The Daily News

1  It's FRIDEEEEEEE!!!!!!! And a Happy Anniversary to my beautiful bride Helene!!! It's been a fun bazillion years, culminating in one of the best summers ever!!! The recent trip up to Shasta was incredibly fun, and that's picture was taken two days ago! Good times!

2   A big thanks goes out to John, Effie and Kat for a few days of spiritual rejuve. I don't want to say too much about 

Shasta because I'm pretty sure the locals don't want the secret out. 

3  We took a ride out to a little place called Castle Lake yesterday, a place that looks like the twin sister to Angora Lake in Tahoe. The main difference was there isn't a beach, nor a lodge, nor any cabins. Other than that it looks strikingly the same. 

4   We walked a few feet down to some rocks and heard a group next to us chanting. It sounds weird but they were religious people who came from France, and who travel the world to visit the seven sacred mountains. I have no idea who considers these mountains the world's most sacred but if you use unknown resources on Wiki, you'll find all sorts of mountains are the seven most sacred; it would appear there is no real agreed-upon list. Mt. Shasta has a tendency to make most of the lists. Here's the list that is on the top of the Wiki list, so THESE must be THE most sacred. Here go:

5  The seven sacred mountains of the world are Shasta, Everest, Inyan Kara (South Dakota, in the Black Hills), Olympus, Taranaki (aka Mt. Egmont, North Island New Zealand), Kailash (Tibet), considered one of the world's highest unclimbed mountains), and Sinai, and Fuji.

6   Was that seven? I keep counting on my fingers and keep arriving at eight.

7   Frankly I don't have time to waste on some bogus article written by an unknown author. This is why you don't use Wiki as a source, kids.

8   I would imagine this would piss off people who have their OWN favorite mountain. So there you go.

9  Moving On, Part One: I always thought the hill opposite my childhood home in Millbrae was sacred, especially when I got stuck on the side of it with my friend Allen Phillips, and we had to be rescued by the Millbrae Fire Department when we were eleven. My Dad, worried that I wasn't home at dusk, came looking for us. He called up and I said something like, "We're okay!"  He ascertained instantly we weren't, and that he should probably call the fire department. Within minutes we heard sirens and what seemed like every fire engine and cop in the world flying up Helen Drive to our sacred sight. 

10  The entire town arrived at dusk to watch our rescue. and when we touched ground zero, I was interviewed by a reporter from the Millbrae Sun. 

11  I told her it got dark, and that we lost the steps we carved with a shovel. To this day I feel we could easily have gotten down on our own, but history is history.

12   The next day at school, Miss Gill, our sixth-grade teacher, asked if anyone had anything to Show or Tell, something she would do on a regular basis. I listened as kids talked about getting new dogs, learning new tunes on piano, and having been visited by grandmas and grandpas. When the last kid talked, the room went silent, that awkward moment where a teacher awaits a response, and the class stares straight ahead. The clock on the wall made a loud tick. 

13  The silence was of course, deafening. 

14  Miss Gill, who was strikingly like Miss Landers of Leave it to Beaver fame, was about to move to her morning lesson when Janice Schnetzler, one of the smartest girls in the class, raised her hand. "I have something I'd like to share!" she said. She looked over at me and smiled. 

15  She took out a clipped article maybe two inches by eight inches, and began reading it aloud. 

16  I lit up like a train signal. To this day I maintain all that stuff wasn't necessary, but also that my Dad did the right thing. I wanted to run home. I somehow made it through that day. Somehow.

17  Somehow. 

18  That experience didn't stop me from climbing Meadows Mountain. I used to go up there and sit, and think about things. Over the years it became my sanctuary, and I enjoyed going up there and looking out over the Bay Area. 

19  I fell in love with the Beatles' wonderful song about a guy who did that. It was the incredible tune The Fool on the Hill. I became that guy before I became this Old Brown Shoe. 

20  I don't know how much more I can report about the Shasta trip. It isn't that nothing else happened; in fact a whole lot happened.

21  For one thing, we met a series of people who were world travelers, two published authors and a historian who knew everything about not only Shasta, but of the seven mountains, and of some differing theories about the Bible stories. 

22  It is amazing stuff but I haven't the time to research all of it and put it in the DN.

23  For one thing, it would seem cultish.

24  For another thing, people might think I've taken the entire concept of coincidences to a much steeper level than ever.

25  So I keep my thoughts bouncing the same way my laptop keeps bouncing words into the middle of other sentences. 

26  So.

27  I feel I've been awake and writing this for twelve years. 

28  Quite mystical. And a totally different place than where I was even a year ago.

29   Moving On, Part Two: It would be mid-morning, and I would be "on," which is to say acting on the stage that is the school, which is Evergreen Valley High School.

30  I would have my head thinking constantly about where I will be taking the students in the next few weeks. I would also be reviewing a MENSA lesson called Are You a Genius?

31  I started every year with a MENSA lesson, MENSA being this group of super-smart people who enjoy brain teasers, who decided at one time to form a club with other super-smart people who enjoy brain teasers. 

32   I'm trying to keep this short and off the top of my head because it's a busy weekend, so here it is in a nutshell: these people with clearly too much time on their hands would exchange brain teasers, but BECAUSE they had too much time on their hands, felt that if they DID form an actual club, that it should be called MENSA, because variations of that word translate into the word "table" in various cultures. 

33  Why table? Well, the wiliest of these decided "table" because it would refer to King Arthur's Round Table. They didn't want this club to be uppity and exclusive. They wanted it to be open to anybody: professors, scientists, dignitaries, but also strippers, shoe salesmen (and wimminz), and even the lowliest of the lows, teachers. 

34  The legend of King Arthur sees Guinevere's father, King

Leodegrance giving the young couple the round table he had been put in charge of watching following the death of Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon (spellings vary over the years). Arthur was considered a Sun King who felt that he was equal with his knights,  often riding into battle with them. 

35  The fact that the table was round meant that there wasn't a head of the table, traditionally where the father of the house would sit, a tradition still followed by millions of people. 

36  Because the King didn't sit at the head of the table meant Arthur considered himself one of the people, and anyone who wanted could become first a squire and eventually a knight. 

37  So these guys with big underpants who founded MENSA chose the name as a reference to the King Arthur legend. 

38  One day I was giving the lesson much better than I am presenting it here, when a Mexican student in the class raised his hand. 

39  "Mr. Harrington? Do you know what MENSA means in Spanish?"

40  "Uh...no. I'm descended from billions of Gringos. Can you share?"

41  "I'm not sure how to translate it directly into English, but it translates roughly to dumbass or dummy."

42  "Wait a minute! Is that true?" I asked. 

43  Sometimes you could see the answer by reading the faces. I didn't need to speak Spanish to know what the answer was. LOTS of giggles and nodding heads. 

44  "Are you KIDDING me? So let's get this straight. The self-proclaimed smartest people, the people who invented MENSA didn't KNOW this?" I inquired.

45   Nope. AND as far as I know, they have swept that bit of info under the rug, or maybe even into Middle Earth. 

46   <chuckles>

47   I gottago. Happy Anniversary, Helene, and to those of you thinking about going to the Class of '05 reunion tomorrow night, I'll be there. You might want to reconsider.

48  Have a GREAT weekend everybody.

49  See you again.

50   Peace.

~H~

fin.