Thursday, March 29, 2007

Well, our winter vacation is quickly drawing to a close. Next Sunday, April 1, we depart for Copper Harbor and the start of our 37th year owning and operating the Isle Royale Ferry Service from the Harbor to Isle Royale Narional Park.

I thought I would conclude my winter blog by posting the cover of the latest of three book I have read since arriving here in mid-February. The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, is Charles Freeman's latest book on the founding and development of Christianity from Jesus to Thomas Aquinas with a fair amount of Greek philosopy (namely Plato and Aristotle) added. With a great deal of selectivity and not a little looseness, he adequately supports his premise as indicated in the sub-title of his book. Personally, I am wary of any writer on Christianity who glosses over the cataclysmic destruction of the Temple Mount in 70 ce and its impetus to Christianity and Freeman does just that. Moreover, in a patently untrue statement, he implies that all of Paul's letters were written before that event. This makes one suspect about the rest of the supporting evidence. Nonetheless, it is a good read and well worthwhile.

The other two books I read were Jerusalem: City of Three Faiths, (for the second time) by Karen Armstrong (another popularization of the history of that vital city), and Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds (for the umteenth time), a book that stoked and continues to feed my interest in the history of religion (as opposed to the history of theology), by Donald K. Akenson.

Finally, I listened to the 14 lectures entitled, "Jerusalem: City of God, City of Fire," delivered by Professor F. E. Peters of New York Univerrsity, a series from the Portable Professor, whick is available at Amazon or B&N. It is a very interesting overview of the events that vexed people throughout its history and well into modern times.

In short, my free time between visiting friends, eating out a couple of times a day, walking about 3 miles per day, and shopping was spent doing what I love to do most: read.

As we start our season, I am on a critical path to retire on January 1, 2008 at the age of 77-1/2, just about the age my own father reached before he passed away and I guess that is the goal of most men: to live beyond their fathers. See you later.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

My father is infinitely pleased that you've done this. Now I've read it. I'm more impressed by the fact that you will be 77 1/2 next January than the litany of books you've devoured. I would prefer the next posting to focus more on the restaurants. Where is it that you might be eating those two meals a day....

Capt. Donald Kilpela Sr. said...

Hello EJ. Sorry we didn't make it to Boston as we had planned. I think it is time for you to get back up here for some R & R.

I am going to start a series of blogs about our ill-fated oil tanker, the M/T MacVie whicvh we operated out of Curacao.

Stay tuned.

Unknown said...

I look forward to your oil tanker stories. It is one of those "Don moments" where my father would tell me what you were doing, and all I could do was stare wide eyed and say, "wow."

I'm sure it's time for another visit. I just need to line up all the family members so I can truly enjoy the experience.