The Way Things Are, or Lucretius, Part Deux

Nature has no tyrants over her,
but always acts of her own will; she has
no part of any godhead whatsoever.

Which of the gods is strong enough
to hold the reins of absolute profundity.
Who can be immanent in every time,
in every place – to cloud the world in dark.
Who sends the lightning’s blast
even at his own temples?
And in wrath, lets fly the bolts
that pass the guilty by
and murder undeserving innocents?

Death is nothing to us,
has no relevance to our condition,
knowing that the mind is mortal.
We may be reassured that in our death
we have no cause for fear, we cannot be
wretched in nonexistence.
No one, when body and soul are lost in sleep,
finds oneself missing, or conducts a search
for his identity.

So we must think of death as being nothing,
as less than sleep, or less than nothing, even,
since our array of matter never stirs
to reassemble,
once the chill of death has taken over.
Life’s a gift to no man only a loan to him.
Earth’s our mother, also our common grave.
And so Earth is receiving loss and gain forever.

What we do not have
seems better than everything else in all the world,
but should we get it, we want something else.
Our gaping thirst for life is never quenched.

The greatest wealth, is living modestly,
serene, content with little.
There’s enough of this possession always.
The rich man’s blessed life.  What vanity!

Fear of the gods crept into human hearts,
imposing over all the world dread awe
of holy, groves, altars, and images.

One more thing you can’t believe:
that the gods dwell somewhere
in hallowed places in our universe.
Not so: gods’ natures are
far from our touch, therefore, being intangible,
they cannot touch us either.
The gods had no need to plan this world.
This world of ours was not prepared for us
by any god.  Too much is wrong with it.

People in wonderment
watched how the season’s variable rounds
followed an order they could not discern,
so they evasively assumed the gods
must be responsible; that all things went
at their caprice.

They gave them homes in heaven
since that was where the moon and the sun,
clouds, rain, snow, winds, thunderbolts,
and hail all had their residence.
What sorry creatures!
Unhappy race of people, to grant the gods
so much and add bitter vindictiveness.

Ah, no. In true devotion lies the power
To look at all things with a peaceful mind.
Even those who have learned the lesson well
that gods lead lives supremely free of care,
may wonder, now and then, by what intent
this thing or that can happen.
This wonderment leads to confusion,
leads them to regress to obsolete religious awe.

Shut out all such stuff, I tell you,
Stop having thoughts unworthy of the gods,
Alien to their serenity.
An ignoramus never understands
What causes things on earth or above,
and so he thinks the gods must be responsible.

Our terrors and our darknesses of mind
Must be dispelled, then, not by sunshine’s rays,
Not by those shining arrows of the light,
But by insight into nature, and a scheme
Of systematic contemplation.
[illustration from The New Yorker]

Before Jesus there was Lucretius

I am speaking at the local UUA congregation this Sunday. My topic will be "Joys of Secularism!" The text will be The Nature of Things by Lucretius, written about 60 b.c.e. I am using the Rolfe Humphreys translation, entitled The Way Things Are. The book or essay is a 7500 line poem.

I really got into it and summarized it in two pages. I left out all the stuff on the senses, including preferred positions for sexual intercourse, which scholars say doesn't differ much from what other classic writers said. And I left out the lengthy and depressing ending on the plague in Athens and how people die and their bodies decay. But I am guessing that the rest of what he wrote will surprise many readers. Here is part I:

You may think you are entering
the ABC’s of godlessness. Not so.
The opposite is true. Too many times
Religion mothers crime and wickedness.
I try to loose people’s spirit from the ties,
tight-knotted, which religion binds around them.

Our staring-point shall be this principle:
Nothing at all is ever born from nothing by the gods’ will.
Ah, but people’s minds are frightened
because they see, on earth and in the heaven,
many events whose causes are to them
impossible to fix; so, they suppose
the will of the gods is the reason.
But we shall perceive with greater clarity
how things are caused,
and no “gods’ will” about it.

Our second axiom is this, that nature
resolves each object to its basic atoms
but does not ever utterly destroy it.
Solid and everlasting; these we call
seeds of things, firstlings, atoms,
and in them lies The sum of all created things.

All perish, all, and in one flick of time
nothing be left but desert, chaos, darkness.
If you know this,
it only takes a very little trouble
to learn the pattern of the way things are.

These lessons brighten each other,
no dark night will keep you pathless,
astray, from ultimate vision and light,
but all things are illumined
in each other’s radiance.

Sweetness lies
in watching evils you yourself are free from.
We do not need so much
for bodily comfort, only loss of pain.

I grant you, luxuries are very pleasant,
but nature does not really care if houses
lack golden statues in the halls, young men
holding out fiery torches in their hands
to light the all-night revels.
Much poorer people are every bit as happy.  

Why do you hesitate, why doubt that reason
alone has absolute power?
Our life is spent in shadows,
and it suffers in the dark.
Our terrors and our darknesses of mind
must be dispelled, then, not by sunshine’s rays,
not by those shining arrows of the light,
but by insight into nature, and a scheme
of systematic contemplation.

We can see all things flowing away with time,
while the sum of things Is constantly renewed;
all creatures live in symbiosis.
There is no center or bottom to the universe,
space is infinite, unlimited,
reaching beyond all bounds, in all directions.

Some people do not know how matter works.
They think that nature needs
the will of the gods to fit the seasons of the year
so nicely to human needs.

To be sure, we breed to keep the race alive,
but to think that gods
have organized all things for our sake
is nothing but a lot of foolishness.
The nature of the world just could not be
a product of the god’s’ devising; no,
there are too many things the matter with it.
Two thirds of it is too hot or too cold.

More Choo Choo History

After another hour of watching Southern Pacific, British, Russian, and Chinese trains on YouTube, I found a picture of the train station in Sioux City! I searched on Ebay, where there are always postcards of everything, and there was this postcard:

The station was located at Second and Jackson Streets. Carol remembers her Dad showing her a roundhouse in that part of town, but I now remember it was only a turntable behind the station for turning the engines around. The tower must be 8 stories tall. There were 4,6, or 8 tracks under the “shed” in back of the station for boarding. (There must be a word for “getting off” a train – “de-boarding?)

I found another roundhouse in Sioux City, too. This Chicago/Northwestern structure had 36 bays! Many photos (copyrighted) may be seen at Siouxland Railroads in Google Books. The photo on p. 121 says that the roundhouses were razed in 1950, but on p. 38 is a photo of them in the 1953 flood, which explains why I can remember them.

When I lived in Chicago, a popular book was Lost Chicago, with photos of all the buildings and other structures that had been gone for some time. (See Lost Chicago in Google Books.) Mostly, these things disappear and we think little of it. We tend to think that what exists now is better than what existed in the past. And since it is out of sight it is out of mind. The rail industry was in decline before WWII and declined rapidly afterward. Many people say they hate to see the old ways go, but they went because we found something better, in this case, the automobile, the tractor trailer, and the interstate highway, . Still, many of us will go out of our way to see, hear, and ride on a train pulled by a steam engine.

The sermon today reminds us that steam engines are about power and spirit. Afficionados of trains use the phrase “live steam” to describe the source of power. These behemoths come to “life” when fired up. Another “lost structure” on Second St. was the “steam plant,” a huge city utility that produced steam that was piped to all of the downtown buildings (about a square mile). I guess they are all on their own now, as are we all, in our increasingly fragmented and individualistic society.

Choo Choo Ch’Boogie – Me and Trains

I was looking at youtube videos of real trains and made a few discoveries which sent me into deep memories and internet research.

One of the momentous events when I was five in 1949 was that I rode the Silver Streak passenger train from Omaha to Kansas City. This was the famous Midwest Zephyr, streamlined stainless steel class transportation. We left Sioux City, Iowa, and changed trains in Omaha at the huge Union Pacific railroad station there. I am disappointed that I can’t find any photos of the great train station that once existed in Sioux City.

The Zephyr was a Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad train. In Kansas City we boarded a dirty old train pulled by a belching steam engine to visit my uncle Merle in Sedalia. He worked at the K-T or Burlington railroad yards there.

In Sedalia as we got off the train, I saw double water fountains, for White and Colored, which made a lasting impression on me. This photo is very much like what I remembered.


In the ‘50's my aunt Verrelle from DeWitt, Iowa would drive north to Maquokeda and catch the Milwaukee Midwest Hiawatha to Sioux City. These were classy yellow-orange and red trains with compartments, a fancy dining car and rounded lounge car at the rear. I begged for a ride, so my Mom and Aunt took me to Sioux Falls and back for a shopping trip.
When the railroads died, Sioux City displayed a Great Northern locomotive near the city auditorium. It has since been restored (for display only) and so has the loco house and roundtable next to the Sioux River and Hwy 12 just west and north of the city. I thought that was a cool place when I was a kid. (It is clearly visible on Google Maps; search for Sioux City Iowa roundtable.)

Carol and I rode a dinner train in Kentucky through the bourbon distillery countryside in the ‘90's. That was neat. And now there is a Saratoga and North Creek Railway (sncrr.com) that stops in Hadley across the Hudson from us. (Oddly, this railroad is owned and operated by Iowa Pacific Holdlings.) So it is now possible to travel by rail from Penn Station to Saratoga Springs and change trains to the Adirondacks. The photo here shows the bridge over the Sacandaga just before it joins the Hudson at Hadley. (The Sacandaga is controlled by a dam, and when the water is released it makes a great white water river over those rocks.)

But the real deal is the Iowa Interstate Railroad.  (Oddly, owned by a group in Delaware.) They haul a lot of freight around Iowa and Illinois on track that used to be silent. And they have added two gigantic Chinese QJ model locos, which haul freight and passengers. You can sit for several hours watching the videos.

These things somehow passed the EPA tests, but I don’t see how. The modern diesels behind the loco are not for power, but are pulled by the steam engine. They are there to provide electricity from their generators for the passenger cars. There were 1,800+ tickets sold for this trip. The whistle that let's you know something really big is coming is an American Illinois Central whistle (A Bb minor triad?).  Here is a video of the other engine with what I think was the original Chinese whistle.  Wonderful video from alongside on a road at its powerful loping speed.

The Chinese built more than 4,000 of these locos in the ‘50's to the ‘90's, based on a Soviet Russian design. This reminds me of the Strelnikov armoured train in Dr. Zhivago.  (No one seems to know if it was a real Soviet loco or one patched together for the film.)

These are all monsters, but not as large as the articulated locos used in the western US during WWII, such as the “Big Boy” 4-8-8-4.  This one is in Proctor, MN, and there is one in the Lake Superior Rail Museum in Duluth.  There are videos on YouTube.

I knew Mel Alderink, a wonderful, gracious man, an Elder at Glen Avon Presbyterian Church there, who was General Superintendent of the DM&IR Railroad during the '70's. Every year I think of another question I should have asked him before he left us.

“Take me right back to the track, Jack.”
 “Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
   Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?”

My Favorite Prayers

I keep finding old things I want to share.  I subscribe to www.comics.com where I get Doonesbury, Pearls Before Swine, and Rose Is Rose, my favorite strips.  Without newspapers, this is the way to get the old style cartoon laughs.

I want to promote Stephen Pastis and his strip, Pearls Before Swine.  He was a lawyer and has a peculiar sense of humor.  Crocidiles (called “Crocs”) live next door to Zeebra, whom they threaten daily.  The Crocs are not well educated or very bright, and speak with a reptilian accent with a bit of Chicago thrown in.  So for example, their fraternity is “Zeeba, Zeeba, Eata.”

So I can share two old strips that illustrate the relativity of prayer.  How would Crocs pray?  What can you legitimately pray for?  Doesn’t it depend on your context?  People pray for what they want without seeing the self-interest reflected in their prayers.  So aren’t the Croc’s prayers really honest?

First, the common bedtime prayer that scares little kids (“Am I gonna die?”).  You need to know that Larry's son is not sure that he wants to be a predator like his Dad, but I suppose genes win:

Second, the famous “Serenity Prayer:”

Me loves da crocs.  And this will have to do since I missed “talk like a pirate day” last Monday.

My Brush with the Death Penalty

The death penalty is all over the news.  I won’t comment on any case; I don’t know that much about them, BUT –

On CNN last night as a crowd awaited the execution Anderson Cooper commented on how a sizeable detachment of the Georgia State Police were ready to repel anyone who tried to cause any violence or try to get into the prison.   So it’s like “Let’s kill anyone who tries to stop this killing.”  And “Let’s keep everyone out of the prison.”  OK.

When I was Presbytery Exec in west central Illinois I was secretary to the Illinois Conference of Churches.  In ‘98 - ‘01 we were able to present a united front to the state for postponing all executions until the guilt or innocence of those sentenced to death was clearly established.  There had been several cases where newly applied DNA evidence clearly showed that the sentenced were innocent. We could not ask for more because we were divided on the basic issue of the legitimacy of the death penalty.  (Apparently, the death of Jesus by execution wasn’t offensive enough. Must have been that the Romans were justified in crucifying him.)

Finally, then Governor George Ryan halted all executions pending determination of guilt.  So we sought an appointment with him to thank him for this (sort of) courageous stand.  (Certainly was, compared to Gov. Rick Perry!)  So here is a picture of us because his staff insisted on a photo op with everyone who came in.  

I regret that I can not name very many of my then colleagues in the photo.  (I am to the right of the Governor, the two of us sons of Ireland.) This meeting had bizarre qualities.  We were all seated around a large conference table and then George entered.  He stopped and looked across the table to the Greek Orthodox priest, third from the right.  Apparently they had encountered each other before, cause George pointed at him and said forcefully:  “You!  Not one word out of you!”  We were stunned.  But our leader, David Anderson, second from left, ever the diplomat, announced that we thanked the governor for the appointment and that we were there to thank him profusely for his delay of the executions.

The Gov responded gruffly: “Don’t any of you get any idea that I am opposed to the death penalty.  I have not said that.”  David smoothed his feathers and even spoke about how we celebrated growth in our beliefs.  The picture was taken and we left.

Later, George did grow.  The number of challenges and innocents on death row had multiplied.  He granted clemency to all on death row in 2003.  Even later, George went to prison for being too much the politician, selling trucker permits for cash contributions to his campaign, as I remember. 

He needed Saul Goodman, the amoral attorney from “Breaking Bad”on AMC.  (Saul is Irish,too, but he says “Who wants an Irish lawyer.  People want a Jewish lawyer.”) Saul would understand Gov. Ryan.  Saul says “Not all crimes are committed by bad people.”  And “Not all evil people are bad.”  Or maybe it’s the other way around.  Gandhi gets the last word: “An eye for an eye makes the world blind.”

Not Blogging, Just Theorizing

I have taken some time off from blogging because school has started.  I am taking Music Theory III at SUNY Adirondack (aka Adirondack Community College).  The first day it seemed impossible that I could recover what I learned last year, but it is coming.  I still think that with two years of music theory I will begin to become dangerous -- musically.

Now I am working on scaler variant triads of melodic minor chords and Modal Borrowing (known to the cognicenti as M.B.) which are major key variants taken from parallel minor keys. Whew. Y’all got that, right?

I have to learn to use this Sibelius 6 that I scored cheap last term....  It would be fun to transcribe something for concert band that hasn’t been done before.  Hm.   Like a medley of peace and anti-war songs....   Or some Phillip Glass....  Or just some good big band jazz....