I’m going to reprint the book I’ve been talking about.

I am now rereading it.  The book sort of fell into my hands a long time ago. It languished on my “must read” bookshelf for years.  It was a curious thing.  All black cloth covers with the title on the top of the spine and Jack Adams at the bottom of the spine. Inside there was an explanation, which stated that it was not written by the person whose name was on the spine. It was not written by the two people who held the copyright. It was the manuscript of Dr. T. A. H. Lowe, who died four years before the book was published. 

I tried to find out a little about this Dr. T. A. H. Lowe , but nothing appeared when I started looking at the National Archives in Kansas City. They have a lot of census data on line and they are only six blocks from my home so I tried there first. It took a couple of months for me to find out that I was looking for Tilghman A. Howard  Lowe. Some times the A. was added, sometimes the first name was spelled Tilman.  There was a Tilghman Howard Hunt and finally I concluded that the Tilghman Howard in Indiana was the one that was born first and since he had a military career and political office he was the one that the others were named after.

 I could eliminate Tilghman Howard Lowe from Omaha because he went off to medical school and was expelled for intoxication which prompted him to head for California. 

The one I wanted information on was Tilghman Answorth Howard  Lowe a graduate of the Eclectic Medical school in Cinncinati, Ohio. At least I was pretty sure he was my man because he ended up practicing Medicine in a couple of places in Kansas.
I finally got to the Historical Archives in Topeka, Kansas and they had a couple of cards in the card catalogue (yes brothers and sisters they still operate with a card catalogue) which referred to Dr. T. A. H. Lowe and wonder of wonders they had a copy of the book .
At last I felt, that now, I at least, was started after the right culprit.

IN the book, the characters have gotten stuck in the ice.  It makes a great adventure but I am not too  enamored with cold.  The description of the Aurora Borealis they see, is very short of the actual thing. I first saw the Aurora Borealis out the airplane window of a JAL flight to Japan. It was very spooky. If one had never read of it, and was trapped in the ice and had absolutely no knowledge of its existence it could be very traumatic . With prior knowledge it was for me eerie and breathtaking. It seemed alive. There were color changes that moved through a shape like a waving flag.

I’ve been real cold, having lived in the mid-west for a large portion of my life. Waiting for the bus, walking to school, before there were snow days, or working for the plumber trying to dig up a frozen sewer pipe in frozen ground. All I remember is promising myself that I am never doing this again. 

When the plumber called me the second time, I went, because he said it was triple time all day. I know it was my greed that kept me warm.  The plumber must have known, that double time would not drive the cold from my mind. I was really greedy, triple time made the cold wind bearable.

My most vivid recollection of cold, came from my imagination. It ran rampant  while watching the movie “Coming Out of The Ice”. When the hero finally slid down into a warm bath in Vladivostok, I quit shivering and I was watching the movie in a hotel room in Hong Kong. It was very warm outside.

Incidentally  Willie Nelson plays the part of “Chicago Red” or “Detroit Red” who gives the hero a homemade trap to catch rats for food, uttering a great line that is something like “After all this they can drop you anyplace in the world and you can live through it”.
So being around ice in movies, in real life or in the book does not hold my interest very well.
I do like ice cream and I like to watch it snow particularly if I am sitting by a wood burning stove.  Wood heat seems to move deeper into the body.

ONE of the things that has become very evident to me, because of this book I am reading is that a lot of people can smell the first whiff of Bull Shit. There are just a lot of very different reactions. The readers go get a book. The talkers get on their cell phone and call or text the world. People join clubs, start news letters, buy booze in gallon containers. Lots of ways that people react to a whiff. I’ve come to admire one group which is rather hard to find. those are the people who just find something to do that will most probably not get caught up in debates of some kind. Debates about whether the result will every obtain a concenus opinion on whether it  is good or bad.

The people who just keep volunteering at homeless shelters, or sewing “Little Dresses for Africa”. They do not let anyone know that they caught a whiff of the cow. They just keep smiling, putting one foot in front of the other and continue to peck away at one small problem. They have discovered they can make a difference, nothing grandiose, until they step back and look at what they and a thousand others, each pecking away at the same problem have been able to accomplish. 

“Little Dresses for Africa” one year ago had delivered 500,000 dresses.

My wife has sewed 500. This year they have delivered 1,500,000 -- plus they started doing britches for boys.

Right here is where I would usually try say something funny, intellectual, something that for sure is negative about Obama and Bush and Clinton and Reagan. Oh well lets just use their Bull Shit on the roses and watch the roses grow. The roses planted by "Little Dresses for Africa"

You can start planting roses --www.nancysnotions.com/text/pdf/LittleDressesforAfrica_pattern.pdf

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TWO years ago I started a project which has taken on a life of it's own. Naturally it has to do with a book I read. The book seems to have started me on a path of repetitive coincidences.The longer I read in the book the more I realized there were a few holes in my education. So I would put this book on the shelf for a few weeks while I pursued information to fill the holes in my education. My wife says that part of the problem is that I have a bit of an obsessive streak when I am expected to stay in sync with consensus reality.

I have a high expectation for those who decide what we are to believe. I expect them to know what is going on. I expect them to answer questions with the most honest answer known at the time the question is asked. When any slight stench of Bull Shit is sensed, I know they are not wanting me/us to know the truth for some reason. I want to know what it is, they, don't think we ought to know.