Amongst the Stones; Amidst the Sin.

At the height of my delusion in regards to joining the Explorer's Club, I felt compelled to join another association that had looser standards towards their members - the American Museum of Natural History.

Where the Explorer's Club is exclusionary, the AMNH opens its large feathery wings and gathers all sorts under its large umbrella.

Most of you may have visited and enjoyed the fruits of Theodore Roosevelt's scorched earth policy to spare no expense in bringing New Yorkers awkward stuffed specimens of grand beautiful beasts that roamed free half a world away. The Museum was the perfect moral foothold to cling to as he slaughtered his way across the world. The body count at the end was close to 12,000 beasts!

In his defense, Roosevelt said "I can be condemned only if the existence of the National Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are to be condemned."


So there. We ALL share the burden of those six rare white rhinos that were blunderbussed.


But one must still live even when crushed by the collective weight of our evils and the moral uncertainty of it all. 


Deep in the bowels of the Natural History Museum, there is a room that may at first seem lifeless and dull, but has a hidden virtue.


It is the Hall of Gems:

Waiting to be Zardoz-ed.

It's not very easy to get excited about ancient rocks and pebbles when there are two floors of monstrous dinosaur reconstructions immediately above you and, unless you are taking a Geology class, the act of looking at samples of anthrocite, feldspar, and granite loses its luster pretty quick.

But it is not the content of the Hall of Gems that makes it so inviting. Rather, it is the low lighting, the carpeted ampitheatre steps, and the severe unpopularity of the room that makes it the most appealing  place to study. 

It's all so very Senatorial or, actually, it's the distinct feeling one has that may be similar to the Acolytes of Plato when they lounged at his Academy, plumbing the depths in a way that only lounging lets you do.

Not unlike this:

Don't mind me, I'm plumbing.

A Sound Beating from my Own Ideology.

There was a brief moment in time where my life became quite open-ended and many things seemed possible through the haze of accelerated idealism.

For a short time, not very long ago, I was seriously set to take on a very long educational undertaking with the pointedly farfetched aim of receiving an advanced degree in Science for the sole purpose of going to a very remote part of the earth to make an incredibly important discovery so that I could sit in this room.

Your monocle, sir.

The fabled Explorer's Club, where adventurers and expeditionists meet over tea and whiskey to discuss the outer reaches of the known.

Notable members in history:

Roald Amundsen - Discoverer of the Northwest Passage

Ernest H. Shackleton - Adventurer in Antarctica and inspiration for the frozen Biggie Shackleton

Charles A. Lindburgh - Atlantic Ocean Traverser

Sir Edmund Hillary - Mt. Everest Climber

James Watson - Rascist DNA Discoverer

Charles E. Yeager - Spaceman

Theodore Roosevelt - Museum Afficionado 

Dian Fossey - Gorilla Studier in search of Dr. Leaky

Fantasies abounded in my mind during that phase of my life where I fancied myself as both Rudyard Kipling and Sean Connery/Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King or Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days or even Bertie Wooster from the Drones Club in Jeeves and Wooster.

Of course, the practical side of these flights of fancy quickly came to bear and I realized that in reality I am only somewhat and not very much of a scientific fellow at the end of the day.

I realize that discovery and exploration can come in other ways as expressed by the antithesis of the Explorer's Club, Emily Dickinson:

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

I Look Upon You as a Gem of the Old Rock.

On Friday, we had a tiny peek into the enigmatic Katie E. Lynch's unique world.  But there is something that many, if not all, people do not know about her. This something I had heard long ago and it returned to me as I noticed that she became increasingly favorable towards all manner of seeds.

She is directly related to the legendary American Nurseryman Johnny Appleseed.

I believe she is his great-grandniece by a few generations. They share some distinct similarities in their attitudes and approaches to the world with their love for seeds being just the starting point. Other parallels include:

-Both Johnny Appleseed and Katie E. Lynch understand the value in used clothing. 

Appleseed wore the equivalent of resale clothing in his time, but he always reserved the best bits for his friends. Katie does the exact same thing. She rarely buys anything new and is quick to give her favorite pieces away. She finds amazing treasures here and here.

-They are both aware of the value of life - great and small. 

This is a story from the annals of the legend of Johnny Appleseed.

One cool autumnal night, while lying by his camp-fire in the woods, he observed that the mosquitoes flew in the blaze and were burnt. Johnny, who wore on his head a tin utensil which answered both as a cap and a mush pot, filled it with water and quenched the fire, and afterwards remarked, “God forbid that I should build a fire for my comfort, that should be the means of destroying any of His creatures.”

Katie E. Lynch has rescued the tiniest of creatures and feels pain at any discomfort wrought upon the smallest of beings. One notable occasion was when an orchid was delivered from the swamps of the Okefenokee to our house, bringing with it a displaced Anole ten digits long --- 1234567890.

What does an Anole look like?

This:

He was immediately christened Roger Anole and bathed in warm light and swaddled in leaves and twigs and served the finest aphids, which he refused to acknowledge by going on hunger strike with the effectiveness of John and Yoko in their hotel and the misanthropy of Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones. Roger Anole died holding onto false ideals, much to our chagrin.

-Finally, Johnny Appleseed and his scion, Katie E. Lynch are both strict vegetarians, which goes hand-in-hand with their sensitivity to the living. I am convinced that Johnny Appleseed would totally be a raw power vegan if he were alive today.

Here's Your Primitive Christian!

Hibernian Homme: Pulled into Beauty.

Man is Men was not born in a vacuum. There have been many points of light illuminating the vision of this blog and all have their own unique virtues.

But there is a particular aesthete that was particularly inspirational to me in starting this blog and that man is  Dan Monteforte with his incredible blog - Hibernian Homme.

Relentlessly beautiful, thunderous in sincerity, Hibernian Homme helps you regain that part of your soul that you always felt was slightly out of reach, such as his recent expedition into Places of Unknown Beauty here and here.

Part sartorialist, part design savant, Hibernian Homme hones his eye on every situation and finds the happiness that is to to had as the venerable Katie E. Lynch and I can attest to.

Eritrea? Really, Hibernian Homme. You really are a tastemaker, not unlike the previously-mentioned Arthur Quiller-Couch.

You Will Eat Life Itself.

I have the diet of a human being.

In all my years of living, I've been used to opening the cupboards and refrigerator to find the norms of society - flour, butter, eggs, pasta, rice, sugar, and so on and so forth.

However, for fourteen months there has been a sea change in my kitchen since the ever-so-lovely and beautiful Katie E. Lynch has transformed into a raw food power vegan.

Where once we lived in tandem, sharing the same food, our kitchen has now experienced a quantum shift, where two separate dimensions exist on top of each other. One is my run-of-the-mill cooked world and the other is a world of exotic names and substances that I have never heard of and can be quite frightening at times.

And, now, to share with you the new reality of the raw power vegan that exists in our kitchen:

Keep in mind that these things are not sitting on the shelves collecting dust, but are actually in heavy rotation as the intriguing Katie E. Lynch develops permutation of foods never before been tasted.(Really!)