Friday, April 30. 2010
"Cold and lonesome" is the gritty low-down heart of the blues. (That is not Jimmy Reed in the photo. I don't know who that guy is, but the music is Reed.)
I hope y'all have enjoyed hearing Jimmy this week.
Last week I was at a Memorial Service where the song “Wind Beneath My Wings” was very fittingly sung about the lessons she transmitted to her family with her life.
Since, it has been running about my mind, what song would I want sung at my Memorial Service (besides “Hit The Road Jack”).
Yesterday, while driving I was listening to a local AM station that has classic songs of the ‘40s and ‘50s. I was struck by the rendition of “We’ll Meet Again”, sung by Anne Murray. As an older father, I try to communicate to my sons the optimism, positive thinking and perseverance that I have lived and believe will be central to their futures, and hope that will guide them and serve as their remembrance.
The words seem to ably sum it up:
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some
sunny day.
Keep smiling through
Just like you always do
and Til the blue skies
Drive the dark clouds far away.
So will you please say hello
To the folks that I know.
Tell 'em I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know
That as you saw me go,
I was singin' this song.
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some
sunny day.
So will you please say hello
To the folks that I love.
Tell 'em I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know
That as you saw me go,
I was singin' this song.
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some
sunny day.
I know we'll meet again some sunny
day.
Research has it that the song was one of the most popular in Britain during its dark days during World War II. The songstress, Vera Lynn, “The Forces Sweetheart”, recorded the Ross Parker/Hughie Charles song in 1942 while making the film of the same name. It became one of the emblematic songs during the war.
Since, many have recorded the song. My selections below the fold -
Continue reading "We’ll Meet Again"
A couple of birder friends and I took an early morning trip down to the Jamaica Bay Refuge in Queens, NYC, for some early warbler-watching last Saturday.
Since we had already had a wave of warblers passing through further north, it seemed like a good time to get a head start on the May warbler-watching before all the leaves came out. Wrong. Not a single one. As with hunting or fishing, it is so often "You shoulda been here yesterday."
Our birds have not bought into the global warming hysteria. The Spring migrants were absent, and the winter birds had left already. I did not even see the usual flock of breeding Ruddy Ducks.
The Jamaica Bay Refuge is a unique oasis. Behind you is JFK with planes constantly overhead, out to the ocean side is Far Rockaway, and in front is Brooklyn with Manhattan rising in the distance. It's a special green and watery stopping-place for migrants on the Atlantic Flyway, but the refuge hosts plenty of breeding birds too. Mixed habitat: beaches, woods, vast bayberry fields, salt- and fresh-water marshes.
Plenty of Tree Swallows. Here's my pal walking up to one of them while fumbling with his fancy camera, Far Rockaway in the distance:
More photos etc below the fold -
Continue reading "Jamaica Bay: A Warbler-free zone in late April"
Gwynnie is going boar hunting in California again, this time with friend Chester, for whom it is a first time. We’re after Sus scrofa, the descendants of European boars imported for a “game farm”.
We’ll actually use rifles in the .270-.308 range, but we told Chester that there were archers too, and he’s really excited.
My men's study/confessional group has been reading the Letter to the Hebrews for a couple of months. One of the topics we stumbled into this week was a discussion of obedience to God, and dutifulness. (Here's a recent post on obedience via Vanderleun.)
While we guys all seem to acknowledge the need for discipline for spiritual growth, many of us confessed our tendency to lazily and self-congratulatingly replace a life in the spirit with "Christian" dutifulness and "doing good." We more or less ended up thinking of moral and religious dutifulness, if lacking the Holy Spirit and the direction of God, as clanging cymbals - empty noise. Of course, that was one of Christ's teachings.
From a Christian standpoint, pride in one's Christian dutifulness and righteousness is a devil's snare - as is pride in one's humility. From Screwtape's Letter #14 with his advice to his apprentice Wormwood:
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is especially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove! I’m being humble”, and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages as you please.
“In this election… we have got to realize there is no longer any such thing as a conservative Democrat. It doesn’t exist. I used to be one of them. When I worked for Bill Clinton, that’s what I was. Now I’m extinct. There are no more of me. I’m a dodo bird. Now you are either a Reid-Pelosi Democrat or you are a Republican.”
Dick Morris
Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. h/t, Washington Reb
Shawcross: Britain's humiliation
Legally, what's an "offended observer"? I am one, all day long.
Pew: More trouble for Democrats
If the government runs medical care, they will own your body. Bought and sold.
Mexico acknowledges migrant abuse, pledges changes. Yeah, sure.
Immigration: New third rail in American politics announced
Market-Based Membership Approach to Healthcare At the Same Monthly Cost As a Cell Phone Plan
Obama to Wall Street: “I Do Think at Certain Point You’ve Made Enough Money”. He made 5.5 million last year. Plus he gets free room and board from the government with a free chopper to the golf course. More from Driscoll
"Where's our money?" The SEIU protest (h/t, Theo):
Thursday, April 29. 2010
This morning's Who Am I? was a first-year Cooper's Hawk. They used to be called "Chicken Hawks."
Even without something to judge size, its Accipter nature is apparent. Many would label it "Accipter sp.", but expert birders might know it just the same as you would know your Lab in a kennel full of Labs.
Depending on how good of a look you get, the diagnosis of Sharpie vs. Cooper's can be tough in general for amateurs like me. Both like to use your bird feeders as hawk feeders. Here's a Cooper's in flight with the accipter's rounded wings and long tail, but with the more prominent head and rounded tail of a Cooper's:
Y'all want more "Who Am I?" posts? I can mix easy ones with the more difficult, and I educate myself in the process.
 Neither an imminent 10-meter ocean level rise nor the prospect of a flooded basement deters the Fearless Al from this waterfront purchase.
So does anybody still think he really believes his nonsense? Yes, he is making ark-loads of $ from it but, even so, he is so on board that it would be too late for him to change his mind regardless of facts.
Like Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley.
But "facts" and "evidence" are just patriarchal and racist tools of oppression anyway, aren't they? In this brave new world, we all get to pick our own facts, depending on how we feel or on which side our bread is buttered, and reality is a politico-socio-emotional construct. Isn't it?
Remind me to post my bit on "Psycho-utopianism" some time soon.
Thirty-five years ago, South Vietnam fell to the communist North. Twenty-eight years ago, President Reagan addressed the British Parliament at Westminster in his famous “Ash Heap of History” speech, to where tyrants will be sent by those valiantly defending freedom.
Yesterday, I went to Orange County’s “Little Saigon”, Westminster, to attend a forum marking the 35th anniversary of the fall.
Before the forum, attendees went outside in the Sid Greenstein Freedom Park for a minute of silence before the war memorial there, the only one in the US honoring US and Vietnamese who fought together.
I knew three of the speakers well (and two others less from shared personal experiences, more as acquaintances, but major figures) from many years of collaboration and friendship to not let the Vietnamese and American sacrifices be in vain, to educate new generations in the lessons personally witnessed and learned...
Continue reading "A Tale Of Two Westminsters: 28 and 35 Years Later"
Re Goldman, from Cardinalpark at Tiger:
The one thing I thought the Goldman executives should have remarked, when questioned about their tactical short overlay to reduce their long exposure to the mortgage morket, would have been to add that, had they not gone net short, they very likely would have been in line testifying with Dick Fuld from Lehman Brothers. And I know which questioning, however ignorant, I would prefer to face.
Today, I am a proud Goldman alum.
Is Congress ignorant about how business works, or do they feign ignorance for populist, political purposes; boob bait for the bubbas? Hard to tell. For certain, the WH is ignorant, as Dino reminds us via this reposted IBD chart:
At Politico today: The Wall Street-Washington divide. My gut tells me it's all a big diversion.
From Smith's The Ghetto-ification of America at Pajamas:
What big government has done to the nation’s inner cities and poor blacks is nothing short of a moral crime. Unless the Democrats are stopped, a lesser though damaging crime will be committed against every other community. Ghetto-light may be your neighborhood all too soon.
It is reminiscent of Dalrymple's observations in the UK which I linked a week or so ago.
 A fun Costco prank. Goat balls?
From The Crushing Patriarchy, Episode 12:
The assumption of a ‘natural’ 1:1 gender ratio in all occupations is itself a prejudice, albeit a modish one. On what basis do we determine that there ought to be a particular ratio of male and female philosophers, or mathematicians, or engineers? At what point and on what basis do we determine that a particular gender is sufficiently “represented” in a given vocation?
Ambinder: The Democratic Message for 2010
Teach Social Justice - Or Else
Obamacare Requires You To "Show Your Papers"
Why reporters are down on the President. And no presser for 10 months! Shocking.
Orszag explains how ObamaCare imposes rationing
Stealth Statehood for Puerto Rico?
Astroturf to support the Cult of Personality
Why Obama is going negative
Adler at Volokh likes Cape Wind. I think it is insane. These costly bird-shredding eyesores will never make money without taxpayer subsidies, and will never amount to a hill of beans as far as energy sourcing goes. Tax-subsidized feel-good baloney.
 This feature back by popular demand. I will post the info later today, although our readers will figure it out first.
We seem to have some knowledgeable birders here. What a world!
Wednesday, April 28. 2010
"You ain't so big, you're just tall that's all."
Probably Reed's best-known song, and it's about work, not love. Everybody can relate. Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" echoes this classic in another way, does it not?
As in many of his recordings, you can hear his wife "Mama" chiming in sometimes.
Many of our readers are impressed by Charles. He has had an interesting life. Here's his Wiki bio.
 City Journal: Preservation Follies - Excessive landmarking threatens to make Manhattan a refuge for the rich.
NASA doubts climate model certainty
BBC: Climate party is winding down
Competition for The Teaching Company: Free Yale intro courses on DVD
Yale bans student-faculty gay sex. (I assume gay sex is included in this.) What about platonic romance?
Why women wear make-up. Villainous
Just what we need: A new mental diagnosis. Computer Stress Syndrome.
Americans, if not Obama, know Israel's strategic value
There is little new in the Arizona law. When I enter a foreign country, I carry a passport. Whether you agree with the law or not, "illegal" means illegal. Americans understand that. Our friend Never Yet Melted sees it differently.
More People Figuring Out that Law School's a Bad Value
Stay away from Mexico
Big biz considering dumping their insurance. Quote:
I’d like to write this off to the law of unintended consequences, but that would be pure nonsense. Not only was this known as a probable outcome, but Democrats lied through their teeth when they denied it. It was and is completely intended. It is the companies, however, that will be demonized for doing precisely what Democrats hoped they’d do (or, one assumes, the penalty for not supplying health care would have been much higher and any tax on Cadillac plans much lower). Single payer, here we come.
From John's Demonizing Goldman Sachs:
I'm not a particular fan of either Goldman Sachs or Congress, but today's hearing confirms that, given a choice, I'd rather have Goldman Sachs regulating Congress than Congress regulating Goldman Sachs. Goldman's employees are much smarter, considerably more honest, and far more likely to have my interests at heart.
Palin:
“I’m sick and tired of Obama and the White House coming out with yet another new crisis that has to be fixed by government sticking it to the people and taking more of what we earn and produce. Instead of allowing our small businesses especially to keep what we earn… But see, to many in the White House including our own president, I don’t know when they’ve run a business. I don’t know when they’ve been a CEO where they had to look out for the bottom line and they had to make payroll and live within their own means with a budget. They’re from government. They’re community organizers. They’ve been spending other people’s money for so long that the free enterprise principles that all of us believe in, it’s all foreign to them.“
The grown-ups of Euroland do not want to further enable the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) in their profligacy, but they are all tied together now, for richer or poorer.
Good summary in The NYT: Greek crisis poised to spread.
Also, good at Mead. He explains why we should care. I don't think Americans do care very much, unless they are in finance.
 Who he?
Dan is running in Southwestern CT against Jim Himes, who washed Chris Shays down the drain in the Obama win.
This November is a chance to remove Himes, a likeable ex-Wall Streeter but a Lefty Pelosi Dem, and to replace him with a new breed of bold Conservative.
Dan has an impressive resume, is an excellent speaker, and a personable fellow. We have met him several times.
He says:
I am running for Congress to restore the values of free enterprise and individual liberty to Washington. Fairfield County families want practical solutions on the economy, healthcare, and transportation. I will use my background as a businessman and a State Senator to implement new ideas to get our economy growing again and create jobs for our families.
All the answers coming out of Washington are for “more government”—whether bailing out banks, taking over auto companies, building record deficits for pork-barrel stimulus, or having government take-over our healthcare system. Our current Congressman, Jim Himes, has been a rubber-stamp for this big government agenda. I believe there is a better way. Through solutions that support small businesses and empower middle class families, I believe that we can get our country back on the right track.
He is trying a 3-day $30,000 money bomb. Send him a few bucks if you can. This could be the year for Blue State Conservatives.
Tuesday, April 27. 2010
Now that ObamaCare restricts the pay of all at health care firms to $500k, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – struggling with the huge deficits that are causing states to cut basic services -- wants to restrict the pay to executives of non-profits that provide services to the state for aid to 1 million needy families.
Depending on size, pay will be limited to between $105,850 and $141,000.
Further:
Executives are not the only target for contract changes, according to the memo:
• State money shall no longer be used for any employee seeking reimbursement for tuition, textbooks and supplies "unless such courses are required by the contract, licensing certification and Medicaid standards."
• Agency officials must seek state permission before they buy a new vehicle. They must justify its use to fulfill the state contract, demonstrate they have sought three bids, and shall not to exceed $25,000 unless they are buying a passenger van or vehicle for disabled people.
• Agency officials must seek state approval before spending more than $250 per person, per event on travel expenses.
• State money may not be used to defray severance costs unless the employee served more than a year with the company. And that would be capped at two weeks of severance pay and benefits.
Executives can try to make more from private contributions targeted to their salaries, bonuses and benefits. That should be interesting.
As if the US didn’t already have enough lawsuits, and as if excess litigation isn’t one of the prime drivers of medical costs, and as if the Democrats didn’t garner 90% of tort lawyers’ contributions, ObamaCare will create a new boom in lawsuits.
A Qui Tam action is brought by a private citizen against a company for fraudulent claims on a federal agency in violation of the False Claims Act. If triumphant, the claimant gets part of the court award.
To now, it was necessary for the claimant to be the provider or original source of otherwise unknown information. If not, the claim was denied court jurisdiction.
Now, the failure to be the provider or original source will not deny jurisdiction, and should there be such dismissal the government can oppose the dismissal and allow the court case to proceed.
Guitarist and harmonica player Reed was really the first cross-over bluesman. Whether he was marketed as blues, rhythm and blues, or rock and roll, he was really a bluesman all the way. His music feels familiar even to those who have never heard him because so much of his style was borrowed by rockers in the 60s.
He drank too much, died at 51.
Excellent, from Daniel Pipes: In Europe, Remorse Has Turned to Masochism. He nails it. One quote:
... it is Europe’s very readiness to acknowledge its faults that prompts self-hatred, for societies that do not engage in such introspection do not lacerate themselves. Europe’s strength is thus its weakness. Although the continent has “more or less vanquished its monsters,” such as slavery, colonialism, and fascism, it chooses to dwell on the worst of its record. Thus his book’s title, The Tyranny of Guilt. The past, with its violence and aggression, is frozen in time, a burden Europeans expect never to throw off.
Related, Sowell's Misusing History: Inhumanity, like humanity, is universal.
We saw this play in NYC a year or two ago, but now it's back in town at the Westside Theater: The Screwtape Letters.
It is straight from CS Lewis' book. Mrs. BD's lady's Alpha group is going to see it together.
From a piece on dinosaur extinction - my bolds. (h/t, SDA):
''We believe dinosaurs were most likely to be cold-blooded creatures and would have needed the warmth to keep them alive,” he said.
“If they were unable to migrate south they could have been wiped out. Climate change is now very much on the agenda in trying to determine how the dinosaurs became extinct.
“We now believe that they died out gradually and it is very possible that this could have been caused by a series of climatic changes.''
The drop in temperature is thought to have occurred because high levels of CO2 were in the atmosphere which caused global temperatures to rise and polar ice to melt – a phenomenon currently predicted for Earth.
"After a century of épater le bourgeois, why on earth can’t le bourgeois épater l’artiste primitif? And why is the bourgeois and reactionary management of the Museum of Modern Art stifling the artistic creativity of its customers?"
More on the Stanford education prof's failed charter school at Pajamas. A quote:
EPA Academy students are graded on a five-dimensional rubric, based on (1) Personal Responsibility; (2) Social Responsibility; (3) Communication Skills; (4) Application of Knowledge; and (5) Critical and Creative Thinking.
Only 20 percent of the grade is based on knowledge, notes Michele Kerr, who taught an ACT prep course for disadvantaged students at a nonprofit from 2007-09. Compared to district high school students, East Palo Academy tutees had “the lowest skills and the highest grades,” Kerr recalls. Students with high A averages turned out to have very poor reading and math skills, though their writing was relatively strong.
The psychoanalyst Alice Miller has died. She was not an MD. I blame her popular writings - all on the one theme of the evil of parents - for fueling the "victimization" and "trauma" crazes in pop psychology of the late 20th Century.
You can term people who take one idea to explain everything as monomaniacs but, to try to be charitable to the recently dead, I would term it hopelessly if not crazily reductionistic.
In the human soul, easy answers and simple explanations of things never do any good. Her sorts of explanations got their traction by absolving people of their own decisions and choices by blaming others, thus further denigrating the powers and potentials of the human soul.
Blues is not about sadness. Blues is about releasing the energy of true feelings. Blues is about sharing your soul. Nina Simone was one of the best.
Last night's Chuck ending scene melded Nina Simone's Feeling Good with the feelings shared by Chuck and Sarah (IMHO, the hottest, realest woman in any TV series).
You can catch it after the 41st minute:
http://www.nbc.com/chuck/video/chuck-versus-the-honeymooners/1222679/
For the whole Feeling Good, try this YouTube:
The Cigar Bars and Cigar Lounges of NYC.
Plus a reminder: in NYC, despite Nanny Bloomberg, you can still abuse tobacco like an Indian a Native American in the outdoor sections of restaurants and pubs.
Col. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby. What a guy.
A newspaper war: Wall Street Journal revs up New York Times rivalry
Why GM is paying money back
What should be done for these poor souls? There are lots of people out there who want to help them, but they are difficult to help.
Scapegoating Goldman: Best short version at Legal Ins. The bubble was obvious to everybody. If you were long mortgages, it was only rational and responsible to hedge that bet.
Americans seem to prefer legal immigation: 60% of Americans Agree With Arizona Bill… Only 31% Agree With Radicals & Obama
The Dodd Bill is a bailout bill
The real Tea Party agenda isn't particularly radical. Sounds like what ordinary Americans want: Leave us alone and quit doing us "favors." We aren't as dumb as you think.
Name the bird, from this site.
Monday, April 26. 2010
Dr. Merc likes Lady Gaga, and our pal and sometime poster Tom Francis likes Ladytron. Well, Jimmy Reed (1925-1976) is one of my favorites. We'll begin the week with Bright Lights, Big City:
Driscoll: Modern art comes full circle
Green corruption in the White House
What tradition knows: Overcoming Bias
Andy Revkin going after the children
City Journal: The Banality of Race - David Remnick’s life of Obama exemplifies the moral laziness of today’s liberalism.
The normally tepid Douthat on the South Park subject:
This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that bravely trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.
Far be it for me to be a profound social critic but the brouhaha over the censoring of Southpark’s depiction of Mohammed reminds me of the musical Cabaret.
A central progression in Cabaret is the audience transforming from enjoying the subversive cultural progressivism to its jolly enjoying the triumph of Nazism.
Southpark has led in revealing the inanities and contradictions of almost everything. Yet, it became too much for Comedy Central to allow Southpark to depict Mohammed and Comedy Central also censored Southpark's defiance of self-censorship to avoid the wrath of ideologic gangsters.
Comedy Central features the funniest and the most vile forms of comedy, never before to my knowledge censoring itself in targeting or revealing cultural inanities and contradictions or denigrating cultural pieties.
Yet, now Comedy Central reveals itself in allowing the takeover of its Cabaret by thugs, becoming itself complicit.
Comedy Central reveals itself as enjoying the profits of decadence until its lack of spine collapses upon itself. Comedy Central transforms from the presenter of any irreverence to become the channel of self-imposed cultural decadence that refuses to resist and indeed joins in capitulation to thugs.
Are we to be that Cabaret audience?
Other takes, from Memeorandum:
Ross Douthat / New York Times:
Not Even in South Park? — Two months before 9/11, Comedy Central aired an episode of “South Park” entitled “Super Best Friends,” in which the cartoon show's foul-mouthed urchins sought assistance from an unusual team of superheroes. These particular superfriends were all religious figures …
My internet discovery of the day: The Internet Bird Collection. Videos and photos, worldwide, by category. They are up to 40,000 videos thus far.
Ed. note: This is a wonderful resource. I just perused their videos of the Parulidae (New World Warblers). Fantastic. Identifying many of the female warblers remains just as tough for me as ever, I am sorry to say. When they are flitting through the treetops, I am lucky to get a glimpse. For example, below, female Tennessee Warbler, via CLO:
I mumbled briefly about Positivism last week, alluding to its potential as a fuel for hubris. No philosophy is the "cause" of human evil and destructiveness, but Human Nature is. Pure rationalism (if there is any such thing) is a frightening way to run the world, or to run anything.
This weekend, in timely fashion, I stumbled on a review of Grayling's latest screed against irrationalism by the esteemable John Gray. One quote from the thoughtful review:
Reading Grayling, it is hard to resist the impression that he believes Western civilization would be much improved if it did not include the Judeo-Christian inheritance. Absurd as it is, there is nothing new in such a claim. It is one of the most venerable clichés of Enlightenment thinking, and Ideas that Matter is a compendium of such dated prejudices. When Grayling condemns religion on the grounds that “a theory that explains everything, and can be falsified by nothing, is empty,” he takes for granted that religions are primitive theories, now rendered obsolete by science.
Prothero in The Globe: Separate truths. It is misleading — and dangerous — to think that religions are different paths to the same wisdom
American Self-immolation. Pravda
Steyn: Don’t worry about Iran’s nuclear program, but if you meet a tea partier waving some placard about the national debt, try not to catch his eye.
Kling: What I think about financial reform
Climate scientist sues newspaper for 'poisoning' global warming debate. So he admits that there is a debate?
The Five myths about green energy
The White House wants churches to advance its climate change agenda.
Just when you thought puff peces couldn't get more ridiculous: Obama loves pie
Q and O: Immigration and the welfare state
Jonah: What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama? h/t, Never Yet Melted
Republicans Threatening Congressional Seats Long Held by Democrats
John at Powerline: The Paranoid Style of American Liberalism
Just One Minute on The NYT:
For heaven's sake - is it asking too much of Times editors to reflect for two seconds before they reflexively blurt out their current PC response? OK, we all understand that when the next case comes the Times will insist that it is completely different and that the living, breathing Constitution can solve the next problem on the exhale.
Most Risks Hide in Plain Sight - WSJ.com
Benjamin Graham, perhaps the most astute analyst Wall Street has ever produced, was once asked whether he thought disclosure was adequate. Graham replied that the quantity of disclosure "makes me ill." He added, "I don't know if there is any solution … I suppose [a prospectus] would have to say in big red-letter words, THIS [SECURITY] IS NOT WORTH WHAT IT IS SELLING FOR. I don't know if that would make any difference either … somebody [would just say], 'What the hell, it is going up anyway.'"
You can lead an investor to disclosure, but you can't make him think.
Sunday, April 25. 2010
 I posted this early Sunday morning:
Farm chores for my aging parents regularly pull me away from church, but this morning we trek down to NYC to meet the pup at Gascogne for a cheap brunch (I'll have the mussels - I always do when they are on a menu - and a healthy and organic Bloody Mary) before treating her to Paul Taylor ll's final day at the Joyce.
Mrs. BD is a big Taylor fan. Our blog pal Neoneo loves Taylor too. Despite being married to a dancer/choreographer for about 100 years, I remain a bit of a dance agnostic. I always did like Merce Cunningham, though, and Meredith Monk. Very quirky.
Follow-up:
It was a wonderful program from the Paul Taylor ll (the 80 year-old Taylor's 6-person touring company), but I would have been fine just seeing Esplanade. In fact, just one dance is really all my brain can process in one day. Powerful stuff, Esplanade. Substantial. Recklessly physical and driven by physical momentum, romance, and gravity and, as I sometimes say about some dances, a poem without words - or like a dream. Mrs. BD could discuss it endlessly; how his Graham background evolved and how ballet training is essential to modern dance, etc., but I lack the skill, the words, and the knowledge. The dance is in my head, though, along with the Bach.
Brunch was good, too. Free Bloody Marys. And it is always a treat to spend some time with the Bird Dog pupette Wall Streeter who returned to work after the performance. Those folks work on weekends, keeping the engines of capitalism humming so that people have money to support Paul Taylor.
I have never seen the TV show South Park, but I have heard that it is clever in a goofy, sophomoric and irreverent sort of way.
You have probably heard that fanatics have threatened Comedy Central about South Park's irreverence towards Mohammed (pbuh). Comedy Central folded like a cheap camera. Hence South Park now has the Prophet appearing in a bear costume, and as Santa Claus. Kinda funny, if you can take a joke. Doubt they can.
As Kate observes:
The "extremist" is the one with the death threat.
The "moderate" is the one who explains what you've done to deserve it.
If you want to have religion in the world today, you have to be big enough to take some teasing and/or annoyance from those who don't get it. If you have a religion with vocal murderous and hateful people in it today, teasing is the least one should expect.
But Everybody Draw Mohammed Day is just teasing.
I stumbled onto Myron Magnet's fine 2003 essay of the above title. Magnet says that good writing is about higher and deeper truths than "knowledge," "information," or "data" can provide, and I agree of course.
One quote:
What’s wanted is wisdom: the ability to see into the heart of things. This is the kind of knowledge that Plato describes so poetically in that most literary of all philosophical passages, the allegory of the cave: the knowledge that sees through the world of appearances to the Truth, of which the appearances are but an emanation—a knowledge that requires a lifetime of reason and study to attain but that comes finally in a flash of intuition, because the Truth is in us, in an inner nature we can glimpse by introspection and intuition, as well as in the world. And this is the knowledge—a knowledge, one might say, that resides in our souls as well as in our minds—that great literature embodies.
He includes a smack-down of the one-dimensional pomo critics, but that's far from his main point.
And since Magnet mentions Cosi Fan Tutte so often in his piece, here's the truly ridiculous and lovely Act 1 Finale, in which the cheating suitors fake committing suicide to re-engage their girlfriends:
Hot-button issues like immigration, ObamaCare, bailouts, taxation, national security, faith divide us mostly along what has been labeled conservative-liberal.
At root, however, the differing views are more rooted in who gives and who takes.
Our “betters” are largely insulated from the consequences of their views, catering to themselves and our “lessers.” Then, there’s the “rest of us.”
The primary divide is between the rest of us who struggled, strived and gave versus those whose advantages parachuted them into powerful positions they abuse for their own wealth and to then take away the more meager advantages earned by others to give to the lessers who haven’t.
The rest of us favor immigration by those willing to work, but not to those who aren’t able or who just demand benefits.
The rest of us favor aiding the truly poor or disabled to adequate health care, but not to those who waste their money on frills and then demand providers to impoverish themselves and us not be allowed to make our own life decisions.
The rest of us favor business creating jobs and opportunities, but not lazy management and crazy schemes then feeding at the taxpayer trough.
The rest of us voluntarily pay our more than fair share, but not basic services being cut to enrich politicians and government workers who create more ways to tax in order to feather their own nests by creating more dependent lessers.
The rest of us support and serve in danger to preserve our freedoms and protect others’, but not to be frittered away through lack of priorities or will.
The rest of us thank G-d for our being and opportunities, but not to tolerate those who would deny us or others theirs.
The rest of us may become polarized but at root are not. The rest of us just feel caught between those who consider themselves our betters, who perpetuate themselves by allying with the lessers without due claim upon us, whether at home or abroad. These betters denigrate the legitimate concerns of the rest of us, but their scorn is hollow, ludicrous, and, indeed, energizing.
Our parents and grandparents were great generations whom we identify with because they were the inspiration for the rest of us. My baby-boomer peers have largely been the selfish punk generation of wastrels. Coming again, the generation of the “rest of us.” Those who want to lead, who deserve leadership, are recognized as authentic in being of, by and for the rest of us.
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“We could have an ice age any time.”