Paranoia - A Creeping Social Infection (Essay by Bob Racine)

There is a man I once worked alongside in a place of employment many years ago whom I will call Gus.  He and I were working in the Field Service division of the parts supply department of a medical supply firm.  We shipped replacement parts on an emergency basis to various customers around the country.  He was not on the job long before it became obvious that he was going to be trouble.  His particular function was to obtain from other handlers in the building what was missing from our current inventory that needed shipping.

                                     

Everyone caught on quite early to the way he got around to demonizing each and every fellow employee he encountered.  We noticed that he was not in a hurry to go obtain the parts we needed.  He kept pressing us to go over the list again and griping profusely when we refused, parts we all knew he could identify.  He had an engineering background; he was no newcomer to the science the company was practicing.  When we finally got him into a meeting with the supervisor, he could not stay on the subject being discussed; he preferred to go around the room and complain to each individual about an alleged slight or an alleged barrier that each of us had placed in his path that supposedly prevented him from functioning. 

                                     

It became clear that he did not trust anybody and was stalling at what he had been assigned, because he was afraid of whomever he might have to deal with.  He was supposed to be a liaison between Field Service and the manufacturing departments.  The job called for him to interact with lots of people at different times, which required him to establish rapport with a wide variety of workers.  His habit of demonizing got in the way of him doing that.  Gus was a paranoid, always looking over his shoulder suspecting rudeness and mistreatment from others and creating both in himself.   After a few weeks he was let go.  I hope the next interview he had was with a psychiatrist.    

                                     

As I recall, Gus actually thrived on the disputes he created; they were contrived by him.  He seemed to have some vested interest in suspecting and demonizing.  He was resistant to trusting, because trusting makes a person vulnerable to loss and injury.   A paranoid feels helpless before what she/he thinks is a threatening world, but by holding the world at arms length the Guses of this world experience the illusion of strength – the strength of their warped perceptions. 

                                     

Is paranoia a sickness that one can inherit?  Are there genes and chromosomes that can be acquired at birth that predispose a person to be paranoid in thought and behavior?  Imagine if you can an innocent newborn baby opening its eyes to take in the world.  If paranoia is an inherited trait, what telltale signs would that infant demonstrate?  I would guess none!  A baby learns very quickly to depend upon the mother – for feeding, for affection, for cradling, for care of the body.  The baby’s first achievement is mastering the ability to accept love and caring.  It is not hard.  Until I hear evidence to the contrary, I will maintain that paranoids are not born; they are created.

                                     

In the 1962 movie “David and Lisa” the teenage David of the title is so resistant to trusting association with anybody and so inclined to turn any encounter into a bitter one that he goes into a rage when someone as much as touches his body.  The setting of the story is a home for disturbed youth.  Having to share space, he reacts to any physical contact as though an assault has been unleashed upon him as a person, even if it happens accidentally, as it does in two instances.  He has dreams in which he executes these “enemies” by cutting off their heads, or as his analyst puts it, “so you’ll feel safe”.  Ironically the only one who finally gets through to him is a schizophrenic girl, the Lisa of the title. 

                                     

No one attacks David; he only supposes that everyone daring to enter his space is to be avoided and maybe even punished.  

                                     

What drives a nation or tribe to engage in armed aggression?  Various things we would suppose: the lust for power or the craving for territory or the expansion of political influence or the enhancement of national image or even religious zeal.  But it seems to me that the pathology of paranoia has been known to play just as great a part in it.  Distrust of anything foreign!  The Empire of Japan in 1941 did not attack Pearl Harbor in retaliation for anything.  Our two countries had been on at least ostensibly friendly terms during the late thirties and early forties.  The attack was driven by the suspicion and nothing more that the U.S. had invasion plans and that all the American military hardware sitting in plain sight there in Hawaii was just waiting to be unleashed upon their small island nation.  They created the monstrosity they somehow believed already existed and feared.   

                                     

The attack on 9/11 in my view was driven by the same malignancy.  We as a nation had once again become the object of the same kind of fear.  Back in the 1950s the general assumption was that if World War III broke out, it would be waged between the U.S. and Russia.  The big powers, the giants, in a super collision!  We had fears that they might strike first and that whoever instigated it, the result would be the annihilation of the human race or at least a large segment of it.  The rest of the civilized world worried about what these colossal nations would do and how they themselves could be caught in the crossfire. 

                                     

But time has shifted the thinking of sober people.  The Cuban Missile Crisis did much to put an end to that perception.  If either the U.S. or Russia had been trigger nervous and ready to strike, that would have been the opportunity to make the move.  But the Russians in that 1962 event demonstrated that they were no more eager for that eventuality than we were.  They had as much to lose as we did; they were no more ready than we to push that button and sacrifice their infrastructures or their vast resources.     

                                     

Today the picture is quite different.  It is now the small fry, not the colossal powers, who pose the great threat.  ISIS and the Taliban and Al Qaeda are exercises in paranoia.  They slash and run; they do not build anything.  They have little if anything material to lose.  Many of them are suicidal, blowing themselves up to advance their influence, what little they have.  Like Gus they regard the rest of the world as enemies, untrustworthy and ripe for demonizing.  And they create the very warfare they think others will wage. 

                                     

But paranoia is contagious.  These terrorist groups do the malicious things they do on the pretense that they speak for Islam.  And there is the nagging fear in some quarters, fed by the inhuman activity of these extremists, that Muslims generally are a threat.  We have a Presidential candidate who wants to bar all of them from entering our country and another who is pushing for police patrolling of Muslim communities.  Recently a passenger on a major airline flight made a big scene complaining that the Islamic man in the adjacent seat was talking over his telephone in Arabic.   Law abiding Muslims have been shunned on the street.  I fear that the paranoia of our enemies may be spilling over into the mass consciousness of our nation.

                                     

A few days ago I watched on line an old Twilight Zone episode in which a previously peaceful American neighborhood is turned into a raging, reactionary mob by alien visitors from outer space.  The aliens, never seen and remaining in hiding, have the power to shut off all their electrical fixtures and to prevent all their automobiles from cranking.  The people of that community, suddenly frozen and immobile, sense that the aliens are somewhere nearby and begin to wonder if they have someone living on their street who is in league with them.  Puzzlement within a few hours turns into suspicion and suspicion gives way to fear and panic.  Guns are finally drawn and one of their number is shot and killed.  Seeing their own destructive power, they all go stark raving mad.  The episode ends when the camera draws back and shows one alien instructing another in the best way to conquer earth – one neighborhood at a time.   

                                     

The story is farfetched, but it gives us in microcosm an unforgettable image of people corrupted from within by their own foolish paranoid suspicions.  Actually it might not take outer space aliens to undermine the security and stability of our society and it will not happen in just a few hours.

                                     

I am pleased to see all the burgeoning studies being currently made on the subject of peace making.  A book published almost a decade ago entitled “The Anatomy of Peace” issued by the Arbinger Institute has gained new relevance and is one that every American ought to read.  I will be reviewing it in detail in another posting very soon.  In a nutshell, it tells a tale that is in actuality the reverse of the Twilight Zone episode.  An assortment of people already full of suspicions and prejudices that have made trouble for them and their families are transformed into peace makers in the space of one long weekend.  I look forward to sharing it with you all.     

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Spotlight (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

2 hrs & 9 min, color, 2015

                                     

The World Book Dictionary gives four very direct, precise and crisp definitions of the word “scandal”.  The first covers the most ground, indicating source: “A shameful action, condition, or event that brings disgrace or offends public opinion”.  The second is in reference to effect: “damage to reputation; disgrace”.  The third indicates the means by which it is transmitted: “public talk that will hurt. . .reputation”.  And the fourth is the most specific of all: “discredit to religion caused by irreligious conduct or moral lapse.”  Aside from reputation, religion itself or a basic standard of morality widely respected is defamed by blatant wrongdoing.

                                     

The scandal that has descended upon the Catholic Church over widespread sexual abuse of children by ordained clergy fits each and every one of these shades of definition.  The action of the priests has created a “condition” that public opinion has caught up with.  The Church’s reputation has been irrevocably tainted by this disgraceful and, as it turns out, commonplace behavior.  It has unleashed a public outrage that has taken the form of unrelenting comment and discussion to which every citizen of the world has been privy; it has by now passed the point of rumor.  And it almost goes without saying that religious scruple and basic standards of decency shared by all civilized nations have been discredited.  Some scandals have been so localized and have involved so few individuals and institutions that over a meager period of time they pass from the public memory.  But this one is not likely to succumb to that fate. 

                                     

For that unlikelihood we have a team of four journalists from the Boston Globe to thank.  They wore out layers of figurative and maybe literal shoe leather between 2001 and 2002 tracking down the evidence from many documented sources to expose this insidious and clandestine practice on the part of a staggering array of priests. The team is called Spotlight, a specialized group who are given the license to spend as much time – months and years if necessary – completing a crucial and complicated investigation on a high voltage story. 

                                     

Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Brian d’Arcy James portray this devoted quartet of inquiring minds, and Liev Schreiber is the managing editor who incites the team to take on the subject.  All of them do excellent work bringing these contributing individuals to vivid life, and Stanley Tucci gives a well restrained but acute portrayal of a lawyer for victims who for years has been probing for justice and cautiously warms up to what the Globe is planning.  There are no lead players; what we have is an ensemble cast; everyone is a supporting player, but they perform together brilliantly.  Tom McCarthy directed the film and along with Josh Singer knocked out the extraordinary screenplay.  He has come forth with an excellently modulated production that spares no essential detail and gives an objective account of both the issue and the tireless labor.  

                                     

We should appreciate, however, that these journalists are not portrayed as white knight crusaders.  It has to be faced by the newspaper staff that they had had clues pointing toward the sickness years before and had not acted upon them.  There are arguments, struggles of conscience and world weariness that they have to contend with in the course of their time-consuming work.

                                     

What memories do I carry away from my two viewings?  I will never rub from my mind the voices of victims recounting the experience of being molested and raped by clergymen whom they trusted as a child of eleven or twelve.  It is one thing for us to be told the nature of the priests’ behavior; it is something far more shocking and heartbreaking to hear one of them report the intricate step-by-step details of it.  None of the ones we hear from are able to get through their stories without sobbing.  I have been brought to tears by many films in my lifetime, but the ones I shed while hearing these conversations reached a primal level in my inner child that was almost paralyzing.  My eyes water up as I write these words. 

                                     

And I credit McCarthy for not smoothing them over; the reporters taking down the explicit details are dogged as they have to be but compassionate.  How grateful we should be that no reenactments were attempted; that would have been a cruel exploitation. What is spoken straight to camera is more than adequate.  One of these victims told about how he was “groomed” for the seduction.  No one it seems was grabbed and forcibly pinned down and painfully assaulted.  They were trapped by their own innocent assumption of the adult priest’s authority and by the cunning of the priest with whom they had dressed altars and from whom they had taken Communion.  All of these bit players who portray the victims do a magnificent job of getting under the character’s skin.  It makes us wonder if they themselves are actual victims hired off the street for the filming.   

                                     

What else will I be unable to forget?  In one scene a suspected priest, already retired, is contacted, who promptly admits that he “fooled around with” kids but claims he never actually raped anyone.  How so?  Because he got no pleasure from it!  A rape is only the genuine article if the rapist gets pleasure out of it!  This pitiful man does not take into account the experience of the kid being abused, only how he the adult was affected.  Heaven help us!

                                     

I will also not forget the culture of secrecy that surrounded the phenomenon – guilty priests being shuttled around from parish to parish without consequences and left free to commit the same crime all over again in each parish with impunity.  The reporters run smack up against walls of resistance that block their path at every turn, not just on the part of the Church but city officials and courts that seal off offending documents.  The team even uncovers collusion on the part of an Archbishop!  In one scene we hear the remark that it takes a village to raise a child and takes no less of a village to abuse one.      

                                     

I will also remember the rationale that was used in an attempt to dissuade the Globe journalists from continuing with their mission.  The city of Boston must be protected from unfavorable publicity and since the Church is deeply intertwined with the common life of that city, having allegedly done wonders for it, that sacrosanct body must be granted immunity from any kind of prosecution.  Schreiber’s managing editor as it so happens is Jewish, and the unkindest and most condescending cut delivered in the course of the film is the Archbishop making him a gift of the Catechism upon his arrival on the job.  Because the man was not considered a true Bostonian, everyone in high places figured he would not last and that upon his departure presumably the scandal would be avoided.  They were in for a huge surprise!

                                     

And finally, I will remember what we are told in the closing credits.  We are left at the very end with a long, long list of the localities worldwide where child abuse by priests has since been uncovered.  It is mind blowing.  

                                     

“Spotlight” takes its place among the very finest of movie docudramas (“The Insider” and “All the President’s Men” otherwise leading the pack for me).  Like its predecessors it does not sacrifice vital issues to the easy manipulation of fact for the sake of excessive “dramatic effect”.  And it is thorough!  It just might be the greatest movie about journalism ever made.  I say maybe; time will tell!

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Escaping the Bully Pulpit (Essay by Bob Racine)

David, like most other kings of old, acted on the assumption that his authority was absolute, that God’s appointment of him to the throne of Israel entitled him to the absolutely free exercise of his own discretion.  He probably assumed even further that since God was ordaining his every move, he was incapable of making a wrong move.  If he felt an impulse, that impulse must be of God.  Entitlement by virtue of inclination!  If I want it, it must be something good for me or God would not have put me on the throne and let me want it.  Bathsheba is a godsend; I must have her.  If I declare war on another nation, it must be a heathen entity, just because I have the idea.  For an absolute monarch judgment is an absolute prerogative. 

                                     

Judgment!   Not many of us I daresay are envious of those who make the laws of society or those who must preside over the enforcement or the interpretation of that law’s fine points.  And yet, if we are completely honest, moral and ethical judgment does have a place in the exercise of all our minds.

                                     

It is with a chastised spirit that I must admit that that kind of judgment had a very central place in much of my early adult life as a theological graduate.  I confused God’s judgment with my own.  It took me many years to understand that just because I could work up a big head of righteous steam over an issue did not mean that I could assume that my fervor and fume were inspired of God.  In retrospect I have nothing but the most bleeding heart sympathy for those poor parishioners who had to weather my storms issuing forth from what was in fact my bully pulpit.  Not that all my sermons were in bad taste or irrelevant; I just got carried away at times being dogmatic – and enjoyed doing it.

                                     

But of course the urge toward absolutes has not gone away, any more than the desire for a drink leaves an alcoholic who goes on the wagon.  I still have fantasies in which I tell off people I dislike.  It is not a wish for them to die, because dead they would be out of their misery.  It is a wish for them to live and be very much in their misery.  The seeds of fascism are right there in my psyche, I daresay in all our psyches.  I am sometimes frightened by their presence.

                                     

People we do not like are not going to go away.  I cannot think of a more appropriate Purgatory than spending the first so many years of eternity locked into a room with people I have wrongly judged!  There is no way out.  You don’t get to have visits from people you like or those you treated fairly.  You do not even get to sleep.  You have nothing to do but make arrangements, come to terms with all these many seemingly detestable individuals.  That would be enough to purge the hell out of anybody.

                                     

Sometimes we might find ourselves calling one of our singular traits by a different name when we espy it in another person.  Let us consider some examples.

                                     

She/he is hateful! ---- I’m passionate and righteously indignant!

She/he is opinionated! ---- I have the strength of my convictions!

She/he is overbearing! ---- I’m persistent and persevering!

She/he is slow! ---- I’m thorough!

She/he is impatient! ---- I believe in forthright action!

She/he is absent-minded! ---- I have a lot on my mind!

She/he is controversial! ---- I’m an innovator!

She/he is withdrawn, distant and snobbish! ---- I value my privacy!

She/he is a pain in the butt! ---- I’m a force to contend with!

She/he is wishy-washy! ---- I’m open-minded!

She/he is a conformist! ---- I’m a team player!

They’re dirty rebels! ---- We’re revolutionaries!

They’re brainwashed! ---- We’re enlightened!

                                     

We could go on and on, with many more examples.

                                     

God’s judgment, unlike our own, does not require a spectacle of litigation or some exhibitionist event, no “Hear ye, Hear ye, this court is now in session.”  God’s judgment is the working out of the moral law.  It occurs ever so subtly sometimes.  We are not punished for our sins; we are punished by our sins.  From within!  David was punished from within.  The death of his baby was not his punishment for having Uriah killed and stealing his wife Bathsheba.  He and the recorders of that history only construed it to be so.  He was punished from within, following his confrontation with the prophet Nathan, who unearthed his secret.  Henceforth, he had to look in the mirror and see a different kind of man, a fallible man, prone to the same evils as anyone else.  He had to give up the idea that his royal discretion was one and the same with the mind of God.  His self-image would never be the same.

                                     

Our righteous judgments constitute what I believe is the most dangerous thing about us human beings – our most lethal weapon.  A mindset that attempts to close the gap between human judgment and divine judgment is an extremely dangerous one, as events in the news are currently demonstrating.  Under the guise of nationalism or religious fervor millions have been slaughtered, lives uprooted, terrorist activity has been unloosed in our streets, and the bully pulpits of politicians and radical clerics have incited otherwise decent people to hotheaded bigotry and sometimes violence. 

                                     

In the previous years of my life when Presidential campaigning was conducted, I seem to remember that mud was slung between candidates but that it was generally a soft oozy, mutually respectful mud.  I remember Jimmy Carter, after some candid and cutting debates with Gerald Ford, expressing appreciation to Ford immediately after winning the White House, praising Ford’s spunk and courage.  And though Richard Nixon lives in infamy because of contemptible things he did after getting into office, I recall how upon the occasion of his first term victory he was full of praise for his losing opponent Hubert Humphrey, calling him a great fighter who had had to contend against terrible odds after the assassination of Robert Kennedy.  “I admire a fighter”!  And one could tell that he meant it.

                                     

In the current contest the mud has not been all that soft and oozy; it has often been hardboiled and rocklike in texture.  Some of the judgmental remarks that have passed between the candidates have not been of a gaming nature, but warlike and downright nasty.  It is one thing to find fault; it is quite another to demonize.  I wonder how mutually respecting the two people nominated will be this time, when the bloodletting ceases upon the election of one or the other.  The Presidency, as the founding fathers conceived of it, is not a bully pulpit; it is a tough rigorous job, one that should give pause to anyone who first sets foot in the West Wing.  But I have been given to wonder of late whether this bitter, seemingly unprecedented behavior will have set a new precedent for our nation’s future.  Have the waters been so badly polluted that the art of open-minded compromise, the greatest of all anti-pollutants, will get lost?   I pray my fears will prove unwarranted.      

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                                    1 hr & 24 min, color, 2015

                                     

No, you are not suffering from an illusion!  What you read above is not a mistake or a typo!  The internationally beloved book I reviewed and celebrated close to three years ago, in July of 2013, now provides the substance of an animated feature film, released last year and now available from Netflix.  (I invite everyone, old subscribers and recently added ones, to consult my website – enspiritus.blogspot.com – and page back to that month and year to review what I said about it as a piece of writing.  If for some reason you cannot find it, I will be happy to e-mail you a copy.) 

                                     

I have to confess that I approached the screening of the film with some trepidation.  Gibran’s work is so special and rewarding to me as sacred literature, one that I keep by my side and in my sight almost constantly along with the Bible itself, that I was not sure its content could serve as an appropriate source of fictional narrative.  But I need not have sweated it; I find it to be a touching and inspiring motion picture, not only spirit lifting and instructive but also exciting fun to watch.  I like to think that Gibran himself would have treasured it.

                                     

The book has next to no plot at all.  Almustafa is depicted as a man who for twelve years has been living in the city of Orphalese, an island community, where he has been waiting for much of that length of time for a ship to take him back to the isle of his birth.  When in the beginning he climbs a hill and spots the ship approaching, he saunters down the slope into the town proper, eager to board, but when he reaches the city square, his joy is suddenly mixed with sadness, catching sight of all the friends he has made during his long stay and realizing that he must leave them forever.  The people do not make the task easy for him; they crowd around pleading for him to wait a little longer – long enough to give them a final summary of all his philosophical gems of wisdom.  The rest of the book consists of his replies to inquiries concerning an almost exhaustive list of timeless topics. 

                                     

In the screenplay he is called simply Mustafa, and he has for seven years (not twelve) been held in official custody.  It seems that Orphalese is no longer a benign community of friendly neighbors and respectful admirers; it is a military dictatorship, and our Prophet has been incarcerated for the same “crime” for which Socrates was indicted – poisoning the minds of the people with his “subversive” teachings.  But of course the people love him.  And there is a subplot that has been wed to the fable most ingeniously without detracting in any way from the substance or spirit of Gibran’s ideas; in fact it undergirds them. 

                                     

A preadolescent girl named Almitra plays a decisive role in the advancement of the plot.  In the book this name is given to a woman seer who was the first to persuade the Prophet to take up residence on the island all those years before.  She is also the one who at the beginning of the discourse inquires after his teaching about Love and the one who raises the subject of Death at the very end.  But in the movie it is a child who bears this name.  The girl’s father has been dead for two years, his death leaving her speechless for all the intervening time.  She can grunt or whine or chirp with the sea gulls, but not a word has since fallen from her lips.  Her sorrow has further been expressed in disruptive behavior that has made merchants in the town deplore her.  Her mother Kamila, the widow, who must toil in the father/husband’s absence, finds it almost impossible to earn a living and at the same time control her. 

                                     

Kamila is employed as a maid in the house where Mustafa is being confined.  One day Almitra skips school and secretly follows her mother to work, where she meets the Prophet and becomes almost instantly attached to him.  That happens to be the day when he is told by a plump, testy uniformed official that he is being set free from his confinement.  While that is cheerful news to him, it is upsetting news for Kamila, who is suddenly out of a job.  The lives of the three of them – mother, daughter and Mustafa – at once become intertwined, along with Halim, a klutzy soldier who has been guarding Mustafa and is secretly in love with Kamila. 

                                     

As Mustafa descends upon the town, the people of the community become excited and thrilled to see him again after a long absence.  Up to this point the story is lightweight and almost constantly amusing as well as seductive, but this convocation sets the stage for a very tense series of happenings the nearer to the ship in the harbor that the Prophet and his followers get.  I will say no more about the plot, except to indicate that there is a catch to the authorities’ promise of his freedom. 

                                     

As one might expect, Gibran’s poetic and philosophic adages occupy most of the film’s soundtrack as they weave together with a most delectable score.  He addresses the subjects of Freedom, Children, Marriage, Work (“Work is love made visible”), Eating and Drinking, Love, Good and Evil, and Death.  The only momentary problem I had with the mix consists of two attempts to provide vocal melody using the words of the text as lyrics.  I found those to be somewhat forced and facile.  But thankfully (for me at least) this device is only attempted in two brief instances.  In all the other recitations the voice of Liam Neeson projecting Mustafa’s words is enough to carry the day.  A better speaking voice they could not have used; he oozes comfort and solemn joy at every turn.  Gibran’s words in spoken form convey a music all their own and Neeson demonstrates that immaculately; they did not need that additional help.  The instrumental music, on the other hand, serves the mood and the magic exceedingly well; I was enraptured by it.  Other performers recently introduced in films lend their voices to making the characters come to life. Direction and Writing are credited to one Roger Allers.

                                     

Not the least of the animated film’s superb properties that enhance the text is its artwork.  I refer to the painterly images that bathe the eye and the imagination, an almost steady stream of pure visual delight.  If you take the time to sit through the lengthy closing credits, you will observe that the images are not the creation of any one artisan or company of artisans.  Many hands contributed to this delicate showcase of work, far too many for me to be able to name and recognize each and every one.  The film is a production of the Doha Film Institute, and in the previews displayed before the feature starts you will see a sample of the kind of animated work they put out. 

                                     

Lest I be misunderstood, let me state unequivocally that the film, as fine as it is, is no substitute for the book from which it is derived.  We should be speaking of both/and, not either /or.  Gibran’s literary masterpiece is a complete study unto itself.  Readers of “The Prophet” can enjoy the colorful tribute that the film crew has paid to Gibran’s memory, but you do yourself a disservice if you do not read and digest the written text.  It is one of those printed works that have beckoned many deep thinkers and spiritual seekers to read and reread it, perhaps a plurality of times.  I plan before long to start my fifth reading.  It is inexhaustible; the nuggets of truth it contains will keep an explorer searching, maybe forever.  It covers that much ground.    

                                     

Kahlil Gibran was born in Jordan in 1883 and died in middle age in 1931.  The book, published in 1923, has been in print ever since he passed away.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.