tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6550315839527219940.post4559883192347489735..comments2023-10-11T02:43:45.437-07:00Comments on CASAMURPHY: Roof LandingLaynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11202742050661813668noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6550315839527219940.post-37560625455614967722013-06-21T21:03:51.515-07:002013-06-21T21:03:51.515-07:00Just back from dinner w/ said Johnstonians, after ...Just back from dinner w/ said Johnstonians, after which we introduced ourselves. All ten preceded me and all spoke with pride of J. and their mentors such as the host. I followed with duly having married into the set, so to speak, and attesting to the pride we share in our son's experience.<br /><br />Being a Buffalo clearly teaches one to think with more confidence and self-motivation, and to gain (we hope) more insight. I cannot imagine a lot of alumni flocking from where I've taught and matriculated to chat about mortality in philosophy and American pop culture. The instructor's interests are very broad and this will appeal more than the "pitch" might let, albeit to a small audience. I thought of the connection this week when James Gandolfini, a few months younger than me, died, and the last episode of "The Sopranos" which I never saw but I know about: a fitting end although an unpopular one to a series, let alone anyone's life, but to me, an honest depiction. Americans don't want to confront the possibility of a blackout. "Heaven is For Real" and "Proof of Heaven": bestsellers for years now.<br /><br />The fact that nearly half (some share my own bafflement how Heidegger and Derrida--let alone Freud whom I've never been impressed by) of the participants (with three more due soon to join us) express delight in tackling such thinkers and the others even if skittish trust their colleagues and teacher to guide them, is inspiring. One young man just graduated, while others are from the start of Johnston, but over generations, they affirm they can benefit from a week confronting death. I still have never seen a human die, I've reflected, while many spoke at the table of seeing their parents, siblings, or a husband die recently. One woman came to this seminar after being encouraged by a friend who now is dying after suddenly finding out she has a cancer of the brain. <br /><br />I was heartened to note the teacher's wife will be discussing the death of animals too, as that is overlooked. I agree with her that watching animals suffer and die is harder, as we want to speak to them and hear them to comfort them in their own existential plight. Her own growing up in L.A. as the daughter of two Polish Holocaust survivors and the fact she got her PhD from UCLA in English a few years before me (we overlapped but never met) adds to the interest I hope I can find in this seminar, among finals of my own to grade and the reading list. <br /><br />The house: built 1892, moved here from L.A. 1928. Still a Methodist retreat, after the founders of Pacific Palisades who dreamed of a Christian community here until the Depression hit. Hard to believe this elegant manse once was surrounded by fields and not condos, highways, and Gelson's. I wish I heard the ocean a mile away and not the endless Temescal Canyon traffic, but such is L.A. I wonder if Buerge Chapel is any connection to the farm on Lugonia Ave. I saw, struggling to survive in Redlands as tracts now surround it too? Unlike perhaps the Inland Empire nowadays, nice air, though. Enjoy your stint with cold meals and t.v. <br /><br />Shabbat shalom...xxx meJohn L. Murphy / "Fionnchú"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16616876266772470719noreply@blogger.com