John Algeo – USA
Introduction:
Jan Nicolaas Kind – Brazil
John and I come a long way. I first met him and his wife Adele in Naarden at the International Theosophical Centre, in the mid-1990s when he was in the Netherlands to conduct a seminar on Senzar. At the time I volunteered as floor-manager during events, doing the sound and recordings, and in this capacity I worked with John. To be quite honest, I found that it wasn’t that easy to work with him. He was demanding, at times difficult to approach and it really took me a while to get used to the “Algeo-way” of doing things. Later, it must have been in 1998, my wife Terezinha and I participated in a gathering at Olcott in Wheaton of the Inter-American Theosophical Federation where I delivered a talk. John was the Federation’s vice-president and national president of the TSA. After my talk John immediately came up to congratulate me, but also made use of the occasion to make me aware of a couple pronunciation errors I had made along the way. I was shocked at first by his blunt and direct style, but thanked him nevertheless. I certainly had learned something. Through the years that followed, my bond with him was a bit uncertain. I never really knew what to think or how to properly deal with him.
It was not until 2007 that I got to know him better and discovered that my uncertainty towards him had a lot to do with myself. John was, and still is a perfectionist, and would expect the same from others working with him. The years 2007 and 2008 were rather turbulent for the TS-Adyar, and it was during that time that the apparent ice between us broke for good.
I discovered that John was actually a rather shy, sincere, and humble man with a profound knowledge of the teachings, always defending what he believed in, and his greatest capacity of all capacities was the gift of admitting a mistake! Throughout their marriage his wife Adele was his beacon, and it was touching to see how much he cared for her and looked after her after she had fallen seriously ill. We know that a difficult phase started for John after Adele had passed away, but it is clear that also on his own, in the autumn of his life, he tries hard to he make the best of things, ever active and always on the vanguard for what he believes in and stands for.
I owe John a lot and have learned much from him over the years. Occasionally when we correspond and Adele is mentioned he says: “Yes, of course I miss her, but I often talk with her in my dreams.”
The article you are about to read is a unique document. John submitted it to me some time ago and I feel that now is the right moment to present it to the readers of Theosophy Forward, so enjoy!
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This is not a proper autobiography, but merely a collection of recollections, mainly of my earlier years, made for those who may find some interest in them. In the words of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins / Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe. / Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata” [Give, Sympathize, Control] . . . Shantih shantih shantih [Peace, peace, peace]”
My name is John Thomas Algeo. I was named for my maternal grandfather, John Wathen, and my father, Thomas Algeo. As a boy, I was “Jack,” and members of my ancestral family knew me by that name only. I switched from “Jack” to “John” in the seventh grade, when a teacher complained about students who had one legal name and a different byname — I have always been influenced by teachers and others in authority (as it turns out, mainly women). I encountered Theosophy and joined the Theosophical Society at the age of 17 in 1947. So I have been connected with Theosophy for some sixty-eight of my Biblically allotted threescore years and ten (Psalm 90.10), that is, for most of my life.
John Algeo was awarded with the T. Subba Row Medal, in recognition of his valuable literary and teaching contributions
My family were mostly non-practicing Roman Catholics. I was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, at home, delivered by a female doctor (not a midwife) because my mother, Julia, was leery of hospitals. During my early childhood (which was during the great depression of 1929-1941), my father traveled around the country looking for work, and my mother and I lived sometimes with my paternal grandmother but more often with my mother’s family, who had a large four-story house that accommodated up to four generations at one time. My mother also worked (in a shoe factory) to help support us; and I was raised by her aunt, who lived with us and became my nanny. Aunt Kitty was doubtless the greatest influence on me during my youngest years. But my maternal grandfather and uncle, all of whom lived together as an extended family, were also important influences.
Aunt Kitty was a widow. Her husband had been a portrait photographer, whom she assisted and much of whose equipment she still had, which she let me play with. She taught me to read, years before I went to school, by our reading aloud together the bedtime stories she chose. Aunt Kitty had never heard of the 1930s children’s classics like “Dick and Jane.” The bedtime book I remember most was Robinson Crusoe, not some children’s version, but the original by Daniel Defoe (first published in 1719). Aunt Kitty was the only active Catholic in the family; she went to mass every day. She was also fanatical about some things. For example, she was terrified of thunder and lightning. Because I had not been baptized at birth, whenever there was a storm, Aunt Kitty got out the holy water she brought home from church and baptized me with it. I was well and thoroughly christened, if not equally Christianized.
At the end of the Depression in 1941 (with the start of World War II), my father took my mother and me with him to Miami, where I spent the rest of young and teenage years. I had long been interested in religions of all sorts (and had read about them in another uncle’s copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica). In Miami, I decided I should get some formal instruction in religion, so I took a catechism class at the main Catholic Church in Miami, run by Jesuit fathers. We used the old Baltimore Catechism, a conventional exposition of the faith. But we were also encouraged to borrow books from the parish library.
Poking about in the parish library, I came upon a series of little pamphlets on “dangerous heresies,” one of which dealt with Theosophy, which was completely new to me. When I read the pamphlet, however, I was immediately interested. There is an adage: I don’t care what they say about me in the newspapers as long as they spell my name correctly. The moral of the adage is that readers get out of an account whatever it may be that they need, despite in the intention of the author. The Theosophy of the pamphlet brought together a good many ideas and themes that I had cobbled together on my own while reading about various religions in my uncle’s encyclopedia. And for that reason, it interested me greatly.
Not long after that, I saw a T.S. meeting announced in the Miami Herald newspaper and decided to attend it see what the dangerous heretics looked like. It was a typical Theosophical meeting of those days: some piano music, followed by a talk and discussion on it, and rounded off with the inevitable punch and cookies. The dangerous heretics were really quite nice people and invited me to borrow a book from their library. One of them recommended Elementary Theosophy, by L. Rogers, who became a national president of the Theosophical Society in America and had been a colleague of Eugene Debs, a labor organizer and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World, as well as several times an unsuccessful U.S. presidential candidate.
I took the book home and read it — actually several times through. The following week I went back to the T.S. meeting to return the book and to ask how I could join the society. They gave me an application form; but, as I was under the legal age, I had to have a parent endorse it. So I took it to my mother, who looked it over and then said to me, “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.” I didn’t, but she was an indulgent parent and signed the form. Thus at age 17, I became a member of the Theosophical Society through a series of events that I summarize by saying that the Jesuits converted me to Theosophy.
Because of my young age (and the fact that all of the other T.S. members in Miami were old enough to be my parents or grandparents), I became a sort of wunderkind in Miami. I was soon elected president of the Lodge and then of the Florida Federation. In later years, I became president of the Atlanta, Georgia, Lodge and chairman of the board for the Stil-Light Theosophical Center in North Carolina. In the American Section, I served on the National Board of Directors (1984-7), and then as First Vice President (1987-93), and as National President (1993-2002). Thereafter, I also served as international Vice President (2002-8).
I became a Co-Freemason while on a year’s academic appointment at the University of London. I was made an Entered Apprentice on April 2, 1987, in Lodge St. Germain, No. 904, Orient of London, and over the years gradually rose through all the Degrees to the thirty-third in 2002. Co-Freemasonry and Theosophy have no formal connection, but they fit together nicely in that Masonry is a practice in need of a theory and Theosophy is a theory in need of a practice. Theosophy, of course, also has other and more applied practices, such as the Theosophical Order of Service, but various kinds of practices have their own uses and benefits.
Masonry is a ritual practice that appealed to me, probably in part because of my Roman Catholic background. * Co-Freemasonry and Theosophy also share certain ideals, especially the importance of brotherhood without respect to race, creed, sex, caste, or color and a non-dogmatic attitude that does not require members to accept any particular concepts. Masonry does, however, favor fancy, exalted titles. So I eventually became in our Masonic Order “Most Illustrious Grand Master of the North American Administration, and Vice President and Secretary to the Supreme Council, Eastern Order of International Co-Freemasonry.” (* Written in 2013 - editor)
To go back a way: As a student in middle school in Miami, I had started working as a page at a branch public library. It was a small branch, so there were just the librarian and I in it. Consequently, I got to do a lot of things that library pages don’t normally do: work the desk, repair damaged books, etc. Eventually I worked at many of the Miami libraries all through my high-school and undergraduate years, including the main one on Biscayne Bay, where I was sometimes the sole night-time staff member. But my chief job was still shelving books. And in the process, I discovered a book entitled Words and Ways of American English by Thomas Pyles, then of the University of Florida. I read it and found it so interesting that I determined to go to the University of Florida to study with him, which I eventually did.
As a young man, I had attended the University of Miami for several years, but then got into the sophomore/junior slump that is a not-uncommon experience for college students, and I dropped out, going to New York on my own for a couple of years. But I was directionless so joined the army out of desperation. I served in the United States Army for three years, 1951–54. In the US, I was stationed in South Carolina, then in North Carolina, and finally was sent overseas to Korea. That was during the final years of the Korean conflict (which was never declared a war by Congress, so those of us who served in Korea got none of the benefits of those who were war veterans, although those who got shot were just as dead as those who had been in a declared war). I was promoted to the rank of Sergeant in Korea, where my principal duty assignment was with the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission, in Munsan-ni, Korea.
After completing my tour of duty in Korea, I returned to the U.S. and was discharged. Then I returned to the University of Miami to complete my bachelor’s degree. From there, I went on to the University of Florida to study with Thomas Pyles; but when I got there, Tom Pyles was on a Fulbright in Germany, and his replacement was C. W. Wrenn, about whom more below. First a bit about my wonderful wife to be.
My wife, Adele Marie Silbereisen, whom I married on September 6, 1958, in the Episcopal Chapel of the University of Florida, in Gainesville, worked with me on every project I was involved with — academic, Theosophical, and Masonic. She joined the Theosophical Society so she could come with me to the TS national summer meeting, in those days held on a lakeside camp in southern Wisconsin and open only to members. But Adele was what Dora Kunz called “a practical girl,” so she soon was elected as president of the Atlanta TS Lodge and served the Society in many other ways, as well, not least in practical ways at Olcott during my presidency there. Because Adele was such an important and wonderful part of my life (including my Theosophical life), I am slightly digressing here to tell how we met and courted.
As I wrote above, having finished my bachelor’s degree at the University of Miami, I went to Gainesville to pursue graduate work at the University of Florida. One warm summer day, I was sprawled out on the grass of the quad, studying a text book, when something caught my eye; it was the flash of a passing skirt. In those days, the fashionable dress for young women was a very large skirt, with several layers of petticoats under it. So when a young woman walked, her skirt swayed and swirled around her. This young woman certainly caught my eye. But she passed on and I returned to my book. That was my first encounter with my future wife.
A week or so later, however, I went to the university cafeteria for my supper, as was my wont, and also as usual I got my main meal, but not my dessert (which was always ice cream, which would have melted if I’d gotten it with the main meal). On this occasion, when I returned to “my” table (I invariably sat at the same one), I found that during my temporary absence, the table had been cleared (which had never happened before), and seated at “my” table was a young woman, whom I recognized as she of the whirly, swirly skirt. I asked if I might join her, and she graciously said I might. That was my second encounter with my future wife.
My third encounter requires a bit of background. That term, the University of Florida had a visiting professor from Oxford: C. L. Wrenn. He was a member of a group called the Inklings, whose better-known members included C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Dorothy Sayers (Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979). They met weekly at an Oxford pub called The Eagle and the Child, where discussion of their academic work was forbidden but critique of their other, nonacademic work was encouraged. Wrenn was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and it was that subject which he taught during his first term at the University of Florida. He wrote the textbook on the subject, which we used. The class was packed, not just with graduate students, but with faculty who came because of Wrenn’s fame.
The first day of that class went normally, as first days do. But on the second day, a new student joined the class: she of the whirly, swirly skirt. How she came to do so is itself a story. She was an Anthropology/Archeology major, but those ancient days, even graduate students were required to have a minor outside their major, and hers was English. (Mine, incidentally, was religion). The young lady, whose name I was soon to learn was Adele Marie Silbereisen, had first registered for a course in Shakespeare; but on the first day of class, the Shakespeare professor announced that everyone in the class would write three term papers. Now, Miss Silbereisen hated writing papers, so she immediately dropped it and look around for a replacement. Spotting Anglo-Saxon and figuring that courses in language did not require papers, she added it.
When she entered the class, I immediately recognized her. And, as she was the only non-English-major and the only student not working on a Ph.D. in the class, I figured she might have some problems with the course, so I invited her to join a study group consisting of several of my friends and me. She did, and so we got better acquainted. Now another slight digression: C. L. Wrenn had an uncanny ability to spot the weakness of every student and to bear down on it. So he announced that everyone in the class would write a paper, and we would begin with Miss Silbereisen, to whom he assigned the topic “King Alfred as Educator.” She wrote the paper, on which Wrenn’s only comment was, “Miss Silbereisen, we use primary sources” (as she had used entirely secondary ones, scholarly studies on King Alfred).
At the end of that class, a very few of us (principally Miss Silbereisen and me) went on to take Wrenn’s second course, which was on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem “Beowulf.” We continued our study sessions, but now they consisted of only the two of us. Thus she and I got better acquainted, a process assisted by the game of bridge. I will explain: I was living off campus (the University of Florida having then no dormitories for graduate students); I rented a room in the house of a woman named Artis Blackburn, just at the edge of campus. She liked to play bridge and had a regular partner, a young man, but she wanted another couple to be regulars with them. So she asked me whether I played bridge. I replied that I knew the rules but was not very good at the game. She responded, “Fine, get yourself a partner and we’ll play.” I asked Miss Silbereisen whether she played bridge; she did (in fact, she was a very good player, much better than I). So Adele and I became regular bridge partners against Mrs. Blackburn and her young gentleman friend.
Now, bridge is a highly intuitive game; it has strict rules, and limits what you can say to specific formulas of bidding. You have to intuit what your partner’s bids mean. Regular partners, if they are to succeed, need to be in tune with each other. Thus Adele and I got in tune, and bridge-attunement led to other sorts of attuning, so eventually we got engaged. I took Adele down to Miami to meet my family. But also I wanted my mother (who by that time had separated from my father) to come to Gainesville to meet my wife-to-be’s family.
My mother came to Gainesville on a bus; I met her at the bus station and took her to the Silbereisen house, where she was to be a guest in their extra bedroom. When we arrived at their house, I took her to their living room to get acquainted. Adele’s father asked my mother whether she would like “a drink.” She said she would, and I anticipated a problem because in my family, “a drink” meant a highball, but most of Adele’s family were teetotalers. Adele’s father brought my mother a glass of water. With some anxiety, I watched her; but without hesitation, she drank the water, bless her.
On September 6, 1958, Adele and I were married by Father William W. (Bill) Lillycrop in the Episcopal Chapel of the University of Florida, where I had served on the vestry, and where eventually both of our children were baptized. I still have the marriage service booklet (text from the Book of Common Prayer), sign by Father Lillycrop and two witnesses, who were my closest friend (and best man at the wedding), Daniel F. Kirk, and my new sister-in-law, Joan Silbereisen Lemosy. The University of Florida chapel was a lovely building — small but in a very traditional Episcopal architectural style, located just at the edge of the campus.
Adele and I stayed in Gainesville until I finished my course work and passed the general examinations for the Ph.D., while she worked as a secretary to support us. Then I got my first full-time teaching job at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Our first child, Thomas John, was born there in 1960; and the summer of his birth, we went to Troy State College in Alabama because FSU had no summer work for me, and I needed the income.
At Troy State, they wanted me to teach American literature, Shakespeare, and French. I’d had only one American course (in criticism) and no formal work whatever in Shakespeare, but I figured I could bluff my way through those courses. But French was impossible. When I told the chairman at Troy State that I knew no French, he asked whether I had not passed the reading exam in that language for my Ph.D. I had, but I explained that did not qualify me to teach a course in conversational French. He reluctantly accepted my excuse and assigned me a freshman English course instead.
The summer in Troy, Alabama, was hot as blazes. Classes began at 6 am, as later in the day the un-air-conditioned classrooms were intolerable. The only air-conditioned place in town, available to me, was the supermarket. As Adele had to stay in with our infant son, I did the grocery shopping; and that led to an experience which typifies for me the appeal of the American South. One day at the supermarket, I got a large basketful of groceries, and took them to the checkout counter, where the clerk rang them up on her register. But then, to my great embarrassment, I discovered that I had neglected to bring my wallet, so could not pay for them. I explained the situation to the girl at the check-out, and asked if she would just hold on to them while I returned to our apartment to get my wallet. She asked, “Are you with the college?” I said that I was, and she replied, “Well, that’s OK; you can just pay for them next time you come in.” I was flabbergasted, as she was just a clerk and I was an unknown. But that’s the way it was in the South in those days. I took the groceries home, got my wallet, and returned immediately to the supermarket to settle what I owed. That’s the American South that was.
After our summer in Troy, Adele and I returned to Tallahassee; and after working as an instructor for two years there, I was invited to return to the University of Florida in Gainesville as an Assistant Professor. Our daughter, Catherine Marie, was born there in 1962. I rose through the ranks as an Associate Professor and eventually full Professor, as well as serving along the way as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School and Director of the Program in Linguistics. Two of us were Assistant Deans there; my job was to represent the humanities and social sciences and to answer much of the Dean’s correspondence and to write many of his speeches.
Eventually, my boss at Florida, the Dean of the Graduate School, was appointed to a higher position at another University. As he prepared to leave, he wanted to make me acting Dean, but that did not appeal to me, partly because I feared it might lead to a permanent appointment, and I had no desire for such an administrative position. So I contacted a friend of mine at the University of Georgia, with whom I had served on several committees of the National Council of Teachers of English and who had earlier told me to let him know if ever I wanted to move. He immediately got me an offer from Georgia, which I accepted. So Adele and I moved to Athens, Georgia, where I served as Professor of English (1971–88), Head of the Department of English (1975–79), and Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor of English (1988–94), after which I became Professor Emeritus. During that period, in 1985, I also served as an Exchange Professor at the University of Erlangen, Germany, and in 1986 as an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London, University of London.
After my retirement in 1994, we continued to live in Athens, although we made annual trips to Adyar between Christmas and New Year’s for the Theosophical Society convention there. As I had just begun working on HPB’s correspondence, Adele spent a lot of time in the Adyar archives, then housed in a basement room of the main building. She was looking for material that I could use and copying it for me. The archives were very unhealthful: damp (as the building was next to a small river) and generally not well cared for. Several other women from the Netherlands who worked there came down with an illness, which they attributed, doubtless correctly, to the archives. I think it very likely that Adele’s eventually fatal illness was contracted in the Adyar archives. For further information about that illness, see the “Appendix on health” below. It also includes an account of how I came to move to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where I still reside.
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Appendix on names
My family was not innovative when it came to naming. The most common male name was “John”; and the most common female name was “Catherine.” I was named for my maternal grandfather, “John,” and for my father, “Thomas”; hence I am “John Thomas.” I named my son “Thomas John.” My daughter is “Catherine Marie” (after several “Catherines” in our family and my wife, who was “Adele Marie.” Our son, however, abandoned the family tradition in naming his two sons “Nicholas” and “Matthew,” neither name with any history in our (or their mother’s) family.
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Appendix on health
I am remarkably healthy, as one of our doctors adds, “for a man of your age.” I have, however, had my share of medical problems, some of them close scrapes.
For instance, my wife and I were in New England on a lecture tour; and one evening during my talk, I felt quite uncomfortable, but returned to our hotel, hoping to sleep it off. But the next morning I was markedly worse, so I decided to go to the emergency room of the hospital about a half mile from our hotel. When I got there, they did a quick assessment and took me into an operating room, where they removed my appendix, which burst during the removal, requiring a good bit of cleaning up. But if I had not gotten there in time, I would not be writing this many years afterwards.
On another occasion, in our Athens house, I was reaching up for something on a top closet shelf and had a twinge in my chest. I mentioned the fact to our Home-Instead helper (whom we had for my wife who was then confined to a bed); that helper had some nurse’s training and advised me to call 911; I said, “Oh, that’s not necessary — it’s just a twinge.” But I did. An ambulance soon arrived; they did a quick assessment, loaded me into the ambulance, and took me to the hospital, where I had quadruple coronary by-pass surgery. Again, if I had not done that, I would not now be here to write about it.
My chronic physical complaints are twofold. One is that my legs are gimpy — not reliable. That started years ago in a small way which I first noticed when I took my daily walk around the neighborhood of our Athens, Georgia, house. But it gradually increased until I became quite unsteady on my legs. The cause is unknown. I have had brain and spinal scans and investigations of the inner ear, but nothing has shown a cause. I used a cane for a while, but gradually the conditioned worsened, so now I used a wheeled walker, even around my apartment for stability. The other problem is digestive, alternating between constipation and diarrhea: annoying and limiting but not life-threatening.
Both my wife, Adele, and I specialized in physical problems of unknown cause and hence with no known cure. Hers was much worse than mine. She came down with a rare lung disease that limited the amount of oxygen her lungs could absorb, so she needed a very much larger supply of oxygen than normal to survive. Consequently she used a machine to concentrate the oxygen in the air and deliver it to her through tubes in her nostrils. We had a large concentrator in our house plugged into an electrical outlet in the wall, and a small battery-powered one on wheels that she could roll along when she went out. Her lung disease is normally fatal within twelve months of the on-set of symptoms. But she survived with it for a number of years, during which we even went to Europe several times. She had excellent care from the head of the pulmonary department at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, who was doing a study of precisely her ailment. He kept changing the prescriptions she took to alleviate the problem; and that helped her to survive for as long as she did.
Finally Adele was confined to a hospital bed in our family room, where she could watch the TV. I did not have the strength to lift her onto the potty when she needed that. So we had Home Instead every day, around the clock. My favorite Home-Instead helper was a big black woman. It was she who alerted me to the fact that Adele was dying and advised me to have our children, Tom and Katie, come to see their mother. This was shortly after I had had my by-pass surgery, for which Katie had come down from Bowling Green, Kentucky, to Athens, Georgia, as no one should be in the hospital without a family member there to help. So Tom and Katie came to bid their mother farewell. Then, when Adele died on March 15, 2010, Katie came again to help with the cremation arrangements; that was her third trip in a fairly short time, and she wanted me to move to Bowling Green, where she could help me without having to get colleagues to cover the classes she taught at Western Kentucky University. So I moved to Bowling Green in June of 2010, into a very nice apartment at a retirement community, which Katie had located for me. And here I am still, happy as a clam in its shell.
Daughter Katie comes by several times a week, often bringing supper. She’s an excellent cook and vegetarian to boot. She also takes care of all my business matters, which is a great relief to me. She inherited her mother’s role as chief family care-giver. So she tends to me here and did also to her uncle Charles, Adele’s brother, who moved to Village Manor, where he eventually died. Katie had been making frequent trips to Georgia to look after our house there until she finally got it sold. When Katie goes out of town, I cat-sit her old pet, Claire, who still recognizes my furniture from her visits to Georgia in bygone days.
In addition to Katie’s kind ministrations, I have three hours of help Monday to Saturday from Home Instead, a Kentucky branch of the same organization that helped me to look after Adele in her last days. My regular is Jerry Webb, a splendid fellow who is a retired postmaster. He goes with me mornings for a trip around the outside of the building in my “Jazzy” (an electrically powered chair), helps me around the apartment in whatever ways I need him, and goes to the stores to do shopping for me.
Son Tom and his wonderful Chinese wife Viviana bring his two sons from his first marriage (Matt and Nick) to visit periodically. They stay in a quite nice guest apartment here at Village Manor. Viviana is a splendid step-mother for the two boys; Adele and I both were (and I am still) very fond of her — for her own sake and for the care she takes with Tom and the boys.
I do a lot of work on the computer, editing material for the Web site Theosophy Forward, for example. I’m also currently on an Agatha Christie binge. I’m collecting citations from her fiction and annotating them — I’m not sure why but I enjoy it and it keeps me off the streets and more or less out of trouble. Agatha Christie was amazingly proficient and productive. She belonged, incidentally, to an Oxford group called the Inklings, a number of whom were interested in the occult and even Theosophy and one of whom was the Charles Wrenn with whom Adele and I studied Anglo-Saxon when he was a visiting professor at the University of Florida.
All in all, I am at peace with this world and look forward to experiencing the delights of the next in Devachan when its time comes.
Blessings on the heads of all who read this! Cheers, John