Jack Bass and The Cookie House

                   Jack Bass and the Cookie House

     The Cookie House was the site where my father, Stewart Springer in his capacity as a notary public,  married Archie Carr (first PhD candidate ever awarded by the University of Florida) and Marjorie Carr (well-known defender of the Ocklawaha River). Jack Bass hired my father, Stewart Springer, in 1935 or 1936 as director of the Bass Biological Laboratory. He organized and funded a shark venture at my dad’s request. As a result my father was awarded the Florida Academy of Science award in 1938 for his scientific  paper on two new species of sharks.

     Jack Bass was a gonzo, in my opinion, to end all gonzo's. He was a raconteur and had untold wealth from his family. It was thought that he cost the family a great deal because it was rumored that he had eloped with a Russian princess and had to be ransomed for his survival. There are many things that were unknown in that time and many other things that remain a mystery about Jack Bass. But he was an instigator and he instigated many things that proved to be very interesting, very troubling to some, and a delight to others. 

     For example, he found that my mother didn't want to live upstairs in the big house on the Lab compound  and wanted a home of her own. I think he resented this to some extent because he couldn't kid my mother the way he could others. So he built a house for my mom and dad. It was a nice place though a log cabin and somewhat airy in the winter. My mother refused to accept a cookie house so Jack built her a house but with logs lengthwise instead of cookie shaped. 

     But that wasn’t the real issue. Before the house was occupied Jack Bass stuffed 2 pounds of fresh mullet into mom and dad’s bedsprings. We moved in and within days mother was complaining about the horrible smell and that she couldn't find where it was coming from. She was packing to leave when Jack drove up and admitted that he had stuffed the mullet in the bedsprings. He arranged to have everything taken care of and cleaned up the house entirely. The main reason for bringing this up is that it was my first experience with a gonzo. 

     I realize that I had no idea at age 4 when I first came into contact with Jack Bass that he was a gonzo. Now that I look back on it there were many reasons why he was a gonzo. In my own personal opinion a gonzo is a conglomeration of Hunter S Thompson and the gonzo of Muppet fame. A gonzo is an outlier, a person on the fringe of life, but also demanding the attention of all. In the scheme of things a gonzo makes slack in any system. The slack keeps a system from breaking down into chaos. It changes a horrifying situation into a palatable one. A few rounds with the gonzo of the Muppet Show illustrate that there is a fine line between dead serious and terribly funny. 

.    There was a dining hall in the main building with a  long dining table and a continuous bench around the table. He could simply stuff anything under the cushions where someone was to be seated.  So Jack Bass stuffed fart bladders, at strategic locations, under the cushions. I remember that some of his targets were itinerant naturalists female schoolteachers. He would sit at the head of the table before anyone got there. When a little lady schoolteacher sat down on the fart bladder, he would hit the table with a crashing fist sending plates and silverware skittering back-and-forth. He laughed and laughed and I foolishly laughed with him. Later in life I saw a few WC Field’s movies and have come to believe  that I  haven’t known seen any one quite like Jack Bass. To me he was very much like the way WC Fields acted in movies I have seen.

      As much as I could, I hung out where he napped in the afternoon under the trees near his home. It was not an usual napping scene in that there were three Great Danes napping beside him and he in a hammock with two pearl handled pistols. But Jack's wife Elsa was constantly trying to persuade mother to be more accepting of Jack's eccentric ways. Incidentally because the Great  Danes developed heart-worm in rapid succession, Jack replaced them with Boxers. I mention this because I loved the Great Danes a great deal and they were always gentle with me. But the Boxers would run up and knock me down every time. They were constantly slobbering on me so I didn't hang out under the trees while Jack napped as much as I did with the Great Danes were there.

     Looking back I don't know how it all came together. Mother was adamant about my going out in a canoe by myself, but Jack just insisted that I go and have an adventure. So I went. I remember being a bit frightened at first but as I was able to navigate the canoe to settle down and went under the highway bridge. I was in a creek which was no more than 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep. The  water was very clear. All of a sudden I focused on a huge sawfish staring right at me just about 3 foot away. His rostrum was right at the bow of the canoe. I froze; frightened and waited as he gently slid by. It was as if he owned the creek. So  I didn't go any further up the creek. Feeling relieved I  turned around and headed for home. 

 By the time I was five years old I had met the most interesting, the most devilish, the most fun loving human being I have ever known or seen since, Jack Bass.

Scattering Thoughts

   

            

     I spent the better part of the year (off and on) trying to understand Julien Jane’s book, The Origin of Consciousness  and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. It must have been a strange set of circumstance that separated the primates from the emerging human being. This mind of mine seems to be in a constant state of breakdown for repair and breakdown and repair again.   

      Well I got a clue through my friend Janet Baringer who reminded me of Eloise Page. The design is what counts!!  so why design a brain into  right and left side.?

      I believe that consciousness within myself is a dialogue between the right and left side of my brain and between all of this is that as well as moral yes’s and no’s. If I awake during the night I might ponder over a moral issue for a period of time and believe that  no harm is actually done if I take an excursion into XXX. If I’m very good at it I feel a modest remorse but if I am bad at it I reward myself with the notion of good moral behavior.

     Some phenomena are so great within my consciousness that I fear the call of bragging. Two Saturdays ago we had our first Zoom family meeting. Both events were a triumph over the natural scattering of modern family life. We  had 20 kin in 9 locations with two graduations of Celeste in Georgia and Christian in.Newberry. 
     With the falls came the internment into nursing  home life, followed by many CT scans, MRI’s and. 3 neurologists.Though questionable; came the diagnosis of Lewy body dementia made famous by Robin Williams.

                   Of this I know to be true 

I know that by some mysterious means many of us alcoholics and many others with similar addictive problems, have a natural intuition as we, through time and effort, become psychologically  healthy. We are not as protected from our unconscious mind as those who are more intellectual. We are healthy people who use intuition effectively to make  choices about what to do in our lives. What is intuition?The dictionary tells us that intuition is a direct perception of the truth without regard to reasoning. 

But these issues are not compartments. There is a mosaic patterning to what happens in ordinary life. Nothing for us is totally rational. For us there is an essential mystery which some of us reserve a large space for the meaning implied by the word spiritual.

     GRight brain Digression

This is Blogs number 46. I am writing a blog about consciousness for several years. Having completed 44 episodes of Hummy and Billy G. I’ve now I’ve been struggling in this problem of consciousness and moved on to the issue of relationship. The clear message  is that consciousness is about the “self” and relationship is how we relate to others. In this blog I will explore how I describe a  particular relationship. This is a tricky  problem because I boldly swing into the “self” of the other and even more audacious  is my effort to plumb the relationship between myself and the group or multiples of the others. A vast gulf of the unknown cause most of my colleague to shy away from this seeming chasm of direct knowledge. This is why many psychiatrists do not engage in group therapy. The vast majority of psychiatrists found that credit what is due to those who are clearly seen as causing an outcome. In contrast the group therapist facilitates interaction but is not seen as visible in the process.Ultimately insurance  companies favor the psychiatrist who can point clearly to his or her efforts in the analysis of therapy.
Insurance companies are not truly the issue. The issue is how do we interact with each other. Here the water is getting treacherously deep.
    I pause here for a six decade digression. A number of years ago I was at national training labs and heard a lady talk about the problem of schools. She believed that schools were run by left brained   Rather than an appropriate balance of right brained people thus throwing Many youngsters completely into supposed learning problems. This remembrance was brought on by my son Louis’Announcement that he been given equity in the company that had just hired him less than a year ago. he was told his process ordinarily took three years. The leader ship of the company realize that he do things that he didn’t know he knew which made him more valuable than they had originally expected of him. In general right brain people do not know their value. They do not know their value without interacting with others. So Louis would pull someone away from their computer screen and engaged them in a conversation Which yielded information that he didn’t know he possessed or I didn’t realize they didn’t know. Therefore right brained  don’t fight for their rights. But others find ways to help out .

Age makes us more reasonable. They have come to call it wisdom

Relationship vs Isolation

by Phil Springer
There is little ease for those who treasure life within a comfortable consciousness and a life of goodness and fairness to all. Whatever became of it or did it exist only within our convenient consciousness? Who can numb themselves agains the atrocities of mass murderer i our mist? What is the comparison from the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin from the atrocities of our current mass murderers? The people of Hitler and Stalin's time were led to believe either in reigning ideology or live in fear of the ideological norm. But our mass murders are a lonely lot with little friendships or pair bonding, religious belief, family ties, or any sense of belonging. The live in relative isolation.

Having studied a variety of well thought out proposals about common ground this method appears to search only within the individual perpetrators. Why not search within something we might term as a problem in relationship? Over the many years of study of the human being the emphasis has been on the static individual measures such as IQ or many personality tests. We might also consider what I personally think of as a factor that is; the climate of violence could be studied if not capture and measures; a pathway could be realized.

I remember, as a young child living in Homestead Florida, during the Second World War the power of the weekly Newsreel in our local movie house. Japanese soldiers were throwing Chinese babies into the air and catching them with their bayonets. My reaction was immediate and long lasting rage towards all Japanese. I did not see that it was the same solider over and over again. Nor did I blame our government for impounding law abiding Japanese descendants U.S. Citizens civilians living in the United States many years. Propaganda usually has a pervasive effect on our consciousness.

So now you have it. The paragraphs so far present us with no easy road to the truth. Imagine for the moment we see thousands of people hurrying toward a hodgepodge of destination on a crowded busy streets. At first glance we may see hopeless confusion but they each find their way with ease. The people find their pathway by a process called bottom up processing. This is the opposite from top down processing, but these methods have take up their respective positions by way of evolution. Imagine how long it would take for the forces of nature to turn solid rock into tiny grains of sand. Since childhood I have struggled to comprehend the evolutionary process of mammals to the present human being.

There where 44 episode in the Blog of Consciousness. I don't foresee much ahead for me personally. There are no regret on my watch thought time is no longer on my side. I never expected to reach 86. My personal sand castle is facing a rapidly rising tide. My hope is for a continuing dialogue with those who follow the precess of exploring relationship. The trigger for this is inspired by a re-reading of Carl Roger's book: On Becoming a Person. This books explores the individual personality as a path for understand ing the hidden power of healing the psychological self. It was written in the 1950's s it has lost its place in she scheme of public life.

I continue to champion the Power of the Double Circle as an amazing tool. The Double Circle Group explores the circles in relationships between two individuals as well as the relationship between two fold groups.

45 Consciousness as a Metaphor

Each of the 25 animals tht were in session to help the human save the planet from annihilation of all living things we’re now beginning to reflect on their experience individually. While in group they had been somewhat restrained from speaking everything that they really felt about human consciousness; so some of them began to think about what it happened and how they might have missed the opportunity to speak out in a way that was understood by all. So let us look in on the private thinking of some of animals.

BillyG thought about how his goat ancestors had been lured into service of humans several thousand years ago giving up freedom of millions of years for free food. Now they were just herded, slaughtered or milked . They were involuntarily bred into the kind of goats that humans preferred. BillyG was not the only one to realize how the intentions of Mom Nature to maintain the natural order had been thwarted. Most humans are voracious predators demanding more goat milk and more goat barbecues. Some goats escaped into the mountains valuing their freedom above all else. Slippery rocks were less dangerous than clever humans. Is it odd that animals love humans. In spite of being treated so badly over many centuries animal still look up to the human beings.

Humans are moving through time and space faster than they can manage. Mother nature has given us organization which is the capacity to put things together in the right order.I think that humans are moving too fast to organize themselves. Rather than do what would be logical they live into warring factions how do we help with that?

44 The Mystery Revealed

Interlude

     Phil, the author. shortly after returning from a wedding, developed chest congestion. The x-ray indicated the possibility of cancer of the lung and he was referred for a PET scan which turned out to be negative. However, the original pneumonia smoldered, and he has just recently begun to venture out of the house. For a while the writing appeared hopeless. For over two years the author has attempted to examine the phenomenon  of consciousness for the purpose of getting humans to see their part in global warming and subsequent catastrophe. We are at an impasse. But we may yet find a natural phenomenon right before our eyes.

Episode 44: The Mystery Revealed

           In the last episode Leda, the dragonfly, rolled a bomb into the midst of the Group. Stark terror gripped the Circle. Leda announced that 76% of the world’s insects have vanished, her own family included.

         Hummy realized that something had to be done to settle the group so that it could at least come to grips with Leda’s shocking statement. His tiny little wings were beating up a frenzy. His mind was wandering aimlessly back-and-forth causing some dizziness in the tiny bird. The only thing that Hummy could  instinctively to do was to herd the group of 25 animals into a nearly perfect circle on the top of the great slab near the waterfall.       

          There was the  rich green of the mountains, the sprinkling of red hibiscus in the valleys below, the chatter of birds, and music coming from the rebuilding of homes in Roseau in the valley below.

          He and several others in the group  realized there was a force directing the group into a circle and in this particular case, a double circle.

        But as the double circle formed there was yet another force coming from within each animal. The force was simply ‘awe’ and probably not  describable beyond that. Within each living organism there is back door. Such a door must have prevailed following previous extinctions. However, the back door is not a true door but a force like gravity or the wind. It is not a thing to tag but a force to be reckoned with.

        Jake, the basset hound, barked out, “Aren’t we the lucky 25? We were safe in the cave and now we’re safely watching humans

rebuilding Dominica.”

       Though trying not to be a spoilsport, Mary the white pelican facilitator said, “We came here to save the humans from planetary destruction and now we’re watching them save themselves. I think we have missed something.”

        Hooie, the barn owl, hooted, “ The people of Puerto Rico are still wallowing in self-pity and the people of this small island have done a miraculous thing. What’s the difference?”

        Mum, the nanny goat, struggled to find  the  right name but faltered.

  “I see a mystery. “

        Mira the sloth, crooned slowly but deliberately, “ Just slow down and see what is happening to each home as it is being rebuilt. There is a rhythm and a flow, the people working on each home in unison. It is true teamwork.”

        Then BillyG bleated, “The word could be configuration. Imagine a school of minnows trying to cross the Pacific Ocean; the first, a family of seven or eight. The second school is a tremendous mass of millions of minnows and the third is a tight ball changing  shape as it goes and  appearing as something different that it is. To some it is just another predator. To others the mass appears to be a whale.

Which of the three configurations has the most likely chance of  survivorship?”

           

Epilogue

          Have we pickled all the available cucumbers? Certainly, we have some 43 episodes devoted to the issue of consciousness. Was the issue never consciousness to begin with? Should we move on into the unconscious? And if so, do we dare to plumb the mind of G-d?  For the moment, Phil, the author will study the unconscious through the medium of meditation. Hopefully G-d will poke through the cloud of the unknown.

Suggested viewing: Earth I and II David Attenborough