Karl Lestar

LOVE is a universal concept related to the affinity between beings, defined in different ways according to different ideologies and points of view (artistic, scientific, philosophical, and religious). In a habitual way, and fundamentally in the West it is interpreted as a feeling related to affection and attachment, and resulting and producer of a series of attitudes, emotions, and experiences. In the philosophical context, love is a virtue that represents all the affection, kindness and compassion of human beings. It can also be described as actions directed towards others and based on compassion, or as actions directed towards others (or towards oneself) and based on affection.

La mayor a de los seres humanos no se detienen a pensar cuando son j venes sobre el futuro y muchos de los que han llegado a entrada edad se detienen a pensar que est n en entrada edad y contin an con la vida con una actitud positiva siempre ocupados en lograr y realizar su m ximo potencial con los talentos que desde tiempo atr s est n conscientes que poseen y para muchos no existen los l mites de sus expresiones art sticas dentro del arco ris de las manifestaciones de las Bellas Artes.Pero hay muchos que se sienten que est n a punto de deslizarse voluntario o accidentalmente por el agujero que es la entrada sin final del conejo aquel en la historia de "Alice In Woderland". La pregunta es; Cuan profundo quieres penetrar en ese agujero y que te garant a que puedas salir?A veces es mejor evitar que despu s lamentar... pero si acaso ya estas alli, he aqu algunos consejos para que puedas regresar de ese perdido laberinto siguiendo el consejo de Act a Tu Edad...

Se cumplir n 106 a os exactos desde el d a de la abolici n de la esclavitud en Puerto Rico el 22 de marzo de 1879 al 22 de marzo de 1979 cuando falleci Ren Marqu s. No hare aqu alarde o manifestaci n alguna de que lo conoc , pues cuando yo nac apenas Rene hab a fundado el Teatro del Ateneo Puertorrique o. S conoc su obra durante mis a os escolares primarios y como un asiduo e incorregible lector me adentre en sus cuentos, no solo los escritos por el sino por sus contempor neos. Este libro es dedicado a la generaci n del siglo XXI quienes de seguro la mayor a nunca han visto una carreta con bueyes menos conocen lo que es un sol trunco. Pero como todo se aprende escudri ando quiz s este libro toque la sensibilidad de aquellos que buscan un poco del pasado de sus antepasados, de c mo eran las cosas que ahora ya no son. Adem s podr n ver la fruct fera creatividad de nuestro reconocido personaje y la internacionalidad de su trabajo literario que muchos hoy quisieran obtener. La mayor a de los escritores influyentes de cualquier pa s sea cual sea su g nero f sico y literario reflejan en sus escritos las condiciones de vida que les afectaron o disturban emocionalmente en su crecimiento intelectual y las que influyen durante su carrera como escritor. Para aquellos que no conocen he aqu a manera de presentaci n algunos de sus temas y pensares en su expresi n literaria: El fen meno nacionalista puertorrique o, la industrializaci n y sus consecuencias morales, psicol gicas y sociales, la participaci n del puertorrique o en la guerra de Corea, el Tiempo como problema filos fico y la soledad existencial del Hombre, el feminismo puertorrique o; adem s lo primordialmente urbano: calles, f bricas, edificios de apartamientos, postes de alumbrado p blico, hilos telef nicos, luces de ne n, anuncios comerciales, aeropuertos, tiendas, torres de acero, casuchas arrabaleras, hoteles para turistas, prost bulos, restaurantes, autobuses, bares, en fin, todo lo que se ofrece diariamente a la visi n del habitante de la ciudad, integra el "paisaje... etc.", as era la literatura de Ren Marqu s. Seg n Angelina Morfi qui n fue una de sus grandes amigas personales y literarias dice; "Ren Marqu s es uno de los escritores m s representativos de nuestro esp ritu nacional de los m s conscientes de los males de la colonia. Nos lega una obra importante, no s lo por su valor literario sino tambi n por lo que aporta al conocimiento de nuestro aut ntico modo de ser". Fue en ARECIBO, en cuyas costas el mar Atl ntico ha demostrado secularmente su furia nace Ren Marqu s el 4 de octubre de 1919. Desde ni o vive interesantes y agradables experiencias a trav s de familiares, paisanos en general, libros, espect culos, la tierra y el mar que rendir an su fruto en una rica obra literaria. El cine y el teatro los disfruta tempranamente por la afici n que les ten a su madre do a Pura Garc a Abreu. Las representaciones de dramas, comedias, operetas, zarzuelas y revistas espa olas se cuentan entre los est mulos iniciales que lo encaminaron al fascinante mundo del espect culo. Su padre Juan Marqu s prefer a pasar las noches en las tertulias nocturnas pero si hab a alg n encuentro de 'boxeo se desplazaba al cuadril tero en compa a de su unig nito. Acostumbraba tambi n llevarlo a las series dominicales de cine y al circo en su temporada de Arecibo. Ren Marqu s se grad a de agr nomo en 1942 en el Colegio de Agricultura y Artes Mec nicas. El mismo a o se casa con Serena Velasco. De la uni n nacen Ra l Fernando, Brunilda Mar a y Francisco Ren . El matrimonio queda disuelto tres lustros despu s. Los ltimos a os de su vida Ren Marqu s se a sla en una bella regi n campestre en Cubuy de Can vanas. El no y una densa vegetaci n circundaban la casa de elegante y sobrio dise o realizado por Jos Manuel Lacomba, su amigo inseparable. Muere el 22 de marzo de 1979 en el

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 to October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, critic and editor best known for evocative short stories and poems that captured the imagination and interest of readers around the world. His imaginative storytelling and tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story. Many of Poe's works, including "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," became literary classics. Some aspects of Poe's life, like his literature, is shrouded in mystery, and the lines between fact and fiction have been blurred substantially since his death. Poe self-published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1827. His second poetry collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, was published in 1829. As a critic at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond from 1835 to 1837, Poe published some of his own works in the magazine, including two parts of his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. In late 1830s, Poe published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, a collection of short stories. It contained several of his most spine-tingling tales, including "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Ligeia" and "William Wilson." In 1841, Poe launched the new genre of detective fiction with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." His literary innovations earned him the nickname "Father of the Detective Story." A writer on the rise, he won a literary prize in 1843 for "The Gold Bug," a suspenseful tale of secret codes and hunting treasure. "The Black Cat" was published in 1843 in The Saturday Evening Post. In it, the narrator, a one-time animal lover, becomes an alcoholic who begins abusing his wife and black cat. By the macabre story's end, the narrator observes his own descent into madness as he kills his wife, a crime his black cat reports to the police. The story was later included in the 1845 short story collection, Tales by Edgar Allan Poe. "The Raven" was published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror, is considered among the best-known poems in American literature and one of the best of Poe's career. An unknown narrator laments the demise of his great love Lenore and is visited by a raven, who insistently repeats one word: "nevermore." In the work, which consists of 18 six-line stanzas, Poe explored some of his common themes - death and loss. "Annabel Lee" This lyric poem again explores Edgar Allen Poe's themes of death and loss and may have been written in memory of his beloved wife Virginia, who died two years prior. The poem was published on October 9, 1849, two days after Poe's death, in the New York Tribune. Later in his career, Poe continued to work in different forms, examining his own methodology and writing in general in several essays, including "The Philosophy of Composition," "The Poetic Principle" and "The Rationale of Verse." He also produced the thrilling tale, "The Cask of Amontillado," and poems such as "Ulalume" and "The Bells. From my book collection of ancient books or antique one... I present to you the 1834 version of "THE RAVEN" with of course some 21st century adaptations... It is dedicated to all of Edgar Allan Poe fans over the world of literature and poetry especially to the young generation. An actual copy of the original book is out of reach for poor souls like us, therefore I give you a close look to the original... enjoy it

Within my book collection there is a great surplus of children's books which today are not even known to many of their parents. I feel the need to provide a glance to both parents and children of what they are missing and perhaps I can imagine see them reading to their children to expand their limitless imagination and acquire a tiny portion of morals which they might apply to themselves as they grow to adulthood. Walter Crane's beautifully illustrated version of Aesop's fables, shortened and put into limericks for the younger reader and first published in 1887. Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. Apollonius of Tyana, a 1st-century CE philosopher, is recorded as having said about Aesop: ... like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths, and after serving up a story he adds to it the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events. Read Baby's Own Aesop (1887), with its cryptically political 'morals' and stunning illustrations by Walter Crane. Crane was not just a brilliant graphic designer and chromolithographer, but also an ardent socialist, close friend of William Morris, and a Marxist Trade Union supporter. The Baby's Own Aesop uses short, rhymed versions of the famous fables of the ancient Greek story teller Aesop. In Crane's preface he tells us that he has produced his version of the tales from a manuscript kindly lent to him by the wood-engraver, William James Linton. Crane continues, however, 'I have added a touch here and there'. Since Linton was as radical in his own Chartist-republican way as the more socialist-Marxist-Internationalist Crane, it is virtually impossible to tell which of them is responsible for the very individual character of the morals the book prescribes The title page proudly reports that the rhyming fables come with "portable morals". These morals are usually printed in capitals in the white space surrounding the rhyme, which is itself embedded within the page's picture. The fables originally belonged to the oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop's death. By that time a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed to him, although some of that material was from sources earlier than him or came from beyond the Greek cultural sphere. The process of inclusion has continued until the present, with some of the fables unrecorded before the later Middle Ages and others arriving from outside Europe. The process is continuous and new stories are still being added to the Aesop corpus, even when they are demonstrably more recent work and sometimes from known authors. Manuscripts in Latin and Greek were important avenues of transmission, although poetical treatments in European vernaculars eventually formed another. On the arrival of printing, collections of Aesop's fables were among the earliest books in a variety of languages. Through the means of later collections, and translations or adaptations of them, Aesop's reputation as a fabulist was transmitted throughout the world. Initially the fables were addressed to adults and covered religious, social and political themes. They were also put to use as ethical guides and from the Renaissance onwards were particularly used for the education of children. Their ethical dimension was reinforced in the adult world through depiction in sculpture, painting and other illustrative means, as well as adaptation to drama and song. In addition, there have been reinterpretations of the meaning of fables and changes in emphasis over ti

El asesinato de Calas, cometido en Toulouse con la espada de la justicia, el 9 de marzo de 1762, es uno de los acontecimientos m s singulares que merecen la atenci n de nuestra poca y de la posteridad. Se olvida con facilidad aquella multitud de muertos que perecieron en batallas sin cuento, no s lo porque es fatalidad inevitable de la guerra, sino porque los que mueren por la suerte de las armas pod an tambi n dar muerte a sus enemigos y no ca an sin defenderse. All donde el peligro y la ventaja son iguales, cesa el asombro e incluso la misma compasi n se debilita; pero si un padre de familia inocente es puesto en manos del error, o de la pasi n, o del fanatismo; si el acusado no tiene m s defensa que su virtud; si los rbitros de su vida no corren otro riesgo al degollarlo que el de equivocarse; si pueden matar impunemente con una sentencia, entonces se levanta el clamor p blico, cada uno teme por s mismo, se ve que nadie tiene seguridad de su vida ante un tribunal creado para velar por la vida de los ciudadanos y todas las voces se unen para pedir venganza. Se trataba, en este extra o caso, de religi n, de suicidio, de parricidio; se trataba de saber si un padre y una madre hab an estrangulado a su hijo para agradar a Dios, si un hermano hab a estrangulado a su hermano, si un amigo hab a estrangulado a su amigo, y si los jueces ten an que reprocharse haber hecho morir por el suplicio de la rueda a un padre inocente, o haber perdonado a una madre, a un hermano, o a un amigo culpables. Jean Calas, de sesenta y ocho a os de edad, ejerc a la profesi n de comerciante en Toulouse desde hac a m s de cuarenta a os y era considerado por todos los que vivieron con l como un buen padre. Era protestante, lo mismo que su mujer y todos sus hijos, excepto uno, que hab a abjurado de la herej a y al que el padre pasaba una peque a pensi n. Parec a tan alejado de ese absurdo fanatismo que rompe con todos los lazos de la sociedad, que hab a aprobado la conversi n de su hijo Louis Calas y ten a adem s desde hac a treinta a os en su casa una sirviente cat lica ferviente que hab a criado a todos sus hijos. Uno de los hijos de Jean Calas, llamado Marc-Antoine, era hombre de letras: estaba considerado como esp ritu inquieto, sombr o y violento. Dicho joven, al no poder triunfar ni entrar en el negocio, para lo que no estaba dotado, ni obtener el t tulo de abogado, porque se necesitaban certificados de catolicidad que no pudo conseguir, decidi poner fin a su vida y dej entender que ten a este prop sito a uno de sus amigos; se confirm en esta resoluci n por la lectura de todo lo que se ha escrito en el mundo sobre el suicidio. Hay por lo tanto humanidad y justicia en los hombres, y principalmente en el consejo de un rey amado y digno de serlo. El caso de una desgraciada familia de ciudadanos oscuros ha ocupado a Su Majestad, a sus ministros, al canciller y a todo el consejo y ha sido discutido con un examen tan meditado como pueden serlo los m s grandes temas de la guerra y de la paz. El amor a la equidad, el inter s del g nero humano han guiado a todos los jueces. Demos gracias a ese Dios de clemencia, el nico que inspira la equidad y todas las virtudes Atestiguamos que jam s hemos conocido ni a ese infortunado Calas a quien los ocho jueces de Toulouse hicieron morir a causa de los m s d biles indicios, en contra de las ordenanzas de nuestros reyes y en contra de las Leyes de todas las naciones; ni a su hijo Marc-Antoine, cuya extra a muerte indujo a error a esos jueces; ni a la madre, tan respetable como desgraciada; ni a sus inocentes hijas, que recorrieron con ella doscientas leguas para poner su desastre y su virtud a los pies del trono. Ese Dios sabe que solamente nos ha animado un esp ritu de justicia, de verdad y de paz cuando hemos escrito lo que pensamos de la tolerancia, con motivo de Jean Calas, a quien el esp ritu de intolerancia ha hecho morir. Ha ca

It has been 240 years since 1777 when women lost the right to vote in New York to 1920 when the "Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution" ratified, stating, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex". The lives of American women in the 1920s differed vastly from their counterparts who had lived only a few decades prior to entrance into the adult world. To the women of the 1920s, the True Woman was little more than a relic that simply acted as a generational gap between their grandmothers and mothers, and themselves. The battle for suffrage was finally over. After all those years of struggles, women had won the precious right to vote. The generations of suffragists that had fought for so long proudly entered the political world. Carrie Chapman Catt carried the struggle into voting awareness with the founding of the League of Women Voters. Alice Paul vowed to fight until an Equal Rights Amendment was added to the Constitution. Margaret Sanger declared that female independence could be accomplished only with proper birth control methods. To their dismay, the daughters of this generation seemed uninterested in these grand causes. As the 1920s roared along, many young women of the age wanted to have fun. With almost infinite more opportunities and equality than the generations before them, these young women quickly and eagerly embraced a rapidly changing world that now allowed females to finally voice their opinions in both the private and public sector. And although a number of holdovers still existed from the Victorian era, the partition between the True Woman and the New Woman was slowly becoming more and more apparent, especially a new phenomenon's like the flapper and the vacuum cleaner took over the American media. Never before in American history had women experienced such personal, social, or political freedom, which meant that the 1920s was also a time of exploration in regards to what it now meant to be a woman. As evidenced in both the images and the articles on these New Women, a completely new outlook on womanly body image was beginning to hold in American communities. In the past, a more full-figured physique was considered most attractive on females, displaying that they were both capable of buying food and not having difficulty in birthing children. In sharp contrast, the 1920s saw the entrance of the flapper, who often "wore the flapper uniform which turned to flattening brassieres that were constructed of shoulder straps and a single band of material that encased the body from chest to waist. Although a healthy, trim build was emulated in past decades, the pencil-thin frames that were now considered to be the ideal of the 1920s were much, much different than anything that had ever been seen before. As evidenced in the many images advertising maternity corsets and girdles, being stick-straight during both pregnancy and immediately after birth was a necessity for decade's New Women. Whereas the True Woman existed solely to be a good mother and wife to her family, the New Woman often placed her appearance and outward image right up along with the home. A very rapidly changing America resulted in a massive shift between the beliefs that had governed the True Woman and those that had come to oversee the New Woman of the 1920s. New opportunities and equalities gave the young women of the 1920s an unprecedented level of freedom compared to their mothers and grandmothers, while also allowing them to indulge in pursuits other than a constant aspiration for motherhood. It was likely this freedom and the third wave of industrialization that had spawned the new athletics, dieting, and flapper crazes that have come to epitomize the 1920s in American history. As the "Flappers" danced at speakeasies women on Puerto Rico dreamed beyond our boundaries of white and gold sands and palm trees, but that is another story. Read

No importa el vocablo que se utilice para nombrar a un ser humano nacido en lo que hoy se llamar a tierra o pueblo incivilizado, ll melo usted: nativo, indio, anormal, loco, ermita o, antisocial, etc... la verdad final es que es un Ser Humano al igual que todos lo que habitan en la tierra. Al no poder comunicarnos con dicha persona por la diferencia de lenguaje y tampoco poder saber su proveniencia, cultura, creencias, costumbres, puede dependiendo de sus intenciones que usted decida enga arlo para abusar de este rob ndole su oro, diamantes, esmeraldas o plata en crudo que el personaje considera como cosas comunes, o quiz s usted lo quiera raptar para convertirlo en su esclavo, o quiz s para seg n su opini n tratar de civilizarlo y convertirlo en un "clone" suyo. Todo esto pudiera ser interpretado como un comportamiento inhumano contra otro ser. Pero no se haga el que no conoce la historia de todas estas civilizaciones que fueron a la fuerza conquistadas y dominadas en nombre de otro hombre o de una llamada doctrina eclesi stica utilizando sus raptores para extraer todo lo posible de la tierra y sus habitantes sin tener ni la m s m nima consideraci n sobre los efectos futuros de esta manera de obrar y actuar para ellos mismos y aquellos quienes los enviaron. Puerto Rico es un ejemplo de esto al igual que lo fue M xico, Colombia, frica, India, y aun la misma Espa a. El Descubrimiento junto a la exploraci n que por ende conduc a a la conquista y colonizaci n bajo los Reyes Cat licos y Carlos V se distingu a por la manera medieval en que estos intelectualmente ignorantes y sedientos hombres se tiraban de pecho sobre un espejismo des rtico para llenar sus nforas de agua y descubren solo arena. En Espa a tanto los te logos y juristas recomendaron en sus asesoramientos a sus Majestades Cat licas que declararan libres a los nativos; pero que a su vez autorizaran los llamaos repartimientos de indios, en que se les hac a trabajar por la fuerza. En el 1510 sin embargo en la Isla Espa ola (hoy Santo Domingo y Hait ) los frailes dominicos protestaron en oratoria contra tales repartimientos entre ellos Fray Antonio Montesinos ayudando as a cambiar la apreciaci n de la vida indiana. Este hecho hizo surgir una de las lecciones morales m s profundas en la historia: hombres de la naci n conquistadora discutieron los derechos de la propia conquista. Dos a os despu s en el 1512 el Rey Fernando con sus hombres de ciencia y conciencia salieron con la brillant sima idea de no abolir los repartimientos sino reglamentarla de manera que coexistiera la teor a de la libertad con la pr ctica del trabajo forzoso. Qu manera m s ignorante de razonar, seg n mi opini n. Esta idea solo pudo haber salido de una mente y actitud medieval sobre la naturaleza del poder de la monarqu a, los l mites entre lo espiritual y lo temporal y la relaci n entre la cristiandad y los llamados infieles. Traduzcamos esto a la aplicaci n en la Am rica; (a) los indios son criaturas razonables y libres, (b) cuando se defienden sin cocer el prop sito evangelizador de los espa oles, est n en su derecho y no se les puede ni arrebatar sus bienes ni esclavizar, aunque, eso s , no les corresponde el poder pol tico de ning n modo, (c) pero si despu s de ensenarles la verdad del Estado-Iglesia de Espa a (es decir, que el poder del mundo reside en el Papa y este dono las tierras de los indios al rey espa ol) los indios insisten en resistirse a los predicadores de la fe cristiana, la guerra sera justa y por lo tanto deben ser invadidos, despojados y subyugados, (d) los indios eran libres con tal que acataran la Iglesia, si lo hacen, se les recibir a con amor: si no, se les har a la guerra, entonces los espa oles pasar an a convertirse de 'pacificadores' en 'conquistadores. Entremos en una de las cr nicas que ha sido considerada como uno de los textos fundamentales para los estudios de la conquista de Am rica. Esta obra