Time Capsules

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

When I was in middle school, our 6th grade class put together a time capsule and we buried it in the school yard. I remember each of us had to bring something in to put in it. My contribution was a toy . A toy called the “click clack.” It was all the rage. It was 2 large marble or glass balls at the end of 1 nylon strings. You would swing them up and down to get a rhythm going and the marbles would hit together on the top and the bottom.

Eventually these marbles would break as kids were being too hard at hitting them together and after a few punctured eyes by glass shards they were taken off the market. Boy, were they fun! Some of the other things that were put in were pet rocks which were all the rage also. A record was put in and lots of other various small things.

In the years since, I have thought a lot about that time capsule. Was it ever dug up? The school was to have it arranged to have it dug up in 30 years or so. That time (30 years) has come and passed. In addition the school has become three other schools in the mean time. So I wonder if anyone now even knows that it was even buried on the school grounds.

Well I took it upon myself to call and see if anyone knew about the time capsule. I called the school today and explained that I was not a kook calling in. I explained about the time capsule and that it was buried somewhere on the school property and that it was still there somewhere. No one knew about it. They asked me about the principle, who was there when I was there. I could not recall. I did recall the assistant principle and the secretary and gave them their names. In addition I did recall some of my teachers names. A woman took my name and phone number and said they would call the district office and see if they could find out any information about the principle and the time capsule.

The woman I spoke to said that she would try to research it and to give her a few weeks to see what she could find out! I told her I would and I thanked her for her help. A mystery search has begun for the missing middle school time capsule.

Which then led me to think about other time capsules. There are actually some famous time capsules that are lost out there. People are still searching and looking for these time capsules:

I got this info from the Oglethorpe University site:

Time capsules usually are lost due to thievery, secrecy or poor planning. Finding them will enrich posterity by assuring that independent voices are heard in the future. The International Time Capsule Society, which has formed with the mission to record the burial of all time capsules, is still in search of nine time capsules of which little is known.

Selections were made by ITCS members: Knute "Skip" Berger, executive director of the State of Washington Centennial Time Capsule project; Dr. Brian Durrans, an anthropologist with the British Museum who has cataloged more than 200 capsules; William Jarvis, a Washington State University librarian and author of a scholarly publication about time capsules; and Paul Hudson, historian and author of "The Oglethorpe Atlanta Crypt of Civilization Time Capsule."

They request that information concerning the whereabouts of any of the lost capsules be reported to ITCS The society was formed in 1990 at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, where a world record time capsule is located. Its purpose is to maintain a registry of time capsules, study them and provide information on the subject. Paul Hudson is the contact person.

In 1991, a list of the "10 Most Wanted Time Capsules" was released. To date, only one, the Kingsley Dam Time Capsule, has been found. The nine remaining are:

1. Bicentennial Wagon Train Time CapsuleThis capsule was supposed to hold the signatures of 22 million Americans. But on July 4, 1976, when President Gerald Ford arrived for the sealing ceremony in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, someone stole the capsule from an unattended van in the bicentennial wagon train. The capsule's maker, the Reynolds Company, had broken the mold. The thief’s identity and the whereabouts of the capsule are unsolved mysteries.

2. MIT Cyclotron Time CapsuleIn 1939 a group of MIT engineers placed a brass capsule beneath an 18-ton -magnet used in a brand new, state-of-the-art cyclotron. The capsule was to be opened in 50 years but was not. No one remembered the time capsule was there (the cyclotron had long since been deactivated). But when reminded of its existence, MIT was faced with another problem: how do you get a time capsule out from under a 36,000-pound lid?

3. Corona, California, Time CapsulesThe City of Corona seems to have misplaced a series of 17 time capsules dating back to the 1930s. Efforts to recover the capsules in 1986 were in vain. "We just tore up a lot of concrete around the civic center, "said the chairman of the town's centennial committee. A Los Angeles Times reporter has called Corona "the individual record holder in the fumbled time capsule category."

4. The M*A*S*H Time CapsuleBuried by cast members of the hit TV show in a secret ceremony, the capsule contained props and costumes of the show. It was buried in January 1983 -- somewhere, no one will say -- in the 20th Century Fox parking lot in Hollywood. The lot has shrunk in size, so the time capsule may be under a Marriott Hotel now.

5. George Washington's CornerstoneToday's custom of burying time capsules is in part an outgrowth of Masonic cornerstone-laying ceremonies. Through the centuries, Masons have officiated at rituals which often include placing memorabilia inside building cornerstones for later recovery. In 1793, George Washington, a Mason, performed the Masonic ritual upon the laying of the original cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol. Over the years, the Capitol has undergone extensive expansion, remodeling and reconstruction, but the original George Washington cornerstone has never been found. It is unknown whether there is anything inside of it.

6. The Gramophone Company Time CapsuleIn 1907, Hayes, Middlesex, England, sound recordings on disc were deposited behind the foundation stone of the new Gramophone Company factory (later HMV, later EMI) by the opera singer (later Dame) Nellie Melba. During reconstruction work in the 1960s, the container was officially removed, but before it could be reburied, someone ran off with it. The whereabouts of these priceless master-pressings of Melba and other stars remains a mystery.

7. Washington Territorial Centennial Time CapsuleIn 1953 Washington state celebrated its territorial centennial by burying a two-ton time capsule on the state capitol campus in Olympia. The legislature failed to approve funds to mark the site, and the capsule was lost until 1959. However, records indicate that a supplementary time capsule was prepared in 1953 for burial alongside the main capsule. The location and contents of the second capsule are unknown. The capsule may have been interred as planned; its reported location was a closet at the capitol. Update: it appears that this capsule was found in 2002. The ITCS will update this document soon.

8. Blackpool TowerIn Blackpool, Lancashire, England, a foundation deposit was interred in the late 19th century with the customary ceremony. When a search was organized recently in preparation for new building work, not even remote sensing equipment or a clairvoyant could locate the time capsule.

9. The Lyndon, Vermont, Time CapsuleFirst mentioned in an 1891 Vermont newspaper, the capsule is an iron box containing proceedings of the town's centennial celebration. It was scheduled to be opened on July 4, 1991. Citizens have looked in the town vault, the bank and the library but have not found the box. The time capsule may not have been buried at all, since some ceremonies were canceled due to rain. Lyndon residents have vowed not to lose their new time capsule which is set to be sealed July 4.

Angels in the Backfield

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

Do we really have guardian angels watching over us? Or does all that happens to us just happen with no rhyme or reason in the universe? Are we able to really choose our own destiny? I ponder these questions all the time. I have come to believe that we do have angels watching over us in ways that we may not understand and that they step in or guide things just at the nick of time to avoid disaster. Most of us are never aware when this happens because most of us are not normally in tune with that. I happen to be in tune, just a little, with the spirit world. Ever since the thing that was darker than dark, I have been in tune.

Well last year, I was on my way to work one morning about 7:30am or so. I had just run an errand and was actually on my way back home to get something I had forgotten. Originally I was on a side street and had to make a right to get back on the main highway. I stopped at the stop sign, looked, saw no traffic and made a right onto the main road. There was still noone behind me. I was now on my way back home. I traveled about 8 blocks with noone behind me. I came to a light, stopped and then a light blue car turned off an other side street and was now behind me.

I thought nothing of that. It was just another car behind me. I traveled on. I had gotten to the point were I got off the main road by taking a right onto another street that led into the subdivision before mine. I would have to weave thru that neighborhood to get to mine. The blue car was still behind me but now that we were in the neighborhood, the driver began to flash his headlights. That was odd.

He began to ride my bumper and flash the lights and get so close that he had to jam on his brakes not to hit me. In the neighborhood I must have been doing 20 and so was he with all the crazy stuff as well. I looked in the rear view and I saw a monster sitting behind the wheel of that car. As soon as I saw his face, I knew that he was going to kill me. I was going to be a random victim. He was a white male. All the hair on his head was standing up and was tangled and matted. His hair must have been about shoulder length because it was like a giant, tangled rats nest. The only thing I could think was that he was on drugs or something or he was crazy.

Crazy, was what I was thinking the most. I decided not to panic and to not even let him know that I was alarmed. There was a firestation that I would have to pass by to get to my development. My plan was to get there. It was about 10 blocks away. Judging by the looks of his beat up car, he would not know the firestation was there. He was not from my area at all. I continued to drive normally. He continued to get right up on me, jam on the brakes just millimeters from hitting me, flash his lights and whenever I looked in the rearview, he was mouthing words and was laughing and was gesturing with his arms. I had never been so scared in my life. And at 7:30am in the morning! Things can happen at any time and at any place. Now I see how children can dissappear on their way to school. Crazy people and sex offenders are out all the time, 24 hours a day. We never really realize how close to death we may have come at various times throughout our daily routines or come into contact with killers.

I was approaching a stop sign still with this insane person behind me. I would have to make a right turn to get on the street that lead to the firestation and my development. Now in this neighborbood there is a woman that I see walking her dog all the time. Every morning I see her and her dog and her plastic bag of poop. I do not know her. I have never waived at her. I just see her everyday. I got to the stop sign and there she was to my left with her dog. Crazy man was still behind me.

For some reason I looked at the woman like I normally do . I had to look that direction anyway to make the turn. This morning for the first time in 4 years of me seeing her eveyday she waived at me. She has seen me drive by her for 4 years and she has never waived. She has looked but neve waived. Odd!

I waived back. I waived because I wanted the maniac behind me to think I was still unaware of him. I waived hoping that if something did happen to me, she would remember she waived. She may be possibly the last person to see me alive that morning. I turned right. I was expecting the blue car to turn also. It hesitated at the corner. I continued to drive as that fire station was not far now and I looked back in the rear view. The car did not turn the corner. All of a sudden it whipped around, like no car could in a u turn and it was gone. It was unnatural the way that car whipped around. I heard tires squealing and it was gone.

My arm pits were dripping with sweat. I did not go home. Just in case, I did not want him to know where I lived. I went on to work and decided I just needed to get somewhere where people were. The forgotten item was something to get later.

Now I have not seen that woman and her dog ever again. I have purposely driven thru her neighborhood just to see if I could see her. I have not. I have gone looking for her on weekends...just driving thru to see if I could see her. I swear, I have not seen her again. It made me think that the guy got her but that would have been on the news.

I think she was my guardian angel. I know she saved my life that day. That waive that saved my life, was something she was guarding over and waiting for, for four years. Her mission was accomplished so she is now gone. Sometimes on weekends I still get in the car and just drive thru that neighbor at my normal travel/work times to see if I would ever see her again and so far nothing. It is like she and the dog have just vanished. Just like that.

I do believe we have guardian angels. I am so very happy to have mine on the job when I need intervention to avoid danger.

From the web:

A guardian angel is a spirit who is believed to protect and to guide a particular person. The concept of tutelary angels and their hierarchy was extensively developed by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in the 5th century.

The belief that God sends a spirit to watch every individual was common in Ancient Greek philosophy, and Plato mentions the belief in Phaedo, 108. Similarly, the belief appears in the Old Testament, although it is not specifically articulated or delineated. Enoch 100:5 says that the just have protecting angels. In Acts 12:15 there is another allusion to the belief. In the Gospel of Matthew 18:10, Jesus says that children are protected by guardian spirits:

"Never despise one of these little ones; I tell you, they have their guardian angels in heaven, who look continually on the face of my heavenly Father." (New English Bible)

Whether guardian angels attend each and every person is not consistently believed or upheld in Christian thought. Saint Ambrose believed that saints lose their guardian angels so that they might have a greater struggle and persevere. Saints Jerome and Basil argued that sin drove the angels away. The first Christian Church theologian to outline a specific scheme for guardian angels was Honorius of Autun (died 1151). He said that every soul was assigned a guardian angel the moment it was put into a body. Thomas Aquinas agreed with this and specified that it was the lowest order of angels who served as guardians, but Duns Scotus said that any angel might accept the mission. The contemporary orthodox belief is that guardian angels protect the body and present prayers to God.

A belief in guardian angels is expressed by the English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) who stated in his Religio Medici first published in (1643):

Therefore for Spirits I am so farre from denying their existence, that I could easily beeleve, that not onley whole Countries, but particular persons have their Tutelary, and Guardian Angels: It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato; there is no heresie in it, and if not manifestly defined in Scripiture, yet is it an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a man's life, and would serve as an Hypothesis to salve many doubts, whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution.

Artist invents pierced glasses

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

I was reading some e news when I came across the following:

Why aren't glasses, glasses?

A Dallas artist has had permanent glasses pierced through the bridge of his nose.

James Sooy, 22, came up with the idea because his specs were constantly slipping down his nose.

He and a friend designed the piercing, which features magnets so Sooy can take the lenses off to bathe and sleep.

He wants to offer a model for sale by June and patent the pierced glasses.

Elayne Angel, medical co-ordinator for the Association of Professional Piercers, said the idea was eye-catching but impractical.

"I imagine putting those on and taking those off is going to be difficult, especially to try to put it on yourself," she said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since when are piercings glasses? I remember the days when glasses were really glasses. Shapes like the kitty cat glasses and coke bottle glasses are what I recall.

octo eyes

kitty eyes

scarey

Those are familiar shapes for glasses and they fit the normal way. Glasses that are piercings! Now I have just about seen it all. I do not think they are for me! They look painful. I remember getting my ears pierced was enough pain!

piercing



pierced glasses

The artist, James Sooy has a website here.

The Death of Magic

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

The death of magic. It can be a hard death which comes unexpectantly and with disbelief. When did the magic die for you? The death of magic came for me when I was 12. It came one summer day and was brought to me on a platter by my mother. She murdered magic and served it up on a silver tray and left it there for me to bury. Only I could not bury it right away. I was in such shock. All the wind was knocked out of me as I looked it in the face and tried to make sense of it. I still mourn for magic and in some ways have never forgiven my mother for the abruptness in which she murdered it, with no remorse or consideration for my feelings at all.

As an abused child, I only had my own thoughts to hold on to. Magic was just one of the good things I had to hold onto. I believed in the magic that was the easter bunny and Santa Clause and ghosts on halloween and all those other things we tend to believe as a child. Those things gave me hope that one day, special days like those as well as my birthdays would be better for me.

The summer when I was twelve, I was in the den with my mother talking about some sort of game or toy that I had seen on tv . I was telling her that if I was good then maybe santa would bring it for me for christmas. She looked kind of funny at me and then said, " you know there is not a real santa?" "Yes there is" , I vehemently said. " Santa is real!" I needed to believe. I needed to believe that all those times when everyone else got christmas gifts but me, that there was a Santa out there who would one day remember me. It simply could not be all up to my parents. If so, then all hope would be lost and the reality of how they made every holiday for me a miserable experience was even more cruel. There was no hope that I would be remembered by anyone.

She explained to me that I was too old to still believe in santa and that she was surprised that I still believed. I told her I still believed and that I really did not believe her in that all gifts were bought by them. She insisted it was. I asked some kids in the neighborhood and they confirmed what she told me was true. I was crushed. Crushed that she told me. What happened to letting the death of magic die a natural death? It is easier on the kids that way. They will soon come to realize what the real deal is but at least they would not have been deprived of their hopes and dreams regarding magic.

Really and truthfully, I have not really ever forgiven her for telling me and I never will. It was cruel. Maybe for a child with a normal upbringing that would have been fine, but for me with all the abuse and trauma I endured at the hands of my parents, it was just too much. I did what I normally did with things that mattered to me but to noone else. I vowed that once I was away from there and on my own, I would do things differently for me and I did.

When I lived alone and before any husbands, I always celebrated christmas in a big way. Live trees and all the decorations even if it was just me. Christmas magic always lived within me. Once I had kids, I vowed that every holiday would be a magical and memorable occasion. I have lived up to that to the point of exhaustion for me on every holiday.

My mother may have tried to kill magic for me, but I had some embers left and I fanned them back to life all of my adult life. Christmas is huge in my house. Santa is real and always will be. Letters are written to him each year. They are mailed by me and to the best of my ability, everything on the list , plus more, is received by my family members. On christmas eve, we do the santa tracking on line and before the kids go to bed, we spend an hour at the window gazing up at the sky looking for the sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. We also spend some of that time listening for sleigh bells and of course, it begins with me...I tell them that I swore I heard bells jingling. Everyone is in a frenzy and excited.

Now while this is fun, it means noone wants to go to sleep, so I have to wait till about 2:30 or 3:30am to put out gifts and finally go to bed. But not before drinking the egg nog and eating 2.5 of the 3 cookies that have been left for santa. The 1/2 of a cookie that is left always causes a lot of excitement on Christmas morning, let alone the gifts. It is magic, that 1/2 cookie and noone is allowed to eat it except the youngest in the household.

On St. Patricks Day we have visits from the leprechaun. Now I did not start this, school did in the first grade. The leprechaun comes to school while the kids are at lunch. When they get back to the class, desks are over turned, there is green paint on some of the desk tops and litttle green foot prints are in the hall. Well, I had no idea that the leprechauns had such an impact on my child till she got home and told me all about it in first grade. She asked me to look up some info on leprechauns and Ireland for her. I did and she then became totally possessed with leprechauns. I guess in school they had been talking about them all week. She had asked me to look up the info about 2 days before St. Patrick's day.

Don't you know on that day she came home and had drawn a leprechaun trap that we had to build to catch him. She got a laundry basket as a trap and made me suspend it from the den ceiling with a rope. Under the trap she put a plate of St. Patrick cookies that were shortbread with green sprinkles on them. She determined that once he went in for the cookies, the hamper would catch him. Well, what was I to do? What would you do? The only thing possible! Be that leprechaun. I ate the cookies, sprung the trap and got a handfull of green glitter and blew it over her as she slept. When she woke up she was covered in leprechaun dust. I also took a baby shoe of hers and put in on the toilet seat and poured glitter over it. Lift it up and you have the outline in glitter of a small little leprechaun foot. She built different traps for 4 years..till the fourth grade. Even now she has baggies of leprechaun dust she collected from the toilet seat of her bathroom. If you ask her about it, she says most seriously that it is leprchaun dust from when she was trying to catch him.

The other big belief in our home is the belief in Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell is real and at times leaves the magic kingdom to bring gifts of clothing mainly to the closet when grades are good. She has been going strong for about 10 years now. Whenever we go to Walt Disney World, seeing Tinkerbell fly from the top of Cinderella's Castle is the highlight of the trip. I think I must be more excited to see her that most kids. Last year thought, my child asked if there was a rope up there as she could just barely make out something else in the sky. I denied it. Tinkerbell flies on her own. No ropes.

During the same trip she said that she thought she felt a finger when she shook eeyores hand. I told her she was absolutely wrong about that! She was feeling the BONE in eeyore's finger.

For my family the death of magic will be at their own pace with me kicking and screaming to keep it alive for as long as possible. In fact, I do believe I have been kicking and screaming for the past year. I am winning thought. I know. This past christmas my child came home and said that she and some other kids were discussing Santa and someone told her it was the parents. I told her it was not true. Santa is real and I certainly did not buy all those presents. I told her that she needed to go outside and look up at the sky and apologize or she might not get any gifts. She just looked at me and said she was going to believe her friends. I again told her she was wrong. She just said, "whatever", in that preteen drama tone.

Well, about 15 minutes later, I heard the front door open. It is night, about 7:30, so I go see what is going on. There my child is, looking up at the sky and apologizing to Santa Clause. I tiptoed back to the kitchen. Magic is alive and well in my house. The death of magic is not welcome there. It is coming sure as the sun rises and sets each day, but I won't murder it. The death of magic will be soft and easy and with pleasant memories that will last a lifetime.

Mind Play

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

Do you see the baby?




Count the Black Spots


Are the horizontal lines parrallel or do they slope?

Saul Bellow Dead at 89

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

Times on Line

Saul Bellow, a master of comic melancholy who in Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift and other novels mourned the soul’s fate in the modern world, died last night at the age of 89. The Nobel prize-winning author’s close friend Walter Pozen said that he was "wonderfully sharp to the end".
Bellow’s wife and daughter were at his side at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the most acclaimed of a generation of Jewish writers who emerged after the Second World War, among them Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick. "The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists: William Faulkner and Saul Bellow," Philip Roth said.
In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, being praised in the official citation for his "human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture". Bellow kept writing into his eighties. His recent works included The Actual, a novella published in 1997, and Ravelstein, a 2000 novel based on the life of his friend, Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind.

As temperamental as he was talented, many critics considered Bellow one of the greatest American novelists of his era, on a par with Henry James, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.

Bellow also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for Humboldt’s Gift, three American National Book Awards and numerous other honours. He wrote more than a dozen works of fiction from The Dangling Man in 1944 to Ravelstein in 2000. His work has pitted him in bitter disputes with other leading members of the literary establishment as well as winning him acclaim.

Solomon Bellows was born June 10, 1915, in Lachine, Quebec, outside Montreal, into a family of Jewish Russian emigres. He was raised in Chicago, which he used for many of his novels, and studied at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and sociology. He later taught for 30 years at the University of Chicago before leaving for a post in Boston to be nearer to his country retreat.

Bellow followed his first novel, Dangling Man, with The Victim in 1947 and by 1948, a Guggenheim Fellowship allowed him to spend two years in Europe, much of it in Paris. On that trip, he wrote The Adventures of Augie March, which earned him a 1954 National Book Award. In 1964, Herzog won him a National Book Award, turning into a best seller.

He served as a correspondent for Newsday news magazine during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, returning to write Mr. Sammler’s Planet, which also won a National Book Award, and was published in 1970.

Bellow’s early novels concentrated on topics such as how Americans coped with living through the 1930s depression and the Second World War. Others were more personal. Herzog portrayed the hero, Moses Herzog, agonising over his former wives and other troubles, writing frantic letters to friends, relatives and public figures that he never bothers to mail. Mr Sammler’s Planet depicted a Holocaust survivor coping with 1960s counter-culture in New York City and showed Bellow’s versatility to a generation of youth.

It was his education, fans said, that gave Bellow his keen insight into human behaviour. "It was my habit to register for a course and then to do most of my reading in another field of study. So that when I should have been grinding away at ’Money and Banking’ I was reading the novels of Joseph Conrad," Bellow said on receiving his Nobel prize.

"What he did was create a new American idiom, what he did was infuse the native American idiom with his own Jewish, Western European inflection," said James Atlas, who wrote the praised Bellow: A Biography in 2000. "He always said he was a writer first, an American second and Jewish third. But all three were elements of his genius."

At work in Boston, where he taught as a university professor, Bellow ridiculed the politically correct on campus. He loved traveling and had a volatile temperament and occasionally stormy private life. He divorced four times and married his fifth wife, Janis Freedman, a former University of Chicago student, in 1989. She gave birth to their daughter, Naomi, in 1999 when Bellow was 84. Bellow was also the father of three sons by each of his first three wives.

Secret, Second Lives of Men

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

I was reading the obit for Johnny Cochran and I came across some interesting tidbits that got me thinking. He had a secret second family with kids and everything. I began to think about our society and that while we tend to stress monogomy and try to live that way, a lot of the world does not. Maybe most of the world does not adhere to that. Polygamy is really commonplace. Look at the Mormons. That has been the staple of their religion forever.

Outside of the western world polygamy is the norm and is accepted just about everywhere. One source says:

"Although the percentage of men in the world who have more than one wife is relatively small, as many as a third of the world's population belongs to a community that allows it, says Israeli anthropologist Joseph Ginat."

In my study of cultural anthropology when I was in college I learned that there are plural marriages in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and here in the west with religious groups like the Mormons. I also think that some pagans have plural marriages as well in addition to some muslims and some jews in the Mediterranean. Some native American tribes have also had plural marriages as well.

In American society many times when relations are strained, the husband simply deserts his wife. Then he cohabits with a prostitute or other immoral woman without marriage. Actually there are three kinds of polygamy practiced in Western societies:

1. serial polygamy, that is, marriage, divorce, marriage, divorce, and so on any number of times;
2. a man married to one woman but having and supporting one or more mistresses;
3. an unmarried man having a number of mistresses.

Why is it that when it happens in our western society it is such a scandal? We have rules and we have taboos in our culture but it seems that most men do not follow the rules. They can run around with various women and are looked upon as a "man about town," or a "ladies man." Let a woman do that and she is seen as being loose or skanky. It seems that noone really sees anything bad when a man runs around with lots of women. It does not hurt their reputation. It is more like a notch on their belt. Something that guys and their buddies would high five and butt chests together on.

Why have we not heard the great scandal of leading a double life? I mean not just an affair but having whole families and homes set up in other cities with kids and all?

Look at Johnny Cochran.

Flamboyant in public, he kept his private life shrouded in secrecy, and when some of those secrets became public following a 1978 divorce, they were startling.

His first marriage, to his college sweetheart, Barbara Berry, produced two daughters, Melodie and Tiffany. During their divorce, it came to light that for 10 years Cochran had secretly maintained a "second family," which included a son.

When that relationship soured, his mistress, Patricia Sikora, sued him for palimony and the case was settled privately in 2004.

Look at Charles Kuralt.

The "On the Road" correspondent lived a dual existence for nearly three decades.
June 8, 1999 | Charles Kuralt, CBS's folksy "On the Road" correspondent, spent years exploring America's out-of-the-way places in search of oddball stories. But the best story may have been the one he never told.

For 29 years, until his death in 1997, he apparently kept a mistress and maintained a second family. The celebrated journalist was, in effect, husband and father to them, as well as breadwinner, friend and hero.

While his wife remained at their home in the concrete canyons of New York City, he nurtured his secret life along a rushing trout stream in Montana.

None of this would come out, however, until after his death, when his mistress, Patricia Elizabeth Shannon, sued to get a Montana retreat he promised her. Montana's Supreme Court ruled last month that the woman is entitled to a trial on her claim.

Look at Charles Lindbergh

He had the reputation of a faithful husband and exemplary father, was considered strict and disciplined. But what do we really know about the legendary pilot Charles Lindbergh, the first man to cross the Atlantic? How could he keep three love relationships and seven illegitimate children secret from the world for decades? Almost 30 years after his death his secret has been lifted: The American national hero led a perfectly hidden double life in Europe. The biography is being written in collaboration with the three German children of Charles Lindbergh. It will contain a selection of love letters written by Lindbergh to Brigitte Hesshaimer and as yet unpublished photos.

He had the reputation of a faithful husband and exemplary father, was considered strict and disciplined. But what do we really know about the legendary pilot Charles Lindbergh, the first man to cross the Atlantic? How could he keep three love relationships and seven illegitimate children secret from the world for decades? Almost 30 years after his death his secret has been lifted: The American national hero led a perfectly hidden double life in Europe. The biography is being written in collaboration with the three German children of Charles Lindbergh. It will contain a selection of love letters written by Lindbergh to Brigitte Hesshaimer and as yet unpublished photos.

DNA tests carried out by a university medical centre in Munich have supported the claim that Charles Lindbergh fathered three illegitimate children in Germany.

Lindbergh, portrayed as a happily married man, fell in love with Brigitte Hesshaimer in 1957. It was only when she died in 2001 that the children came forward.

Lindbergh supported the family financially and visited them regularly.

Why can't men just be happy with one woman? That is the age old search of evey woman. To find the one man who just wants her. That has been my search and trust me I have been unsuccessful. I do not know where the monogamous men are. I sure would like to know where they are hiding. Or maybe they are hiding from me? When I look back there has not been one person I have dated who was ever faithful. But me, I always was. That is the way of women. To be faithful and loyal and to stand by our men. Unfortunately they do not stand by us. If anyone knows where the monogamous men are, please send me an email! Leave me a comment!! Just tell me where they are!