EVEN LITTLE NON-BOOKS HAVE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS

About this time of the year I go to the bookshelves and pull out the same old book I've been reading every summer for, I suppose, the last 50 years.

You're probably thinking this is some beautifully written piece of literature, full of wise sayings, challenging suggestions, inspirational thoughts, profound utterances. It's none of the above, yet all of the above on a simpler scale somewhat like comparison of Keats and Shelly to Guest and Armour.

The book's title is "A Thousand Ways to Please a Family." Today's critics would likely call it a non-book and say that it is the farthest away one could get from Plato's profound articulation that the idea alone has true being, that the tree, the man, the flower pass away and change, but the general idea of the tree, man and flower never change. (Get that?) Or Pascal's learned statement that reason can go so far and no further, but there are no limits to faith. (More easily understood.)

I have read some of Plato's and Pascal's works on long winter nights when there are no bird songs or butterfly flutterings to distract me. For summer, among others, I'll take this easily read little book published in 1921 and subtitled, "With Bettina's Best Recipes."

Since America's mid-20th century's and continued upheaval of so many aspects of living, I can see where that title, especially the subtitle, would cause quickly raised eyebrows above a prompt, smirking smile by critics who might interpret it as suggesting it is up to the housewife, only, to make a family happy. Such alert readiness to disparage would be an injustice to the book and to women everywhere who take pleasure in pleasing their families. Men, too.

It has been many years since I've had the pleasure of trying to please a family on a daily basis. But I still like to read this unsophisticated book about home life when things were simpler.

I think Socrates, that father of philosophy, would have approved of it, for it was his belief that goodness was based on knowledge and wickedness on ignorance, and this book is a compendium of knowledge that can bring about good things.

Not knowledge such as knowing one planet has a moon that rotates counter-clockwise around it, that Japan ranks 10 in the silver-producing countries, or even that Socrates' (since we've mentioned his name) wife, Xanthippe, was so ill-tempered Socrates lived with her just to learn self-control, but knowledge of how to make pleasant days, one after another.

Bettina, the narrator in this book, keeps a daily journal wherein she plans little surprises and happy moments for her two children and working husband. Starting with January, she goes around the year with such plans. You have to read between the lines to arrive at profundities.

In January, when the family returns home from a New Year's Eve visit at Uncle John's farm, young Robin, the son, exclaims, "Oh, it was such fun to be at Uncle John's and so good to be home again," and is followed by Bettina's observation that to the children's unjaded experience, a journey to Uncle John's farm was as important as a trip to Europe would be to their parents.

Two things I note in this short, half-page episode. One, the children like to come home and two, they are unjaded.

I think our current, national, family counselor, Dr. Dobson, would catch this quickly too.

To create a home where children like to return, even after an exciting visit, is a profound accomplishment for someone who wants to please a family in one of the thousands ways. It way be something as simple as seeing that all chores were done before they left for the day, or something good to eat when they come home.

So here, in the book, we have one of Bettina's best recipes. Socrates' Xanthippe wouldn't have thought of anything so simple as that, would she? Poor Xanthippe.

Making an effort to see that your children aren't too early jaded with life is, in my opinion, the more important of Bettina's observations. In these days of relative affluence it is easy to push and shove children into such a myriad of experiences that at, say age 25, there's nothing new.

Bettina's husband's observation to his children at the end of the year is, "New Year's Day is a good day to make a fine new beginning, but then, so is the first of February and the tenth of June and every other wonderful day of the year."

I think Pascal would have liked that. Socrates and Plato too. Maybe even Tillich, Barth, Kierkegaard, Cicero, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Emerson, Dewey, Hegel, Weaver and LeCron.

Just name dropping, folks. I haven't studied them all. Never heard of the latter two? They put together Bettina's around the year book! And I know that none of them, the philosophers that is, whether arguing about idealism, existentialism, logic, metaphysics or whatever, experienced Bettina's no-bake cookies: one pound of dates, raisins and figs; one half cup nuts and one half cup of granulated sugar. Put fruit and nuts through the food chopper to make a paste. Shape into various forms and roll in sugar. A couple of these would have been a lifesaving substitute for Socrates' cup of hemlock.

REJOICE!