Interview With Frank McGee, Author of "A Song for the World"

Frank McGee has built a distinguished career as a writer and journalist over half a century. In the tumultuous 1960s he covered stories as far afield as Brazil, Indonesia, and Viet Nam. As managing editor of "Pace" magazine, a contemporary of "Life, Look, and Holiday," he worked with thought leaders from around the world.During the 1970s, McGee launched and edited "New Worlds," the signature magazine of California's Orange Coast. The University of California at Irvine tapped him to write the coffee table book commemorating the school's first twenty-five years. In the '80s and '90s, he authored and edited books on a variety of topics that were published in a dozen languages. Today, he lives with his wife in Tucson, Arizona.Tyler: Thank you, Frank, for joining me. You're here today to tell us about your new book "A Song for the World" which tells the story of how the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen used music to bring peace and diplomacy to the world, particularly through the group, Up with People. To begin, will you tell our readers a little bit about how it began?Frank: Glad to, Tyler. Up with People started in a way that surprised everyone at the time. It was born during the 1960s to give a voice to youth eager to have a say in building the future. There's a chapter in the book about that. The Up with People show was launched in embryo in 1965 at a conference for young leadership on an island in the Great Lakes. It evolved that summer in performances from a showboat touring local harbors, and within weeks, literally, it was in orbit around the world. No one expected that to happen, least of all the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen, who initially just wanted to provide a platform for the idealism and creativity of the young people attending the conference. You might say that Up with People was born through a passion for change.Domestic and global audiences came to know the Colwells and Allen in the following decades through Up with People's four Super Bowl Halftime Shows. Multiple casts had toured on every continent and across the U.S. and Canada. In America's Bicentennial Year, 1976, they played in 771 U.S. cities to live audiences totaling 3.9 million. That year they literally invented the modern Super Bowl halftime format when the NFL invited them to perform. The first chapter of "A Song for the World" opens with that event. I have to say (speaking modestly as the author!) that it's a pretty dramatic story. In 1980 I had the privilege of being a field photographer during their performance at Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl.Tyler: Frank, I understand you have been friends with the Colwells and Allen for fifty years. Would you tell us a little bit about that friendship and how it developed?Frank: That's half a century, Tyler! I first met them in their teens. I hadn't advanced much beyond that myself. Allen was recognized as a musical genius from his youth, a child prodigy. In his hometown of Seattle he was famous as a wizard on the xylophone. He trained under the best classical piano instructors in the Northwest and was enrolled to enter the Oberlin School of Music, but his passion in his teens was his dance band, Herbie Allen and His Orchestra. Herb was a junior in high school when we met. I was then working with Moral Re-Armament (MRA), an international volunteer group focused on developing accountable leaders across a broad spectrum of society. Herb instantly responded to the objective. More and more I've come to realize the implications of the readiness of young artists like Herb and the Colwells to engage in a purpose that gave relevance and meaning to their talents.The Colwell Brothers were already country music stars when our paths crossed in Southern California. They were regulars on NBC's Tex Williams television show, broadcasting weekly from Orange County's Knott's Berry Farm, which was America's first theme park (Disneyland opened later just up the road). The Brothers, aged 19, 17, and 15, were the youngest group under contract with a major label, Columbia Records.I was in the cast of a Western musical show then, and someone got them tickets for the Hollywood premiere. Ironically, the show was about brothers who were feuding over water rights. "A Song for the World" tells the pretty amazing story of what happened during the next few months; I say amazing because in little more than a year they were giving their first performance in a language other than their own. It was in Switzerland, when they sang in French for Robert Schumann, the former foreign minister of France and a founder of the European Union. During the next decades they would write and sing in 37 languages and dialects, with help from the locals, of course. They all speak Italian. Herb Allen, who worked for years in Italy, speaks it like a native. There's an incident in the book about Allen finding a machine gun under his bed when he was staying with the family of Bruno, a young communist he had come to know: "What's worrying you?' Bruno asked Herb when he "happened" to mention his discovery. "We all have machine guns here. There's one in every apartment in the block."Tyler: Frank, why did you decide to write "A Song for the World?"Frank: I don't want to sound strange about this, but I think writing the book was decided for me. In the spring of 2003 I was in a gathering of long time associates who met from time to time to renew friendships and talk about what was happening in our worlds. A probation attorney from Oakland said that young people in her city were being confronted with unimaginable situations every day, and desperately needed hope. "There should to be a book about the Colwells and Herb," she declared.I'm not kidding when I say the thought hit me with an almost electric jolt that I was meant to write it. My wife, Helen, who has been my partner in creative ventures for half a century, felt the same impulse. And so did my friend John Ruffin, who was moderating our discussion that day. John's company, Many Roads Publishing, would eventually produce the book, with startup financial support from more than a hundred people from across the world who believed this story had to be told.Tyler: That's a wonderful story, Frank. Obviously, musicians have the power to be a big influence on young people, both positive and negative. Do you think Up With People is able to reach young people today and what is their message to youth?Frank: At the end of Up with People shows, there are always young people in the audience who apply to travel with the cast. Sometimes they're too young to qualify, sometimes too old, but the element that reaches people most, I think, is a purpose that's important. Of course the show alone is a big attraction, but in the setting of "Bringing the World Together," it seems to offer an answer to that ubiquitous question, "What can one person do?"Tyler: I understand these artists traveled a great deal and witnessed history in the making in several countries. Would you give us an example of one of the most interesting events they witnessed or participated in?Frank: How about two? Seriously, there are many remarkable occasions described in the book, for instance, being the first international musical performers in China after the demise of the infamous "Gang of Four;" or taking the first show to Russia after the Cold War, even before the Berlin Wall came down. But here are two:In 1957, Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi was about to embark on a grueling tour of Southeast Asia in which he would apologize to Pacific nations for atrocities Japan had committed during World War II. The Colwells and those they worked with, some of whom were parliamentarians, had been dialoguing with Kishi for months, and at his official residence on the night of the departure, they were invited to present the entire send off program for the prime minister, his cabinet ministers, and high government officials. Their friends spoke and the Colwells sang, with special songs written in Japanese for the occasion. The last sound Kishi heard that evening as he left for the airport was the music of three young Americans, in western costume, singing to him in his own language.Two years later the Colwell Brothers were in the Congo, today called Zaire, where they sang at the official celebration events when the country gained its independence. The Congo is the size of Western Europe! During an intense and turbulent year they remained working in the country, living through rebellion, revolution, and a re-invasion by troops of the Congo's former Belgian occupiers, and then U.N. intervention. President Lumumba was assassinated during that year. With an international team the Colwells visited every province in the country, meeting with tribal chiefs in the villages, singing to crowds in stadiums, to Congolese military and peacekeeping U.N. forces in open-air concerts, and performing for national leaders from all parties in the country's capital of Leopoldville. In the rainy season they crossed swollen rivers with their van perched atop ferries built of planks laid over dugout canoes fastened side to side. The afternoon the army seized control of the country in a coup, the Congo was entirely without phone or telegraph communication with the outside world. An hour after midnight that night the brothers led journalists to a remote village they had visited months earlier on the Congo River, where the reporters could hire villagers and noiselessly slip out into the current in dugout canoes to get the news out to the world. During that year, with their international teammates, the Colwells made more than 400 broadcasts on Radio Congo, the country's sole means of communication, programs the auxiliary bishop of Leopoldville called "a voice of sanity to the nation."Tyler: Wow, that is determination. What do you think really motivates the Colwells and Herb Allen to take these kinds of risks?Frank: That's hard to answer, for me at least, without seeming to quote from a press release. I've seen the grit, sweat, and sacrifice involved. They could have turned away a thousand times from the path they'd chosen. But they believed something lasting could be achieved, and that they were meant to give their time and talents to it. I don't think they had the slightest idea when they set out on this journey where it would take them, or ask of them.Tyler: Frank, when other groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were making huge hits and probably tons of money in the 1960s and beyond, why did Up with People focus instead on touring the globe and visiting countries in crisis?Frank: I think that boils down to "reason for being." I've little doubt that the 20,000 young people who've taken part in Up with People during its first forty years would appreciate tons of money! And I know Herb and the Brothers wouldn't object!But to get the answer to your question you have to look at the choices they made more than a dozen years before Up with People was even a gleam in anyone's eye. Look at the back cover of the book, which has some paragraphs under the heading, "The Power of Music." There's a line there that says, "They literally walked away from their childhoods, comfort, careers, and loved ones, putting everything on the line for something they believed. They believed they could change the world."Tyler: Why do you think "Up with People" has been so successful?Frank: Even more than the entertainment of the Up with People show, I think it strikes a chord in the consciousness of people. We all want to know there is hope for the future. We'd all like to participate somehow in creating it. To see young people dedicating themselves to that purpose is both a challenge and an inspiration. The show itself is really a show window. What is inside the store is the encouragement, the gentle persuasion, and possibly even a little provocation to get involved in the life of your community, to volunteer with others who work to make a difference.Tyler: For readers unfamiliar with the group, what are some of the songs they might recognize?Frank: People may know "Where the Roads Come Together," by Paul Colwell. It's a poignant and moving ballad about who we are:None of us is born the same,We don't know whyIt's the way we came,Every heart beats a little differently,Each soul is free to find its way,Like a river that winds it way to the sea.There are many roads to go,And they go by many names,They don't all go the same way,But they get there all the same.And I have a feelin'That we'll meet some dayWhere the roads come togetherUp the way.If you lived in the Congo, you'd doubtless be familiar with the Colwell Brothers' "Vive le Congo," which became something like a second national anthem and was played on Radio Congo for years.And of course, "Up with People" is a song known around the world. CDs of the Words and Music of Paul Colwell will soon be available at http://www.asongfortheworld.com.Tyler: Would you tell us a little bit about the song-writing aspect of the group? Who writes the music and who writes the lyrics? Where do they get their ideas, and how does it all come together so the music can be performed?Frank: Paul Colwell, as I mentioned, wrote many of the songs performed in early shows. He often had collaborators, frequently Herb Allen, who was listed as coauthor. There's a chapter in the book titled, "Birth of a Phenomenon," about the songwriters, arrangers, and producers from several countries who have worked with Up with People either long term or on specific events.Several Up with People albums have been produced in Britain, with top technicians and arrangers brought together by David Mackay, a long time collaborator. Mackay has an impressive collection of gold and platinum albums to his credit, including production of the New Seekers' international hit, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." One writer Mackay brought in was John Parr, co-writer of "St. Elmo's Fire, and also David Mallory, one of France's most successful pop/rock songwriters who created most of the hits of megastar Johnny Hallyday, sometimes called the French Elvis Presley.Tyler: You mentioned the Colwells have written many songs in different languages and dialects? How do they go about providing this kind of international taste to their music?Frank: When they've written songs in other languages it's almost always been with people from the area. There are a number of stories in the book about this. For instance, once they were traveling with Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, to the south of India to join in the land reform efforts of Vinoba Bhave, Gandhi's disciple and the man regarded as his spiritual successor. At a train station in Bombay they chanced to meet a senator friend of Rajmohan who helped them write a song in Marathi, the mother tongue of Maharashtra state where they were heading the next day. After a dusty 12-hour road trip in 117-degree heat in a 20-year old seven-passenger Plymouth they had mastered the song. Arriving to meet Vinoba Bhave, they hauled Ralph's acoustic bass and their other instruments out of the old car, and performed in the Marathi language for the saint and thousands of his followers. Vinoba Bhave used the words of their song as the theme of his address to the crowd.Tyler: Musically, what do you feel makes "Up With People" stand out from other groups?Frank: I think it's been the content of the songs, plus their intent. They talk of taking down walls of misunderstanding, of excelling, of moving toward new frontiers. The songs are drawn from life. One, "The Last Embrace," was inspired by a PBS special about a bridge that spanned the no man's land between war zones in Kosovo, and a Christian boy and Moslem girl who had fallen in love, and died from gunfire on the bridge trying to cross it together. Many songs have been written for special occasions, for special people. A reflection by Captain Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, that he had looked back at the earth and seen "a world without borders," inspired the visionary lyrics of "MoonRider." Paul Colwell and Herb Allen's "Song for China" opened hearts and doors in China when an Up with People cast went there in 1978 before diplomatic relations were established between China and the U.S.Tyler: Frank, what do you feel is Herb Allen and the Colwell Brothers' greatest contribution?Frank: May I answer that in two parts? The first would be a personal response. These four have enriched the lives of many. They are fun to be with, never take themselves too seriously, and never, never get carried away with the PR about them. They're quick to deflect credit and give it to others, and I have never heard them claim to have caused positive things to happen because of their work. Of course I know otherwise, but they would hit the "delete" button on any "spin" I might have tried to slip into the book. Okay, now to part two:To me their greatest contribution would be the demonstration of the power of music to generate change. They typically wrote and performed not just any music, but music that touched lives, was drawn from what was important to people, and from what they saw around them. They never set out to tell others what they should think or do. On the contrary, they went everywhere to listen, to learn, and to understand. As a result, doors and hearts seemed to open to them everywhere. You might say that Up with People is their legacy. I think to them it is much more than a show or organization; it is proof to young and old of what the great English educator Edward Thring declared 150 years ago, that music "sooner or later is the great world bond."Tyler: Thank you, Frank, for joining me today. Before we go, would you tell our readers your website where they can buy a copy of the book and also what other kind of information they might find there about "A Song for the World?"Frank: Go to http://www.asongfortheworld.com. You can order the book there, read reviews, learn which cities are scheduled to be visited for concerts and book signings, and see many of the photos from the book. Thanks very much for having me today, Tyler.Tyler: Thank you, Frank. I wish you lots of luck with "A Song for the World" and I hope it introduces the Colwells and Allen to a whole new generation of fans. dr seuss cat in hat quotes

"Hollow Bones" by Stephen Paul - Book Review

Wow! That best sums up this wonderful book written by a very gifted author, Stephen Paul. I thoroughly enjoyed this parable designed as a wake-up call to save our world before it is too late. The book is well-written, engaging from start to finish, and written for all levels of spirituality. I have always been a huge fan of using parables to teach important truths to the general population. I hope that this story has as much impact and becomes as far reaching as the "Celestine Prophesies" did back in the early 90s.The main premise of the story is based on a Native American prophesy that was fulfilled in 1993 when seven delegations gathered at The Cry of the Earth Conference at the United Nations in New York. The author writes about this in his note that Native American leaders and elders took that opportunity to convey prophesies and visions given to their spiritual leaders concerning the state of the earth and the people who live upon it. Their message was a simple one. They warned that a long-predicted time of purification was already under way. They urged that we heed The Creator's original instructions to the indigenous peoples and voluntarily return to living more simply, respectfully, and harmoniously with all our relations, the people and other life forms, on this planet. If we choose to ignore this message, the Prophesies warn that erratic weather patterns, earth movements, starvation, violence, and war would occur with ever-increasing frequency and with greater and greater intensity. The book "Hollow Bones" was born from this.The story takes place in the future, not too distant from now I wondered if maybe it was related to the predictions around 2012. The main character, Matthew, is completely devastated when his beloved wife, Catherine, dies. In his despair, he decides to leave their home and feels drawn to a self-sustaining community he has heard about in Montana. His gardener and friend, Hope, and her daughter Lily, decide to embark on this adventure with him. Because of all the uprisings and trouble, the journey is a very dangerous one. Spirit is with them and leads them on what becomes their life mission.Along the way to Montana, both Matthew and Hope discuss the strange and similar dreams that they are having. People begin to show up in their lives that confirm these dreams are past-life memories. As the people draw together for their mission, they all realize that this is being orchestrated by something much greater than their selves, by Great Spirit. When they truly find out how to live with Hollow Bones, they find the peace that they have been looking for.I would highly recommend "Hollow Bones" to people on the spiritual path or those with an interest in pursuing this path. With this book, this talented author has the opportunity and talent to make a huge impact on society with his teachings. This book is a winner and I cannot wait to read more books by Stephen Paul. dr seuss cat in hat history

Interview With Stephen Paul, Author of "Hollow Bones"

Stephen Paul has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Missouri and has taught, researched, counseled, and consulted at the University of Utah. Until five years ago, Stephen maintained a private practice while he and his wife, Jackie, owned and operated a metaphysical bookstore and a vegetarian restaurant, providing an oasis for the Salt Lake community. He currently writes and speaks about how to ride the inevitable waves of change by living more simply, harmoniously, and respectfully--more in line with Spirit.Stephen collaborated with artist Gary Collins to publish "Illuminations: Visions for Change, Growth, and Self-Acceptance," "Inneractions: Visions to Bring Your Inner and Outer Worlds into Harmony," and "In Love: Visions for Growth and Harmony in Relationships."Tyler: Welcome, Stephen. "Hollow Bones" is a very intriguing book. I'm afraid if I try to describe it, I won't be able to do it justice. Would you please summarize for us what kind of book it is and what it's about?Stephen: Let me start by putting "Hollow Bones" in its historical context. In 1993, Native American prophecy was fulfilled when a delegation representing the North American indigenous peoples addressed the Cry of the Earth conference at the United Nations. Hopi spiritual leaders had instructed messengers to knock four times at the doors of the UN in an attempt to deliver their message to the people of the world. It took forty-five years, but on the fourth--and last--attempt they finally gained access. The elders took that opportunity to deliver the prophecies of their spiritual leaders to the world.The elders warned that a long-predicted time of purification was already under way. They urged that we heed the Creator's original instructions to the indigenous peoples, and voluntarily return to living in simpler, more respectful, and more harmonious ways. The elders warned that should we choose to ignore this message, erratic weather patterns, earth movements, starvation, violence, and war would occur with ever increasing frequency and intensity."Hollow Bones" takes place in the not-too-distant future, at a time when those predicted changes and disruptions are well under way. Matthew's life has unraveled since the death of his wife. Now, with his friend, Hope, and her young daughter, Lily, he commences a journey in search of a new beginning.Along the road, the three travelers face the harsh realities of a failing culture, the sheltering kindness of strangers...and a string of startling revelations. Vivid dreams trigger memories of a shared lifetime with Chief Joseph, long-forgotten Spirit ways, and a two hundred-year-old oath they had made to return. The dreams mark the beginning of a startling series of encounters and events, leading to the long-awaited fulfillment of ancient Native prophecies.Tyler: Stephen, "Hollow Bones" focuses on spirituality, and many of the ideas will probably already be familiar to people interested in spirituality. But what made you decide to write a novel to express these ideas?Stephen: In retrospect, I'd say there were two main reasons why I chose to write "Hollow Bones" in novel form. First, I've always personally enjoyed reading spiritual fiction. In books such as "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho or Dan Millman's "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior" an unfolding story transports the characters--and the reader--through a series of intriguing adventures that result in important personal realizations. As a reader, I can be caught up in the engaging adventures, while at the same time benefiting from the insights the characters gain along the way. A novel can bring insights to life in ways that non-fiction simply cannot.The second reason I decided to write "Hollow Bones" as a novel is that the central theme of the book--the relatedness theme--first came to me as a visual image: I saw and experienced the possibilities of relatedness literally playing out before my eyes. That compelling vision had a built-in narrative that could easily be expanded and elaborated into story format. This is a story that told itself.Tyler: Stephen, do you yourself believe in the prophecies issued in 1993 as something that will come true. I ask because I'm wondering to what extent you sought to be accurate regarding those prophecies and their implications, and what if any room did you leave to fictionalize the situation? Since you set it in the future, even if a not too distant future, are we to assume it has to be fictional to some extent?Stephen: I do believe those prophecies will come true. In fact, I believe they are already coming true. When I read the paper or watch the news, I see those prophecies unfolding. In the last week alone, 500 villagers were killed in warfare in Iraq, a level 8.0 earthquake hit Peru, China, India, North Korea, and our own Midwest experienced record-breaking and devastating flooding, hurricane Dean is sweeping a wide swath through the Caribbean, and one of the largest fires in history rages in California. Disruptive events just like those are occurring all over the world, every day.But, you're absolutely right, Tyler, "Hollow Bones" is a work of fiction. I decided not to focus on the specific events--the purifying events--that might bring about the changes depicted in the story. Because all of the problems we face (climate changes, energy, food and water shortages, wars, etc.) are interrelated, there are many possible scenarios for how the transforming events will play out.In "Hollow Bones" (as I believe it is in reality) the purifying events are only the means used to bring us to our senses and lead us to realizations we must eventually all discover. They are meant to bring us back into harmony with each other and our world.Tyler: The book also follows the mythological journey quest format. What sets "Hollow Bones" apart from other books that use the journey motif?Stephen: Often in the mythical journey genre, a naïve main character is guided and transformed by a much wiser and knowing mentor, teacher, or guide. That guide typically knows exactly what's going on, while the protagonist struggles along unaware.In "Hollow Bones" none of the central characters see the big picture. There is no all-knowing figure to lead them. It's in the convergence of the separate pieces each individual holds--their joining in community--that the whole takes form. Each person is fulfilling a part of much larger prophecy, without any awareness of the other parts being played out, or the prophecy itself.Tyler: I understand the book is based on Native American prophecy? Would you tell us a little bit more about that background?Stephen: I already mentioned the prophecies issued at the "Cry of the Earth" conference earlier in the interview. Those prophecies are important because they establish a time frame and context for the disruptive events taking place in "Hollow Bones." We live at the time when the old Native American prophecies are being fulfilled.A second set of prophecies actually inspired the storyline of "Hollow Bones." Those prophecies were compiled by author Steven McFadden in his book "The Rainbow Warrior Prophecies." Of those prophecies, Crazy Horse's sweeping vision is considered to be the most important prophecy ever given to the Native American people. Concerned about the future welfare of his people as Whites began invading their lands, Crazy Horse prepared and purified himself and then withdrew to a holy mountain to pray earnestly for a guiding vision.In the vision that came to Crazy Horse, he was shown not only the future of his own people, but the future of the world. He was grief-stricken to foresee the overwhelming defeat and subsequent subjugation, decline, and suffering of his people, which extended far into the future. Not knowing what they were, he observed metal objects (cars and planes) crisscrossing the continent. To his utter dismay, Crazy Horse was made to witness the unbelievable carnage of two world wars.After having to endure those images of misery, pain, and war, Crazy Horse was shown a bright light that rose in the East. The light brought forth a tree of life from the blood-soaked soil of this continent. Crazy Horse watched as beings from the spirit world returned to the earth and danced together under that tree. Some of the people living on the earth (people of all races--a rainbow of colors) felt drawn to dance together with the spirit beings under the tree of life, and a new world was given birth.We live at the time when that prophecy is about to be fulfilled. "Hollow Bones" offers one account of how that might transpire in the lives of people who are alive today.Tyler: Stephen, what would you say to people who would say such prophecies are only coincidences? In what ways do you see the prophecies are being fulfilled?Stephen: I would say that I don't believe in coincidence. I believe we would have to be in complete denial not to recognize the relationship between our choices and actions and the turmoil and disruptions in the world. I believe those events are intensifying and increasing in frequency as a direct consequence of our not heeding the call to live more simply, harmoniously, and respectfully.At the same time I was exploring the Native American prophecies, I was also reading scientific predictions about the future. In my reading, I came across "Plan B 2.0" by Lester Brown. Lester did an analysis of world resources and concluded that there were several interrelated problems (population growth, climate change, poverty, spreading water shortages, rising oil prices, and rising food prices) that all pose serious, imminent threats to the earth and mankind. He predicted that, unless we launch an immediate, fully-committed response to those problems, we will experience terrible economic, social, political, and environmental consequences.I came away believing that we live at a time when scientific predictions and Native prophecies are converging. Both are being fulfilled.Tyler: Stephen, as you talk about the prophecies, I am guessing readers will want to read these prophecies for themselves. Would you tell us where one can find copies of them?Stephen: The messages and prophecies delivered by the Native tribal representatives at the 1993 "Cry of the Earth" conference can be found on the People's Paths website, http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/political/cry.html. They also offer a link to a site where you can obtain a videotape of the entire conference.I drew heavily on Steven McFadden's compilation of historic and contemporary indigenous prophecies which can be found in his book "Legend of the Rainbow Warriors." He can be contacted through his website is http://chiron-communications.com. There is also a second excellent account of Crazy Horse's vision in Kurt Kaltreider's book, "American Indian Prophecies."Tyler: I am also curious how the prophecies you mention came to be written down. For example, I am aware that controversy has arisen around the book "Black Elk Speaks" because Black Elk did not actually write it, but rather the oral stories were written down by John Neihardt, a white man, who probably edited the narrative to make it more readable for a wider audience. Consequently, questions arise about the authenticity of the text and what might have been changed, especially since Black Elk's editor was a white man. What, therefore, makes such Native American prophecies valid in your opinion?Stephen: As I mentioned, the prophecies presented at the Cry of the Earth Conference are available as public record in tape or transcript form. The conference speakers indicated that many of the instructions and messages given to the indigenous peoples by The Creator were delivered in physical form (stones, wampum belts, etc.). Those records have been carefully guarded and preserved. Some of the prophecies were passed down orally, making them more difficult to document, but the Native Americans take their oral tradition very seriously and would argue that it is superior to many written historical records.Many of the prophecies compiled by Steven McFadden were collected during interviews with living spiritual leaders. Steven is trained as a reporter, and I trust he did a very thorough job collecting and documenting his sources and information.I accept the validity of the prophecies for several reasons. First, I believe that indigenous people around the world once had a very close relationship with Spirit, and that they were given instructions and caretaking responsibilities. Second, there is a great deal of consistency among the many different sources even though they live in different parts of this country and on other continents. Third, many of the events mentioned in the prophecies have already come to pass, and the prophecies have proved to be quite accurate (the arrival of the White man, cars, planes, wars). Fourth, a friend who is a Native American medicine man read "Hollow Bones," and he agreed that these prophecies are being fulfilled now. Finally, I trust my own intuition, and my intuition leads me to believe in, and to honor, the essence of the message of these prophecies.Tyler: Stephen, are you Native American yourself, or if not, how did you become interested in Native American culture and religion?Stephen: That's a bit tricky to answer. The short answer is, "No, I was not born a Native American." I've always felt an affinity to the Native American people, especially Chief Joseph, but I hadn't pursued those interests much further than to read a book or two, attend a couple of pow wows, and participate in a sweat ceremony.My level of interest changed a few years ago when I attended a workshop in Montana and sat with Surya Ma and a small group of people in meditation. Suddenly everything shifted: I was dancing around a fire. I looked down and I was dressed in beaded buckskin and a bone breast plate, with an eagle feather dangling by my right ear. For that brief period of time, I was no longer the person I am in this lifetime, but rather a proud, fierce, and life-filled Native American warrior. I saw and felt as he saw and felt. I experienced relatedness--to my tribe, to the creatures, to the earth, to the Great Spirit, to all--through his experience.When I returned from that experience, a rush of energy shot up my spine and spread around me in a circle of light that appeared as a headdress of feathers. At the same time, a voice in my head shouted, "I have returned!" Only after the meditation ended did Surya Ma explain to the group that Joseph and the Nez Perce had passed though the very land where we sat, during their flight to escape the pursuing U.S. cavalry.What I saw through that warrior's eyes and felt through his heart was powerful, wonderful, and far beyond my imagining. I had never experienced anything that resembled the relatedness I felt then in this lifetime. It was as if I were being shown the very essence of something we desperately need to remember now. I went away that afternoon knowing I had to write about that experience.As you can imagine, since then I've become much more interested and involved with Native Americans. I've traveled to several different reservations, participated in pow wows and ceremonies, and rekindled a friendship with a medicine man I have known for a couple of decades. He is educating me about the Native ways.Tyler: As I mentioned earlier, Stephen, you practiced as a psychologist for many years. How has that work influenced your writing?Stephen: As a therapist for thirty years, I had the opportunity to know many people intimately, and to witness, time after time, the difficult process of personal transformation. For years, I had a ring-side seat at the tug of war between a person's will to change and their strong resistance to change. During the last few years I practiced, I realized just how important it is for a person to release his or her attachments--their energetic ties to the people and things in their lives--in order really to change and live freely. Those observations and realizations found their way into the "Hollow Bones" storyline and into the transformations that the characters experience.Years ago, I discovered that I did my best work as a therapist when I emptied myself and opened to inspiration during my sessions: I learned to be a "hollow bone." Often I would learn things I had not known before during those sessions, right along with my clients. That was always exhilarating. I applied the very same practice to my writing, approaching each writing session as a "hollow bone."Tyler: I understand that in the book, the characters have dreams which they later learn are really past-life memories. Why did you feel the need to include this idea of reincarnation into the book? What can be learned from past-life memories?Stephen: As I mentioned before, the meditation I did with Surya Ma had quite an affect on me. During that meditation I experienced myself as a Native American warrior (I place the period as the late 1800s) and then heard myself--him?--saying, "I have returned." I wasn't observing that warrior, inferring his perspective: I was that warrior, experiencing the world as he did. I can't say for certain, but it certainly seemed to me that I was experiencing another life I had lived.I've had several other "incidences" in my life where I've experienced images seemingly tied to memories of other lifetimes (as a medicine man, as a Japanese noble, as a prophet, as a monk, as a female pianist in Europe). In my personal life, and in my work as a psychologist, I've had many brushes with beings at the boundary between the worlds. They have convinced me there's much more to life than what our five senses tell us.My past-life memories have served many different purposes. They have reminded me of ignored aspects of myself, and helped me to understand personal issues that seemed to transcend the events and circumstances of this lifetime. At times, they have helped me to understand my connections to the people in my life, and the sometimes difficult and inexplicable issues that arise between us. I believe those memories suggest a continuity of experience and interrelatedness that extends far beyond our current frame of reference.Tyler: Why did you choose the title "Hollow Bones"?Stephen: I got the term "hollow bones" from Chief Frank Fools Crow who was considered by many to be the greatest Native American holy person to live in the last hundred years. He and his uncle, Black Elk--also considered an extraordinary Sioux holy man--often talked together about the healing work they did. They often discussed how they became "holes" that Spirit could work through.In an interview with Thomas Mails, Fools Crow described how he prepared himself to do his healing work. He would go off by himself to pray to the Great Spirit. After drawing any negativity out of his being, he would lift his arms to the heavens and allow Spirit to fill him. Once he overflowed with Spirit, he was ready to allow Spirit to flow through him to the person in need of healing.Fools Crow often used little hollow bones in his healing work. One day it occurred to him that he much preferred to think of himself as a "little hollow bone" rather than as a "hole." The term describes well the empty vehicle Spirit prefers to work through--and it certainly has a better ring to it.Tyler: Stephen, do you think the Native American emphasis, while it may attract some readers, might alienate others because it seems unfamiliar. Without discussing the Native American perspective, what do you think is the core message that makes the "Hollow Bones" important to readers?Stephen: I do think the Native American premise of "Hollow Bones" could make it less approachable for some people. I might have had the same reaction just a few years ago. As I mentioned before, the images that inspired me to write "Hollow Bones" came from a Native American's perspective. In a sense, the Native American tradition picked me.The core messages of "Hollow Bones" are: 1.) that we are all related--to each other, to the earth, to the plants and creatures, and to The Creator, 2.) that we need to free ourselves from our attachments to reconnect with Spirit, 3.) that we can create a new world based on living more simply, harmoniously and respectfully, and 4.) that Spirit will play a part in the creation of that new world--just as it did in the past.Tyler: And what would you say to readers of other faiths besides Native American religion? For example, why not instead focus on the prophecies in the Bible's book of Revelation rather than Native American prophecies? What would you say to readers who are skeptical of religion in general?Stephen: The fundamental themes of "Hollow Bones" are universal and perennial. They could have been developed in another culture, drawing on the prophecies and traditions of another tradition. The story could have been set in India, China, Israel, Italy, or Afghanistan.I'm not so sure that a person who discounts all things spiritual or mystical would be interested in "Hollow Bones." However, I wouldn't describe it as a religious book. I differentiate between structured orthodoxy and mysticism. "Hollow Bones" describes the personal mystical experiences of the characters, without trying to suggest one route to salvation. It is a mystical, rather than a religious work.Tyler: Stephen, you've obviously been a very busy man. You've written books, worked as a psychologist, and run a metaphysical bookstore and vegetarian restaurant. What do you do to relax or to connect with your own spiritual side?Stephen: I try to approach everything I do as a "hollow bone," in an empty state of being. I do brief meditations many times throughout the day to bring myself back to that state. I also do tai chi and a lot of hiking and walking to help me remember my place in Being. I love to be in nature, and we try to take frequent trips to the nearby mountains and deserts. We can actually walk to a nearby canyon from our house. It has always been much easier for me to feel connected in nature.Tyler: Are you working on another book, and if so, can you tell us a little bit about it?Stephen: Right now I'm focused on getting "Hollow Bones" into the hands of readers. However, I do have two other books in mind. The first is a follow-up to "Hollow Bones" which will follow the main characters, Matthew, Hope, and Lily as they set out to explore the new world that is emerging at the end of the first book. In a second, non-fiction book, I'll explain how readers can make the changes (release attachments, empty, open, trust, be) the characters must go through to become "hollow bones."Tyler: Thank you for joining me, today, Stephen. Before we go, will you tell our readers what your website is and what information they can find there about "Hollow Bones" and your other books?Stephen: In addition to a description of "Hollow Bones," I have placed downloadable versions of the Author's Note, the first two chapters of the book, and a Reader Views review on my website, http://www.circledancer.com.Also, I've posted a lot of other useful information on my website. Each day I post an interactive blog and a quote taken from one of my other books, "Illuminations," "Inneractions," and "In Love." I offer weekly suggestions in a section I call "You Can Change the World: Simple Actions You Can Take." There are also downloadable articles I have written about how to live more simply, harmoniously, and respectfully and links to a number of very informative and useful resources.Tyler: Finally, what do you hope "Hollow Bones" will teach readers?Stephen: There are several things I hope readers can learn--or remember--through reading "Hollow Bones." The first is that when they read the morning paper or watch the news they are witnessing the fulfillment of prophecies. The predicted intensification of erratic weather patterns, earth movements, starvation, violence, and wars is occurring before their eyes. We have not yet heeded the warning of the indigenous spiritual leaders to live more simply, harmoniously, and respectfully.I want to remind readers that we truly are all related--to each other, to this earth, to the plants and animals, and to the rest of Being. We live in a culture that emphasizes individualism, selfishness, consumerism, and immediate gratification over relatedness. We need to remember the extent to which we actually are related, and to think and act in ways that are harmonious, respectful, and that benefit the whole.Finally, I want to present readers with the positive possibilities the future holds if we will only heed the warning. It is possible to create communities that live together in simpler, more harmonious, and more respectful ways--communities guided by the principles of relatedness. I want readers to know that, if they are willing to free themselves from their distracting attachments, Spirit will guide their way through these turbulent times. I want them to discover that they can become "hollow bones."Tyler: Thank you, Stephen, for joining me today. I wish you lots of success with "Hollow Bones" and your future endeavors.Today, Tyler R. Tichelaar of Reader Views is joined by Stephen Paul, who is here to talk about his fascinating new book "Hollow Bones," Circle Dancer Publishing (2007), ISBN 9780979034800. dr seuss cat in hat book

Book Reviews on Bible Aid and Bible Commentaries

For those of you who are looking for some very good Bible aids so as to help you understand and interpret our Bible, here is a list of some of the absolute best aids on this subject matter.In these Bible aids you will find every single verse of the Bible properly interpreted for you when you are having a hard time in deciphering what a particular Scripture verse may mean. For those of you who are serious in your study of Scripture, each one of these aids are truly indispensable.1. "The Illustrated Guide to Biblical History" by Kendell EasleyFor those of you looking for a good book that will give you a nice, basic overview of the history of our Christian faith - this particular book does a very nice job for you. This overview is presented in a very easy-to-understand and follow manner. This book enables you to locate specific people and events on the correct timeline as they occurred in the Bible at a very quick glance. This book also has many colored photographs and maps so you can see where all of these incredible events took place.2. "The Three-In-One Bible Reference Companion" by Thomas NelsonThis is one of my absolute favorites as far as a Bible reference guide. It is a combination concordance, topical index and dictionary. You can look up the meaning of a word for its definition, and right underneath the word will be all of the Scripture verses that will have that word in it. All of the words and topics are listed alphabetically so that you can find what you are looking for a very fast glance. This book combines the best features of a Bible dictionary, concordance and encyclopedia. All of the most important words listed in the Bible are in this book.3. "Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary" edited by Trent ButlerThis particular Bible reference book has become one of the best selling reference tools since it was first published back in 1991. This book has very good definitions on all of the main words in the Bible, along with 600 full color photos, illustrations and charts to help explain the meaning of the words to you. It also has some of the latest archaeological information from some of the different Jerusalem excavations. Very thorough and very complete Bible dictionary.4. "Holman Bible Handbook" by David DockeryThis book goes into each of the individual 66 books of the Bible. It gives very good commentary on all of the key themes and sections in the different books of the Bible along with giving a many full-color photos, illustrations, charts and maps of some of the events that occurred in the Bible. Everything presented in a nice and easy to understand format, even for beginners. These kinds of books will help accelerate your knowledge in the Bible and will save you years and years of having to do this kind of research for yourself.5. "King James Version Bible Commentary" by Ed HindsonAs far as all of the different Bible commentaries that are out there - I believe this one to be one of the absolute best. Even though it is only dealing with the King James Version of the Bible, you can still use this even if you like some of the other different translations. This book will literally interpret every single verse of the Bible for you and does so in a very easy-to-understand manner. I have several different Bible commentaries, but this is the first one I will always go to when I need a good explanation on what a particular Scripture verse may mean. I simply cannot recommend this particular commentary high enough.6. "The Hayford Bible Handbook" by Jack HayfordI believe Jack Hayford to be one of the best Bible scholars and teachers we have in the Body of Christ today. Again, this book from Mr. Hayford is another one of my personal favorites. In the first part of the book, he interprets every line of Scripture for you. In the second half of the book he has very good definitions, commentaries and full explanations for many of the keys words and phrases that are found in the Bible. This is another great book that I cannot recommend highly enough. This man is truly a genius in God with the wealth of information and knowledge that he has on the Bible.7. "Tyndale Bible Dictionary" by Walter ElwellThis is another exceptional Bible dictionary. Besides giving very good basic definitions of many of the main words found in the Bible, it goes even further and then gives actual commentary on many of these words so that you can fully understand what each of these words mean. This book is 1332 pages long and has several beautiful maps at the end of the book so that you can see what all of these Bible areas looked like back at the time that all of these incredible events were occurring. This is just another good solid Bible dictionary that the Body of Christ has available for all the real seekers.8. "Believer's Bible Commentary" by Arthur FarstadThis is another good basic Bible commentary, interpreting every line of Scripture for you. Presented in a very nice and easy-to- read format. It is 2383 pages long. I use this side by side with the King James Version Bible Commentary mentioned above as it is good to have several Bible commentaries when looking up the meaning of different Scripture verses.9. "Holman's Concise Bible Commentary" by David DockeryThis book is a smaller, more concise type of Bible commentary, but don't let the smaller size of this particular book fool you. It is loaded with very good commentary on all of the main verses from Scripture. This is the third main Bible commentary I have in my own personal God-library and I use it in conjunction with the above two Bible commentaries mentioned above. It is only 681 pages in length, but there is a lot of valuable knowledge and revelation in this shorter commentary. dr seuss book collection

High Performance Affiliate Marketing Ebook Review

Short Bio: Jeremy Palmer is an affiliate marketer from Utah. Jeremy began working as an affiliate marketer in 2003 and after just 6 months he quit his day job.Jeremy Palmer is the 2005 Commission Junction Horizon Award Winner, a certified Commission Junction Performer, Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador and a Google Advertising Professional.In 2006 alone Jeremy managed over 1 million dollars in sales. He mainly uses Pay Per Click buy he also uses search engine optimization to get visitors to his specially designed websites that are proven to convert visitors into buying customers.What I think:I was quite impressed with this eBook. Jeremy goes into great details in the 150 page PDF eBook. Each chapter is very well explained and you are not left with unanswered questions. Jeremy writes in a very straightforward easy to understand manor.There is a great section in this eBook about landing pages/squeeze pages/opt in pages whatever you want to call them.The search engine optimization section is also great. For thos of you are not firmiliar search engine optimization is when you optimize your website to rank very high in Google, MSN or Yahoo. So when you search specific keywords or phrases your sites appears first.I would this section very informative an Jeremy describes many ways to get high quality one-way links to your website. Which is much of the trick to SEO.Another really interesting section in this eBook was the website design section. Not to many affiliate marketing eBooks cover this information. Jeremy goes over the basics and some really great tips about creating your site for maximum usability and optimization.Overall, I highly recommend this eBook for people getting started in affiliate marketing business as well as more experienced affiliate marketers. seuss book collection sets cat hat

The Cool Nguni by Maryanne Bester

The Cool Nguni is a 20-page, well-written, richly illustrated story dealing with issues of identity, self-esteem and self-appreciation. The main character, the Little Nguni Calf, is a uniquely South African cow, but the issues the book raises are universal.The little calf is unhappy because he's doesn't think he's cool enough. He compares himself to cattle from other countries and in every case, he comes off short.The cattle he compares himself to include Longhorn Cattle from the "wild, wild west," Highland Cattle from Scotland and the Brahman Cattle from India. "Those cattle from over the sea- they're cool," he says to his mother.Eventually, the little Nguni Calf learns that he has a number of qualities that make him special. In his own way, he is cool too, just like those cows from across the sea.The Cool Nguni is a good, fun tool to explain to a child why being different is not a bad thing. The book also deals with the concern children the world have, and that's of being cool enough/good enough when compared to other people.Having grown up in South African society during an era when Black children were taught that it's not okay to be themselves, I can certainly appreciate why there is an acute need for The Cool Nguni.My daughter nine-year old daughter also enjoyed the book, and is still paging through to look at the colourful illustrations. I also hope the message that everyone has their own unique beauty helps her develop a strong self-image and self-appreciation. dr seuss cat in hat quotes

Blogging To The Bank Review - Is Blogging To The Bank The Best Computer Home Based Business Guide

Blogging To The Bank by Rob Benwell is a guide to making money through the use of free blogs but is it really the best computer home based business that you could try and if it is, is Blogging To The Bank the best guide to show you how to do this?Firstly I do believe that making money from blogs is the best way to work from home and start your home business. There is little you cannot do on a free blog that others do on an expensive website and that includes making money.Surprisingly Rob Benwell, the author, hasn't actually been in internet marketing too long but he is one of the few people that took a chance on doing things differently and it paid off and now he's helping others to learn the methods that made him succeed.Rob Benwell found a way to make over $500 a day just from using free blogs and you could achieve the same with the help of Blogging To The Bank.The ebook guide is in truth fairly short at just 39 pages but this just means all the filler material that is included in other similar guides has been removed. The guide is well written and easy to follow with plenty of screenshots to make it even simpler. Unlike many guides this one actually shows you the exact steps you need to follow to set up your free money making blog.Blogging To The Bank shows all the techniques required to optimize your blogs including what to name them, what settings to use, which templates to use, money making hot spots on your blogs, where to put adsense, and most importantly how to drive massive amounts of traffic ( visitors) to your blog.Two of the techniques are a little on the risky site and many may not wish to use them but even without these methods you will be able to make money from free blogs with the other techniques in the guide.Blogging To The Bank is an excellent guide to the best computer home based business opportunity around and for the price it is amazing value especially considering it features techniques not shown anywhere else. Without hesitation Blogging To The Bank is highly recommended. dr seuss cat in hat history

Review of "Why We Buy - The Science of Shopping"

Paco Underhill published his book "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping" in 1999. Today it remains a modern classic for understanding the psychology of consumer purchasing behavior.Here is a summary and critique the book's main points:1. Purchasing behaviors can be studied: Underhill and his team opened the eyes of CEO and retail managers everywhere with their unique approach of meticulously observing people as they shopped. They brought techniques from anthropology and merged them with economics to create a new science.2. Retailers still have much to learn about why people buy: Most CEOs that Underhill spoke with knew a whole lot about how store revenues but very little about what actually made customer purchase. For example, one CEO he spoke with believed that about 99% of people who visited their stores made purchase. When Underhill revealed that the correct statistic was only 48%, the CEO was needless to say enthralled with the possibilities.3. Sellers can benefit from understanding buyer behavior: Buyers have a certain way of walking through a store. A specific way of using their hands, looking at signs, taking breaks while shopping. Sellers who understand these behaviors can gain a huge competitive advantage. 4. You can always sell more: Your best customers are your current customers. Find ways to upsell. Entice them to the back of the store. Keep them in the store longer.5. Women and men shop differently: For example, men tend to go into a store, look at a large shelf of items, pick one, and quickly leave. Meanwhile, women are actually more information-intensive, reading the label for each possibility before making a purchase.6. People use all five senses to decide on a purchase: The more of the five senses to which a seller can appeal, the better. People want verification with their whole body before buying a product.7. Shopping on the Internet is different: Okay, this one is a "well, duhhh, Mr. Underhill" today, but remember this book was written in the late 1990s. Underhill does list some truisms about the advantages of shopping on the Internet which are helpful reminders. Underhill's book certainly opened my eyes to what retailers know and do not know about what makes people buy. My only problem with his book is the writing format. Underhill's writing is actually pretty good, but it lacks periodic summaries of main points to really drive home the reader's understanding.By reading "Why We Buy," you will get an informative, if sometimes wandering, read through the psychology of buying. dr seuss cat in hat book

The Whole World Over - by Julia Glass

Any story that begins in Manhattan and has a pastry chef as its main character has a sweet appeal to me, and The Whole World Over has been just that. Except for a slightly startling tense change at the end of the book, I found the book delightful and easy to read, so much so that I promised myself to read everything that springs out of the pen of its wonderful author, Julia Glass.The story is about personal commitments explored through love, betrayal, forgiveness, and understanding. When the chance of a profitable job presents itself, Greenie Duquette who is a pastry chef in West Village grabs the opportunity and leaves her life, which has become monotonous, to work in the house of the governor of New Mexico. Alan, her psychiatrist husband, opposes this move especially because Greenie is taking their young son George with her, although Greenie asks Alan to come with them to New Mexico. After a year and many twists and turns that also include the 9/11 disaster, all loose ends are tied.The anticipatory lines to Greenie's decision shows up in the first chapter as, "Is That All There Is? Greenie did not know what to do about this. She would have attacked the problem head on if the sufferer had been one of her girlfriends, but Alan was a man, chronically resentful of direction..." Even if the backgrounds of the numerous characters seem to be so different from each other, the plot connects them in a way that their unrelatedness becomes indiscernible. Most of the characters in the story are unique and richly developed with their quirks, foibles, backstories, and humanly sides--even the governor Ray who, in the beginning of the book, feels like a cartoon character, and at times, acts like a clown. Although Greenie's character appears to be selfish at first, the eventual display of her husband's internal life and his past make the reader absolve her actions and understand her predicament. Just as Greenie cooks and experiments with her cooking, the different kinds of love and relationships are also explored for the reader.The writer creates various settings with much charm, clarity, and brilliance--from West Village in Manhattan to Santa Fe, to Berkeley, to Connecticut, and to an island in Maine. Glass has a good eye for making the different settings influence the personalities and lifestyles of her characters.The Whole World Over has 576 pages, three parts with many chapters, and ISBN-10: 1400075769 and
ISBN-13: 978-1400075768.Julia Glass is a New Yorker, living in Masschusetts. After graduating from Yale University with an art degree, she received a fellowship to study figurative painting in Paris, and afterwards settled in New York City. Her first novel, Three Junes won the 2002 National book Award. Her talent as a writer has won her the Tobias Wolff Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, three Nelson Algren Fiction Awards, and the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal for Best Novella. Her second book, The Whole World Over, was published in May, 2006.The Whole World Over reads like a fairy tale, playful, rich, complex, and with taste and texture akin to the cakes Greenie creates. It is a book one should not miss reading. dr seuss book collection

Book Review - Songbirds Are Free by PM Terrell

Historical History at Its Best"Songbirds are Free" is the story of Mary Neely. Mary was abducted and taken into captivity by a group of Shawnee Indians. Suspense, Thriller author P. M. Terrell transported me to another time and place as she drew me into this story. I experienced, with Mary, the hardships of survival, of daily crisis. I was challenged to understand in a new light those confusing issues faced by the colonists, the Indians, and the British in the setting of the Revolutionary War era.I received a whole new picture of the culture, traditions, and savagery of the Indian as they were forced to migrate in hopes of finding new placed to settle. The Indian battles depicted in the Saturday matinees of the Western movies of my childhood were replaced with a new reality. I became immersed in the insight regarding beliefs, customs, and survival techniques of the military, the settlers, and the Indians, as principles were replaced with bigotry, cruelty, abuse, and revenge.Mary became accepted and her life was spared because of her songs. The Indians gave her the name "Songbird" because of her lilting voice and melodies. She sang hymns and composed poems as she planned her escape during a two year period of captivity.The story parallels Mary's movements and those of Lieutenant Jim Hawkins as they traveled the rivers and the frontiers of what we now know to be Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan to Canada, east to New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.This is a book for readers of historical fiction and those who enjoy suspense, action and romance. Terrell's writing is strong, her research impeccable. The dialog helps the reader get into the story. Selected pictures showing highlights of the locations from the book add a dimension of appreciation for the credibility of this heroic story of perseverance and hope in the face of adversity. Mary Neely was truly a remarkable woman. seuss book collection sets cat hat

Burn The Fat Reviews

"There is no substitute for exercise" Have you heard that before?. I am sure that we all have. If we remember that fact in life it will help as we strive to evaluate weight loss programs. The shocking truth about Tom Venuto's burn the fat feed the muscle ebook, is that he is right on track in the 4 ways to beat obesity. With the right food, at the right time, in the right amount, with the right exercise. In burn the fat feed the muscle it comes with some great valuable information in the form of several ebooks the one entitled "Food that turn to Fat " is an eyeopener which discloses why the average person is overweight. He also disclose in his ebook entitled "Food that burn fat" that there are foods that can awaken our metabolism and begin to burn fat.Some are critics to this program who pass this off as another weight loss scam. The truth of the matter is that you really have nothing to lose. Some quibble over the price of $39.95 however the determination is quite easy to make because burn the fat feed the muscle comes with a 100% money back guarantee. The success and failure of this program depends on us the individuals. We must remember that there is no substitute for exercise which this program does not omit.The vast misconception comes from person who want a miracle cure. Many have tried liquid diets, runners jog, walkers walk, some even use drastic measures of having their jaws wired, or digestive surgery. (Not Recommend) However fat cells are resilient they always come storming back. Pound lost often come storming back with a vengeance.Please remember when evaluating any weight loss program such as burn the fat feed the muscle it all depends on the person. Thus in reality although this is complex subject when it comes to investment for some it will work to their benefit for other it will not. However if you are skeptic think of it this way. What to I have to lose? If it is not working I will send it back and exercise the 100% Money back guarantee. In summary this program is well worth the effort because it comes with the money back guarantee. So with the right food, at right time, in the right amount, with right amount of exercise can lead to a reduction in our weight. Burn the fat feed the muscle is an ebook that is a must read for all. That is why I recommend that you try it, because you have nothing to lose but the weight. dr seuss cat in hat quotes

Suspended Animation In "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce

The story depicts the last moments Peyton Fahrquhar's life during the American Civil Wars. Being "a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family", he was fervently committed to the "Southern cause". Due to some circumstances which are not mentioned in the story, he was hindered from taking part in the war, however he strived like an audacious soldier to satiate his own inner heroic demands. One evening he was visited by a thirsty soldier and while his wife was fetching some water, Peyton inquired the soldier for news from the front. Being a Federal (Nourthern) spy,the soldier had disguised himself as a Confederate (Southern) horseman and ignited the zest in Peyton to meddle with the reconstruction of the Owl Creek Bridge. The repercussion of any sort of tamper would be hanging. The soldier succeeded and Peyton was caught and hanged in an attempt to explode the bridge.Part 1The story is divided into three section, each section with it's own unique narrative techniques. The first part commences with the depiction of "a man", whose name not divulged till the second part,waiting to be hanged. However the picture is not illuminated forthwith, The very first sentence of the story: "a man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below" presents no morbid image in mind but step by step the reader is led to put the pieces of the puzzle together and grasp the fact that the man being described is going to be executed. Also the repetition of " man" instills a military shrillness into the mind while the delineation of the protagonist is outweighed by the depiction of the "sergeant who in civil life might have been a deputy sheriff", the two sentinels "who did not know what was occurring at the center of the bridge" and were "statues to adorn the bridge" or the captain for whom "death is a dignitary". Bierce's obsessions with the brutality of war and it's nugatoriness are inculcated more palpabily in this part of the story, signifying petiness of human beings when a war is fought and also the fact that executing civilians can be a run_of_the_mill routine during the wars. After stirring the reader by such a mockery in tone and the macabre portraying of the man with a rope round his neck, Bierce puts forward the image of the forest and the stream as starkly juxtaposed to the stockade loopholed for rifles,the muzzle of a brass cannon or the company of infantry in line as the spectators of the execution. The soothing effect of the natural imagery is utterly shattered by the metallic and inhuman armor or the soldiers in the line but later in the story such natural imageries will regain their crucial significance and the overwhelming forces of the war and termination will surrender to the power and freedom inculcated by nature.Now having created a vivid picture of the setting that is a bridge located within a forest during the American Civil Wars, Bierce gradually sets aside the social dimensions of the story and casts more light on the protagonist, however with an apparent laconicism and terseness. The fact that he is a gentleman, not a vulgar assassin and is executed according to "liberal military code" is another ironic attack against the absurdity of war. Even the mere procedure through which the execution is carried out, though "simple and effective", culminates to callousness and ruthlessness of the military codes. The uncovered eyes of the convict, a kind of torture impelled upon him by the Federals ironically is a symbolic loophole for him at the excruciating moment of death, allows him to take last glimpse of the world which serve as significant elements throughout the narrative. From this point the trend of the story alters and the reader is taken deep into Peyton's thoughts and introspections and the horrid picture of the hanging is shattered by visual and the auditory imageries that magnify his disturbed state of mind. Of these imageries the swirling water of the stearm represents his perplexed and distraught mind which later by the remembrance of his beloved ones, wife and children, forfeits it's nervous osilliations and turnes out to be be "sluggish stream" and is no more a mad one but "touched to gold by the early sun". In his last moments of life he has acquired a sharper appreciation of his surroundings which could have been without any distinction in his life and the auditory imageries of this part contribute to this notion, the ticking of his watch (symbol of death) heard as "the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil" or the roar of the stream all augment the tension and inevitability of the situationThe first part of the story terminates with his last wish to free himself and last reassurance about his family that they are beyond the invader's reach and the sergeant's stepping aside from the plank serves as a transition between the two parts of the story. The end of the first part could be considered an early suspenseful climax for the story but as we read on the whole climatic features of this part is exhausted though it's abrupt ending and the imageries trigger many anticipations on the reader's. The third person limited point of view which mainly mirrors Peyton's observations demonstrates a proper pliability in description of various elements throughout the story, it becomes detached, denotative, demotive, factual and shrill with short sentences like that of the military discourse. However once coming out of the military zone and reflecting the human realm, it is embellished with descriptive passages, stirring imageries and human impulse, as if easily floating like the stream. The whole story is patterned through the forementioned style of narration and contributes to Bierce's artistic creativity as the writer of macabre and black satire.Therefore the first part ends with presenting a nebulous picture of the protagonist and his origins. The second part of the narrative provides a direct access to his idiosyncrasies and the impetus for his execution.Part 2The second part of the story acts as a direct interposed biography of the main character, whose name as the very first word of this part (Peyton Fahrquhar) obliterates any suspensions and speculations about him. He is an oppulant slave owner, brave enough to devote himself to the "Southern cause" and being instigated by the Federal scout, he broods over destroying the Owl Creek Bridge in order to gain heroic immortality among the other Southerners. Hence the prospects of becoming a hero subjugate his vows to the family, though their reminiscence never ceases haunting his mind and is the only refuge at the moment of death. His children are never described throughout the story and the only facts about his wife are the whiteness of her hands (that symbolizes purity) and her satisfaction with serving the soldiers whish suffice for her momentous role in the story, in other words a full_scale depiction of the family could have ruined the inevitability and pithiness of the narrative for which Bierce is master. Even by some critics he is accused of ruining the whole effect of a story by his impelled conciseness but in this story his style is an overwhelming rejoinder to such critics and the laconic narration adds up to the implacability of Peyton's destiny.The second section of the narrative serves as a flashback between two phases of Peyton's last moment of life that is between falling off the plank and being strangled. In this part the narrator stops the story, relates Peyton's background and then returns to him while hanging from the bridge, hence such cinematic qualities of this story has led to many movie adaptation and t.v series. This shortcut to his life at the moment of death reinforces the fact that death is always shadowed by the desire of returning to life which is utterly magnified in the third part of the story.Part 3This part is utterly dedicated to Peyton's thought and introspections at the moment of departure. After the flashback, the narrator takes the reader back to the bridge where he is awakened by the pain upon his throat and with a feeling of congestion. His power of thought is restored when he hears the splash of the water. The neatly_woven auditory, thermal and visual imageries of this part of the story such as the image of the pendulum, the fire, the light or the sound of the splash and ripples, make any empathy plausible, that is while reading, the reader cannot help identifying with Peyton and seeing himself/herself drowning, struggling, tearing away the noose and all the actions on the part of Peyton. Here the narrator directly puts into words his thoughts in a way that his own presence is totally effaced and the reader feels that Peyton himself is the narrator, even he has a sense of humor when he says:"To be hanged and drowned, that is not so bad" or struggling to release himself he thinks:"What magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo!". His sense of humour is sharply juxtaposed with the appalling image of the hanging.Now coming to the surface of the water, he is bestowed with a new cognizance and appreciation of his surroundings and his "organic system" has become so "exalted and refined". He can see every single leaf of a tree and the insects upon them, flies, spiders and different colors or the humming of the gnats along with other insects sounds like a music for him. Even he can see the grey eye of the markman on the bridge who is trying to shoot him. He has gained a vigor beyond human conditions, he can dodge a volley and is not wounded by the bullets and they just "touch him on the face and hands and continue their descent". Getting released from a vortex, he reaches the Southern bank of the stream. Again he sees the world differently, the gravels are "diamonds, rubies, emeralds", even he notices the symmetrical arrangement of the trees and hears the "wind making in their branches the music of Aeolian harps". Eventually he is touched by the newly_gained epiphany which is accompanied by his love of wife. As walking towards his home during the night, he notices the "strange constellations" and in the climatic part of the story, he finds himself in front of his house in the morning. Rushing to embrace his wife, he is overwhelmed by "darkness and silence" and the story ends with Peyton's body swinging from the bridge.Peyton's whole quest in the last part of the story embodies his last wish to be with his family or in other words the desire of living on. Narrated in four pages, this interior journy did not last more than the time needed for taking the last breath and the breaking of his neck was the resolution and the late climax shatters the reader's expectations of his freedom and redemption. So the setting of the whole story can be concluded from this part, that is on the Owl Creek Bridge and the last moment of Peyton's life and plot is nothing than a brutal hanging. But Bierce surpasses the boundaries of narrative techniques and represents the depth of human experience through not conscious action but unconscious thought. Water as the universally_accepted archetype for the unconscious, brings into light Peyton's unconscious yearnings which are never materialized. So the last part of the story from the point that he is awakened after hanging to the moment that he is veiled by darkness, occurs in his unconscious mind and that is why his experiences in this part are quite vital, vivid and are expressed through a poetic language such as describing Peyton as "fatigued, footsore, famished". This kind of expression is quite apart from the factual and demotic language of the first part. In this newly_defamiliarized world he sees "the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass", he hears the "audible music" of the nature and the other cases which are mentioned in the previous paragraph. However, the ghostly and superhuman features of Peyton such as not being wounded by the bullets, foreshadow the unreliability of the narrator but in the same respect, he provides the reader with some clues to doubt the veracity of the quest, for instance the sense of suffocation or congestion and protruding his tongue because he is thirsty all substantiate the fact that he has not survived the hanging. However, the quest encompasses all microcosmic and macrocosmic features of human life that are not easily reconciled in ordinary organic conditions and such metaphysical experience is only attainable at the moment of death as testified by many other people throughout the world. This metaphysical realm is symbolized by the "untraveled avenue" in the forest which he chooses as a path towards his home, also his domicile symbolizes every human's desire for everlasting salvation. Therefore all the experiences in the last part of the story epitomize each phase of his death. His moment of death is not that of torture, disappointment or ordeal, it is a time for awakening from mundane slumber, for seeing the real world and a time for revelation.The third part with all it's suspense and climatic peculiarities frustrates reader expectations. These expectations were formed by the abrupt ending of the first part which assumes a loophole for Peyton and also the romantic narrative of the last part that to the very end of the story keeps the reader alert and hopeful. Ironically the poetic language of this part contributes more to shatter all the illusions because it takes the reader deeper into the exposed experience, therefore the shock at the end is more devastating and dazzling. The title itself with it's horrid understatement adds up to the coldness of the first and ironic qualities of the last part. Knowledge in army tactics and map reading gained there would aid him in the Civil War, into which he enlisted in 1861, at nineteen years of age. As biographer Richard O'Conner wrote, "War was the making of Bierce as a man and a writer." Surely this cannot be disputed, for it was in the war that Bierce was surrounded by the dead and the dying. From this grim experience Bierce would emerge -- at twenty-three -- a young man with a true understand of death and a destined writer truly capable of transferring the bloody, headless bodies and boar-eaten corpses of the battlefield onto paper (along with other, less gruesome qualities of war). Bierce's war tales are considered by many to be the best writing on war, outranking his contemporary Stephen Crane (author of The Red Badge of Courage) and even Ernest Hemingway. dr seuss cat in hat history

Autobiography As De-Facement - A De Manin Reading of "Perseid" in John Barth's Chimera

This article focuses upon the de Manian reading of "Perseid" - the second novella in Barth's Chimera - with respect to its autobiographical implications. The concept of autobiography contributes to the deconstruction of the figure of Barth-Perseus as the main textual function in this novella. This attempt in its turn substantiates the impossibility of a totalized reading in de Manian critical prospect.Many critics of Barth have considered Chimera, in particular the last two novellas as autobiography. This segment tends to respond to such critics by applying de Man's theory of self-defacement. Initially, "Perseid" is going to be scrutinized with its Barthian concept of autobiography; fictionalized biography. Then, by applying de Man's notion of defacement, the text deconstructs itself.Auto-Barthian-BiographyChimera is an autobiography. It is the deliberate account of what has gone before. The artist has become the critic who is artist commenting on his own themes, his own book, and his own performance. Details of public and publishing history keep the theme of life-story in the forefront of the text in which Barth analogously examines the lives, as he tells the stories of heroes who are avatars of himself. Like Sherry, Perseus and Bellerophon, Barth looks at the point midway in his journey when his career has reached a climax - according to Freitag's life-story line. Barth and his avatars live their days nostalgically, examining the question of their heroics, their performances.However, Barth can never reduce his novel to just a simple autobiography. He parodies his own concept of my-life-in-its-climax by posing three diagrams as the schema for the typical rise and fall of dramatic action in a hero's life. The auto-Barthian-biography of his artistic life is sharply juxtaposed with the mathematically measured life-line of exposition, rising, climax and falling. Barth depicts his life-line satirically, in which the straightforward diagram is decentralized by a spiral temporality, with discrepant zones. This kind of autobiography does not delineate the author's life as an ontological entity, which undergoes various stages in order to achieve a predestined goal. The epistemology of the outer existence can never be the target of the writer, since gaining a true understanding of the world is quite impossible in Barth's worldview. For him the key to the treasure of knowledge is useless, except for purposes of satire. Such a malady - cosmopsis - leads Barth-Perseus to the fact that nothing has inherent value, one can never choose, and ultimately would have no reason to choose. The only sensible activity would be to refuse to make a choice.Hence, the artist is the hero, and the hero-artist is Barth himself at some ontogenic level removed from mere autobiography. Perseus depicts the predicaments of being Barth by accepting the fictionality of his own character. In contrast to many postmodernist fictions in which the characters are in search of their authors or are victimized by the author of their tale, as in Gabriel Josipovici's "Mobius the Stripper" (1974) or Nabokov's Transparent Things (1972), Chimera depicts a heterarchy, a metalepsis in which the author does not possess the highest authority in the text. He is as fictional as the characters, even at some points leaving the decisions to character-authors to determine an ending or a course of action. In this kind of autobiography, Barth's personal anecdotes of the incidents of his life are substituted by the anecdotes of literary incidents, climaxes and falls. Barth has converted himself to a textual function whose art-line is figurally depicted by the life-lines of Scheherazade, Perseus and Bellerophon.Barth fictionalizes the autobiography, and acclaims a different ontological status from pure fiction, resulting in a stronger one. Chimera becomes an "autobiographical fiction, not a straight autobiography" (McHale 203). Barth co-opts himself as a character (whether Genie, Perseus, Bellerophon or Polyeidus). Roland Barthes explains what happens to the author when he/she inserts or inscribes himself in the text,It is not that the Author may not "come back" in the Text, in his text, but he then does so as a "guest". If he is a novelist, he is inscribed in the novel like one of his characters, figured in the carpet, no longer privileged, paternal, aletheological, his inscription is ludic. He becomes, as it were, a paper-author; his life is no longer the origin of his fictions but a fiction contributing to his work. [. . .] The I which writes the text, it too, is never more than a paper-I. ("From Text to Work", 161)Accordingly, Barth never intends to centralize the autobiographical aspects of the novel. He hides behind the paper I in "Perseid", "Bellerophoniad" and Genie in "Dunyazadiad", yielding to their implications as characters.Chinese-Box or Russian Babushka dolls can exemplify how autobiography works out in Chimera. Brain McHale in Postmodernist Fiction (1987) defines this concept in terms of an analogue,A recursive structure [Chinese-Box] results when you perform the same operation over and over again, each time operating on the product of the previous operation. For example, take a film, which projects a fictional world; within that world, place actors and a film crew, who make a film which in turn projects its own fictional world; then within that world place another film crew, who make another film, and so on. (112-3)Gerard Genette in Narrative Discourse (1980) calls this recursive structure "the metalanguage of narrative levels". He denominates the primary world diegesis. The secondary world within diegesis, he calls it hypodiegesis. Then it would be possible for the characters of a fiction to descend deeper into a hypo-hypodiegesis (238-42). This structure has the effect of interrupting and complicating the ontological horizon of the fiction, multiplying its worlds, and laying bare the process of world-construction."Perseid" along with the two other novellas can be elaborated in the light of the Chinese-box prototype. The diegetic world in each of them is the mythological construction of Scheherazade, Perseus and Bellerophon. Primarily, the novellas are nothing but the recounting of three myths. Barth tries to remain faithful to the mythic diegesis by preserving the characters, places and on the whole the cosmology of each myth. Nevertheless, he steps into a hypodiegesis by making each of the avatars the author of their own fiction, as Perseus confirms, trying to "learn about art and life" (60). They are both "the protagonist and author" (83). Within this hypodiegetic world of character-authorship, Barth imposes a hypo-hypodiegesis, that is, his own world as the author of the entire novel. In other words, he disguises behind his own characters as they tell their stories. He resides at the depth of the text, and observes how Sherry's struggle for writing the part three of her tale or Perseus' sexual impotencies reflect his own predicaments on the way to his artistic climax. Calyxa, the prostitute-priestess summarizes Barth's autobiographical strive: "How can Being Perseus Again be your goal, when you have to be Perseus to reach it?" (101). Being Barth again at his climax, overcoming the writer's cramp (block) requires revising of Barth himself, getting to know his past in order to ascend to the diegesis of the future world, in which he is no more a hypo-world but the primary diegetic level of his own fiction as Perseus says: " I thought to overtake with understanding my present paragraph as it were by examining my paged past, and thus pointed, proceed serene to the future's sentence" (83).Hence, it can be concluded that Barth fictionalizes his own biography or literary biography in order to bring about a double coding, that is, amalgamating past and present, fiction and reality. He never tries to differentiate between the various ontological levels that he inserts in the novella. The only thing that matters for him is disrupting the run-of-the-mill autonomy of predetermined life structure, such as that of Freitag's. Whether Perseus or Bellerophon, Barth never ceases to exist in his characters, and sketches his own life-line in which the climax can also serve as the unknotting of another tale. For Barth, the foundationalism of storytelling is not worth the linearity of a bunch of tales rising and falling into an ending.De Manian Hero-MachyDe Man in The Rhetoric of Romanticism (1984) deals with the problematics of autobiography. He initially targets the attempt for treating autobiography as if it were a literary genre among others. Since the concept of genre designates an aesthetic as well as a historical function, what is at stake is not only the distance that shelters the author of autobiography from his experience but the possible convergence of aesthetics and history. By making autobiography into a genre, one elevates it above the literary status of mere reportage, chronicle, or memoir and gives it a place, albeit a modest one, among the canonical hierarchies of the major literary genres. This does not go without some embarrassment, since compared to tragedy, or epic or lyric poetry, autobiography always looks slightly disreputable and self-indulgent in a way that may be symptomatic of its incompatibility with the monumental dignity of aesthetic values. De Man continues his observations of autobiography in regard with its generic history, whether Augustine's Confessions is the first autobiography, its style, that is, if it is possible to write an autobiography in verse.Then he moves to the crux of his debate; the distinction between autobiography and fiction. Autobiography seems to depend on actual and potentially verifiable events in a less ambivalent way than fiction does. It seems to belong to a simpler mode of referentiality, of representation, and of diegesis. It may contain lots of phantasms and dreams, but these deviations from reality remain rooted in a single subject whose identity is defined by the uncontested readability of his proper name, like John Barth that intermediates the gap between character-Barth and author-Barth. The reader approaches the text with Barth's signature on the text, in other words the name itself creates a presupposition, an identity in the mind of the reader. However, de Man moves beyond the literal problematics of autobiography to a more figural sphere, and asserts that the author of any autobiography becomes a trope in his own text. He is no longer the determined, outer identity that imposes his extra-textual elements upon the text, but he becomes part of his own work. He is the metaphor of his real self; Barth in Chimera - Perseus or Bellerophon - is the metaphor of Barth-the-real. In other words, the author is lost in his own medium; Barth hardly arises above the level of his own fictionality to the level of pure autobiography. De Man concludes that the "distinction between fiction and autobiography is not either/or polarity but that it is undecidable" (70). This tension between fiction and autobiography is capable of infinite acceleration and in fact is not successive but simultaneous.Autobiography, then, is not a genre or a mode but a figure of reading or of understanding that occurs to some degree in all texts. The autobiographical moment happens as an alignment between the two subjects involved in the process of reading in which they determine each other by mutual reflective substitution. The two subjects are on the one hand, the author who declares himself the subject of his own understanding - the author of the text - and the one that is specularly reflected in the text, who bears his name - the author in the text. The mirror-like quality of autobiography supposedly renders self-knowledge for the author, but as aforementioned this quality becomes tropological. "The study of autobiography is caught in a double motion; the necessity to escape from the tropology of the subject and the equally inevitable reinscription of this necessity within the specular model of recognition" (72). The discourse of autobiography is "a discourse of self-restoration" (74). Any author by venturing into pinning down his ontogeny strives toward the preservation of his self along with gaining a self-revealing insight to his inner depth.The definition of autobiography with regard to de Man's perspectives instigates his de-valorization of the genre (now used with more caution). He believes that prosopopeia is the trope of autobiography, in which author's name (signature) is made intelligible and memorable as a face. It is the fiction of an apostrophe to an absent, or voiceless entity, which posits the possibility of the latter's reply and confers upon it the power of speech. "Voices assume mouth, eye, and finally face, a chain that is manifest in the etymology of the trope's name, prosopon poien, to confer a mask or a face (prosopon)" (76). Autobiography as the prosopopeia of the voice and the name of the author transforms him into a voice-from-beyond. In fact, it is the rhetorical function of prosopopeia to posit voice or face by means of language. Also, "to the extent that language is a figure, it is not the thing itself, but the representation, the picture of the thing, as such, it is as silent and mute as pictures are" (80). Language is always privative, and it works "unremittingly and noiselessly". To the extent that, in writing, "we are dependent on this language we are all deaf and mute - not silent, which implies the possible manifestation of sound at our own will, but silent as a picture, that is to say eternally deprived of voice and condemned to muteness" (80).It can be concluded that autobiography as a genre is universally acknowledged as the self-preserver, self-restorator of its author. However, for de Man it is a figure of speech, prosopopeia. Its literal sphere is that of personification, or giving voice, face or human attributes to the work of art in order to represent its author. The figural pole of the trope is that of silence, absence and facelessness. The author is not restorated by autobiography but diminished via its decrees of linguistic referentiality. Autobiography is like any other language figural, and can never be expected to yield itself to closure or totalization. As de Man mentions, the aporia between the literal and figural spheres of the prosopopeia is never settled. Autobiography veils a defacement of its author of which it is itself the cause.De Man's concept of autobiography applied to "Perseid" concords with Barth's attempt in creating a heterotopia; a world seething with conflicting ontologies. It should be mentioned that this procedure can be applied to "Dunyazadiad" and "Bellerophoniad" too, since the three novellas are of the same content, and follow a common objective, that is, depicting the author as the creator and character of his own art. "Perseid" begins with "Good evening", that marks the continuation of "Dunyazadiad", and entrance into another hereocosm - the otherness of the fictional world. From the very outset, the text substantiates it fictionality: "Stories last longer than men, stones than stories, stars than stones. But even our stars' nights are numbered, and with them will pass this patterned tale to a long-deceased earth" (59). Barth insinuates his mastery over the text by foregrounding the tale-ness of the narrative and also by addressing the narratee, here Calyxa, in first person point of view. The aestho-autogamy of Perseus, that is, his birth into the world of the novella is when he "is sea-leveled, forty, parched and plucked" (60). He is at the height of his heroic career, has slain Medusa, married Andromeda, and now twenty years after slaying Medusa, he is dead, living in heaven with a nymph-priestess-prostitute catering him.In heaven, Elysium or whatever signifier it can be called, Perseus recounts his story to Calyxa through flashbacks, anecdotes and particularly the panels that depict "alabasterly several chapters" (59) of his youth. He actually tells the story of his life from these panels, and at some points cannot finish the tale without the upcoming panel, and presses Calyxa to tell him how far the murals go, for while he could predict some incidents but several of them such as his demise were obscure to him. Thus, panels present the authorial role of another author, that is, Barth who procures his character with the story to tell. In this regard, the amalgamation of art and life creates the hypodiegesis to which Barth belongs. Barth presents the process of becoming himself by the camouflage of Perseus. He himself after writing Giles Goat-boy (1966) was struggling with creative writing, and the used-upness of his potentialities culminated in Chimera. In this fictionalized autobiography, Barth flickers between being the fictionalized I, Perseus, who narrates the tale and his real I (real author), the one whose experiences are reflected in the text. But he is totally aware of the fact that the absolute reality of him as the author becomes just another level of the fiction, and his reality retreats to a further remove. He reincarnates himself in Genie, Perseus or Polyeidus, and retains his omnipresence and omnipotence throughout the novel, particularly in "Perseid", where without the role of a mentor, that of Genie or Polyeidus, it is Perseus himself that takes on the course of his narrative. Thus, diegetic level of Perseus, as the primary, mythological ontology directly evokes the hypodiegesis of Barth as the author.Having centralized Barth as the subject of autobiography, it would be metaphorically de Manian to de-figure him. "Perseid" can be considered as an autobiography, which in its own turn is the prosopopeia of Barth. The novella as a trope possesses the literality of delineating Barth's personally experienced tensions within an author. The conceptual sphere is that of Barth's absence, facelessness from his own text; he is as fictional as other characters. In other words, "to reveal authors position within the ontological structure is only to introduce the author into fiction; this gesture merely widens the structure to include author as a fictional character" (McHale 197-8). Thus, Jac Tharpe's labeling of Chimera as an autobiography is obscured by the fact that the specular presence of the author as the subject of his own text yields itself to a self-defacement. The autobiographical text never allows its author to divulge his inner self regently. Jorge Luis Borges' "Borges and I" is the closest parable to de Man's notion of the author of autobiography with two selves. The article begins with the sense of division between the authentic self and an inauthentic role or mask. The innovation and the source of paradox is Borges' identification of inauthenticity with the self that emerges in and through writing, the written persona from which the authentic self claims to be in constant retreat,Years ago I tried to free myself from him, and I went from the mythologies of the city suburbs to games with time and infinity, but now those games belong to Borges, and I will have to think up something else. Thus is my life a flight, and I lose everything, and everything belongs to oblivion or to him? (Borges 200)He continues to say that if the protest against the inauthentic written self is itself made in and through writing, then from whom does this protest originate? Who speaks?: "I don't know which one of the two of us is writing this page" (Borges 201). Accordingly, the writer vanishes, and is eclipsed by his writing; he dies by projecting himself into writing. The paradoxical relation between the writer and written self correlates in de Man's author-of-text and author-in-text. The tension between the two results in not self-advertisement or self-liberation of the author but, a self-deselfment. Perseus the embodiment of Barth-in-text observes that "myth isn't reality" (109), thus his reflection of Barth can never be accounted for as true essence. When he has told the two-third of his story up to the first climax where he is going to confront Andromeda and her lover, Cassiopeia, he ironically proclaims: "Let my second tale be truly a second, not mere replication of my first; let a spell of monologue precede new dialogue . . ." (115). Here Perseus exemplifies de Man's dual selves; the written self of Barth admits his inability to depict a true picture of the writer Barth. Any try would result in just a "replication", a mirror-like relation between the two in which Barth's reflection in Perseus reflects a faceless Barth, a mere echo in void. The final conversation between New Medusa and Perseus testifies such process of de-facement. Perseus is now constellated into Delta Persei. Thus Barth is finally converted into an utterance; as long as Perseus talks, Barth can exist. The worry of a blank page or silence shadows the text, pertaining to Barth's struggle for having his autobiographical hero as a refuge from the whiteness of the blank space; "hurrying away and filling up the page with discourse" (Federman 51) . However, "Perseid" ends with "Good night", after resonating within the last pages, the voices of Perseus and New Medusa vanish into the a dark silence. Barth's self-preserving attempts succumb to the discourse of non-existence, to "infinite pause" (Chimera 90). The final dialogue between New Medusa and Perseus encompasses Barth's objective of writing such an autobiographical text, which is never accomplished.Barth's attempt in immortalizing himself, thus shapeshifting to a constellated mythological demi-god, Perseus, reduces him to just a composite of visible signs, yet silent. Ironically, he is content with what de Man considers to be mortalizing, a process of self-erasure. The contentment that Barth relishes, being "rehearsed as long as men and women read the stars", paradoxically instigates the perpetual presence of his defacement in the mind of his readers. Since he has not managed to present a true image of himself, what remains is just an illusory, faceless reflection of Barth in the mind of his audience.Thus, the much claimed autobiographical facet of Chimera collapses. "Perseid" represents de-faced Barth who from the very outset of the novel has ventured to originate a strong link between his artistic career and the text. Along with "Perseid", "Bellerophoniad" rounds off in a zero zone in which the autobiographical hero sustains his ontological status, however, as a decentered phantom echoing in the final pages. In spite of the fact that Barth has accomplished to establish a fictionalized autobiography, he has been obsessed with the diegesis of his mythological hero, hence backgrounding what he initially intended to foreground; his most inner self as an author. The application of de Man's autobiographical approach elucidates the figurality of any type of writing or genre, even the most wildly-recognized realistic ones. Fictionality or deviation from objective truth can be traced in any assumedly real-life-based writing. J. G. Ballard in his introduction to Crash (1974) asserts: "We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent reality (Cited in Travers 310). Henceforth, Barth can never do away with the fictionality of his text. The aporia in which he is entangled is between being an outsider or an insider with regard to the text. As an outsider or the subject of autobiography, he is hindered to see his reflection in the text by Barth-the-insider or Perseus. It goes without saying that there is no edge or divining line between the two; they intermingle to the extent that the distinction between author-Barth and Perseus-Barth is hardly possible. dr seuss cat in hat book