Number 118, May - June 2018
Pablo Picasso’s (Spain, 25 Octubre 1881 - France, 8 April 1973) “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” a breakthrough 1932 painting, treats Marie-Thérèse Walter’s mauve flesh as the source of vegetation. In 1932 the world was tilting toward catastrophe. In his studio on Paris’s Rue la Boétie or from his chateau in Normandy, Pablo Picasso barely noticed. For him, the year 1932 was a cavalcade of public praise and private indulgences, a year when stylistic invention tipped into frenzy. Always overproductive, Picasso supercharged his career in 1932, the year his first retrospective exhibition took place and when the first volume of Christian Zervos’s mammoth catalogue raisonné was published.
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Editor's Page Was Jesus God? by "Z" 
A while ago I published a piece here in SouthernCrossReview called We are the Lucky Ones, (by “Z”). It described an essay, or the manuscript of one, that had been found by my son and his dog in an old lunch-pail in the wooded part of our property here in the valley of Traslasierra in the Province of Córdoba. I didn't expect that something else would ever be found here, that finding the lunch-pail was no more than a unique stroke of luck. But fate is fond of playing tricks. Just last week my son and his dog were investigating the flora and fauna (insects) in a dry riverbed at the far end of the wood, actually outside of our property because the riverbed acts as the natural border, no-man's-land so to speak. There, thanks to the dog's olfactory talent, they found an old rucksack caught under some fallen branches... Continue reading Current Events
God wills it! 
America may be sinking ever deeper into the moral morass of the Trump era, but if you think the malevolence of this period began with him, think again. The moment I still dwell on, the moment I believe ignited the vast public disorder that is now our all-American world, has been almost completely forgotten here. And little wonder. It was no more than a casually tossed-off cliché, a passing historical reference whose implications and consequences meant nothing to the speaker. "This crusade," said President George W. Bush just days after the 9/11 attacks, "this war on terrorism... Continue reading Trump’s Recycling Program - War Crimes and War Criminals, Old and (Potentially) New By Rebecca Gordon 
A barely noticed anniversary slid by on March 20th. It’s been 15 years since the United States committed the greatest war crime of the twenty-first century: the unprovoked, aggressive invasion of Iraq. The New York Times, which didn’t exactly cover itself in glory in the run-up to that invasion, recently ran an op-ed by an Iraqi novelist living in the United States entitled “Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country,” but that was about it. The Washington Post, another publication that (despite the recent portrayal of its Vietnam-era heroism in the movie The Post) repeatedly editorialized in favor of the invasion, marked the anniversary with a story about the war’s “murky” body count. Its piece concluded that at least 600,000 people died in the decade and a half of war, civil war, and chaos that followed -- roughly the population of Washington, D.C. Features Meeting Thomas Mann by Susan Sontag 
Reading and listening to music: the triumphs of being not myself. That nearly everything I admired was produced by people who were dead (or very old) or from elsewhere, ideally Europe, seemed inevitable to me. I accumulated gods. What Stravinsky was for music Thomas Mann became for literature. At my Aladdin's cave, at the Pickwick, on November 11, 1947 - taking the book down from the shelf just now, I find the date written on the flyleaf in the italic script I was then practicing - I bought The Magic Mountain. I began it that night, and for the first few nights had trouble breathing as I read. For this was not just another book I would love but a transforming book, a source of discoveries and recognitions. All of Europe fell into my head - though on condition that I start mourning for it. And tuberculosis, the faintly shameful disease (so my mother had intimated) of which my hard-to-imagine real father had died so long ago and exotically elsewhere, but which seemed, once we moved to Tucson, to be a commonplace misfortune - tuberculosis was revealed as the very epitome of pathetic and spiritual interest! Continue reading Fiction Prospect Park - a mystery play (scenes 5 and 6 of seven scenes) by Frank Thomas Smith 
The scene is set by the actors in dim light. They are unhurried: four tables, one left, one right, one upstage center, one downstage center, forming a large rectangle, tilted so the characters' faces are visible to the audience. The Chairman of Board, C.B., stands before the upstage tables. KENNETH stands opposite him, MARGO is on his left, JOHN is on his right. Love in the Life of Spies (Chapter 5, The First Encounter) by Frank Thomas Smith 
That night I went to the Gilded Cage with a purpose and was dressed accordingly: blue sports jacket, slacks, loafers without socks, white shirt open to the third button. I arrived early and found a stool at the semi-circular bar, put a fiver on the bar for effect, ordered a Millers High Life, lit a cigarette and looked around. The bar-stools were almost all occupied - by men. Soon they'd be three deep, it being Friday night. The piano was set back in an alcove to the left-rear of the bar. It also had bar-stools around it so you could drink there and look at the player with one elbow on the piano. Two young couples were perched on the stools, the men in suits and ties and the giggly women showing a lot of leg. The men were probably asshole officers from Fort Ord, I figured. The piano player was playing As Time Goes By... Miryam - Part Eight by Luise Rinser 
A beggar sat at the city's gate. He was blind. I said: Yehuda, give him something. Daddies by Frank Thomas Smith 
"Balls," said the queen, "if I had them I'd be king." Children's Corner Juancito Hummingbird by Frank Thomas Smith 
Juancito (which means Johnny in Spanish) was more proud of his hair than anything else. Every time his mother wanted to take him to the barber he protested so much that she finally gave in and Juancito let his hair grow till it reached almost to his waist. It was blond, curly and shiny y Juancito sometimes let it fall down his back, and other times he tied it back with a rubber-band. Even the girls envied him. Juancito Colibrí Lo que más orgullo le daba a Juancito era su pelo. Protestaba tanto cada vez que su mamá quería llevarlo al peluquero, que ella finalmente se dio por vencida, y Juancito se dejó crecer el pelo casi hasta a la cintura. Era un pelo rubio, rizado y brillante, y Juancito a veces se lo dejaba suelto sobre la espalda y, otras veces, se lo ataba atrás con una banda elástica. Hasta las niñas se lo envidiaban. Antroposophy Bio-dynamic Agriculture Course - Lecture Six plus a Question and Answer session by Rudolf Steiner 
The
Nature of weeds, animal plagues and the so-called plant diseases
before the tribunal of nature The Fifth Gospel - Lecture 1 of 7 lectures by Rudolf Steiner 
The theme I intend to speak about seems to me to be especially important in view of the times and conditions in which we live. I would like to emphasize from the start that it is not due to a wish for sensationalism or similar things that the theme is The Fifth Gospel. For I hope to show that, given our present circumstances, it is especially important, in the sense that is meant, that no other name is more appropriate than The Fifth Gospel. This Fifth Gospel, as you will hear it, does not yet exist in a recorded document, although in the future of humanity it will certainly exist in a specific record. But in a certain sense this Fifth Gospel is as old as the other four Gospels. In order that I may speak about this Fifth Gospel, however, an introduction is necessary in order to clarify certain important points for a complete understanding of what we will now call the Fifth Gospel... Continue reading Buddha and Christ - A lecture for members of the Austrian Theosophical Society by Rudolf Steiner 
Nowadays in the Theosophical Society questions are asked, especially by young members, which are worth taking seriously. One of these questions, often posed, is this. Why do we dedicate so much time to the study of Theosophy? Why do we weigh ourselves down with all the ballast of theories about the origin of the cosmos from the very beginning up to the evolution of man with his various bodies and principles? And also: the teaching about the many incorporations or incarnations the human being must live through, and learning about the law of cause and effect. Why is all that necessary? Wouldn't we advance further by concentrating on the ethical aspects of theosophical teaching in order to better develop into good people? Isn't that the main thing? Why then all the studying? Continue reading Poetry Birches By Robert Frost 
When I see birches bend to left and right Southern Cross and Parting by Frank Thomas Smith 
Gracefully
the gaucho gallops through Words and Music Waiting for the Miracle - Leonard Cohen 
Baby, I've been waiting,  Letters to the Editor 
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