The Reading Life and a Life of Reading

By Kenneth Ring, Ph.D.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading.

-- Elizabeth Hardwick

 

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

-- Groucho Marx

Part I

As a child, I was not a precocious early reader. In fact, I was not precocious in any way. I was just an average kid, except for my vision, which was always poor. Mostly, I was interested in baseball, girls and pop music. I had always loved to sing, having a good voice, but as for reading, meh.  

Although my house when I was growing up wasn’t entirely barren of books like the home of the Texas writer and book collector extraordinaire, Larry McMurtry, I don’t remember there being any books in my house, though there must have been some. Nor do I ever remember anyone in my family reading bedtime stories to me. I lived with my mother, her sister and her husband. My father had gone off to war when I was about seven years old. No one in my family had been to college. I did not come from a family of readers, much less intellectuals.

Except for my Uncle Bill, my mother’s older brother.

As I was to learn, Bill had had a somewhat wild youth growing up during the Depression. He rode the rails, hung out with tramps and hobos, knew some criminals and denizens of the demimonde, and had married a hooker named Sonny whom I was later to meet. (She soon divorced Bill after her former lover was discharged from prison.)

Bill had never got beyond the 8th grade in school, but he was one of those self-educated, bibliophile Jews, and somehow found time to read a great deal. I got to know him around the ages of seven and eight when he was working as a gardener at Mills College in Oakland, not far from where my family lived.  He lived in a little hut on campus where I would visit him.  It was crammed with books.

Bill was my first teacher. He talked about the books he had read – on politics, religion and especially science – and gave me some of them to read so we could later discuss them. Bill educated me and, looking back on my time with him now, I am aware that it was he who introduced me to the world of books.

But before my time with Bill, I did read a little. I remember reading books on baseball by a writer named, as I recall, John R. Tunis, and on astronomy, which fascinated me after my family took me to Chabot Observatory where I was able to hold a fragment on a meteor. There’s another book I vividly remember reading around the age of eight, which now belonged to my mother.  It was a book about the lives of composers.  I remember lying across my bed, engrossed in the book, which as you will learn, would prove to be a touchstone for my later writing.    

And I remember being drawn to the fiction of Jack London, then a very popular writer, though mostly forgotten now.  He wrote a lot about Alaska in books like The Call of the Wild, and kindled my desire to there, though I never did. I also read his autobiographical novel, Martin Eden, which my Uncle Bill might have given to me since he, like London, was an ardent socialist. Years later, I read London’s book, The Iron Heel, and could then see what a turgid author he was. Still, I eventually paid homage to him by visiting the last home where he had lived, in Glen Ellen, California. He died at the age of forty, a literary meteor himself before crashing to his death on earth.

In junior high school, I read the usual books assigned in those years, such as David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn, but the most important event that occurred during those years took place when a friend of mine took me to his home. His father was a professor and his study was lined with books. I remember thinking, "I was I could have had a father like that."  I later wondered whether this was a kind of "seed experience" that was implanted in me then that led to my own life as professor.

I now live in a little house that is jam-packed with books. I always wanted to have my own library, a room with bookcases from floor to ceiling, like some of my professional friends, but I never have lived in such a house. Instead, I have bookcases all over my house, in every room except for my bathroom and kitchen: in my hallways and entry room, in my storage room, books tucked away in my dining room cabinet, etc.  I live surrounded by my books and my life in many ways has been defined and molded by them. 

I suppose I have probably read thousands of books during my long life, and still have hundreds of books in my house, though I have probably given away or lost more books than I now possess – many hundreds of them.

For example, when I left the University of Connecticut toward the end 1996 in order to move back to California, I had to leave at least half of my professional books and most of my fiction behind.  Over the years, I also lost many books when I lost my wives (I’ve had four) in messy divorces.  I’m ashamed to say that I’ve mourned the loss of those books more than my ex-wives. Even after moving back to California, because of lack of room for my books, I’ve had to give away hundreds of them.  Almost all my books on psychedelics (they are now in a special collection at Purdue University), UFOs, psychotherapy, mysticism, etc. Since I’ve always been interested in classical music, and have written some books about classical composers, I once had a very large collection of books on music, including more than sixty books on composers alone, and I still have quite a few books on music, but I had to give away all my books on composers to a musician friend of mine who is also a composer. It would be hyperbole to say that the loss of these books is like a wound in my side, but I do miss them; they were a part of me.

When I was still a teen-ager, I lived with my mother and stepfather in a home In the Oakland hills, above Mills College. During the summers once I had started college at Cal-Berkeley, I can remember sitting outside on the stairs below the porch reading very long books, such as The Authoritarian Personality, which was in vogue during those days. But what I also remember from that period was becoming acquainted with the work and life of Bertrand Russell, who was one of my literary heroes then.

I can remember reading his magisterial History of Western Philosophy on those stairs. And also his little, but influential, book, Why I Am Not a Christian, which I still have here.  In those days, I was very partial to books by atheists and agnostics, and I was keen on Russell, my kind of guy.  A bit later, I read his three-volume autobiography (I still have two of the three).

Around the same time at Cal (and later when I was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota), I started my long acquaintance with another atheist hero of mine named Sigmund Freud.  In those years – the mid-1950s – Freud and psychoanalysis were still important topics. Not so today, of course, when Freud is pretty much passé.  But I read many of his books and books about him, such as Ernest Jones’s three-volume hagiography of Freud, and a lot on other psychoanalytic theorists. Jung, too, after he split with Freud and went his own way.  As a young professor, I lectured on this subject as well.

And of course, as a graduate student in social psychology and as a young professor, I read scores of other books on psychology, anthropology (which was my minor in graduate school), sociology, philosophy, religion, etc. 

But before many years had passed, my reading life took a drastic turn away from all that. I had discovered psychedelics, which took my life and my reading into domains that were entirely new and thrilling to me.

And once I started my work on near-death experiences a few years later, I had found my professional raison-être. What had occurred earlier was only the prelude to my real life, which only began in my mid-thirties.

I don’t want to spend much time here talking about the sort of books I started to read then and for decades to follow.  Instead, I’ll just show you some of them.  Here is a snapshot of some of those books in one of the bookcases in my office:

On the first shelf are books that recount personal stories of NDEs.  The next three shelves contain books about NDEs (if you squint, you might be able make out titles of some of my own books on the second shelf).  The fifth shelf holds the non-fiction books I have recently read and the bottom shelf features the fiction that I’ve read over the past few months. 

It would be tedious to give even a brief account of the various categories of books I have read, so for the record (not that anyone is keeping score), I’ll just mention a few of my most important collections and how I came to have them.

When I went to the West Bank and Israel in 2008, and saw for myself what was going on there, I quickly became a passionate supporter of justice for Palestinians. After that visit, I acquired a whole slew on books on the subject of how Israel and its violent settlers have been relentlessly engaged in the effort to expel Palestinians and possess their lands.

Some years earlier, when I still identified as a Jew (because of Israel’s actions, I no longer do), I spent a couple of years reading many books on Jewish history, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. I actually have no interest in and am actually repelled by Judaism itself (I am not religious), but I learned a great deal about how Jewish secular history and culture formed my personality.

I’ve read a great deal about other genocides besides the slaughter of Jews. Four books alone on the Armenian genocide; books about the violent Spanish conquest of the then "new world;" the European ravaging of indigenous Australians (I still remember my shock and horror when, as an undergraduate at Cal, I read how the Europeans hunted down and killed Tasmanians for sport). King Leopold of Belgium and his many-years-long rape of the Congo.  And, of course, books on slavery and the genocide of Native American people, including the Indians of my native state, California. Think Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

In my guest bathroom, I have a little bookcase with all my books about animals, nature and climate change. Although I don’t live with animals, I love reading and learning about them, and have written a number of blogs about them.

I’m very drawn to the artistic and cultural life of 19th century France and have many books about that period and biographies of the artists who flourished then.

And of course, I have a wide variety of other books, on history, philosophy, religion, evolution, film, baseball,  etc., and hundreds of works of fiction about which more at the end of this blog.

But what I’d like to do to conclude this section is tell you a bit about books on subjects that may surprise you, as I have a kind of quizzical interest in subjects I know nothing about or have no talent for.  

Math mania

Although I have absolutely no head for mathematics, I am fascinated by those who do. So, I have quite a few books about mathematics, but particularly about mathematical wizards. I regard them as a species apart, something beyond mere Homo sapiens.  I love reading about their lives and the worlds they live in. And the mysteries of why the universe seems to be written in a code of mathematics which science attempts to solve. And questions such as whether math is something to be discovered or is a human invention.  I guess you could just say that I suffer from an incorrigible case of math envy.

The gay life

I like to joke that when it comes to sex, I am straighter than a ruler.  I’ve known a few gay guys in my life, but I’ve never had a homosexual encounter with any gay man.  I think the closest I came to that was when I was a kid sitting in a movie theater by myself when a man chose to sit next to me, put his hand on my knee and asked if I would like to go outside.  I soon excused myself and went to sit elsewhere; the man did not follow.

And yet, I have read quite a bit about the history of gay life, and of how much gays have suffered because of their sexual orientation and life style. But I think what I find so attractive about many gay men is their aesthetic tastes and talents. So many outstanding artists are or have been gay; that is well known. Anyway, I have read quite a few books by gay writers, both memoirs and fiction, including the marvelous diaries of the composer, Ned Rorem. And because I admire artists so much and wish I could have been one, I sometimes wonder if the reason I am not gay myself simply reflects a failure of imagination.

Overlooked women of genius

In recent years, I have spent quite a bit of time reading about exceptional women, particularly women who have accomplished outstanding work in the field of science, which was recognized during their lifetime when they were honored for their work, only, for the most part, to be forgotten by history. It irks me to learn how many such women failed to receive Nobel Prizes that they deserved because the men they worked with claimed credit for what these women actually discovered.  Although that wasn’t the case with Emilie Chatelet, who was certifiably a genius and did extremely important work in physics – she translated Newton’s Principia into French and her work influenced Einstein – these days she is mostly remembered as Voltaire’s mistress.

Fiction Favorites

The largest category of books I’ve read – by orders of magnitude – are works of fiction. Just too many to count and since this blog is already long enough, I will just put it and possibly you to sleep simply by mentioning some of my very favorite novels and novelists.

Of course, I’ve read the 19th century Russian masters – at least a few of their many books. Tolstoy, whom I don’t like, so he’s not actually favorite of mine, nor is Dostoevsky, though obviously a genius.  No, my favorite is actually Ivan Turgenev, the author of the classic book, Fathers and Sons. But why I’m so fond of Turgenev is because of his extraordinary love affair with a married woman, the incredibly talented singer, Pauline Viardot, with whom he lived for many years along with her husband, in an amicable ménage à trois.

Among the Victorians, my favorite, by far, is George Eliot. Of course, her big book and best known is Middlemarch, but my own personal favorite is her late novel, Daniel Deronda, which damaged her reputation. In the eyes of her contemporaries and fans, but not in mine.

I know everyone thinks that Dickens is the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, but not for me.  I’ve never cared that much for him, and if you were to read the book by Robert Gottlieb called Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens about how he treated his ten children and mistreated his long-suffering wife, you might change your mind about him, too.

Moving along to our own time and country, my favorite American novelist, and a superb stylist, is John Updike many of whose books I’ve read along with countless articles and short stories. The most entertaining novelist and short story writer that I know is man with an unforgettable name, T. Coraghessan Boyle, whom I call TCBY.  I’ve read about ten of his novels, and enjoyed them all, and quite few of his short stories.  Some years ago, I heard him speak at a local bookstore.  I don’t remember what he said, only that he wore red socks. Check him out.

To me, the greatest contemporary American novelist whose writing I have extolled elsewhere is a man named Mark Helprin, who deserves to be better known than he is.  I’ve read most of his novels and am totally in awe of the beauty and power of his prose. For me personally, the greatest novel I have ever read is Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War, which I regard as America’s War and Peace. I can’t recommend Helprin’s book strongly enough though I think I just did.

However, to conclude this section and Part I of this blog, I must tell you about the most wonderful novel I have ever read that I doubt many of you have even heard of. It’s called The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, and its author is a man named Benjamin Hale.  The book tells the story of a character out of a Kakfaesque dark fantasy, except Hale’s tale is convulsively hilarious and, at the same time, deeply moving and poignant.  

Bruno is a literate chimp. Or at least he becomes literate. Not only literate, but he eventually becomes a Shakespearean actor. OK, I know this sounds ridiculous but, trust me, it’s not what you think. It’s beyond what you can imagine.  

You can get some idea of the book by reading a portion of a fan letter I wrote to Hale about a dozen years ago, shortly after finishing the book.  Here’s how it begins:

Dear Mr. Hale,

I’m 77 years old, a retired university professor (of psychology) and author, and have probably read roughly a gadzillion books. But in all this time, I have never, so far as I can recall, been moved to write to an author of any fiction. Until now.  

I came across Bruno quite by chance – no one had told me about it – at my local bookstore. It looked interesting, so I bought a copy. I began reading it at night, sitting in a warm bath, while recovering, though I never quite have, from a bad case of bronchitis.  I must have spent a month reading it, perhaps 20 pages or so a night. 

I was hooked from the start. I have read many wonderful, even remarkable, novels, but yours is, quite simply, the most extraordinary, glorious, unforgettable and enthralling novel I have read in ages, maybe ever. It is also side-splittingly funny. (I haven’t laughed so much while reading a novel since I encountered Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim sometime during the Pleistocene.) Ever since I got into it, I have raved about it like a besotted madman to all of my friends and even to strangers.

I finished it last night, though I would have happily continued to read it even if it were of Tolstoyan length. Bruno may have fallen in love with Gwen, but I fell in love with him.  He is certainly one of the most memorable characters I have ever met and he has taught me so much about how a conscious animal might well perceive our human world.  And it was devastating – and devastatingly funny, too, as I have said. 

Of course, like everyone, I thought of Kafka, of Humbert Humbert (and there were so many Nabokovian touches, too, especially in Bruno’s vocabulary), of Augie March (which, oddly enough, I had started reading, only to put it aside when I started your book), but your own voice, or Bruno’s, is so distinctive, and your other characters so vividly drawn, especially the Falstaffian Leon Smoler, that your book has its own enchanting singularity. Nevertheless, I feel sure that the lubricious Bruno will often be compared to Humbert Humbert and that your book will come to be regarded, if it isn’t already, as the Lolita of our time.  And may it sell as much as Nabokov’s book has, too!  

Well, I could write pages extolling the treasures to be found in your book, but as an author myself, I know that e-mail is the enemy of work.  So please don’t bother to acknowledge this letter.  I just wanted you to know how much pleasure your book gave me and how much its savage Swiftean satire hit home, like a kick in the cajones.  

Benjamin Hale actually took the trouble to respond and wrote me a very sweet note of thanks.

Now, hunt out that book and read it for yourself.  I can assure you that you won’t be disappointed.

[To be continued on Thursday, May 1.]

NDE Follies

By Kenneth Ring, Ph.D.

Dear Friends,

I was in a larkish mood the other night, so I decided to write a little parody about NDEs.  I hope you will enjoy it and maybe get a laugh or two from reading my frolicsome tale.  Here you go.

Title: “Death, Dying, and Other Inconveniences

I must say, dying is terribly inconvenient.

You could be having a perfectly ordinary Tuesday - walking the dog, microwaving leftover lasagna, planning your revenge on whoever scheduled a meeting at 7:30 a.m. - and then bam, your heart forgets its job and checks out early like a disgruntled employee. Suddenly, you’re staring at your body from the ceiling, wondering why you ever worried about cholesterol.

Now, before you panic and clutch your kale, let me assure you: this is not a tragic tale of doom. No, dear reader. This is a tale of curiosity, of mystery, and yes, of a surprising number of people reporting that the afterlife has really good lighting.

As someone who has spent a rather absurd amount of time collecting near-death experiences (NDEs), I can confirm two things:

1. People who "die" and come back often seem a lot happier than people who just try to find parking in downtown San Francisco.

2. Almost nobody sees a pearly gate. St. Peter must be very backed up.

You’d think dying would be terrifying. And yet, person after person comes back from the brink with the same general report: “It was beautiful. I didn’t want to come back. And also, I could see through walls.”

Apparently, when the brain shuts up, the soul gets chatty.

Many NDErs describe being greeted by a loving presence - a being of light, not to be confused with your dentist’s overhead lamp. Some describe a life review that’s less “Judgment Day” and more “Netflix binge of your greatest hits, including that time you stole a grape at the supermarket in 1994.”

And the kicker? They almost always report that the entire experience was infused with unconditional love. The kind of love that makes you forgive your cousin Steve for stealing your thunder at Grandma’s funeral by showing up in a sequined tuxedo.

Now, I’ve never had an NDE myself (though I once got lost in a Macy’s for three hours, which I believe is spiritually equivalent), but I’ve read hundreds of these stories. And every time, I walk away with the same conclusion: death, it seems, is a lot less scary than rush-hour traffic.

So what do these near-death escapades teach us?

Well, first: try not to wait until you’re flatlining to realize that life is sacred and everyone deserves your compassion - even that guy who chews with his mouth open. Second: we’re all interconnected, even if we can’t agree on pineapple on pizza. And third: it might be wise to live every day as if it were part of your life review highlight reel.

Also, pro tip - if you find yourself floating above your body and someone in scrubs is yelling “Clear!”, maybe pause before following the tunnel of light. You’ve still got time to return that library book.

In all seriousness (or as close to it as I get), the growing body of NDE research continues to poke holes in the idea that consciousness dies with the brain. If anything, these accounts suggest that death might not be the end, but a rather awkward costume change.

And so, if you find yourself worrying about what comes next, remember this: You’ve survived middle school. You’ve survived holiday dinners. You’ve probably survived dial-up internet. You can survive this, too.

Besides, when your time comes, you just might find that the next world is brighter, kinder, and blissfully free of robocalls.

Actually, as some of you might now suspect, I didn’t write this at all. I just told ChatGPT to write a three-page blog in my style and characteristic humor. This is what it turned out. My daughter Kathryn said it sounded a lot like me. Heaven forfend! I would never saturate my blogs with so much corny humor; a sprinkling of wit is actually more my style, n’est-ce-pas?  

Anyway, this is the age we now live in where you can never tell whether you are getting a note from a bot or a human body.  You’ll have to guess who or what wrote this paragraph.

Claire Sylvia’s Afterlife Dreams

By Kevin Williams

Dr. Ken Ring writes, "After posting my spoof of Dick Cheney’s heart transplant in my last blog, my webmaster, Kevin Williams, drew my attention to a story he had written up on his website that concerned a remarkable, indeed, an amazing, case of cellular memory following a heart/lung transplant. The satire I wrote about Dick Cheney was fictitious, but it was based on extensive research that shows in that in some cases, the recipients of such transplants begin to experience the tastes and habits of their donors. After reading Kevin’s article, I asked him if he would be kind enough to reprint his story as one of my blogs.  Kevin graciously acceded to my request, so what follows is his article.  I think you will find it as mind-bogging as I did.

One of the strangest cases in the history of dream research is described in the documentary, The Secret World of Dreams. It describes the amazing story of a woman named Claire Sylvia, a 47-year-old drama teacher from Boston and former professional dancer with several modern dance companies. In 1983, she was diagnosed as having primary pulmonary hypertension – an often fatal, rare progressive disease which causes blood vessels in the lungs to collapse. Her health slowly deteriorated until she was forced to give up her job and became home bound. She was also dependent on oxygen and could only move around in a wheelchair with great difficulty. A heart-lung transplant was her only hope and the risks involved were considerable.

Soon after the transplant, she began having strange and incredibly vivid dreams about a young man she didn’t recognize. Eventually, Sylvia realized that the young man in her dreams was the 18-year-old organ donor whose heart and lungs resided in her chest. Through her continuing dream contacts with her donor, she learned a lot about him including his name. She then decided to do some research to find out if this “heavenly” information was correct. Her research proved that it was indeed correct. Sylvia then met the young man’s grieving family and Sylvia shared with them the amazing story of her contact with him through her dreams. Claire Sylvia died in August of 2009 from a blood clot in her lung; 21 years after her heart-lung transplant. The following is the detailed account of her amazing story:

“My mother was basically dying,” says Amara, “She prepared herself for death and she was preparing me for her death. She labored to get up in the morning to go to the bathroom. Her breathing was labored and I was afraid every morning whether she would be alive or not.

Then Sylvia’s bizarre dreams began to unfold.

“I started to have a series of dreams. One dream was that I had the transplant and I had to drink four glasses of milk a day. At the time I questioned this, I said, ‘I wonder what this means? Where does this four glasses of milk come in at? I don’t understand what this means.’

“And there was no explanation so I just let it go. I lived each day with a thought and a prayer that I would live till the next day and that I would live to see my daughter graduate from high school which was about a year away.”

Finally, Sylvia’s prayers were answered.

“The phone rang and it was the transplant coordinator. She very calmly said, ‘We officially got permission to do heart and lung transplants and we have a donor for you today.’

“I was speechless. All I could say was, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God!'”

Within hours, Sylvia was rushed into surgery and after a delicate three-hour operation, she awoke.

“I knew that I would have to take an anti-rejection drug, cyclosporine. They injected a certain amount of this liquid into two little cups of milk. Then at night, I repeated this same process. I realized that these were the four cups of milk a day in my dream.

“At first I didn’t accept it, I kept saying, ‘I must have gotten this information from someplace.’

“I kept checking around and nobody told me. Then I thought, ‘This is bizarre. I don’t know why and I still don’t.'”

It was May of 1988, and Sylvia’s operation was Connecticut’s Yale-New Haven Hospital’s first successful heart-lung transplant on a female patient.

Five days later, journalists were invited into the hospital to interview Sylvia in the intensive care unit. During the press conference, a reporter asked her:

“Now that you’ve had this operation, what do you want right now more than anything?”

Sylvia replied: “To tell you the truth, right now I’d die for a beer.”

Sylvia was momentarily stunned by what she had just said, not so much because it was flippant, but because of the fact that she does not like beer and has never liked beer.

When Sylvia returned home, another sequence of unexplained occurrences began. Her taste in food changed dramatically. Five weeks after the operation, when she was allowed to drive for the first time, and she headed straight for Kentucky Fried Chicken – a fast food she had never previously enjoyed. She couldn’t explain this sudden craving. Nor could she explain many other apparent changes in her personality, such as, why she was starting to look at women the way a man might look at women, for example, or why her favorite colors are now green and blue rather than the hot shades of pink, red and gold she used to prefer. Other strange things occurred. Sylvia started eating green peppers, a vegetable she had formerly meticulously picked out of salads.

Around this time Sylvia had a strong, unexplainable desire to visit France. On her return, just when Sylvia thought her life couldn’t get any stranger – it did – in another mysterious dream.

“I’m in an open field and it’s very light. It’s daytime and I’m in a playful relationship with a young man whom I see clearly. He is tall, has sandy colored hair and his name is Tim L.

“I come back and say goodbye to him and as we approach each other, we kiss, and as we kiss, I feel as if I inhale him into me. It’s like taking this enormous breath. And I know that he will be with me together forever. But it also seemed that this man in my dreams, whom I knew as Tim, must be my donor.

“I was very curious to find out who my donor was because of all the things that were happening to me and because of the dreams I was having – and the feeling of living with his presence.”

Claire became convinced her donor was trying to communicate with her. She contacted the hospital but they informed her that donor records were confidential. When all hope seemed lost, her friend Fred Stern called to tell her of a message he received in his own dream.

“I had a clear image of a dream,” says Fred Stern, “that we had gone to the basement of the public library and had seen in the Portland newspaper a story on either the third or fourth page several days before her operation. A story about the boy who was killed and whom she had gotten her heart from.”

Claire and Stern made arrangements to meet at the local library.

“I met Fred at the public library and we looked at the papers the week preceding my transplant. Sure enough, the day before my transplant, as was in his dream, the obituary of a young man who was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was 18 years old. His name was Tim L. as it was in my dream. It felt like my heart stopped beating for a moment. I was standing up and I remember getting kind of weak all over. My knees went a little weak. It was a shock.”

According to Fred Stern: “It was almost like magic, like some sense of knowing. It is just wonderful to be a part of it – this unfolding.”

It turned out that Tim L. had died in a motorcycle accident shortly before Sylvia’s life saving surgery. She had received the organs of Tim Lamirande, 18, of Saco, Maine.

“I was shocked because now it became more real. Now I had all the information. I had the family’s name. I had details. This person really existed.”

Wanting to know more about her donor, Sylvia wrote to Tim’s family in Maine and made arrangements to meet them.

“I was very excited,” says Tim’s sister, Lee Ann, “and the whole family was very excited to meet Claire.”

Sylvia then met the Lamirande family. According to Fred Stein:

“She [Claire Sylvia] was very apprehensive because she didn’t know what she was going to meet, but she was warmly received, particularly by Tim’s sisters. They were very positive and said how much Claire’s atmosphere and behavior reminded them of their brother. What was important too was that we had come to the conclusion from her dreams that the donor must have been a hyperactive person, and the family confirmed this, saying that when he was little he had to be kept on a leash because otherwise he would run off, and at the time that he died he was holding down three jobs as well as attending college.”

Tim’s sister, Lee Ann, said:

“It was like meeting my brother all over again for the very first time – seeing him alive again. Claire was very warm towards us. She was loving. She was loving like Tim was. There was so much feeling that it was absolutely exhausting.”

Sylvia told the Lamirande family about her dream. Afterward, Tim’s sister replied: “My first reaction to Claire’s dream was one of disbelief. I really didn’t believe it until she just started describing things about my brother – like how he was tall and wiry. She described him almost to a T. She was getting the information from her dream. She described how Tim was loving and that he came to her and wanted to be a friend. I just kind of felt that, ‘Yeah, that’s what Tim would do.'”

Sylvia told them: “When I met the family, I was trying to corroborate some of the things that had been happening to me. I asked them if he happened to like green peppers and they said, ‘Oh, yes, he used to love green peppers. He’d fry them up with cabasa.’

“They told me his favorite food was chicken nuggets and that he had apparently just bought them before he died because they had to pull them out of his motorcycle jacket when they found him. When they told me that I said, ‘Oh my God!'”

The Lamirande’s also confirmed that Tim liked beer. And Sylvia’s burning desire to visit France was also explained. The Lamirandes were French Canadian. Tim’s favorite colors were also blue and green.

One night after visiting the family, Sylvia dreamt that 22 motorcycles were being revved up to be driven round town to commemorate some event. In the morning she realized it would have been Tim’s 22nd birthday. To celebrate, she asked a friend with a motorcycle to take her for a ride. It was, she said, “exhilarating.”

Tim’s sister Jackie remarked: “Why would she have a dream about her donor unless God was trying to tell her in a way who we were and trying to make it easier for her to get to us so she could see that there was good out of everything she went through.”

Sylvia stated: “All the images that have come to me since the transplant are, in and of themselves, having to do with this new part of me.”

Over the years, Sylvia kept in touch with Lamirande’s family. When Sylvia died in 2009, Joan Lamirande said, fighting back tears in a telephone interview from her home in Saco:

“She was a wonderful person. As long as she was living it was as if my son was still alive. Now that she is gone, I know that my son is gone.”

The implications of Sylvia inheriting personal characteristics of her donor are astounding. This is because it supports “cellular memory” which is the hypothesis that memories can be stored – not just in the brain – but in all the cells of the human body. One particular study published in a 2008 edition of Nature called Cellular Memory Hints at the Origins of Intelligence is suggestive of cellular memory; however, mainstream medical science does not acknowledge memory outside of the brain is possible. If it were possible, it would mean medical science would have to re-evaluate the accepted view that all memory is stored in the brain, much like data is stored on a computer’s hard drive. Nevertheless, research in Israel indicates that 34% of people who have undergone heart transplants have had some kind of experience of what is now known as "trait transfer."

Re-Runs

By Kenneth Ring, Ph.D.

As I grow nearer to the dreaded age of ninety, I have found myself joking about the triple threat of attaining that age: running out of time, ideas, and functioning neurons. Well, I can josh about this now, but it’s really no joking matter; it is almost certainly my destiny. But before I subside into the shadows of dementia, I figured I could resurrect, if not myself, then at least some of the nugatory trifles I wrote sometime ago, which you may have already read but more likely have forgotten

For this purpose, I decided to draw on one of my less well-advised books, which I called Confessions of a Humorist Manqué.  So, I’ve adapted some of the contents of that book and rewritten portions of it so as to conform to the dimensions of a blog.  I hope you will enjoy reading some of my whimsical tales, especially those that demonstrate my proclivity for making a fool of myself.

***********************

Jews are funny.

I am a Jew.

Ergo:  I am funny.

Well, I may be funny, but I also know that’s a slippery syllogism, or as we used to say behind our teacher’s back, a sillygism. After all, it doesn’t say All Jews are funny. I could be the rare exception. By the time you finish this blog, you can render your verdict.

But consider my background. I am old enough to have grown up listening to Jewish comics on the radio. (Do you remember radios or at least remember hearing about them? They were very popular in my day along with slide rules.) Jack Benny, for example, or in the early days of television, Milton Berle (Uncle Milty!), Sid Caesar, Amos ‘n Andy. (All right, they weren’t all Jewish.) Most kids grow up wishing they could be football quarterbacks or well-healed thugs wearing shades and Armani suits. Me? I grew up wishing I could be Woody Allen, only better looking. 

Anyway, when I was a kid, I had a reputation for being the quickest quipper in the West. For a while, some people even thought I had Tourette’s. But no such luck. Besides, I soon found that being King of the Yock Hill didn’t get you the girls. They just tended to look at you pityingly and then went for the nearest jock. So I was obliged to recess my tongue and devote it to licking the crumbs off my bagels.

Nevertheless, in high school I retained enough of my humor to be voted “class wit.” (This is true. I still have my plaque. That is not true.) These days, of course, as I begin to slide ever nearer into the early stages of dementia, people tend to refer to me as a halfwit (okay, I know that’s a lame joke, but what do you expect from a lamebrain?) But I think it’s in the genes, anyway, because my son, Dave, recently told me that in high school, he was voted “class clown.” It runs in the family, I tell you, it’s tribal, it’s tradition! (Think Tevye.)  

Speaking seriously for a moment (I promise it won’t last), in my life as a professor and author, I have spent much of it writing books about seemingly grim and morbid subjects, such as what it’s like to die (it’s not as bad as you think) or what it’s like to be a Palestinian living in Israel or the West Bank (it’s as bad as you think) -- books that I hoped would educate and edify my readers, maybe even enthrall them if they were to read about what people actually do report when they come close to death, but don’t get around to it. But I have mostly not written blogs like this one whose main purpose is merely to entertain. But if not now, when?

I mean, in this dark and dysphoric age in the reign of Donald II, when the world seems to be going to hell, anyway, maybe what we need is not love, more love, but laughter, more laughter. At least in the tenebrous gloom of our time, it is one way to keep our sunny side, up, up, before we go back to putting our head in the sand or spending our time looking to join the local opioid club.

So, in this blog I have gathered some amusing stories of things that have happened to me or that I’ve witnessed, some of which, I must say, do not present me in a flattering light. But at this stage of my life, I have no reason to conceal from the world what a sometimes ass I was, and no doubt still am.

Embarrassing Moments

When I was a young professor back in the Antediluvian period, before the invention of computers and other devices to further the art of plagiarism, I used to teach large classes in social psychology in banked lecture halls where the seats rose steeply seemingly into the stratosphere. With my poor vision, I couldn’t even make out if the top rows were full of students paying close attention or whether they were masturbating to relieve their boredom.

Anyway, in those days, professors were accustomed to distribute course syllabi on the first day of class, and for my large classes, I simply asked students in the front row of the aisle to distribute them for me.

When I approached a young man sitting in the first row on the left side of the auditorium to do this favor, he refused.

I blinked with surprise and said, “What’s the matter? Are you blind?”

Guess.

One day, a student came into my office during office hours when my door was open and said, “Professor Ring, may I s-s-s speak to you?”

He had a strange grin on his face, so I thought he was putting me on.

“Certainly, I said. Please s-s-s sit down.”

He wasn’t.

When I was a teenager, I fell in love with classical music and listened to it obsessively. I even kept a little brown spiral notebook in which I listed every piece of classical music that I had heard over the radio. During my high school years, I arranged to become an usher at the performances of the San Francisco Symphony where I could hear the performances for free. Even in those days, but it is worse now, I confess, I prided myself on my knowledge of the classical repertoire.

One night the orchestra was playing a piece by the Hungarian composer, Zoltán Kodály, called The Hary Janos Suite. At its conclusion, I initiated the applause, but was surprised that only a smattering of applause followed.

Then the music continued.

I spent the rest of the concert under my seat and to this day, more than a half century later, I am never the first to clap even if I’ve heard the work fifty times.

How I Became a Pyromaniac

On May 21, 2012, I received an intriguing email from a trio of authors in Colorado, which contained a rare compliment: They were planning to write a book modeled after one of mine dealing with near-death experiences, Lessons from the Light, and wanted to advise me of their intent to make sure it was okay with me. They also asked if I might be willing to confer with them about their undertaking, if I wished.

I had not heard of these authors, but apparently many others had. I learned that they – a husband and wife, and the brother of the husband – specialized in giving retreats on spirituality and healing, that they had done so in about 60 countries, and had already written some twenty-two books, which collectively had sold over a million copies. These were certainly well established and successful authors, so I quickly assented, and with delight, to their overture.

This was the beginning of what has become a deep and loving friendship with the Linns – Denny and Sheila, Denny’s brother Matt, and John, Denny and Sheila’s teenage son.  

After many delightful email exchanges, they suggested that, inasmuch as I was planning to visit one of my daughters in Colorado, I might want to spend some time with them during which I could actively collaborate with them on their book over a period of several days. I accepted with alacrity.

Once my visit to my daughter was over with, a friend of the Linns drove me to their house in the Colorado mountains. There were forty-five steps up a seemingly small mountain to their front door – for a moment, I thought I was back in Amsterdam! But the Linns were very welcoming and we all had a wonderful and warm conversation over the dinner that Sheila had gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare.

But trouble of another kind was soon to come.

In the morning, after taking a shower, I nearly burned down their house.  

When the shower was over, I turned on the switch that controlled the heat lamp in their downstairs bathroom.  Or I had innocently assumed that it did. I was wrong.

It actually controlled the sauna in the adjacent room.  

That sauna was rarely used, however, and had been used mostly for storage.

Soon smoke began to billow out, the smoke alarms went off, and all hell broke loose!

Matt, who had been sleeping in the room next to mine, jumped out into the hallway. The other Linns, who had been sleeping upstairs, leapt out of their beds and came charging downstairs (Denny injuring his leg in the process) and we all began furiously trying to beat out the fire before it spread any further.

It was touch and go for several minutes, but finally it was quelled.

I felt like killing myself.

By now, the fire brigade had arrived, the paramedics, ambulances, the works. We all had to clear out for a time.

When we were allowed back it, the house reeked of smoke, although the actual structural damage was confined mostly to the sauna.  

The rest of the day was devoted to various officials coming by, insurance inspectors, cleaning people, etc.  

The house would be uninhabitable for several days. (Fortunately, there was an attached house that was empty that we could use in the meantime.)

So much for our book collaboration!

By now, I had learned that though the Linns had insurance, their deductible was still $5000. I wanted to pay them before killing myself.  

And you know what? They wouldn’t hear of it! I insisted, they resisted. I persisted. Finally, Sheila told me in so many words that she would horsewhip me if I dared even mention the subject again.

I won’t continue with everything that took place over the next few days except to say that all the Linns did was to offer me love, support, kisses, and promises of their enduring friendship. We had the best time together – despite everything – and shared many intimate personal stories together. We even managed to get quite a lot of work done on their book.  

This is how I really came to know and love the Linns. That’s the kind of people they are. And though it all, we have remained in touch ever since as loving friends.

I have also learned to take showers in dim light, if necessary. And I have promised them they will never have to put me up as a houseguest again. God willing, my days as an inadvertent pyromaniac are over. 

Memorable Encounters

The Girl Who Didn’t Like Mozart

In graduate school for a while I dated a girl with the rather unfortunate name of Bonnie McBane. She was not alluring either, but in those days before my life as a lothario began, I took what I could get.

One evening, I took Bonnie to a concert. Opening the playbill, we found that a Mozart symphony was on the program. I think it was “The Haffner,” one of his best. Bonnie sniffed, “I don’t like Mozart.”

“You don’t like Mozart?” I spluttered incredulously. She confirmed that I had heard correctly, and indeed during the performance of the symphony Bonnie looked bored.

Of course, that put the kybosh on my relationship with Bonnie, the girl who didn’t like Mozart.

Afterward, I thought I would write a short story about her. After all, I already had a title for it. But I never did.

Though I think I just I have.

Very short.

The Student with the Box

During the years I taught psychology at the University of Connecticut, I offered a course on perspectives on human behavior that began with psychoanalytic theory, moved on to existential psychology and next ventured into the then new field of transpersonal psychology before ending with a sampling of Zen Buddhist thought.

For this class, I asked students to maintain a course journal in which they were to write their comments on the assigned books, the lectures and on anything in their personal lives that they felt connected with the themes of the course.

One year, I had a particularly intelligent and thoughtful student who would come into see me during my office hours to discuss the topics of the course and his reaction to them.

Although I always offered students the option of submitting their journals to me for evaluation during the course, I often did not see them until the end of the semester.

However, I was puzzled to find that my splendid student had not turned in any journal at all.

I managed to track him down at his dorm and asked him to come in to see me

He came bearing a box, a large box. I was puzzled by the box, but first I asked him about his journal and why he hadn’t yet submitted it.

It turned out there was a good reason for that. He had never bothered to keep one. Instead, he had spent his time constructing this box, the one that now lay on my desk. He explained that he felt the box had somehow expressed what he had learned from the course, and better than words could ever do.

He invited me to peer into the box through an aperture I hadn’t noticed.

When I did, I saw that he had constructed it with a complex of internal mirrors that seemed to reflect infinity, the incomprehensible, a universe of light.

I was impressed, but how was I to grade him?

“Are you willing to destroy this?” I asked in a moment of inspiration.

He looked at me in shock, hesitated, and then he picked up the box and heaved it with full strength onto the floor where the shards shattered seemingly into a thousand pieces of glass. It made a terrible noise and since my door was open, nearby professors rushed into my office to find out what had made such a clatter.

The student was shaking.

I gave him an A-. Because he had hesitated for a moment. Very Zen, no?

Mom Near the End

My mother had a sad life and a long and slow descent toward the edge of the cliff of her death over which she toppled at the age of almost 89 in June of 2001. 

Her last years were spent in a nursing home in Berkeley where, until her last year or so, I was accustomed to pushing her around the neighborhood in her wheelchair. She was, however, lucid to the end, even though she was by then hard of hearing and generally very passive. She did not like to be touched, and mostly she was taciturn, too.

I tried to entertain her by recounting my latest adventures and sharing family news.

“You talk too much,” she said to me one day.

On another occasion, when I thought she might not have long to live, I spent five minutes or so telling her about my work on near-death experiences. Finally, I asked her, “So, mom, what do you expect will happen when you die?”

She narrowed her eyes and replied in a flat voice: “Nothing. I expect to be dead.”

Once, on what turned out to be one of our last times together, I asked her if she could tell me some of the things in her life that had given her the most happiness.

“You,” she said. 

Metamorphosis

Most of you are probably old enough to remember Vice-President Dick Cheney, with his perpetual snarl. He was sort of a Darth Vader character, pulling the strings for an often hapless George Bush, who sometimes seemed to be Cheney’s puppet. Cheney, however, suffered for many years from heart problems, and eventually had to undergo a heart transplant. But few people know the story of what happened to him afterward. You are about to find out about Cheney’s change of heart, one might say, with a double entendre definitely intended. 

One morning, two days after his heart transplant operation, Dick Cheney awoke from a pleasant dream feeling distinctly odd. For one thing, he was smiling.

His daughter, Mary, also noticed that there was something strange about her father.

She calls it to the attention of her mother.

“Mom, there is something distinctly odd about Dad this morning.”

“What do you mean,” Lynne asks, looking puzzled.

“Well, for one thing, you know how Dad always looks dour in the morning, as if life is a pain and why does he have to bother being pleasant.”

“Well, that’s just your father, darling.”

“I know that, Mom. But this is different. Dad looked positively radiant this morning.”

“Hmm, that is distinctly odd,” Lynne agrees.

“But that’s not all,” Mary continues. “What really was strange was what he was saying.”

“Mary, I’m in a hurry this morning. You know how angry your father gets when I don’t have his eggs ready for him. Please get to the point.”

“OK, Mom, it was about Obama.”

“So?”

“He likes him now.”

“What!”

“He likes him. He thinks he’s been wrong about him all this time.”

“Mary, I have no time for jokes. Now, really, I have to get to the kitchen.”

“I’m not kidding, Mom. If you don’t believe me, ask him yourself.”

***********************

“Dick, how are you feeling this morning, dear?”

“Couldn’t be better.” (Beaming) “I’m a new man!”

“You look well, dear. I even notice that snarl -- er, I mean, that little mouth tic of yours is absent today. Ah, Dick, I was wondering – Mary said you were talking about Obama this morning.”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about him lately. You know, Lynne, I really think I’ve misjudged the man. I mean, he’s not such a bad fellow. And, you know something else, Biden was right. For a black man, he is very clean and uncommonly articulate. You gotta give him that.” 

“Dick, what are you saying!”

“I dunno, Lynne, it’s just something that I feel. I think when I’m up and about we should invite him and Michelle over for dinner. Maybe we can make amends.”

“Dick, I’m calling your cardiologist. I think the drugs that they’ve given you to prevent rejection must be making you delusional. I’m worried about you, honey. You’re not yourself.”

“Balderdash, Lynne, I haven’t felt this well and this clear-headed in years. It’s like I’ve just woken up from a bad dream – except my dreams this morning were very pleasant.”

Mrs. Cheney looks ashen-faced.

“And another thing,” Cheney says. “This thing about Mary, you know, her….”

“Please don’t bring that up, Dick.”

“No, really, Lynne. I’m proud she’s gay, and I’ve also been thinking she’s right about same-sex marriage. I don’t know what I was thinking before. I must have been bamboozled by all those rightwing nuts and those Tea Party crazies.”

“Dick, those are your people. How could you be talking this way!”   

Cheney continues to beam. His mind is elsewhere, a beatific smile of satisfaction on his face.

***********************

“Doctor, I need to talk with you.” Mrs. Cheney is talking on the phone, which she cannot hold steadily. Her hand is shaking too much.

“Of course, it’s about Dick. Doctor, he is talking gibberish this morning. I mean, he is actually talking like a Democrat!”

“You don’t think it’s the drugs? But what else could it be?”

Mrs. Cheney pauses, and then she has an idea.

“Doctor, I know we are not supposed to know the identity of Dick’s donor, but do you think….”

There is a long pause.

“I know it is against the rules, but doctor, this is the Vice-President we are talking about, and he is a very sick man, and I don’t mean just physically!”

“All right, I’ll wait….”

A few minutes pass. Mrs. Cheney is very agitated.

The doctor comes back on the phone.

Mrs. Cheney listens with stupefaction.  

Then she faints.

Mary, hearing a noise, rushes in, sees that her mother has now staggered to her feet and is sitting, dazed, in a chair, her eyes glassy.  

She picks up the phone.

“A teen-aged black boy. From Chicago?”