"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
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