We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The Euro-MidEast international Eurovision song competition each year is usually one of my favorite shows. Each country's entry is usually superb, and making a choice of winner difficult. This year, however, the sameness of many of the entries, and the increased prevalence of English from almost all countries, made the choices easier, for me anyway. There's usually griping, with much justification, that there's much favoritism in the final rankings. Here's my favorites from the 25 semi-finalists: Greece, France, Spain (with extra points on top of artistry for being in native tongues), and for a lovely performance Azerbaijan (in English). Azerbaijan won the competition, maybe because its entry didn't have the hoochy-koochy, look-alike theatrics of so many of the others.
Here's a sampling of the top 25. After that, click around for your favorites and other countries entries. Nice way to idle away a few hours.
My kids are also gonna see these guys next weeK - Toots and the Maytals - another favorite of some Maggie's readers. These guys were doing ska in the early 60s, before reggae was invented -
It's tough on these folks, but they know they live on a flood plain, and know it will happen once in a while despite the levees which attempt to tame the untameable and mighty Father of Waters.That Mississippi silt from flooding is the reason they have such great farmland.
My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America
follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called “hate
speech crimes” which is only used to punish people who are critical of
islam, that day America will have lost its freedom.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed. ...
and
Many problems troubling America today are rooted in the poor performance
of our elite educational institutions, the moral and social collapse of
our ‘best’ families and the culture of narcissism and entitlement that
has transformed the American elite into a flabby minded, strategically
inept and morally confused parody of itself. Probably the best
depiction of our elite in popular culture is the petulantly narcissistic
Prince Charming in Shrek 2;
our educational institutions are like the Fairy Godmother, weaving
shoddy, cheap, feel-good illusions into a gossamer tissue of flattering
lies.
Wherever beauty lies in wait for us, there arises a desire to preempt
its appeal, to smother it with scenes of destruction. Hence the many
works of contemporary art that rely on shocks administered to our
failing faith in human nature—such as the crucifix pickled in urine by
Andres Serrano. Hence the scenes of cannibalism, dismemberment, and
meaningless pain with which contemporary cinema abounds, with directors
like Quentin Tarantino having little else in their emotional
repertories. Hence the invasion of pop music by rap, whose words and
rhythms speak of unremitting violence, and which rejects melody,
harmony, and every other device that might make a bridge to the old
world of song. And hence the music video, which has become an art form
in itself and is often devoted to concentrating into the time span of a
pop song some startling new account of moral chaos. Those phenomena record a habit of desecration in which life is not
celebrated by art but targeted by it. Artists can now make their
reputations by constructing an original frame in which to display the
human face and throw dung at it.
When I was an adolescent, we thought that "beauty" was old-fashioned, for the old fogies, and that rough and ugly was hip. Little did I know then about how beauty can be so elusive, temporary, and precious.
Once upon a time, a Prince asked a beautiful Princess... "Will you marry me?"
The Princess said "NO!"
And the Prince lived happily ever after, and rode motorcycles, and went fishing and hunting, and played golf, and dated women half his age, and smoked cigars, and drank beer and Scotch, and had loads of money in the bank, and left the toilet seat up.
“When you look closely at the climate change issue it is remarkable that
the only actual evidence ever cited for a relationship between CO2 emissions and global warming is climate models.”
The average contemporary human does not consider the sublime much. Life
is not seen as linear --with an end -- or even circular, with an eastern
repetition. In many people's mind they were never a baby and will never
be old. It's a botoxed cougar world, facing off against forty year old
men still dressing up like Star Wars characters.
I don't want to be sixty years old at a Coldplay concert with a
girlfriend on my shoulders, thanks. I don't think it will be fun to
eventually look at eternity and only have fifteen minutes of real adult
behavior in your CV. And I don't want to act as if children are just
short adults. I'm six-foot-two, there's plenty of short adults around
already. It's common for people to remark that they don't want to see
children out in public, and old people should find an ice floe before we
have to find one for you.
"Real adult behavior"? "Ice floe"? Ice floe in my glass of Scotch, thanks very much. Well, I happen to be into the sublime, wherever I can find it. Sipp links these charming short vids from one of the civilized youths of today.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
Yesterday it came out that at the City University of New York City College's (CCNY) graduation ceremony, the Palestinian flag will be hoisted among those flags of UN members, although it is not a UN member. This singular honor speaks volumes about the moral and political rot within CUNY.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who’s been at the center of the Kushner controversy, said that the flag issue seemed to point to a double-standard at the university.
“I would think if we were going to fly the flags of aspiring nations, then we should certainly those of aspiring nations that have been in the mix even longer, like Tibet, like Kurdistan,” Wiesenfeld said. “In other words, whatever the policy is, it should be based on a consistency, but not a fashion of the moment.”
One City College faculty member said it reflected a deeper problem in academia....
Flying the Palestinian flag is not a problem in itself. But flying it alongside the flags of UN member countries, at a public university, makes a particular statement. It says that CUNY’s City College is recognizing the state of Palestine, and its quest for UN member status, regardless of the outcome of the peace process. The college is free to argue that this has “nothing to do with foreign policy,” but the reality speaks for itself.
If CUNY really wants to speak up for repressed peoples -- many really ruthlessly oppressed -- it might raise the banner for these members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), which are not UN members. The UNPO is accredited by the UN as an NGO.
What distinguishes these peoples from the one honored by CUNY's City College is that: 1) they are not favored or in most cases even paid attention to by liberal elites -- or others (several years ago I asked the leader of a major refugees NGO why it paid no attention to the Hmong; he answered that the NGO had other prorities.); and 2) The Palestinians would not subscribe to the Covenant of the UNPO, which includes:
Convinced that the principles, methodology, and practice of Gandhian nonviolence and nonviolent civil-resistance are the most effective means of pursuing and enforcing both collective and individual rights, we, the undersigned Nations and Peoples, reaffirm our unreserved commitment to such principles, rejecting in the process terrorism, extremism, and violence in all its forms;
[T]he New York cultural elite, which may be caricatured in this case as an interlocking directorate of playwright, pundits, and professors, the presumption of impunity is absolute. Academia, in particular, has a "sacred mission," to be defined solely by the faculty and under no circumstances to be questioned. That the faculties themselves tend to be monolithic in their political and ideological orientation may help to explain their wild overreaction in the present instance and others like it. Delusions of infallibility combined with well-deserved insecurity and profound authoritarianism make for a potent brew.
Yesterday, CUNY's Vice President for Communications said:
“The City College flies all of the flags that are flown at the United Nations,” the Vice President for Communications Mary Lou Edmondson told me. “It has nothing to do with foreign policy.”
CUNY's Vice-President for Communications today digs deeper.
CUNY’s City College VP of communications Mary Lou Edmondson emails this response: “I regret that I misspoke about the flags flown at the United Nations."
So, CUNY's CCNY chooses to fly the flag of its "chosen" people, the Palestinians. Need I say more?
But he made that decision to go without telling Pakistan and that took
some real courage, as much courage as our Navy SEALs did in pulling off a
near flawless operation.
A handful of pills and a few minutes of canned shrinkology is not enough to tend to a soul in turmoil and in pain. Take my word for it. People are complicated. For most people with troubles, sooner or later they have to face themselves, their flaws, and their self-defeating or destructive tendencies with honesty, and it is best done in the patient company of a decent soul who knows a thing or two about it all, and knows how to dig just deep enough to try to get to the heart of things; to gently drive a wedge through the devilish defenses to address the real "issues."
Some of us, or many of us, the Old Guard, are still here if you want to try to talk from the heart. Life itself is difficult enough, and having to struggle with one's own self just makes it harder for all.
My kids are going to see these wonderful guys, and Maggie's favorites, in a week or two. Country-folk-rock with a sweet disposition. Who could resist them?
Why Pastors Should Get Their Heads Examined - Young
pastors dive into ministry with a plan to fix the church and save the
world -- only to discover that they too need fixing and saving.
...there is no greater example of the power of duplicitous negotiation
than Hitler’s brilliant manipulation of Chamberlain in their three
meetings. More than seventy years later it is still painful to read
Chamberlain’s naïve reports of his "influence" over Hitler, who in fact
considered the Prime Minister a "little worm."
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Insty:
God's Grandeur (1877)
To my fans and followers.
Toilet paper: 
