"The Real Christmas Scandal
by Jim Wallis
There is a Christmas scandal this year, but it's not the controversy at shopping malls and retail stores about whether their displays say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." The real Christmas scandal is the budget proposed by the House of Representatives that cuts food stamps, health care, child support, and educational assistance to low-income families - while further lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans and increasing the deficit for all of our grandchildren."
from SojoMail@sojo.net
Enough said.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
4th-graders pass counterfeit bills
From an Associated Press story:
"GARY, Ind. — Police found several discarded counterfeit bills in the home of one of three fourth-graders arrested at school carrying phony bills, officials said.
The Marquette Elementary School students were arrested after lunch Tuesday when the cafeteria cashier realized a boy had paid for his food with a fake $20 bill.
Police arrested two 10-year-old boys and a 12-year-old girl. The students were released to their parents as police continue to investigate.
All three face juvenile charges of forgery and theft, Otano said. No date has been set for the children to appear in juvenile court."
Having a good idea of what life is like for kids in Gary, I suspect these little paperhangers are bound for the criminal justice system for the rest of their lives. I know that it is the criminal in me that perversely wishes for their success instead. I suppose I should be more concerned over crimes of forgery and theft. If everybody could get away with counterfeiting money, of course, it would make "real money" worthless. I just have these Robin Hood sentiments for those who manage to rob the rich. I bet these kids are poor and destined to be forever. It would be nice if they could succeed in doing their little bit to redistribute the wealth. Of course there are better ways than printing bogus money.
Our money is worth so much less than it used to be, though, because of the bogus wealth of CEOs, who are paying themselves obscene bonuses for taking jobs away from honest people. Our money is worth less because of the obscene salaries that go to professional athletes and movie stars, while teachers and non-TV preachers are paid so little (not to mention, of course, janitors and maids and ditch-diggers and garbage collectors).
"GARY, Ind. — Police found several discarded counterfeit bills in the home of one of three fourth-graders arrested at school carrying phony bills, officials said.
The Marquette Elementary School students were arrested after lunch Tuesday when the cafeteria cashier realized a boy had paid for his food with a fake $20 bill.
Police arrested two 10-year-old boys and a 12-year-old girl. The students were released to their parents as police continue to investigate.
All three face juvenile charges of forgery and theft, Otano said. No date has been set for the children to appear in juvenile court."
Having a good idea of what life is like for kids in Gary, I suspect these little paperhangers are bound for the criminal justice system for the rest of their lives. I know that it is the criminal in me that perversely wishes for their success instead. I suppose I should be more concerned over crimes of forgery and theft. If everybody could get away with counterfeiting money, of course, it would make "real money" worthless. I just have these Robin Hood sentiments for those who manage to rob the rich. I bet these kids are poor and destined to be forever. It would be nice if they could succeed in doing their little bit to redistribute the wealth. Of course there are better ways than printing bogus money.
Our money is worth so much less than it used to be, though, because of the bogus wealth of CEOs, who are paying themselves obscene bonuses for taking jobs away from honest people. Our money is worth less because of the obscene salaries that go to professional athletes and movie stars, while teachers and non-TV preachers are paid so little (not to mention, of course, janitors and maids and ditch-diggers and garbage collectors).
Monday, December 12, 2005
Hitler's Niece
A fine read, moral fiction:
Finished Hitler's Niece by Ron Hansen. Geli Raubal (whose mother was Adolf’s half-sister Angela), died in September 1931 at the age of 23 by a bullet from Hitler’s gun, which was found lying beside her. She was also found with a broken nose, and the historical evidence strongly suggests that Hitler viciously struck her and then murdered her. He is portrayed as having done so in the novel.
The Munich cops and other officials called it suicide. There was no autopsy and no police investigation. It is possible, I suppose, that one of Hitler’s thugs could have been the one to murder her, but it is likely that if that were so it was still done at his behest. If she had shot herself did she also break her own nose? His violence to her by those acts were the least of the cruelty, sexual as well as mental, that he heaped upon her in her lifetime, it appears.
I agree with the critics that this novel is brilliant. Although (or perhaps because) it is told from the point of view of Geli, a girl who grows into a young woman and then abruptly dies, it dramatizes the breadth and depth of the evil of the entire Nazi regime, certainly its hideous leaders.
Goering was about as repulsive as a human being could be, wearer of perfume and women’s makeup, appallingly fat, a plundering thief from Jews he disposed of, a sexual pervert, a cold-blooded murderer. Goebbels was an incredibly, disgustingly sycophantic ass-kisser of Hitler and just as incredibly ruthless in grinding subordinates under his heel and plotting the death of an entire people. And most of the Nazis close to him ridiculed Hitler behind his back while kowtowing and genuflecting and saluting and hollering “Heil Hitler!” whenever he was around. He expected it, demanded it, and believed he was entitled to it.
All the time, in his sexual behavior, he was masochistic as well as sadistic, imprisoning and enslaving Geli -- his niece, nineteen years his junior -- while, for example, having her urinate on him while he masturbated. So the little corporal was a golden-shower boy -- among other things. Millions of innocents died because of this man’s sexual psychopathology, I suppose you could say.
Ron Hansen, the author of this powerful novel, wrote about Hitler’s 1945 suicide in the bunker and added: “If only he’d done it fourteen years earlier.” If only. If only.
Eugene McCarthy, who I supported in 1968 in his run against LBJ as a peace candidate, died at age 89. Richard Pryor died at the age of 65. Both were noble men. Richard, through his comedy, depicted the suffering of African Americans and the ridiculous behavior of the white majority and how they were related.
I got a haircut today. It's the best one I've had in a long time. When I get a haircut I like for it to look like I've had a haircut. Done. It's been a good day. Rosie and I put up the Xmas tree and she spent a good part of the evening stringing lights on it while I watched and listened to a Star Wars "Musical Journey," a DVD that was one of two discs, the other being a music CD. Both CD and DVD are da bomb.
Goodnight.
Finished Hitler's Niece by Ron Hansen. Geli Raubal (whose mother was Adolf’s half-sister Angela), died in September 1931 at the age of 23 by a bullet from Hitler’s gun, which was found lying beside her. She was also found with a broken nose, and the historical evidence strongly suggests that Hitler viciously struck her and then murdered her. He is portrayed as having done so in the novel.
The Munich cops and other officials called it suicide. There was no autopsy and no police investigation. It is possible, I suppose, that one of Hitler’s thugs could have been the one to murder her, but it is likely that if that were so it was still done at his behest. If she had shot herself did she also break her own nose? His violence to her by those acts were the least of the cruelty, sexual as well as mental, that he heaped upon her in her lifetime, it appears.
I agree with the critics that this novel is brilliant. Although (or perhaps because) it is told from the point of view of Geli, a girl who grows into a young woman and then abruptly dies, it dramatizes the breadth and depth of the evil of the entire Nazi regime, certainly its hideous leaders.
Goering was about as repulsive as a human being could be, wearer of perfume and women’s makeup, appallingly fat, a plundering thief from Jews he disposed of, a sexual pervert, a cold-blooded murderer. Goebbels was an incredibly, disgustingly sycophantic ass-kisser of Hitler and just as incredibly ruthless in grinding subordinates under his heel and plotting the death of an entire people. And most of the Nazis close to him ridiculed Hitler behind his back while kowtowing and genuflecting and saluting and hollering “Heil Hitler!” whenever he was around. He expected it, demanded it, and believed he was entitled to it.
All the time, in his sexual behavior, he was masochistic as well as sadistic, imprisoning and enslaving Geli -- his niece, nineteen years his junior -- while, for example, having her urinate on him while he masturbated. So the little corporal was a golden-shower boy -- among other things. Millions of innocents died because of this man’s sexual psychopathology, I suppose you could say.
Ron Hansen, the author of this powerful novel, wrote about Hitler’s 1945 suicide in the bunker and added: “If only he’d done it fourteen years earlier.” If only. If only.
Eugene McCarthy, who I supported in 1968 in his run against LBJ as a peace candidate, died at age 89. Richard Pryor died at the age of 65. Both were noble men. Richard, through his comedy, depicted the suffering of African Americans and the ridiculous behavior of the white majority and how they were related.
I got a haircut today. It's the best one I've had in a long time. When I get a haircut I like for it to look like I've had a haircut. Done. It's been a good day. Rosie and I put up the Xmas tree and she spent a good part of the evening stringing lights on it while I watched and listened to a Star Wars "Musical Journey," a DVD that was one of two discs, the other being a music CD. Both CD and DVD are da bomb.
Goodnight.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Mucho Ado About Nada
I just read an article in the Washington Post about a 16-year-old, Zach Rubio, who was suspended from a high school in Kansas City for speaking Spanish. According to Zach: "It was, like, totally not in the classroom. We were in the, like, hall or whatever, on restroom break. This kid I know, he's like, 'Me prestas un dolar?' ['Will you lend me a dollar?'] Well, he asked in Spanish; it just seemed natural to answer that way. So I'm like, 'No problema.' " The principal, Jennifer Watts, defended her suspension of Zach by saying, "This is not the first time we have [asked]Zach and others to not speak Spanish at school."
Well. I'll come back to the language problems of both the young man -- and his principal. But first I hearken back to the summer of 1967 when a cousin and I were on an outing to San Francisco and she heard two adult women speaking Spanish. She said, "What the hell's wrong with them people? Why don't they learn to speak English like the rest of us?"
I thought the same thing then as I do now: Dotty doesn't know Spanish. And neither do I. I feel guilty that I don't know Spanish. If Spanish-speaking immigrants can become bilingual, why can't we Anglos? I don't know what "them people" are saying.
The shortcoming is mine, not theirs. I did well enough in school, especially in English and Latin. Alas -- don't see many people in togas I can strike up a conversation with; and doing well in English has just frustrated me because I listen to somebody in these parts murder the language virtually every day. (In most cases it's not because "he don't know no better." Hillspeak is a badge of honor, an assertion of pride in being plain folk, of not puttin' on the dog, an in-your-face part of the cultural war as fought by the likes of the lady who sings "Redneck Woman." In her case, highly profitably.)
As for German, I did fairly in it in college, and -- this is the truth -- once worked briefly with a Japanese whose English was so poor that I could barely understand him, but when he found out I'd studied German we conversed passably in it. I really struggled with it then because my grammar, vocabulary, and noun and pronoun declensions were abominable, but we talked a little.
Why not learn Spanish? I once heard a blue-collar Chicano with a drinking problem in Utah say to a group, "Why are you people so offended when we speak Spanish to each other? Why is it so much trouble for you to learn Spanish? Hell, I learned English in jail!"
And Zach, like, learned his English from, like, his peers, and although it leaves something to be, like, desired, he is honest-to-God bilingual. And I envy the hell out of him. (The principal, by the way, split an infinitive, but that's pretty small cerveza by today's standards of the standard English of presumably educated people.) (An infinitive? What the hell's that?)
I grew up in southern rural Indiana, and while I was doing so, there wasn't much Spanish spoken here. Now there is quite a lot. I hear it about every time I go to Wal-Mart. I wish I knew what they were saying. I wish I'd taken Spanish in high school instead of Latin and Spanish in college instead of German. I decided after all my Marco Polo wanderings and adventures to settle in little old Forlorn River, Indiana, and I can't understand the speech of the Chicanos who live here. Ai! Chihuahua!
Well. I'll come back to the language problems of both the young man -- and his principal. But first I hearken back to the summer of 1967 when a cousin and I were on an outing to San Francisco and she heard two adult women speaking Spanish. She said, "What the hell's wrong with them people? Why don't they learn to speak English like the rest of us?"
I thought the same thing then as I do now: Dotty doesn't know Spanish. And neither do I. I feel guilty that I don't know Spanish. If Spanish-speaking immigrants can become bilingual, why can't we Anglos? I don't know what "them people" are saying.
The shortcoming is mine, not theirs. I did well enough in school, especially in English and Latin. Alas -- don't see many people in togas I can strike up a conversation with; and doing well in English has just frustrated me because I listen to somebody in these parts murder the language virtually every day. (In most cases it's not because "he don't know no better." Hillspeak is a badge of honor, an assertion of pride in being plain folk, of not puttin' on the dog, an in-your-face part of the cultural war as fought by the likes of the lady who sings "Redneck Woman." In her case, highly profitably.)
As for German, I did fairly in it in college, and -- this is the truth -- once worked briefly with a Japanese whose English was so poor that I could barely understand him, but when he found out I'd studied German we conversed passably in it. I really struggled with it then because my grammar, vocabulary, and noun and pronoun declensions were abominable, but we talked a little.
Why not learn Spanish? I once heard a blue-collar Chicano with a drinking problem in Utah say to a group, "Why are you people so offended when we speak Spanish to each other? Why is it so much trouble for you to learn Spanish? Hell, I learned English in jail!"
And Zach, like, learned his English from, like, his peers, and although it leaves something to be, like, desired, he is honest-to-God bilingual. And I envy the hell out of him. (The principal, by the way, split an infinitive, but that's pretty small cerveza by today's standards of the standard English of presumably educated people.) (An infinitive? What the hell's that?)
I grew up in southern rural Indiana, and while I was doing so, there wasn't much Spanish spoken here. Now there is quite a lot. I hear it about every time I go to Wal-Mart. I wish I knew what they were saying. I wish I'd taken Spanish in high school instead of Latin and Spanish in college instead of German. I decided after all my Marco Polo wanderings and adventures to settle in little old Forlorn River, Indiana, and I can't understand the speech of the Chicanos who live here. Ai! Chihuahua!
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Die Erde ist bedeckt mit Schnee
Vee haf schno, ya? We had some snow this afternoon that (yay!) fortunately covered up the sleet and freezing rain that preceded it but (boo!) is sure to be slickern snot in the morning because the temp will be in the teens. Right now (11:11 p.m.) the wind is fairly roaring out there and it is a sound I love hearing while being grateful I'm inside where it's warm.
Might as well talk about the weather. It's a nice, safe topic. But seriously, I love the wind. And the stars too. How about that Mars and Venus this autumn. (Actually, they're planets but you know. And autumn my ass. This is winter, dude. It might make Chicagoans yawn but it'll do here until the real thing comes. Just hope and pray nobody freezes helplessly because the oil companies and the monopolists decided they weren't making enough profit. As I say, might as well talk about the weather.)
Speaking of Chicago, an airplane ran a stoplight at 55th Street and Cicero (was it Central?) tonight. Seriously, it was gnarly there for a minute, but incredibly no one was killed* and only the poor souls in one or two cars were hurt. The passengers were unharmed. Amazing.
CORRECTION: A 6-year-old boy, a passenger in a car, was killed, and eight people in all were injured. I am truly sorry to hear of the tragedies.
I'm reading Hitler's Niece by Ron Hansen. It is a worthwhile read, bei mir. Und Froehliche Weinachten, Schatze.
Might as well talk about the weather. It's a nice, safe topic. But seriously, I love the wind. And the stars too. How about that Mars and Venus this autumn. (Actually, they're planets but you know. And autumn my ass. This is winter, dude. It might make Chicagoans yawn but it'll do here until the real thing comes. Just hope and pray nobody freezes helplessly because the oil companies and the monopolists decided they weren't making enough profit. As I say, might as well talk about the weather.)
Speaking of Chicago, an airplane ran a stoplight at 55th Street and Cicero (was it Central?) tonight. Seriously, it was gnarly there for a minute, but incredibly no one was killed* and only the poor souls in one or two cars were hurt. The passengers were unharmed. Amazing.
CORRECTION: A 6-year-old boy, a passenger in a car, was killed, and eight people in all were injured. I am truly sorry to hear of the tragedies.
I'm reading Hitler's Niece by Ron Hansen. It is a worthwhile read, bei mir. Und Froehliche Weinachten, Schatze.
O'Reilly: Flavor (yech!) of the Month in Grinches
The First Amendment still reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
That bete noir of the latest Xmas grinches, namely the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) states on their website, "The right of each and every American to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all (free exercise), is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The Constitution's framers understood very well that religious liberty can flourish only if the government leaves religion alone."
And does not by law respect the establishment of religion, I might add, which means no state religion, see? This is not a "Christian nation."
I remember a long time back that churches used to say "Put Christ back into Christmas." I also remember reading a long time ago somebody's idea that we keep the celebration of the birth of Christ on December 25 (we have no idea when in the year He actually was born but 12/25 will do quite nicely, thanks) and move this bah-humbug commercial holiday we've had for so long now to February 29, so we would have to endure it only every fourth year instead of every year.
That bete noir of the latest Xmas grinches, namely the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) states on their website, "The right of each and every American to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all (free exercise), is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The Constitution's framers understood very well that religious liberty can flourish only if the government leaves religion alone."
And does not by law respect the establishment of religion, I might add, which means no state religion, see? This is not a "Christian nation."
I remember a long time back that churches used to say "Put Christ back into Christmas." I also remember reading a long time ago somebody's idea that we keep the celebration of the birth of Christ on December 25 (we have no idea when in the year He actually was born but 12/25 will do quite nicely, thanks) and move this bah-humbug commercial holiday we've had for so long now to February 29, so we would have to endure it only every fourth year instead of every year.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
What's In a Name?
Talk about artificiality: I just changed the name of my blog. A blog by any other name would smell as ...
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Another Artificial Mark on the Wall
It's come and gone now, and the moment will be quickly forgotten by most, but since capital punishment was resumed in the United States, the 1,000th person (Kenneth Boyd, in North Carolina) has been put to death by the people. For the eye-for-an-eye folks, it would be proper if it were possible that Boyd be put to death twice, given that he put two people to death.
The 2,000th American military person to die in Iraq was Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander, Jr., 34, of Killeen, Texas, who died in Samarra, Iraq. (Those geographical names ooze with irony. Killeen, isn't that the town where a nut drove his dualie into a restaurant and massacred a couple of dozen people with his gun? And Samarra is the place where the man in the folk tale had an appointment with death. But I digress.)
"The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq ... is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives." (That was Lt. Col. Mark Boylan, spokesman for the Iraq military operation about 125 or so deaths ago.)
Well, "ulterior" means undisclosed or beyond what is explicit and I am here and now saying that my motive is to oppose the culture of death (war, guns, capital punishment, and, yes, abortion) and the lust for revenge that seems to reign among the powerful in this nation. Yes, my agenda is specific.
Considering how many of my opponents have spoken out of turn lately with incredibly fatuous utterances (v. Bill Bennett, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and of course Messrs. Bush and Cheney, our glorious leaders), I was waiting for someone to spew forth the "artificial mark" remark anent the 1,000th execution. I probably missed it.
The 2,000th American military person to die in Iraq was Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander, Jr., 34, of Killeen, Texas, who died in Samarra, Iraq. (Those geographical names ooze with irony. Killeen, isn't that the town where a nut drove his dualie into a restaurant and massacred a couple of dozen people with his gun? And Samarra is the place where the man in the folk tale had an appointment with death. But I digress.)
"The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq ... is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives." (That was Lt. Col. Mark Boylan, spokesman for the Iraq military operation about 125 or so deaths ago.)
Well, "ulterior" means undisclosed or beyond what is explicit and I am here and now saying that my motive is to oppose the culture of death (war, guns, capital punishment, and, yes, abortion) and the lust for revenge that seems to reign among the powerful in this nation. Yes, my agenda is specific.
Considering how many of my opponents have spoken out of turn lately with incredibly fatuous utterances (v. Bill Bennett, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and of course Messrs. Bush and Cheney, our glorious leaders), I was waiting for someone to spew forth the "artificial mark" remark anent the 1,000th execution. I probably missed it.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Breaker, breaker, Clark
Making the post just one before this one corrected the problem. As the biker at the subway said, "Who gives ...?"
My blog is screwed up
I've asked for help and I have just started to study a tutorial on HTML. I'm going to get this thing jazzed up. Not screwed up. (An old-time hepcat would be confused by those two terms, which would contradict themselves.)
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Another observation
Another film in the never-will-see-it-in-a-Madison-theater category -- Good Night and Good Luck, about Edward R. Murrow, the CBS newsman who became a Joe McCarthy-buster of the fifties. Heck, ol' Tailgunner Joe is still a hero around here! We need him back, the right guard here thinks. Now why doesn't somebody make a bio-pic of Joe the Hero? Mel Gibson would be a good one to do it. Oh -- and by the way -- Ed Murrow was not the first newsman to openly and unabashedly debunk McCarthy for the shit-for-brains saboteur blowhard he was. The first newsman was Aurora, Indiana's own Elmer Davis, a real lefty, God bless him. I'd like to see George Clooney make a picture about Mr. Davis.
Monday, November 28, 2005
But more!
I got De-Lovely from the library. It never made it to the Madison theaters. (Cole Porter, a Hoosier, by the way, from Peru, pronounced PEE-roo, was gay. Too revolutionary.) Also recently saw Kinsey on DVD from the library. Which did not show at theaters in Madison. (Kinsey studied human sexual behavior and published his results as if sex were not something hush-hush and nasty. Too radical.) Also saw Fahrenheit 911 on a DVD from the library. Which also did not show at theaters in Madison. (Michael Moore debunked the Bush administration. Blasphemy.) I should keep my mouth shut. Somebody might read my blog (ha!) and decide to spray agent orange on the library because it is a hotbed of subversion.
I'm sure it's me, but...
Watched De-Lovely, on a DVD from the library. Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd portray Cole and Linda Porter well and the music is lovely. With one exception. Whoever does “Begin the Beguine” murders it. It makes me really, really angry. Turns out it’s Sheryl Crow. Her rendition is a crime. There is nothing whatever wrong with the melody of the song or its beguine (a dance from Martinique) rhythm the way I've heard it by many performers. Good performers. Ms Crow's liberties with "Begin the Beguine" in my opinion compare to Ted Turner's colorizing the old black-and-white movies. Hell, I don't even know if she can sing the tune the way it was written. Talent started running pretty low after Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Jo Stafford, Margaret Whiting, and Anita O'Day left the scene. There are no rules anymore, I suppose, but if there ever were, I think they included -- even among jazz musicians, who improvise all over the place -- running through the song the way it was written just once before taking liberties with it.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Toons
Cartoon Alley is a regular feature on Saturday mornings on Turner Classic Movies. I enjoy the cartoons and I enjoy the droll comments by the host of the show, Ben Manckiewicz. Ben also introduces movies during the day on weekends, with wit and style.
When is Brownie going to get his Medal of Freedom?
Correction: Ben's surname is spelled "Mankiewicz" -- no c. Sorry.
When is Brownie going to get his Medal of Freedom?
Correction: Ben's surname is spelled "Mankiewicz" -- no c. Sorry.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Headline in the rag -- "Vatican says sexually active homosexuals not welcome in priesthood."
Whereas sexually active heterosexuals are?
The AP writer reports -- "The Vatican says homosexuals who are sexually active or support "gay culture" are unwelcome in the priesthood unless they have overcome their homosexual tendencies for at least three years."
Excuse me?
Aren’t priest supposed to be abstinent from all sexual relations once they take the vows? The logic of the latest policy would require straights to “renounce sexual activity and support of straight culture" and to "have overcome their heterosexual tendencies for at least three years” too. Wouldn’t it?
On the issue of sex and the clergy, the Roman Catholic Church is about as silly as the Clinton administration was on its policy toward gays in the military. Remember, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”? That was precisely the policy the church had when it was (while it is?) shuffling deviant priests around instead of defrocking and prosecuting them for crimes as well as sin. And that was for pedophilia, not consensual sex among adults.
I think the problem could be, by and large, resolved if “the Vatican” (Pope Benedict XVI the dictator and his hierarchy of men who are presumably holier than the Catholic laity throughout the entire world) could accept monogamous, sexually active men and women as priests, regardless of sexual orientation. Drop the celibacy idiocy, as well as the ban against women and homosexuals in the priesthood.
Why? Because there is no more revelatory, logical, or scriptural support for limiting the priesthood to celibate, heterosexual men than there is for requiring incense, candles, statues, and vestments (let alone an algorithm for donning them). Tradition and superstition are the only impediments to moving on. Jesus (remember Him?), while telling us not to judge, said that we will know the wrong in policies and practices by the results they bring. The pedophilia scandal (did you know that girls were molested too?) was the result of the absurd, pigheaded policy in place now.
Whereas sexually active heterosexuals are?
The AP writer reports -- "The Vatican says homosexuals who are sexually active or support "gay culture" are unwelcome in the priesthood unless they have overcome their homosexual tendencies for at least three years."
Excuse me?
Aren’t priest supposed to be abstinent from all sexual relations once they take the vows? The logic of the latest policy would require straights to “renounce sexual activity and support of straight culture" and to "have overcome their heterosexual tendencies for at least three years” too. Wouldn’t it?
On the issue of sex and the clergy, the Roman Catholic Church is about as silly as the Clinton administration was on its policy toward gays in the military. Remember, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”? That was precisely the policy the church had when it was (while it is?) shuffling deviant priests around instead of defrocking and prosecuting them for crimes as well as sin. And that was for pedophilia, not consensual sex among adults.
I think the problem could be, by and large, resolved if “the Vatican” (Pope Benedict XVI the dictator and his hierarchy of men who are presumably holier than the Catholic laity throughout the entire world) could accept monogamous, sexually active men and women as priests, regardless of sexual orientation. Drop the celibacy idiocy, as well as the ban against women and homosexuals in the priesthood.
Why? Because there is no more revelatory, logical, or scriptural support for limiting the priesthood to celibate, heterosexual men than there is for requiring incense, candles, statues, and vestments (let alone an algorithm for donning them). Tradition and superstition are the only impediments to moving on. Jesus (remember Him?), while telling us not to judge, said that we will know the wrong in policies and practices by the results they bring. The pedophilia scandal (did you know that girls were molested too?) was the result of the absurd, pigheaded policy in place now.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Thanksgiving
I keep imagining when I'm writing this stuff that the biker at the steps of the subway in Frankie and Johnny will say to me what he says to Johnny (Al Pacino) as Johnny tells him, "Hey I just got a job!"
Which reminds me, that movie gives me a pretext for playing "Clair de Lune" on one of my film music shows. Work that is play, now there's something to be thankful for. Every time I watch a movie I look to see who's the composer, and then I look on the internet to see if that person has a CD that I might play on the air.
Rosie's Uncle Eddie left a straw hat last time he was here, before last summer, and I started wearing it on my daily walks. He was back today for a Thanksgiving gathering and he gave the hat to me. Thanks for that. I won't need it again until spring, substituting a 97-cent black knit cap for it for now.
I don't have a pimped-out website like folks I admire, so I won't offer a link to it, but I think Wikipedia is wonderful. I've not been frustrated yet in looking for information in it. I wanted to read about the opera composer Richard Wagner (or as he is known in Saluda, Billy Dick Wagner) and there are about twenty pages on him, including a thoughtful discussion of his anti-Semitism. I was amazed to learn that although his public views were by and large odious he did not call for genocide but for assimilation of Jews into German society, he had Jewish friends and colleagues, and he was a pacifist. Although Hitler loved his music, Goebbels actually banned Parsifal in 1939 because of its pacifist sentiments. Did you know that?
Actually, I loathe Wagner because of his monumental egotism but I now have some excuse to offer my Jewish listeners if I play "Ride of the Valkyries" from Apocalypse Now. I like that tune, and I also like "Prelude to Act III" of Lohengrin, which I've liked since I was a little boy listening to it on the glowing vacuum-tube radio. It used to give me cold chills.
Well, as the biker at the subway entrance says, "...
Auf wiedersehen, Siegfried!
Which reminds me, that movie gives me a pretext for playing "Clair de Lune" on one of my film music shows. Work that is play, now there's something to be thankful for. Every time I watch a movie I look to see who's the composer, and then I look on the internet to see if that person has a CD that I might play on the air.
Rosie's Uncle Eddie left a straw hat last time he was here, before last summer, and I started wearing it on my daily walks. He was back today for a Thanksgiving gathering and he gave the hat to me. Thanks for that. I won't need it again until spring, substituting a 97-cent black knit cap for it for now.
I don't have a pimped-out website like folks I admire, so I won't offer a link to it, but I think Wikipedia is wonderful. I've not been frustrated yet in looking for information in it. I wanted to read about the opera composer Richard Wagner (or as he is known in Saluda, Billy Dick Wagner) and there are about twenty pages on him, including a thoughtful discussion of his anti-Semitism. I was amazed to learn that although his public views were by and large odious he did not call for genocide but for assimilation of Jews into German society, he had Jewish friends and colleagues, and he was a pacifist. Although Hitler loved his music, Goebbels actually banned Parsifal in 1939 because of its pacifist sentiments. Did you know that?
Actually, I loathe Wagner because of his monumental egotism but I now have some excuse to offer my Jewish listeners if I play "Ride of the Valkyries" from Apocalypse Now. I like that tune, and I also like "Prelude to Act III" of Lohengrin, which I've liked since I was a little boy listening to it on the glowing vacuum-tube radio. It used to give me cold chills.
Well, as the biker at the subway entrance says, "...
Auf wiedersehen, Siegfried!
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Veterans' Day Eve
In answer to an earlier question I posed to myself, Herschel Burke Gilbert was the composer of the Gunsmoke theme. We're watching Rosemary and Thyme, a BBC series about two single ladies who have an idyllic country garden home and solve crimes every week. The music is lovely. I'll have to check the credits again to see the composer but the theme (borrowed from the Paul Simon song from The Graduate)is played by John Williams the guitarist.
Susie, my hapless stepdaughter, had the misfortune this morning to hit a deer on the busy road between I-71 and Carrollton. She wasn't hurt. The deer expired after a brief time and was given to a poor man for food.
I got glasses, bifocals, this morning and discovered to my delight that I can see much better to drive and to see the TV and the digital readout on the radio across the room. I wish I'd got trifocals, actually, because I can see my laptop screen better without the glasses, so I can't see to write and watch the idiot box at the same time. A good solution would be to turn off the TV and leave it off. Moving to Canada is also a thought.
I've been reading the "87th Precinct" police procedural novels of Ed McBain. They are entertaining, pure fluff, a wonderful escape. I enjoyed Blackboard Jungle when I read it in high school, and never read another novel by the same incredibly prolific writer who died this year. (Every young male teacher then was nicknamed "Daddy-o" after the protagonist, who was played by Glenn Ford in the movie, which began with Bill Haley and the Comets screaming "Rock Around the Clock.") I decided to try one of the 87th books, which were highly lauded in McBain's obituary, and am glad I did.
I printed "a prayer for the 2,000th US soldier to die in Iraq" and taped it in the rear window of our car. I saw a young man reading it in the Wal-Mart parking lot the other day, nodding his head. A letter was in the rag tonight exposing a provision in the "No Child Left Behind" foolishness that requires public high schools to allow military recruiters to have access to the names of students. Why, I bet Bush's approval rating here is down a whole two percentage points because of all that has gone on in the past two months.
A tornado recently struck a trailer park in Evansville in the dead of night and took more lives there than all the others taken by tornadoes in the United States thus far this year. We had a little lightning and thunder here and were surprised to hear of the severity and deadliness of the twister down the river from us. Of course a trailer park is the worst possible place for a tornado to touch down, and the darkness hours and the month of November caught the people unawares. The fragility and uncertainty of life were once again demonstrated. There are those who believe that life began of a fluke, so they would not be surprised that it ends for so many with one.
I saw some sign that said "Remember Our Veterans." Does one ever get a chance to forget them in Indiana? As someone wrote decades ago, Indiana is a militaristic state. We have a cannon or a tank or a statue of embattled soldiers on every courthouse lawn in the state. I would have liked the "New Hill Road" named simply as "Jefferson Street," which it is for part of its course, but someone named it "Veterans Memorial Highway." (Probably the same people who decided that we are going to remain on "slow time.") I'm an old soldier too. I toyed with the idea of being an officer and was invited to go to OCS when I was doing my stint in the late fifties. A wisdom born of the collective unconscious of my family must have warned me to decline. I had a brother who wanted to be an ace fighter pilot and ended up being a tail-gunner in a B-17 crippled over Das Vaterland (another militaristic state, at least back then) and he made it back to England with his life but not his emotional stability for the rest of his days. I served honorably as a Willie and Joe dogface grunt in peacetime if not with distinction. I was crazy (and drunk) enough from my days in the Peace Corps in West Africa, let alone being in combat. War sucks and there is nothing glorious about it. There are too many profiteers for it to be a noble thing.
Good night and good luck.
Susie, my hapless stepdaughter, had the misfortune this morning to hit a deer on the busy road between I-71 and Carrollton. She wasn't hurt. The deer expired after a brief time and was given to a poor man for food.
I got glasses, bifocals, this morning and discovered to my delight that I can see much better to drive and to see the TV and the digital readout on the radio across the room. I wish I'd got trifocals, actually, because I can see my laptop screen better without the glasses, so I can't see to write and watch the idiot box at the same time. A good solution would be to turn off the TV and leave it off. Moving to Canada is also a thought.
I've been reading the "87th Precinct" police procedural novels of Ed McBain. They are entertaining, pure fluff, a wonderful escape. I enjoyed Blackboard Jungle when I read it in high school, and never read another novel by the same incredibly prolific writer who died this year. (Every young male teacher then was nicknamed "Daddy-o" after the protagonist, who was played by Glenn Ford in the movie, which began with Bill Haley and the Comets screaming "Rock Around the Clock.") I decided to try one of the 87th books, which were highly lauded in McBain's obituary, and am glad I did.
I printed "a prayer for the 2,000th US soldier to die in Iraq" and taped it in the rear window of our car. I saw a young man reading it in the Wal-Mart parking lot the other day, nodding his head. A letter was in the rag tonight exposing a provision in the "No Child Left Behind" foolishness that requires public high schools to allow military recruiters to have access to the names of students. Why, I bet Bush's approval rating here is down a whole two percentage points because of all that has gone on in the past two months.
A tornado recently struck a trailer park in Evansville in the dead of night and took more lives there than all the others taken by tornadoes in the United States thus far this year. We had a little lightning and thunder here and were surprised to hear of the severity and deadliness of the twister down the river from us. Of course a trailer park is the worst possible place for a tornado to touch down, and the darkness hours and the month of November caught the people unawares. The fragility and uncertainty of life were once again demonstrated. There are those who believe that life began of a fluke, so they would not be surprised that it ends for so many with one.
I saw some sign that said "Remember Our Veterans." Does one ever get a chance to forget them in Indiana? As someone wrote decades ago, Indiana is a militaristic state. We have a cannon or a tank or a statue of embattled soldiers on every courthouse lawn in the state. I would have liked the "New Hill Road" named simply as "Jefferson Street," which it is for part of its course, but someone named it "Veterans Memorial Highway." (Probably the same people who decided that we are going to remain on "slow time.") I'm an old soldier too. I toyed with the idea of being an officer and was invited to go to OCS when I was doing my stint in the late fifties. A wisdom born of the collective unconscious of my family must have warned me to decline. I had a brother who wanted to be an ace fighter pilot and ended up being a tail-gunner in a B-17 crippled over Das Vaterland (another militaristic state, at least back then) and he made it back to England with his life but not his emotional stability for the rest of his days. I served honorably as a Willie and Joe dogface grunt in peacetime if not with distinction. I was crazy (and drunk) enough from my days in the Peace Corps in West Africa, let alone being in combat. War sucks and there is nothing glorious about it. There are too many profiteers for it to be a noble thing.
Good night and good luck.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Economics
I wrote this entry a while back and, because some vultures have furthered their commercial or pornographic agendas through my blog site through one of their lame posts, I killed the comment and killed the entry. It’s probably a worm or virus or whatever these people kill their precious time on this earth devising and such abominations will no doubt appear again but I’m going to make my original post again. As follows:
I had a debate on Sunday night (September 25th) with my nephew John over politics and economics and it continues to be on my mind and in my mood. It’s depressing how few inroads are made into the entrenched positions of people of the persuasion opposite mine, no matter how adverse the events.
I’d thought John might have something to say about the enormous tax cuts for the rich in the face of the war and the hurricane—that perhaps they were unwise. To the contrary. He thinks that the deficit is not excessive. He thinks the economy is great. He thinks God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is at work in our economy, and job casualties are just part of a constantly changing world.
He says that people on opposite sides of the political spectrum want the same good things for everybody else, and that includes the Friedman economists who say that the only ethical duty a corporation has to the public is to make the biggest profit it can no matter what happens to the casualties—those economists too have compassion for the everyday people who are in my estimation falling further and further behind.
He thinks that the reason we are having prosperity now (lost jobs and unaffordable healthcare notwithstanding) is because the Reagan regime made tax cuts in the 1980s. Tax cuts—you see, sonny, he lectured me from his lectern at the head of the Economics 101 class—stimulate growth. There’s little else you need to know. I believe he is talking about supply-side, also known as trickle-down, economics.
By the bye, he thinks Karl Rove is ethical. Valerie Plame Wilson the CIA operative merely had a desk job and wasn’t in danger for her life bla-bla-bla the standard Fox-O’Reilly-Novak-WSJ-Ed-page party line. (You do watch Fox, don’t you?) And there is no proof that Turd Blossom trashed John McCain during the South Carolina primary or that he masterminded the swiftboating of John Kerry, turning a war hero into a war criminal. Slander isn’t the crime it used to be. I seem to recall that John said Karl Rove is ethical because he is successful. (In the name of God, in what value system?)
Now Dick Cheney, he was provoked—you’ve got to understand the context—into telling Senator Patrick Leahy, who had the unreasonable demand that Cheney not conduct government business in secret, to go fuck himself. John made the concession that Cheney had misspoken. (Mistakes were made.)
And John continues to think that Bush—who has shown glaringly, post Katrina, that he is not only pigheadedly stubborn and arrogant, but incompetent—John thinks that Bush is doing a good job.
Anything else?
My stepdaughter works for Kroger. She has a diabetic ten-year-old son and a husband who had a hip replacement and was off work for an enormous length of time—and who has other serious problems.
Susan works in the deli and stands on her feet all day in a hot environment cooking chicken. One day we stopped by and I saw Susan working and interacting with the public and I knew from her demeanor that she is all business and a credit to her employer.
Susan graduated from high school and did work for the gambling boat counting money and balancing the books. Susan had a learning difficulty associated in particular with math but she overcame it for that job. The main reason she left it was the atrocious hours that kept her away from her diabetic son.
Susan is a fulltime employee who is classified as part time for the sole purpose of denying her benefits—in particular, health insurance—but also it denies her job security while it does ensure Kroger the option of just not calling her back to work any time they decide to cut labor costs and give a little more of the work burden to those who remain.
The union collects dues from her but gives her nothing in return for her dangling situation. The government does nothing for her situation. Faith-based charities do nothing for her situation. As far as having a full-time job, she is shit out of luck. Just one of the stories in the naked city.
Regarding John, I wanted to listen to his views. That’s why I asked what he thought about going on with the tax cuts in spite of 200 billion here, 200 billion there, bridges to nowhere in Alaska, no thought of conserving energy and maybe reducing the deficit a trifle by imposing a gasoline tax.
I wanted to listen, like Charlie Rose and Jim Lehrer do—not interrupt and drown out and hector and even yell at to shut up, like the people whose TV styles I despise. I saw Bill Press, formerly “from the left” on Crossfire, interviewing Roy Moore, the Alabama supreme court chief vanquished for his insistence on posting the Ten Commandments, and although I think little of Mr. Moore, I was disgusted with Mr. Press for the rude way he treated the man. Then of course there is old Peace Corps confrere Chris Mathews, who just can’t seem to shut up while the others are talking. And the Mother of All Rude TV personalities, Bill O’Reilly.
I respect John. He is past president of the Atlanta economists’ association. He has a master’s degree. He has a record of success in the business world. He really is ethical. I told my wife that John had said years ago that he went to a church at which the preacher said that people of all political beliefs were welcome, that there would be an expectation of all kinds of candidates’ names on bumper stickers in the parking lot. “Would that still be the same?” she asked.
I said, “If it would not, John would leave. He’s principled.” And I love John. He’s my kinsman, and even so, he’s lovable in his own right.
I am a populist, I guess. My father did heavy labor most of his life and as far as I understand it, became an FDR New Deal Democrat when those programs turned the economy around. Daddy thought that business, all business, was pretty much how John Steinbeck described it in The Grapes of Wrath—namely, “curious ritualized thievery.”
At the time I read that book, in about 1954 when I was a very impressionable fifteen, I agreed wholeheartedly with that poetic phrase. I have seen the light since then! Steinbeck wrote it in a mid-book essay on the cigar-chomping predators who sold defective cars and trucks to the “Okies”—the poor farmers made poorer by the Dust Bowl—who bought junk in order to migrate to California in the thirties. (“Look at that rube. See if he got any jack in his jeans. Jesus! Wish I had a thousand jalopies to sell these suckers!”)
I also read Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, and old Red too was pretty uncharitable to businessmen, with ridicule and caricature of the fictitious person, George F. Babbitt of Zenith, in the Midwestern prairie state of Winnemac.
Those two books, just novels, and by lefties of sorts, were about the extent of my readings in the dismal science, it seems. When I finally had to take econ, the textbook was by Paul Samuelson, an old standby with boring graphs of supply-and-demand curves, taught by a new prof at old Hangover U, before it became a conservative arts college. I seem to have managed to eke out C’s in those courses, probably mainly because the new prof was a nice guy and not because of any merit on my part.
I have always been stung by the saying, “If you’re so damn smart, why aren’t you rich?” Good question. I’m not smart and I’m not rich either, and there is probably a relationship between those two variables. About the only thing I’ve ever been good at is doing without and saving money and living on a shoestring. My parents were good at that.
But as I said above, I have seen the light that is possible to be involved in commerce and be ethical. No good Presbyterian (and I am still a Presbyterian, never as far as I know having yet had my name purged from the rolls of the Deer Creek Presbyterian Church in north central Indiana) takes seriously—certainly not literally—the sayings of Jesus about wealth and service to God, to wit, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other … You cannot serve God and wealth,” and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 6:24; 19:24).
I know some awfully nice Presbyterians and Baptists and Episcopalians and what-not who seem to be ethical and really get righteously incensed about some truly sleazy things but they don’t take those Biblical sayings all that seriously, as I say. Even the Episcopalians, who in their worship stand and face the priest with the Bible for the readings from the Gospels, crossing themselves before and after and making some other gestures and verbal responses and remaining at attention while the priest and his entourage walk the Bible, held high, back to its altar.
And Jesus’ teachings reprimanding the rich and advocating the poor are in the Gospels.
In Indiana, too, we have had two well-known publicly confessing Christians who have had big business empires, the one being Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical magnate; the other, Irwin Miller, the CEO of Cummins Engine Company. I worked for Mr. Miller’s company, and I have taken many drugs over a lifetime that were manufactured by the Lilly company.
I did see that both men behaved a little differently from many of their business-as-usual counterparts—most notably, both have treated their employees well. Cummins succeeded at least once in meeting environmental standards for their diesel engines while General Motors was whining that they just couldn’t do it. (And got away with it.)
I don’t know how enamored J.I. Miller was of Milton Friedman’s Nobel-prize-winning commandment to make just as much goddamn profit as you ever can regardless of the cost to the little guy. I know that after J.I. was out of the chairman’s chair his minions stepped in and whacked the unions and laid them off and started over with a nice wage that a competitive company could live with. And although J.I. saved the company from a hostile takeover he so far as I know didn’t save the grunts from an impecunious wage from now on.
As for Lilly’s drugs, they are damned expensive, and Lilly has not exactly been a standard-bearer of ethicality as regards lobbying, wining and dining docs and whisking them away to conventions in the Bahamas, authorizing slanted studies, repackaging drugs to renew patents, or making their drugs available to the poor.
But, as I say, both have treated their employees really nice.
So it is possible to be ethical in business. Not easy. But possible.
Well, another of my rants. I don’t like George Bush as president or just about anybody in his regime as executives of the government. It has a lot to do with his hypocrisy. “Compassionate Conservative”—NOT. Molly Ivins talked about his lack of compassion. Which is not to “impugn motives.” It’s plainly there in the behavior. And in the contradictory utterances. People may doubt what you say, but they will always believe what you do.
The behavior is in the form of giveaways to the ultra-rich—corporations and individuals. It is in allowing ravaging of the environment. It is in lying and keeping secret what should be in the public domain because the truth will plainly show the rewards to the haves and the harm to the have-nots and the true agenda that will enrage the American people if it is made known. It is sending people—poor people—to be targets in a shooting gallery—for the sake of oil. It is in ruling against paying for work-related conditions. It is in speeding up assembly lines and intimidating federal meat inspectors. The list, as we say, goes on and on. I’m still at the top of it.
Molly said, “Hell’s own conservative. And dick for compassion.”
Amen.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Autumn Is Here
The autumnal equinox occurred at 5:23 this evening, Madison time. Precious little show of color in the foliage so far, and the day remained summery.
Elsewhere in the weather, Rita is inexorably making her way to Galveston, Corpus Christi, and Houston, and it just might do more damage in New Orleans. My sis and I have sent food and housekeeping items through the auspices of her church on a semi to the already stricken area and we may be sending items again.
This is Madison's "Chautauqua" weekend, which is its toneyest flea market, in my no doubt base opinion. My nephew and his wife, and possibly my niece, are coming for the occasion. Rosie and I already have a commitment to entertain her cousin, who says he will be here at 10:15, give or take a few seconds, on Saturday morning. At the church I've attended from time to time downtown there will be a concert of works for piano, alto sax, clarinet, and voice in the evening and we would like to attend that.
I have a son and a daughter who have blogs, which give me great pleasure to read and comment on. My son is a watchmaker who shares his enthusiasm for jazz, and my daughter is a medical doctor who is doing her internship; and her blog is vastly more interesting than ER. My other daughter has no blog but she lives close enough by that I have access to her charming person every now and then.
Today I rode my bicycle to the state park, parked and locked it, and walked several miles in the park, including on a trail overlooking one of the waterfalls. It was the first time I rode there as well as walking and it was quite a workout. The little park--Clifty Falls--is truly beautiful. The goldenrod and a blue flower the name of which I don't know were pleasing to the eye, and birdsong and the rustle of tree-leaves were about the only sounds I heard while walking.
It's past my bedtime. I'm listening to the Beethoven Satellite Network, with Peter Van de Graaf as the DJ. A wordless choir is singing right now--it might be from The Planets by Gustav Holst. I'm going to retire and start reading a few words of an Ed McBain novel. That is the nom de plume of Evan Hunter, which was in turn a pseudonym for Salavatore Lombino, I learned from his recent obituary in the New York Times, which was laudatory. He also looked nothing like Glenn Ford, who played the autibiographical teacher in The Blackboard Jungle, Hunter's popular novel of the 1950's. Then I read the book before seeing the movie. Anyhow, I'm going to work on the "police procedural" novel by Ed McBain tonight.
Good night and good luck.
Elsewhere in the weather, Rita is inexorably making her way to Galveston, Corpus Christi, and Houston, and it just might do more damage in New Orleans. My sis and I have sent food and housekeeping items through the auspices of her church on a semi to the already stricken area and we may be sending items again.
This is Madison's "Chautauqua" weekend, which is its toneyest flea market, in my no doubt base opinion. My nephew and his wife, and possibly my niece, are coming for the occasion. Rosie and I already have a commitment to entertain her cousin, who says he will be here at 10:15, give or take a few seconds, on Saturday morning. At the church I've attended from time to time downtown there will be a concert of works for piano, alto sax, clarinet, and voice in the evening and we would like to attend that.
I have a son and a daughter who have blogs, which give me great pleasure to read and comment on. My son is a watchmaker who shares his enthusiasm for jazz, and my daughter is a medical doctor who is doing her internship; and her blog is vastly more interesting than ER. My other daughter has no blog but she lives close enough by that I have access to her charming person every now and then.
Today I rode my bicycle to the state park, parked and locked it, and walked several miles in the park, including on a trail overlooking one of the waterfalls. It was the first time I rode there as well as walking and it was quite a workout. The little park--Clifty Falls--is truly beautiful. The goldenrod and a blue flower the name of which I don't know were pleasing to the eye, and birdsong and the rustle of tree-leaves were about the only sounds I heard while walking.
It's past my bedtime. I'm listening to the Beethoven Satellite Network, with Peter Van de Graaf as the DJ. A wordless choir is singing right now--it might be from The Planets by Gustav Holst. I'm going to retire and start reading a few words of an Ed McBain novel. That is the nom de plume of Evan Hunter, which was in turn a pseudonym for Salavatore Lombino, I learned from his recent obituary in the New York Times, which was laudatory. He also looked nothing like Glenn Ford, who played the autibiographical teacher in The Blackboard Jungle, Hunter's popular novel of the 1950's. Then I read the book before seeing the movie. Anyhow, I'm going to work on the "police procedural" novel by Ed McBain tonight.
Good night and good luck.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Beautiful Days, Ugly Tactics
Dear Ed,
The weather today and yesterday has been great. Walking both days was a delight. Tomorrow Jay promises increased heat and humidity and an increased chance of thunderstorms. So be it. That will be good too. Rain would be good. And serene heat and sunshine before that.
I'm watching The Key (1958), starring William Holden, Sophia Loren, and Trevor Howard. I recognized the music as being that of Malcolm Arnold. He composed the score for Bridge on the River Kwai. I like Arnold's Second Symphony, also his Dances (English, Irish, Scottish, Cornish). He has a lot of humor, some of it wacky. He ends one of the Scottish dances with the tune, "shave and a haircut, two bits." You may not know how that that tune goes, and you might not know what "two bits" means. You can't get a haircut for two bits any more, and you probably can't get a shave at all in a barber shop.
The Key takes place at sea, partly. Holden is apparently the skipper of a small merchant ship. Aha, it's December 7, 1941. Anybody know what happened then? Hint: the next day Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress saying that the previous day would "live in infamy" because of the "dastardly" deed of the Japanese air force at a place called Pearl Harbor, in what is now our fiftieth state.
Today was an especially good day for me. A vocational wish I've had for a good while is coming true--if I can believe it! I'll say more when I'm surer that it really is going to happen. For now, I can't believe my good luck. I am grateful, and at this point anxious.
My nephew was to go to college today, his first day at Indiana University. I recall a little of my first semester at college. It was the nearest to perfect autumn I can remember, day after day of dry, sunny days and crisp nights. I was planning on being an engineer of some sort and I took chemistry, math, German, and English. I liked the subject matter then, and I did pretty well--B's and C's, a 2.5 GPA. That was good for me. Looking back over nearly fifty years, I see that the most fitting course for me was English composition and my best teacher was a young woman who was the registrar as well as the teacher of the course. She taught me social conscience, logic, critical thinking, and how to recognize propaganda. I'd never had any experience with such elements of education up to then, or maybe it was just that I was aware of them for the first time.
The most popular form of propaganda today is argumentum ad hominem, argument "to the man," i.e. attacking the character, motives, associations, habits, etc. of a person rather than arguing a point on logical grounds. Your opponent says that she is grieving because her son died in a war you started, an unjustified war, and because of her son's death and nearly two thousand others, and your seeming indifference to all of this by going on vacation for a month, it is a great injustice to the the entire nation that you govern and it is time you put away your bicycle and chainsaw and get your ass back to your oval office and get to work on getting the soldiers home. Rather than apply yourself to the assertion the lady has made, your henchmen and mouthpieces get busy and start to Swiftboat the lady, slime her, trash her, say that she is unstable, she is in league with a fat, unkempt man (that he is fat and unkempt rather than that he has found you out is ad hominem) who has cast aspersions on you, she is really not sincere. The woman is the problem, not the injustice of your war. That's the ad hominem argument. Miss Duus taught it to me years ago. Nice to know what it is. Character assassination, sliming, and--a new term for it--swiftboating.
It used to be the folks on the other side of the pond that did the "dastardly" acts.
I long for people in high places with character, who argue a point on its merit, who are not smug and arrogant, who are humble, reflective, penitent, who are not liars.
Goodnight, dear, and amen. Here's hoping we meet now and then. It was great fun but it was just one of those things.
Old Blue Eyes
The weather today and yesterday has been great. Walking both days was a delight. Tomorrow Jay promises increased heat and humidity and an increased chance of thunderstorms. So be it. That will be good too. Rain would be good. And serene heat and sunshine before that.
I'm watching The Key (1958), starring William Holden, Sophia Loren, and Trevor Howard. I recognized the music as being that of Malcolm Arnold. He composed the score for Bridge on the River Kwai. I like Arnold's Second Symphony, also his Dances (English, Irish, Scottish, Cornish). He has a lot of humor, some of it wacky. He ends one of the Scottish dances with the tune, "shave and a haircut, two bits." You may not know how that that tune goes, and you might not know what "two bits" means. You can't get a haircut for two bits any more, and you probably can't get a shave at all in a barber shop.
The Key takes place at sea, partly. Holden is apparently the skipper of a small merchant ship. Aha, it's December 7, 1941. Anybody know what happened then? Hint: the next day Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress saying that the previous day would "live in infamy" because of the "dastardly" deed of the Japanese air force at a place called Pearl Harbor, in what is now our fiftieth state.
Today was an especially good day for me. A vocational wish I've had for a good while is coming true--if I can believe it! I'll say more when I'm surer that it really is going to happen. For now, I can't believe my good luck. I am grateful, and at this point anxious.
My nephew was to go to college today, his first day at Indiana University. I recall a little of my first semester at college. It was the nearest to perfect autumn I can remember, day after day of dry, sunny days and crisp nights. I was planning on being an engineer of some sort and I took chemistry, math, German, and English. I liked the subject matter then, and I did pretty well--B's and C's, a 2.5 GPA. That was good for me. Looking back over nearly fifty years, I see that the most fitting course for me was English composition and my best teacher was a young woman who was the registrar as well as the teacher of the course. She taught me social conscience, logic, critical thinking, and how to recognize propaganda. I'd never had any experience with such elements of education up to then, or maybe it was just that I was aware of them for the first time.
The most popular form of propaganda today is argumentum ad hominem, argument "to the man," i.e. attacking the character, motives, associations, habits, etc. of a person rather than arguing a point on logical grounds. Your opponent says that she is grieving because her son died in a war you started, an unjustified war, and because of her son's death and nearly two thousand others, and your seeming indifference to all of this by going on vacation for a month, it is a great injustice to the the entire nation that you govern and it is time you put away your bicycle and chainsaw and get your ass back to your oval office and get to work on getting the soldiers home. Rather than apply yourself to the assertion the lady has made, your henchmen and mouthpieces get busy and start to Swiftboat the lady, slime her, trash her, say that she is unstable, she is in league with a fat, unkempt man (that he is fat and unkempt rather than that he has found you out is ad hominem) who has cast aspersions on you, she is really not sincere. The woman is the problem, not the injustice of your war. That's the ad hominem argument. Miss Duus taught it to me years ago. Nice to know what it is. Character assassination, sliming, and--a new term for it--swiftboating.
It used to be the folks on the other side of the pond that did the "dastardly" acts.
I long for people in high places with character, who argue a point on its merit, who are not smug and arrogant, who are humble, reflective, penitent, who are not liars.
Goodnight, dear, and amen. Here's hoping we meet now and then. It was great fun but it was just one of those things.
Old Blue Eyes
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Kids' Stuff
Dear Ed,
We went to the Children's Museum in Nap Town today and observed a water clock that was fascinating. It is truly a functional chronometer. We watched the hour change from two to three, and it happened all at once, and it was a joy to see. I wish I had a photo to illustrate it, since it is a complicated thing to describe. It looks sort of like a laboratory distillation device, with ascending glass balls on the left to indicate hours and smaller containers on the right to indicate minutes. At first glance I thought it was model that illustrated the mechanism of a petroleum cracking tower but then I observed the pendulum. Said pendulum is connected to a simple ladle pump, which is essential in the timely delivery of water. It is filled with blue-dyed water, and all parts which include tubes. It is in the lobby, which has skylights, and today was a beautiful sunny August day. The Children's Museum in Indianapolis. Great! The pendulum reminded me of the Foucault pendulum at the museum downtown, which uses the earth's movement to keep knocking over these little pegs all day long. Every kid, virtual and actual, should get to see that pendulum too. Those two items are the kind of phenomena that made Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. proud of his native Indianapolis. I like Nap Town (I insist on calling it "Nap Town" instead of "Indy," because it is still a great place to take a nap, in Indiana, the center of things--the dead center. Some kids from out of state came in a decade or so ago and tried to jazz Indiana up, and they were misguided, because Indiana's unjazziness is part and parcel of its charm. A red 1950 Studebaker convertible rolling over a covered bridge at twenty miles an hour--bring it back! And August is probably next to October in being the most charming month in Indiana--melons and corn and tomatoes and picnics and reunions and some of the best weather Indiana is capable of having. And, I concede, some of the worst.) I love you, Hoosier State! I wish sometimes Madison wasn't so damned Kentucky. I'm a Yankee, dammit, not a Reb. (And on that one, murder will out -- Grant was a better general than Lee. Just as Omar Bradley was a better field commander than Rommel. Go figure.)
JT
We went to the Children's Museum in Nap Town today and observed a water clock that was fascinating. It is truly a functional chronometer. We watched the hour change from two to three, and it happened all at once, and it was a joy to see. I wish I had a photo to illustrate it, since it is a complicated thing to describe. It looks sort of like a laboratory distillation device, with ascending glass balls on the left to indicate hours and smaller containers on the right to indicate minutes. At first glance I thought it was model that illustrated the mechanism of a petroleum cracking tower but then I observed the pendulum. Said pendulum is connected to a simple ladle pump, which is essential in the timely delivery of water. It is filled with blue-dyed water, and all parts which include tubes. It is in the lobby, which has skylights, and today was a beautiful sunny August day. The Children's Museum in Indianapolis. Great! The pendulum reminded me of the Foucault pendulum at the museum downtown, which uses the earth's movement to keep knocking over these little pegs all day long. Every kid, virtual and actual, should get to see that pendulum too. Those two items are the kind of phenomena that made Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. proud of his native Indianapolis. I like Nap Town (I insist on calling it "Nap Town" instead of "Indy," because it is still a great place to take a nap, in Indiana, the center of things--the dead center. Some kids from out of state came in a decade or so ago and tried to jazz Indiana up, and they were misguided, because Indiana's unjazziness is part and parcel of its charm. A red 1950 Studebaker convertible rolling over a covered bridge at twenty miles an hour--bring it back! And August is probably next to October in being the most charming month in Indiana--melons and corn and tomatoes and picnics and reunions and some of the best weather Indiana is capable of having. And, I concede, some of the worst.) I love you, Hoosier State! I wish sometimes Madison wasn't so damned Kentucky. I'm a Yankee, dammit, not a Reb. (And on that one, murder will out -- Grant was a better general than Lee. Just as Omar Bradley was a better field commander than Rommel. Go figure.)
JT
Friday, August 19, 2005
My WIFE Likes this Movie?
Dear Ed,
I just discovered Flashdance. Never saw it before. Rosie didn't know the name of it but described it to me and after searching a half-hour I finally found it.
Here it is tonight on Bravo (which of course has a googol of commercials and the dialogue bowdlerized by the falsely righteous censors who are cowed by Falwell and Dobson -- no problem, of course, with a scene in which hoods break the standup comic's nose. It's sex, not violence, that's the problem. Violence is AOK. It's America, right? Capital punishment? No problem. "Make-my-day" gun laws for intruders (who are not born-again Christians anyway)? No problem. Film violence by people who have the right political beliefs (think Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson)? No problem. Just no "bad" words. Problem. Why? What would Jesus do? He would send the cussers straight to hell. Also, don't show any children's cartoon characters whose sex-preference is suspect to Jer-Bear and Jimbo, Homophobes for Jesus).
But I digress. Again.
I told Rosie I'd get the movie, our copy, uncensored and uninterrupted. Have a vested interest in it myself, now that I've seen a bit of it. Nothing to do with sex, of course. I like it when hoods break someone's nose to prove a point. There's no other way, right? Movies make that point over and over. Can't reason or plead or reinforce more constructive behavior. Just beat the shit out of 'em. That'll show 'em.
Looks like I'm going to tape a radio show for my favorite station. Don't know when it will air -- program director wants to work that out. But he isn't offended that I want to air "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" from O Brother, Where Art Thou? as a selection on a program of film music to be broadcast on a station with a 24-hour "classical" music format. It also includes Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, which was in Platoon and The Elephant Man. That music, by the bye, gives Rosie cold chills, she says.
Your fellating rag, Ed, had an editorial on the price of gasoline that was halfway sensible (because I had been thinking some of the same things) -- if it had just gone far enough. You pointed out quite correctly that there are too many gas-sucking SUVs and dualies on the road. "Weapons of Mass Deception," as my clever, beloved son has dubbed them. And you observed that driving habits are hardly conducive to gas conservation. True. The tailgating F-350's and Tahoes with drivers pissing their pants to pass me when I myself am exceeding the speed limit by, oh say ten or fifteen miles an hour, prove that point when I meet them a few seconds later while they're still sitting at the stoplight.
But what about mass transit? Even in this modest little city, we have vans that, besides making scheduled runs, operate as virtual taxis, and they are cheap. And we have taxis, for that matter. I doubt they're smoke-free, since things don't progress here all that fast, but I bet you can beat the pump prices by riding in them. What's a little secondhand smoke when you're trying to save your money on fuel? And wouldn't it be neat if people would car-pool? And ride bicycles? And walk? If you live in the same neighborhood and work at the same place, why not share a ride? But, I know, for Yanks to pool anything -- cars, expensive tools -- why, it's communistic! What are we, a bunch of hippies? Everybody wants -- needs -- private, portal-to-portal transportation, on demand, twenty-four hours a day. And, as some of the Freudian persuasion have speculated, people preoccupied with their machismo have to have their automotive prop under them at all times. Someone even postulated an inverse relationship between magnitude of the penis and the size of the vehicle. They call it Hummer's Law. And WTF is this business of raising the speed limit in Indiana? Nixon in the seventies signed an executive order lowering the speed limit to 55. Egads! A Republican actually decreed that Big Oil would lose some opportunities to profit. (Well, at least it seemed that way.) I note that a local car dealer has a revolving platform with a car upon it. No one is paying attention to it. What a silly waste of energy. That worthless contraption runs with electricity, no doubt, which is generated from burning fossil fuels. Near that in perpetuum piece of junk, stores stand open, virtually unoccupied, with God knows how many lights burning round the clock and the a-c blasting away, cooling no one but a handful of clerks? Do we know how to waste energy? Does a cat have an ass?
Enough. Wait 'til you catch me in a bad mood.
Good night, Mrs. Calibash and Scnozzola, and Bud, dear Bud, wherever you are. And Harold, Harold, be at the end of all our remembering. Here's a classical piece for tuba and brass choir. God, I love it! Who wrote the theme for Gunsmoke? A wind choir plays it at the end of the show, with a still shot of the big ole coffeepot. Amen.
JT
I just discovered Flashdance. Never saw it before. Rosie didn't know the name of it but described it to me and after searching a half-hour I finally found it.
Here it is tonight on Bravo (which of course has a googol of commercials and the dialogue bowdlerized by the falsely righteous censors who are cowed by Falwell and Dobson -- no problem, of course, with a scene in which hoods break the standup comic's nose. It's sex, not violence, that's the problem. Violence is AOK. It's America, right? Capital punishment? No problem. "Make-my-day" gun laws for intruders (who are not born-again Christians anyway)? No problem. Film violence by people who have the right political beliefs (think Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson)? No problem. Just no "bad" words. Problem. Why? What would Jesus do? He would send the cussers straight to hell. Also, don't show any children's cartoon characters whose sex-preference is suspect to Jer-Bear and Jimbo, Homophobes for Jesus).
But I digress. Again.
I told Rosie I'd get the movie, our copy, uncensored and uninterrupted. Have a vested interest in it myself, now that I've seen a bit of it. Nothing to do with sex, of course. I like it when hoods break someone's nose to prove a point. There's no other way, right? Movies make that point over and over. Can't reason or plead or reinforce more constructive behavior. Just beat the shit out of 'em. That'll show 'em.
Looks like I'm going to tape a radio show for my favorite station. Don't know when it will air -- program director wants to work that out. But he isn't offended that I want to air "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" from O Brother, Where Art Thou? as a selection on a program of film music to be broadcast on a station with a 24-hour "classical" music format. It also includes Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, which was in Platoon and The Elephant Man. That music, by the bye, gives Rosie cold chills, she says.
Your fellating rag, Ed, had an editorial on the price of gasoline that was halfway sensible (because I had been thinking some of the same things) -- if it had just gone far enough. You pointed out quite correctly that there are too many gas-sucking SUVs and dualies on the road. "Weapons of Mass Deception," as my clever, beloved son has dubbed them. And you observed that driving habits are hardly conducive to gas conservation. True. The tailgating F-350's and Tahoes with drivers pissing their pants to pass me when I myself am exceeding the speed limit by, oh say ten or fifteen miles an hour, prove that point when I meet them a few seconds later while they're still sitting at the stoplight.
But what about mass transit? Even in this modest little city, we have vans that, besides making scheduled runs, operate as virtual taxis, and they are cheap. And we have taxis, for that matter. I doubt they're smoke-free, since things don't progress here all that fast, but I bet you can beat the pump prices by riding in them. What's a little secondhand smoke when you're trying to save your money on fuel? And wouldn't it be neat if people would car-pool? And ride bicycles? And walk? If you live in the same neighborhood and work at the same place, why not share a ride? But, I know, for Yanks to pool anything -- cars, expensive tools -- why, it's communistic! What are we, a bunch of hippies? Everybody wants -- needs -- private, portal-to-portal transportation, on demand, twenty-four hours a day. And, as some of the Freudian persuasion have speculated, people preoccupied with their machismo have to have their automotive prop under them at all times. Someone even postulated an inverse relationship between magnitude of the penis and the size of the vehicle. They call it Hummer's Law. And WTF is this business of raising the speed limit in Indiana? Nixon in the seventies signed an executive order lowering the speed limit to 55. Egads! A Republican actually decreed that Big Oil would lose some opportunities to profit. (Well, at least it seemed that way.) I note that a local car dealer has a revolving platform with a car upon it. No one is paying attention to it. What a silly waste of energy. That worthless contraption runs with electricity, no doubt, which is generated from burning fossil fuels. Near that in perpetuum piece of junk, stores stand open, virtually unoccupied, with God knows how many lights burning round the clock and the a-c blasting away, cooling no one but a handful of clerks? Do we know how to waste energy? Does a cat have an ass?
Enough. Wait 'til you catch me in a bad mood.
Good night, Mrs. Calibash and Scnozzola, and Bud, dear Bud, wherever you are. And Harold, Harold, be at the end of all our remembering. Here's a classical piece for tuba and brass choir. God, I love it! Who wrote the theme for Gunsmoke? A wind choir plays it at the end of the show, with a still shot of the big ole coffeepot. Amen.
JT
Sunday, August 14, 2005
The Screwtape Emails
My Dear Wormwood,
Good to hear from you!
Papagena and I were watching an "oater" starring Glenn Ford as the marshal and Angie Dickinson as the saloon girl. Looks like they're sleeping together, and I don't think they're married, so this movie obviously postdates the strict censorship days. I recall the barkeep* from a movie by the National Council on Alcoholism, in which he played the chief of a detox-rehab place. Shows versatility. I used to show it when I was the "alcoholic coordinator" for the Athens City Court in the seventies. But enough of the nostalgia and chit-chat.
[*Lin Lesser. The movie was The Last Challenge (1967). Shucks, come to find out he was on Seinfeld!]
Our experiences with church (i.e. yours and mine) seem to parallel each other. You said your new pastor is "superficial and a Republican" and that wouldn't matter if he didn't come across as a "neoconservative evangelical." And what is worse, you said that he ignores, doesn't attend, and doesn't even mention the existence of your church study group to the congregation. You are the bastard group.
Welcome to bastardy.
Our experiences are strikingly similar, it seems. Perhaps I'm masochistic for doing it, but Papagena and I have been attending the Avis Megachurch in Forlorn River, and the pastor is a native Hoosier who spent twenty years in Oregon before coming to this church.
I see that he went to a conservative Bible college out there, and he said that his son attends an "evangelical" college in the Midwest. (By the way, I'd think that from the name of the college it would be a mainline church affiliation and would be notoriously liberal, like my alma mater, Cragmont College, used to be. Actually I think Cragmont is now pretty conservative politically, but they're more "liberal" than they were in the sixties on drinking, now selling beer on campus to 21-year-olds, and the gay students -- of whom there were "none" in the days of Animal House (Cragmont had the dweebs, jocks, and frat rats just like "Faber College", but of course "no" queers) -- have formed an out-of-the-closet, gay pride organization! The place is well endowed by country club Republicans (rather than religious right ones), who are very much well and alive. Cragmont, and, as far as that goes, the Republican Party, is a concoction of contradictions. My, that was a long digression. We call that circumstantiality, don't we?)
Anyhow, back to this pastor, Theophilus Tory, by name. I like him. He's a likable guy and a "people-person," I think. I believe I told you my aunt is a lifelong member of that church and pastors love her. She'll be 80 next year and she has been the volunteer Sunday school superintendent for decades now. After my uncle Chap died, leaving only Lula and me, I started attending the church with her. I regard myself as a sojourner there and in just about any church in Forlorn River.
Knowing what little I do about theology and the society of this town, my best fit is probably in St. Andrew's Episcopal, or Cragmont Presbyterian. But for some cussed reason, I keep going back to the church where my aunt who baby-sat me goes, where my father was a deacon, where I had the hell scared out of me by those brow-mopping, bible-wielding, hell-foretelling fire-insurance salesman called evangelists, and where my entire nine-year-old body was immersed in the baptistery one Sunday night when I "accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior."
Soon after I started back there, I got involved with Sojourners and God's Politics and I thought that, one of the objectives being to build a bridge across this chasm we have today, it would be logical to ask Theophilus if we could have a study group at the church.
Ixnay. He thought it was "too risky." He told me about a near-dustup between two deacons at a board meeting, one a Bushie, one a Kerryite, before the 2004 election. Besides that, I observed his deer-in-the-headlights reaction when I told him that I was "extremely liberal, certainly by Forlorn River "standards," and his flinch when I said that you-know-who "thinks he's the Messiah."
I secured the community center as our meeting place and went to several churches asking the pastors to announce the group or make a post in their bulletins. Twice more I went to Theophilus and asked him merely to get the word to his congregation. The second time, two days before the group began, he said he'd have to OK it with the deacons. I said I couldn't see anything "risky" in simply telling the members that such a group existed. (God's Politics isn't exactly a manual on Satan worship.) I sparred with him a little bit about it and then he said he didn't trust me. At last, the truth.
Papagena said she didn't want to go to the church any more and she didn't like the denomination. I continued to go to the damn church because I wasn't going to let a Bushie (I have no doubt he is) drive me off. Papagena stopped going for several Sundays and I missed a couple myself. But I went back last Sunday and this, and for some perverse reason I enjoy the place. Theophilus's sermons are not too bad. He uses Power Point for his outlines of his main points and does a good job, like a Sunday school teacher. Lula and I sit there and write his main points on the bulletin insert (Skinnerian programmed learning!). He refers to some books I like. He exhorts personal piety and assures people of salvation and peace of mind if they practice the principles.
Hell, I don't know. I just keep going there.
But no more has been said about the God's Politics group. Having the paranoid proclivities that I do, it occurred to me that he could have not only not informed anyone, but passed the word that it was a "subversive" group. If he did, however, he would be more two-faced than he seems to me. I have more faith in him than that.
We ended up getting one person (who got his info from the newspaper ad) who was to the right of our politics and religion. He is a good man and I had great hope for that "bridge" while he was there --which ended up being once.
I have become disheartened about building that bridge. I read an article in the New Yorker magazine by Hanna Rosin about Patrick Henry College in Virginia. A good many of the kids there were home-schooled, and they are not only taught that you can't be a Christian without being a Republican, all of them campaign for Republicans, and some of them do internships in D.C., where they conclude that Karl Rove is a "political genius" -- rather than a character assassin. He couldn't be the latter, they reason, because Turd Blossom is the right-hand man for that Godly man in the oval office. These kids learn debate -- but not critical thinking.
This morning we went to church to a youth-led worship. Some kids gave testimonies that because of "knowing Jesus" they (1) don't swear, (2) read the Bible and pray, and (3) stay away from "the wrong kind" of people. A young seminarian (in Bible camp T-shirt and shorts) gave a sermon reinforcing those behaviors -- none of them, by the way, having anything to do with the "social gospel." And there you have it -- stay away from the wrong kind.
I think that a lot of Paul's letters to the fledgling churches contain language about cloistering themselves in a like-minded community and avoiding worldly people, whereas Jesus encouraged his disciples by both precept and example to go out into the community at large and teach and heal and comfort, etc. Jesus was an activist, Paul a pietist, I'd say.
The pietists of today choose the message of insularity, with their own TV and radio, their own music, their own schools, their own book stores, and of course their own churches. I suspect Theophilus learned when he was a kid at his church to stay away from the wrong kind of people, and when I walked into his pastor's office his radar went blip! when I used "the L-word." If I try to build a bridge, they will blow it up for sure every time. Or so it seems right now. And that's why I'm just a little disheartened. So I'm ready for a good sermon from one of my kind too.
Reckon our main man Phil will be back from sabbatical after Labor Day, huh?
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
Good to hear from you!
Papagena and I were watching an "oater" starring Glenn Ford as the marshal and Angie Dickinson as the saloon girl. Looks like they're sleeping together, and I don't think they're married, so this movie obviously postdates the strict censorship days. I recall the barkeep* from a movie by the National Council on Alcoholism, in which he played the chief of a detox-rehab place. Shows versatility. I used to show it when I was the "alcoholic coordinator" for the Athens City Court in the seventies. But enough of the nostalgia and chit-chat.
[*Lin Lesser. The movie was The Last Challenge (1967). Shucks, come to find out he was on Seinfeld!]
Our experiences with church (i.e. yours and mine) seem to parallel each other. You said your new pastor is "superficial and a Republican" and that wouldn't matter if he didn't come across as a "neoconservative evangelical." And what is worse, you said that he ignores, doesn't attend, and doesn't even mention the existence of your church study group to the congregation. You are the bastard group.
Welcome to bastardy.
Our experiences are strikingly similar, it seems. Perhaps I'm masochistic for doing it, but Papagena and I have been attending the Avis Megachurch in Forlorn River, and the pastor is a native Hoosier who spent twenty years in Oregon before coming to this church.
I see that he went to a conservative Bible college out there, and he said that his son attends an "evangelical" college in the Midwest. (By the way, I'd think that from the name of the college it would be a mainline church affiliation and would be notoriously liberal, like my alma mater, Cragmont College, used to be. Actually I think Cragmont is now pretty conservative politically, but they're more "liberal" than they were in the sixties on drinking, now selling beer on campus to 21-year-olds, and the gay students -- of whom there were "none" in the days of Animal House (Cragmont had the dweebs, jocks, and frat rats just like "Faber College", but of course "no" queers) -- have formed an out-of-the-closet, gay pride organization! The place is well endowed by country club Republicans (rather than religious right ones), who are very much well and alive. Cragmont, and, as far as that goes, the Republican Party, is a concoction of contradictions. My, that was a long digression. We call that circumstantiality, don't we?)
Anyhow, back to this pastor, Theophilus Tory, by name. I like him. He's a likable guy and a "people-person," I think. I believe I told you my aunt is a lifelong member of that church and pastors love her. She'll be 80 next year and she has been the volunteer Sunday school superintendent for decades now. After my uncle Chap died, leaving only Lula and me, I started attending the church with her. I regard myself as a sojourner there and in just about any church in Forlorn River.
Knowing what little I do about theology and the society of this town, my best fit is probably in St. Andrew's Episcopal, or Cragmont Presbyterian. But for some cussed reason, I keep going back to the church where my aunt who baby-sat me goes, where my father was a deacon, where I had the hell scared out of me by those brow-mopping, bible-wielding, hell-foretelling fire-insurance salesman called evangelists, and where my entire nine-year-old body was immersed in the baptistery one Sunday night when I "accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior."
Soon after I started back there, I got involved with Sojourners and God's Politics and I thought that, one of the objectives being to build a bridge across this chasm we have today, it would be logical to ask Theophilus if we could have a study group at the church.
Ixnay. He thought it was "too risky." He told me about a near-dustup between two deacons at a board meeting, one a Bushie, one a Kerryite, before the 2004 election. Besides that, I observed his deer-in-the-headlights reaction when I told him that I was "extremely liberal, certainly by Forlorn River "standards," and his flinch when I said that you-know-who "thinks he's the Messiah."
I secured the community center as our meeting place and went to several churches asking the pastors to announce the group or make a post in their bulletins. Twice more I went to Theophilus and asked him merely to get the word to his congregation. The second time, two days before the group began, he said he'd have to OK it with the deacons. I said I couldn't see anything "risky" in simply telling the members that such a group existed. (God's Politics isn't exactly a manual on Satan worship.) I sparred with him a little bit about it and then he said he didn't trust me. At last, the truth.
Papagena said she didn't want to go to the church any more and she didn't like the denomination. I continued to go to the damn church because I wasn't going to let a Bushie (I have no doubt he is) drive me off. Papagena stopped going for several Sundays and I missed a couple myself. But I went back last Sunday and this, and for some perverse reason I enjoy the place. Theophilus's sermons are not too bad. He uses Power Point for his outlines of his main points and does a good job, like a Sunday school teacher. Lula and I sit there and write his main points on the bulletin insert (Skinnerian programmed learning!). He refers to some books I like. He exhorts personal piety and assures people of salvation and peace of mind if they practice the principles.
Hell, I don't know. I just keep going there.
But no more has been said about the God's Politics group. Having the paranoid proclivities that I do, it occurred to me that he could have not only not informed anyone, but passed the word that it was a "subversive" group. If he did, however, he would be more two-faced than he seems to me. I have more faith in him than that.
We ended up getting one person (who got his info from the newspaper ad) who was to the right of our politics and religion. He is a good man and I had great hope for that "bridge" while he was there --which ended up being once.
I have become disheartened about building that bridge. I read an article in the New Yorker magazine by Hanna Rosin about Patrick Henry College in Virginia. A good many of the kids there were home-schooled, and they are not only taught that you can't be a Christian without being a Republican, all of them campaign for Republicans, and some of them do internships in D.C., where they conclude that Karl Rove is a "political genius" -- rather than a character assassin. He couldn't be the latter, they reason, because Turd Blossom is the right-hand man for that Godly man in the oval office. These kids learn debate -- but not critical thinking.
This morning we went to church to a youth-led worship. Some kids gave testimonies that because of "knowing Jesus" they (1) don't swear, (2) read the Bible and pray, and (3) stay away from "the wrong kind" of people. A young seminarian (in Bible camp T-shirt and shorts) gave a sermon reinforcing those behaviors -- none of them, by the way, having anything to do with the "social gospel." And there you have it -- stay away from the wrong kind.
I think that a lot of Paul's letters to the fledgling churches contain language about cloistering themselves in a like-minded community and avoiding worldly people, whereas Jesus encouraged his disciples by both precept and example to go out into the community at large and teach and heal and comfort, etc. Jesus was an activist, Paul a pietist, I'd say.
The pietists of today choose the message of insularity, with their own TV and radio, their own music, their own schools, their own book stores, and of course their own churches. I suspect Theophilus learned when he was a kid at his church to stay away from the wrong kind of people, and when I walked into his pastor's office his radar went blip! when I used "the L-word." If I try to build a bridge, they will blow it up for sure every time. Or so it seems right now. And that's why I'm just a little disheartened. So I'm ready for a good sermon from one of my kind too.
Reckon our main man Phil will be back from sabbatical after Labor Day, huh?
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Moral values and the Awl Bidness
Saturday 08/13/2005 8:24 a.m.
Dear Ed,
Marion started the choral part of the Ninth by Beethoven—where the baritone sings, “O freude!” and Rosie began frowning and shaking her head. I turned off the radio—I’m not hip on hearing the Ninth at this hour either. The silence was then tomb-like.
Nor am I hip on hearing two shouting heads wrangling about punishing or offering a suspended sentence and therapy to a woman who is accused of having sex with her sixteen-year-old pupil. I would like to send an e-mail to MSNBC denouncing their new Rita Cosby program which uses the format of facing off two shouting heads and letting them go at it between commercial breaks, which come all too often. But I’ve got it on to break the silence.
Got to fix my oatmeal and get going. It’s almost nine and the heat index is getting close to 90 already.
Rosie has gone to ready for the day and I turned off MSNBC News. Pat Buchanan was going to come on and say that the mother near Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch protesting the death of her son in Iraq is “reaching a point of diminishing returns” in trying to call attention to her plight and that of other sons in harm’s way and their grieving mothers. Thus, Pat reasons, the woman’s concerns are trivial. As Rummy says, yuh fight the war with the army yuh got, not the one yuh want—what’s left of it. Rather than fuming in sufferance of Bukey’s mouth-flatus that is sure to come in billowing clouds of mouth-stink, I switched to Turner, to a black and white movie with Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Charles Coburn, and Marilyn Monroe. It’s a farce that is meant to be one, whereas MSNBC is an unintended black comedy of horrors.
And then there’s the Fox News Network. Like death by torture, I don’t want to think about it.
Well, I’ve finished my oatmeal and need to get on my way. I think I’ll take the same route I took yesterday only backwards. Amen and may I go with God.
...
Fifty-nine minutes of trek, the first twenty of it really booking. Beautiful sights and sounds—chirring locusts and cooing doves. And sunny and steaming hot. This is day 225 of the year, with 140 to go—should anybody care. At the Swifty gas and convenience store at State and Cragmont last night, regular unleaded gasoline was $2.559 a gallon. God dog. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, just love the hell out of ‘em. The boys in the awl bidness are running the country. You voted for "moral values," people. Moral values this.
JT
Dis and Dat, as Dey Say in Da Region
Dear Ed,
Slept three hours this afternoon, so up late for an old man. Friday night (actually Saturday morning) now. Piano concerto on WUOL (Prokoviev?). I like it. Rudy is scratching himself. Rosie has gone to bed. God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. Posted a comment on Dr. Nat Sue's latest blog entry. Poor girl is starting her overnights in her internship. She was on call and busy for thirty hours! She is made of sterner stuff than I am.
Rosie and I went downtown tonight, noticed there was a concert in the Broadway Fountain Park, and stopped by too late. We sat a while on a park bench. It wasn't too warm and humid. I feel great physically and emotionally. Walking every morning for an hour after oatmeal and have got off the NaCl and FaT in my daily diet. Quit half of my blood pressure medicine and three readings since doing so are 100/60, 125/80, and 100/70. The two lower ones are after walking.
Trying to bridge to the religious right, or thinking about trying again. I know a pastor, a man I like very much and enjoy hearing preach his sermons of comfort and empowerment, who I want to engage in dialogue, and whose flock I want also to engage, who has avoided my incursions so far, and I'm thinking of sending him a Sojourners message from one who has tried to engage those to his right and has been frustrated by his attempt. I wonder if he'll read it or even acknowledge it. He seemed quite fearful that I might tell him something he doesn't want to hear. He finally trusted me enough to tell me he doesn't trust me. Progress!
Am nearly finished with a script for a radio show on film music. The work I've put into it has been its own reward. I'm finding out more about the topic and am continually delighted by the endeavor. I hope it will make some folks happy for the hour it's on the air. (I hope, before that, that the program director will want to air it when he hears the finished product.) Rather than trust myself to ad-lib in comments between selections, I've written a script. The last time I spoke to a group of people about my own recovery from addictions, I wrote out what I wanted to say and read it rather than speak impromptu. It worked much the better, I think.
Good grief! It's one in the morning!
Dat's all for now, Ed.
JT
Slept three hours this afternoon, so up late for an old man. Friday night (actually Saturday morning) now. Piano concerto on WUOL (Prokoviev?). I like it. Rudy is scratching himself. Rosie has gone to bed. God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. Posted a comment on Dr. Nat Sue's latest blog entry. Poor girl is starting her overnights in her internship. She was on call and busy for thirty hours! She is made of sterner stuff than I am.
Rosie and I went downtown tonight, noticed there was a concert in the Broadway Fountain Park, and stopped by too late. We sat a while on a park bench. It wasn't too warm and humid. I feel great physically and emotionally. Walking every morning for an hour after oatmeal and have got off the NaCl and FaT in my daily diet. Quit half of my blood pressure medicine and three readings since doing so are 100/60, 125/80, and 100/70. The two lower ones are after walking.
Trying to bridge to the religious right, or thinking about trying again. I know a pastor, a man I like very much and enjoy hearing preach his sermons of comfort and empowerment, who I want to engage in dialogue, and whose flock I want also to engage, who has avoided my incursions so far, and I'm thinking of sending him a Sojourners message from one who has tried to engage those to his right and has been frustrated by his attempt. I wonder if he'll read it or even acknowledge it. He seemed quite fearful that I might tell him something he doesn't want to hear. He finally trusted me enough to tell me he doesn't trust me. Progress!
Am nearly finished with a script for a radio show on film music. The work I've put into it has been its own reward. I'm finding out more about the topic and am continually delighted by the endeavor. I hope it will make some folks happy for the hour it's on the air. (I hope, before that, that the program director will want to air it when he hears the finished product.) Rather than trust myself to ad-lib in comments between selections, I've written a script. The last time I spoke to a group of people about my own recovery from addictions, I wrote out what I wanted to say and read it rather than speak impromptu. It worked much the better, I think.
Good grief! It's one in the morning!
Dat's all for now, Ed.
JT
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Saturday Night in Madison, Indiana, Sing That, John Denver
I wanted to name this blog "Window on the World" but thought that was too grandiose. (Like other people who are grandiose for no justifiable reason whatever and know it, I try to mask my grandiosity. But it's in there. It's in there.)
Karletta, my prospective stepdaughter-in-law, is sweetly loquacious and she is regaling my wife with her chatter. My wife is a good listener, having listened to her garrulous mom all her life. (Mom is especially gabby right now, on a steroid high. Mom is 89, Dad 92, and God bless them both, they are hanging on. My wife, besides being a good daughter, is also a good nurse, and takes marvelous care of them.) Karletta's prospective spouse, David, is in his woodshop out back.
What a good boy am I! My daughter, a medical doctor, agreed with me last weekend that I need to lose weight through judicious eating and get my bulky body out there walking -- and I have done just that all week! I elected not to walk one day last week when the THI was 110 (I had actually walked, all 248 lb and 66 yrs of me, the day before when the discomfort index was just as high), but otherwise I've made it out every day for 2.35 miles, according to the trip-odometer on the jalopy, walking the entire length of my street and returning.
We've had a string of fine days again, pleasantly dry such as to be cool in the shade. The eight years my kids and former wife and I lived next to the Wasatch range of Utah, this weather was commonplace. The kids would wear winter pajamas to bed in summer. But I forget. We had an unusually rainy spell that went on for what seemed like at least a year, and the stench of the Great Salt Lake (ever heard of brine shrimp?) was foul and pervaded the entire East Bench, where I was finishing up my Ph.D. I'll take the Ohio Valley, I guess, until the next tornado comes along.
I'm having fun researching movie music for a proposal I made to a radio station. It's a big undertaking and I have been told I would have amateur status only. Fair enough. I have no experience in broadcasting. And I don't know enough about music (ran away from my piano teacher) or movies. (I've seen quite a few and take delight knowing many of the obscure character actors in B movies -- ever heard of I. Stanford Jolley? Look him up on Internet Movie Data Base. And I am learning more every day about movie composers, old ones such as Roy Webb and new ones such as Rachel Portman.) I have mainly enthusiasm, and I hope a few listeners will share it.
Karletta, my prospective stepdaughter-in-law, is sweetly loquacious and she is regaling my wife with her chatter. My wife is a good listener, having listened to her garrulous mom all her life. (Mom is especially gabby right now, on a steroid high. Mom is 89, Dad 92, and God bless them both, they are hanging on. My wife, besides being a good daughter, is also a good nurse, and takes marvelous care of them.) Karletta's prospective spouse, David, is in his woodshop out back.
What a good boy am I! My daughter, a medical doctor, agreed with me last weekend that I need to lose weight through judicious eating and get my bulky body out there walking -- and I have done just that all week! I elected not to walk one day last week when the THI was 110 (I had actually walked, all 248 lb and 66 yrs of me, the day before when the discomfort index was just as high), but otherwise I've made it out every day for 2.35 miles, according to the trip-odometer on the jalopy, walking the entire length of my street and returning.
We've had a string of fine days again, pleasantly dry such as to be cool in the shade. The eight years my kids and former wife and I lived next to the Wasatch range of Utah, this weather was commonplace. The kids would wear winter pajamas to bed in summer. But I forget. We had an unusually rainy spell that went on for what seemed like at least a year, and the stench of the Great Salt Lake (ever heard of brine shrimp?) was foul and pervaded the entire East Bench, where I was finishing up my Ph.D. I'll take the Ohio Valley, I guess, until the next tornado comes along.
I'm having fun researching movie music for a proposal I made to a radio station. It's a big undertaking and I have been told I would have amateur status only. Fair enough. I have no experience in broadcasting. And I don't know enough about music (ran away from my piano teacher) or movies. (I've seen quite a few and take delight knowing many of the obscure character actors in B movies -- ever heard of I. Stanford Jolley? Look him up on Internet Movie Data Base. And I am learning more every day about movie composers, old ones such as Roy Webb and new ones such as Rachel Portman.) I have mainly enthusiasm, and I hope a few listeners will share it.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
"The Present Acrimony"
Dear Ed,
The quotation marks cite a small-town Presbyterian minister (unusually laconic, by the way, for a minister), referring to the chasm between the “religious” right and the “secular” left in the U.S.A.
I’ve noted that a divide has stood for a long time between “activists” and “pietists,” the former believing that Christ’s mission for us is to minister to the poor, sick, and unfortunate, with or without a message, in contrast to the latter, who believe that the most important thing is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, dedicate the rest of your life to getting everybody else to do the same (preferably in your church, during an altar call following a hellfire-and-damnation, come-to-Jesus sermon, but we can quibble about the details), and also spend the rest of your life not sinning (being “sanctified” as well as “saved” will help if your theology allows it), especially not committing sins having to do with sex of any kind and “taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
In What I Believe, Tony Campolo, an evangelical, tells of speaking at an evangelical Christian college. He said to the assembly, “Yesterday [some number of tens of thousands] people in the world died of starvation.” He paused. “And you don’t give a shit.” There was an audible gasp followed by hushed silence—I believe that was the way he put it. “You were more shocked that I said ‘shit’ than by the fact that [all those] people died,” he said.
I remember having a similar thought while in a Sunday school class of young adults thirty-five years ago. The teacher was a professor at a nearby university and he was talking about the what he regarded as dirty Hindus who lived on campus—he said that their food preparation was appalling to him and he implied that his interpretation of their “inferior” hygiene was caused by their “heathen” religion. I wanted to say, “You're a damned bigot.” But it was a Sunday school class, I was a visitor, the pastor was my wife's uncle, and the kids there would be scandalized (by my impure word, not by his unchristian attitude). Being more concerned with “sinful” language than with our collective sin of inhumanity to others resulting in their deaths as surely as if we had murdered them in cold blood—that's pietism.
I believe the pietists of today—the “religious right”—are afraid, as they were then. They have been cowed and bullied from their pulpits and told what they must believe to avoid hellfire. Their beliefs used to be only about end times and the Rapture and the Great Tribulation and the Battle of Armageddon and the Antichrist and the Second Coming and Life After Death and how to prepare for them by Accepting Christ and being Born Again and avoiding Sin. The pietists were “in the world but not of it.” They were poor and ignorant and had little hope in this world and someday, if they were good, they would go to a place where there would be no more crying and pain and the beasts of the wild are led by a child. And the rich and worldly would be no part of it.
When I was a little boy I was taught to fear the great calamities described in excruciating detail, imminent and inescapable. I sat in a high-ceilinged church, a captive child of eight, tortured verbally night after hot, humid summer night of revivals, tortured by the horrible, sadistic men who mopped their sweat with a white handkerchief with one hand and held an open, limp bible with the other while they shouted their threats from the pulpit, telling us it was our last chance before the Lord returned and ended it all.
I had an aunt, God rest her, who reminded me of how much a burn hurt and how it would feel like that all over my body in Eternal Hell (where the God who loved us so much would send us forever.) I was scared as much as anyone, maybe more than most, because I have always seen myself as being a terrible coward—so I tried to become a pietist too. But I could not. I just couldn’t buy fire insurance. There must be more to a loving God than that, I always reasoned.
Today, the pietists are no longer poor and ignorant. They have become rich and powerful—and it has been hell on earth ever since. Their beliefs include who to vote for and campaign and lobby for and, in the latest development, to be a political operative for, in league with the likes of Ralph Reed and Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman—in league with the devil. They are still afraid, triply so—the politicians who rule by fear and the televangelicals and fanciful novelists who enrich themselves at the pietists’ expense have joined the preachers in scaring the hell out of them.
But I say that they are still poor and ignorant. It’s just that now—as always—they have all the answers, and the television and radio “ministries” and networks to bombard all of us with those answers. They have all the money and power and a whole political party that has duped them into believing that they are storing up treasures in heaven, when in reality they are storing up treasures in the coffers of the ultra-mega-hyper-rich of this nation. And the rich and worldly—now, in a funny (that’s funny grotesque, not funny ha-ha) twist—own them as they never did.
So we have come to “the present acrimony.” Well, as I dared to say, I am a Christian too, not duped by the cobbled-together coalition of the rich and righteous, and I read the Bible too (even limp-backed ones if they’re the only ones available), and the relevant text about fear is in the First Letter of John (4:18-20):
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because He first loved us. Those who say, “I love God” and hate their brothers and sisters are liars; for those who do not love [those] whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.”
And Jesus said, “You have heard it said, ‘…love your neighbor and hate your enemy… For if you love [only] those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, … do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matthew 5:43 et ff.)
But we Christians, activists and pietists, seem to skip over these texts, required reading in our Sunday schools, and here we are, at the present acrimony. We won’t talk to one another except under the most strained of circumstances. When we do, the most fearful of us try to do all the talking because we have all the answers, and I am reminded of the little kid who sticks his fingers in his ears and shouts, “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!” to drown out the other’s words.
What are we to do, brothers and sisters in Christ? Can we find some common ground? Some higher ground? Is there anything we might agree on? Maybe not much on beliefs—let’s get over that. But how about Jesus’ commandments? There were only two, actually, and the second has to do with the verses above, about loving our neighbors with charity (agapé, in New Testament Greek), practicing the Golden Rule, feeding, welcoming, clothing “the least of these” as if we were doing the deeds for Christ himself.
I confess that at this moment I feel like a big hypocrite because I have not done nearly my share of good works in my day, and I know pietists—a lot of pietists—who have done and are doing much more than I have and am doing.
But why don’t we do more things together? Maybe while we’re working together to do Christ’s bidding on earth, can we talk about our similarities as well as our differences? Could one group stop saying that the other does not really consist of Christians? And even if it is true that other major world religions are wrong and all the people who sincerely believe in them are damned to hell for all eternity—I don’t believe that myself but apparently there are fellow Christians who sincerely do—even if it is true, can we stop harping on it and just love these people and practice the Golden Rule and extend agapé to them the same as we purportedly do to one another? Red and yellow, black and white, They are precious in His sight. “Who is my neighbor?” Let’s end “the present acrimony.”
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Music at the Movies
Dear Ed,
Saturday afternoons when I was about ten, in 1949, I'd go to the matinee at what my mother called “the lower show.” Downstream on Main Street from "the upper (picture) show," it was not as nice (or clean, by then) as the newer theater a block to the east. It had seen much better days as an honest-to-god opera house, being architecture that most thought was much better than the art-deco movie palace up the street. This town that cherishes its status as "historic" regrets it tore down the theater once known as (and aptly so) the Grand. That decision was made when the river also was a sewer and the bank along the front of our town was a dump and an eyesore.
But when I went to the lower show as a pup it was the Saturday showplace for Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Sunset Carson, Allan (Rocky) Lane, Bob Steele, Wild Bill Elliott, Johnny Mack Brown, and Lash Larue—not to exhaust the list of B-oater stars.
My favorite, for some reason, was the “Durango Kid,” played by Charles Starrett, who was always “Steve” something when he wasn’t in his disguise, and his sidekick was Smiley Burnett, who was often as not named “Frog” because of his vocal tricks while singing along with the gentleman country band, which always did a number or two. I wonder if they were the ones who did the song that had the lyrics—
Oh what a face!
It’s a disgrace
To be showing it in any public face!
I remember that good-natured musical spoof about a homely woman—who was mercifully not present. Memory does not allow me to say which movie I heard that in, and I hope ASCAP won’t get after me for “publishing” those lyrics without permission. In retrospect, Smiley certainly had more talent than Starrett. And I was embarrassed when a few years ago I saw two of the Durango Kid movies. They were awful! I recall that I liked the music in some of them. It was awful! (Except for the gentleman country acoustic band playing a sort of Texas swing, and one orchestral passage I recall even now.)
Like a lot of other blog bullroar, this isn’t going much of anywhere, I suppose, but I wanted to talk about movie music. A passage of orchestral music from a Durango Kid movie I saw 55 years ago remains in my memory—it had a cantering rhythm, for three canters, followed by and blended in with two sustained notes, the second lower than the first, then followed by four quick notes, which skipped rather than cantered, then again the two long notes, then the four quick notes again, the canter continuing all the while underneath. The composer knew counterpoint, the work of people like Dimitri Kabalevsky, perhaps Shostakovich, I would guess, I being ignorant of music as a trained person but as a music-lover with a reasonably good listener’s ear, and the music is original to me—I’ve never heard anything like it since. This passage wasn’t in the two movies I saw as an old man, sorry to say. I think it was good music. Studios used a lot of “stock music,” I learned, some by composers such as the now eminent African American composer William Grant Still, and I would like to think it was he who composed that little figure that I liked so well that I would sit through three showings just to hear it.
And which prefigured my current love of classical music--Bach, Samuel Barber, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Hindemith, Elgar, Howard Hansen, and yes, of course, the excellent movie composers--Roy Webb (The Cat People), Rachel Portman (The Legend of Bagger Vance), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood), Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings) ... I can babble on, and since this is a blog not likely to be read by anybody much, probably will. Hope this is good bedtime reading for someone else besides me. Shalom.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Letters to Ed: On the Constitution and Religion
Dear Ed,
I’m writing to you because I’ve been frustrated from expression of thoughts elsewhere. It’s a “free” country, in a social and spiritual sense, where you can say or write what you want. But it’s not “free,” in the economic sense, to be ensured that others get a chance to hear or read it.
We still have the First Amendment to the United States Constitution—and may I repeat it here?
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
I choose to comment on religion—its “establishment” and “free exercise,” in particular. Opinions on what the clause means vary from, at one extreme, no mention whatever of beliefs about a Higher Power in public to, at the opposite extreme, making one religion the official (or at least dominant, unrestrained and pampered) religion of the USA.
The one extreme, i.e. no public utterance at all, hinders “free exercise”—for example, Christians have the Constitutional right to bless, in the presence of other diners, their meals taken in restaurants. (Jesus spoke out against showing off your piety in Matthew 6:1-5 (how does that jibe with evangelism, by the way?)—but there is no law against public prayer in this country, as long as others are not forced to join in--well and good. In fact, I am free to say in this forum, thank God for that.)
The latter extreme, making Christianity the official religion of our nation, is “establishment.” Christianity was truer to its roots when it was the religion of a persecuted minority, in my opinion. From not long after the Edict of Milan (313 C.E.) to the present, Christendom has at many times been drunk with power as the majority or official religion.
Today in the United States, Christianity is in the majority and pressing for virtual takeover of the government—while many of its most powerful (or at least loudest), self-appointed spokesmen insist it is “persecuted.”. If vehemently disagreeing with, for example, a television pastor who says we should “blow away [our Middle Eastern enemies] in the name of the Lord” (in spite of what our Lord said about how we are to treat our enemies—v. Matthew 5:43-48) is “persecution,” then so be it.
JTE
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