Jerry, George and Kenne Toasting the Good Life During a Wonderful Hike Visiting a Series of Scenic Lakes Nestled in a Gorgeous Valley Surrounded by 13,000-ft Peaks in the High Sierras. (August 6, 2006) — Image by joy
I first met Jerry in the late 1990s when he became a member of our book club, The Society of The 5th Cave — A Reading Club for the Non-Discriminating Bourgeoisie. His first selection was The Future and it Enemies by Virgibia Postrel. “Postrel’s book stands out as one of the best popular defenses of the ideal of a free society precisely because she covers the skeletal principles of liberty with the flesh and blood of history, everyday real life, and examples of things around us that we take for granted. It is one of those rare instances of a well-balanced blending of theory and practice that may yet make free men and free markets a reality in the next century.”
In a dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, and yet he is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: “How you been?” He grins and looks at me. “I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees.”
— Wendell Berry
3/11/22, 9:58 AM Col. Hoblit Obituary (1936 – 2022) – Conroe, TX – The Courier of Montgomery County
Col. Jerry Noel Hoblit, the greatest ghter pilot of all time, flew west on January 31, 2022, at age 85 in Conroe, TX. Pilots around the world were heard to say YGBSM. Some knew him as Hognose, but his call sign was Dragon. While no SAM could catch him, Dementia and Parkinson’s finally did. Aside from being a world-class fighter pilot, Jerry was a loving husband and father, doting grandfather, and generous friend.
Jerry Hoblit graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Class of 1958. During the Vietnam War, where he served three separate tours, he was awarded three Distinguished Flying Crosses and three Silver Stars, among others. Decades later Colonel Tom Wilson (USAF, Retired), who had been Hoblit’s “backseater” learned that Jerry had one less Silver Star and had been recommended for the Air Force Cross but never received it. Three and a half decades after his service in Vietnam, the Air Force awarded Col. Hoblit with its highest honor, The Air Force Cross. Jerry retired as a U.S. Air Force Colonel on June 30, 1982.
While his military career was marked with incredible success, he counted his marriage to Rosalie Ward as his greatest and most happy achievement. The couple was married on May 24, 1963, at Spangdahlem Air Force Base in Germany. Their family grew to include three daughters, Holly Virginia, Heather Elizabeth, and Heidi Noel. Jerry loved his three girls but found being a grandparent to Eric, Ethan, Rhegan, and August to be the most enjoyable.
A Memorial will be held at Metcalf Funeral Home in Conroe, Texas (1801 East White Oak Terrace) at 3 PM on Saturday, March 12. Chocolate Cake (of course!) and light refreshments will be served following.
This summer the family will honor his wishes and spread some of his remains at Lake Rosalie in the High Sierras. Date TBD.
Col. Jerry Noel Hoblit will have full military honors and yover at Arlington Memorial Cemetery at a future date (most likely in 2023 due to the waitlist). Following this ceremony, the family will honor his request and host a roast in his honor.
Jerry’s wishes were for donations to be made to
Shriner’s Children’s Hospital
Dinner with the Hoblits, the Boyles and the Turners at the Hoblit cabin in Mammouth Lakes, California (August 4, 2006)
The Society of the Fifth Cave Christmas Celebration, December 19, 2009
The Society of the Fifth Cave, “A Reading Club for the Non-Discriminating Bourgeoisie,” has existed in one form are another, since 1983. I became a member in 1998. The last time I was able to attend one of our monthly meetings was September 2012.
— kenne
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
Invoking the Mystery By Giving Of One’s Time — Computer Painting by kenne
(The following was first posted on September 26, 2009, on this blog. In the process of writing about my dear friend, Linda Ricketts, who passed away recently, I was doing a tab search on this blog when this posting was among those identified. So much has happened in the intervening years that make the premise of “Invoking the Mystery” even more critical and timely, especially with the Supreme Court’s deeply flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United.)
The book club to which I belong, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” comprises members, all-be-it old educated professionals, males who pride themselves in being specialists in many areas, but with age accepting the reality of being skilled in few. Mostly politically right of center seeking to help me see the light, convinced that those with opposing views are also conducting their act of ministry. Wrong, oh truth sayers! Although I may debate a position, I don’t want everyone to agree with me, and I want each person to think. That’s why I selected Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff for September reading. (Click here to see Rushkoff on Colbert Nation.) It is a book that can help people better understand many of today’s economic and financial issues, which Rushkoff feels are not a problem of reality or nature but a problem of design. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. Instead, there is a convincing case to be made for redesigning a poorly designed invention of our culture by identifying non-market ways of developing gift-exchange institutions.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that many who may take a road-trip vacation tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat rather than going to a local establishment. If this is your comfort level, you don’t want to be traveling between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. According to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather-Sealed blog, this is where you will be hurtin’ if you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my life and my fortune are controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard to become part of the gift economy –- doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where goods and services are exchanged without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world, we can begin making local impacts that it spreads. Rushkoff gives many examples of local, sustainable efforts that effectively trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. The act of giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkoff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people who are doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s excellent book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance are even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which the book is mostly about, and pure science, spiritual life, healing, and teaching…. Therefore, this book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy. This book explains why and builds out on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he refers to human endeavors such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has its own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires — “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to gather the Duende.
Suppose we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science, and artistic practice, none of which operates well in the corporate marketplace. In that case, we must find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
A Society of the 5th Cave Book Club Meeting In The North Montgomery County Woods (April 10, 2005)– Images by kenne
(Click on any image to see slideshow.)
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
It has been over two years since I last attended a Society of the 5th Cave book club meeting, which change during our recent visit to the Houston area. After the celebration of Mother’s life in The Woodlands, I headed north to Conroe, Texas to attend the August meeting of the Cave..
It was nice visiting with Cave members as we discussed this month’s reading, “Destiny of the Republic” by Candice Millard. Of course, as usual the book only served to generate discussion on many issues only somewhat related to the book.
December 31, 2009, a time of reviewing the past and new resolutions. This process includes retrieving and assembling photos that help reconstruct memories. However, this labor of love took on a different meaning after learning that morning that Kitty Davis had lost her battle with cancer. Two days later, Joy and I attended a memorial service for Kitty at the First Presbyterian Church in Conroe. The church was packed with friends and family exchanging personal memories with the collective memory of a community that had grown in this exceptional person’s love and caring friendship.
Words can resurrect the past, serving to memorialize it. Still, photographs allow us to prompt the elusive feelings that contribute to our being able to develop an awareness of how the past relates to our memories in the present.
Through the reading club, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” I met Ken Davis, Kitty’s husband for life. The friendships developed in the 5th Cave created social occasions, which provided an opportunity to take some of the photographs in this posting.December 31, 2009, a time of reviewing the past and of new resolutions. For me, this is a process that includes retrieving and assembling photos that help reconstruct memories. However, this labor of love took on a different meaning after learning late in the day that Kitty Davis had lost her battle with cancer that morning. Two days later, Joy and I attended a memorial service for Kitty at the First Presbyterian Church in Conroe. The church was packed with friends and family exchanging personal memories with the collective memory of a community that had grown in the love and caring friendship of this very special person.
Words can resurrect the past, serving to memorialize, but it is photographs that allow us to prompt the elusive feelings that contribute to our being able to develop an awareness of how the past relates to our memories in the present.
It was through the reading club, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” that I met Ken Davis, Kitty’s husband for life. The friendships developed in the 5th Cave created social occasions, which provided an opportunity to take some of the photographs in this posting.
In addition to the 5th Cave connection, there was the Academy for Lifelong Learning (ALL) at Montgomery College connection. Having been involved in creating this organization, I witnessed Kitty living out one of her passions, yoga. On two occasions, in January 2004 and 2005, I photographed the yoga sessions conducted by John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga and son of community leader and a charter member of ALL, Ann Friend. I knew Kitty was in some of my photos, which I now share so they may invoke in you, as they do in me, this line from one of my favorite songs, Stardust: “Love is the stardust of yesterday, the music of the years gone by.”
Stardust Memories
The past is not for replay
But for the Stardust of yesterday
Yesterday, a time, a place
Gently massaging forgotten dreams
Dreams give clues to
Our stardust memories
Memories fading for now
Only reborn to our imagination
Imagination directs the soul to
Reconstruct old moments
Moments experiencing rapture
In the joy of our love
Love is the Stardust of yesterday
The music of the years to come
May these words and images gently sprinkle down on our collective stardust memories of Kitty.
In July of 1997, Cave member Dave Parsons selected Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow as our book for the monthly meeting of our reading club of the non-discriminating bourgeoise. Since that time Dave’s selection has held the record as the most difficult read for members. A benchmark not surpassed, some argue, till Dick Rohfritch’s selection of William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central.If the bar has not been raised, Europe Central at least equals Gravity’s Rainbow in excellence and difficulty.
Although only one of our members (George Boyle) finished the book, this didn’t lessen the brevity of the discussion. Each of us had completed enough of the book to appreciate Vollmann’s writing on moral extremism and our valuing the opportunity to learn about the good side of bad helping us better understand reality and what is the essence of moral behavior.
We are human beings we are always questioning our own moral calculus as does Dave in his poem “Sounding:”
“last gasp and every mourning parent’s gnashing, “No!”
Standing in the center of this simple kitchen, for the first time
in over forty years of my sloping for light — I am certain
Everyday I ask people to become “friends,” “follow-me,” etc, resulting in, “Why?”
One of the groups I belong to is a book club, The Society of The 5th Cave, and now we are Twittering — well, some of us are. Since we are mostly older generation guys, it’s not easy to Twitt just because one of us puts 5thCave on Twitter.
Today I received another one of those “Why?” questions. What following is my response:
Good question. Here are some reasons why you need Twitter:
1. Easily link with people sharing common interests i.e., reading, book clubs, etc.
2. Quickly share club information and history.
3. Have interactive dialog on books selections.
4. Others can follow the 5thCave and learn about our reading list and reviews.
5. The social media group provides an element of trust because of our knowledge of one another.
6. Provide avenues for choosing to link (follow) other like minded people.
7. The are many other reasons for using Twitter, i.e.:
• Identify potential clients, news sources, leads, etc
• Find a job
• Build brand awareness
• Make money
• To get news and information
• Drive viewers to blog or website
. . .but may not apply to 5thCave.
To be a part of the Twitter 5thCave, one needs to register on Twitter.comand start following 5thCave.
Twitter is just one of many social media sites that allow people to network, which is fundamental to being human, but make use of technology to network.
The real negative of Twitter is you will need to check your site, which will contain postings on 5thCave if you are following 5thCave. What shows up on your site are the posting of those you are following — so the choices are all yours.
Hope this is helpful.
I would like to hear your comments on why you use social media.
For more years than I can recall, I have given books to family members as if it were a form of contrition for all the books I wish I had read – call it a form of “book credit.” This year will be no exception, however, I have learned that this annual selection process may have more benefit to the giver than the receiver. Although I read more books than ever before, I still can’t read everything I would like, so I supplement this deficiency by reading reviews and discussions on the Internet.
Tops on my weekly list of Internet reading is the NY Times Sunday Book Review and this time of year includes “100 Notable Books of 2008.” As with most years, I have not yet read any on the list, but one year into the 2007 list, I can acknowledge having read some on it, thanks in large part to being a member of the “Society of the 5th Cave.” This group of the “non-discriminating bourgeoisie” ensures my reading some books I would not normally read, especially those in the fiction category.
The Society of the Fifth Cave Christmas Celebration, December 19, 2009
![Zographus regalis cuprea [Cameroon]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52783978513_e3da275118_s.jpg "Zographus regalis cuprea [Cameroon]")
Becoming is Superior to Being 
(The following was first posted on September 26, 2009, on this blog. In the process of writing about my dear friend, Linda Ricketts, who passed away recently, I was doing a tab search on this blog when this posting was among those identified. So much has happened in the intervening years that make the premise of “Invoking the Mystery” even more critical and timely, especially with the Supreme Court’s deeply flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United.)
The book club to which I belong, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” comprises members, all-be-it old educated professionals, males who pride themselves in being specialists in many areas, but with age accepting the reality of being skilled in few. Mostly politically right of center seeking to help me see the light, convinced that those with opposing views are also conducting their act of ministry. Wrong, oh truth sayers! Although I may debate a position, I don’t want everyone to agree with me, and I want each person to think. That’s why I selected Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff for September reading. (Click here to see Rushkoff on Colbert Nation.) It is a book that can help people better understand many of today’s economic and financial issues, which Rushkoff feels are not a problem of reality or nature but a problem of design. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. Instead, there is a convincing case to be made for redesigning a poorly designed invention of our culture by identifying non-market ways of developing gift-exchange institutions.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that many who may take a road-trip vacation tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat rather than going to a local establishment. If this is your comfort level, you don’t want to be traveling between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. According to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather-Sealed blog, this is where you will be hurtin’ if you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my life and my fortune are controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard to become part of the gift economy –- doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where goods and services are exchanged without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world, we can begin making local impacts that it spreads. Rushkoff gives many examples of local, sustainable efforts that effectively trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. The act of giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkoff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people who are doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s excellent book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance are even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which the book is mostly about, and pure science, spiritual life, healing, and teaching…. Therefore, this book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy. This book explains why and builds out on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he refers to human endeavors such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has its own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires — “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to gather the Duende.
Suppose we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science, and artistic practice, none of which operates well in the corporate marketplace. In that case, we must find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
— kenne
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