Last Saturday was a cool one with lots of rain, but Sunday was summery again. At around nine (9) am Jeltsje and I will make a phone call. This we do about once a year, maintaining a dear friendship dating back to my Dutch sojourn, which ended ten years ago next month.

She and I have a bit of a soul mate connection regarding reincarnation, Gnostics, the Cathars and the world of extra sensory perception and experience. So, there is always lots to talk about, besides the family and mutual friends, of which my sister Els is one.

Later on I’ll go by Jack’s place, who will join me for our mutual birthday lunch at the Selkirk restaurant. Yesterday I was at the well attended lecture by Herman on the ‘Inner Critic‘. There I met up with my friends whom I had missed at various times over the summer months.

This included Daniel who is interested in the Gnostics, but more in the modern interpretation of those writings. My interest is historical and functional in the sense as to what was it that drove those people to write this, some times very strange, stuff? I suspect it is the record of unconscious content at the time, becoming conscious for assimilation.

Over the weekend I made a start with the address list that John asked me to set up. This we discussed on Saturday and I settled on using spreadsheet software for the tabulation. This way the file will be printable and transferable between computers, rather than be stuck on an email service site.

Last but not least I finally started again on the colouring on my Doodle Mandala from 1973! I am still aiming at a near completion for the end of this calendar year! That will make it a forty (40) year project. I am a late starter and a slow learner some have said, but thorough I add!

And very last I bought a new book titled ‘The Barbarous Years’ by Bernard Bailyn, a well published historian for that time period. This author writes on the early settlement of modern North America and the displacement of the indigenous cultures and its peoples. I am now about two thirds into ’My Husband and my Wives’ by Beye. In it sex reports are slowly being displaced by observations about relationships and other experiences.

The reason I bought ‘The Barbarous Years’ is that it deals with the tremendous diversity and intense conflicts that played out in the years of 1600 - 1675 in North America. This to me is a parallel to the Global situation of today, where we too have many conflicts between people who hold differing identities dear and are very intolerant of each others conviction. The book ends with the initial resolution in the case of this North American scenario.

An second motive is that there are various chapters on the Dutch presence and actions in those early years. This is well known and acknowledged, but not much written about by a grounded historian.

All this was good reason to buy this book; not that I need that much justification usually, but this purchase was well justified! I think, but do I know:).
ca. 9:00am~