3/14/15 9:26:53 AM & PM</div>
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It doesn't work with a 24 hour clock because technically the morning is 3 14 15 <b>09</b> 26 53 and the evening would be 3 14 15 <b>21</b> 26 53. Of course we are also dropping the 20 in 2015. We feel justified in do so, simply because we are alive right now and we want to celebrate the day and to hell the inconvenient 2000 years that throws the number out of whack. This alludes to the fact that while we may take pride that we are witness to a once a century event, we should mourn that we missed the really big Pi Day which would have been</div>
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March 14, 1592 with Pi seconds at 6:53:58. </div>
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That one was pretty big. The next time you will be able to do that is March 14, 15926 (13,911 years from now, alas). But take heart that Pi Day will only have Pi minutes, not Pi seconds:</div>
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3/14/15926 5:35</div>
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The next digit is 8. The biggest second you can have is 59 (60 if you cheat). So looking at the string of numbers we will not be able to have another Pi second (with a full year like what happened in 1592) until:</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">March 14, 1,592,653,589,793 2:38:46</span></span></div>
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That is a whopping 1.59 trillion years into the future. My guess is no one will be around to notice. Anyhow can you see what I mean about mourning the loss of 1592? It was a great year for Pi. I wonder did anyone notice? <br />
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<b>EDIT 3/15/15: </b>Taking a second look at this I just realized that there is a slight flaw in my logic. I am accepting single digit hours, but not minutes or seconds. But doing an image search of digital watches, I find that unless in 24 hour format, most watches display h:mm:ss for single digit hours and hh:mm:ss for 10 thru 12. None display single digit minutes or seconds. The single digit minutes and seconds are always preceded by a zero. So going by standard time format my claim still holds true.<br />
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<b>EDIT 3/20/15, ERROR CORRECTION</b> On the date 1.59 trillion date, incredibly I somehow missed a digit in the original post and had a date 159 billion years in the future. How exactly I did that when I copied an pasted the number is beyond me. In any event the date has been corrected. It was only 1.433 trillion year error.<br />
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Another thing that should be noted is that once you can get the digits of Pi to line up to a second in the 12 hour digital clock format _h:mm:ss format, then the remainder of your Pi moment is simply a decimal fraction that theoretically will go out to an infinite number of digits. So to tell exactly what time our Pi moment occurred we would need a clock with an infinite number of digits. However, in a practical sense, our universe has a limit on how short you can slice time. It is known as <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time">Planck Time</a> </b>and represents the time it takes light in a vacuum to travel one Planck length. In some circles it is known as a jiffy. 1 jiffy = 1 Planck Time = 5.39 X 10^-44 second. Hence any digits finer than a jiffy are meaningless. Think of a jiffy being the fastest tick in time allowed in our universe. So our moment has to be a bit slower or it is literally out of this world. So our real Pi moment has to be at least equal to or a bazzilionth of a second longer than longer than 1 plank time. To put that in context, think of having a stop watch that could measure microseconds (millionths of a second). So you could see an event, start the watch, see a second event and stop the watch. So theoretically you could tell how many microseconds the event lasted. The only problem is that the response time of your nervous system probably limits the accuracy to hundreds of a second. So if your event took 0.215,435 seconds, all you can say is that it took about .21 seconds. The 5,435 microseconds would be meaningless accuracy. </div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4JY9Q5xiaY/VQStF9l_k3I/AAAAAAAAB1U/jQd8Kn-qHoY/s1600/Pi_pie2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4JY9Q5xiaY/VQStF9l_k3I/AAAAAAAAB1U/jQd8Kn-qHoY/s1600/Pi_pie2.jpg" height="319" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Credit: Wikipedia<br />
"Pi pie2" by GJ - Pi_pie2.jpg. Licensed under <br />
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - <br />
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/<br />
File:Pi_pie2.jpg#/media/File:Pi_pie2.jpg</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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So what exactly is Pi? It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter which always works out to 3.14159.... So roll a toy wheel, 1 inch in diameter, exactly one revolution and the center of that wheel would move 3.14159... inches across the floor. Roll any wheel of any size and it will always roll 3.14159 times the length of the diameter. There is a cute animated graphic of this at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi"><b>Wikipedia</b>.</a> To me, being somewhat of a mathematical nit wit, that seems very odd. But the circumference of any circle is always Pi times the diameter. Very convenient but also very odd. </div>
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Pi has another very odd property. You can never quite calculate the exact value of Pi. It is irrational and the decimal value goes forever in a non-repeating sequence. </div>
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In my working life, I used Pi probably twice a day in some calculation or other on a slow day. Round things seem to be favored in the industry in which I worked. Here is a trick that I used quite often. I was responsible for a bunch of facilities with miles of pipe. Repairs or modifications required ordering new pipe. Measuring pipe diameters of installed pipe is a bit tricky. If it is small diameter you can use calipers, but as the diameter increases soon the jaws of the caliper no longer reach the sides of the pipe. You can eyeball it but there is a much simple way. Use a flexible tape or just a piece of string to measure the circumference of the pipe and then divide the length by Pi. Voila! Pipe size? Not quite! Pipe sizes in North America below 14 inch pipe are weird. You must consult a nominal pipe size table such as this:</div>
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<b>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_Pipe_Size</b></div>
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For example you measure a pipe and the circumference is, what a coincidence, 3.14 inches. You do the math and that yields a diameter of about 1 inch. Common sense would dictate you have 1 inch pipe. Wrong! Looking at the table at the above site yields that the nominal pipe size of 3/4 inch has an actual outer diameter of 1.05 inches. One inch nominal pipe is actually 1.32 inches in diameter. </div>
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All you ever wanted to know about pipe but were afraid to ask. </div>
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Have a Happy Pi Day and a Pi moment this evening. </div>
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<b>LINKS:</b></div>
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<b>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi</b></div>
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<b>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day</b><br />
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<b>EDIT 3/20/15: </b>The Internet never fails to delight. Have you ever wondered what is the one millionth digit of Pi after the decimal point? Burning question I know. Well now you can find out at:<br />
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<a href="hhttp://www.piday.org/million/" target="_blank"><b>ONE MILLION DIGITS OF PI at Pi Day.Org</b></a><br />
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After holding the page down button for several minutes, I watched 999,999 digits go whizzing by and as a public service, the answer to the question (in case you are ever on Jeopardy), the millionth digit after the decimal point in Pi?<br />
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What is 1 Alec.<br />
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Here are the first and last lines of Pi taken out to one million decimal places:<br />
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<br /><br />3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582... lots and lots of digits...</div>
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<br />34646042209010610577945815<b><span style="font-size: large;">1</span></b> ...and that’s one million digits of Pi after the decimal point!<span class="digits" style="color: #333333; font-family: freight-sans-pro, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 40px;"><br /></span>
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<span class="digits" style="color: #333333; font-family: freight-sans-pro, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 40px;">According to <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_computation_of_%CF%80" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></b>, as of October 2014 Pi has been calculated out to </span>13,300,000,000,000<b style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; text-align: -webkit-right;"> </b>decimal places. <br />
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Sextanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02869179401767968180noreply@blogger.com7