Homesick in Atlanta

Another delay in the confirmation process

Questions for my senators concerning John Bolton, the nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

• If John Bolton is truly abusive to colleagues and subordinates, should he be working for any office of the government, whether in the U.N. or anywhere else? Diplomats and U.N. workers from other countries can take care of themselves; my concern is for "our own."


• If the charges against John Bolton are false or exaggerated, who will be held accountable for the anti-Bolton campaign? (Question to President Bush: Even if Bolton is only half as obnoxious as his detractors assert, could you not have done better in choosing a nominee and saved us all, including Bolton, a lot of misery?)


• Why won’t anyone in mainstream politics question the argument that U.N. reform requires an abrasive White House-certified tough guy? Does anyone really believe that the United Nations will have a better chance of fulfilling the dreams of its founders because the most powerful rogue nation in history, well known for exempting itself from any international rule it doesn’t like, appoints an ambassadorial Dirty Harry? (I apologize to John Bolton for this comparison, which may be utterly unfair – but this is the pitch being made by his own supporters!)

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Occultism, mysticism, and Rudolf Steiner

Aleksandr Men’:

When I think of Steiner, when I read his books (I have read a lot of his works), mentally I lament for him. I lament because I can’t help wishing that such a person would have served the Truth, served Christianity. It’s a shame and an offense that he took the occult route.

What is the distinction between the occult and the mystical? The mystical rises upwards; the occult goes sideways into a parallel universe; and insofar as this universe is deceptive, one could spend one’s whole life wandering about chasing will-o-the-wisps, constructing whole reality systems, astral worlds, passageways, hierarchies, all the while getting more enmeshed in the endless revolutions of that beastly world.*

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Our chariot

Once upon a time, we bought a Honda Civic Wagon, a cute little copper-colored car. The salesman at Al Castrucci in Dayton, Ohio, dragged out the negotiations until it was almost closing time at the YMCA day care center next to Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio, something over 45 minutes away along smallish country roads. At the other end of that journey was our five-year-old son, waiting in trust for his reliable parents to pick him up at the end of the day. The statute of limitations on speeding have surely run out by now – he’s now 18 – so I can report that I was not nearly as late as I should have been.

That Honda still bears a souvenir of the YMCA day care center. It has a Cincinnati Bengals window decal, which our son received when the Bengals, whose off-season practice site was the college field behind the Y, thrilled the kids with an unexpected visit. At least we hope the car still bears that sticker. We don’t know for sure, because last night someone stole the Honda from the parking lot of Reedwood Friends Church, where Judy was serving as an overnight host in the family shelter.

* Библия и литература: Лекции (The Bible and Literature: Lectures), М., 2002, page 254.