Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM Ms. Axiological flummeries from Alan Alda, coverboy: Some of the nicest moments of my life have happened over meals. Going out to dinner with the people I'm working with on a film...
...When I served on the International Women's Year Commission, I was the only man in the room at one meeting in Washington...
...The woman I love more than anybody I've ever loved told me two nights ago that she needed two weeks off from me after some hassling over the jealousy issue...
...How do I know...
...June 13, 1981] Soviet Life Three brave Americans defy the CIA and the American Legion to express their true sentiments about the benevolent USSR in the free and vivacious correspondence section of Soviet Life: We could not resist the opportunity to comment on the cover of your February issue of Soviet Life...
...In a Kennedy Political Union speech held Tuesday night in Ward I, Gregory said the shootings of President John Kennedy, his brother Robert and even the recent assassination attempt on President Reagan can all be connected with covert CIA and FBI activity aimed at increasing the power of the law enforcement agencies and organized crime...
...I went to Armenia and I hardly could believe my eyes the things they did in that short time...
...Thompson also extols Upper Paleolithic culture for its similar understanding...
...I remember also when my father used to say or whisper that our only hope was that our big uncle would do something to free us...
...This thing called American would make Hitler look like God," Gregory said...
...I take another toke and another sip...
...That was easy...
...On my return to Portland I was invited to use them in a slide show for members of the Oregon Artists Society...
...One coincidence in the assassination attempt, Gregory said, was that Bush's son had dinner with John Hinckley's brother the day of the assassination attempt...
...William Irwin Thompson, just minutes before the vice squad arrived at his library: Rather coyly, Thompson hints at his own taste for the feminine principle, when he mentions some corroborating "experiences in Kriya yoga...
...Thank you...
...April 1981] Maryknoll On the pious pages of Maryknoll the eminent Eugene H. Ciarlo demonstrates how Dr...
...The Tantric yogi considers, with Thompson, that he has experienced the state of being female...
...We would like to see more of this Soviet worker...
...November 1980] The Eagle (American University) A shocking report on enemy action within the United States, thus far suppressed by most of our major news media: A chain of political assassinations in the U.S., and the recent killing of nearly two dozen black children in Atlanta can both be linked to an intricate conspiracy involving the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and organized crime in America, according to political activist and comedian Dick Gregory...
...Schlesinger, a beleaguered homeowner on East 64th Street: The rich have estates...
...It was acclaimed the Society's finest show of the year...
...There is no fear of any kind or from anyone...
...I was angry and yelling passionately about some setback for women's rights, and 1 heard myself saying, "They can't do this to us...
...May 23, 1981] San Francisco Chronicle The war against crime as practiced by advanced criminologists in the psychic capital of America: More than 40 devotees of Transcendental Meditation met behind closed doors daily through April and May, and now declare that this collective act of contemplation had the effect of cutting crime in San Francisco...
...He quotes a former therapist friend who said to him: "Real change involves enormous pain...
...It was a dream, and that dream came late, but it finally came and now we are a free nation, and in that 60 years we did very well...
...It always boils down to one person thinking the Dodgers will win and the other thinking they won't...
...But he describes how during Tantric meditation, "the sushumna of the spine becomes a vagina and the yogi feels an ecstatic experience that is both male and female at once...
...Such a fusion of spiritual and genital consciousness in esoteric thought gives biology an inordinately important symbolic place, and though Hera's reaction to Tiresias's presumption was perhaps excessive, surely one of the inviolable mysteries is the experience of the other sex...
...I agree...
...Going out to dinner with the people I'm working with on a film is more important to me than rehearsals...
...In fact, one of the reasons that feminism has so much to offer everyone is because of its celebration of differences and admiration of diversity...
...the rest of us look at mounting medical bills and yearn for national health insurance...
...June 1981] The New York Times The comparative condition of human rights in Argentina as reported by Tom Wicker, whose knowledge of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has apparently been limited to Vodka and the Bolshoi: Nowhere, in any society or any political system, whether of left or right, are those principles more systematically violated today than they are in Argentina...
...In addition to the assassination attempts, Gregory also accused the FBI and the National Center for Disease Control with the recent death of 23 youths in Atlanta...
...June 2, 1981...
...I was jealous and ridiculous about it...
...June 16, 1981] The Daily Olympian An intellectual reader of Olympia, Washington's Daily Olympian files thought that could make every chef in the country into an accessory before the fact: I have read with interest your coverage of John Hinckley's shooting of President Reagan...
...His wealthy parents and popular siblings, his infatuation for "Taxi Driver's" Jodie Foster were all written about, but can the old standards of background and culture fully explain this bizarre behavior...
...Marx has been ignominiously unhorsed in Fidel's island prayer chamber: I enjoyed the recent Maryknoll on "Religion in Cuba...
...What about his diet...
...Kegham Agegian Royal Oak, Michigan The beautiful six-page spread of the Hermitage in the February 1981 issue of Soviet Life brought back memories of my visit to the Hermitage in September of 1976...
...Come to think of it, eating is one of the few sensuous things people can do together...
...What came to me mostly was that the Christianity that used to be preached can now be lived...
...This is the first time she's put the shoe on the other foot...
...Their doors are never locked day or night...
...We seem to deny that even atheists can be anonymous Christians in their lifestyle...
...There is now a technique among people who practice TM that relieves the collective stress and violence in society and improves the quality of life," said TM executive Robert Roth with little more ceremony than someone introducing a new line of machine tools...
...Anne M. Cramer St...
...Paul, Minnesota I am an Armenian 83 years old and I remember a long long time ago when we were under the yoke of Turkish rulers and all the Armenians were treated very badly...
...Sharing great food is a sensuous experience in a controlled environment...
...During my visit I was only able to see and photograph but a fraction of its beautiful art...
...Arthur Hansen Portland, Oregon [May 1981] The Wall Street Journal A report on life in the ghetto from Prof...
...I just finished reading Harry Stein's column "Looking Hard at Number One" (Ethics, February...
...the poor go to public playgrounds, swimming pools and parks...
...My insides quiver...
...I find politics and sports amusing for about five minutes...
...Now I know what the feminists mean by "double standard...
...However, I was able to purchase sets of 24 slides each of paintings of English, Flemish and Netherlands artists, sculpture and treasures from the gold room at the museum gift shop...
...The insight kicked me in the ass...
...April 27, 1981] Esquire Hard times and sempiternal angst in Kalamazoo, Michigan, exhibited in the correspondence section of Es-quire, a man's magazine: I am sitting at my bedroom desk, sipping on a quart of Miller and smoking a joint...
...We Armenians know very well the value of peace and freedom...
...It's irrational, unfelt, and backed up by irrelevant data memorized for the sheer act of knowing...
...The newspaper's description of a repairman's report of Hinckley slumped over in front of his TV surrounded by an apartment filled with junk food wrappers suggests to me that we need to look much more closely at how his diet has affected his behavior...
...By killing the youths and snipping off the tips of youngsters' penises, he said, the agency is extracting the blood needed to create the artificial form of the cancer cure which sells for $22 billion dollars a pint...
...I tend to be relentless, but I talk about serious problems in warm tones because I believe the biggest basis for rapprochement is respect for differences...
...Marina Warner takes the spellbound readers of the New Republic through a review of the randy lucubrations of Dr...
...That is surely building up the kingdom of God-our whole effort...
...Thompson also suggests that Christ incorporates the feminine principle through the vulva-shaped wound in his side...
...Gregory said the plan was part of a complex scheme designed by the CIA to increase the production of the possible cancer miracle drug interferon...
...I don't want to sound freakishly perfect, but...
...I've requested the same "space time" a couple of times myself...
...I keep looking for reasons of why someone who was seemingly well adjusted as a young teenager would change so drastically as a young man...
...It is so rare that we Americans can be objective about that particular country, or any communist country for that matter...
...It is wonderful for a small nation like Armenia to be partners with a big country like Russia and have the same freedom and same right in everything and everywhere...
...The rich have doctors on Park Avenue...
...April 17, 1981] The New Republic Prof...
...He reinterprets the famous enigma in the Shaft of the Dead Man at Lascaux, and finds that the fallen man with an erect penis is a shaman envisioning through psychic forces in the genitals the Great Goddess in her aspect of a huge life-giving bison...
...Gennadi Bashtanyuk has a far-reaching appeal any Western woman could appreciate...
...We Armenians outside of Armenia hope and pray only for one thing, peace and no war any more...
...Gregory, who was humorous while discussing serious matters, said Vice President George Bush "is a CIA man to the end...
...This must be hubris...
Vol. 14 • August 1981 • No. 8