Literary Discussions

Geetanjali - Thanks you for your words of praise. Over these many years you always hold me in too high esteem and I have tried to disabuse you of excessive admiration. It is very easy to learn certain obscure facts and give others the illusion of a depth of knowledge where there is none.  I could not cite the 12 apostles or the ten commandements from memory or the 77 books of the Protestant Canon of the Bible (or the Orthodox/Catholic with the Deutero-Canonical Apocrypha) ... but then why should I waste brain cells when Google is always at my fingertips.  I grew up in the 1950s and 60s during the "cold war" when the emphasis was on "college prep" courses with science and math in high esteem.  My parents were both very intelligent but because of the Great Depression and World War II they never went to college. They separated when I was 11 and while they were together there was much "mental cruelty" inflicted upon my mother and there was not the intellectual nurture present in other families. Had I lived in a different sort of family and perhaps been raised Roman Catholic I would have had a very different life although the my life as it unfolded was by no means the worst. I did have a rich intellectual experience which I believe was more rich PRECISELY because I was self taught (except for college at St. Johns) and I was never under the constraints of an academic institution which tends to nit pick over writings until it fits the lowest common denominator of what the academic institution would care to put its name to in publication.