Lake Forest: suburbanite; rewriting and a new article; skin; headless hatter; Hitler’s bath tub

Neither Carol nor I have had a back yard since we became adults.  We have variously lived in apartments, condos and boats.  In Lake Forest we have one.  Grass, a towering oak tree, lawn chairs, the small gas grill that lived on the balcony in Evanston.  The entire suburban dream, and for the past several evenings we have been enjoying it.  Drinks and dinner in the back yard.  An unexpected, innocent and temporary pleasure.  Soon winter will come and even sooner I will be back in Hilton Head.  It seems wise at any age to enjoy what you can when you can, but particularly for an almost octogenarian.  I try.

Rereading ‘A Slice of Life’ took me back to my main site where I also reread the Introduction and the Requiem.  In doing so I made slight revisions.  I also found that one of my articles, “The End of Being” was not on the articles page and have included it.  For those of you who have read GANNET’s passage log there will be nothing new, though it is repackaged.  I will post another recent article after it is published.  

I changed a single word in the last sentence of “The End of Being”.

Formerly it read:  Full understanding will come in time.

Now it reads:  Full understanding might come in time.

One word.  A significant difference.

https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/end_of_being.html

I have long accepted the science that we are all Africans.  You may recall a Simon and Garfunkel song, “Under African Skies.”  Sometimes in southern Africa I have looked up at the sky and felt oddly at home.  Still I learned a great deal from a video link that James sent me to a lecture by Nina Jablonski, a professor at Penn State:  The Evolution and Meaning of Human Skin Color.  To oversimplify, skin has evolved to block partially UV rays from the sun which can cause skin cancer, as I well know, and birth defects, but which are also necessary for our bodies to produce essential Vitamin D.  I did not know that concepts of race were originated by two philosophers, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, in the 18th Century, neither of whom traveled outside their own small communities and relied on second and third hand and worse information.  

The video is a little over an hour long.  You may not be interested but I found it well worth my time.  I thank James.

https://youtu.be/sc4OFcT5m1Y 

I am presently reading DUEL WITH THE DEVIL a non-fiction book about a murder in New York City in 1799.  I find a quote from Christopher Colles, who is described as a hapless inventor, amusing.  He said after one of his ingenious projects to bring clean water to the city was wrecked by British soldiers during the Revolutionary War, “Had I been brought up a hatter, people would have come into the world without heads.”

I had not heard of Lee Miller until Michael brought her to my attention.  I thank him.

She was a fashion model who became an outstanding war photographer during WW2.  That is she in the photograph at the top bathing in Hitler’s bathtub just after the war in Europe ended.

I have googled her and viewed many of her photographs.  Some are brutal as is their subject matter.  She was one of the first into the concentration camps.  I have also found some videos about her.  Carol and I watched one last evening.  Her photographs are worth seeing.