Welcome to The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction in which we look at the greatest and holiest writers from Catholic history. Join us as we explore the life and times in which they lived, an overview and study of their greatest works and how we as Catholics can look to these masters as models for our own holiness on our journey to heaven. Welcome back Tan fans and Father Robert Nixon to another episode in our mini-series on the Spiritual Master of Saint Anselm of Canterbury. Father, thank you for being here again. Thanks Carter, it's great to be here. Last time we talked about one of my favorite books, The Passion of the Christ through the eyes of Mary and we just had an amazing conversation about many passages in that that gave us an insight into Mary's situation at the foot of the cross and through his whole passion and we just learned so much in the previous episode before that we talked about the biography of Saint Anselm and how he was not just a great theologian and philosopher but a devotional writer, a spiritual writer and so he definitely qualifies as a doctor of the church. But my hope as the publisher of Tan is to have Saint Anselm really be seen by our customers as a spiritual director and your work on his different writings is helping with that and I hope this podcast series convinces our readers and our listeners to embrace him as a model for their own life. And so today we're going to talk about this short little work called the glories of heaven, the supernatural gifts that await body and soul and paradise and this is fun because we often talk about what we need to do to get to heaven but in here we talk about what it's going to be like to be in heaven and it's very exciting but we always begin with a prayer offered by you and seeking Saint Anselm's intercession so let's do that again today. Heavenly Father, you teach us to yearn for the things which are above to long for the perfect union with you in love. Through the intercession of Saint Anselm, may we be drawn into this imagining, this desire, this love for the things of heaven. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. Thank you Father and we continue with the great Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church. Tell me about, let's just begin by what brought you to this work. You have a lot of old volumes and a digital database of these old ancient saints works. How'd you stumble across this one and why'd you decide to translate it? Well, interesting question, Connor. You know, and I was thinking to myself, how many books have I read about heaven? I thought not a great number and it's so important. It's the ultimate goal of the Christian life and for Benedictine monks in particular, we're told that our heart should be filled with longing for heaven and I happened upon this book and well, I thought, yeah, I read through it and found about its origins that it was originally a conference which Saint Anselm had given to a group of young monks at the monastery of Clutie and I thought, well, this is fantastic. It's so encouraging, so accessible that it was something which I just felt I had to share with contemporary readers. Well, Clutie was a famous monastery, am I correct on that? It was, it was. So it had been founded about 100 years ago before the time of Saint Anselm and was famous for its liturgy and scholarship and at that stage was on continental Europe the biggest, most flourishing monastery there was. So Saint Anselm was invited to visit there because he was a tremendous writer, spiritual leader, whose reputation spread all the way throughout, throughout Christendom at the time. So he was asked to share a few encouraging words with the monks about what heaven was like and the result was this wonderful series of conferences. And to your knowledge, this is the first time this work has been in English? This, yes indeed. This is the first time the work has appeared in English. So although Saint Anselm is such a famous saint and a great doctor of the church, a number of his works haven't yet been translated into English. That's incredible. I mean, you know, a doctor of the church is only 37 and there's works untranslated. That is, that is. But you know, there are a few works by Aquinas that haven't been translated yet. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. So see, it's incredible. It is, it is. Well, I guess the imperative to translate things into English only came about in the last half century. Yeah, yeah.  I mean, I guess the the imperative, you know, so I mean, but we got a lot, we got a lot of translations to do, you know, so it's exciting and I'm glad Tan can participate in that. So, so this book begins, The Glories of Heaven by, how do you say his name? Admer? Admer? Edmar. Edmar. Edmar, his introductory letter to another monk saying what? Why don't you tell us what this introductory letter is? So in this he begins, I'll just read a little bit. You shall remember, I believe, that when our venerable father, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury recently spent a few days at the monastery at Clooney, he took the opportunity to say a few words to the assembly of the brothers there. On that occasion, he said many wonderful things about the eternal happiness of the Kingdom of Heaven. And as you no doubt recall, requested that I should note down all that he said in the presence of the brothers at the time and give you a copy for your perusal and edification. And so the result is this work. So, Admar, who also was the main biographer of St. Anselm, transcribed this conference and then wrote it down for at the request of one of his friends who'd asked for it. I got you. Okay. So it's, so you have this guy basically taking some kind of Latin shorthand and then he probably went back and transcribed it like kind of all the way through. They would have written it out by hand yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he apologizes for some times where he thinks he might have fallen short of what Anselm actually said in the original. But yeah, I'm pretty sure it's an accurate transcription of all that was said in those conferences. That's awesome. So, you know, Anselm has some introductory remarks. But the unique thing about this book is that it starts getting into, I guess you'd call them attributes of the body in heaven. And it starts on page 11. He starts with beauty, the beauty of the bodies of the blessed. Now, one thing this reminded me of and we publish another book called The Happiness of Heaven. It's actually in my top 25, 10 books we publish. And there it does emphasize that the holier you are here on earth, the more glorified your body will be in heaven. And so it's almost like the more you deny your body here, the more glorified it will be later. So did he have a sense of the beauty of the body? Do you think Anselm had a sense of you can have even a more glorified body or less glorified body once you're in heaven? You know, he talks about that later on. And he says that, yeah, there will be differences in the souls of people. But it won't be differences in the sense of rivalry or whatsoever, because it will be in perfect harmony with God. Yes, but this theme of the glorification or the perfection of the body. And this is something, you know, where in our culture, we're probably not that comfortable with because there's a stereotypical idea of what a, you know, beautiful human being, whether it's a man or a woman is supposed to look like. But the fact is, everything which God created is intended to be beautiful. That includes human beings. And while we're in this mortal condition where our bodies are impaired by sin by the result of original sin and so forth. And in heaven, we will be brought to perfection of being exactly what God intended us to do. And this is the highest possible beauty which any person could have. So yeah, so this idea that our bodies will achieve this perfect beauty, working from the premise that beauty is something which all human hearts naturally desire, which we naturally aspire to. Yeah, I think it's a very beautiful thing to keep in mind before we get to all these different attributes, because I've also heard that saints who have appeared to us from heaven have said, if I could go back and live a whole life of suffering just to improve my status in heaven, just a little bit, I would do it, which is, you know, there's no rivalry or anything. Everyone's kind of perfectly happy with, you know, their state, but they know that they could have done more. They could have done more. So I think we're just going to kind of go through this and I'm going to name the attribute and let you kind of mention it, you know, explain it. I will. So the next one is velocity. This is an interesting type of word. When I hear velocity, I think of like the velocity of baseball or something. So the speed by which the glorified bodies can work through heaven. Yeah, and this is interesting. And when I was translating it, the Latin word was velocitas, literally velocity. And I was thinking, is that really the right word in English? You know, because, but I think it is, it is really the best one and the only one there. The idea that velocity, that freedom of movement is something which human beings naturally value and aspire to. And so if we love it now, if we want it now, we're going to have it to its full perfection in the kingdom of heaven. So this means that we'll be able to move around, as he says, just like the angels do, literally at the speed of thought. And he talks about the fastest thing which we can perceive here. And this I think is showing the keenness of his mind. He says, the fastest thing is light, that the rays of the sun reaching the human eye do it in like a split second in almost a moment. But he says, is so much greater will be the velocity of the glorified bodies in heaven, that if these rays of light, which are inanimate things can move so quickly, then our souls which are, which are intrinsically animate, which are animation themselves will be able to move so much more quickly, which is a kind of astonishing idea, isn't it?  I mean, to be able to zip across the universe and to see what the next galaxy looks like, you know, I mean, just, you know, and, and it's, you know, because we think in terms of speed and maybe, maybe this is a whole concept even above or beyond that, but we're just not limited to, to space and time, you know, so just, you want to see the rest of the universe? There you go. You got it. And that's an amazing thing. I mean, who, if I was going to have that ability in life, I would do whatever was necessary to get that ability, but we're, we're going to be able to have that ability if we just have to live a holy life now. We, indeed, indeed kind of. The immensity of strength, the next one, page 15. So this is remarkable. So he talks about strength as being something which people naturally desire, which, which they naturally want. And if you think one of the worst conditions a human being could be, it would be to be, be deprived of all their physical strength, you know. So he says that this physical strength is going to reach its very perfection, that it's very highest possible degree. And he talks about, like he says here, for those who attain the state of heaven and merit to be numbered amongst the citizens of the celestial Jerusalem, they shall possess such immense strength and power that nothing shall be able to prevent them from performing anything they wish. And there will be no force which is able to remove or overturn them from their state of eternal bliss in the love of God. And they will be able to employ the enormous strength which has been granted to them with no more effort than it currently takes us to blink our eyes. It's incredible. It is indeed. It's incredible. And the next attribute is fairly similar, the unimpaired freedom. And here I'll read this. He says, we shall encounter no obstacle or restrictions whatsoever. There shall be no enclosure which is able to detain us. In a similar way, the body of the Lord after his resurrection could not be held by the tomb. After rising from the dead, he was able to pass through walls and close door with perfect freedom. So kind of a similar idea of powers like we're going to be able to come and go as we please. Indeed. Indeed. And I think this removing of impairments to freedom is so important because during this mortal life, whether we recognize it or not, there are so many things which impair our freedom. We're weighed down by a body, by distance, by physical obstacles. So yeah, to think these things removed will have this perfect freedom which we never experienced in this lifetime. But every human heart longs for freedom. It's one of the fundamental values, I think. Yes, it's amazing. And the next one, the perfect well-being of the souls in heaven. And I think this basically means no pain. Yeah. We have no pain in our body. We have no illness. It's not a big subject to that. Yeah. And when he talks about that, he says that in the present life, even when we think we're perfectly well, we're not really because we're always very close to some injury. He says he is something very interesting. For those who believe themselves to be in completely perfect health, we can test this if it's really true. Take any apparently healthy and sound human body whose possessor considers themselves to be in a particular condition of perfect well-being. Now, if you apply pressure to any part of the body or strike it with any degree of force, immediately the person will explain, exclaim, stop that. You're hurting me. So it shows this fragility, the fact that we're where it kind of entrapped in these mortal flawed bodies all the time, that we never actually experienced perfect well-being while we're in this life. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we often know that the greatest pleasure is the absence of pain. It is. And you experience that after you've been suffering from some pain and it's taken away. Do you think, wow, this is amazing? I think we're going to have some kind of experience like that. I mean, I'm not sitting here in pain right now, but the limitations and the fragility of the human body, I mean, just once we get to heaven and we're freed from that, that's going to be glorious just in and of itself. So the opposite of pain is pleasure. And so the next one, he says, the pleasures of heaven. And he says, we call pleasure all those things which cause delight to the physical senses. And he talks about the sense of smell and sight and vision. So what is the pleasure of heaven like? Yeah. So he talks about this as being an infinite pleasure, a pleasure which will continue to satisfy. And he points out very astutely that any earthly pleasure is only a pleasure for a certain period of time. And after a while starts to cause tedium and then wears away. Is it boredom? Because you often think like, well, do you get bored in heaven? And the answer is clearly no. No, you don't. Yeah. And to think also that this pleasure is something which is going to involve all of our senses, you know, so it's not like sensory deprivation, but rather it's complete sensory fulfillment. So the best possible sensory experiences we could have in this earth will be multiplied to an infinite degree in heaven and then enjoyed for an infinite period of time. He's talking about the difference. He's saying, how do I explain what pleasure is like in heaven? So he kind of says, okay, let's talk about a little bit of pain. He doesn't go dark in this in any way.  But he says, I'm going to read a little passage here. He says, I do not see how I can try to explain this, except perhaps through a similitude based on the opposite phenomenon. I'm on page 23. That is pain. Imagine, he's got a vivid imagination.  Think of the great pain he will experience, how agony shall suffice his whole body so that neither the marrow of his bones nor his intestines nor any part of him shall be free from the most extreme discomfort. How could we describe the condition of such a person? He is thoroughly, thoroughly tormented and he will be completely filled with agony and utterly overcome with anguish in a similar but opposite way. And this was his whole point in the future life of heaven. An effable pleasure shall completely inebriate and saturate those who are saved. An unimaginable outflowing of delight shall fill them in all their senses with the most indescribable sweetness.  I mean, it's a beautiful concept like incredible pleasure permeating every pore of our being. Indeed. Yes, it is amazing. And you know, to think about that, he presents an example of pain because I think we could probably more easily imagine the extremity of pain that we can, the extremity of pleasures. Exactly. Exactly.  Well, I think we do. I think we do. And so many things which we call pleasures in this life are really only the alleviation of pain. Absolutely. Yes, it's a deep insight. It's really good. The next section, the immortality of the life of heaven, which might sound a little obvious. But what does he mean by this? Yeah, so he uses immortality in the sense that our life on earth is limited because it has a final point, whereas the immortality of the life in heaven that will go on and on forever. He says that every human being naturally desires length of life, that we consider length of life to be a blessing. Well, we will have this in heaven, not just a very long life, but an infinitely long life. So this is the immortality. And interestingly, in this book, he doesn't talk so much about eternity as in the sense of beyond time, but rather speaks about as a infinite duration of time, which is a different way of imagining it, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, it is very good. The next thing is wisdom. I particularly enjoyed this one because there's a lot I wish I had answers to, you know? And which one is more attractive to me to be able to fly around the universe super fast, like the high velocity and pick up a building, move mountains with incredible strength, or is it to understand the depths of the mysteries of our faith and of the universe and of human nature? I mean, I'm a want to be philosopher, right? And I just want to understand certain things. And so when I read about wisdom, he says, but in the next life, the blessed souls in heaven shall possess wisdom, which is of such a wonderful extent that there shall be absolutely nothing which they do not know or understand. I mean, so far in the book, that's the one that gives me the most excitement is the wisdom. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this desire for knowledge, this desire for wisdom is a universal human desire, and it's going to be fulfilled completely in heaven. And St. Edsum talks about this wonderfully. And he also talks about some very interesting philosophical questions which emerge from that, you know? Like our sin. Will everyone know everyone else's sins? And he says, yes, they will, but it won't actually be horrendous or an embarrassing thing because the awareness of sin will be accompanied by the awareness of mercy and forgiveness. Yeah, he mentions that we can better appreciate God's mercy if we have awareness of sin. Yeah. And so it's converted from an emphasis on sin and embarrassment, which we have now, to an emphasis on, wow, look at all these sins and therefore look how awesome God's mercy is. Yes, I think that's right. I think that's right. It's a real beautiful spin on that, and I enjoy that. It kind of takes the embarrassing factor off a little bit because the point is it's not about us, it's about God. Yeah, exactly. The next thing, and this too, this one got me really excited, the wonderful friendships amongst the souls in heaven. Now, you know, I teach Aristotle, and I'm kind of very keen on the idea of what Aristotle refers to as true or virtuous friendship. And in that, you have to have two people who are really dedicated to each other to try to bring about the good and the other, right? So you can't just, it can't be one way. And it's not true friendship if they're just hanging out together to have a good time, or if they're just useful to each other, Aristotle has three types of friendship, utility friendship, pleasure friendship, and then true or virtuous friendship. And so here I kind of see him describing, of course, true or virtuous friendship. He says, you will love your heavenly companions just as they will all love you. And, but here's the point I'm trying to get to. In this life, Father, we're limited to only a couple true friends because it takes time to have those friendships. Aristotle says you can't have a dozen of these things. You just don't have time of the day. You can only have a couple throughout your life. And if you have a couple throughout your life, you're blessed. You know, Aristotle says that. So, but in here, we can have innumerable friendships. And most people, if they've experienced a true friendship, I guess often you can kind of say that that might be found in marriage, you know, in a way. But, you know, even marriage is different because it's sacramental, you know, but, but if you have a true, true friendship, you can look throughout history or maybe people you've known. When a guy has a true friend, he will give up his wealth for that friend. He'll give up his reputation for that friend. Like he'll sacrifice anything for that friend. But you only get to have a couple of them. Yeah. But in heaven, you get to have perhaps thousands, I guess, a million. That's right. That's amazing. I think this is related to the perfect wisdom and perfect understanding that will know all the other souls there perfectly understand them perfectly and be united in this one, this one supreme love of God. So, there will no longer be any place for the things which separate human beings from each other, which is the fact that they don't understand each other or don't know each other, the fact that they're rivals, the fact that they have different values and are seeking different things because they will be united in the Kingdom of Heaven. So, they'll be not only the happiness which one experiences oneself, but the happiness which comes from these other souls whom one will love, also partaking in this same eternal joy. Which is the perfect segue to the next point. I mean, there's such a logical progression for Anselm here. I mean, these are connected. His background, there's a philosopher and a theologian. He's helping them. Yeah. I mean, it's not a coincidence that we went from friendship to now the next one on page 34 is Concord, where we don't have, how much of our life is made up of conflict and disagreement and argument.  That seems like huge stress really. I don't have to argue anymore. So, talk about what he means by Concord. Yeah. So, Concord is perfect harmony of will. And this perfect harmony of will comes about through the perfect union of the will of God. Now, with this life, of course, as you mentioned, there's a lot of conflict. It's not that every human soul fundamentally desires what's good, but we all understand what is good in a little different way and the best way to achieve it and so forth. So here, because that obstacle will be removed, there'll be this perfect Concord. And when you when you do experience perfect harmony with another people or group of people, it's a tremendous feeling. It's quite rare, but when it does happen, and it will be the prevailing state in the Kingdom of Heaven. I just like that in my house for a little bit, you know. No arguments in the house. Okay. Yes. I think the closest we get to it in this life is when everyone is asleep. That's true. Yeah, definitely. That's true at my house. The next one's power. Power. You can't have a talk about heaven very long until you start talking about power. Yeah. Now, this is very interesting. And this brings about a point that since our will will be in perfect harmony with the will of God, whatever we wish for, God will also wish for. They say whatever God wishes for, we will also wish for. Which means that in effect, we will find ourselves omnipotent, possessing all power. Whatever we will, we'll be done. I really will be able, if I make it, to move mountains. You will. Yeah. Because the mountains you want to move will be the same as the mountains God wants to move. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. That's great. Now, I love the next one on honor. Now, he begins this one with a great story, you know, about the beggar and king. Oh, yes. Do you remember that? Can you tell us that story? Okay. So, if we imagine there's this king and a beggar, a certain poor and wretched beggar from whom all solace is absent and who is afflicted with hideous ulcers and other foul wounds and infirmities. Now imagine that a most powerful and magnificent king is passing by and happens to see this poor wretched lying in the dirt by the wayside. And the king feels pity and compassion for the poor man and commands that his wounds be treated and healed, and that the beggar should be clothed in fine garments from his own stores. And he also goes on to adopt this wretched beggar as his very own son and henceforth commands that all the subjects of his kingdom are to regard him as his own adopted son. And so that no one is to belittle him or disparage him upon him anyway. Now think about the great honor which this beggar has received in being clothed by this magnificent king and adopted as his own son. Now, that's what's happened to every single human soul. We were in this state of wretched dejection and God himself, the king of the universe, has singularly chosen each one of us and clothed us with his honor and commanded that we be his adopted sons or daughters. So yeah, it's an awesome thing to think we will have that honor of being an adopted son of not just any king, but of the supreme king. I find it interesting, that's how Anselm decided to explain honor is by showing this honor, which we don't deserve being bestowed on us by somebody way above us. And that's why he tells that little parable. Yeah, we will have the dignity of true sons and daughters of God. On page 42, absolute security. Another interesting thing about heaven. I don't really think about that, but we live a whole lot of our lives without security. We do. And this, of course, varies. Sometimes we can be in a state of acute insecurity where we're not sure of of our status in the world of our future prosperity, our future survival even. But even when we feel relatively secure in this world, we're only relatively secure, not absolutely secure, because so much could happen. The unexpected could happen. But this will be completely removed in heaven. So we will then have absolute security, realizing that everything we possess, we possess eternally that nothing could be taken away from us. The final attribute that he gives is perfect joy. And that's interesting to me because joy is joy and happiness. I always kind of get confused on what the difference is between joy and happiness, but there's something very exciting about joy. So do you recall anything about this, about what perfect joy and heaven is like? It's almost, to me, it's almost like a summary of everything we just read come together. It is, it is. And he emphasizes also that this perfect joy is going to be multiplied by the fact that all the other souls whom we will all love and be in perfect harmony with will also be seeing this joy. So he says, if you have a perfect friendship and one of your friends has wonderful joy, you're also filled with joy. Now, this is going to be multiplied to a huge, extrapolated to a huge extent because of the very multitude of the souls in heaven. So the joy of everyone else will multiply one's own. If I could just read a little bit from here, he says, there shall be a thousand times a thousand souls who enjoy the perfection of happiness, or rather a thousand times a hundred thousand, or rather a number which is utterly incomprehensible and uncountable. And applying the principle we have just described, each one shall have their own joys multiplied in perceiving the joys of all the others. Yeah, that's great. It gives me some hope that there's a good number of people there. So, you know, on page, I'm going to skip ahead a little bit for the sake of time.  And this little section is entitled on the necessity of self-knowledge, confession, and humility. And, you know, in a previous podcast, you and I have talked about humility, you know, and how important that is. And he has some interesting things to say here about humility. But my mind focused in on one.  And he talks about what true humility is. Do you remember this? Yeah, can you talk about that a little bit? Okay, so he says, true humility comes about when you're prepared to accept your faults when other people identify them. And I think there's a lot of truth to this, that, you know, each of us, if we're asked, you know, what's a fault you have, we can probably name one or two or several. And we're okay with that. But then if someone else tells us one of our faults, we're not so okay with that.   And, you know, I think that's what he's saying is true humility is to be able to receive calmly and honestly other people finding our faults. If you think about it, it's other people really who are best qualified to tell us what our own faults are.  But whenever I interview people who want a job here, I'll say, okay, what are your faults? And they say, you know, I just really work too hard.  Give me something real, man, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I think this openness to having, to listening to the criticism of others.   And they might have had a practice back in the old days and monasteries where you stood up and kind of confessed yourself. You know, there is a practice which I'm not sure if any monasteries still do this, but there used to be what was called a chapter of faults, where each week you would go and say whatever your faults were, whatever you'd done wrong. And then the community would also add to that, oh, yes, and you've also done this wrong and this wrong. So I think probably it's wise that we don't have that anymore, I know, in our community and probably in most communities it would be a formula for disaster. Yeah, I guess the times have changed. At the end of this book, there's another part of this and it's called an exhortation to strive for the glories of heaven. And it's on page 74. And I just love how he starts it. He says, my friend, what is it that you're doing? I mean, I kind of hear him almost yelling at me. Why is it that like a beast, you immerse yourself so enthusiastically and avidly in the vein and ephemeral things of this passing world? And then he kind of lectures to us about how we got to get serious. As I read this, I felt a kick in the butt by my spiritual director, St. Anne Anselm. So this is a very powerful couple pages where he's talking directly to us very assertively, saying to restrain yourself from all earthly things, emulate the angels, and strive to make all your thoughts, desires chased and holy, free your soul from the chains which bind it to the passing vanities of the material realm. I mean, it's so strong, it's very, very strong. And it's almost encouraging.  That's what I experienced with this. Oh, yes, yes. This is such a powerful discourse. And these are some of the language which we don't hear so much these days, the vanities of this passing world and so forth. But yeah, there is this great wisdom and encouragement in this exhortation, you know, what are we doing? Our time here is limited that we were destined for somewhere else. We're just passing through here. We're letting ourselves, you know, it's a bit like a person on a journey, stopping too long to look at the scenery around them and getting too involved with what's going on while they're on the journey. Yeah, you got to get somewhere. The destination. Yeah, yeah. And the very last, I thought I would just read a little bit of the very last paragraph, second to last paragraph of the book. And he does something, Father, that I've never really done. He just does it in a slightly different way than I've ever considered it. He says, act and think now as if you are dead to the world and let the world be dead to you. Look at the glories of this passing sphere as if you are already amongst the dead and had left all mortal cares and aspirations far behind. Imagine that you're already resting in your tomb and that the wealth, honor and pleasure of this terrestrial orb mean nothing to you to not allow your heart to be infatuated with anything from which you are destined to be separated either sooner or later. For whatever you are not able to possess eternally, you never truly possess at all. And in the very last paragraph, do nothing for the sake of obtaining merely human praise or popular acclaim or public fame for such things involve much effort and anxiety, but they are really nothing at all. Instead, do everything for the sake of the eternal life and the everlasting unbound happiness of heaven, which if you but act justly, love tenderly and believe sincerely Christ in his infinite mercy and love shall most assuredly bestow upon you who with the Father in the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen. This is a powerful way to close this remarkable book.  And I love this volume because he's showing us how glorious our bodies will be in heaven. But we have to begin now by detaching ourselves from our bodies, from the devil's temptation and from the world. Indeed, indeed, indeed. And this detachment doesn't imply that, you know, that we don't do anything while we're here. We continue to do our duties to live the Christian life, to fulfill the Gospel, to serve God and to serve our fellow men. But we do it all as pilgrims passing through a strange land. We have no lasting dwelling here that what everything which is here today will be gone tomorrow, including ourselves. But this eternity which awaits us is so immense, so important that it should be our number one priority at all times. In closing, I'll just say that, you know, the reason I think this is such an important book for traditional Catholics is, you know, we have a tendency sometimes, Father, to overemphasize purgatory and hell and the devil and, you know, you know, traditional Catholics, we love the stories of exorcisms. I mean, we enjoy those things to some extent because it's interesting. But as you mentioned earlier, there's not a lot of books written about heaven. There's more books written about hell. And it's important for us Catholics to dwell on heaven seeing the prize that awaits us and not to become overly morbid by focusing too much on the negative things. And so I feel that this is very edifying, this is very uplifting, it's very motivational. And in fact, in my personal life, Father, I find thinking about what the glorified body can be as more motivational than just avoiding the pains of hell. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's absolutely right. We should give priority to meditating upon the joys of heaven rather than fear of hell.   And that that's what we're created for. So this is this is what our souls are made for. So we should spend time meditating upon heaven. Of course, we can never do it perfectly as himself himself knows. But whatever we do is is a step in the right direction and the motivation of reminding us why we're living the Christian life. Yeah. Well, thank you, Father. And in our next episode, we're going to just do a quick overview and conclusion of this man and his works and his influence St. Anselm and talk about how we think that he's a great model for us in our daily lives. So thank you for being here again. Thank you for your work translating this magnificent product by St. Anselm. And thanks for being here with us talking to our readership and listeners. God bless you. Thanks very much. God bless you. This has been an episode of The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction. To follow the show, learn about more inspiring holy men and women, and to get special offers exclusive to Spiritual Masters listeners, sign up at SpiritualMastersPodcast.com. And thanks for listening.


A very good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Harish Pat and I am the brand custodian at Tata Sons. It's my pleasure and privilege to address all of you at the India brand conclave this evening. I want to start by asking all of you a question. So, how old or how young the Tata brand is? If you do, you have come to a conclusion, put down the number of years on paper. The Tata brand this year, ladies and gentlemen, is 154 years of age. It was founded in the year 1868. The Tata group was founded in 1868 by a Parsi merchant of this very city, Mumbai, Jamsherji Tata. But the question I have for all of you is, how many brands can you think of? How many Indian brands or how many global brands can you think of which are more than 150 years old? I'm going to pause for half a minute because I really want to give you time to think of brands which are more than 150 years of age. All of you are marketers here. Some of you are very senior marketers. Some of you are aspiring marketers. Think of brands which are more than 150 years of age. How many can you think of? One, two, five, ten. I asked this question in many classes that I speak to. I get a few brands and there are a few brands which are more than 150 years of age, but they are very, very few. The question then arises in my mind as a marketer and as a historian of brands and marketing. Why has the Tata brand survived and flourished for 154 years and why does it continue to grow from strength to strength? The average age of a brand on the Fortune 500 list is 40 years. The average age of a medium-sized brand in this world is about 18 years, a medium-sized company. Companies come and go, but for some reason the Tata Group and the Tata brand has lived on and flourished and grown from strength to strength and it continues to grow from strength to strength today. It is India's most valuable brand today with a brand valuation of more than 26 million dollars and the only Indian origin brand in the top 100 in the world as per the Brand Finance Annual Report of 2023. This takes me back. The answer to this question is very, very relevant to all of us who want to build sustained brands. So this takes me back to the foundation of the Tata brand in 1868. Let's go back to the time this brand was founded and this group was founded. The first enterprise that was established by our founder Jamshiji Tata was a textile mill. The first category in which the Tata Group was present after the establishment of the Tata & Sons by Jamshiji Tata was a textile mill that he created in Nagpur called the Empress Mills. Now the Empress Mills soon became a very, very profitable enterprise. It was established in Nagpur in the heartland of the cotton industry. Jamshiji Tata used the best quality of long stapled cotton for the textiles that he made there. He used the most modern innovations like the ring spindle which had not even been used in the UK at that time to make the textiles that were woven there and it soon became one of India's most profitable enterprises. But that is not why I'm narrating the story. He did a few things in the Empress Mills which are memorable until today. In the 1870s and 1880s, he introduced in the Empress Mills accident insurance for his workers. Soon thereafter in the 1880s, he introduced a pension fund for workers of the Empress Mills and these were semi-educated or uneducated women who came from the hinterlands of Nagpur. In 1901, he did something that all of us who work in corporates today see every month on our facelifts. He introduced the concept of the Provident Fund. He introduced Provident Fund for his workers in the mills. And a few people went to him and asked him, why are you doing all this? Why are you spending so much money on the welfare of workers? After all, wealth belongs to shareholders, doesn't it? And Jamshaji Tata in a speech in 1895 said, we are not more generous or more philanthropic than others. We believe that the success of our shareholders, the wealth we create for our shareholders is indeed very, very important. But we also believe that the welfare of our workers and the welfare of our community is central to our enterprise and is a very, very important foundation on which we build the tomorrows of our enterprise. He said that because he had come to believe that the community is center stage in an organization. An organization exists in Jamshaji Tata's views for the sake of the community. Indeed, brands like yours and mine have to make a lot of profits, have to earn economic wealth. But he believed that eventually that wealth should go back to the community. And he set out his vision of a group and a brand where the community is center stage and not another stakeholder. It's fashionable to say that in today's day and age, where conscious capitalism is repeated like a mantra by many, many people and indeed it's the right mantra to repeat. But what his sons and he did thereafter was a master stroke of conscious capitalism. What they did, his sons Durabji Tata and Siratantata, what they did was they transferred their wealth, charitable trusts and thereby the parent company of the Tata group, Tata sons became majority owned by the Tata charitable trusts. That was quite unheard of. Very, very few corporations in the world are owned by charitable trusts. But more than 100 years after Jamshaji Tata and his sons did that, Tata sons today, the holding company of the Tata group is still 66% owned by the Tata charitable trusts. What does this mean? This means that of all the profits that the Tata group generates through dividends, 66% of the dividends are issued to the Tata charitable trusts. And what do the trusts use these for? Over the years, they've used them for the building of the Tata Memorial Hospital at Parail, the Tata Cancer Hospital in Kolkata, seven new Tata Cancer hospitals which have recently been inaugurated in Assam, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, education, water facilities, the National Center for Performing Arts, NCPA in Mumbai and a host of other institutions. In fact, when COVID-19 came upon us just three years ago, in March 2020, Mr. Ratan Tata who is the chairman of the Tata Trust and Mr. Chandrasekharan who is chairman of Tata sons jointly announced that the Tata group would commit 1,500 crores in the fight against COVID-19 as a continuation of that focus of the community. And I felt very proud that day because it reinforced what we stand for as a group, that the community is set the stage for us. What this means, ladies and gentlemen, is that the Tata brand, the Tata trademark is of course owned by Tata sons. But emotionally, and for many, many reasons, the Tata brand is emotionally owned by the people of India. It belongs to the people of India. It's a brand which I think has transcended being a commercial brand and become in many people's mind their own brand. That happens when you put the community center stage. When over years and over decades, you do what you think is right for the community. Then I think the brand transcends commercial boundaries and becomes an institution that people resonate with very, very strongly. That indeed is the story of the Tata brand. It has done a number of things for the community over the past 150 years of its existence, some of which I've already pointed out, some of India's finest institutions, finest universities, the fight for health, the national water mission, the cancer grid, and I can go on and on and on. But I suffice it to say that the community lies at the heart of the Tata group's success over the past 150 years. GRD Tata, who was a chairman for more than 50 years, said the philosophy of the Tata group is that what comes from the people must go back to the people time and time and again. What that does for a brand is very important since all of you here and me myself are marketers. When a brand exists in harmony with its community, when a brand contributes to its community, then I think it also builds a lot of trust. People see the brand doing that time and again over years, over decades, over a century. But that is one of the pillars of the Tata brand, the fact that the community is center stage for us in everything that we do and that is the central idea that underpins Tata. But the other central idea which underpins brand Tata is that we have chosen to invest in industries which are very important to our niche, industries which lie in the confluence of national interest and business opportunity. Let me give you some examples. Let me narrate a story to you. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Jamshedji Tata felt that India needed its own steel mill to make steel. He said India should not depend on foreign countries for all its steel. It should not depend on the UK for all its steel. Remember, we were still ruled by the British at that time. He went round the world, found the right technologist, brought him to India. One of the finest metallurgical engineers of the world, Charles Page Perini, attracted him to India to put up India's first integrated steel plant which came up at Sakshi, now called Jamshedji. That is the plant and that is the brand you now know as Tata Steel which is one of the finest brands in the country. As they say, we also make tomorrow, we also make steel but it is the company that came in because of Jamshedji Tata's love for India. He wanted India to have its own steel plant. More than 40 years later, J.R.D. Tata thought India needs aviation. He said aviation is essential to a country's progress and therefore he began at that time what was called Tata Airlines. Tata Airlines is the airline that later became Air India. At some stage it was nationalized by the Government of India and very recently, just about a year back, the Tata's have acquired it back and it's back in our group now. But the reason why Air India began was J.R.D. Tata's love for aviation and his strong belief that a country to advance requires aviation, requires quick air transport. And it went on to become a business where I mean it was one of the finest airlines in the world in the 1960s and 1970s to the extent that when the Singapore Premier League when you was thinking of an airline for Singapore he said go and study J.R.D. Tata's airline in India and find out what has made it tick. But let me give you a more recent example. If you come to the 2000s, 1990s and 2000s, Mr. Ratan Tata who is now the Chairman Emeritus of our group and the Chairman of the Tata Trust, at that time he was the Chairman of Tata Suns, he was convinced that India needed its own car, its own indigenous car. At that stage India had the Maruti 800, the Hyundai Centro, but these were cars which were designed in Japan and Korea and assembled in India. He wanted a car which was completely indigenous, made for Indian families to Indian specifications using Indian ancillary parts. Once again people were skeptical of his aid but he said we would invest in this because it is important for a nation when a nation has an automobile industry it sets new levels of engineering excellence. And it's a story which can be told, I can narrate the story in great detail but at that time he had to actually... Telco or Tata Motors was a small company. He had to invest more than 2 billion dollars in creating a new car plant because Telco did not have the money, his team and he went across the world found a disused Nissan car plant in Australia. Brick by brick the disassembled it in Australia brought it to Pune, set it up in Pune. He got his engineering research center people to create the designs along with idea of tuning for what the Indica should look like. A car as large as the ambassador, as stylish as the Zen and as fuel efficient as the Maruti and that is how the Tata Indica was born. There were some initial quality hiccups but eventually by 2002-2003 the Tata Indica V2 went on to become the fastest selling car in India. That is the company which today produces the Tata Harrier, the Tata Nexon, the Tata Punch is the leader in electric vehicles in India but the origins of that company were in the creation of the Tata Indica India's first indigenous car. If you take the Tata brand forward a few years after that the creation of India's first major branded jewelry company, Tanishk which I was fortunate to be part of for several years the creation of India's first Iodized branded salt at a national level Tata Salt which reaches 700 million consumers across the country today may be more more than half of India's population garnishes its food with Tata Salt or if you go even further and take Tata New India a super app which has been created for India or you take the entire thrust towards electric vehicles which Tata Motors is leading with today and it's by far the market leader in India today because it's important for sustainable development of the country and good for the planet but at the same time we are grateful that tens of thousands of consumers are taking to driving electric vehicles in the country today. So if you take each of these ladies and gentlemen you will see that over the years and over the decades from steel to airlines to trucks to cars to IT services more than 50 years ago IS was founded by the Tata Group Tata Consultancy Services which is today India's bellwether and flagship of its IT industry I've talked about branded jewelry I've talked about branded salt so if you go virtually every decade you can find that the Tata Group reinvents itself and how does it reinvent itself by founding businesses which are at that very sharp confluence of business opportunity and national interest and believe that the second big pillar of the Tata brand is its pioneering instinct it's pioneering but at the same time pioneering of industries which are which contribute to the development of the nation. So pull back a little bit and think about what I've told you in the last 15 to 18 minutes first I have said the community is set to stage for the Tata brand and I give you many examples of the institutions created by the Tata Trust but I also told you that the Tata brand is eventually owned through Tata and Suns by the Tata Trust who are the majority shareholders of Tata and the second thing that I told you is the pioneering instinct of the Tata brand of the Tata Group in creating new businesses in creating new product categories new industries which are extremely important for the growth and development of our nation and of course it's very important when you do that to create excellent quality of products and services which are trusted by customers only then will customers come and buy the products and services that you make and the Tata Group is committed to that we have within the group the Tata business excellence model which emphasizes that excellence of products and services is very very important so these ladies and gentlemen are the three pillars of the Tata brand the community the instinct and a commitment to excellence the highest quality of products and services it is these three pillars together which constitute what the Tata brand is in the minds of people and it is the combination of these three pillars together which leads to trust in the minds and hearts of every Indian and indeed even customers outside the world who partake of products and services by the Tata brand so if you go on to the streets of the country today and I do that sometimes and ask people what do they think of Tata one common answer that I always get is that we can trust products and services that Tata makes that's what also comes out in the brand tracks that we do when we ask people about the Tata brand that poses a great responsibility on us in the Tata Group when your consumers and your stakeholders trust you then we have to ensure that we nurture that trust for the future we have to ensure that the 150 years that have gone by which have been dedicated to nation building the next 150 years and more are also dedicated to the same cause therefore I know I may be running out of time now I had a 20 minute session to deliver to you what I'd like to mention to you is that as you think about great brands as you think about iconic brands as you think about brands that have become institutions I would say the one the biggest learning that I've had and something that all of us should think about is why does your brand exist just like the Tata brand is dedicated to the community and nation building what is the core reason why your brand exists what is the core reason why your brand will be missed if it does not exist today if your brand will be missed if it does not exist then I think you're serving a core need of the consumer a core need of the society and community around you that is a single message ladies and gentlemen that I'd like to deliver to all of us today that the core purpose of the brand is what is important and if that core purpose is in harmony with your community and society and consumers and all your stakeholders then you have a good chance at longevity then you have a good chance that your brand will continue to grow and flourish into many years and many decades into the future there are many brands which do this very successfully across the world, Tata being one of them and I hope that this brief address from my side has left a few key messages for you to take back with you I'd like to thank the organizers of the India brand conclave for giving me this valuable opportunity of speaking to all of you and I hope that the words that I've put forward to you will resonate and there will be at least an idea or you or idea or two that you take out of this address thank you very much for giving me this opportunity and I wish all of you a wonderful week thank you


How has your view of yourself as a teacher leader, a presenter changed? I don't think, to be honest with you, I don't really think my view has changed all that much. I don't mind presenting, if I'm presenting something I personally value. So it really hasn't changed much, I guess. I am not a presenter. But she did a very nice job and so it gave me a little bit of confidence to do it. So hopefully the more I can get involved. Our presentation went off without a hitch. We did a great job.


What's up everybody just in for Jasper's case breaks calm 2021 panini immaculate baseball four-box Pikachu number one sells out with this R&B that sold out includes the Yankees Angel Seahawks Chicago White Sox Philadelphia Phillies and the Washington Nationals So again guys first we do the randomizer here everybody gets a random number from zero through nine And we go by the left side of the serial number dash so first number on the left side So for example if you get blocked through randomized to you and you get a card number 243 out of 299 that goes to block 3 13 out of 99 goes to block 3 3 out of 25 Etc. Etc. Remember all redemption cards go automatically the spot zero even if we know it's a one-on-one and still goes to spot zero and then of course Any non numbered cards are randomized to the group So here you go. Here's a dice Roller. Here's a customer names Linda and Joe There you go zero 39 So let's roll it Six and a three nine times. Good luck one two three four six seven eight and nine So there you go six and a three nine times Brad at the top down to Joe and here we go So again three nine times nine times one two three four six Seven eight eight down to two Brad with eight Peter with one Jeremy with four Brad Paul you have zero any in our redemptions Linda with six We're actually a five Matthew with three seven Edward's sorry three and nine Edward seven and Joe with two and of course Peter with one any one-on-ones All right you guys so coming up next video is the break itself. Good luck everybody


Right. Hi, welcome everyone to a Child's Christmas in San Francisco, which is a conversation with author John Briscoe and Ralph Lewin. My name is Taryn Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the Mechanics Institute. For those of you who are unfamiliar with mechanics, we are a 166-year-old independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest in fact designed to serve the public in California. We're also a cultural event center and a world-renowned chess club that is the oldest in the nation. Right now, due to the pandemic, almost all of our activities are virtual, but I encourage you to consider becoming a member with us. It's only $120 a year and with that you help support our continued contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. I'd like to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, Kimberly Scrafano. She joined the Institute in July of 2019 and thanks Kimberly for hosting with me tonight. Sure. Thank you so much. I really appreciate having the opportunity to be part of this great program. I just want to welcome all of our guests and presenters and I'm sure both of these distinguished folks need no introduction, but I will try my best to do them justice. First, it's my honor to welcome John Briscoe, a member of Mechanics Institute for more than 17 years. So thank you for sticking around with us for so long. We really appreciate it. John is a poet, an author, and an attorney and he's also co-owner of Sam's Grill, the fifth oldest restaurant in the United States. He has generously donated wonderful, exquisite food over the years and I heard there was even some delivery, which is which is always wonderful. But more than that, he's published poetry, articles, and prose, including several books. He's also a senior partner at a San Francisco law firm and has argued and tried numerous cases including before the United States Supreme Court. He's also served a special advisor to the United Nations and is a distinguished fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. John is also served on the advisory board of the Creative Writing MFA program at St. Mary's College in California and he sits on the board of several historical societies and other organizations as well. And joining John in conversation about his new book is Ralph Lewin, the previous executive director at Mechanics Institute and Ralph has been instrumental in helping develop Mechanics Institute's stronger partnerships and enhancing programming while he was here. He also previously served as president and CEO of Cal Humanities and currently is the executive director and chair of the Peter E. Haas Junior Family Fund. He's also been on numerous boards focused on cultural and educational endeavors and he joins John in discussing his new book, picking up a bit on the their previous conversation, I believe where they talked about John's book Crush, The Triumph of California Wine. And I was just sort of mentioning that I just got a chance to read John's new book as well and I encourage all of you, if you can, to take a look at it. It was a wonderful read and very beautifully laid out. And now I will turn it over to John and Ralph. Thank you. Oh, thanks very much, Kimberly. Taryn, I just wanted to thank you and your other staff members and the board of Mechanics Institute for inviting me and John to be with you tonight and also thank the audience, many of whom are members of Mechanics Institute and if you're not a member, I ask you to consider joining and if you are a member, man, a Mechanics Institute gift membership is just an incredible holiday gift. It's kind of like a badge of honor that people who love San Francisco should wear. So speaking of honor, what a pleasure to be back with you, John, at Mechanics Institute. Virtually, I wish we were there in person, but so it goes. And Kimberly talked a little bit about your background and one thing I, you know, we've talked a little bit about, but I think what would be interesting to learn a little bit more about is your childhood. This is a child's Christmas in San Francisco. What was your childhood like? You grew up in San Francisco, didn't you? Well, much of my childhood was, and thank you, Ralph, and Kimberly and Taryn. I want to thank you both also for this opportunity. I love Mechanics for the folks in the audience. What's behind Ralph is the magnificent library at the Mechanics Institute, which is to be seen and to be lived in if you haven't seen it before. Yes, much of my early childhood was in San Francisco in North Beach at 630 Lombard Street and it was a magical city that I fell in love with them. I was rusted away to have to live with my parents in Stockton. I was living with my grandmother. We boarded with a lady at 630 Lombard Street and I yearned for the day that I could be free and return to San Francisco. It was a wonderful time. It was magical. The end of the, I was not quite old enough to remember the end of World War II, but I remember well the end of the Korean War. And the city was one magnificent party and everywhere my grandmother and our landlady, Mrs. Giacomozzi, took us. I was the star of the show and I could never figure that out, because, you know, five-year-old kid, six-year-old kid. Until years later when I realized, all these servicemen who were getting ready to muster out, I am the son they hadn't seen in three years or had never seen. And that's why I was such a star. Anyway, kind of hard not to like San Francisco after a start like that. What was North Beach in particular like in those days? What memories do you have of North Beach as kind of a neighborhood in the city, in the place that it held? Very much as it is today oddly, so many people talk about the great changes that have occurred in San Francisco. But as I walked North Beach and for 10, 11 years, my office was right at the foot of Telegraph Hill. So North Beach was a quick walk for lunch and it hasn't changed much. When I was growing up, the boundary between Chinatown and North Beach, Broadway, had been broken. There were a lot of Chinese families in North Beach. And mind you, I'm living with my grandmother who was an Indian woman from Mexico. And our landlady who was a Spaniard, she, her late husband was Italian. So it wasn't an Italian household, but everybody around was Italian and Chinese. And the Wong family lived in the building at the corner of Mason and Lombard, that'd be the northeast corner. And Mr. Wong had the grocery store was down below and they lived upstairs. And Eddie was my good buddy. And what was our playground? Well, right across the streets the Northeast playground and the North Beach branch of the library. So this was the whole world two blocks up was Liguria, Bakery, with the great Italian breads, and St. Peter and Paul Church, of course, and Fisherman's Wharf, not too far, was my world. Beautiful. Were you one of those kids that grew up going to the library and kind of having an inkling from the early age that, you know, storytelling, that writing was going to be part of your life from early on? I don't remember that it was the library, but I do remember storytelling, because storytelling was in the family, both sides of the family, the Irish side as well. And poetry was everywhere. So it was, it was just in me, I can't explain it. Nobody said this is really important, it just was important. It seemed to apprehend it. Well, you certainly have. I mean, you've been prolific as of late in terms of the writing that you've been doing and the publishing. You know, last time we were together at Mechanics, we discussed your book Crush about the history of the wine industry, which I thought was a wonderful, wonderful book and exploration into that part of California's history. Book Prior to Crush, I think was a poetry, right? That's correct. The book Prior to Crush was called The Lost Poems of Chang'an. And these are, I mean, nobody's listening, right? It's just you and me, so like, keep away a secret. It's between us. Okay. These are translations from ancient Chinese 4,650 years ago, which makes them the oldest known poetry on earth, older than the Epic of Gilgamesh, older than the hymns of Anhodwana, which are about 150 years older. This is from Akkad in what's today, Iraq. In truth, I wrote the whole thing. It's a friendly literary hoax, if you will. But it was an attempt to write poetry that you can't write today. There are two types of poetry that are banned by the PC police, if you notice. You and I have had some conversations about this. One is light verse. Oh, no, that's just off limits. You cannot do that. Poetry is a deadly serious thing. It's about those deep internal thoughts that one has while walking the iris center on the college green. Because these thoughts are more important than anything else in the world, right? And the others love poetry. I have no idea because poetry had to have begun as a means to try to express the emotion love in all of its infinite facets. But it was the last time any of us read just good old-fashioned love poetry in poetry magazine, the American Poetry Review in the New Yorker. But the last poems of Chanja, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, that was an effort to find out what would be a very, very old poetry. And it assumed it would be largely love poetry. Why do you think our culture shifted away from, say, love poetry? I have no idea. I mean, I can speculate in the way that, well, maybe it's this, and then 30 seconds later, I realize I'm wrong about it. But it's interesting that just take San Francisco alone, which has been a literary hub since the Gold Rush. Bret Hart founded the Overland Monthly. Gillette Burgess founded The Lark, a literary magazine in 1895. I never saw a purple cow. I hope I'll never see one, but I will tell you anyhow I'd rather see than be one. 70% of Americans knew that poem, and about half of Americans knew it by heart by 1900. But why is life poetry out of fashion? I don't know. Why is left poetry to come back to San Francisco? There was a poet here when I was young and into my college years here named Rod McEwen. And he wrote love poems. The two titles that come readily to mind are Listen to the Warm, and Stanion Street, and Other Sorrows. And these were wildly successful, as I remember. All bookstores carried them, went into 16th, 18th, 20th printings. The guy made money off this poetry. He also was a musician and a songwriter and so forth. But I remember my English teachers in college, Rod McEwen, I don't know, but the academy was trying to diminish this, even though it was so popular. And so if you liked it, you were sneered at by the academy. And if you wanted to become a statistician, you had to get your liking for Rod McEwen's type of poetry out. And maybe the same thing happened with light verse, which like left poetry has been around since poetry has been around. Let's turn a little bit to this new book and I'll hold it up. I hope people can see it. It's kind of fading. Anyway, there it is. And A Child's Christmas in San Francisco, it has, it's chock full of light verse and it's beautiful. And it's, you've had two heavy weights in the poetry world come out and say really great things about the book. Joe Parisi, the former editor of Poetry Magazine called it a big hearted charmer of a book. Robert has the former U.S. poet laureate called it handsome, fiendishly ingenious. And these are wonderful words for this kind of poetry that many are not paying attention to. So you're getting some attention among heavy weights. So that's really wonderful and they have great things to say. What was the genesis of this book, John? I think maybe the Exodus is more important, however I escaped this. But the genesis, Ralph, was nothing more than the same imagination that goes into a great, not that this is great, but that the same imagination that prompts a sculptor to create something and you're not quite sure what it is or a painting or what have you. The genesis literally was recalling one day, I think at the office, it was a Tuesday. And I'm walking through the office and somebody said, happy Tuesday. And I turned at the person and I growled, this was a much younger person than I growled, Tuesday is Red's Tamale Day. And that person just looked at me, shocked. Like, what did you say? And I said, no, you understand. We're back when the last millennium, there was a radio station in San Francisco that everybody listened to. Nobody listened to any other one. It was KSFO. They had the Great Don, Sherwood, Jasbo Collins and so forth. But these commercials would run on the air and you'd hear this absolutely memorable voice that would say, Tuesday is Red's Tamale Day. Well, Red's Tamales were a pre-packaged, I think they were frozen, Tamale. And they were advertised all over San Francisco. I mean, you just couldn't escape that. And there was something so memorable about that voice. I later learned that voice, and you can YouTube it or whatever, that voice was the voice of Mel Blank, the voice of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, all the Warner Brothers voices. The voice of Farms and Merkley, that's Mel Blank too. And there was just something memorable about that because at the playground or at school, if it was Tuesday, we would say Tuesday is Red's Tamale Day. And then poems got made up about it. Or I made up the fact that poems were made up about it. I'm not really sure at this point where the creativity leaves off and the memory resumes. Memory, shaping this book as kind of the Child's Christmas in San Francisco, there's a lot of great writing. And I guess the title is related to Dylan Thomas's work, Child's Christmas in Wales, is that right? Well, I'm shameless about this. Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet, wrote, talk about a charmer of a story. It is just a heartbreak and a charmer of a story, a child's Christmas in Wales. And I will confess that the sound of that title was in my head. And I have to say that Dylan Thomas's wife's name was Caitlyn, and your wife was named for Caitlyn Thomas. There's a connection here. But yes, but this book is nothing like A Child's Christmas in Wales, except that there's a lot of fancy in it, a lot of whimsy, some memory, and some a lot of imagination. Memory seems, to me, it plays a big role. I read the book not once, not twice, but three times now in the past 48 hours I've had it. I really am enchanted with the book. I find that every time I read through it, there's something that I see anew. And that might just be a fraction of myself. But I think it's just a clever and thought provoking book. But one of the things that I find myself wondering about is kind of how you're able to, in my mind, capture some of the essence of San Francisco. And I'm wondering if that's something you sought out to do, or if you think that's right. And if so, how you would think about what is the essence of San Francisco that you capture? I think there is no one essence of San Francisco. It has many essences, which is one of the charming things, the maddening things, the beguiling things, the entrapment things about the city. Nobody writes about Fresno as they write about San Francisco. I mean, William Saroyan came closest, but what did he do? He moved to San Francisco. It's ineffable, a word I love, not sure I exactly know what it means, but it's something like indescribable, ineffable, ineffable. And I was grasping for a whole bunch of things here. The history of food and drink in San Francisco, and not high-brow food drink. I mean, bullpup enchiladas, bullpup tacos, the it's it at Playland. Rets tamales, no, but Roosevelt's tamales, or tortolas or what have you. I mean, this is not cuisine. This is peasant food. This is ordinary food, but it was so San Francisco, and schoolchildren are very inventive, and they do ditties. They haven't been yet told that light versus wrong, right?  They just do. Or funny lyrics, you know, not necessarily dirty, but they go into dirty, and I got into my share of trouble. That's what kids do. And what did the adults drink? Martinis, you know? So it had to be in here. And that great couple, Gino and Esther, you know, the Italian kid who went to Galileo, and the Jewish girl from the Mission District, who of course went to Lowell, you know, and they were the masters. They had the greatest Monday poem forever, but when they broke up, one long night's walking ocean beach, they vowed they would never ever recite that poem again, and only they could do it. Nobody else could remember it, and it's lost for the ages. Tragic. Oh, it is. There's some tragic stuff in here. This one breaks my heart. I mean, you know, I remember when I was at Mechanics Institute, I learned a little bit about Pisco Punch, and Pisco Punch plays a prominent role in the book, and I'm wondering if you could talk about it. I think Saturday is, of course, Pisco Punch Day. And there's a wonderful photo in the book of the House of Pisco. That's kind of hard to come through, but it's a beautiful photo, and there's so many great photos in the book. But I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about Pisco and Pisco Day and maybe the Diddy. Okay. Well, Pisco finds its way. Pisco is a Peruvian brandy. And at Duncan Nichols Bank Exchange Saloon in the Montgomery block, which that's the trans-American pyramid today, I believe. I should know. But anyway, it was served there. The recipe has disappeared, and it's taken on mythic proportions. What was Pisco Punch? And there are so many marbles. I had to actually cut a lot of historical references to Pisco Punch. But the manager of this huge block-long building where the saloon was, Oliver Perry Stigerm, likened Pisco Punch, quote, to the scimitar of Haroon, whose edge was so fine that after a slash, a man walked on unaware that his head had been severed from his body until his knees gave way and he fell to the ground dead. Now, that's something to write about. And many people have. Or experience. There's a whole long article written in the California Historical Society's Journal and 40 years ago, the secrets of Pisco Punch, only in San Francisco. Do we think about stuff like this? Only in San Francisco? My gosh. It's a bit like, where did Drake land? Yeah. I mean, millions and millions of research hours have been spent on that. Obviously, he landed at Drake's Bay. I mean, it's called Drake's Bay. Isn't that where he landed? I don't know. Listen, you dedicated the book to Warren Hinkle, and I know you were good friends with Warren Hinkle. And why did you dedicate this book to him? And maybe you can tell us a little bit about what he meant to you, to writing and to San Francisco. Well, Warren was a dear friend. And I miss him greatly. He died in August of 2016. He was ahead of me at college. He went to USF, the University of San Francisco, distinguished from the University of South Florida. I was appalled to learn that some other upstart school had the same initials. And he was legendary. He took the little college newspaper there and made it one of the finest instruments of journalism in the world. The USF Foghorn became famous. He was a phenomenal writer. He had gone to Reardon High School. When he was the senior and the editor of the Foghorn, senior, maybe junior, a young freshman from St. Ignatius, well, from an orphanage who then got into St. Ignatius, who is at USF and comes in and he wants to be a reporter for the Foghorn. So he has to interview with Warren Hinkle, the great one. And this fellow, bow tie, the sport coat. He shows some writing samples to Hinkle. And Hinkle says, after about 20 minutes of this, he said, well, it's 1130. You've passed the office portion of the interview. Now it's off the remainder of it. Well, what's that? Asked the young student. We're hitting the bars in North Beach. The young student was Kevin Starr. Those two became the closest of friends, the greatest historian of California ever, Kevin, and the wildest writer since when? We've had a lot of wild writers in California in San Francisco. Warren went on to a great career, Hunter S. Thompson. We wouldn't know of Hunter S. Thompson if it weren't for Warren. He was a discoverer of talent. He assigned Hunter S. Thompson to cover the 1970 Kentucky Derby. That story, 50 years old now. That story is considered one of the four or five best sports stories ever written in the 20th century. Now, Hinkle was a fabulous editor. And no one will ever know how much of that story was actually Hinkle as opposed to Thompson. And ESPN has an interview with Warren maybe 10 years before his death about resting that story out of Thompson, getting it, okay? Forcing him to write. Kidnapped him in a hotel room in New York. And it's a fabulous story. But Hinkle valued writing, valued good writing, valued writing for a purpose, and valued writing really well for fun. And I admired him so much for all of this. Martini Monday, the story that's there is in part, in large part, lifted from an essay that he asked me to write a number of years ago.  John, John, I need you to do me a favor. And so on and on, you haven't gotten behind the wheel of a car, have you? He was known to have a drink or two. Yeah. No, no, no, I want you to write me a story. And it was the story of the, the true story of the birth of the Martini. Then I thought, okay, I've got three or four months. He said, no, no, I need it Friday. I said, this is Wednesday. And I did it. I did it. And it was great fun. So the story there in the book is 99% historical fact and 1% BS. Nice. We'll leave the readers to guess which 1% is the best. So just staying with the Hinkle connection, this is published by Last Gasps Press, which is a wonderful San Francisco house. Publishers of the weird and wonderful. How did you get connected with Last Gasps and how did you decide that they were a good fit for this book? Well, that's your last question. It might be turned the other way around. How did they decide that this book would be a good fit for their esteemed publishing house? But Ron Turner founded Last Gasps 50 years ago this year. His son, Colin, is doing a lot of the heavy, heavy lifting today and their friends. Ron was a great friend of Warren Hinkle's and of the whole writing and publishing community in San Francisco. He's a marvelous, warm-hearted fellow. And I can't quite remember. I mean, when he asked, when we got serious about this, he said, what genre is this manuscript of yours? And I said, well, it has no known genre. I don't know. Anyway, you look at all these pigeonholes, I can't fit this thing into anyone. Well, how would you describe it? I said, it's a nostalgia for a time that never was. But we talked about it and they publish a lot of weird stuff. The comics are classic. I mean, they're one of the great publishers in the world in that field. But they also published Hinkle's posthumous Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson? Question mark.  Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. But the mere posing of the question asks so many things. This book is a 250, 60 page introduction by Warren about his good friend Hunter S. Thompson and then essays from 30, 40 other people about Thompson, including then Governor Jerry Brown. And it's an absolutely astounding exploration of a literary phenomenon. It's not just Thompson. It's also Hinkle and the whole circle that is all gone now. So I feel very honored to have this book brought out by Last Gasp, particularly in light of not only their 50 years, but that particular book Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson. Well, it seems like a perfect marriage. And I think, not only is the writing it's really poignant, provocative, filled with feeling. But I think it's also a beautiful book in the way it's laid out. And I think the images that were selected are amazing. Can you talk a little bit about some of those images? Yes. And I have to adopt my hat to my editor and the designer, Tom Christon, who I hope is listening. Tom is a remarkable fellow. We've been friends for six or seven years. He edited and designed The Lost Poems of Chancha for me. Tom has a PhD in comparative lit, as I remember, from the University of Wisconsin. So I mean, he's deeply into literature. He was the number two person at North Point Press, ran Mercury House for 10 years. And then for 17 years was the publications director at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. So think of all those magnificent coffee table books and what not. He's also a translator of poetry, of latter 20th century Spanish poetry. And if you liked Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, you can thank Tom. He's the translator of that. Oh, beautiful. But he read the manuscript and he asked if he could do the design working with glass gas. So the dust jacket, which is very arresting and is very deliberately not green and red. The Hughes are not. But he found a very, very old postcard, which is, well, it's no older than 1937 because of the Bay Bridge or 1936. But you can tell by the buildings in the background, he superimposed Santa and the sled. And he laid it out. He came up with the size. He selected the photographs, put her marvelous and laid everything out. I should give a shout out to Bedeen Bakery because Wednesday is sour dough day. And that's Papa Stefano Giordano on page 12. So that's a real, you know, Papa Stefano was the head baker at Bedeen Bakery. And that's him with those numbers. Well, you got just some amazing characters in here.  So what I'd like to do at this moment is turn it over to Taryn and Kimberly. And maybe they have some questions to fire at you. Yes, speaking of characters. Let's go back to Warren Hinkel. And Cynthia has a question for you, John. How were you able to beat Warren Hinkel from being the first to write A Child's Christmas in San Francisco? Did you have a conversation about these poems? Yes, we had, we had many conversations about all such things. And Warren just sadly died before me. Otherwise, I'm sure he would have written a much better book than this. So lots of Calamari fueled lunches at Sam's? Well, yeah, Calamari, but we pretended every day was Monday, which meant it was martini day. So we had a, we had a martini for in honor of Hinkel. I have my glass here, which is empty. I've been abstaining on all during this presentation. But yes, we had, we formed what we call the Warren Hinkel Roundtable at Sam's. And Taryn, you sat there at that table. It started at that round table in the corner. It was named by Kevin Starr. But we had, there were dinners, and we talked about San Francisco history, about the importance of history, the importance of literacy, the importance of poetry, how do we impart it to the next generation, the importance of fun in it all, because if it isn't fun, it's not going to take. And so that's one of the reasons that I dedicated this to Warren, because he was all about, you got to make it fun. You got to really tickle the reader or the student or the child. Great answer. I didn't know that that round table in the corner was, was named for him. Well, when we had, yeah, it was the poor man's round table from the Algonquin Hotel. And it was named by Kevin Starr. I mean, Hinkel when he was there, he was always, he was always there until he got very sick. And then he died. He was our chair and included people like Jim Haas, Charles Frockia, Charles Fahlhaber from Berkeley, you know, many people, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And when Hinkel got sick and then died, Kevin became Kevin Starr. The great historian became our chair. But Kevin died only five months later, January of 2017. And then Ernie Bile, great North Beach flannur, as he called himself. Six four six. That's a great word. I love that word. But Ernie wrote a column for the, he'd been a Chronicle writer. He wrote a column for the Marine at times. He became our chair. And then Ernie died on his 90th birthday. And so we don't have chairs anymore, because when your name's chair, you're going to die soon, it seems like. So there was another question from Cynthia Murray, and it just said, what was your favorite Christmas poem as a child, John? My faith, oh my gosh, I know a Cynthia Murray and God help her if this is the same Cynthia Murray who has tough, but my favorite Christmas poem as I'm not sure I had one. I've that's a very disappointing answer to me, especially, but I done pops into my head. Now, John, what are you doing to make sure that that the literary and historical traditions of San Francisco carry on other than writing books and maybe hosting lunches at Sam's? Well, as you know, I like to support the Mechanics Institute and all that it does to support the literary institutions. And at the San Francisco Historical Society, where I'm lucky enough to be the president now, when we reopen, we have this marvelous museum at 608 Commercial Street, where we've already had literary events until we only got the museum last August. But it's how can we do it? Incidentally, that museum, that building, 608 Commercial Street, that was the first mint west of the Mississippi. It became a United States mint. And Bret Hart was hired, I believe, as the superintendent of the Mint with a nice budget. What did Bret Hart do as the superintendent of the Mint? He founded the Overland Monthly, a fabulous literary magazine right there. I think he spent all his time on that. You look at volume one, 1868, I want to say, the year before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. And you read, he has poems by Ena Klubreff. She was the first poet laureate of California. A guy named Mark Twain writes all of these stories, the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County. Bret Hart, the luck of roaring camp, and so many other great West Coast writers found it right there. All people who came from someplace else, they weren't native San Franciscans because they were the Olones, and they actually were welcomed into this new society that had come here. But I hope to do my part in the remainder of my life to foster a love and enjoyment of literature. Doing great so far, providing your own. Thank you. Thank you. That's another question. So what do you view as the most magical place in San Francisco during the Christmas season? Oh Kimberly, there are too many magical places in San Francisco, but if I've got to pick one, it's Land's End, where there's the remains of the bridge of the USS San Francisco or Little Sutro Park that hardly anybody knows of that overlooks the Cliff House. These are magical places. Yeah, Little Sutro is a very beautiful place. Yes. So what, there's a question from Will. What is your next book? Do you have anything in the hopper? Well, I've got a book of serious poetry. I've got three. A book of serious poetry, and I don't know what the working title is, maybe cold coffee. Another book of light verse called, what has three super titles and then a title, but let's just call it fish feathers. It's too complicated, but it's light verse. It's poems about animals with names beginning with each letter of the alphabet. It's been done many, many times by other people. But I've been practicing law for going on 49 years and I have a lot of reflections on it. I've been very fortunate to have had some fascinating cases and more fortunate to have met some phenomenal people in the law. And so I'm working on a book titled, tentatively, titled Paper Lawyer, Confessions of a Practicer of the Dark Arts of Law. Sounds like you need to wear a robe with that. I was curious. I noticed, you know, reading the book, which was great. You know, you did it by each day and I, you know, started on a Tuesday, which I thought was really unique. But I really liked when I got to Thursday and there's this great photo of a roller coaster from Playland and, you know, really appreciate the whimsy and sort of tying it to food and was just curious sort of how do you see the, you know, pre-depression era of large amusement parks like Playland and, you know, places like Coney Island and Neptune Beach and how these helped maybe create and maybe shift when they closed sort of some of the culture and experiences of San Francisco? That's a, that's a phenomenal question, Kimberly, and I don't have a ready answer to it. I, your answer assumes that there was a cultural shift and I agree with that. I feel that there was. I remember when, when Playland closed, I remember when the fire destroyed sutro baths. And as a young fella, you know, going out to Playland, that was one of those really inexpensive dates. I don't remember what it cost, but, you know, you could just ride rides and have a lot of laughs, eat some so-so food. This is funny, it was probably awful food, but we have such wonderful memories of it. And it was created by the, the surroundings, Laughing Sal. There's a wonderful photograph of Laughing Sal who reposes at Pier 45 right now, and she was hideous. Why do, why do we all want to go see Laughing Sal and hear her cackle as she bent forward and back and forward and back? I, it, it had some effect as radio must have had some effect as television. I remember adults saying, well, television is rotting the brains of children. And then later I read that Plato, Plato railed against writing, writing things down. No, you're going to rot the brain, memorize. Don't read stuff down. He also didn't like poetry, but a student Aristotle studied it fervently. All right. Now, this is for both you and Ralph, just because you have a, both have a long experience with San Francisco food. Now, my father, he worked for the Veterans Administration in the 70s and 80s, and he would always come home after work. And he would say, yeah, we had a rat burger for lunch. Do you know what that could have been? I have no idea, but I'm dying to know.  You got to feel this. You know, I think it's something that one of my sons would try and feed me, but I, what that is, I'm sorry, Tara, and I'm drawing a blank. Maybe somebody, the audience has an answer for you. I'll pose it in the chat space. So John, you know, I think we're coming towards an end. I just, you know, we're in the middle of this pandemic and, you know, you and a number of your friends and colleagues have done just an amazing job and, and really saving a cultural institution in Sam's Grill. And I know it's a really hard time for restaurants in general, and I'm sure for Sam's Grill. How are you feeling right now and about San Francisco and, you know, what the future holds? I'm feeling very positive. And I think partly because that's the only feeling you one has to have, you know, you can't give up hope, but looking at it objectively, you know, San Francisco began as a city in 1849. It nominally began with the mission and the procedure in 1776, but there was nobody here until the gold rush of 1849. Fewer than 500 people in the census of 1847. In those first couple of years, everything was built of wood and the city burned down six times in two years. Just everything just went through and they, and they rebuilt. And how many times have we heard it said particularly like San Francisco is not like what it used to be. Oh, has it changed?  Can you imagine being here then during one of those six fires, but then take 1906. So you have one of the largest earthquakes in an urban area ever. Population of 400,000, 250,000 are homeless almost overnight. 250,000. We got 8,000 homeless in San Francisco today. And that's a crisis. Oh no, wait, wait, we had 250,000 homeless before. We figured out what to do about it. I have no idea how the city is going to climb out even more recently when organizations like the Mechanics Institute, like the San Francisco Historical Society relied upon great corporate benefactors such as Chevron, Bank of America, right? They leave San Francisco. They stop writing checks to Mechanics Institute, to the symphony, the opera, the Asian Art Museum. So, oh, this is the end. This is the end of culture and arts, because we need that private money. But somehow it changed. Now, we're, we're in the midst of a disaster. A lot of businesses are not going to make it. A lot of nonprofits are not going to make it. It's scary in the non-profit world. Like you, I have one foot in that. You got both feet in that. I'm optimistic, but I have no objective reason to be, except that people who come to San Francisco, they, you know, they drink the water, and we're just going to do it. Beautiful. Thank you. I mean, it's nice to hear that note of that perspective and that hopefulness. It's not always easy in these times, so thank you for that, John. Tara and Kimberly, we have just a few minutes left. I don't know how you'd like to proceed. Well, we have an answer to my rat burger question, which I think is kind of fun. Cynthia says rat burgers were greasy burgers and also good for hangovers. So but I always thought the VA was near the embarked arrow. So I always envisioned giant wharf rats. The VA was Fort Miley out by Sutro Park. No, it had to have been on Bart because he took Bart. You can't take Bart out to the beach. This would have been in the 70s and 80s, so there had to have been some sort of like office or space or something.  Cheers indeed. Thank you, Tara and Kimberly and Ralph. Yeah. Thanks to you all and thanks to Mechanics Institute, and I wish you all a very, very happy holiday season. Stay safe, be well. Thank you, everyone. This has been very great. Bye bye. All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll send the video link out tomorrow. So you can share it with your friends and family if you like. And don't forget to pick up a copy of A Child's Christmas in San Francisco by John Briscoe. It is a wonderful last minute gift or stocking stuffer for your loved one for a local or a wannabe local. Anyway, thanks again. Have a nice evening. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Bye.