Socrates Would Really Hate Me

The first graduation at JAMS - The Class of 2014

Yesterday Cha Cha and I donated my old drum kit, a couple of tambourines, a few other percussion instruments, about 50 sets of drumstick (every type you can imagine), and an acoustic guitar to a secondary school (Jane Adeny Memorial School for Girls - JAMS) in Kenya that is adding a music program to the curriculum it had begun in 2014. I know it is really going there because I gave it directly to my friend, Matthew Tembo, an internationally known African musician who is starting the music school and at JAMS and is taking it there himself. It makes me happy to know that many young women will get joy and a brighter future from something that once brought me so much happiness. The song Joy To The World is swimming through my heard now, "...all the boys and GIRLS now...joy to you and me!" You can check it out at www.JAMSKENYA.org.

I was very sad, over the weekend, when I first learned that Rupert Murdoch purchased National Geographic. It just shows that money can, almost literally, buy anything. I grew-up on National Geographic and I learned many things that I know and believe today. Will my future great-great grandchildren be denied the truths of climate change and the many species of animals that are/were annihilated by human-kind's recklessness and disregard for the beauty of the world and it's inhabitants? I truly am deeply saddened by this. I would hold hope that this is one area that the Fox parent company would leave it the way that it is but I know that would be foolish and naive of me. I am foolish and naive quite often but, when I see it headed my way, I try to avoid it. Money (mainly the love of money and the greed that accompanies it) ruins most things eventually. Murdoch is Australian - you'd think he would have a better appreciation for what beauty there can be appreciated in the world. I will reserve judgement and hope that perhaps he saw that National Geographic was not doing well and he didn't want to see it disappear. We all have many sides to our psyches and personalities and I will hope that his good side is behind this move.

 Perhaps I have just written too much in life. Socrates proves everything IS about me! 

How does the phrase "over-qualified" even exist? We are taught to learn and grow intellectually as humans and know as much as we can. Be diverse and strive to "be all that you can be." But, apparently, there are limitations. That phrase really frosts my cookies!

I was surprised to learn the Socrates would not like my blog. Plato wrote about a conversation Socrates had with Phaedrus where Socrates, supposedly, said that "words themselves are not representative of knowledge." The writings said that Socrates was against writing but we cannot take his word for that because he never wrote anything down - nothing! Could Plato not have liked Socrates and wrote this knowing that Socrates would not defend himself to the future by writing it down? I am not saying that Plato would make this up - why would he? Maybe he and Socrates didn't like each other and Plato knew, eventually, people would have to believe his account as we would never know Socrates' position. Socrates, as it is written by that rebel Plato, said words are to knowledge as pictures are to their subject. He said that real knowledge could only be gathered via dialog; that the questions and answers between people (probably only men in his day) is where ideas are interrogated until knowledge is truly understood, So, texting back-and-forth is probably okay, right? Maybe, based on the early history of the world with little or no writing. we are not really sure if we are who we think we are or even if things happened as we are told that they happened. I love writing so Socrates would have hated me if he were alive today though he would be too old to do anything about it.

REO Back in the big hair days

I just heard from Kevin Cronin (lead singer for REO Speedwagon) that REO guitarist Gary Richrath died yesterday morning. I remember that I saw them right after I got my big toe chopped off my senior year of high school. Can you believe that REO has been around since 1967? They were a fun band and nice guys. Richrath left the band in 1989 and had one solo album but then rejoined the band for a concert in 2013 to help raise funds for people who had lost their homes to a string of bad storms. The band originated in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; meeting at the University of Illinois when they were students there.

I hope you have a great day. Thank you, so much, for sharing part of yours with me. TTTT...MITM (out) TA!