Tuesday, August 20, 2013

10:54 AM I'm reading again. It's the Dan Brown book, The Lost Symbol. As usual with Dan Brown, there is lots of woo woo in this one. In followup to what I'm reading I've already gone to the Internet for Freemasonry and Noetic Science. The most interesting thing I found about Freemasonry was the fact that most groups of Masons are strictly segregated racially, though there are Black Masonic lodges. Many of the white masonic lodges still don't recognize the black groups as legitimate. There is one group in Atlanta of white Masons who have initiated two black members, though, and there may be more that I didn't find in my search. At least they are making progress.

On the other hand, the boy and girl scouting movements were segregated during the early 1900's. The Boy Scouts were finally sued in 1974 by the NAACP and desegregated. The Girl Scouts began voluntarily to open up in the 1950's, and were praised by Martin Luther King, Jr. for their efforts. Still, there was a recent incident in which two black girls were expelled due to a talk they gave about their parents civil rights activities. I never had any kind of racist references of any kind from anybody, nor ever observed any, when I was in the Girl Scouts. Our troop leaders were both very generous and openhearted people. I will say that the issue of race was never discussed, however, so maybe there were simply no incidents that inflamed racist reactions, and there were no black girls in our troops. There were no civil rights activities in Thomasville when I was growing up, so I was not “awakened” to the issue until I was in college.

11:30 AM Back to Dan Brown. This book is interesting. It may not be a murder mystery, but it is enthralling. Lots of suspense and small clues to trace.

5:33 I have just come across a Masonic “Chamber of Reflection” in the book, and it is gruesome. I can see why they keep their rituals secret. I will stick with more positive and simple philosophies. I found a description of it on the Internet, too, so it's not exactly a secret, I guess. But the symbolism of the skull and crossbones and the scythe is very dark. I think things like that pull the person who pursues them down emotionally, and I am prone to depression.

Back to reading.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

8:13 AM News – there have been 299 dolphin deaths and strandings on the east coast so far this year, as compared to 111 for all of last year. Some had pulmonary lesions and one had a virus similar to the one that causes measles, morbillivirus, which killed 700 during the years of 1987 and 1988. I hate to see dolphins die, because they are so friendly with humans and so intelligent, plus in a fishy kind of way they are really beautiful and graceful. I grieve whenever I hear of sea life dying, because we have over-fished to such a degree that whole species are becoming endangered, and still the unrestricted fishing goes on. Every time they hunt tuna they get dolphins in the net. I forget where it was happening, in Europe I think, but some tuna fishermen look for dolphins hunting tuna – they can tell where the tuna are by the large group of dolphins gathered together and jumping up out of the water – and they put out very large nets around the whole group of tuna and dolphins and draw in the nets. The dolphins can't get out and they drown. That's why there are those statements on the can of tuna saying that no dolphins were killed. The news story said that that is probably not true. That so many fishermen use that technique that there probably were dolphins killed. I don't boycott very many things, but I have stopped buying tuna. I don't even like it as much as mackerel anyway, and mackerel is less expensive. When I had a cat I used to buy a can of mackerel and divide it up into three servings, one to eat,two to freeze and always feeding my cat some. Normally I only gave her dry food, but she did love mackerel.

Reading – This book is definitely a thriller. The villain is a very spooky bad guy, looking for the “Ancient Mysteries” of the Masons. The author makes it clear that the Masons are a force for good, and the two Masons who are in the story so far are presented as being very powerful and deeply involved in mystical things. Langdon is, too, of course, in that he is a scholar of symbolism. Right now the villain has made it into Katherine Solomon's laboratory and is pursuing her in a pitch dark room to kill her. She has been doing laboratory experiments in Noetic Science to prove some of the ancient stories true, and the Villain is out to stop her. It was stated that he is under a very strong conviction that the world will change if the Ancient Mysteries are proven to be fact and not legend, and he thinks it is imperative that the information in the Mysteries remains dark. He has a Middle Eastern name, but the author has not made it clear whether he is with a terrorist group or what his affiliation is. Why does he want the world to remain ignorant? So his people can manipulate politics or the world cultures to gain power? I have yet to find out. Back to the book.

10:24 AM The sky is dark and thunder is rumbling around. I hope we get an active thunderstorm. It breaks up the monotony and gives me a good light show. Good background for a mysterious novel, too. Hopefully we won't lose power.