buck, bela, john-john and me

I guess I have pretty catholic, some might say schizophrenic, tastes in music: at the library the other day I borrowed two CDs: one was Volume One of Buck Owens' All Time Greatest Hits and the other was orchestral works by Bela Bartok, the mighty twentieth century Hungarian composer. My beloved son John introduced me to Buck, one night in Florida when Amanda and I were riding in his truck. I never thought I would waste my time with country music, but, true to the adage that there are two kinds of music, good and bad, I swear off my intolerance of good music that happens to be country. John-John likes it, Garrison Keillor likes it, Mick Jagger likes it. We may yet find out that Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma are closet admirers of George Jones. (Maybe not, but...)

The Bartok disc contained Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, which appears in two familiar American movies, "Being John Malkovich" and "The Shining." In spite of the stumbledick I'd counted on to get me to the big-time who instead let me down, I'm determined to do some kind of show on movie music, i-Pod or something, and I'm continuing to do research. It will happen. And there'll be plenty of room for hillbilly music. Yee-ha!

Whaddaya think, Aldous Huxley?

This evening we watched "Charly," starring Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom. (Excuse the digression: God, how I long for the days when women acted and dressed like Claire does in this movie.)

"Charly," who because of an operation goes from being retarded to a genius (and who then has the good sense to seduce his gorgeous, sexy teacher, played by Claire -- OK -- no more digressions, I promise. Well, just one: the music is by Ravi Shankar and I wonder if it's on CD) is asked by a panel of scientists what the future of civilization is going to be. He replies, “Brave new hate, brave new bombs, brave new war.”

In 1968, I might have thought that was a melodramatic answer. But here we are in this brave new year, our nation at war -- an unjust war (are there really any just ones?) -- killing and being killed, and an administration that is corrupt, greedy, ruthless to its enemies, which include me because I dissent. Brave new hate. And most of the haters claim to be obedient to the One who said that the two great commandments are to love. (Let's see: isn't love the opposite of hate?)

Culture of Death

The American culture of death lost a round when Zacarias Moussaoui received a sentence of life in prison instead of death for his part in the tragedy of 9/11. Jurors considered "mitigating circumstances" in his case and most of them decided such circumstances were great enough to withhold the death penalty. The prosecution and victims of family members were disappointed.

When I say the "culture of death," I refer to those who are almost always "pro-life" in the case of the unborn but otherwise are pro-capital punishment, pro-war, pro-guns, and pro-damnation for their opponents. Their undisputed leader is George W. Bush, who so callously and adamantly blessed the executions of people when he was governor of Texas and who has damned thousands of American soldiers to their death and disabilities for his stinking war.

Feeling Well

I get a little stronger and feel a little better each day. I'm grateful for that. Very grateful. We're going to a birthday luncheon for Rosie's dad's 93rd after a while. It's a beautiful spring day. Long live Howard! Long live JT!