The Boron Letters Page 2

  Plus, after you get into it, it will make you feel great!

  So anyway, here are some other good health habits that I think you should get into right away.

  FASTING - You are, in my opinion, too young to go on any extended fasts but I really think it would be good for you to fast one (1) full day each week.

  Currently, I am fasting every Saturday. And, I intend to keep fasting one day a week (at least) for the rest of my life. When you fast, you begin to normalize your body functions and also, you develop a certain self-discipline that will help you in most other areas of your life. I intend to write a lot more about fasting later on but, for right now, I just want to encourage you to begin immediately to fast one day every week.

  Here are some tips. First of all, I suggest you do not tell other people what you are doing. Most people don't understand fasting and all you will get from them on this subject is a lot of ignorant babble. Secondly, I feel that you should do very little (or no) athletic exercise on the days that you fast. You see, your "Fast Day" is the day you set aside to give your mind and body a rest. You don't have to stay in bed all day or anything like that but you really should take it easy both physically AND mentally.

  What I do on my fast days is sort of kick back and read and putter around and, also, I have found it a good time to take care of those nagging little chores and errands that seem to accumulate during the rest of the week.

  In other words, I think you should do road work every morning to more or less "order your day" and fast every week in order to "order your week".

  You know what, Son? I am 46 years and one day old and the two things Ihave written to you about so far are the most important things I have ever learned.

  And just think. You can start right now before you are even 16 years old. God, what a head start you will have!

  Now, let's go on. The next thing I want to talk to you about is your diet. First of all, I believe that everybody who says breakfast is the most important meal of the day is dead wrong. In my opinion all you should eat before lunch is a couple pieces of fruit. Do you remember what I said to you in yesterday's letter? I said you should eat a piece of fruit (preferably a banana) before you start your road work.

  Well, after your road work, in my judgment, what you should do is take a shower, clean up, and get dressed and get your day started. And then, some time after that, before lunch, you should eat another piece of fruit. Actually, you should eat three pieces of fruit every day (except when you fast) and I think you can't miss with a banana, an apple or an orange. This way, you will get your potassium, your vitamin (and something called pectin, all of which is very good for you!).

  Incidentally, I have read, and I believe it to be true, that fruit is the prize food of man. Also, I believe that fruit is perhaps the number one food category that Americans need to eat more of.

  Watch your Mom. Watch other people. How much fruit do they eat? Very little I'll bet, and they are missing out on something very, very important.

  One reason, of course, is that fruit contains a lot of stuff that is good for you and, another reason is fruit, along with certain other foods, acts sort of like "nature's broom" and helps keep you cleaned out and mobilating.

  Anyway, as I said yesterday, I'm just warming up right now and I intend to write more on all this at a later date. But for now, it would be an excellent idea if you would start eating three pieces of fruit everyday and start right after you get this letter.

  You know Bond, in addition to everything else, you are the best student I have ever had and it is a real joy to teach all these things to you. Boy I sure wish my Dad had been able to do this for me but that's water over the dam.

  But maybe we can start a tradition here. A new "Halbert Tradition" whereupon the father's make it a point to pass down what they have learned to teach a new generation.

  It would be nice.

  Okay, here's more info on the subject of diet. What else should you eat? Well, one thing is sure: You should definitely eat a big bowl of some "bran type" cereal. Grapenuts is probably the best you can find in an ordinary grocery store and some health food stores have cereals that are even better.

  By the way, remember yesterday when I asked you to get a copy of "The Joy Of Running"? Well, here are two other books you should look for: "The Miracle of Fasting" by Paul Bragg and "Are You Confused?" by Paulo Airola. Many health food stores will probably carry both of these books.

  By the way, I don't want you to feel like you have to write to me as much as I am writing to you. I do want to hear from you (and often) but you are not writing a book like I am so no guilt trips are necessary.

  Let's take a break and talk about something else. There's an old tomcat around here at the camp named Crackers. Crackers is an arrogant cat. There is a lot of small game around here and Crackers like to catch these little critters and plays with them.

  For example, a week or so ago, I was doing my morning road work and I spotted Crackers as I was coming down the backside of "The Hill". Crackers had a little critter in his mouth that looks just like a baby chipmunk. These little guys are cute as hell and I have since (I'm getting tired) found out that they are, in reality, Antelope Ground Squirrels.

  Anyway, Crackers had this cute little creature in his mouth and he brought it over to me and then dropped it. The critter just laid there. Then, after a little while, Crackers would bat it around a little with his front paws. After a while, the critter began to stir and then it tried to run away. Crackers caught it again in short order and began to repeat the whole process. What I mean is that he would carry it in his mouth and then drop it and then torment it until finally the poor thing had no fight left.

  In other words, Crackers just messed with this little squirrel until he tormented the life out of it. And then, after all this, do you know what else he would do? What he would do is pick up the squirrel again in his mouth and toss his head back and throw it up in the air and then bat it back and forth while it was in the air like he was playing handball with it.

  Whatever. In any case, when I told some other inmate about this he said, "Yeah, but that stupid Crackers is nothing but a stupid punk. He always takes trash from the other cats around here. There's a black cat from over at the housing area that whips him all the time!"

  What's the point of all this? Probably, there isn't one but it reminds me of something I read once in an article in "The Herald Examiner" in which someone was quoted as saying:

  "There is no justice. There is only power."

  That's it for now.

  I Love You and Good Luck!

  Dad

  7:07 P.M.

  *(Sorry, but that is how inmates talk.)

  UPDATE:

  In this second letter, pop begins by remarking on his new get-tough attitude and with all due respect, that is total bullshit. He was ALWAYS tough. I have no illusions about my father and he was not tough in all situations and certainly had his fears as we all do, but in general he has always been tough.

  He grew up in an economically depressed small town, served as an MP in Germany and had five children by the time he was thirty. He got rich, went broke, got rich and blew it all again several times by this point in his life and squarely faced going to prison head on.

  Oh he carried fear for sure, but he always did what he had to and he faced some tough shit.

  The hidden point he might make if he re-read the letter today would be how he hates mean people. Cruelty was something he hated to his core and once he knew someone was scum, he developed a hard-core tough attitude towards that person.

  This was an important survival skill. In life, everyone must learn to deal with unnecessary grief from other people, but sometimes you are faced with a jerk who has the balance of power in their favor and the only way to survive, especially with your pride intact, is to develop a mental toughness as a form of mental armor and once you do…. that attitude is always there when you really need it.

  The people who ran Boron didn’t inspi
re a new get-tough attitude in him. No… they simply inspired his toughness to surface.

  On the subject of fasting, I did try it a few times shortly after receiving this letter, but I hate fasting.

  However, his letters did inspire me to eat more fruit than most other people of my generation and all of his nutritional advice in the letters is spot on.

  As I said in the first commentary, my father abused his body, went on health kicks and yet, he died at 67 so it is impossible to judge how much he extended his own life. He did manage to make it 10 more years than his father but…

  After he passed, the medical examiner remarked that he was in great shape, other than being dead of course. He would have loved that comment.

  Seriously though, she did say he was in terrific shape other than his blocked artery and enlarged heart which seems to be hereditary in origin.

  Before we get far from the subject of fasting, he made what I believe to be the most overlooked lesson of the letter and that was when he wrote, “don’t tell anyone.”

  My dad’s favorite saying was “nothing is impossible for a man who refuses to listen to reason” and it served him well his whole life.

  He did so many things other people said couldn’t be done. This shouldn’t be taken as “never listen to reasonable people”, but just because someone says you can’t do something or shouldn’t, doesn’t mean they are right, even if the whole world agrees with them.

  Most of the people in the world are nay-sayers. They say it is too hard to quit smoking or it is too tough to get rich or you will never make it. When it comes to accomplishing things, most people fail to even try. There is no benefit in dealing with people who have nothing but negative things to say. When that someone amounts to just about everyone, just keep it to yourself.

  This reminds me of the Australian doctor who discovered a non-surgical cure for ulcers. Everyone in the scientific community agreed that no viruses or anything could live in the acidic conditions inside the human stomach. He spent a LOT of time trying to convince other doctors he was right. Finally, he ignored all of them and went about his research and proved that most ulcers are caused by organisms in the stomach.

  He Had To Treat & Cure Several People

  Before The Medical Community Would

  Pay Attention To Him!

  But he sure would have saved a lot of time by not bothering to argue and just finishing his work.

  All people KNEW the world was flat and the sun revolved around it, and what happened when people offered up a different idea? They were punished for heresy and ridiculed by their colleagues.

  No, sometimes there is no use wasting time and energy fighting established beliefs by arguing and it is better to just silently go about proving or accomplishing your goal.

  Finally, in this letter, he touches briefly on the idea that I would continue to pass on and add any wisdom to my kids’ early development. This was written 15 years before my first child Emma Rose was born.

  Other than in this letter I don’t recall him ever talking about me writing letters until one day I told him what I was doing.

  He was very proud that I decided to write letters to my kids and he really knew how much I appreciate what he had done for me.

  Anyway the last part of the letter is about Crackers. I remember Crackers and he didn’t strike me as any more smug than most house cats, but pop really liked the ground squirrels.

  more free letters at halbertising.com

  The Boron Letters

  Chapter 3

  Thursday, 3:26 p.m.

  June 14, 1984

  Dear Bond,

  Guess what?

  Today I jogged "The Hill" two times without stopping!

  Big deal, huh? Well, it is to me. Your old man is getting lean and mean.

  Anyway, let's get started. First of all, I want to briefly review what I have suggested to you so far.

  1. I have suggested that you do one hour's worth of road work every morning right after you get up for six days a week.

  2. I have suggested you eat three pieces of fruit every day.

  3. I have suggested you eat a large bowl of some bran type cereal every day.

  Now, let's go from there. What else should your daily diet consist of? Well, for one thing, you should eat a lot of vegetables. What I suggest is that you get yourself some kind of baggie or plastic container and every night before you go to sleep I suggest you cut up a bunch of new veggies and put them in the container and then put the container in the refrigerator. Then, in the morning, when you are ready to leave the house, you can grab your raw veggies and take them with you to munch on them all day.

  By the way, don't listen to all that garbage that says you should not eat between meals. You should eat between meals. In fact, six small meals is a lot better than three big ones. Actually, what is best is to have a little nibble whenever you get hungry. And this is a good way to eat your vegetables. Just carry your container with you wherever you go and eat some whenever you get hungry.

  Incidentally, this is a habit that will go a long way in keeping you from feeling tired because it will tend to keep your blood sugar level at a more or less constant level.

  WARNING! Don't depend on your mother or anybody else to buy or cut up your vegetables for you. You should, instead, develop a tough independent attitude.

  You see, when you depend on others you give yourself an excuse for failure. "It's not my fault if she forgot to buy my vegetables." And so on. Don't set yourself up like this. Depend on yourself.

  O.K. So far, we've got you eating fruit, vegetables and a bran type cereal. What else? Well, one thing else I think you should do is drink one large glass of non-fat milk every day. This will give you your calcium, some protein and some other good stuff.

  And, what else? More protein, of course. As I said, you'll get some protein from your milk but it won't be nearly enough. You should also have at least one serving of some kind of lean meat or fowl.

  Hamburgers are fine too.

  Go easy on eggs. Two or three a week is plenty. They contain a lot of cholesterol and that's the stuff (along with fats) that can clog up your arteries.

  Here's a couple more good ideas. (1) Buy yourself a box of bran flakes and mix two or three heaping tablespoons full into your cereal or whatever. (2) Get some protein powder. You can get this at most any health food store and I now believe it is a good idea (especially for a growing boy) to add some protein powder to his diet every day as "protein insurance."

  What else should you eat? Actually, just about anything you want. I think it is a bad idea to ever forbid yourself to ever have ice cream or a soft drink or whatever. Just go easy and use a little common sense.

  But don't worry. You see, if you keep up your road work and eat all the foods you should eat every day you won't have much room (or much inclination) to load yourself up with junk.

  Let's take a break. I'm going to stop writing in a minute or two anyway because it is time for mail call. You know, Bondo, I've been thinking. I figure it will take me about one hundred letters to teach you the basics of what I want you to know. This should come out to between 500 to 1,000 legal pages of writing and these pages will form the core or nucleus of the book I want to write.

  After I get this first part done I intend to take notes from various good books on exercise, diet, selling by mail, etc. and then, at this point, I should be able to sit down with all these letters and notes and then outline the book I want to write. After that, I'll write the first draft of the book. Then, after that, I'll review everything all over again and then write the final draft. I figure my timetable for the book to work out roughly like this:

  1. Letters to Bond ......... 3-months

  2. Notes from other books .. 2-months

  3. Outline ................. 1-month (maximum)

  4. First draft ............. 2-months

  5. Final draft ............. 1-1/2 months

  6. Polish ........................... 1-1/2 months

>   Total ... 11-MONTHS

  Remember - these are very rough estimates. Actually, it is my goal to have the book finished after about ten-months of solid work which means I should (hopefully) be done by middle of next April.

  We'll see. But one thing is true. This is the best place to write and get healthy I've ever been. I seem to get more productive every day.

  Maybe, I'll have to commit some new federal crime every couple of years in order to get my books done!

  Just kidding. Just kidding.

  Strange. We usually have the mail by now but today it is late.

  Oh well, I'll just keep writing.

  STOP 4:14

  Start Again 4:25

  I was interrupted by mail call and now they are having "count." Count is simply when they count us to make sure we are all here.