Comments on: Unvarnished horror stories for children

By: projektleiterin

projektleiterin — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:00:31 +0000

You will stop laughing once I invite all my little spammer friends for a session here, HA HA. *evil laughter*

By: Mike Pulcinella

Mike Pulcinella — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:34:32 +0000

Spammers are going to RUIN the internet! People will soon demand that “something be done about this”, the government will step in and…need I say more?

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:08:45 +0000

Hasta la vista, “fromthe water!” Cursed spammer.

By: Dan Klarmann

Dan Klarmann — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:17:40 +0000

The fromthewater response is clear spam. Clicking on his name takes you to a paid links page.

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:16:25 +0000

proj: I can’t explain why some people (like you apparently) are bad and thus deserve all the frustrations life throws their way. Everything happens for a reason, right?

ps I’m just kidding.

By: projektleiterin

projektleiterin — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:29:05 +0000

So, fromthewater’s comment gets through and mine got classified as spam. I don’t really want to start whining again that life treats me unfairly, but come on, but recently even emails to my grandma’s email account and other accounts I own got classified as spam…

By: grumpypilgrim

grumpypilgrim — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:19:34 +0000

Where, exactly, is the scriptural support for the Catholic belief in transubstantiation? It seems to me this bizarre belief, and the ‘holy communion’ ritual it supports, has two causes. First and foremost, it is a vehicle for Church power. Once the Church convinces people: (a) they cannot get into heaven without holy communion, and (b) the Church is the only source of holy communion, the stage is set for an assertion of absolute power. We’ve see this today: Catholic powermongers who threaten to deny communion to politicians who vote in favor of abortion rights.

A second reason why the Church has this odd belief and ritual likely stems from the fact that ritual slaughter — animal or human — followed by the consumption of the slaughtered creature is a common feature of many ancient religions, especially those the Church desired to convert. What better way to convert such people to Christianity — while at the same time helping to safeguard the lives of those enterprising Church missionaries who ventured into cannibalistic cultures — than to convince the population that Christianity would provide both the ritual slaughter and ritual meal they were used to having, but without the messy business of actually killing a fattened calf or attractive virgin? By becoming Christians, converts could enjoy all of the benefits of ritual slaughter without any of the usual costs.

We see this self-serving motive in many Christian sermons. Watch almost any televangelist, for example, and he will declare that whatever you donate to his ministry “will be returned to you a hundred-fold by God.” “Accept the free gift of salvation and you can spend eternity in heaven.” The list goes on.

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:25:47 +0000

Vicki: The Waldorf teachers at the school my daughter attended were incredibly dogmatic. They often insisted on doing things a certain way because Rudolf Steiner (the founder of Waldorf) said so. Why Grimm? Because Steiner said so, we were told. They did a lot of other strange things. They covered the bathroom mirror at the school because children were unable to deal with their own image. The “art” class consisted of swirling one color of paint around a page without making any particular images. They celebrated their own brand of fairy-laden holidays.

We were attracted to this Waldorf School for the good things you mention–connection with nature and handicrafts. It all sounded good from the outside but we were sorely disappointed by the day-to-day reality. We barely lasted one semester. I must say, though, that this was only one Waldorf school. There are other Waldorf schools in the U.S. and many other Waldorf schools in Europe. Many of them have fine reputations substantiated by high-performing graduates.

By: Vicki Baker

Vicki Baker — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:20:06 +0000

Oh, one more thing about Waldorf schools. Angela Davis, the radical Black Panther-turned-professor, sent her kids to the Waldorf school here in Santa Cruz. I used to think it was really funny, because Waldorf seems so non- Black Panther-ish. But I guess if you develop a taste for one Germanic philosophy (Marxism) another one (theosophy) is just that much more palatable.

By: Vicki Baker

Vicki Baker — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:14:15 +0000

Some of the tales in Grimm’s collection have roots that go back thousands of years. There are versions of the Cinderella for example in almost every culture. Originally they weren’t stories for children, of course, they were just stories that the people told. The Bible is a bunch of stories that people told that wandered into a religion and got trapped there. Buddha is an example of someone who thought he was founding a worldview, and wound up walking into a lot of fairy stories (some very lovely ones, esp “Journey to the West”)
Tolkien and CS Lewis theorized that fairy stories came to be associated with children in the same way that old furniture ended up in the nursery - once adults had no use for them they were consigned to children. Children do wrestle with dark things like fear and jealousy that are the themes of these universal tales, so I see value in them. There’s nothing especially sacred or authentic about the Grimm versions, they were composited and cleaned up versions of stories the brothers collected from their informants. Yes, cleaned up - the original stories had a lot more sex. I remember an early Riding Hood story for example, where the wolf is clearly a sexual predator. He has Riding Hood take off all her clothes one by one, and then get in bed with him. Whereupon the resourceful girl says “Oh Mr. Wolf, I really have to pee.” After some discussion, the Wolf lets her outside to pee but makes her tie a rope to her ankle so she can’t run away. Once outside, she ties the rope to a tree and runs off.
As for Waldorf schools, I like a lot of things about them, the handicrafts and the nature corner and so on, but there’s just something… they tend to attract people with dogmatic tendencies, even if they aren’t committed theosophists. The ONLY Griimm diet is an example. Why not folk tales from around the world?