July 5th, 2012

My Dear Friends:

I do hope everyone had a great and joyful 4^th of July. Here it is very hot and the hot weather has got me thinking, how each Christmas I am so puzzled by the Christmas decorations. The angels available for tree tops are always females. There is no doubt that every reference to angels in Scripture refers to them in the masculine gender. The Greek word for “angel” in the New Testament, angelos, is in the masculine form. In fact, the feminine form of angelosdoes not exist. There are three genders in grammar—masculine (he, him, his), feminine (she, her, hers), and neuter (it, its). Angels are never referred to in any gender other than masculine. In the many appearances of angels in the Bible, never is an angel referred to as “she” or “it.” Furthermore, when angels did appear, they always appeared dressed as human males (Genesis 18:2, 16; Ezekiel 9:2). No angel ever appeared in Scripture dressed as a female. There IS not such thing as a female angel!

The only named angels in the Bible—Michael, Gabriel, Lucifer—had male names and all were referred to in the masculine. Revelation 12:7 – “…Michael and his angels.”; Luke 1:29 – “Mary was greatly troubled at his (Gabriel’s) words.”; Isaiah 14:12 – “Oh, Lucifer, son of the morning.” Other references to angels are always in the masculine gender. In Judges 6:21, the angel held the staff in his hand. Zechariah asked an angel a question and reports that he answered (Zechariah 1:19). The angels in Revelation are all spoken of as “he” and “his” (Revelation 7:1; 10:1, 5; 14:19; 16:2, 4, 17; 19:17; 20:1). IT is my hope to one day find a male angel for atop my tree.

The confusion about genderless angels comes from a misreading of Matthew 22:30, which states that there will be no marriage in heaven because we “will be like the angels in heaven.” The statement that there will be no marriage has led some to believe that angels are “sexless” or genderless because (the thinking goes) the purpose of gender is procreation and, if there is to be no marriage and no procreation, there is no need for gender. But this is a leap that cannot be proven from the text. The fact that there is no marriage does not necessarily mean there is no gender. The many references to angels as males contradict the idea of genderless angels. But we must not confuse gender with sexuality. Clearly, there is no sexual activity in heaven, which we can safely derive from the statement about no marriage. But we can’t make the same leap from “no marriage” to “no gender.” I must say a heaven without sex hardly seems like much of a heaven to me.

Gender, then, is not to be understood strictly in terms of sexuality. Rather, the use of the masculine gender pronouns throughout Scripture is more a reference to authority than to sex. God always refers to Himself in the masculine. The blurring of the distinction between male and female can lead to heresies such as “mother/father God” and the Holy Spirit as an “it,” ignoring the references to Him in Scripture (John 14:17; 15:16; 16:8, 13-14). The Holy Spirit is never described as an “it” or an inanimate force. God’s perfect plan for the order and structure of authority, both in the church and the home, imbues men with authority to rule in love and righteousness, just as God rules. It would simply be inappropriate to refer to heavenly beings as anything other than masculine because of the authority God has granted to them to wield His power (2 Kings 19:35), carry His messages (Luke 2:10), and represent Him on earth. I do not wish to make females angry but I do wish them to see and understand how things are and meant to be. I believe I have a Guardian Angel and "HE" of course is male. I believe each of you may also have a Guardian Angel to watch over you and they are to be sure all male.

I offer this cool thought to help make the hot summer more bearable. I am sure of few things but that all angels are male is one of them.

With LOVE Always!!!
Rick Payne

#9 New Today

Other Writers

Wednesday June 20^th., 2012

These are writers I like to read. If I am to talk about other writers let me start with Joe Girzone. Rev. Joseph F. Girzone (born 1930) is an American writer, and most notable as the author of the Joshua series. Girzone was born in Albany, New York, to parents Peter and Margaret Girzone. He entered the Carmelite Order in 1948 and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1955, just two years after my birth. After serving as pastor for various New York churches, he retired from the active priesthood in 1981 for health reasons. Following his retirement, he embarked on a second career as a full-time writer and speaker. Joseph Girzone now lives in Altamont, New York. In 1995 he established the Joshua Foundation, "an organization dedicated to making Jesus better known throughout the world."  He is a very good and decent man who I have got to know through letters. Dot Speiser introduced me and him.

He wrote:
Joshua(1983)
Joshua and the Children (1989)
Joshua and the Shepherd (1990)
Joshua In The Holy Land (1993)
Joshua and the City (1995)
Joshua : The Homecoming (1999)
Joshua in a Troubled World : A Story for Our Time (2005)

This is NOT a complete list but it will get you started.

I love writers to do something brave. Joseph Girzone wrote his parable, Joshua,  in 1983 and published it himself with neither accompanying fanfare nor expectation of the extraordinary effect it would have on people around the world. With only word-of-mouth for advertising, and by virtue of its simple message of love, Joshua became an international force of spiritual strength. Then, after its modest beginnings, Joshua and its sequels have millions of readers around the world, including me, and continue to bring hope and peace to all who seek nourishment. When Joshua moves to a small cabin on the edge of town, the local people are at first mystified, then confused by his presence. A quiet and simple man, Joshua appears to seek nothing for himself. He supports himself solely by carpentry and woodworking, and he charges very little for his services. Yet his work is exquisite. Even more exquisite, and even more mysterious, is the extraordinary effect he has on everyone he meets. All who come in contact with him can't help but be transformed by his incredible warmth. This is as it should be…love exchanged should look and feel like this. The acceptance and love in his eyes and in each actions amazes the townspeople. Who is Joshua and just what is he up to? The answer to that question amazes them almost as much discovery of that same transforming power in each of their own hearts. Joshua and Jesus are one and the same. These are some great books and well worth reading. The power of love is something that I do believe in.

Then there is James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961, my 7th birthday) was an author, cartoonist and celebrated wit during his time. Thurber is best known for his cartoons and short stories, published mainly in The New Yorker magazine then collected in his numerous books. One of the most popular humorists of his time, Thurber celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary people. My sister Connie read me The Last Flower when he died and told me who he was. I still really love this little story, which I told on stage as James Thurber in a play. It is very special to me.

I was in High School, in 1970, and a teacher named Valerie Seldon taught a class in American Literature and she had us read several of his short stories and for some reason I just connected to this writer. As the years passed I watched films based on his short stories and made it a point to read everything he ever wrote. In college a drama teacher went to the campus library and had the librarian do some research to see who among the students was a real Thurber fan and she report that I was about the only fan who had made a point of reading everything the man had ever written. He contacted me and had me try out for a play entitled The Thurber Carnival and I got the leading male role. I ended up married to the leading lady, who became my first wife and the mother of my oldest daughter. The other cast members called us the Battling Bogarts.

His books include;

   Is Sex Necessary? or, Why You Feel The Way You Do (spoof of sexual psychology manuals, with E. B. White), 1929, 75th anniv. edition (2004) with foreword by John Updike, ISBN 0-06-073314-4
   The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, 1931
   The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments, 1932
   My Life and Hard Times, 1933 ISBN 0-06-093308-9
   The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, 1935
   Let Your Mind Alone! and Other More Or Less Inspirational Pieces, 1937
   The Last Flower, 1939, reissued 2007 ISBN 978-1-58729-620-8
   The Male Animal (stage play), 1939 (with Elliot Nugent) and screenplay starring Henry Fonda, written by Stephen Morehouse Avery
   Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, 1940 ISBN 0-06-090999-4
   My World and Welcome to It, 1942 ISBN 0-15-662344-7
   Many Moons, (children) 1943
   Men, Women, and Dogs, 1943
   The Great Quillow, (children) 1944
   The Thurber Carnival (anthology), 1945, ISBN 0-06-093287-2, ISBN 0-394-60085-1 (Modern Library Edition)
   The White Deer, (children) 1945
   The Beast in Me and Other Animals, 1948 ISBN 0-15-610850-X
   The 13 Clocks, (children) 1950
   The Thurber Album, 1952
   Thurber Country, 1953
   Thurber's Dogs, 1955
   Further Fables For Our Time, 1956
   The Wonderful O, (children) 1957
   Alarms and Diversions (anthology), 1957
   The Years With Ross, 1959 ISBN 0-06-095971-1
   A Thurber Carnival (stage play), 1960
   Lanterns and Lances, 1961

When I was in my twenties I really enjoyed reading Thurber and to a very large extent this writer helped shape and define me as a man. He taught me that the things in life that cause us the most grief and pain and be the source of some of the best humor. We can choose to laugh or cry at the things that get to us and I prefer to laugh out loud and hard. James Thurber was a brilliant man and a fine writer and his art makes me feel better about my own.

James Thurber helped to shape my feelings about women, dogs, what is real and what is not, how I think, feel and act as I have coped with life. He also helped determine how I handle stress, relate to others and make choices. I really owe this man truth be told.

Most of the writers I enjoy were suggested to me by people who I came to like and admire. While I was in college, about 1976 I had a professor named James Hoban, who I greatly admired and respected. He helped guide me into my love of the English language and the evolution of the words we use in the English language. He also suggested I get to know John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who had just died,  (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. In the 1970’s when I was in college everyone was reading JRR Tolkien. I got a hold of The Hobbit and started to read it and couldn’t stop. I loved each and every word.

Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature there from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972. I recall many of my college friends sitting around a room staked up with books, sitting smoking our pipes and drinking Constant Comment Tea and talking about great books we had read and this included the works of Tolkien.

After his death, Tolkien's son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings.

While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Forbes ranked him the 5th top-earning dead celebrity in 2009. From this writer I learned to dare to dream and think and allow my self to escape beyond that which others defined as “real” and true. I let myself feel and experience things beyond real and true and go deeper into my imagination.

Tolkien was a Catholic and a man who loved the English language as much as I ever could and so it would follow that I came to love his work too.

The Hobbit
Is the story of Bilbo Baggins, 13 dwarves, and the wizard Gandalf go on an Adventure. This is a fantasy book that offered the first glimpse into Tolkien's sub-creation. 

The Lord of the Rings
Sometimes published in 3 volumes: 1. The Fellowship of the Ring; 2. The Two Towers; 3. The Return of the King. Tolkien's masterwork. A sequel to The Hobbit, but much richer and deeper (and longer) than its predecessor. Bilbo's heir Frodo Baggins embarks on an epic quest to destroy the sinister Ring acquired on the earlier journey. This collective work is often named the greatest novel of the 20th century. I loved it very much and read it over and over again.

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
This is a collection of poems and light verse supposedly written by hobbits, actually collected from Tolkien's papers of many years.  It is fun to read after you have read the first four books.

The Road Goes Ever On
Songbook of Donald Swann's musical settings of several Tolkien poems. Includes new calligraphy and some historical and linguistic notes by Tolkien. Out of print.

The Silmarillion
Best seen as the lore book of the Elves whom the hobbits meet on their journeys. In a high formal tone, it tells of the mythic creation of the world and the tragic wars of the Elves and the Valar against evil. This volume was compiled after Tolkien's death as a "snapshot" of the latest versions of legends he'd been working on all his life.

Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien
Large-sized reproductions of illustrations for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Many also appear in Hammond and Scull's J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator. Pictures is out of print.

Unfinished Tales
The book with the answers to the questions posed by readers of The Lord of the Rings' appendices. Incomplete but polished stories and essays from all periods of Middle-earth's history.

Bilbo's Last Song
A short poem, published as a book with illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Out of print.

The Book of Lost Tales (2 vol.)
The earliest versions of the "Silmarillion" legends, written in the 1910s.

The Lays of Beleriand
Chiefly two long incomplete narrative poems retelling two of the principal "Silmarillion" stories, of Turambar and of Beren and Lúthien. Written in the 1920s.

The Shaping of Middle-earth
The early versions of the "Silmarillion" in its later form, written in the 1920s and 30s.

The Lost Road
The title story is the earlier version of Tolkien's Atlantis legend, the fall of Númenor. Also includes more early "Silmarillion" material and thorough Elvish language etymologies, all written in the 1930s.

The Return of the Shadow (The History of The Lord of the Rings v.1)
Drafts and early versions of the beginnings of The Lord of the Rings, written in the late 1930s and covering approximately the first half of volume 1 of the finished book.

The Treason of Isengard (The History of The Lord of the Rings v.2)
Continuing the drafts of The Lord of the Rings into the early 1940s and parts of volumes 1-2 of the finished book.

The War of the Ring (The History of The Lord of the Rings v.3)
Continuing the drafts of The Lord of the Rings into the mid 1940s and parts of volumes 2-3 of the finished book.

Sauron Defeated (The History of The Lord of the Rings v.4)
Part one, "The End of the Third Age" (also published separately), completes the drafts of The Lord of the Rings, covering the last half of volume 3. Also contains "The Notion Club Papers" and "The Drowning of Anadûnê", later versions of the fall of Númenor. All written in the later 1940s.

 Morgoth's Ring (The Later Silmarillion v.1)
"Silmarillion" papers, not included in the book called The Silmarillion, dating from the 1940s and 50s, mostly dealing with events of the first half of the story, in Valinor and Tol Eressëa.

The War of the Jewels (The Later Silmarillion v.2)
More "Silmarillion" papers, from the same dates and chosen on the same basis as in Morgoth's Ring, but mostly taking place in the second half of the story, in Beleriand.

The Peoples of Middle-earth
Includes drafts and early versions of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings and other late writings mostly of the 1950s and 60s, including a fragmentary sequel to The Lord of the Rings.

Farmer Giles of Ham
A short humorous account of an enterprising farmer in Anglo-Saxon times and his dealings with giants, dragons, knights, and other mythical beings. A hardcover edition includes introduction and annotations by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, plus a fragmentary sequel by the author. Without the extra material, the story is in the paperback omnibus The Tolkien Reader. Both editions in print have the splendid original illustrations by Pauline Baynes.

Tree and Leaf
An important essay "On Fairy-stories", plus a short story "Leaf by Niggle" making the same points in allegorical form. Both are included in the paperback omnibus The Tolkien Reader.

Smith of Wootton Major
A short elegiac fairy-tale set in Anglo-Saxon times, describing a man's desire for Faërie. The paperback edition is paired with Farmer Giles of Ham.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo
Tolkien's translations of three important 14th century Middle English poems.

Letters from Father Christmas (previously titled The Father Christmas Letters)
The letters supposedly written by the British equivalent of Santa Claus to the Tolkien children between the 1920s and 40s. All of the creative imagination that Tolkien used for more public works, and a good deal about elves and goblins, went into these.

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Correspondence with his family, publishers, and readers, showing the care Tolkien put into the writing and production of his books, giving further details of his intentions and the events of his sub-creation, and discussing his personal and moral philosophy.

Mr. Bliss
A children's picture book recounting the adventures of a peculiar man, his strange pet the Girabbit, and the day he buys a car. Out of print.

The Monsters and the Critics
This is a fine collection of Tolkien's non-technical essays on language and literature. The title essay is his ground-breaking study of Beowulf. Out of print.

Roverandom
A children's novel which is not much shorter nor less elaborate than The Hobbit, but only published recently. It recounts the adventures of a wayward toy dog on the Moon and beneath the Sea. It includes introduction and annotations by Hammond and Scull.

J.R.R. Tolkien was born about the same time as my grandfather Fredrick Lake Clark and both men fought in World War I, and I liked to think that maybe they met and knew each other. They perhaps they talked and shared ideas. If I could create my own grandfather I would have created J.R.R. Tolkien! I also admire the relationship that he had with his son Chris. It is fun to note that my grandfather Fredrick Lake Clark had a son named Chris, who also loved his father very much.

J.R.R. Tolkien gave me so much to think about and consider. I love this man and his work very much!

I admit I am a momma’s boy. I remember too wanting to know about the time (1922) that she was born. I then began to read FrancisScott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned,Tender Is the Night, and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age. I really liked his books. I think I may have fallen in love with the 1920s. Both The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night were made into films, and in 1958 his life from 1937–1940 was dramatized in Beloved Infidel. He was still a very young (44) man when he died. He died from drinking too much and so did my mother and father...booze and tobacco killed them both. Fitzgerald's work has inspired writers ever since he was first published and he inspired me. The man could tell a great story.

I remember going to see the movie The Great Gatsby and the clothes both excited me and made me much more fashion conscientious and I became a fan of the man that in my opinion captured a piece of my mother just for me. Ms. Seldon had us read The Great Gatsby and talk about it in her class in high school.

Like most boys who grew up in the Pacific Northwest west I also read and loved, Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) who was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. I learned from him to just say it. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 the year after my birth. He published seven novels, six short story collections and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of these are considered classics of American literature according to our Ms. Seldon.

Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1922, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent, and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel, was published in 1926. He also taught me that before I could write I had to live some life first. Hemingway was born in Illinois and my father died and was buried there.

After his 1927 divorce from Hadley Richardson, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War where he had acted as a journalist, and after which he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. They separated when he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II; during which he was present at the Normandy Landings and liberation of Paris.For Whom the Bell Tolls taught me to give careful thought to what I entitle a story. We may have also seen women much the same way if you favor him with a bit more Thurber.

Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life.

Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and 1940s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961. He died not even a hour drive from where I would live 7 years later. I did see what attracted him to Idaho in those days...before Mormons and Republicans ruined the place.

I think I learned to write how I really felt about something from this fine man. I may have learned also how to live my life from him. I think I have read most everything he has written and I have studied his life in great deal. He reminds me of my father, Rusty Payne, I suppose.

I think when a man is growing and is being forced to embrace so much “change” it is those he admires who help guide him through it. For me, Ernest Miller Hemingway, was sort of a guide. When I was 25 I debated shooting myself, but decided if Ernest Miller Hemingway could handle 61 years surely I could too!

I love a great well written story. I have read more books that I can list here, well into the thousands. I think perhaps one of the most important to me as a writer was and still is Earl Henry Hamner, Jr. (born on July 10, 1923 (my mother’s age) in Schuyler, Virginia) is an American television writer and producer (sometimes credited as Earl Hamner), best known for his work in the 1970s and 1980s on the long-running CBS series The Waltons and Falcon Crest. As a novelist, he is best known for the novel Spencer's Mountain, which was inspired by his own childhood and formed the basis for both the film of the same name and the television series The Waltons, for which he provided voice-over narration. I wrote him once and he answered my letter much to my surprise and thereafter we exchanged several letters and I got to know him some and I have to tell you I like him a great deal. I have an autographed 8x10 of him on my wall in the office.  His family and my family (the Paynes) both started out in America in the state of Virginia.

Mr. Hamner is currently 88 years old and I will be so sad when he passes.

He based the Walton family grandparents in the popular television series on his own maternal Italian-American grandparents, Ora Lee and Colonel Anderson Gianniny, an anglicized version of the Italian surname "Giannini". I would watch The Waltons and see my own family more often than not, we too were a large poor Southern family.

We had no Italian blood but mostly Welsh, Scotch, English, Irish and some Native American!

In 1954, Hamner wrote "Hit and Run", an episode of the NBC legal drama Justice in which guest star E.G. Marshall plays a man haunted by his crime of striking a newsboy on a bicycle and fleeing the scene of the accident.

Hamner also contributed eight episodes in the early 1960s to the CBS science fiction series The Twilight Zone. His first script acceptance for the series was his big writing break in Hollywood. Including one of my favorites about an old man and his dog.

He created two less successful series, Boone on NBC (1983–1984), starring Tom Byrd and Barry Corbin, and Apple's Way (1974–1975) on CBS with Ronny Cox.

Hamner used family names to title his projects: Spencer (Spencer's Mountain) is the maiden name of his paternal grandmother Susan Henry Spencer Hamner. "The Waltons" comes from his paternal grandfather Walter Clifton Hamner and great-grandfather Walter Leland Hamner.

Spencer's Mountain staring Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara and James MacArthur was the story that became The Waltons truth be told, first as a book then as the wonderful film. Thanks to this author I began writing about me and my family with pride and more important I began writing with the idea of a film coming from the story. James MacArthur was the first John Boy.

There is another writer that inspired me a great deal. Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs,Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that were made into movies. He also has written the books for several musicals, including Sweet Charity. I also wrote him and was surprised when he wrote me back and we exchange several letters and his 8x10 also hangs on my office wall. From him I learned so much about dialogue and injecting just the right amount of humor. I love this man and his work very much. He is I think about 84 as I write these words and so know too I will miss him when he passes.

Writers are strange people who see the same world as the rest of us but who focus on things we tend to ignore or just not see in the first place. I have learned to write from many of them each giving me just one or two things that makes all the difference. To be a good writer you have to become a great reader. I thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts on these writers and encourage you to read more about each of them. I want to add just one more.

Many writers have come to surface since I developed my interest in cinematherapy; Flanders, Linda, Grace, Maria, Gurian, Michael, Horenstein, Mary Ann et al., Johnson, Bill, Kalm, Michael A., Madison, Ronald J. & Schmidt, Corey, Peske, Nancy and Beverly West, Rosenberg, David to list a few but none more than Solomon, Gary.  Gary Soloman came to me after I had completed my Master’s Degree dealing getting Hispanic Parents Involved in Their Children’s Educational Process and wanted to get started on my PhD research. When I read Dr. Gary Solomon would suggest watching movies for their therapeutic value it made a great deal of sense to me having been raised by a television set.

Dr. Gary Solomon is a tenured Professor of Psychology at the College of Southern Nevada. Dr. Gary Solomon has a Master’s Degree in Social work, a Master’s Degree in Public health, a Doctorate in Psychology, and a Doctorate in Social Work--(abd status). He is author of “Reel Therapy,” “The Motion Picture Prescription”, “Cinemaparenting”, "A Psychiatric Diagnostic Primer" and "A Ballad for Allison Porter." Dr Solomon has four additional books being released in 2009.

He is the former director of Arizona Family Counseling and Education and former director of the prestigious Oregon Psychotherapy Consortium, Dr. Solomon’s area of expertise includes analyzing film for its psychological content--a process he created called, Cinematherapy, psychiatric diagnosis such as post traumatic stress in the work place, school or society, sexual disorders, anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, suicide, substance disorders.

He can also speak with authority on the quality of mental health care in Nevada. Dr. Solomon's most recent work in the area of quantum mechanics and evolutionary psychology is gaining local and national attention. If I ever finish my PhD it will be thanks to him for pointing me in a direction that could interest me enough to hang in there.

I had just finished writing my Master’s Thesis about getting Hispanic students moms and dads more involved in their educational process when “Selena” Quintanilla-Pérez (April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995) died and the little Hispanic girls at our school were devastated by her death and as one who worked with them at Lincoln Junior High School I wanted to help them deal with and cope with the lose of somebody they loved and respected so much. The answer came to me from the work of Dr. Gary Solomon in something I learned was called Cinematherapy. It would preoccupy my thoughts for years afterward when thinking about how to deal with other issues they faced, like juvenile crime, drug abuse, gangs and teenage pregnancy. Teachers, counselors and parents need all the tools they can get to help their children cope with today’s issues, problems and tragedies that the children face everyday. Thank God people write down their thoughts on such things and share them with the people working on the frontlines with these children.

These then are the other eight (8) writers and authors that have most impacted me and my writing. I have read most of the so called classics and I was an English minor in college and so did my share of reading and discussing the best known pieces of American and world literature.  I love to read and write biographies and so made a point of reading about 100 of my heroes and all of the US Presidents, and while at Lincoln Junior High School I did make Abe Lincoln a special study. These days I am reading about business and some special projects that interest me…health care and building several major projects. My diverse background had me studying many different things…building, chemical pesticides, nursing, title insurances and food for example. Writers of many different things for example water and gardening have been life interests that I read about almost every day. I want to take this opportunity to say Thank You to the writers I have enjoyed for making life so much more interesting!

#8 New Today

Friday June 15, 2012

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