John came down my way on Saturday and we had a good chat at Savour’s this time. Sunday unfolded as normal, but my lunch with Herman last Friday took an unexpected turn. As we discussed the ISIS threat, he insisted on equating that to the one of the Nazi’s back in the 1930-ties.

This he appeared to base on Israel’s Netanyahu speech of a few days before, which I skipped since it was too predictable and over the top.

Equating the present ISIS threat with the old Nazi threat misleads one into taking the wrong counter measures.

Learning from history is one thing, but equating processes is mere substitution, which misleads one into taking the wrong counter measures. These in turn can result in aggravating the situation, as has been the case in the past.

However, our discussion had ceased to be that, so I just got up from the table to indicate that I did not want to continue this exchange. This we did and parted, nevertheless with a well meant handshake. Friends disagreeing you might say and for this there has to be room.

I was going to my laundry this morning, but someone was ahead of me, so I’ll wait until this aft or otherwise tomorrow. To night I’m slated to pack up Elisabeth from our airport. She is returning from a one week trip to Castro country, which is a welcome break for her, I’m sure.

This week I’ll use all available time for my Maya talk this coming Sunday. An appropriate narrative is slowly maturing in my mind and psyche, but it keeps changing. I attribute this to the wealth of new information that I have available to me in two very informative books and the various web sites.

And I suspect that the nature of the material has something to do with that slow gestation process. I would say that more than half the material I study is from discoveries of the last fifty years and these discoveries are haphazard by nature.

So, I come across bits here and pieces there that differ from the ones already collected and now need to be refitted into my partially formed outline of my presentation.
Too much material will kill the story and I do want to convey the notion that the Maya tradition is alive today as it was in the past, starting so long ago in ca. 3000BC and continuing. This makes it the longest running human culture that I know of, aside from the hunting and gathering tradition.

This makes it the longest running human culture that I know of, aside from the hunting and gathering tradition.

At the present time I feel the need to address two sets of concepts about the Maya tradition. One is the accepted set of concepts and ideas we hold about the Maya in our own culture with its facts and taught stereotypes. These differ from the now emerging concepts about what this civilization actually was and is about.

As I write now, it appears that I need to tell my story from the existing notions and then re-examine them, maybe even replace them with new info. I visualise myself as stepping from one stone onto the other, rebuilding the path as I go and still have a path to look back at that shows an updated and coherent view of this old human civilization, alive among us today.
<10:43am and with edit and phone call now noon:16pm~