And Doc, let us not forget that the Gita occurs on a battlefield with Lord Krishna exhorting Arjuna not only to fight, but to kill! Convinces me even further that this planet is designed for mixing light and dark.
________________________________ From: "doctordumb...@rocketmail.com" <doctordumb...@rocketmail.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, October 7, 2013 7:02 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: A vision of Fairfield's future? snip Yes, very ironic that many of the things we enjoy as modern conveniences, like the Internet, were originally developed as research projects for the country's "defense", or war-making capability. Both my grandfather and my dad, collected weapons, mostly firearms, and the hand-to-hand stuff from WWI is pretty grisly. I have saved a few swords and guns, because although they are used for such a desperate purpose, some of the weapons are quite beautiful in their own right, for their function and design. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: Re "Yeah, I am a big fan of places left to crumble. I saw Devil's Island . . . ": I know where you're coming from. That sounds like a fantastic but disturbing place to see. The closest I got to such an experience was when when I visited the Channel Islands. The islands were the only part of the UK that were occupied by the Nazis in WWII and they used slave labour to construct vast underground complexes. The sites are open for tourists to visit and I swear that you can sense the ghosts of the former inmates who died in the thousands from starvation and over-work. I still shudder whenever I remember my visit. That people could be so brutal to fellow humans is quite literally incomprehensible to me. It was a traumatic onslaught, and it is to this day a nightmarish memory. It reminds me of my visit to the Imperial War Museum in London. When you enter, at first you are quite upbeat: Wow, there's a German Tiger tank just like in the movies. And look there! There's a Spitfire fighter, and so-on. But eventually the sheer overload of witnessing the various ways man has invented to massacre his fellows really starts to wear you down. Oddly, the most disturbing exhibits were from a World War One display which had authentic home-made (trench-made) knuckle dusters and such-like primitive weapons. It was warfare reduced to a close-combat gang fight - primitive, brutal and elemental. I was seriously depressed when I left! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: Yeah, I am a big fan of places left to crumble. I saw Devil's Island (there are actually three) that way, in the early '70's when the French would let a few tourists visit, but were still pretty embarrassed by the barbaric conditions. So they hadn't done anything in the intervening years. Towels still hung, rotting, in the tropical heat, in decaying washrooms. A doctor had drawn step by step instructions for a surgery on an inside wall. The infamous two man brick cells with a hole above, to ensure ventilation, insects, and rain, were being overgrown, though the manacles in the brick walls were still quite visible. Very creepy. There is also a large prison from the same era on the French Guiana mainland, in a town called St. Laurent, and a few of the old trustees could be seen wandering the town. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: Me too. There's a whole subculture of folks whose hobby is exploring abandoned buildings and sites, both above and underground. They call themselves "urban explorers." See the site at the link below, or Google "urban explorers," for more. They take lotsa wonderful, creepy photographs. It can be arduous and sometimes dangerous to mess around in decaying structures. If I'd known about them when I was younger, I might well have joined them. http://www.urbanexplorers.net/ Ann wrote: I saw the article about the abandoned Land of Oz theme park yesterday. I think looking at ruins and crumbling old stuff is often much more interesting than seeing it when it was new - especially kitschy theme parks and other structures that would never be able to live up to the real thing they are trying to represent.
