Richard L. Fricks

05/03/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.

Here’s a link to today’s bike ride. This is my pistol ride.

Here’s a few photos taken along my route:

Here’s what I listened to today: I Will Find You, by Harlan Coben

Amazon abstract:

Five years ago, an innocent man began a life sentence for murdering his own son. Today he found out his son is still alive.

David Burroughs was once a devoted father to his three-year-old son Matthew, living a dream life just a short drive away from the working-class suburb where he and his wife, Cheryl, first fell in love–until one fateful night when David woke suddenly to discover Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall.

Half a decade later, David’s been wrongly accused and convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security prison—a fate which, grieving and wracked with guilt, David didn’t have the will to fight. The world has moved on without him. Then Cheryl’s younger sister, Rachel, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph. It’s a vacation shot of a bustling amusement park a friend shared with her, and in the background, just barely in frame, is a boy bearing an eerie resemblance to David’s son. Even though it can’t be, David just knows: Matthew is still alive.

David plans a harrowing escape, determined to achieve the impossible – save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. But with his life on the line and the FBI following his every move, can David evade capture long enough to reveal the shocking truth?

A few top reviews from the United States:

vegasbill

VINE VOICE

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great story from this author

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2023

Verified Purchase

Harlan Coben can spin a yarn! Once again he has proven that in I Will Find You. This intricate plot is populated by a colorful and interesting cast of characters, especially the two FBI Special Agents, Max and Sarah, assigned to this case. They provide the comic relief in an otherwise very serious story of murder and a missing child. While cracking wise to each other they manage to cut through the distractions provided by Coben’s other characters and home in the most important issues.

David Burroughs is accused and convicted of killing his three year old son. While in prison he learns the son might still be alive, a scenario which makes no sense as the son’s body was found in his bed, beaten to death. In order to find out if that is true David must find a way to get out of prison and find his son.

The story is compelling and moves swiftly with lots of suspense and things that keep the reader guessing. If there is any flaw, there are parts of the plot which sound more like a soap opera rather than a murder mystery. That didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. I recommend this to all who enjoy a good mystery/thriller.

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlan Coben at his best!

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

The story begins with David Burroughs five years into serving a life sentencing for murdering his son. He feels his life his over and never fought his conviction since he felt his life was over without his son. He never felt he would have murdered his own son but he had no memory of the night in question. David refused visitors in his first years at the prison until one day when his sister-in-law, Rachel, shows up requesting to see him. The visit causes him to question if his son is actually still alive. The book is an another great by Harlan Coben! I couldn’t put it down until the last page. I highly recommend this book and this author.

Daniel Kramer

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Ride

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

I Will Find You has a premise which I have not found in another novel. A man convicted of murdering his child, who thinks that he may have done it in a drunken moment of hysteria, finds out that the murdered child in his house that evening was not his son and that his son is still alive. Great idea for a book. How will Harlan Coben bring the pieces together so that it makes sense and gives the reader a thrilling ride? I will divulge nothing other than Harlan Coben did a really nice job of giving me the ride that I was hoping for.
Is the book perfect? Am I still a little confused by the ending? Yes. Does it matter? No. The book is a roller coaster ride which you should take if you like thrillers or you have read everything that Coben has ever written.
His best book ever was The Boy From The Woods. By far, that book was perfect and exceptional. This book is right up there and worth your time.

Jodie Short

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlan Coben has done it again!! This book will be your favorite this year!

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2023

Verified Purchase

Wow! The storyline in this book is beyond! I didn’t know if I even wanted to know the truth behind how it happened, but I had to know! That is what makes Harlan Coben a standout beyond all the rest! The characters, as usual, you will fall in love with and some you will love to hate! His style of writing is the reason I love to read! I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone! I already recommended it before I even finished it myself! I gave this book a five-star rating because Harlan Coben gets an A+ and every area of his writing! The plot, the characters, his style of writing the mystery! He has ramped up the edginess in this one!

10th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism

Huineng 4: No Mirror to Polish

See through your sense of self and realize that it’s always been illusory.

Here is today’s Meditation.

Carl Sagan’s Message to Mars Explorers, with a Gentle Warning

Here’s the link to this article.

“Whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

Several months before his death in 1996, Carl Sagan — who twenty years prior had co-composed the Arecibo message as part of the Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence (CETI) project and sent the Golden Record into space — sat down in his home at 900 Stewart Avenue in Ithaca, New York, and recorded a moving message to the future explorers, conquerors, and settlers of Mars. As NASA’s Curiosity Rover makes history this week, Sagan’s words echo with even more poignancy and timeliness.

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F55495367&show_artwork=true

Maybe we’re on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there — the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we’re on Mars because we have to be, because there’s a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process — we come, after all, from hunter-gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we’ve been wanderers. And the next place to wander to is Mars. But whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.

But some sixteen years prior, in Chapter V of his legendary Cosmos, titled “Blues for a Red Planet,” Sagan had voiced a gentle lament reminding us to keep our solipsistic anthropocentrism in check:

The surface area of Mars is exactly as large as the land area of the Earth. A thorough reconnaissance will clearly occupy us for centuries. But there will be a time when Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after rovers have combed the surface, a time after samples have been returned safely to Earth, a time after human beings have walked the sands of Mars. What then? What shall we do with Mars?

There are so many examples of human misuse of the Earth that even phrasing this question chills me. If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes. The existence of an independent biology on a nearby planet is a treasure beyond assessing, and the preservation of that life must, I think, supersede any other possible use of Mars.

05/02/23 NO Biking & Listening Today

Here’s what kept me home and off my bike:

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s a link to [yesterday’s] windy bike ride. This is my pistol ride.

Here’s a few photos taken along my route:

Here’s what I listened to today: I Will Find You, by Harlan Coben

Amazon abstract:

A few top reviews from the United States:

vegasbill

VINE VOICE

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great story from this author

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2023

Verified Purchase

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlan Coben at his best!

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

Daniel Kramer

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Ride

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

Jodie Short

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlan Coben has done it again!! This book will be your favorite this year!

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2023

Verified Purchase

9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism

About the Holy Bible, by Robert G. Ingersoll (1894): Part XII: The Real Bible

This is a very long article. I’ll post it by part.

Here’s the link to the full article.

XII: The Real Bible

For thousands of years men have been writing the real Bible, and it is being written from day to day, and it will never be finished while
man has life. All the facts that we know, all the truly recorded events, all the discoveries and inventions, all the wonderful machines whose
wheels and levers seem to think, all the poems, crystals from the brain, flowers from the heart, all the songs of love and joy, of smiles and
tears, the great dramas of Imagination’s world, the wondrous paintings, miracles of form and color, of light and shade, the marvelous marbles
that seem to live and breathe, the secrets told by rock and star, by dust and flower, by rain and snow, by frost and flame, by winding stream
and desert sand, by mountain range and billowed sea.

All the wisdom that lengthens and ennobles life, all that avoids or cures disease, or conquers pain—all just and perfect laws and rules
that guide and shape our lives, all thoughts that feed the flames of love the music that transfigures, enraptures and enthralls the victories
of heart and brain, the miracles that hands have wrought, the deft and cunning hands of those who worked for wife and child, the histories of
noble deeds, of brave and useful men, of faithful loving wives, of quenchless mother-love, of conflicts for the right, of sufferings for the
truth, of all the best that all the men and women of the world have said, and thought and done through all the years.

These treasures of the heart and brain—these are the Sacred Scriptures of the human race.

Viktor Frankl on the Art of Presence, the Soul-Stretching Capacity of Suffering, and How to Persevere in Troubled Times

Here’s the link to this article.

“When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer… his unique opportunity lies in the way he bears his burden.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

The life-story of Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) , is one of history’s greatest testaments to the tenacity of the human spirit. In his remarkable 1946 psychological memoir Man’s Search for Meaning (public library), previously discussed at length here, Frankl reflects on what his devastating time at Auschwitz taught him about the most essential driver of life — the inextinguishable human hunger for meaning, which separated those who survived from those who perished.

In one particularly poignant passage of the book, Frankl reminds us that the art of presence — an art so central to our everyday well-being — isn’t merely about savoring the pleasant moments of everyday blessedness. Rather, its canvas stretches all the more exquisitely in precisely the opposite circumstances — those most trying and turbulent moments, when the ability to inhabit the present makes all the difference between life and death, both figuratively in matters of the soul and, in Frankl’s Auschwitz experience, literally and bodily:

A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist. Regarding our “provisional existence” as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless. Such people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless.

To be sure, Frankl is far from advocating for filtering the present through rose-colored glasses in order to soften its intolerable pain. Quite the opposite — much like John Cage came to believe when he discovered Buddhism, Frankl argues that presence comes from leaning into suffering, not from tensing against it:

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

Frankl points to commitment, be it to human relationships — “the soft bonds of love [which] are indifferent to life and death,” to use Isaac Asimov’s poetic language — or to purposeful work and cultural contribution, as the essential anchor of presence, the umbilical cord that links those in the most trying of circumstances to their own lives:

This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love… A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”

Man’s Search for Meaning is a remarkable read, life-changing in the most earnest sense of the phrase. See more of it here, though no annotated excerpt could possibly do justice to the expansive richness of its entirety.

Huineng 3: Polishing the Mirror

Discover how your own internal commentary obscures the openness of this moment.

Here is today’s Meditation.

05/01/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.