h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Cass.

I´ve started to read the essay, but didn´t come much further for there are other things to be done. It´ll take a while until I can post on that matter and I can´t say when at the moment. Although I´m able to print some things, I do have to be careful to not extent this advantage and allowance too much.

I hope that you´ll have fixed the roof problem before the weather is getting nastier. Winter is approaching here and it won´t take long until we´ll have our "first snow". Not the season I´m fond of, every year I´ve to "get through" the Wintertime and wait for the Spring (that´s my preferred season like some mild late Summer and Autumn).

Cheers,
Thomas

Cheers Thomas

Thanks for keeping me posted.. I feel really good today having gone out and bought £160 worth of materials.. Just going to start carrying them up to my roof.. though I may use a long rope as I have done before: Health and safety and all that. Perhaps I might even get my wife to cooperate with attaching the rope at ground level.

At the shop I saw an old "friend" who I have chatted too, and with whom I have much in common. When I mentioned my flat roof problem his reaction was "Me too! And I have just paid someone £2000 to repair the flat roof on my garage, and I am still having to go up and brush away the puddles of standing water.. It encouraged me to feel that I will do a better job on mine for much less than that..

Cass

Hi Thomas

The other day I posted this on Facebook-- then I thought I might as well post it as a Guide Entry..But there it is likely to just get lost.. In case you are interested here is a link: http://h2g2.com/entry/A87817602

As it was read and appreciated by a few people on fb I am writing the next bits of my "Turning" essay in increments that I will post.

Cheers

Cass

Hi Cass.

I´m sorry to get rather late in my response to your post. There has been more work to do in recent times and other obligations to meet as well. I´ve read your linked article and as always I find it interesting and in many ways it sums it up quite well what is meant to be the current situation of many countries in Western Europe.

I´ve missed to get on with the other essay and for I can´t tell you when I´ll find the time to read it through, I´ll rather say that I´ll come back on that when I´ve read it. So there is no point in making any prediction on when this may happen.

In case you´ve added some further parts to the Thatcher project, I´ll have a look from time to time and read that instead.

I hope that your roof problems have been solved and that you´re well.

Cheers,
Thomas

Hi Thomas

I realize that Xmas gets a busy time for many people- one way or another.. Not for the first time I was annoyed yesterday when a journalist asked the CEO of British Gas why the reductions in Bills would not impact until the January bills.. We are already in December for Heavens sake, do they not have any idea about the logistics of redoing all the bills.. and in the run up to the Xmas New Year break.

The roof is coming on fine.. I have just come down.. But I am really getting 'deep' into my next section of Mrs Thatcher..and have rediscovered the fun of working on my old computer in my own study with Radio 3 and my view of the gardens, plus enjoying playing and singing.. Not long ago I finally openend a porta-studio (brand new) that an old colleague just gave me, and I get a great guitar sound through that to my combi-amp.. So my wife (not in the best mood since her TV recording editing system has gone bust) thinks I am spending too much time doing other-things.. But then yesterday I had a pre-lunch session, and had a break until after lunch-starting soon before 1pm (my idea of a civilized lunch hour)- but we ate c3pm.. And it is dark before 5 pm.

I also posted this on Facebook yesterday:

"PLENTY MORE FISH IN THE SEA

Well I suppose that is no longer the case, but I was interested to see Country File yesterday on Fish Farming in off the coast of Scotland- and the great hopes of the SNP on its future development- post independence.. And then I recalled a TV programme I saw in France a few weeks back about the French oyster growers and fish-farmers who have left France because pollution is affecting the French waters and who have relocated on the West coast of Ireland.. And then I wondered about all the other coasts in the world that might be suitable for fish farming.

Then it occurred to me that the SNP see great potential for various parts of its natural resources- waves, wind, waters, rivers- but waves, wind, waters and rivers are to be found all over the world.

Even more water than Land.. And the great fact of Twentieth Century History is that because of the steam revolution - ships and railways- the Land resources of the world were exploited as never before, and market prices for Food, Raw Materials and Commodities fell by about 30% on average between c1870 and 1914.. The strain that this imposed (in the opinion of the historian and fabian G.D.H. Cole probably made the First World War inevitable.

Just one of many factors that leave me wondering about the SNP's case for independence."

Cheers

Cass

Hi Cass,

Excuse me for replying late. It hasn´t been all about the usual busy time for Christmas prepa-ration. It´s got more to do with the illness of my Parents-in-law and last week, my Father-in-law deceased while his wife was still in hospital for weeks. We´ve had to make some arrangements and doing some paperwork. Yesterday we went to his funeral. He suffered from dementia and it was getting worse since he felt down the stairs on Christmas Eve two years ago.

As today is my last day for this year in my office, I´m determined to use the upcoming holiday to finally read through the other essay of yours. I´ve reached Chapter 2 and as usual it´s an interesting work to read.

I hope you´re well and I like to use this opportunity to wish you and your wife a Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopefully 2014 will be the year where you´ll have finally your aim achieved to get published.

In case I don´t find the time to post another message, I´ll be back on this forum after January 6th.

Have a good time and enjoy the holidays.

Kind Regards,

Thomas

Good Morning Thomas

Condolensces on your loss.. On our traditional Xmas Good News letter this year I included four deaths, because though there is always the "sweet sorrow" of partings...in all four cases we could feel that 'the time was right', and that we were at least able to be part of the process, remaining engaged in those lives right to the last, and also remaining part of the life that they have left behind...

I write these thoughts in anticipation of working out what to write to my elder sister on her Xmas card. In many ways these things do not apply because of the tragic circumstances of our childhood that still hang over the Present.. It is I suppose what has made me such a driven person determined to follow to the [even bitter] end the road that I set myself at the age of ten to seek my answers through History.

I may actually send her a copy of these reflections below that I have just pasted on facebook- that were prompted by an old-pupil asking yesterday why she was "at the mercy of these people".. Last Friday after she had been taken into hospital yet again with anorexia, she was dismayed to find that she was 'sectioned'- which means she has had her legal freedom and liberty taken away from her.

Meanwhile though it is always a pleasure to find a message from you, I know that Xmas is a busy time- even for us- especially in the limited daylight hours.. and I note on facebook numbers of people cheered by having a good Xmas break.. I hope that you and your wife enjoy the break. Perhaps you may follow up the recent contacts in time of sadness- as we did last summer, when we went ahead with a family get-together scheduled for 5 days after a funeral.. Xmas is about Life beginning a new phase.

So Merry Xmas

Cass

PS- I am writing up a storm in Part Four of "Turning a Page"-- perhaps it is all finally coming out and coming together.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

The concept of someone having someone else “at their mercy” seems now to be accepted as inherently ominous. We rather expect that someone who has achieved such a position of power over others will be merciless, because ‘mercy’ was a quality associated with Gods and Kings, who are now largely sidelined in a world that has made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

But, looking in the dictionary, "mercy" is supposed to be a positive thing. It is "kindness in excess of what might be expected": or "kind or compassionate treatment"...

It is also the case that "at the mercy of" means "completely in the power of"...But that does I think presuppose that the 'power' has a duty of care and benevolence, which is why humankind has empowered people or positions.

So there are those who are equipped to make a "mercy flight" which is "an aircraft flight to bring a seriously ill or injured person to hospital from an isolated community"....And for the 'ill or injured person" that a journey is very much a question of "your life in their hands"- as are those "journeys" from sickness to health, or from an old life to a new life that are the business of hospitals.

But thinking of the way we use the phrase “to have someone at their mercy” now-- there does seem to be an assumption that "those who have us at their mercy" [that is those who are empowered] will at best only deal with us 'fairly' and 'justly' in a reasoned and 'scientific' way, measuring out to us no more than is our due...

Perhaps it has always been 'the common people' who have known that love and care are much more important than the simple exercise of power-- e.g. juries finding someone guilty but recommending clemency...Then the best Kings and Judges understood that to some extent the people had them at their mercy because they were given the right to use either awesome, evil and ’sinful’ means, in accordance with the law, or to show the ’quality of mercy that is not strained but droppeth like the gentle dew from Heaven’. One of the most often cited of the many names of Allah is “The Merciful”.

Sadly in our collective lives we longer really believe in and empower the Human Touch and Human Qualities. Instead we empower, and learn to rely upon, systems, structures and mechanisms like money and those those that have been designed as conveyor belts to provide institutional care. Again sadly recent times has too often shown, such things too often provide good hiding places for those of evil, flawed, negligent and sinful intent, while tending also to punish, suppress, repress and exclude those with too much Humanity to fit uncomplainingly into “the machine“.

What are there no workhouses!! Bah Humbug!!

Thanks for your kind words and your interesting post Cass.

I was wondering what made your childhood that tragic. I can´t remember some details about that from our times on the BBC MBs. But well, as this is a private matter, it´s not suited to talk about that on an internet forum at all.

I´m not sure whether it´s appropriate when you describe yourself as "driven", but I acknowledge that you´re in some ways a multi-talented person and it might be that what makes it sometimes difficult to keep up with you in some ways. It´s the advantage of this more quite place which provides us the space to have reasonable exchanges of opinions and where I can learn more undisturbed from your essays and thoughts, as this was nearly impossible in our times at the BBC History MBs.

I´m looking forward for the next chapter of the "Tourning the Page" project.

Have a good time.

Cheers,
Thomas

Till 2014 then Thomas.... Enjoy the Festive Season and more exchanges in the next year.. My old-pupil is scheduled to meet up with her old friend in publishing that I met with her a couple of months ago, and give her my details so we can explore whether or not I might be of any interest to her firm.. But perhaps I should not have immediately spotted a couple of typing errors in what she had written for a show-programme- she had taken a risk when her computer spell-check stopped working.. She had given it to someone to check over.. But skills that we have now delegated to machines, we no longer bother to hone.. Perhaps I still have something of the teacher's eye.

Cheers

Cass

Hi Cass,

I hope you´ve got a good start into the New Year and hopefully 2014 will be a year of success to you.

I´ve managed to read through the "Modern lessons from medieval history" and made up to chapter 5. It was a very interesting reading so far and it gave me some informations I´ve not read about before. Especially the parts of French and American history. The economic aspects are as well interesting for I´ve never payed so much attention to them as I realised that they´re as well important for the understanding of some developments.

I´ll try to finish the reading of that essay within the next time.

Cheers,
Thomas

Good Morning Thomas

Happy New Year to you.. I hope you really enjoyed the break and that the return to work has not been too much of a shock to the system..I have to say that with the terrible weather we have been having it would almost have been nice to be obliged to get up and go out to work- almost but not really.. Has Germany suffered too? My in-laws in Dijon do not seem to have had the storms... It has been a particular worry for me because in November I started building a new roof over the flat roof on our house-extension- short bursts because of the early onset of darkness.. Then when I saw the early forecasts of the bad weather I fast-tracked and adapted by plans to get the roof to a state at which it could be just left functional but incomplete until drier weather in the late Spring..This meant leaving it not actually fixed down but held down by its own weight plus bags of extra-weight in terms of things like potting grit etc.. I was quite confident about this until we had these really exceptional and wild storm winds, with the nightmare scenario that some even greater wind would/will lift it right off causing damage to persons and property.. Frequent trips up the ladders two storeys high have so far been reassuring.

I am glad that you have enjoyed reading "Modern Lessons.." I have been writing up a storm in my "Bursting of the Dykes".. I think I started with some quite short sections/chapters but I am now on Chapter 20, of the first part which is really all around the significance of the 're-birth' of Berlin as the gateway to the huge awakening mass of Asia.. Finally the Modern replacement for Medieval Constantinople...The current argument in the Ukraine is interesting with the dispute over whether the way ahead is in the EU or in closer ties with Russia.. Russia was the Past-- but looks like being increasingly important in the global future.. I have actually got out and started reading my uni notes on the Soviet Economy which was my final year speciality in 1965-6..Germany to Japan via Russia and China looks like becoming the future core of the world's economic activity.

Next section will look at New York- as the modern replacement for Rome as the inspiring and Celestial City encouraging the world to dream of a better future through "Western Civilization".

But I am not sure that I will post all of this on h2g2.. Perhaps it is time that I set up a Casseroleon web-site.. Perhaps I could post you a copy on CD when it is finished. Then you could have English Peace as well, if you wish..

On a funny game put up on facebook the other day it seems that what will be "mine" in 2014 is "Time".. Perhaps it will be "My Time"-- but probably only if I take the steps necessary to make it so.

Cheers

Cass

Good morning Cass.

We´ve had it not so bad with the weather here as you in England. It´s been from the temperatures like Spring and no snow. I was thinking of you and your problems with your roof when I´ve heard about the bad weather in England in the news. It´s good news to know that you got through without damage.

As for your new and the older essays you´d like to give me on CD, I´m sorry to tell you that I´m not able to read them because I´ve no computer back home and there´s no intention on our side to buy one.

I´d prefer to visit your own website in case you´ll create it and take the essays from there (PDF files would do very well). I´d very welcome that idea of yours for it would enable us to communicate directly via your own website. In case you have that established, please let me know and I´d be glad to visit it.

I hope that I´ll manage to finish the "Modern Lessons ..." over the weekend and afterwards tell you some of my thoughts on that.

Have a good time.

Cheers,

Thomas

Morning Thomas

But perhaps you could use a CD at the computer that you use normally. We could always discuss on here anyway.. [I seem to have 'hit the wall' generally at the moment.. No drive or initiative left]

Cass

Good Morning Cass.

Unfortunately, it´s not allowed to use private CDs on the computer I´m using. I think that I´ll have to do it the old ways (copy and paste and then print).

I was getting some pages further on the other essay and the more I read, the more I realise that you´ve written some piece of socio-economic history which is of course important, but has been more neglected by the "bigger events" in those times concerned. It has also been a driving force in human developments. I keep reading on that.

I don´t know about the limits of this site re essays and I can´t think of any proper alternative to have the same space for your work like here.

Maybe it´d be the better choice to create your own website, but I´ve no idea what huge work might be going with such an undertaking.

Cheers,

Thomas

Hi Thomas

Fair enough.. As for your comments about socio-economic factors and headline events- I think that this goes to the heart of my analysis- perhaps especially to what I am writing at the moment.. There is that famous Shakespeare observation about "a tide in the affairs of man which when taken at full flood..etc"... This is very much the theme of "The Bursting of the Dykes" so that, for example, I am somewhat amused by all the current interest in the success of "The Scandinavian Model".. What has happened is that since the Fall of Communism the ecomomic potential that science and technology brought to the Baltic regions creating a new and very powerful Germany and Russia has been suddenly released once more- only even more so, because the huge changes since the age of the train and the telegraph- have opened up the vast Eurosian landmass as never before.. Looking at my old 1955 Atlas the Communist bloc was one solid joined up mass from East Germany all the way out to China and North Korea, which was formerly kept apart from the global economy- but which is now one of its most dynamic parts in an increasingly interconnected economic system with China developing Westwards and Russia Eastwards.. the Silk Road about to become a modern super-highway.

Cass

Hi Thomas I've just been writing an overall summary of "Turning a Page" and thought I would share it with you since it outlines the thrust at least of "The Bursting of the Dykes"

Cass

Hi Cass,

Thanks for your post and I´ve printed the latest entries from your short essays (Thought for the day). I´ll come back to this later during that week.

I´m nearly to finish the "Lessons from Medieval History" and will finish that one first before starting with the others.

Til then,

Cheers,
Thomas

Hi Thomas

Good reading. I look forward to hearing from you.. Just a reminder that there is a blip in "Modern Lessons" where I just stopped the revision process that remains incomplete...

Cass

Hi Cass,

I´ve now managed to finish the „Modern lessons from medieval history”. In all, as I´ve said before, it´s been an interesting reading. It gives some good overview and some insight in developments connected with medieval times. There are not less things, especially from French history I didn´t know before. Just to name that French King “St Louis” of which I´ve either never heard before or wasn´t aware about him.

You know from our conversations, medieval history isn´t the section of my deep interest. Therefore it was a good learning from that essay. The tracing of connected developments, with the focus on socio-economical developments that culminated in historic events is indeed to follow like a red thread through the essay.

I noticed that most of those writers you´ve cited in many passages are American and British ones. From those Americans I don´t know a single one and from the others, except Trevelyan and Carlyle, I don´t know either.

Some citation in chapter 8 by the Indian novelist and activist Arundhati Roy

“The people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the U.S. government. All the beauty of human civilization – our art, our music, our literature – lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles”

is one thing I´d absolutely agree with.

The passages on Carlyle in chapter 10 are also of interest to me, in the light that you´ve often mentioned him in other essays and I do regard his writings as well as those of Macaulay and Trevelyan as the most basics or fundaments of your view on history. That said from the angle that you´ve grown up with their books and studied them from your early years since you have followed your passion on history.

I was wondering about which parts of that essay may have fitted into what was on the curric-ulum when you were still teaching in your School. The reading of the essay is both, a sort of preparation for a lecture but also a work of research. Drawing lines between different events, developments through centuries which are interconnected. That´s the view I´ve got from reading it.

What springs to mind after reading a couple of your own works is, that in their core the focus is on economy and it might be just that which makes it difficult to place it “in a proper section” for publishing. Given that some of the publishers who rejected the publishing of your work really have read it, but not told you where they see the problem, it might be this. On the other hand, there are also books available that deals with exactly such topics. Those books are rather used by students for they study work but most filled with dry facts and lots of figures.

Your essays are in between study work and the telling of history, which means it serves both and seeks to find the points of connections and also interpretations from various sources.

I´ve noticed the other short essays “Thought for the day” and I´ll see to find the time to read them. After the “Towards project”, the “Modern lessons from medieval history” was the second long essay I´ve read. The first one was a complicated reading for me, because I wasn´t familiar with your style and most of the people you´ve mentioned in that, the Thatcher essay was easier to read and the lessons one is in the middle of all the three.

In their contents, they´re all good works (the mention of typos omitted), seen from the angle of a reader with interests in history. Some professional might have a different view on them, but even such people might not deny that when reading through these essays, it can wake an interest to read about and from those writers cited in the essays. It can also wake an interest to read more of your own works when someone likes to read about a different view on history made by yourself.

Maybe it could help you a bit more if you would establish your own website and install all the essays there so that people who know you can visit your website instead of h2g2 and find them easier and also get in touch with you.

I personally appreciate the silence and peace on h2g2 in compare to other internet forums, but to bring your works to a wider public, this place here is rather a niche than the threshold to the www.

Have a good weekend and I hope we´ll meet next week on this site.

Kind regards,

Thomas

Thomas

As ever it is a real pleasure to hear from you.. As you say h2g2 is a 'niche' a quiet corner where we can be undisturbed.. One of the interesting things at the moment is that I am getting used to the Laptop computer (second hand- but invaluable to me) that our daughter gave me for Xmas.. It has meant that in the early morning when my brain is often very active, I can just open it up in bed- and this is why I started doing "Thoughts For the Day" which I could post both on my h2g2 Journal and on my Facebook page.. I did get some initial encouragement on fb- but also comments as per usual that my posts were too long, though people looked forward to reading a book if one ever appeared..

All of which made me think that there was little point just carrying on getting carried away by my writing and that I really should start another round of trying to get published.. This time I have accepted that 'the system' demands that I approach an agent, and I spent a few days drafting a letter to send to such a beast, and then trying to cut it down to one page so that I could sound out agents in an initial letter..

Yesterday, however, I started that process via Google and soon found an agency that only accepts online submissions- letter and outline plus 5000 words or three chapters.. I have been refining what I had written and will prepare it to send.. I believe that it is best to do this via PDF Files (our daughter has to do such things professionally)

As for your post- Some of those things that were in Modern Lessons were touched upon during various parts of my teaching career, but that year I decided that, having focussed so much on the history of the last couple of hundred years, I should read more about Medieval History and much of that whole essay sprang from a Cambridge view from 1916 and an American view from 1963. The former addressing British students in a Britain leading the fight for Christian Civilization and the latter addressing American students in a Melting Pot USA that had been thrust into a position of 'leadership of the Free World'- with the significant German-American population that had impacted upon the US attitude to both World Wars. Significantly its last section refers to the German Holocaust of the Thirty Years War which perhaps to a student generation that wanted to make peace not war went some way to creating a sense of balance with the more recent Holocaust- and a reluctance to regard a Nuclear Holocaust as anything but the ultimate evil to be avoided at all cost..

In this centenary year of the start of the Great War it is vital that we retain that wisdom and understanding within a world order that, much like 100 years ago, has its pockets of intransigent hostility, fear, hatred and enmity.

Have a good week-end. Will keep you posted.

Regards

Cass