Olof's Thoughts
These are writings by
Olof. They are posted here with
permission from the recipients.
November
24, 1991 letter to James D. Tabor:
"Each morning I spend
up to an hour closely reading about two pages from Seneca's Epistulae
Morales. Although I'm quite aware
of the historical/cultural "Bedingtheit" of these letters, I read
them nonetheless for personal edification, the same way I once read Nietzsche
and, before that, the Bible. That is, my approach is not exactly scholarly.
Furthermore, in reading Seneca's letters, I have no agenda other than the
immediate enjoyment of sitting in the pre-dawn hours with a cup of coffee
savoring both his Latin and his thoughts. My entire existence has its
fulfillment in that hour or so. I likewise spend a while afterwards reading a
few pages in Schopenhauer's Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, which I appreicate much more after a first
reading many years ago. It is so wonderfully wise, and like Seneca:
"mundus"; clean, elegant, refined, devoid of the vulgar."
Olof
on teaching students Latin, letter to James D. Tabor,
September 6, 1991
"I have wonderful
students, bright, energetic, attractive. Some of the 9th graders are terribly
immature, but there's always a few who are intellectually precocious. At
certain points in the text I practice guerilla tactics, that is, I strike
quickly and then immediately move on as if nothing had happened. Just the other
day, for example, I discussed the first declension noun "poeta,"
which is irregularly masculine, because of course most ancient poets were men.
This gives me the opportunity to mention in passing Sappho. I describe her and
her exaquisite poetry in a couple sentences, point out that she and her clique
lived on the island of Lesbos (smiles, chuckles, and penetrating looks of
intense curiosity from those sparkling eyes), and, as an afterthought, mention
that the Church destroyed most of her works, before I move on to the next word
on the upcoming vocabulary quiz. The word "mensis" for month
gives me a chance to point out the derivative "menstrual" and I
happen to think of the graves of the Old European cultures where menstrual
blood was sprinkled over the grave goods as a sacred fluid, rather than
something unclean."
Emails to Amanda Davis
Email 1: June 14, 2005
"I'm sure you're going to enjoy the orientation at Carolina, a tropical paradise compared to the desert of WA. And speaking of which, I hope you have a great time in Hawaii. You're actually traveling farther than I am even though you're not leaving the country. That's one state I've never been to, one reason being that I wouldn't know what to do once I got there, since I'm not much for beaches and isn't that what you do in Hawaii? Go to the beach? I STILL haven't been to the beach in North Carolina. But they tell me the flowers are magnificent on those islands. That I would like to see. Can you imagine what Hawaii must have been like before the first human settlement and the beginning of species extinction a thousand years ago or whenever it was?"
Email 2: September 18, 2005
"Your classes sound interesting. The other day, in B&N, I
saw on the front tables two books by a CH scholar, Bart Ehrmann: Lost
Christianities and Lost Scriptures. He's a major figure in the field of NT
studies. I hope that anyone who is studying NT ends up taking one or two of his
courses since it will reveal that the world of early Christianity is not as
simple and clear-cut as fundamentalist Christians want to believe. We all go
our different directions and must, in the end, be honest with ourselves and be
comfortable with where we're at. In the end, I had to side with Mark Twain:
"We go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company." I want to
end up with my friends and the figures in history I most admire. I would much
rather be with the pagan philosopher Epicurus than the self-righteous Paul,
even if I have trouble hearing his voice over the crackle of the flames and the
anguished screams of the damned -- the sound and sight of which will be a major
source of pleasure for those upstairs in heaven, according to St. Thomas
Aquinas.
Sometimes I think it would be better to be involved in an
occupation which involves little or no controversy, like music or mathematics.
The public discourse today is vastly more contentious and venomous than it was
a few decades ago. Nixon and Kennedy were quite opposite to one another but
there wasn't the bile and hostility you see expressed today, for whatever
reason. One of the reasons it's nice to spend time abroad is that the air is
free of this bitter enmity between political camps. And there's little sense in
debating someone who knows little of history, philosophy or science. 40+% of
Americans think the earth is around 10,000 years old. Is it possible to carry
on a intelligent conversation with them??
Classes are coming along fine, good students, the administration
leaves me alone, bless them. Maybe I'll see you soon at the school. Carry on
and study hard!! Yours--Magister Ribb"
Email 3: October 26, 2005
"Seriously, too bad about them not letting you onto campus.
It seems they're taking the new security concerns way too far.
Things have been going okay. Today I'm off because of a doctor's
appointment and the first of 30 radiation treatments (6 weeks). The latter are
at 3:30 so I won't have to miss much of school. Tonight is our Latin Club
Halloween Party in the media center.
So, things rock along at Western. I hope you are well, doing well
in your studies, if not getting A's at least close to A's, and enjoying
yourself on top of it. I know that you are able to appreciate the great
opportunity you have to be studying at such a fine university.
Yours,--Olof(Mr.) Ribb"
Olof to me (Erick
Mortenson) 11/8/2004. I had asked
him about recommending travel to Sweden or Norway.
"Sweden, of course, I
know very well, Norway hardly at all, so I can't offer good advice there. Sweden
tends to be more urban and more sophisticated (at least they think so) whereas
Norway is more rural in character. Swedes tend to be a bit more formal -- some
would say up-tight -- than the Norwegians, although all Nordics agree that the
Danes are the friendliest. All of these countries are of course very liberal,
refreshingly liberal. We do have (remote) family contacts in central
Sweden, although there has been little contact in the last few years, partly
through my fault -- just other matters and interests more pressing. My interest
in Sweden is to a large part purely intellectual and you can't expect a country
with a population of 8 or 9 million to have a culture nearly as deep and rich
as that of countries ten times that size. Which is not to say I don't love the
country. I could move there tomorrow and feel perfectly at home in a matter of
months. The Swedes are so civilized; the level of their education is
obvious to any visitor. Can you imagine Philosophy as a subject in American
elementary schools??? The very mention of evolution in my classroom is a
provocation."
Olof to me 2/15/2005. I had just moved to a house that is a
few yards from a coffee shop that he would visit when he lived in Minneapolis.
"I don't think I was ever
on that street or block but I did spend a lot of time at nearby Dunn Bros. on
Hennepin, sitting in the rear right corner near the computers if they still
have it set up that way. I still miss the Cities although the nostalgia factor
takes a sharp decline after about four or five years, from my experience. But
now it's the family more than anything in particular that I miss, like the ASI [American
Swedish Institute] or the Int'l
Film Festival. We'll see."
Olof to many recipients on
8/8/2005, with pictures from Quito, Ecuador. There were 7 emails in all, each with a picture and story.
Quito 1
"Hi,
I'm
emailing five or six photos from Quito, one at a time, in case anyone is
interested in what things look like in that far away place. --Olof
This
first one is the view from my top-story, 3rd-floor bedroom window, looking
south over Quito. Quito is about 18 miles N-S and only three or four miles E-W,
lying in a basin about 9000 feet above sea level (2800 meters). It has about
1,800,000 inhabitants. Ecuador is about the size of Colorado.
Telling
statistic:
In
1950 Ecuador and Switzerland both had 3 million inhabitants. In 2000,
Switzerland had 4 million and Ecuador had 12 million.
--Olof"
Quito 2
"Hi
again,
Here
is one of my teachers, Alexandra, standing atop Mt. Pichincha to the west of
Quito. In the background you see the southern half of the city, containing
about 700,000 inhabitants. It doesn't appear on the tourist maps and is more or
less off-limits to "blancos" (whites) like myself. Many or most of
the inhabitants are in fact not native Quitenos -- many of those from this part
of the city are in NY or Spain -- but immigrants from the countryside looking
for work. To get to the top of this mountain you have to take a cable car that
costs $4. That means few of the city's inhabitants will ever get up here.
Ecuadorians in Spain are
like Mexicans in the U.S. -- the money they send home is very important to the
economy. -Olof"
Quito 3
"Me again. The native
markets are very popular tourist destinations in Ecuador. This one is about an
hour from the city in a town called Saquisili. You find a lot of indigenous
people selling crafts here, many of them descendants of Incas but many others
from other tribes. The Incas were just in the process of subjugating this
northern part of their empire when the Spanish under Pizarro arrived in 1531.
-Olof"
Quito 4
"All the towns have
their big annual festival. This one is in Machachi, in ranching country, where
there are a lot of cowboys ("chagras") and this is their parade. Here
is Jesus himself decked out like a chagra. Afterwards there was a huge street
dance, accompanied by massive alcohol consumption, on the streets off the main
plaza. -Olof"
Quito 5
"Hi. I stayed with a
family for five weeks. Here's the mom of the house, Rocio ("dew"),
with her three sons. It was a very tight-knit family living a hard life by our
standards. I went grocery shopping with them once and every little purchase was
a major issue. Prices for consumer goods are higher than in the U.S. Gas is
$2/gallon. A school teacher makes around $200/month. -Olof"
Quito 6
"Our caba–as (cabins)
at the lodge in the Amazon region -- quite comfortable actually. Not at all hot
and steamy like I expected and the insects weren't bad either. The jungle is
very noisy, at all hours, especially at night, with all sorts of strange
sounds. The only seasons they have here are dry and rainy. We practically on
the equator. -Olof"
Quito 7
"Last one here. Yours
truly on the road to Papallacta, a vocanic springs area. This is typical Andean
scenery -- huge vistas. -Olof"
More about Ecuador on
8/21/2005
"Hi,
Erick,
Yes,
Ecuador. I am continually coming across people with a personal connection to
the country, people going there or having been there, people who know someone
from there. As in Mexico, the money the immigrants send home is a critical part
of their economy. My friend Alfredo, who spends his summers in Madrid, tells me
that Ecuadorians in Spain are the analogue to Mexicans in the U.S. He has an
"elderly" point of view in that he thinks that immigrants are ruining
and trashing the country. Maybe it's pay-back time?
Next
summer I must, MUST get back to Minnesota, at least for a visit, possibly
more than that, we'll see. We could go biking together. I'm a fat-tire guy so
may not be able to keep up with you if you're a more serious, long-distance
type, although yesterday I went 35 miles, deliberately far since it was my
birthday, for the record, you know. I set out before sunrise, to avoid the
heat. It was mid-90s yesterday, and humid, worse than the Amazon a month or so
ago!
Warmest
regards to Keeley! --Olof James
P.S. attached photo:
Quito, standing in in line to get a passport, always a line here in the
mornings."
Part of an email to Judy
that I was copied on 10/18/2005 describing facing cancer.
"Later today I have my first appointment with Radiation Therapy here in Greensboro. I'll write you after that. The pain hasn't been too bad since last weekend, am getting by with one long-acting morphine combined with ibuprofin. But, the pain is always there and relief via radiation will be very welcome. In my more resigned moments I figure this thing is going to get me sooner or later -- it wasn't exactly caught in the early stages -- but all I really want is what I've always wanted even before this happened: some good days (without pain) and the opportunity to put things in order, providing for a minimum of fuss after I'm gone. If I can have that, I'll be happy. It's quality, not quantity."
To Gabriele Ršwer on May
19, 2005. Part of his email is
translated from German.
Dear
Frau Ršwer!
Es
freut mich sehr Ÿbrigens, dass Herr D "sich recht gut erholt" hat.
Vivat et valeat!
Versuch
einer †bersetzung:
"...with the ripening of my atheistic outlook. The less I believe in God, the more I believe in life -- one of the reasons I want to spend a week in the Amazon Basin this summer -- and especially in that life that is trampled underfoot and exploited in this world: women (especially of the underdeveloped world), children, animals. And the more sweet and precious every day is, knowing that inevitably you will no longer be "under the sun," as the ancients put it. Transience is the very thing that gives life its value. And, also, how dangerous life is, knowing that "time and chance" happen to us all, willy-nilly, that you are utterly on your own. And the liberating feeling that, in the end, nothing really matters. In the end."
"...beim Reifen
meiner atheistischen Perspektive. Je weniger ich an Gott glaube, desto mehr
glaube ich an Leben -- einer der GrŸnde ich in diesem Sommer eine Woche im
Amazonas verbringen will -- und besonders an jenes Leben, das in dieser Welt
mit F٤en getreten und ausgebeutet wird: Frauen (besonders in der
unterentwickelten Welt), Kinder, Tiere. Und desto s٤er und kostbarer jeder Tag
ist, in der Gewissheit, dass unsere Tage "unter der Sonne"
-- wie die alten Heiden es ausdrŸckten -- unabwendbar zu Ende kommen.
VergŠnglichkeit ist gerade das, was dem Leben sein Wert verleiht. Und auch, wie
gefŠhrdet dieses Leben ist, weil wir wissen, dass "alles liegt an Zeit und
GlŸck", wohl oder Ÿbel, das man všllig und total allein ist. Und das
befreiendes GefŸhl dass, am Ende, nichts macht etwas aus. Am Ende."
This printed email was
found in Olof's belongings.
March 11th
2005:
This is really quite
amazing, if true, i.e., regular, cyclical extinctions, like something from
Hindu mythology...
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/10/MNGFIBN6PO1.DTL&type=printable
Profunda super nos altitudo temporis veniet.
(The deep flood of time will roll over us.)
Seneca the Younger, Epis I, 21
[Below is a response to
the email by Stephen Estes on March 12th, 2005]
====
Whether there is a regular
cycle or not, scientific cosmology speaks thusly:
The universe is a very rough place. Our quivering droplet of life is a fragile rarity. Earth has
taken a beating before, and will again. If we plan to stay here indefinitely,
we're toast, or ice.
For example, the Sun is a
main sequence star, in its early middle age. Later-- lots later on human
timescales but not so far in the cosmological future-- the sun will turn into a
red giant. The habitable zone of the solar system, with temperatures at which
H20 is a liquid, will be somewhere around Neptune.
Alternately, possibly
before the sun gets middle-age spread, the solar system, in its orbit around
the galaxy, may encounter zones of gas, dust and rocky matter. The dust could
obscure enough solar radiation to chill the earth to into a snowball. Or, the
rocky stuff could pummel us, with a range of nasty consequences.
On December 27th, a star
about 50,000 light years away popped a gamma ray flash, emitting in a fraction
of a second more energy than the Sun normally emits in 100,000 years. Any life
within 15 light years of that star was sterilized. Currently there are not any
stars of this type near us, but, again, the solar system and other stars are on
tour around the galaxy.
The early Earth was a
hellish place, bombarded by meteors and comets, rent by earthquakes, choked by
volcanos. Analysis of bacterial RNA indicates that life on earth descends from
a common ancestor whose nearest relatives are the microorganisms which breathe
iron and manganese dioxide in volcanic plumes undersea, in the Pacific. Life
can take many forms.
These are not the parables
of ancient mystics, but the best current exegesis of a material revelation
which is not closed.
Der Mensch ist etwas, das
Ÿberwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr getan, ihn zu Ÿberwinden?
"Alfredo told us to
drive by a house that Olof would make a point of seeing by each time he
visited. Olof had said it was, of all the houses he knew of in the city,
the one he'd most like to live in."
A testament to Olof's
humility after he won teacher of the year - emailed to Joy Martin.
3/3/2005
"Thanks,
Joy, for your card and congratulations. I certainly bamboozled them!
Olof"
A wonderful addition to
this site, thanks to Lew Griffin.
The attached pdf's are four letters typed by Olof from 1979 to 1982.
You will need adobe reader to
open.
All 4 letters are in the
link below. Each letter is 2 pages
long, and they are in chronological order.
From
Stephen Estes:
ÔÉhere
are some excerpts of letters I have from Olof, with some of his timeless
observations, plus a couple of reflections leading up to his teaching in
Germany. More to come. I've just unearthed some photos and things that we
had packed away from our last house move.
--StephenÓ
Need
I say that I never cross-copy sections of letters to another correspondent
unless they're quotes? The reason for that is simple: letter
writing is as much for me as for the addressee! (November, 1990)
...a
few weeks ago... I had a letter printed in the Sunday Forum, as follows:
The occasional letter to The Forum reminds me what a
blessing the AIDS epidemic is to us clean-living Christians. It enables
us to enjoy in this life a pleasure (according to St. Thomas) otherwise
reserved for the saints in heaven, namely, contemplating the sufferings of the
damned.
"...In order that they might be all the more pleased with their
blessedness."
(April,
1993)
Shopenhauer
appeals to me for a number of reasons: 1) he's the most
"eastern" of Western philosophers, 2) his style is wonderfully
lucid, 3) his mood matches mine (elitist, quietist, pessimistic)
and 4) his writings are laced with excerpts from French, Latin, Italian
and other languages, which make me feel very smart for being able to figure
them out and bring directly to bear what I have spent years working on. (February,
1993)
Letter
to the editor publishied in The Forum, January 8, 1994. (my latest "prank")
The Dec. 31 column, "Obviously, sex still repels many,"
contained a remarkable assertion, namely that "sex is normal (and)
healthy." We all say that, but virtually none of us truly believes
it, since even the most secular among us has breathed in the air of a religious
culture hostile to the flesh.
From today's pulpit, however, you'll hear the same message, that sex is
normal and healthy. But that's the voice of the modern church, leavened
by secular values, in defiance of its own ancient tradition.
Even Luther, who enthusiastically endorsed marriage for all, was
still the Augustinian monk when it came to sexual intercourse. His
statement, "Conjugal duty is not fulfilled without sin," is offensive
to modern sensibilities and probably receives scant attention in today's
seminaries.
A more recent German, Nietzsche, speaking of Eros, the
ancient god of love, noted: "Christianity gave Eros poison to
drink. Eros didn't die, of course, but degenerated into a vice.
After two millennia of defamation, Eros will not be rehabilitated
overnight.
--Olof
Ribb
Bismarck, N.D.
Yesterday I received a letter from the educational ministry of Schwerin
(Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) in response to my query regarding teaching
English. The sehr geehrte Frau Kulturministerin informed me of
opportunities for teaching English both to students and to teachers in continuing
education (sowohl an den allgemeinbildende Schulen . . wie auch in der
Fortbildung von Lehrkraeften).
So, I've been up most of the night, lying awake in bed, contemplating all
this. Later today I hope to fax the documentation she requested, which is
one of the reasons I acquired this new toy (fax machine). Although I
dread the prospect of uprooting myself (what will I do with all my beautiful
plants?!), storing my car, giving up this lovely little, serene apartment,
etc., I've no doubt I'd give it all up in a minute if I were offered a job in
Germany for a year.
(May,
1994)
Each day I've been boxing up a few more things and a week
from today I leave the apartment. Everything is falling into place....
About
a week ago I sent a fax to the U.S. Inormation Service office in Berlin
explaining my situation. Today I received a fax from a certain Dr. Ward
who heads the English teaching responsibilities for Germany and the Slovak and
Czech Republics. I will be able to order videos, posters and the like
from Bonn and also use their library in Berlin. ... He appended a...
description of Greifswald by a recently visiting U.S. professor. That's
where I'll be going to sumer school, of course, and I suspect that Wolgast is
about the same. I'm in no way surprised by the dismal portrayal as it
merely confirms my impression from a couple years ago when a friend of Kent and
I took an evening drive across the "border" from Luebeck.
(June,
1994)
Sonntag
0935 - ich sitze hier gleich neben der K-W-G Kirche, hšre einer MilitŠrband zu,
u. schreibe meine erste Postkarte. Morgen frŸh holt mich Manfred ab und
die folgenden zwei NŠchte habe ich in Quedlinburg meine Hotelkosten. Bin
noch immer reisemŸde aber werde genug Kraft Ÿbrig haben um heute eine Stadtrundfahrt
zu machen u. di Berliner Luft tief einzuatmen. Ihr werdet oft von mir
hšren, weil ich oft an euch denke. Dein/ihr, Olof
(July, 1994)
Sent from Greg
Doudna. This is an excerpt from a
letter Olof wrote on November 16, 1980.
ÒAnd so you read, and you think, and go about the daily
affairs of making money and feeding yourself and you never really know what
it's all about. You're painfully aware of how much you're culturally
conditioned and, on a much deeper level, conditioned by evolutionary history,
having inherited, for example, the stereoscopic vision, prehensile limbs and
efficient nervous system from little arboreal mammals living 60 million years
ago. Your moods change. Sometimes it seems very bleak, as bleak as an Algerian
desertscape from one of Camus' novels, and sometimes you feel very alive and
upbeat, enjoying the moment for its own sake. Maybe Goethe has the last word: We
may understand the world as much as we wish; it will always contain one half
day and one half night. Or maybe Christian Morgenstern summed it all up in one
of his poems:
Kroklokwafzi? Semememi!
Seiokrontro-prafriplo:
Bifzi,
fabzi; hulalemi
quasti
basti bo...
Lalu
lalu lalu lalu la!
Now what can you possibly say to that???
Yours,
OlofÓ
