RonPrice

RonPrice
2013-01-27 09:04:27 (UTC)

THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDEGEMENTS

THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Part 1:

What follows is a series of 6 posts on one thread here at this International Forum where I've been posting for several years. I have posted between 100 and 200 thousand words at this site, at least two good-sized books. Perhaps after my demise, an event soon to take place as the clock-flies, as tempus fugit, as my mother used to say, perhaps books will be made of all my posts. I am somewhat inclined to the view that, for millions of people, books are somewhat passe, even declasse, to chose a word that rarely appears these days. Still, given the yin and yang of life and the complexityof so many issues, I'm sure there are also more books being read now in 2013 than at any other time in history, especially given the world's population of 7.3 billion compared to 2.3 in 1944 when I was born.

I get an invitation every two or three weeks from the administrators and moderators to add another post at this international forum. Although there are only 6 posts in this series, on this thread, readers will quickly tire if they attempt to read all my 5 posts and the summary statement at the end in one reading, in one go.

There are some 40,000 words and 120 pages(font-14) in the statement below, so skim or scan this lengthy document---is my advice, read until you get tired or lose interest or, it goes without saying, just don't read it. In this latter case, go somewhere else: (i) to read and/or enjoy whatever images(moving or still) catch your fancy and interests, (ii) to make whatever clever or funny, or both, remarks you can make at some social networking site(SNS), and/or (iii) to enjoy your enthusiasms and passions---because there are plenty of things in cyberspace you might enjoy more than reading what is found below.

There is now plenty to do in real space and getting entangled in my extensive words of appreciation to and for: (a) a myriad of people, places and things, and (b) aspects of my life over the last 70 years since my conception some time in mid-October 1943--may not be the best use of your time. But I leave you to work out how to use your time and, if reading this statement attracts your interest, go for it aned may it be of some personal value.

I began posting the following piece at this International Forum on 24/10/'12, and this latest addition, this last piece of editing, was placed here three months later on 25/1/'13. -Ron Price, Tasmania, Australia
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Preamble

Part 2:

In some of my childhood years and adolescence, the ages 9 to 19, and the first decade of my young adulthood, 20 to 30, the seeds of what I believed, and still believe to be, a divine knowledge were sown in the soil of my heart.(1) These were the years, in total, from 1953 to 1975 in my lifespan. It was a heart which had its pure parts and, certainly by the age of 30, its share of impure elements, loves of various kinds that inclined me to ere in my ways, inclinations that would have been better if they were not part of my life, and immaturities that took decades to learn to deal with, and some of which I am still dealing with.

Life is a long path of learning, and the two decades from the first years of my late childhood to the beginning of the last decade of my young adulthood, age 9 to age 30, were formative ones. For many reasons I kept that divine knowledge to which I refer, part of my first organized and articulate belief system, hidden---at least mostly---due to the disinterest of those around me in the content of that knowledge. We all have to chose which parts of life's knowledge-base we want to make permanent, or at least a long term part of our lives, and which parts to share with others. Most of those I knew in my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, the 1950s through the 1970s, carried on the beliefs of their parents or opted for atheism, agnosticism, or one of the many variants of secular humanism centering their lives in the process on: family, job, a range of personal interests from TV to gardening, from cooking to sport.

"To each their own", seems to be the adage. Not everyone wants to investigate what we investigate, or engage in whatever is our romance or religion, our personal recipes. Not everyone is going to share our particular interests: whoever we are and whatever our interests. Much sadness results from hoping others will be enthusiastic about what we have enthusiasms. Much loneliness comes from the simple inability to be able to people out solitude with the joys of aloneness and the various activities associated with contemplation, the intellectual side of life and enjoying one's own company. By my mid-50s I had had enough of the social world and yearned for aloneness, but not everyone experiences this fatigue with people that I did after 50 years of a highly social and gregarious life-style.

It took me some years to learn not to expect others to be enthusiastic about what I was enthusiastic about; unrealistic expectations dot the lives of most of us and lead, in one way or another, to a certain sadness.

Perhaps that knowledge, that divine knowledge, to which I refer above was also kept hidden from others, as well as myself, by those mysterious dispensations of Providence and my own incapacities. I was unaware in those early years of my life of the marvellous truths and wisdoms of this earthly and etherial wisdom that had come into my life as early as '53. These truths and wisdoms only gradually became part of my understanding, only gradually became part of my everyday use in practice. And, again, whatever I regard as truths and wisdoms is not and has not been shared with everyone else in my life, especially family and friends who were close to me. My belief that the Baha'i Faith was the latest, the newest, of the Abrahamic religions was not shared with most of those I came to know in life.

Gradually, though, more and more pennies dropped as I went through the last decade of young adulthood(30-40), middle age(40-60), and the first decade of late adulthood(60-70). I will be 70 in 18 months from now, on 23/7/'14, and, if good health stays with me, I hope to become a centenarian in 2044 and get my letter from the Queen or King, as members of Commonwealth countries have done since 1917. The Anniversaries Office at Buckingham Palace is responsible for sending-out such letters. Most of the pennies dropped in the form of my writing prose and poetry, although excellent treatments for my bipolar disorder were like gifts from the gods, so to speak. These treatments came in stages from the 1960s to the last 9 months of 2012 and 2013.

In the first 9 years of my late adulthood(60 to 69), on retirement and on two old-age pensions, and especially the years after the age of 65 in 2009, hyacinths of a divine wisdom finally began to spring from my heart, at least that was my view, if not the view of all my readers and friends. Those hyacinths had begun to spring-forth before the age of 65 in sensible and not so sensible ways. As I look back over the decades of my life, I can see that they have been in evidence perhaps as far back as the 1950s, but that evidence was not as abundant as it became, as it bloomed in my 60s. This, of course, is what you might call a personal retrospective, a personal reflection on the 7 decades that have been my life thusfar.

There were also wisdoms that sprang from mire and clay, from my shadowy and ephemeral attachments(2). So it was that I felt I always had to analyse my views to refine them and so come to understand them more deeply than I once had. For, as I say above, life is one long path of learning and discovery, making mistakes, falling down, and getting up to try again. In some ways it is not the falling down that is crucial, but the getting back up and continuing the journey, the battle, the road of life. There have been some people in my life who possess a persistence in dealing with their tests and difficulties and they have been like mentors, even though they often did not know it.

One person who has been my mentor in this regard has been my second wife who has had to deal with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome or just the problems assoicated with hypothyriodism in recent years, to say nothing of her two mastectomies and a hystorectomy. Indeed, she has had a list of psychological and physical problems that were enough to sink a ship, so to speak. I am one of those fair-weather creatures who feel good when life is good, and when I am in physical discomfort I do not deal with it with stamina and persistence, patience and a long-suffering attitude. I express my appreciation to her in more detail further-on in this statement.

In our complex world it is somewhat presumptuous to claim to possess any wisdom. Virtually all of whatever wisdom is mine was obtained from others: from reading, from observing and, as I say, from learning by my mistakes. I leave it to readers to assess the evidence of any wisdom or lack of it in the lengthy statement below and in my general writings---which readers can now access in cyberspace if they are interested. In some ways, I feel I have only made a start along this lengthy path of wisdom acquisition. Go to this link, if you are interested, for the latest of my annual emails/letters for access to the current state of play in my life:http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?241588-Ron-Price-s-Annual-Email-for-2012-1st-Edition&p=3452639#post3452639

If this link proves too difficult to access, just go to my website by googling these words: Pioneering Over Five Epochs. Then go to the sub-section on Autobiography. This will lead you to the link to my annual letters for 2011/12, 2012/13, and 2013/14.

Preamble:

Part 3:

The life and ideas, writings and analysis of the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius(121 to 180 A.D.) and the British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) taught me at various times from my university days(1963-1967) to the years of my retirement from all FT, PT and casual-volunteer work(2006-2012) by their example. I still worked for several causes, mostly in cyberspace and to some extent in real space. These were causes to which I have been committed for various lengths of time from the 1950s to this second decade of the 21st century.

These two historians, philosophers and poets taught me, or at least I learned by reading their works, how good and how pleasant it is for a writer and author, a poet and publisher, an editor and researcher, an online journalist and blogger---like myself to declare his gratitude to those in his life whose words and sentences, lives and actions, found their way inexplicably into his life and, he likes to think, into his soul.

Wishing to delight myself, in part because I am a writer and author, I now give my expression of thanks for the virtues and actions of those who have lived with me in the privacy of my inner chamber and in my social life, to those many sources of meaning and pleasure which have enriched my life. I now want to thank those who have helped me rise, at least partly, from the prison of self to some of the glorious meads above and, at least to some extent, from this mortal cage unto parts of the paradise of the Placeless.(3) -Ron Price with the deepest appreciation for (1)Baha’u’llah’s Hidden Words, Persian, # 36, and (3) #39; and (2) Baha’u’llah, Tablet of the True Seeker, Gleanings, Baha’i Pub. Trust, Wilmette, 1956(1939), p. 264.

I first came across the statements of appreciation & acknowledgement that the above two wonderful writers, to whom I have been indebted for their writings, had expressed to those to whom they were indebted nearly 50 years ago. It is high time for me to express my own thanks and acknowledgements in relation to my indebtedness to: others, to people, places and things, in my life. This statement is now some 40,000 words and 120 pages, using font-14, in length--hence the need for readers to glance lightly at this document, skim or scan, read every word, if they are so inclined or, as I say above, just not read the following.-Ron Price, Statement of Thanks and Acknowledgements, last updated on 25/1/'13.

Preamble:

Part 4:

This statement follows many paths and includes many approaches to the overall view, the comprehensive presentation and picture of my thanks and acknowledgements. Some readers will find this recitation, this account, far too circuitous, far too lengthy and detailed for their liking. I write this piece mainly for my own interest and, if readers find it also of interest, so much the better.

One could go on endlessly, on such a topic, thanking the universe for staying in its place and not wandering out of balance, thanking all the asteroids for not running into our planet, and on and on might go some litany by a writer who writes compulsively as I have come to do to some extent in this the evening of my life---having retired from FT, PT and as much volunteer work as possible and having also limited my social engagements to a minimum.

One must draw the line somewhere, and I have done so below. Like all such statements, it is a quite personal and idiosyncratic one.-Ron Price, Australia, written over the period 24 October 2012 to 25 January 2013 in the second-half of my 69th year.
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Part 1: PEOPLE

To my Mother for helping to awaken in me a love for music and words, poetry and prose as well as a sensitivity to the religious and philosophical aspects of life. She was there, of course, from my inception, and my earliest memories in 1947/8 consist of her kindness and gentleness, her long-suffering persistence, and her many ways and means of exposing me to the input of a religious and poetic sensibility, an intellectual and social responsibility.

If my Mother had not been there giving to my mind and heart that early bent, a bent and direction that became more and more evident as my teens turned into my twenties and my twenties into my thirties, I have little doubt that I would not now be writing these words. She is responsible, in part at least, for the general orientation of my life. In many ways my orientation is very different from hers. We each must seek our own path.

As the Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer Kahlil Gibran wrote about "a woman who held a babe against her bosom and who said: "Speak to us of Children." And he said: "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."

and he went on:

"You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."
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To my Father for the example of his quietness and hard-working life, for giving his all to my mother and I, and for being an example to me of another type of persistence and patience, for his sin-covering eye and for his always exerting an effort in the years I remember him, in his 60s and early 70s, when his fatherly advice and his having embraced a new Faith in the evening of his life helped to give a direction to mine in my life's early morning especially the years 1953 to 1965.
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To my first and my second wife, two women who also taught me by their example. My first marriage was over the 6 year period: 8/1967 to 12/1973, and that first wife(Judy Gower, now Judy Noack, age 65) taught me, or gave me the daily example of, a spontaneity and a delight in life, among other things. She was also a fine primary school teacher and went on to teach for more than 40 years retiring in June 2012.

In the case of my second wife whom I have now known from 2/'74 to 1/'13, 39 years. I experienced a woman who had the ability to give and to endure in the face of difficulties. I do not possess that ability, that capacity to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to anything like the same extent as is her endurance. But she has pointed the way for me to at least try within the context of my incapacity. I have spent more time with my second wife than any other person on earth, and I thank her for the myriad things she has done to and for me, for helping me raise three children and for accompanying me into the evening of my life as helpmate and companion, friend and colleague.

She and I will, I hope, go the distance together into the evening and, indeed, the nighttime hours of our earthly life. It is my belief that we shall also go into the land of lights, that "undiscovered country", as Shakespeare says in his famous soliloquy in Hamlet, "from whose bourn No traveller returns/ puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have/Than fly to others that we know not of?"
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To my 1 child, 2 step-children, one grand-child, & 3 step-grandchildren for helping to give me a sense of a normal, or should I say, somewhat traditional life-narrative in the lifespan. In the last several decades with the breakdown of the traditional family in the West there has arisen a multitude of family types: (i) single parent with kids, (ii) single parent with no kids, (iii)partners who are, as they say, in de facto relationships, (iv) people having affairs within the context of one of the variety of marital relationships, (v) homosexual and lesbian family arrangements, (vi) married with no kids, (vii) group marriage, (viii) common-law marriage, and (ix) marriage with partners who died early leaving the other partner alone, inter alia.

A common-law marriage can also be known as a sui juris marriage, that is, an informal marriage, or marriage by habit and repute; this is an irregular form of marriage that can be legally contracted in an extremely limited number of jurisdictions. Common law marriage should not be confused with non-marital relationship contracts, which involve two people living together without holding themselves out to the world as spouses and/or without legal recognition as spouses in the jurisdiction where the contract was formed.

Non-marital relationship contracts are not necessarily recognized from one jurisdiction to another whereas common law marriages are, by definition, legally valid marriages worldwide provided the parties comply with the requirements to form a valid marriage while living in a jurisdiction that still allows this irregular form of marriage to be contractedinter alia. I have now enjoyed, at least for the most part, some 46 years of marriage(1967-2013) in two affinal families.

A marital relationship is, for most people, a demanding one and a context for a great deal of significant learning in the path of life. It is also a context for the raising of children, an exercise in which I have now been involved for nearly 40 years as I have seen them grow from childhood to the stages of early adulthood(20-40), and middle adulthood(40 to 60). My oldest step-daughter is now 47, and I came into her life when she was 8 in 1974.

I should also add here that I had the pleasure of growing-up in what sociologists call a consanguineal family of three in which I was the only child of older parents. My mother was 40 when I was born and my father 55. I was able to start life on a solid base of values and beliefs from these two souls to whom I was the fruit of their life. I also had the benefit of my grandfather's presence to the age of 3 in Hamilton Ontario where I was born.

As I have grown into my late adulthood, the years from 60 to 80, according to one of the many models of human development in the lifespan used by psychologists, I have become much more conservative, much more appreciative of tradition, of familiarity, of the loyalty of a partner, of the importance to me of someone with whom I have shared most of my life, and will share my future years until one of us passes from this mortal coil. My relationship is not, nor has it always been, easy, but that is true of nearly all of the really important relationships in my life and, I might add, most other peoples' lives.
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My family, both my consanguineal and two affinal families, required of me more patience and kindness than I thought I had, as well as more self-discipline, self-forgetfulness, and the need to persist and keep going to maintain the links that can be and should be, but not always are, part of the family bond. In the process I was able to provide both financial support, a home and hearth, and protection from life’s elements. I was also able to be as good an example as possible of how to live to my several children and grand-children. sometimes even the power of negative example, it a powerful one for one's children.

Being at first a child, in my case, a son of two legally married parents over 23 years until the death of my father, and then a step-parent, a step-grandparent over 19 years(to 2013), as well as a parent and a grandparent over 35 and 2 years respectively---has given me a set of roles in life which have taught me many things, too many things to list here, things I am still learning in these several roles, and things I may not have learned had I not been at first a child, then a step-parent, a parent, a step-grand-parent, and a grandparent.

Each of these family units: consanguineal, and affinal, has demanded of me all that I had in terms of patience and endurance, compassion and a wide range of human virtues. I sometimes thought I was being tested beyond my capacity but, in retrospect, I do not think this has been the case. I have Baha'u'llah's words to confirm this view. ndeed, I have His words to confirm many of my ideas in life, words which have given me a sense of certitude that has been an asset all my adult life. Everyone in life has their own story insofar as the acquisition of good human qualities is concerned. A significant part of my story has been in the roles of a quite traditional life-narrative of the lifespan. And I am thankful for that.
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To my grandfather, and my mother’s brother and sister for yet other examples to me of how to live, what to do with my time, and what to strive-after in life's journey. Their generosity and kindness in my formative years, my childhood and adolescence, I will never forget and those qualities have helped to give me, even now, a sense of a solid foundation for the living of my life, as well as its meaning and purpose. By the time I was 40 they had all left this earthly life, and I could begin my years of spiritual maturity as Baha'u'lah calls the age of 40.
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Part 2: TWO SPECIAL HISTORIANS

To Arnold Toynbee, Edward Gibbon and a Host of Historians for their sheer intellectual prowess and occupation, their persistence in achieving their literary goals and purposiveness, their self-discipline and concentration, their eager appetite for knowledge and their ambition to carry out the duties imposed on them by their native curiosity and their creative intellectual work.
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Part 3:

To People and Institutions, Landscapes and Buildings, Photographs and Moving Pictures, Radio and Books

Part 3.1: MORE PEOPLE

My curiosity was stirred, and meaning and pleasure in my life was enhanced by, all of the above. This Part 1, though, deals with the multitude of people up to the age of 30, the end of the first decade of my young adulthood. There were several people who came into my life, from the age of 9 to 30, as a result of my association with the Baha’i Faith beginning at the age of 9 in 1953. Some of these people were academics: Jameson Bond, an anthropologist, and Douglas Martin, a historian; Michael Rochester a physicist and his wife, Elizabeth, a psychologist-social worker; Nancy Campbell, a dancing instructor and prominent Baha'i in southern Ontario, and several others whose names I have now forgotten.

In addition there were others who were working men and women from many walks in life: John and Hattie Dixon, Fred Graham, Lulu Barr, Loretta Francis and so many others to whom I owe so many different things, too many to list here.

Jameson Bond helped the penny to drop in my academic and professional career at a critical turning point from October 1965 to May 1967 while I was in my last two years of university. I decided at that time to travel-and-pioneer among the Inuit and to do so I had to qualify as a primary school teacher. So it was that, on finishing my B.A. in 1966, I entered teachers’ college in the small Baha’i community of Windsor Ontario, Canada's most southerly city, where Jameson Bond was a professor of anthropology at the University of Windsor.

I spent most of the next four decades(1967-2007) as a teacher and lecturer, among several other jobs in the international pioneer field, jobs and roles which readers here can survey at LindedIn, Facebook, and in the CV, the resume which follows in this lengthy thread.
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Douglas Martin was a high school history teacher, and a member of the national spiritual assembly of the Baha’is of Canada when he came into my life in my third year of high school. He often took me to discussions, or firesides as Baha'is call them, in Toronto and to Baha’i summer schools in Michigan and in northern Ontario. At the time he was arguably the Canadian Baha’i community’s best public speaker. I heard him give innumerable public talks and his style and manner, his ideas and intellect stimulated the early development of my own ideas in relation to the Baha’i Faith among other subjects. I have kept my interest in history from the 1950s to this second decade of the 21st century, and his influence is difficult to quantify.
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I will not site chapter and verse of the influence of many other Baha’is in my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood---in whose homes I spent some time, occasionally with my parents, sometimes with my first wife, and often on my own. These Baha’is were ordinary men and women whom I got to know in my childhood, my teens and my twenties due to a degree of social intimacy, domestic familiarity, and personal dialogue, that I cannot put into words. The full measure of what they have given to me and my feelings for them, even after the passing of more than 40 to 60 years, is impossible for me to express in a few words. Indeed, it requires an autobiography which is now some 2600 pages.
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There were, of course, many others from many walks in life: dozens of teachers and professors, lecturers and tutors, and 100s of fellow workers, colleagues, and students over an 18 year period, as well as the literally 1000s of students I taught over 32 years. In the many jobs I had over the years 1955 to 2005 there were too many to even attempt a cursory summary. It would require too many words to give them, each and all, their just place in this already lengthy statement. Perhaps, at a future time, I will try to focus on a small handful of the 1000s of people I have summarized in the above paragraph.
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Scholars from many fields. I will write about only one, although there have been so many that to discuss them below would require many pages. I will deal with but one as an example from the many possible ones. My prose and my poetry mentions many of these influences and readers who would like an extension of this section are encouraged to read some of my several million words, and more than 7000 prose-poems.

Erich Fromm(1900-1980):

Part 3.2:

Fromm was German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher and theorist who brought other theories together. He also emphasized how a person's personality is embedded in class, status, education, vocation, your religious and philosophical background and so forth. Since this autobiography and my personality is embedded to a great extent in these factors that Fromm describes, it seems timely to start this first expression of thanks to scholars with these words on Fromm.

I read Fromm's books off and on for thirty years. -Ron Price with thanks to Michael Maccoby, "The Two Voices of Erich Fromm: The Prophetic and the Analytic," Society, July/August 1994. The year I began my pioneering experience, 1962, Erich Fromm, American psychoanalyst and prolific writer in the field of existential psychology, stated his 'credo' in his book Beyond the Chains of Illusions. I have written some of his Credo below since it was consistent with my views back in 1962 and still is. I have commented on some of his Credo expressing views that have remained part of my beliefs during this pioneering venture spanning, as it does now, more than fifty years.

Part 3.2.1:

"The most important factor for the development of the individual is the structure and the values of the society into which he has been born." Given this fact, my role as a Baha'i has been to spend my life trying to build the kind of society fit for human beings to be born into. For, as Fromm says in his Credo, "society has both a furthering and an inhibiting function. Only in cooperation with others, and in the process of work, does man develop his powers, only in the historical process do humans create themselves. Only when society's aim will have become identical with the aims of humanity will society cease to cripple man and to further evil."

In attempting to transform society, Fromm underestimated the need for individuals to adapt to their society. For the Baha'i to be an effective teacher, propagator, of the New Society he has become associated with, he needs to adapt to the larger society in which he has been born and in which he lives his life. The difficulties I had in the first decade of my pioneering experience came, it seems to me in retrospect, from a slow adapting to my society. Later, in the following decades, my effectiveness was due significantly to my more effective adapting to my society.

This adaptive process is slow and arduous work and, for Baha'is, it takes place in the context of action toward goals using a map provided by the Founders of their religion and the legitimate Successors. "I believe that every man represents humanity. We are different as to intelligence, health and talents. Yet we are all one. We are all saints and sinners, adults and children, and no one is anybody's superior or judge. We have all been awakened with the Buddha, we have all been crucified with Christ, and we have all killed and robbed with Genghis Khan, Stalin, and Hitler. Man's task in life is precisely the paradoxical one of realizing his individuality and at the same time transcending it and arriving at the experience of universality. Only the fully developed individual self can drop the ego."

Perhaps this is one way of defining the nature of 'Abdu'l-Baha and the reason for his effectiveness and efficiency. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 9 October 2002.

Part 4: INSTITUTIONS

The Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice are twin-institutions of the Baha’i Faith that have guided my steps over my entire Baha’i life and have influenced my beliefs and actions in more ways than I can count. They have also maintained the unity of this newest of the world’s Abrahamic religions, a unity which is perhaps this Faith's greatest achievement in a world in which all the major religions are fractured into a multitude of sects and cults, denominations and branches, divisions, isms and wasms.

The Central Figures of the Baha’i Faith, and their successors, Shoghi Effendi and the Universal House of Justice have provided me with a core of ethical and moral directions, with spiritual and intellectual examples and models, aims and purposes, goals and meanings, ways and means on how to live my life, and contribute to the building of a new society, global and unified---a process that will take several centuries.

Part 4.1Baha'i Administration:

Serving in various aspects of the elected and appointed side of Baha’i administration has been a learning experience from the word go. I have served on local spiritual assemblies, off and on, since 1966. It has provided a wonderful opportunity to get to know people in demanding personal circumstances. The Baha'i Faith is not one based on a passive congregationalism; it is not one with a comforting and regular ritual that induces what is often a sort of aesthetic religiosity, a bit like a spectator-sport. Much religion in the west, what remains from the acids of secularism, is something inherited from the wider society, but not something that one invests a great deal of thought. The Baha'i Faith requires a much more active commitment.

I cannot think of any other experience I have had with people that affords this particularly useful, invaluable lesson in understanding human character, than my community experience in the Baha'i Faith. At the same time, I must warn the student of human nature, as the essayist William Hazlitt(1778-1830) also warns, that “the more I learn, the less I understand it.” This is a complex and subtle question which requires a separate essay to deal with its implications.

One would hope that, with the insights of over one hundred years of social science behind us, we would have come to understand humankind more. In some ways, perhaps. There is nothing that helps a man more in his travel through life than a just understanding of his own characteristic weaknesses. In consulting, for that is the term Baha'is use for attempting a dispassionate and cordial discussion of issues at local assembly meetings, an individual is made more than a little aware of his inadequacies, his inabilities, his utter ineptitudes, in addition to his strengths. In my early years of assembly work, until I came to Australia, my main problem was focussing sufficiently on the topic at hand in order to make a useful contribution. I got lost in the multitude of views.

Once I had mastered the problem of dealing with complexity in the consultative process, at least enough to deal with some of the subjects--I went on to other skills. It had taken several hundred hours to get this far. I was a slow learner. Keeping my ego out of the way was always a challenge. Not dominating; not reacting to punitive rebuttals with my own heat were new problems for me by the 1970s. I’m still working on them. Just as soon as I think I’m winning I get plastered again. It is a long road travelled and it keeps the old ego quite manageable, or should I say nicely tested, on a weekly or fortnightly basis. I am now retired and participate in the consultative process of Baha'i administration far less than I once did.

Part 4.2:

Perhaps it is just a sign of age, or that familiarity breeds fatigue, or that after three decades of serving with the aim of increasing the number of believers and getting a discouragingly meagre response year after year, but ennui creeps in, sometimes an engulfing weariness with it all. Except for a short period of statistical success in the late 1960s and early 1970s---it has been slow slogging. A certain persistence, dedication, devotion to duty all come into play or one would simply wither on the vine. Call it spiritual muscle if you like.

The patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon are useful but in short supply. The Baha'i Faith is like a large family and most people know how difficult families can often be. It is also one reason why so many in our world stay clear of participation in organizations, except those they have to like: work and school, or interest groups like tennis clubs, sport associations and film societies.

When one reads about(Priceless Pearl, p.451) about a special Baha'i known as the Guardian and comes to know that he was “called by sorrow and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness” the heart responds with a “yes!” The Guardian comes closer. This is a revolution, the Baha'i Faith, with all the attributes of ordinariness and quietness. I am thankful to have been part of this quiet revolution.

I think that is one reason why those buildings on Mount Carmel lift my heart so. It has partly to do with hundreds of meetings in lounge rooms being spiritually dried out. Faith asks many things of the believer: one of these things is the need to endure these endless meetings. For some martyrdom in the West is associated more with meetings than with jails, bullets, and physical persecution. Some may find I’m overstating it. For them I probably am. In Shoghi Effendi’s first letter to Australia and New Zealand he refers to “severe mental tests”. Such tests take many forms and I’m sure they are not over yet for us in this fourth epoch, seventy years after his letter.

Then, of course, there were the multitude of meetings over 4 decades of paid employment and that is another story which I will save readers from a detailed expatiation. In those four decades there were many I have to thank, and I do so later in this statement.

Part 5:

Part 5.1

Australian Government--Department of Human Services

There are many government departments in Australia which I must acknowledge and give thanks to. Perhaps the DHS is one which has been of direct benefit to me at times when I have been unemployed. Through the agency of Centrelink I was able to receive financial benefit: (i) for some 8 months in 1979-80, again (ii) from 8/'99 to 7/'09 on, first, unemployment benefit and, second, disability benefit, and finally: (iii) from 7/'09 to the present on an old-age pension.

Part 5.2

Other Federal, State and Local Government Departments and Agencies

I will not list all of these sectors and sections of the three levels of government in which my life has been enmeshed in the 41 years I have lived in Australia, 1971 to 2012. Nor will I list the similar agencies in Canada in another form of federal parliamentary government where I lived my life from 1943 to 1971.

Part 6: LANDSCAPES

The bleak and lonely landscape of Ontario in winter and Baffin Island all year round, southern Ontario’s richly coloured but, paradoxically, obdurate autumnal canvas, the hushed and howling drama of winter’s death, with Canada’s images of northness and seasonality, and the clean-red spaciousness on all the old maps.

Australia’s searing heat, glaring sunlight and vast empty landscapes filled with spinifex and sand precipitate me into a nostalgia which helps to support my reality by filling my memories with spaces that I once thought were ordinary but, now in retrospect, I find to be neither ordinary nor moderate. I have been intimidated by the relentless Australian sun that so often oppressed my spirit as I walked through its vast territories, and dusty gardens. The freezing 30 to 50 below temperatures on the icy Arctic tundra and the sun’s often unalleviated glare are now memories as if they were part of the experience of someone else.

There were, and there are, other landscapes: (i) many of which have been brought into my life by cinema and TV which I write about below, and (ii) others in both Canada and Australia which were far from bleak, far from excessively hot or cold, and far from remote. I will leave it to readers to google those places, those two dozen towns where I have lived in life, and the more than 100 to which I have travelled, to read about the landscape and general geography.

Part 7: BUILDINGS

There have been many buildings both sacred and secular that have strongly influenced my life, and they stand now as memories and icons, spaces and places with meaning and a certain sensory pleasure. The buildings and gardens at the Baha’i world centre in Haifa Israel, several Baha’i temples around the world, many of the homes I have lived in beginning with my childhood and early adult life. There are, too, a myriad places of architectural delight, too many to recount here, which with their historical settings and significances influenced my life by providing individual mise en scenes, settings, of beauty and a certain wonder.

In the years of my retirement, from the age of 55 to the present, I have had the time and the leisure, to enjoy the immense variety of buildings that were presented on art and architecture programs on television: temples and churches, mosques and religious buildings from history, as well as the architecture of many civilizations and religions, nations and cultures. After nearly 15 years of being able to take in such beauty in an organized form by scholars and commentators, I have had my life enriched and these years of my retirement may have a long way to go to continue this process of my aesthetic and intellectual education.

Part 8: PHOTOGRAPHS, MOVIES, VIDEOS AND DVDs

Preamble:

I must express my appreciation for the innumerable photos and movies, videos and DVDs. Although my experience with the print and electronic media: TV and cinema, newspapers and magazines, journals and the internet, cassette tapes and CDs, DVDs and videos--what gradually became a cornucopia of stimulating media--began to come into my life insensibly and sensibly by 1950, the last 60 years (1952-2012) have been immensely enhanced and refined by the content of these media. I must acknowledge my thanks to the sources of this vast field of experience that resulted from their presence in my life.

The formal study of these media did not begin until my early 30s when I taught media studies at the Ballarat College of Advanced Education, now the university of Ballarat, from 1976 to 1978. Again in the 1980s and 1990s at colleges of technical and further education in northern Australia, and then at the Thornlie Tafe College in Perth, media studies became a curriculum subject on my agenda. When I retired from teaching in 1999 I kept three arch-lever files of notes on media studies and in the dozen or so years since, 1999 to 2012, I have added several more files of notes and photocopied material.

The visual content of media in newspapers and magazines were part of my parents' experience and they became part of mine, perhaps unconsciously, as early as 1944 when I was in the cradle. The story of the relationship between the print and electronic media and my life over these seven decades is a long and complex one. Now, at the age of 68 I have a base (a) in my files and on TV, as well as (b) on the internet, for the study of this important part of my life and the life of my society.

The only years I had much to do with the formal study of film, what is now called by several names: film studies, cinema studies, the history of film, et cetera--was when this formal study was part of a media studies course that I taught at the Thornlie College of Tafe on two or three occasions in the early 1990s. I drew on films, video and TV programs in my teaching all the way back to the 1960s. It was not until I retired from teaching, both FT and PT, as the new millennium turned its corner that these volumes and a serious study of these mediums slowly emerged. They had begun, they had their etiology as the medical world calls beginnings, with some notes, notes I had taken for that course I taught in Tafe more than two decades ago in those early 1990s.

By November 2012, more than 13 years into my retirement, these film studies and other media studies notes were expanded. They had begun to occupy all of volumes four and five of my media studies files with three additional special 2-ring binders for Volume 5.1, Volume 5.2.1 directors, Volume 5.2.2 Actors and Volume 5.3 Actors. The material on the Internet was absolutely burgeoning in the field of film studies and impossible to cover in any systematic way because of (a) the wide ranging nature of my academic interests and (b) the limitations of time and circumstance.

By November 2012, too, more than 13 years after retiring from full-time work, and taking a sea-change to Tasmania, I had notes on over 50 specific films and access to 1000s, as well as notes on many specific actors and directors. My study of the field of film studies had really only just begun—the many aspects of film and its history was clearly an interdisciplinary field. Some 60 years of ‘the movies’ provided a pleasure for which I express my thanks and acknowledgements.

Part 8.1: PHOTOGRAPHS

While growing up in Canada and before leaving home and the region of southern Ontario, first in 1966/7 and then in 1971, my mother and then my first wife took a serious interest in taking photos. In Australia before my divorce in 1974 my first wife, Judy, continued her interest in photography and had her own dark room.

After 1974 until now, 2012, nearly 40 years, a series of people have contributed their part in providing the photographic base for this album: (a) the Baha’is for whom taking photos may just be their only ritual; (b) my consanguineal family in Canada and the two affinal families in my life, one in Canada and the other in Australia; and (c) friends, associations, work colleagues, et cetera in the many other communities I was involved with in varying degrees during my life.

More recently, of course, since taking an early retirement and returning to Tasmania in 1999 as well as the opening of the new millennium in 2001, I have begun to receive more photos from: (a) my 2nd affinal family, the one here in Australia; (b) my wife’s consanguineal family and the affinal family from her first marriage; (c) my first wife’s, 2nd affinal family, the one from her second marriage after she and I divorced in 1975; (d) my consanguineal family in Canada; (e) people I met along the road of life, Baha’is and non-Baha’is, who have sent me photos since this album had its embryonic existence in 1992 and, finally, (f) a new set of people I have only begun to meet since moving to George Town.

I have always thought that taking photos as a hobby, a serious leisure activity, would be a good idea. By the 1990s, with cameras becoming more versatile and cheaper, many were snapping more photos than ever, not so much in the way my first wife did with her dark room and the study of photography as a serious leisure activity, but simply as a hobby so that more photos could be enjoyed by family and friends.

Circumstances, other interests, problems with the mechanical and technical aspects of life and having others around who did the job with enthusiasm always seemed to militate against my using the camera and snapping photos. Like many things in life, the idea of taking photos more frequently than once a year, if that, remained just that: a good idea and it was never acted upon. It would seem, in retrospect, that print, talking and listening and other activities, leisure and non-leisure, would occupy me-not taking photographs, not in the past and not in the future and the remaining years of my life. Such is life. Others should therefore be given credit for the contents of this album. I only arranged the deck-chairs, as they say these days.

In the last years of my teaching career: FT, PT and volunteer teaching (1992-2005) this album had its first shaping and in the following two years, 2006-2007, this album assumed its present form. One can organize and reorganize photos, like so many other things in life forever, ad nauseam. After more than a dozen years of putting this folio of photos with their several embellishments into a useful shape for the future, I leave it now for other activities that demand my attention and hold my interest to a greater extent. I am happy with the general arrangement here. If it is to have any long term value I feel these photos are now in a form that might be useful to posterity, at least some element of a future age. Time will tell what will be their long term use, their longevity.

Part 8.2: BOOKS, NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, JOURNALS, INTERNET

In the more than 60 years during which reading has been a critical part of my life, 1949 to 2013, books and newspapers, magazines and journals, the internet and a world of print from too many sources to list here----meaning and pleasure were brought to me through these mediums. It is a meaning and pleasure to which I here give thanks and voice my acknowledgements to more resources and materials, more writers and authors, poets and essayists, novelists and scholars than I would want to list for fear of prolixity and boredom for readers of this now lengthy ‘thanks and acknowledgements’ statement.

It is impossible for me to make an accurate record, or even a reasonable guesstimation, of what might be called my reading record since 1949, that mid-century marker that was my first year of kindergarten and the beginning of grade one. I have made a start at such a record, such a rough guesstimation, though. And here it is:

A. Books Read(i.e. skimmed or scanned): 5,000
B. Books Read: entire…………………..........: 5,000
C. Books Partly Read : 20,000
______________________________Total : 30,000

D. Poems Read(i.e. skimmed or scanned) : 4,000
E. Poems Read: entire…………………............…: 3,000
F. Poems Partly Read : 6,000
___________________________Total : 13,000

G. Articles Read(i.e. skimmed or scanned) :50,000
H. Articles Read: entire…………………............:20,000
I. Articles Partly Read(1/4 or more) :100,000
___________________________Total : 170,000

J. Total number of items above…........………: 200,000(circa)
----FOR MORE SECTIONS BEYOND THIS LAST SECTION PART 8.2 GO TO THE NEXT POST--------
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----THE NEXT POST IS THE 2ND ITEM IN THIS THREAD---------------

_________________
married for 44 years, a teacher for 35, a writer & editor for 12, and a Baha'i for 52(in 2011)

Last edited by RonPrice on Fri Jan 25, 2013 4:17 pm, edited 38 times in total.

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RonPrice Post subject: Re: THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS(Part 2)
Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:58 pm



Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2011 10:56 pm
Posts: 128
Location: George Town Tasmania Australia
Nationality: Canadian Part 8.3: SOUND AND MUSIC

The radio and many other sources of sound like: hi-fis and cassette tapes, television and film, especially their musical content.

A.

All of the above have played an important part in my life unlike dance and plays, the martial arts and sport---and of which have been, at best, peripheral and short-lived experiences. In primary school from 1950 to 1957 music was a regular part of the curriculum. My mother and father both played the piano, sang in choirs, had sing-alongs in our home, with our family, with friends and with the Baha’i community as I entered my late childhood in about 1953/4. We listened to classical music around the house from my conception in October 1943 until my father died in 1965.

My mother and I then moved into different flats. I then moved to another town in 1966 and then another, and then another country; in the process this family musical experience ended and I began my life in a series of two affinal families each with their musical experiences.

In the mid-to-late fifties I became interested in rock and roll, listened to it on the radio in my bedroom among other places; in 1965 I bought my first LP: Barry McGuire’s The Eve of Destruction. My mother gave me the family copy of The Messiah that same year and these two LPs launched my collection. I purchased LPs and 45s, as they were known, until 1975 by which time I had accumulated some 60 LPs and 45s. In 1975 my first marriage ended and with it, it seems in retrospect, my purchase of records and extensive listening to music in my home.

B:

Judy, my first wife, and I never had a TV and listening to records was an important part of our shared experience: 1967-1973. In the following years I had to scale-back my purchases of records due to having to raise three children and the increased cost of records. My second wife and her two daughters were more interested in watching TV, engaging in sport and, for various reasons like the fracturing and diversity of our musical tastes and the birth of my only child, listening to records in my home seriously diminished by the mid-1970s.

I started to learn to play the guitar in 1968 after an unsuccessful attempt at classical guitar in 1962/3. I taught music in my role as a primary teacher from 1967 to 1971. In 1989 I taught guitar to a class of Aboriginal students at Thornlie Tafe. I led sing-alongs from 1968 to 1999 when I retired from the teaching profession. In 2000 I joined a small group of singers in George Town to entertain residents in an aged care facility called Ainslie House in that same town, the oldest town in Australia(1804) and I continued singing with that group until May of 2005. In 2008 I began to play the guitar and to lead those same residents in singalongs using my “sixties singalong music booklet” that I revised from earlier collections I had made as far back as the 1960s.

In 2000 I also had access to some 50 CDs as part of my role of Baha’i radio program presenter on City Park Radio. By April 2005 I had presented about 150 half hour programs and this activity also came to an end that year. Such, in summary, is a brief history of my musical experience and I thank and acknowledge the many sources of meaning and pleasure which have delighted my life.

I have made a list of the pieces of music I have enjoyed most, and it can be found in my computer directory, my two-ring binder sing-along file and on the internet. I also have a list of all the records I own in that same file. This particular music file has four sub-sections divided into 4 sub-sections as follows: two popular music sections and two classical sections. They contain separate lists of articles about music, articles I began to save in 1984, but did not begin to save seriously until the year 2000. I opened this file for these articles and resources in 2004 after twenty years of slowly accumulating the material. It became a serious collection in the four years(2004-2008) in my effort to write poetry with musical themes. In 2005 I divided the resources into: (a) classical and (b) popular and placed them in separate files. In 2006 I opened a jazz section(1.1.B), a sub-section of the popular music file.

C:

I should mention, in closing this introduction, that radio and television have played an important part in my musical experience beginning as far back as 1944. This is not the place to summarize more than 60 years of radio and more than 35 years of television and their respective musical influences in detail. I should say, though, that in these first dozen years of my retirement, 1999 to 2012, my musical experience comes in the main from the Australian Radio National, the FM classical radio station. TV, at an average now of 1 hour/day and some pop-music from the local radio station are also part of my musical fare.

Occasionally I used to get an LP bug and listen to classical music from my collection of LPs, but in 2007 this ceased due to hi-fi technical problems. One of my aims in these early years of my retirement is to integrate music, life's activities and my religious beliefs in different ways in my poetry and in postings on the internet. The resources in these files represent a base of information for this poetic-writing exercise which I have found to be immensely stimulating.

The exercise of listing one’s favorite music is no easy task after the passing of some seven decades. If a person is young, say in their childhood or adolescence the task is not as great. It may be better for such young people to wait for some years before making such a list, waiting until they survive the perils of: (a) their sporting interests, (b) their love life, (c) their job life, (d) their other leisure pursuits, (e) their desires and passions, wants and wishes as well as (e) the many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that inevitably come into life.
In my lifetime there has come to be a world of sound in which I can drown, happily or not-so-happily as the case may be. The lists I made of my favorite music contain some of the happier sources, pieces, items, songs, inter alia that give me pleasure now and they did so at various times in my 69 years of life, 1943-2012.

D:

In the three year period June 2002 to May 2005, I compiled periodically a list of my favourite music. It was an attempt to define, to give expression to, to list what had become by then a vast sea of pleasurable sounds produced in a number of genres of music. My first memories of listening to music were in about 1948, although I was exposed to music right from the word go in 1943 by two parents who played the piano. I would post the full list here, but it is too long. I would post here "a short list" of nearly 70 years of musical experience, musical pieces I have enjoyed from a longer list of music that gave me pleasure, but it is also too long to include.

This list is just a start to making a comprehensive outline, a brief survey, a dip in the sea, so to speak. There are now over 1000 items in this full and comprehensive list that I put together in the years 2005 to 2011. If I continue to add to this list systematically and regularly the list will become completely unmanageable and necessitate far too much of a focus on music in my otherwise highly interdisciplinary life. But the names of many of my favourites are found below for my interest and occasionally to post at a website when others ask about my musical tastes. Since it seems impossible for me to remember the names of many of the pieces, this list helps assist me in bringing to memory these names when and if required. The exercise is interesting to me in its own right without any particular practical value.

As I began adding every item to this list from what I heard on ABC FM Radio in and after 2002, and on the internet, it became obvious that, in the end, the list would become too long if I took the exercise seriously with any sense, as I say, of making a comprehensive collection. What is found here serves as: (a) a list of musical pieces I own/have access to in my collection and (b) a list of additional material I would like to have access to in my study, but do not. As I say, this is a list of musical favourites that I will never bring to an end. The sea is just too full and I have listed only classical pieces below. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, Last Updated on: 19 June 2011.

E:

1.1 Bach: Symphony No.2 E-minor
1.2 Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No.1 in F; 12.2 No.6 in B flat Major; No3, 4
1.3 Bach: Goldberg Variations
1.4 Bach: Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring
1.5 Bach: see my 20 record collection of Bach--too many to list here
2.1 Beethoven: Sonata #8 opus 13 and Violin Concerto in D, Opus 61
2.2 Beethoven: Symphonies: set 1-9, especially no.#5
2.3 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Opus 57(Appassionata)
2.4 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 24 in F# major, Opus 78
2.5 Beethoven: Pathetique Sonata, Piano Sonata No.8 in C minor Op.13
2.6 Beethoven: Moonlight Sonata, Piano Sonata No.14 in C-sharp minor Op.27/2.
2.7 Beethoven: Piano Concerto #5(Emperor)
2.8 Beethoven: Fur Elise(Bagatelle No.25 in A minor, G.173
2.9 Beethoven: Leonora Overture No.3, Opus 72 and 72a
2.10 Beethoven: Waldstein Sonata, Piano Sonata No.21 in C major Op.53
2.11 Beethoven: Piano Trio #7 in B Flat Opus 97(The Archduke)
2.12 Beethoven: too many other pieces of Beethoven’s to list due to prolixity
3. Berlioz: Symphony Fantastique
4.1 Johannes Brahms, Symphony No.1 in C-Minor
4.2 Brahms, Piano Concerto # 1 in D Minor, Opus # 15
5.1 Frederick Chopin: Scherzo 1,2,3 and 4 ; 11.2 Ballads 1 to 4
5.2 Chopin: Fantasy Impromptu in C sharp minor, Opus 66
5.3 Chopin, 24 Preludes(C#minor,A-Flat-Major)
5.4 Chopin, Waltz No.7 in C Sharp minor, Opus 64/2
5.5 Chopin, Study No.3 in E major Opus 10 Tristesse
5.6 Chopin: Polonaise in A Flat, Op. 53 "Heroic"
5.7 Chopin: Nocturne No. 2 in E flat, Op. 9 No. 2
5.8 Chopin: Etude Op.10 No. 3 in E
5.9 Chopin: to list all of Chopin’s music that I enjoy would lead to prolixity
6.1 Claude Debussy: Claire de Lune from the Suite Bergamasque
6.2 Debussy: Preludes, “Girl With the Flaxen Hair” among other preludes
7.1 Anton Dvorak: New World Symphony
7.2 Dvorak: Symphony #3
7.3 Dvorak: Cello Concerto in B Minor, op.104
7.4 Dvorak: Symphonic Variations, Opus 78
8. Edvard Grieg, Peer Gynt, Suite No.1
9. Frederick Handel, Water Music Suite
10. Gabriel Faure, The Pavane in F-sharp minor, opus 50
11. Franz Joseph Hayden: Concerto in D. Major
12. Franz Liszt: Concerto No.1 in E Flat Major
12.1 Liszt: Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat, S 541 / III.
12.2 Liszt: Consolation, for piano No. 3 in D-flat Major
12.3 Liszt: La Campanella
12.4 Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody #2 in C-Sharp Minor
13. Henryk MikoĊ‚aj Górecki (pronounced Goretsky), Symphony #3.
14. Jules Massinet: Meditations
15. Felix Mendelssohn, Symphony #4 in A(Italian), Opus 90
16.1 Amadeus Mozart: Sonatas for Piano
16.2 Mozart: Divertimenti for strings, Adagio & Fugue in C Minor
16.3 Mozart: Piano Concerto #20 in D minor, K466
16.4 Mozart: Piano Concertos: other
16.5 Mozart: Symphony #40 in C minor
16.6 Mozart: too many other pieces of Mozart to list due to prolixity
17. Giacomo Puccini:One Fine Day, Madame Butterfly
18. Nicoli Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
19.1 Sergei Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
19.2 Rachmaninoff: Prelude in G Minor, Opus 23, No.5
19.3 Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No.2 D Minor
19.4 Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C sharp Minor Op.3 No.2
19.5 Rachmaninoff: too many other pieces of Rachmaninov to list due to prolixity
20.1 Joaquin Rodrigo: Ecos de Sefarad-guitar
20.2 Joaquin Rodrigo: need to familiarize myself with his repertoir
21. Erik Satie: Gymnopedie No.1
22.1 Franz Schubert: Fantasie in F. Minor, D 940
22.2 Schubert: Ave Maria, Symphony #8 in B-minor
22.3 Schubert: Octet Quintet in F major(For 2 violins, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, horn and bassoon)
22.4 Schubert: Impromptu No.3 in G flat major D.899/Op.90
22.5 Schubert: Impromptu No.7 in E flat major opus 6
22.6 Schubert: Impromptu No.7 in E-flat major opus 90 no.2
22.7 Schubert: String Quartet #14: Death of a Maiden, D 810
22.8 Schubert: String Quintet in C.
22.9 Schubert: Piano Trios in E Flat Major, D 929 and 897
22.10 Schubert: Piano Quintet In A major: 'Trout' D667
22.11 Schubert: Impromptu in A Flat Major. Op. 90, No. 4
23.1 Robert Schumann: Concerto in A-Minor
23.2 Schumann: Symphonies 1-4
23.3 Schumann: Etudes
23.4 Schumann: Romance Violin
23.5 Schumann: Fairy Tales for Viola and Piano
23.6 Schumann: violin concerto op 134 d minor
23.7 Schumann: Mondnacht
23.8 Schumann: Traumerie
24.1 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.6 in B Minor
24.2 Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto D Major
24.3 Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio in A Minor, Opus 50
25. Antonio Vivaldi: Violin Concerti #3; trumpet concerti for 4 violins

F:

There were over 50 CDs in the Launceston Baha’i community files by 2005. I played them for several years as “presenter of programs” on City Park Radio. I have none of these in my personal collection. I have listed elsewhere these 50 CDs. These 50 CDS had many individual songs that I came to enjoy and could list them as favourites. I give thanks to those who created the music and acknowledge the pleasure they have given me.

After having music in my life for nearly 70 years(1943-2012) and after collecting records for 40 years(1965-2005), the time finally arrived to index the collection I had acquired. By 2005 music in the form of CDs, at least for me, were replacing LPs as a source of new recorded music. A separate collection of some 15 CDs is now found in the chest of drawers near the radio in the dining room. Cassette tapes had begun to be a source of music already by the 1960s and I now have some 30 cassette tape




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