Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll published in 1865 has been overlooked.  I hope to “catch up” with this widely recognized tale soon.  Amazon offered a paperback copy for $2.95 and I expect the book to arrive sometime Friday.  Time and space distortion is a feature of the story as I am given to understand.  Alice is disoriented by the effects of Wonderland.  She is impinged by change, her size grows or diminishes according to circumstances which she cannot control.

What is Alice to do?  Survival demands that she learn to adapt to change, simultaneously to adapt and to control the external constraints, as she is able.  Alice meets a collection of inhabitants of Wonderland.  There’s the murderous Queen of Hearts. the White Rabbit always distressed at “being late,” a Cheshire Cat that randomly manifests and disappears, and fortunately for Alice — the empathetic caterpillar, the addicted creature who teaches Alice to eat mushrooms to control her fluctuation in size.  Not to be neglected, I must mention the Cards, servants who are “just here” to obey.  This must reference go-along-to-get-along individuals, raising their voices to join in chorus with the party that seems the most entertaining.

Welcome to the show: Wonderland America!  Could you pass more mushrooms?

I’ll take another.

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What tune is recommended for a gray Thursday as the snow begins to fall at the intersection of 3rd and State here in Geneva?  Could we choose any other than White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane?  Woodstock 1969!  Grace Slick delivers with palpable sensuality.

White Rabbit

by Jefferson Airplane

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small

When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

Lyrics by Grace Slick