On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

Johnson at last, of his own accord, allowed very great merit to the inventory of articles found in the pocket of the Man Mountain, particularly the description of his watch, which it was conjectured was his God; as he consulted it upon all occasions. - James Boswell (Boswell's Life Of Johnson) One of my favorite movies is "Jeramiah Johnson," a film that starred Robert Redford, about a civil war vet who became a famous mountain man. The film has many of the elements that Americans love; the wily old sage and a varied cast of oddball characters whose paths cross throughout the film. Those meetings at various times in Jeremiah's new life become a barometer of his progress as a mountain man. It also illustrates a concept that many Americans love, particularly in the Internet age; the notion that one can become a master with a few choice secrets from an expert that opens the door to mastery. Americans love "experts," who are as exalted as ...

  "The mind is it's own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." - Milton (Paradise Lost) "I live all the daytime In faith and in might: In holy rapture I die every night." - Novalis (Hymns To The Night) Most people rarely see the night...in fact, if you you see it, it really isn't night...probably the false dawn of distant city lights or the poetic pale glow of moonlight. Real night is pitch black, as in can't see your nose pitch black...most people have seen night in some form during a power failure...building or house going dark, street disappearing, something like that. In a power failure, how dark it gets depends on where you are. In a small town, everything disappears as there's no other section of town that might be unaffected and give off a glow...the worst is in a storm; you leave a coffee house with it's emergency lights on, thankful that somebody in government could have cared less about the business world...