culture | Bertram's Blog

Thirty Days Hath . . .

November 30, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Thirty days hath September, April, June and . . . you guessed it. November!

Since this is the thirtieth, tomorrow starts a new month, and that means a new tarot deck for me. I had a hard time deciding which to use of the dozens I own.

Some of the traditional decks passed down from medieval times are too odd and the images too angular and misshapen for my tastes (deriving as they do from traditional woodcuts), and so are many of the decks based on those old cards.

Some of the newer versions, though intending to seem old, using as they do, images from the Renaissance, are often too . . . natural . . . for my tastes. I don’t need to see anatomically correct pictures (or at least anatomically correct enough to know which cards depict males). It seems jarring, though I’m sure there is symbolism in the nudity, perhaps showing the necessity to put off the falsehood of clothes, and be who we are, but I can get that symbolism with clothed images, too, since the raiment people don is also symbolic. (Even in today’s culture, clothes are symbolic, though I doubt people stop to think what it is they are trying to broadcast with their apparel.)

Some of the decks are simply too symbolic, with more icons and Jewish letters and astrologic signs and qabalistic codes than I wish to study right now. I’m still trying to get comfortable with the cards themselves, as well as trying to find the deck that speaks most clearly to me.

So far, the deck I like the most is The Cosmic Tarot, created by Norbert Losche and printed in Germany in 1988. The cards have a hint of the 1920’s about them, and most seem evocative of something, even if not what was intended. The following is the Queen of Wands from that deck:

The deck I decided to use this month is the Egorov Tarot, a Russian-inspired deck that is so very elegant with shiny gold borders and highlights. (Unfortunately, the gold photographed as brown, but you can still see the vast difference between this deck and The Cosmic Tarot.)

Someday, if I get bored or ambitious, it would be interesting to photograph all the queen of wands from all the decks and see how they compare. Meantime, I’m just glad I made the decision which deck to use during the coming month.

***

Please check out my new book!

“I am Bob, the Right Hand of God. As part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park. Not even God can stop progress, but to tell the truth, He’s glad of the change. He’s never been satisfied with Earth. For one thing, there are too many humans on it. He’s decided to eliminate anyone who isn’t nice, and because He’s God, He knows who you are; you can’t talk your way out of it as you humans normally do.”

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, life, tarot. Tags: choosing a tarot deck, Egorov Tarot, learning the tarot, Russian inspired tarot deck, The Cosmic Tarot, traditional tarot decks. 5 Comments »

Conundrums

November 29, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’m reading a thriller where several people are hunting for some sort of Jewish treasure that Columbus apparently took with him on his final voyage in an effort to protect the articles from the inquisition. The premise of the story is based on the theory that Columbus was a Jew who converted to Christianity as a way of avoiding being tortured and killed, and that his name was not Columbus. Columbus was his adopted Christian name, not his real name. Supposedly, he did not set out on his journey to prove that the earth was round or even to hunt for an easier route to the Spice Islands. He was actually looking for a place where Jews could live in peace, so his backers were predominately Jewish.

I was already aware of these theories, so that is nothing new. What the book did was make me think of what is going on in the world today with all the fights over statues and renaming of holidays.

Columbus Day was originally a New York holiday to honor Italian-American heritage. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the day into a national holiday, and therein lies the problem, including that of a nearby city. A statue of Columbus resides in the middle of that city, a century-old memorial to its large Italian-American population, but a vocal element wants to tear down the statue, as if Columbus were personally responsible for all the ills of this country, which is silly. Columbus never even set foot in North America, and in fact, was only one of the many seafaring people who managed to cross the ocean, some even thousands of years previously.

The truth is, there are no Native Americans. All of us, even the American Aborigines, are immigrants from elsewhere. There are signs that people from all over the world, for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, were enveloped into and contributed to the development of “native culture.”

The problem is not with Columbus but with an overpopulated world — at the time, the arable land in Europe was divided up and owned by the nobility. People with no other options needed a place to go to start a new life, and here was a whole continent (two continents, actually) where few people lived and harsh laws (except for the harsh laws of nature) had yet to take hold.

The wave of Europeans came decades after Columbus’s voyages, so none of that is to his credit or discredit. The times and a dying way of life were the real culprit.

Still, even if you believe the myth that Columbus discovered America, destroying statues of him (which aren’t really of him since no one knows what he looks like) is utterly hypocritical. If people think we are wrong for being here, they can always go back where they came from. Tearing down a statue, renaming a holiday, apologizing for things someone’s ancestors did (not mine — mine were still living in feudal countries and didn’t even come here until the twentieth century) in no way changes the past. No one is seriously considering making reparations and giving the country back to the Indians, and why should they? If the various tribes had been less obsessed with their traditional enemies and had banded together against the new one, they could have halted the population growth at the Mississippi River. At least for a while. But a time that has come, has come. There is no stopping it.

Which brings me to the whole idea of reparations. If the BLM has their way and they are granted reparations, who is to pay them? Those of us whose ancestors were not even here? That’s absurd. So who? England? After all, the slaves were first brought here when the area was still under control of England. And later, the slave area was under the control of the Confederacy. They could be paid with Confederate dollars; I’m sure there are plenty of such dollars in collections. And yet — signs of the Confederacy, such as statues, are being destroyed. If we’re writing history to erase the whole slave era, then who’s to pay? There’s no one left.

Sheesh. Here I’ve been doing so well staying away from the news and local issues and all the conundrums of our times, and an awful book brings me back. (Awful because there are too many separate stories and too much redundancy since each of the stories is basically a repetition — hunting treasure and killing people. Worst of all, huge portions of the book are in Italics, and Italics always tell me that particular portion is not part of the book and so I skip it.)

For my own peace of mind, I might have to give up reading, too.

***

If you haven’t yet read A Spark of Heavenly Fire, my novel of a quarantine that predated this pandemic by more than ten years, you can read the first chapter online here: http://patbertram.com/A_Spark_of_Heavenly_Fire.html

Buy it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0024FB5H6/

Download the first 30% free on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1842

Posted in books, culture, life, writing. Tags: Christopher Columbus, Columbus Day origins, Columbus statues and hypocrisy, Italian American heritage, reparations, there are no native americans. 4 Comments »

So Much Gratitude!

November 25, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I spent the morning cooking, which is something I rarely do anymore. I mostly do quick meals suitable for a single person, so I truly enjoyed the experience.

What did I make? Cranberry compote and chili. Odd combination, right? They both begin with “C” so that’s something they have in common! Other than that, not much.

I had to make a cranberry compote to take to dinner at a friend’s house tomorrow. (Cranberries, oranges, apples, honey and water.) And I needed to cook up a bunch of ground meat. Both the sausage and ground beef that my contractor brought yesterday were in pound packages, and because they were already frozen solid, I couldn’t cut them into smaller portions to freeze as I normally do. Hence, the chili.

I figure since I’ll probably be eating all sorts of treats tomorrow, I might as well get started by treating myself today, and since I make chili so rarely, it really is a treat. Even better, I can freeze it in meal-size portions for later on.

Although I know tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and although I will enjoy be celebrating the day with friends, it seems rather . . . I don’t know . . . redundant. I give thanks every day for my good fortune in having this truly wonderful place to live. Whenever I look around, I see evidence of the help people have given me, whether they were paid or not. I see gifts — both new and hand-me-downs. Truly, other people’s discards are a treasure to those who appreciate them. I bask in the feeling of being home — in the house, in the yard, in the town, and with friends.

It’s hard not to be grateful when one is steeped in things which engender gratitude.

So although I will be thankful tomorrow, I’ll also be thankful today and tomorrow and all the tomorrows that come after that.

***

And oh, yes — on the top of my list of things I am grateful for is my newly published absurdist novel that asks, “What if God decided to re-create the world and turn it into a galactic theme park for galactic tourists? What then?”

Click here to order the print version of Bob, The Right Hand of God. Or you can buy the Kindle version by clicking here: Kindle version of Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, home, life. Tags: being grateful, cooking chili, cooking for one, cranberry compote, treating myself. 3 Comments »

When a Door Opens

November 22, 2020 — Pat Bertram

People often say things like, “When a door closes another one opens” or “When a door closes, a window opens.” Sometimes people don’t use the passive voice, but have God or the universe opening the door.

I know the intent of the quote — to encourage people to look beyond a failure or a loss or a disappointment and to keep trying because, as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over until it’s over.”

As admirable as the intent might be (I say “might be” because no one likes being jollied into a different outlook after a disappointment), the saying itself is beyond idiotic.

The entire door quote, attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, is: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

Whether you use the long or the short version, the quote completely ignores the nature of a door. When a door closes, you can open it again. That’s the nature of a door. It closes. And it opens.

The worst use of this witless saying is to comfort those who are grieving. (And yes, people do say this to people who lost a spouse or a child or someone else whose death is catastrophic.) Apparently, they think . . . well, no. They don’t think. The loss of a beloved to death is in no way akin to a door closing. An unscalable wall suddenly thrust in one’s path is more like it. Or the sun losing its warmth. Or a tsunami hurling you into a completely different world. There are hundreds of applicable synonyms, but a door? No.

The truth is, though, things do change. Even in a seemingly static neighborhood, every time people open a door to the outside, they see something different. Sun and flowers, perhaps. Or snow and blue skies. Or a car passing. Or shadows that weren’t previously there.

And when someone dies, seemingly destroying your life, you can veer off into a different path and develop a new life.

After all these years since Jeff died, a different path opened up to me — a new town, home ownership, gardening and landscaping. It’s a good path for me, though it’s not one I would have ever chosen if Jeff were still alive. It’s not one that would have ever even entered my mind.

Come to think of it, Bell’s saying is silly on all fronts — not just the door analogy, but not being able to see the newly opened door because we are so fixated on the closed one. The truth is, often we can’t see another way because at that time there is no other way. It took many years, many changes in me and my outlook, several deaths (not just Jeff but parents and siblings) for me to find the new path.

But other than death, from which there is no recourse, when a door closes, just open the dang thing again.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: Alexander Graham Bell door quote, it ain't over until it's over, look beyond failure, the nature of a door, when a door closes, when a door closes a window opens. 7 Comments »

Confusion Is the Name Of The Game

November 21, 2020 — Pat Bertram

We’re back in near-lockdown again, or rather buildings are in lockdown. For me, that means no library, though if I were desperate, I could send them a list of books and they would hand them out the door when they books were ready to pick up.

I understand that people have died from The Bob, and I know many people who know people who have died, but I don’t personally know anyone. Instead, during this time, I’ve known people who were diagnosed with cancer, heart problems, and a whole host of other horrific diseases. I’m not really trying to be controversial, just mentioning my experience.

I feel bad for people who are having to deal with catastrophic diseases during this time because no one seems to care about anything but how many tested positive for The Bob, even if most of those positives were not accompanied by symptoms.

Except for the library being closed, and my feeling bad for those with untreated illnesses because of limited medical services at this time and my feeling even worse for those undergoing various treatments while trying to steer clear of The Bob, my life isn’t any different. And it hasn’t been. I guess it helps being a hermit — one who is quite content reading, playing a computer game or two, and watching one’s property slowly being brought into submission.

Others have a different experience, I know, and I am in no way making light of those experiences, but some of the bureaucratic idiocies surrounding The Bob are appallingly ridiculous. For example, Colorado has implemented a color dial system to let people know how they are supposed to behave, with purple being the most restrictive and green the least. It makes me wonder how many of our tax dollars were spent coming up with such an utterly unnecessary system. Why not just tell people they have to stay home or they can go out but not in groups or whatever. Being told one is orange or red only confuses the issue because then people have to try to figure out what that means. But I suppose confusion is the name of the game. It keeps people focused on something other than that we are still dealing with governors with delusions of greatness and illusions of total power.

It’s funny that no one talks any more about the original projections that put all this insanity into play. If, as was postulated, that 80% of the world’s population would die, then yes, these restrictions would be necessary. But although people are getting sick and dying, the numbers simply don’t add up to such a destruction of normality.

And yes, I do take precautions, but that’s not because I’m being forced to. It’s because I always take precautions when it comes to illness. To force people to stay home, not because they are sick, but simply to protect their neighbors who might get sick if one didn’t stay home is beyond anything I could ever have imagined while steeping myself in conspiracies and government machinations for my first books.

But at this point, there’s not much any of us can do about the situation — and the confusion — except find an acceptable level of isolation and preparedness and interactions with people, and ignore what is anathema.

***

Buy it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0024FB5H6/

Download the first 30% free on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1842

Posted in culture, life. Tags: colorado's color dial, Covid color dial, getting sick in the time of the pandemic, government machinations, living with the quarantine, pandemic. 5 Comments »

A Thousand Years

November 15, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Considering all the address labels various do-gooder groups are sending me, I won’t be able to move for a thousand years, and even then, I’ll have a few labels left over as well as those they will be sending me over coming millennium.

I mean, really — in this electronic age, how many address labels does one person need? I’ve been using one each month to pay a local bill because I got out of the habit of paying in person with The Bob restrictions. (Incidentally, if you don’t know why I call this particular disease “The Bob,” it’s not just because I can’t bear to use its name, even though that’s true, it’s because of a scene from my book, A Spark of Heavenly Fire. Click here to read the explanation: The Bob)

And I might use a couple address labels for Christmas cards if I decide to send out the new cards I constructed from old cards at an Art Guild meeting the other day. But besides that, I have no use for address labels. You’d think charitable organizations would come up with some other sort of gimmick to get people to contribute to their cause, but I suppose the labels are easy to make and cheap to mail.

***

Please check out my new book!

Click here to order the print version of Bob, The Right Hand of God.
Click here to purchase the Kindle version of Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: address labels, Bob The Right Hand of God, charitable organizations, do-gooder groups. 4 Comments »

What Do I Need to Know Today?

November 12, 2020 — Pat Bertram

To learn the tarot and to get familiar with the various decks I inherited from my brother, I’ve been picking a card every day, and then researching the meaning. To get the best use of such an undertaking, a person needs to ask a question, though it isn’t necessary. My question — when I remember to ask it — is always, “What do I need to know today?” I find when I don’t ask the question, the card reflects my worries more than anything else. When I do ask . . . well, sometimes I get advice and sometimes not, but it’s hard to figure out from a card what I need to know especially if I don’t know what I need to know because the cards can only tell me what I already know since I am the one interpreting them.

Still, the advice I glean is sometimes spot on, sometimes too general to be useful, and is often something I already I know about me or my life. (I haven’t yet figured out how to discover that which I don’t know about my secret inner workings, even though learning such things is supposedly the best use of the tarot.)

The one suggestion that comes up over and over again in my daily one-card reading is to trust my intuition, trust my intellect, and to stay true to myself. I can’t help but equate this advice to certain current events since my intuition — and intellect — are both at odds with what most other people think, so I tend to doubt myself.

Despite the lack of true knowledge from the tarot about what I need to know each day, it’s still an interesting exercise. Maybe it will open my mind up to this intuition I am supposed to trust. If not, at least the question helps me focus on the day and what I might glean from it.

Forgetting the cards and what they might tell me, I’m curious as to what you might tell me — me specifically, or me as a member of the human race — what I need to know today.

So, what do I need to know today?

What do you need to know?

***

My latest novel Bob, The Right Hand of God is now published!

What if God decided to re-create the world and turn it into a galactic theme park for galactic tourists? What then?

Click here to order the print version of Bob, The Right Hand of God. Or you can buy the Kindle version by clicking here: Kindle version of Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, life, tarot. Tags: asking the tarot a question, doubting myself, learning the tarot, learning to trust my intuition, learning to use the tarot, trusting myself, what do I need to know today. 3 Comments »

My “On” Button

November 10, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Before the election, I talked with a friend one day about all the lies and cheats and deceptions. Like most people, she knew knew these tactics existed, but since she believed the lies told by the alphabet newscasters, she wasn’t aware there was another side.

I don’t often monopolize the conversation, but every once in a while, someone finds my “on” button, and I hold forth. Much of the truth of this past election was hard to find, but if one read more than an article or two, and if one read articles that went against what one happens to think at any given moment, it was a lot easier to piece things together. Also, I’ve studied such things most of my life — people often downplay the unpalatable truth with a contemptuous sneer of “conspiracy theory,” but the truth is, a conspiracy is merely something people in power do behind your back. And politics is full of back door, back room, back stabbing deals that we are not privy to, and if we do happen to stumble on the truth, well, then, they dismiss it by saying it’s just another conspiracy theory or fake news or whatever damning name they want to call it.

That particular day, however, I’d watched the news with her, watched the newscaster show a clip of an interview, then listened to her turn the person’s words upside down to prove a completely different point, then asked a second interviewee a question that would again make a mockery of the truth. The two of them talked about the horror of the event as if it had actually happened, rather than being a total fabrication.

Since I don’t watch the news, this took me aback. That they didn’t even pretend to hide their reprehensible behavior was too much for me. Did they really think we were such fools as to not hear what we originally heard?

Apparently so. Anyway, that got me started.

The friend listened agog as I explained not what we had just seen but also some of the subtle — and not so subtle — lies we’ve been told, explained how they vilified some players while beatifying others, and even explained some of the historical background leading up to this particular political mess. When I realized what I was doing, I apologized.

She said, “I like listening to you talk.” She asked me how I knew everything I did, including all the pieces that went together to make up my books. Then she said, “You must have gone to school for a long time.”

The truth is, I didn’t go to school for a long time. In fact, I have far less formal education than just about anyone I know, but I’ve spent a lifetime reading and researching, listening and thinking to make up for the lack. Even more, I almost never watch television. I didn’t grow up watching like most people of my generation did because my father wouldn’t get one. He wanted us to be independent thinkers, which kind of backfired on him. He wanted us to independently come to the same conclusions he did, and he was appalled to discover that we all turned out to think independently of him.

But that’s beside the issue. The real issue is that a lot of knowledge is hidden in books. Not school books or text books, but . . . books. All kinds of books, fiction and non-fiction. If one never reads, one never learns anything but what they are fed.

The first time I realized that tales hid truth was in grade school. For an English assignment, we had to create a newspaper. I thought it would be fun to make the news stories about various fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and in trying to find things to say about these bits of folklore, I happened to come across a book that gave the origins and meanings. And wow! What an eyeopener!

And so began my quest for the truth hidden in books.

If I have ever had a life-long passion, it’s with the truth, reading, seeing that which is hidden that we’re not supposed to know. So far, not all the truth is suppressed, and I’m not sure it can be, but it’s a lot harder to find than on a lighted screen.

I can’t say knowing the truth — at least as much of it as I do — has made me happy. It’s made me more of an outcast than anything (except during my years with Jeff — he was the only other seeker I had ever met, and together we learned a lot). But still, I’d rather know the truth — and if I don’t, I prefer searching for it — even if people don’t agree with me. Sometimes, their disagreement leads me to other paths. So far, none of these paths have set me on a totally different course, though a lot of the paths augmented the ones I was already on.

Searching for truth is like this find the hidden objects game I’ve been playing — it’s about learning patterns, seeing the truth as deviation from the pattern as well as seeing the truth in the pattern.

See what I mean about my “on” button? I had no intention of going into all that, but once I got started, I just kept going.

Luckily for you, I also have an off button.

***

My latest novel Bob, The Right Hand of God is now published!

What if God decided to re-create the world and turn it into a galactic theme park for galactic tourists? What then?

Click here to order the print version of Bob, The Right Hand of God. Or you can buy the Kindle version by clicking here: Kindle version of Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: back door deals, conspiracy theories, don't watch television, finding the truth, making up for lack of formal education, searching for the truth, watching the news. 13 Comments »

Make-Believe Worlds

November 6, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’m seceding from the world at large and planning on disappearing into make-believe worlds. There are simply too many horrible or stupid or insulting conversations about the election in the real world, the seemingly most innocuous being one of the worst, for me. People are saying that this was a contest between two men and should not be affecting our relationships with one another. While I might agree with the second part (to the extent that people keep their insults and aggressiveness to themselves), I definitely do not agree with the first part. To say it’s a contest between two men makes it seem like a high school presidential election where the most popular person wins. Many of our national elections have been like that, with nothing at stake, but this election is historic. It was not a choice between two men, but between two entirely different directions for the country to take — between freedom and subjugation, between choice and control, between more government and less government.

People on both sides are appalled that so many people voted for the other side, which means, again, that it was not about two men but about all of us.

So, I’m seceding. Or maybe it’s more that I receding. Either way, I’m finding comfort in make believe worlds.

I’ve got books, my yard (though I had to give up on digging up the grass in my garden because the tops of my feet hurt from all that unfamiliar work), and I’m immersing myself in one of those silly hidden objects game where you search for . . . you guessed it . . . hidden objects. I play my own game (which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about me). The game itself is free, but you are expected to buy “energy” (the coin of the realm) with real money as well as various other artifacts, but my game is to find ways of playing free. For example, if players agree to watch a commercial, they get gifts of energy and other e-delights, and I always agree — it gives me a chance to rest my eyes. They also occasionally have a side game that can be played free, as well as “happy hours.”

The game amuses me. It keeps my attention and provides exercise for my not-as-sharp-as-it-once-was memory, but it’s also an excellent example of an inflationary world. The more you play, the more energy you can accumulate, but the more energy you accumulate, the more each phase of the game costs. But, unlike in the real world, I can find ways around the inflation, such as playing the most “expensive” games during happy hour, and only playing the “cheap” games with my accumulated energy.

For now, I’d rather live in the make-believe worlds in games, in novels, and even inside my own head. At least, I don’t have to listen to lies and comments that irk me.

To set the record straight, none of the comments left here have ever irked me in any way. I appreciate every one of you and your comments. But then, this blog, in its own way, is also a make-believe world.

***

Speaking of make believe worlds, my latest novel Bob, The Right Hand of God is now published! Click here to order the print version of Bob, The Right Hand of God. Or you can buy the Kindle version by clicking here: Kindle version of Bob, The Right Hand of God.

What if God decided to re-create the world and turn it into a galactic theme park for galactic tourists? What then?