Siddonsburg Road

Driving the wagon down a winding road
I had taken a road I had never seen.
Several more had pressed me forward
So an anxiety in my bones I had gleaned
From their haste, to do their business
But I on an unfamiliar country road
I found myself in a new place, just five
Miles from my home, and everything was new
And every beautiful landscape I had never known.
Five miles off my path, off that winding Siddonsburg Road
I had seen within a whole new world,
One which I had never known.

And then, taken back to familiar streets
My eyes had seen my familiar town
New buildings, new things, new things untold
I had even walked into my home
And saw it was all fresh and new
When I travelled on Siddonsburg Road.

Books I’ve Read

Be a Rebel.
Read a Chapter Book over ten years.
Read a Nonfiction Book in the same amount of time.
Read a poem, essay or a short story once or twice a month.
Read a life by Plutarch or Suetonius once a year.
Catch up on your mythology and fairy tales once or twice a year, too.
Read a random Encyclopedia or Dictionary Entry once or twice in a while.
Read a chapter of the Bible now and again.
Read an Epic Poem over a lifetime.
Just read... don't be afraid. It's not a contest.

The Bible More than Every Other Book, Probably Even Twice Combined
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy Twice
Anna Karenina By Leo Tolstoy Once
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway Twice
Steinbeck The Pearl Once
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby Four Times
The Communist Manifesto Three Times
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice Once
Jane Austen Mansfield Park Once
Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy Once
Machiavelli's Prince Once
True Believer Eric Hoffer Once
Frank Herbert Dune Trilogy Once
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Alexander Solzhenitsyn Once
Fredrick Douglass The Life of Frederick Douglass Once 
Lois Lowry's The Giver Once
C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity Once
C. S. Lewis The Abolition of Man Three Times
C. S. Lewis The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Once
C. S. Lewis The Magician's Nephew Once
C. S. Lewis That Hideous Strength Once
C. S. Lewis Perelandra Once
C. S. Lewis Out of the Silent Planet Once
C. S. Lewis Dymer Once
1494 By Stephen R. Brown
Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine Once
Ray Bradbury The Martian Chronicles Once
Ray Bradbury The Illustrated Man Once
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 four times
Macbeth By Shakespeare Once
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare Once
How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie Twice
Julius Caesar by Shakespeare Once
Shakespearean Sonnets Once
Aristotle's Poetics Twice
The United States Constitution Five Times
United Nations Human Rights Charter Once
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Once
The Art of War by Sun Tzu Once
Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Once
George Orwell's 1984 Three Fourths
Brave New World Once
The Complete Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T. S. Eliot
Sir Thomas More's Utopia Once
The Catcher in the Rye Three Fourths
Civil Disobedience By Thoreau once 
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Four Times
Conquistador by Buddy Levy Once
The Case for Christmas Lee Strobel Twice
The Case for Easter Lee Strobel Twice
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit Once
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur Twice
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Once
Before and After Socrates by F. M. Cornford Once
St. Augustine's Confessions Once
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn Once
Voltaire's Candide Once
Seamus Heaney's Translation of Beowulf Once
Paradise Lost Once 
George Orwell's Why I Write Twice
The Everlasting Man G. K. Chesterton Once
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Once 
Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift Once
Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy Once
Animal Farm George Orwell Once
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Once
The Lotus Caves John Christopher Once
Complete Sayings of Ptahhotep - Thrice
Two Poems by Thomas Gray
Discourse on the Method by Descartes - Once


40 Poems by Wordsworth 

1. Lines Written in an Album

Flowers for Algernon Daniel Keyes - Once
The Child of the Cavern Jules Verne - Once

40 Poems by Wendell Berry
1 Essay by Wendell Berry
8 Poems by Robert Frost
30 Poems by Coleridge

1. Meditation on a Cataract
2. Religious Musings on Christmas Eve

20 Poems by Yeats
20 Poems by Keats

1. Hyperion 
2. The Fall of Hyperion

60 Poems by Walt Whitman
30 Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
15 Poems by Seamus Heaney
20 Poems by Horace

1. icci beatis

3 Short Stories by James Joyce
1 Short Story by Herman Melville
1 Short Story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
9 Full Canterbury Tales
Rousseau's First Discourse
60 Irish Poems and Fairy Tales by Various Authors

1. Babylon
2. The Burial of King Cormac
3. The Lament of Queen Maeve
4. The Banshee
5. The Children of Lir (Poem and Short Story)
6. The Bells of Shandon
7. Lament of Poets 1916
8.  The Exodus
9. The Famine Year
10. To Inishkea
11. To Maeve
12. The Herb Leech
13. Go Ploughman Plough

5 Complete Plutarch's Lives
8 T. S. Eliot Poems
5 Robert Southey Poems 
5 Meditations in the Tao Te Ching
10 Byron Poems

1. Prometheus 

4 Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
3 Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
1 Life by Suetonius (Nero) 
65 Grimm's Fairy Tales
22 Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
4 Essays by Frédéric Bastiat
6 Essays by Sigmund Freud
2 Essays by Carl Jung
3 Dialogues of Plato
5 Short Stories from Great American Short Stories
30 Poems from A Treasury of Poems in the English Language
2 Short Stories by Charles Beaumont
30 Great Tales from Great Tales From English History by Robert Lacey 
1 Essay by Benjamin Franklin
15 Poems by John Donne
Thomas Paine's Letter to Quakers
4 Short Stories by Guy De Maupassant 
22 Essays from Michael Montaigne
50 Aesop's Fables
20 of the Most Influential Speeches
Washington's Farewell Address
Washington's Inaugural Speeches
Jefferson's Farewell Speech
The Declaration of Independence
6 Books of the Old Testament Apocrypha
12 Books of the New Testament Apocrypha 
12 Poems by Wallace Stevens
3 Stories in The True Fairyland of Old King Cole
10 Poems by Emily Dickinson

1. I Gave Myself to Him

1 Essay by Francis Bacon
12 Irish Legends
4 Welsh Legends
Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vaunaghut 
Many Egyptian Fables and Stories from its Mythology

20 Letters from the Founding Fathers

3 Poems by William Blake

1. A Prophecy of America

12 Eddas from the Elder Edda
Athanasian Creed 20xs
Apostles Creed 1000xs
Nicene Creed 300xs


*If A Poem is Set Aside and Numbered, It's One I Recurrently Read

Books I'm in the Process of Reading

Virgil's Aeneid
Ovid's Metamorphosis
Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy 
Homer's Odyssey
Spencer's Fairy Queen
Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mozi's Meditations
Confucian Analects
La Rochefouchauld's Maxims and Essays
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays and Poems
Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe
Philip K. Dick 20 Short Stories
J. R. R. Tolkien's Silmarillion
Goethe's Faust
The Tale of Genjii Lady Murasaki
Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper
Caxton's Le Morte De Arthur
The Sayings of Mencius
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Romantic's Manifesto by Ayn Rand
Anthem by Ayn Rand
Dante's Inferno
Herodotus
Adam Smith's the Wealth of Nations
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan
John Locke's Two Essays
The Federalist Papers
The Antifederalist Papers
The Complete Pythagoras
Globish by Robert McCrum
Fernand Braudel's A History of Civilization
For Whom the Bell Tolls Earnest Hemmingway
Brother's Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Writings of Martin Luther
Being Logical D. Q. McInery
On Tyranny Timothy Snyder
Edith Hamilton's Mythology
Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology
Memoires of Chateaubriand
Emma Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck
Child Harold's Pilgrimage Byron
Michelangelo by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  
The Horse and His Boy C. S. Lewis
Paper Towns by John Greene
Lucretius' On the Nature of Things
The City of God
Leibniz' Theodicy (One Snippet on Asymptotes Helped Me Completely Understand Calculus)


Compendiums I Refer To Often

Constitutional Law Casebook Fourteenth Edition
Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetic Terms
A New Handbook on Literary Terms - David Mikics
Encarta Encyclopedia 2004
Euclid's Elements  from Green Lion Press
Evidence that Demands a Verdict - The McDowells 
2 Western History Textbooks from the 1980s and 2010s
Rules for Writers by Diana Hacker
A Reader's Digest of North American Birdlife
A Reader's Digest of North American Wildlife
Bulfinch and Edith Hamilton's Mythologies
Mythology A - Z  Annette Giesecke
Myths and Legends by William Doty and Jake Jackson
1978 Lutheran Hymnal
Barnes and Noble's Illuminated Book Edition The Constitution and Other Selected Writings of the Founding Fathers
Matthew Henry Commentary
World Mythology in Bite Sized Chunks by Mark Daniels
The Little Book of Mathematical Principles, Theories and Things by Robert Solomon 
Mathematics by Michael Willers

Scripture Translations I'm Familiar With

Dead Sea Scrolls Translated Into English
2 Hebrew Transliterations
1 Greek Transliteration
KJV
NASB
NRSV
NKJV
NIV
ESV
JPS
GNT 
TEV New Testament
Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, J. B, Lightfoot
Old Testament Apocrypha, NRSV
Strong's New and Old Testament Concordances

Children's Books I Read When In School

Iceberg Hermit Arthur J. Roth
Island of the Blue Dolphins Scott O'Dell
My Side of the Mountain Jean Craighead George
The Hatchet Gary Paulson
The Cay Theodore Taylor
Wacky Wednesday Dr. Seuss
Go Dog Go Dr. Seuss
The Foot Book Dr. Seuss
Green Eggs and Ham Dr. Seuss
The Best Nest Dr. Seuss
The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish Dr. Seuss 
Monsters Come in Many Colors Jim Henderson and Jocelyn Stevenson
Meet the Care Bears Ali Reich
Kids Fun Filled Question and Answer Book Jane Parker Resnick
The Beginner's Bible: Timeless Stories Karen Henley and Dennas Davis
Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes 
Killer Angels Michael Shara
Tuck Everlasting Natalie Babbit
The BFG Roald Dahl
James and the Giant Peach Roald Dahl
A Comprehensive Photo Book on Gettysburg
American Tall Tales Mary Pope Osborne



Philosophy of Math and Why It Proves God’s Existence

[...]The way number works down to the very minute fraction and detail, is a miracle in itself. That all you need to do is find a simpler ratio through geometric principles, develop it into a formula, and you'll have an exact measurement. That's kind of miraculous, and proves God's design over our universe.

Like the way quadratic formulas work is fascinating. The way we solved them, and can solve exponential equations, was by looking at a square, and developing a system of logic that can reduce that to any quadratic principle, back down into a linear solution. That's why you get two answers for [a] quadratic formula. Because it's not linear.

But the fact is, those ratios can describe everything in our world. There's design in our universe through number. And a lot of the great sages felt that was proof of God's existence.

That's also how calculus is solved, is by looking at shapes. Calculus is even more of a miracle, because you have to take a simpler logic, predict the answer, and then shape a formula around that prediction--like you know the logic's sound. But, that's how Calculus is framed, by looking at geometric principles, and then solving a limit through predicting what the answer will be, from a simpler shape.

The Flood

Actually, in Egyptian records there’s a marked collapse coinciding with everywhere else on Earth. There’s a global civilization and then there isn’t. You see that in the archeological record. Which lines up perfectly with the 24th Century Anomaly, which lines right up with Biblical Genealogies, if you assume a 100 year gap of overlap with the judges. Naqadan pottery shows this world wide civilization, and the next dynasty has no more remnants of it. It happens in the Americas and Asia too.

{}The First Dynasty of Ur was a part of a global civilization. The Second is mythological, because the Flood happened, and we don’t have much records from that time anywhere—literally, every continent sees a drastic gap in all their civilizations around the 24th century. And the Third is generally the Sumer of Akkad, and begins with the empire of Sargon—Nimrod. In fact, the Mesopotamian Basin was the first instance in history of a clash of empires. You had Sumer, the Akkadians, the Amorites, the Elamites, and they were all fighting amongst one another. The first battle was the Battle of Sidim, under Sulgi’s 45th year, and that’s recorded in the Bible. As well as the politics of the time period.

[T]he First Dynasty of Ur precedes the Third—we don’t know about the Second, because it seems to be where the Flood gaps civilizations—and the First was part of a Global civilization, that spanned from Asia, into Africa, into Europe and then into the Americas. You can tell that by certain artefacts they find.

The Good Sultan and his Camel

The Sultan worked in the stables
Cleaning out the stalls for his beloved Dromedary.
She had just lost her calf,  so she wept bitterly
Throwing up her head in mournful lowing,
And the Sultan came to her, and through up his hands 
Around her giant body,
And cried, "Ah, my Aziz is crying for her calf
"I know, I know, the world is hard, my precious.
"For you weep, and so do I at this world's evil."

On Success

[T]he only way to get successful: You could be the best at something, and get nothing. Also the absolute worst, and get everything you want out of life (although that usually is a curse in disguise). How many times has that happened? All blessing, honor and prosperity flows through the LORD. So does all curse, too. Sometimes, by natural causes God wants to bless you, but the world’s too powerful, and He won’t be able to without exerting great power and torment. That’s why He doesn’t come and save the world from all its suffering this very [hour], is because it would require such force, the righteous on Earth would suffer too, like Jeremiah did.

The Annals of Guang Wu, 31ad the Eclipse Happened, and a Month Later Guang Wu Issued the Decree and Phlegon of Trelles

Gongsun Shu established Wei Qi as King of Shuoning.

On the last day of the year of Guihai (March 31st, 31ad, ChinaSonaFoundation), the sun was eclipsed. He avoided the main hall, put down his guards, and did not attend to affairs for five days. He said in an imperial edict: "My poor virtue has brought disaster upon me, and I am blamed by the sun and the moon. (讁 is a word for blame. It is pronounced as the reverse of 直革. Zuo Zhuan said: "A ruler who does not use good in governing will bring disaster upon himself." ) I am trembling with fear. What can I say? Now I am thinking about my mistakes, so that I can eliminate the guilt. I will order the officials to perform their duties, abide by the laws, and benefit all the people. All the officials should submit their secret reports, without any excuses. Those who submit letters are not allowed to mention the saint. "

On the renwu day of the fourth month of summer, the emperor issued an edict saying: "It is a misunderstanding between the yin and yang, and the sun and moon are eclipsed. If the people have committed a crime, it is my fault. I will grant amnesty to the whole country. The dukes, ministers, secretaries, and governors of the states shall each select one virtuous and upright person and send him to the Gongche. I will examine him there." ( Gongche is the name of a gate. The place where Gongche is located is named after it. The official etiquette of the Han Dynasty said: "Gongche is in charge of the Sima Gate of the Palace. All the affairs of the country and the summons are under its jurisdiction." 

AI Generated Translation https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%BE%8C%E6%BC%A2%E6%9B%B8/%E5%8D%B71%E4%B8%8B

Julius Africanus writes "Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Cæsar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth..."[4]

Eusebius, in book 2 of Chronicle (Chronicon, quoted by Jerome), refers to Phlegon's 13th book for confirmation of an eclipse and earthquakes in Bythinia and Nicaea. [5]

"In the 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was a great eclipse of the Sun, greater than had ever been known before, for at the sixth hour the day was changed into night, and the stars were seen in the heavens. An earthquake occurred in Bythinia and overthrew a great part of the city of Nicæa."[6]

Wikipedia. Phlegon of Trelles. 5. 28. 24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegon_of_Tralles

On Old and New Testament Law

But I’m not judg[mental. No one is] a good person{...}. Nobody is. And that code of ethics makes more sense than the ethics we have today, by a longshot. Even the harder aspects of it; not to mention, people naturally follow those laws to begin with, even you when you are revolted by what I say, make yourself a Law according to what’s in scripture. It’s just you turn it against God, but that same warlike nature is in you. It’s human nature, and that’s why the Bible has it so. So you have to direct it toward the right kinds of things.

And generally, that is the good news, also, that we don’t have to deliver judgment anymore. God’s going to do it. We can let the world burn, and be ran by the bad guys into the ground. We couldn’t stop it anyway. We’re just here to be a Mockingbird.

Exile to Babylon in Modern Day

[T]o be frank, we’d still be believing in Magic had [The Roman Catholic Church] not done some of the things they did.

No, I’m actually starting to understand why the Catholic Church proscribed rules against witches and stuff. Like, the entire Enlightenment was derived from Christians expecting to find order in the cosmos and consistency, not only in physics but in ethics. Without which we’re back to magical thinking. Which the enlightenment couldn’t have happened, if people were still running around casting spells like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Like what did happen, was the Salem Witch Trials exasperated people’s belief in magic, and they thought it was terror what happened, and felt the whole thing was an atrocity. That was Christian Ethics that did that, because we firmly based our principles in hard science and reason, and not the Law of Attraction or Sorcery, and just simply stopped believing in it.

Like, Christ’s Laws worked. America paralleled exactly what’s in the Bible. Literally, you couldn’t find a better picture of the Prosperity Promised through the Practice of God’s Law than in America. The Ethics of Christianity worked for 200 years, and without them, we’re seeing the whole civilization corrode.

Though I’d rather live under Islam than a completely Atheistic regime. That’s a fact. It wouldn’t get quite as ridiculous.

I mean, my only concern would be paying their tax. That’d be my only concern. But, it wouldn’t be as crazy as what the West is doing right now.

I mean, it’d kind of have echoes of Daniel and Ezekiel going down to Babylon. Because God sent Judah to exile because they’d be safe there, and purified. Believe it or not, the Babylonians—before they venerated Sin—were actually very similar in their laws to Judaism, and Judaism probably had an effect on Cyrus the Great so much that he instituted Zoroastrianism. Which is the origin of Islam, is Zoroastrianism. But the Monotheistic faith of Abraham’s was instituted around 1300bc. Abraham and the Patriarchs believed in one God since the beginning, but the world didn’t get a monotheistic religion until the Jews in 1300bc. It just never was properly followed, and people chose to rebel and worship the Pantheon of Baal-El and Sin.

I also wouldn’t mind living under a Hindu regime, either. But the Caste System can get kind of hairy. But definitely not an atheist regime, with all the gross things they would do.

Just for the record, I’m a 100% Christian, but I’m just speaking in the form of the Bible, that when Judah sinned—like America is right now—it went into captivity. And one reason God chose the place they went to, was that they had more humane laws. There was idolatry, but they had better ways of being, as the Hebrews were having orgies in the mountaintops, and giving birth to children that they would later consume. So, God had to do something with them. America is doing a lot of the same things, with Abortion, and accepting Homosexuality and this Hook Up Culture that makes Marriage nearly impossible; not to mention the Civil Courts are gross, and almost always rule in favor of the aggressor, and not necessarily the one who has the just cause.