Tuesday, March 2. 2010
Marriage, and Conflict or Divorce? A ?Lenten confessional piece, with good links.
Who ever said anybody was really a "great catch"? We're all just flawed people.
Sunday, February 28. 2010
You're the engineer of a great big freight train. Nothing stands in your way! What's that? There's a huge 18-wheeler stalled on the tracks up ahead? No problem! You'll cut that tin can in two and just keep on goin'! Nothing stands in your way!
Well, unless you attempt to drive through a tornado, of course.
But who'd ever do that?
Looking forward to fishing season, and hoping Capt. Tom will have some fresh info for us, especially about fly fishing in Yankeeland. In the meantime, I will dig up some of our archival bamboo fishing posts -
That's Editor Bird Dog in the distance, happily fishing in the rain on an April Saturday on the Eleven Mile Brook in CT, with a Haney 7'4" quad bamboo, on Beat #4. Plenty of mostly hatchery Brook Trout, all sizes. Which are not trout, as I am regularly reminded. Called trout, look and act like trout, but Brookies are, in fact, a species of char, not trout. 
Saturday, February 27. 2010
Friday, February 26. 2010
This fascinating "virtual back lot" video saddened our friend The Anchoress.
It didn't sadden me, but rather impressed me with the use of graphics software. How do they perform this theatrical magic?
When I consider it, our lives are packed with incoming lies and virtual realities: the news, stories and fiction writing, advertising, photoshopped photos, politicians' statements, theater, legal "theories," activist's anecdotes, fantasies and imagination, memories, dreams (and the tales our patients tell us about their lives).
Mr. Plato had plenty of thoughts on the subject of human perception of reality, and he was darn well aware of the human distorting component too.
Some good blogger (I forget who) recently commented that she (I think a she) was sick of the term "narrative." I sympathise, but I am not sick of it yet. I find it useful. The overused term "authentic" is the one I am sick of.
I have not yet entered a pomo solipsistic world in which reality is a pure mental construction or, worse yet, a pure social construction (see the wonderful Berger and Luckmann). Reality does exist: Just hit your thumb with a hammer or stub your toe on something in the dark to be reminded of that. Many of us, fortunately, do not distort things very much to ourselves, or to others.
However, I do live in a world in which meaning is indeed a human construction, both personally and socially.
A "narrative" is an effort, conscious or unconscious, to ascribe meaning: designed to deceive, to manipulate, to entertain, to seduce, to support one's wishes or self respect, to indulge, to self-justify or to rationalize or serve some other defensive purpose, etc. - or just to try to make sense out of the stuff that seems to happen - more or less regardless of its objective validity. Every song, picture, poem, film, and book is a "narrative" too. Like any blog post. "I" am a narrative, I guess, and right now, presenting a narrative about narratives.
One of the many interesting things about being a shrink is to contemplate a person's "narrative," whether it is just a report of something that happened, or a life story. When somebody is engaged in an exploratory, depth treatment, these narratives change over time - which is why we never take them at face value. We assume a narrative meets some present want, or need, or fantasy. Our always-challenging and endlessly-interesting job is to probe the meaning of the narratives we see or hear in the work of untangling what ails a person's heart and soul.
One of our luxuries as people in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy field is the reliable consistency of the human personality "structure" (another term I hate - shrinks often use fancy latinate terms and complex conceptualizations for ordinary things): like a jigsaw puzzle, there is always a picture of something in there somewhere. Another is the luxury of not worrying too much about the literal truthfulness of things (unless dealing with undiagnosed sociopaths).
I could go on and on about this, but that's enough for now.
Is anything more inviting than a cozy Dunkin' Donuts early on a cold snowy morning? Hot chocolate or coffee? Or both?
The friendly and cheerful legal Hispanic gals there know what you like and they manage to get to work on time no matter what the weather or "climate" offers. I am usually game for a plain stick. And a medium milk no sugar.
Then to the shoveling as the wind whistles and moans through the trees. A good workout. That chest pain is just in your imagination...
Thursday, February 25. 2010
Man, do I agree with Ramesh in Time. One quote from his piece of the above title:
We could probably increase the number of high school seniors who are ready to go to college — and likely to make it to graduation — if we made the K-12 system more academically rigorous. But let's face it: college isn't for everyone, especially if it takes the form of four years of going to classes on a campus.
To talk about college this way may sound élitist. It may even sound philistine, since the purpose of a liberal-arts education is to produce well-rounded citizens rather than productive workers. But perhaps it is more foolishly élitist to think that going to school until age 22 is necessary to being well-rounded, or to tell millions of kids that their future depends on performing a task that only a minority of them can actually accomplish.
The good news is that there have never been more alternatives to the traditional college.
 From the New Math of Poetry in Chronicle:
If current trends persist, the sheer amount of poetry "published" is likely to double, quadruple, "ten-tuple" in the decades ahead.
Who is writing all this poetry? In quieter times, the art's only significant promoters were English professors who focused on reading poetry for its own sake. Today colleges across America have hundreds of programs devoted to teaching men and women how to actually write the stuff. Those in charge of undergraduate and M.F.A. programs have cast themselves in the role of poetry-writing cheerleaders who are busy assuring tens of thousands of students that they are talented poets who should expect their work not only to be published but to win awards as well.
The notion that writing and performing "poetry" is the easiest way to satisfy the American itch for 15 minutes of fame has spilled out of our campuses and into the wider culture. You can't pick up a violin or oboe for the first time on Monday morning and expect to play at Lincoln Center that weekend, but you can write your first poem in May and appear at an open mike in June waving a "chapbook" for sale.
Wednesday, February 24. 2010
Vicenza is an uncrowded, almost unvisited UNESCO World Heritage site with a great number of Palladian buildings. The nearby La Rotonda was shown here recently, but usually Americans visit it as a side trip from over-crowded Venice. A great pity. Our suggestion is to stay in Vicenza or Verona, and if absolutely necessary, take a day-trip to Venice!
Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza. The two columns were built at different times. The lion represents the Venetian republic and was once the only column in the square. It wasn't until over a century later that the second column was built in honor of Vicenza and its citizens.
Street Scene, Vicenza
Below is Villa Valmarana, between La Rotonda and Vincenza. In 1757, Tiepolo and his son Giandomenico were invited to Vicenza to fresco rooms in the Villa Valmarana and in the adjoining guest quarters, the so-called 'foresteria'. Their patron was Count Giustino Valmarana, a scholar and theater enthusiast. Tiepolo frescoed the walls and ceilings of the vestibule and four ground-floor rooms, while his son executed the decoration in the adjacent guest house.
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
Monday, February 22. 2010
Sunday, February 21. 2010
We were fortunate to get to David Parson's Remember Me last night at the Joyce. Even if you have minimal interest in dance, it's well-worth it. The performance is stunningly good. The style, Mrs. BD tells me, is inspired by Paul Taylor whose work I always could enjoy.
New to me was the East Village Opera Company (providing most of the music), which rocks classic opera. As an aspiring curmudgeon, I would not have thought that I would have found that to be as wonderful as it is. Here's their Nessun Dorma. Their stuff is dynamite and reminds us that Italian opera was the pop music of its time and there is no reason for it to become "museum music."
Check it out, Anchoress! The interesting story of the East Village Opera Company is here.
You can buy their Olde School CD here.
Somebody has given AVI a book. He is funny. A quote:
I read the blurbs - Howard Zinn, Garrison Keillor - and scanned the table of contents. I know already a lot of what will be in this book. Voltaire, Freud, Hume; a collection of Jewish writers, tending strongly to the mystical and the reformed; Buddhists and related Chinese writers; a few Marxists and Existentialists; as the author is female there will be a collection of feminist writers. Physics will be dragged in inappropriately, showing that in the 20th C we learned that everything is relative, because hey, even Science admits of uncertainty now. Chesterton, Lewis, Wright, Flew, will be studiously avoided. Jesus is mentioned as an example of a doubter. We know where that's going.
I left the book at work so I can't check if I'm correct. But you know I am.
 A serious point and shoot: the Leica D-LUX 4 Camera
You can get an old-fashioned leather case for it too.
Do any of our readers have this thing?
 William Tyndale was the Oxford-educated polyglot theologian and reformer who produced the first printed Bible in English.
His translation was from Erasmus' Greek-Latin Bible, the same one which Luther used to translate his German Bible. Tyndale's Bible was banned in Britain: you can't trust the rabble to read it themselves. He famously said that he wanted a Bible that "every plowman" could read the Scripture for himself.
Tyndale was executed by Henry Vlll for his efforts. It is believed that Thomas More was pushing for the execution.
It is thought that up to 80% of the King James Bible - the most printed book in the world - is Tyndale's product. For hundreds of years after the first printings, Protestants avoided the Anglican King James Bible, preferring the Geneva Bible (which is very similar). The Pilgrims used the Geneva Bible and, no, Anglicans are not historically Protestants and neither are their American Episcopalian brethren.
Excellent summary of the history of the Bible in English here.
Saturday, February 20. 2010
From some good ones from Neoneo's commenters:
- So this baby seal walks into a club...
- A dyslexic man walks into a bra...
- A fellow goes to a restaurant and asks the waiter for a cup of coffee without cream. A few moments later the waiter returns and says, “Sorry, we’re all out of cream, it will have be without milk.”
- An out of work geophysicist goes into a McDonald’s to ask for a job. He fills out an application and as the manager reads it he says, “I know I'm overqualified but I can do the work and I need the job”.
The manager answers back “It’s not that, it’s just that most of our geophysicists have PhDs.”
And of course, there's always this one:
Counterfeit Cubans, from JR. Nicaraguan. Mine just arrived today, and I just smoked one. Cheap, legal in the US, and plenty tasty as a medium-strength everyday smoke with a hearty earthy tanginess. I am told that those Sumatran wrappers were grown from Connecticut seed. I can't say they are as good as a good Habanos, but quite enjoyable for the price. Perfect for this Obama economy.
Why does the O smoke cigarettes instead of cigars, anyway? Who does he think he is? FDR?
Friday, February 19. 2010
Now Mrs. BD is considering mountainous Corsica for a summer trip. The lad has been there, and recommends it. Popular with Brits, I am told. They speak French and Corsican there. My Corsican is a tad rusty but my French is OK. She found this little villa in Monticello, and says it would hold the whole family:
 
Tuesday, February 16. 2010
We visited the New Britain Museum of American Art this weekend, known as one of America’s most welcoming, distinguished, dynamic, and educationally ambitious art museums. They have a current exhibit (through April 11, 2010) entitled Inspired Innovations: A Celebration of Shaker Ingenuity.
The exhibition, organized into 12 Zones of Innovation and with three rooms resembling traditional Shaker quarters, will showcase some 350 objects spanning over 200 years from 1800 to 2000. A testament to the durability, practicality, and simplicity of Shaker ingenuity, with a focus on functionality, each piece is gracefully formed with a genuine devotion to ones craft that reflects the words of Shaker founder, Mother Ann: "labor to make the way of God your own; let it be your inheritance, your treasure, your occupation, your daily calling."
Maggie's readers will like this quote from Shaker Martha J. Anderson of Mt. Lebanon, NY: "The lamp of genius burns as it is supplied by the oil of enthusiasm."
The New Britain Museum of American Art's founding in 1903 entitles the institution to be designated the first museum of strictly American art in the country. That year, a $20,000 gift of gold bonds to the museum's former parent, the New Britain Institute, from industrialist John Butler Talcott, created funds to purchase "modern oil paintings." Subsequent purchases, with advice from New York museums and galleries, further defined "modern" to mean American works of art, now numbering more than 10,236. With particular strengths in colonial portraiture, the Hudson River School, American Impressionism, and the Ash Can School, not to mention the important mural series The Arts of Life in America by Thomas Hart Benton, the museum relies heavily on its permanent collection for exhibitions and programming, yet also displays a significant number of borrowed shows and work by emerging artists. The singular focus on American art and its panoramic view of American artistic achievement make the New Britain Museum of American Art a significant teaching resource available to the local, regional, and national public.
As the Guide Michelin might say, "worth a detour".
Dead at 89. h/t, Jungleman. The guy provided me many hours of delight by the pool and on the beach.
Monday, February 15. 2010
She's my new favorite chanteuse. Here's a snip from the unembeddable My One and Only Thrill TV ad. Here's another song:
For those unfamiliar with sailboat racing, it's not just about a faster boat. It's about strategy, tactics, boat-handling, seamanship, fine-tuning, luck, and lots of other details.
Here's some dramatic footage from this year's race.
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