PAUL SIMON - "DAZZLING BLUE"

WEEKLY REMINDER

ONLY ONE?

From the line-up of speakers at the Republican National Convention, you'd think Condoleezza Rice ran the country single-handedly from 2000 to 2008.  I'm glad to know it's not just me who is amazed that only one major player from the George W. Bush maladministration spoke at the convention.  What is it?  Is the present company ashamed of the previous Republican maladministration?  Were the major players really not invited?

Photo and caption from Republican Family Values. 

LABOR DAY THEN AND NOW

Labor Day Parade, Union Square, New York, 1882

Americans are celebrating the Labor Day holiday, a moment born as a salute to the nation's unionized workers that now has often morphed into a day of family gatherings marking the unofficial end of summer.

Most of the rest of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1.

Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer)

Image at the head of the post from Wikipedia.

Cartoon from someecards.

PEGGY NOONAN GOES TO TAMPA

Peggy Noonan, in her book titled What I Saw at the Revolution, tells of the period in which she worked as a speechwriter in the Ronald Reagan White House.  In her book Noonan reveals that Reagan, due to his deafness, could not hear what was said in a group unless the words were spoken directly to him.  She describes her first meeting with the president several months after she began writing his speeches.

There he was, behind his desk, turning toward me: a big, tall, radiant man, impeccably tailored, his skin soft, pink and smooth. He twinkled at me. I was the new one, and the only woman. He walked to me and took my hand. It is the oddest thing and true, even though everyone says it: it is impossible to be nervous in his presence. He acts as if he's lucky to be with you. ''Well,'' he said, ''it's so wonderful to meet you. Please, please sit down. Well, so!''

We sat, I in the spot on the couch immediately to his right. I don't really remember what we talked about. There was no reason for the meeting beyond ''The new speechwriter's unhappy and let's let her meet him or she may leave.'' The President sat up straight in his chair, a piece of beige plastic in his ear. I was surprised how big his hearing aid is, or rather how aware of it you are when you're with him. There was a quizzical look on his face as he listened to what was going on around him, and I realized: he doesn't really hear very much, and his appearance of constant good humor is connected to his deafness. He misses much of what is not said straight to him, and because of that he keeps a pleasant look on his face as people chat around him.

The meeting lasted half an hour. Conversation ambled. The President looked around sometimes as if to say: ''What are we doing here, folks?'' I felt guilty at taking his time.

Since Noonan was and is an ardent admirer of Reagan, I was surprised that she revealed that much of the time during meetings, Reagan did not know what was going on because he could not hear.  The president also may have had symptoms of Alzheimer's while he was still in office, according to his son, Ron.

But I digress. What I really want to talk about is Noonan's report on the Republican National Convention in the Wall Street Journal.  After getting off to a slow start because President Obama convinced the weather services to wrongly report that Tropical Storm Isaac was headed for Tampa, the convention got its groove on the second night with Mike Huckabee.

It started with Mike Huckabee. He is a performer, he knows how to do this, and he made the audience listen. But he is also a policy person and a veteran campaigner who knows the base.

Mike knows the base base, indeed.

That was electric. Every speaker afterwards got to bounce off the energy Mr. Huckabee left in the room.

Condi Rice was a star. She took the role of accomplished and knowledgable public instructor, boiling down the conservative critique of Mr. Obama's foreign policy.

Oh I remember the bright star Condi sitting with a vacant look on her face holding up the President's Daily Briefing from August 2011 which was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" as she was questioned by a member of the 9/11 Commission as to why there was no response by the White House to the warning.  If you recall, Bush was on vacation in Texas at the time and did not return to DC.

The most important speech Wednesday was Paul Ryan's. America was meeting him. I won't quote at length, since it's all over the Internet and you already know the lines that scored—the college kid and the Obama poster, the elevator music. Great stuff.

But here's what was important. Mr. Ryan started awkward, got his sea legs, settled down, and by the time he was finished he'd made Mr. Obama look tired and old. He made the administration sound over. He made it sound so yesterday.

I watched less than 5 minutes of Ryan's speech and decided that he was FOS and became bored, so I stopped watching.

And yet. He [Ryan] seemed very young up there. And the teleprompter forced him to shift his eyes from screen to screen and deliver the good line, plonkingly, to the center screen. The crowd loved him and conservatives love him, but he is going to have to work very hard to break through to America. 

   Indeed!

Clint Eastwood was funny, endearing—"Oprah was crying"—and carries his own kind of cultural authority. "It's time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem." He was free-form, interesting—you didn't quite know what was going to come next—strange and, in the end, kind of exhilarating. Talk about icons. The crowd yelling, "Make my day," was one of the great convention moments, ever.

Whoa!  Did Peggy and I watch the same "speech"?  Again, I saw less than 5 minutes because it was excruciatingly embarrassing to watch Clint meandering around talking to an empty chair.  How could the organizers of the convention let this happen to Eastwood who had volunteered out of the goodness of his heart to help them?

Mitt Romney's speech? The success of the second night of the convention left people less nervous about the stakes. Nobody expected a great one. There was a broad feeling of, "Look, giving great speeches is not what Mitt does, he does other things."

He had to achieve adequacy. He did.

Ouch!  I suggest Noonan's commentary be used in lessons in English rhetoric as an example of damning with faint praise.  Ah well, she gave it her best.

Again, I did not last 5 minutes with Romney's speech.  I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard Romney say that Americans came together after Obama's election.  How long after the inauguration was it before we heard the first racist commentary?  How long before we saw the first racist posters and pictures?  Yes, I know.  The commentary and pictures were there all throughout the campaign, but there was no coming together after Obama's election, except in your dreams, Mr Romney.

Now you know know that I watched very little of the activities of the RNC, but others did.  For a somewhat different take on the speakers, I suggest you read my good friend Elizabeth Kaeton's report on the major speeches at her blog "Telling Secrets".

Margaret of "Margaret and Helen" watched the speeches, too, and posted her hilarious commentary. 

So. Who ya gonna believe?  Peggy Noonan took a trip, but was it to the RNC in Tampa?

ARCHBISHOP TUTU PULLS OUT OF SUMMIT WITH TONY BLAIR

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has pulled out of an international summit, because he doesn't want to share a platform with the "morally indefensible" Tony Blair it emerged yesterday.

The retired archbishop, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his campaigning against apartheid, said that he had withdrawn from the event because he believed the former Prime Minister had supported the invasion of Iraq "on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence of weapons of mass destruction."
....

Archbishop Tutu has long been a critic of Mr Blair's stance on Iraq – even before the invasion.

In 2003 the archbishop said Mr Blair's support for the Bush administration was "mind-boggling". "I have a great deal of time for your Prime Minister, but I'm shocked to see a powerful country use its power frequently, unilaterally," he said.

Archbishop Tutu is correct that the invasion of Iraq was illegal and based on false information.  A full explanation by the archbishop for his withdrawal may be found at the Guardian.

If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth? Days before George W Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world. Ms Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.
....

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.

The weapons inspectors from the UN had nearly completed their work and asked for a short delay in order to finish, but their request was refused.  They were close to a conclusion that Iraq had no WMD, and it's possible that Bush and Blair rushed the invasion, in part, to avoid the disclosure from being made public.  The two leaders were determined to bring down Saddam, WMD or no.  The inspectors had to rush out of Iraq in order not to be caught in the invasion.

I won't ever forget observing the process with horror, aghast that Blair would go along with Bush and crew in the madness.  There was an air of inevitability about the coming invasion, and it was plain that no new information would get in the way.

H/T to Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

I KNOW THE FEELING

Why I might even say with some degree of honesty that I have the feeling.

Thanks to susan s.

A CHRONOLOGICAL NEW TESTAMENT

Marcus Borg writes in The Huffington Post on a New Testament arranged in chronological order in which the books were written.  It seems to me that rearranging the books beginning from the earliest and ending with the latest according to a consensus or a majority of New Testament scholars would make a lot of sense.

Growing up in the Roman Catholic Church and attending RCC schools for 16 years, not a great deal of emphasis was placed on the study of the Bible.  I remember when I began to attend Bible study classes being puzzled about a particular dispute in a community mentioned in one of Paul's letters which would have been easily settled by passages in one of the Gospels.  When I asked the question of the leader of our group, he said, "Think about it."  We had already covered the estimated dates of the parts of the NT,  and after I thought for a while, I realized that the Gospel that would have settled the dispute was not yet written at the time of Paul's letter.  Since Paul was a not disciple of Jesus before his death, and his conversion was a result of a private revelation, he had not heard all the stories about Jesus, what he said and what he did, that are told in the Gospels which came later.  Aha!

Do read the entire article at HP in which Borg explains why it is important to the history of the church to know the order in which the books of the NT were written.  Below is the list the books in chronological order according to Borg. 

1 Thessalonians
Galatians
1 Corinthians
Philemon
Philippians
2 Corinthians
Romans
Mark
James
Colossians
Matthew
Hebrews
John
Ephesians
Revelation
Jude
1 John, 2 John, 3 John
Luke
Acts
2 Thessalonians
1 Peter
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
2 Peter

Photo from Wikipedia.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - GEORGE SMILEY

"The fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt."

From the film "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy".

The movie is excellent, and Gary Oldman is superb as George Smiley, a British secret service agent during the cold war.  I watched the movie twice to tie up the loose ends from the first time around, which included more than one than one distraction.  The film calls for close attention.  Although I'd read the book and watched the TV series of the same name years ago, I had mercifully forgotten who was the mole, so the suspense remained on the first view. 

When I heard Oldman speak the words above, they seemed very true to me, so I backed up to get the exact quote.   The words do not refer only to others but are cautionary for me to examine myself for drift into fanatic mode, and, should I find myself there, to look for the secret doubt. 

Picture from Wikipedia.

CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF - BACH SARABANDE - PARTITA IN D MINOR

"Bach's music confronts the player and the audience in a very personal situation, in a very alone way," he [Christian Tetzlaff] explained.  "And I try at that moment to put away pretensions - in levels of violin playing, pretensions of being a strong man, of being invulnerable - and instead say, 'This is where all of us have common ground.' Most of the time, we try to tell oursleves 'I'm confidant' or 'I'm doing well.' But then, in a moment alone at home, you feel how close you are to some kind of abyss." 

He continued, "Music, even at terrible moments, can make you accept so much more - accept your dark sides, or the things that happen to you. Maybe it's just because you see that this is a common trait for all of us. You see that we are not alone." He said this with such quiet intensity that it seemed the opposite of sentimental.  "And that's what the concert situation is about for me, when I'm sitting in the hall and also when I'm playing myself.  It's about communication - I almost want to say 'communion.'  As a player, you really don't interpret anymore.  You listen, together with the audience."

Tetzler says he is not a religious man.  What shall we say of him?  He is spiritual but not religious?  Earlier in the article the author, Jeremy Eichler, says of Tetzlaff:

Tetzlaff is not a religious man, but he describes his art in frankly spiritual terms.  Performing music, he says, "is the job that has the most to do with the belief in the existence of a soul.  I deal in Berg's soul, in Brahm's soul - that's my job.  And you can challenge me, but I find that music is himans' most advanced achievement, more so than painting and writing, because it's more mysterious, more magical, and it acts in such a direct way.  Trying to turn lead into gold is nothing compared to taking something mechanical like an instrument - a string and a bow - and using it to invoke a human soul.

Something beyond the senses, something ineffable is evoked by music, art, and words, which I've had great difficulty describing.  Tetzlaff's description as soul meeting soul articulates for me what I have never been able to put into words.  It's not that I never notice mastery of the skills, or technique, or style, because I do, but either a soul to soul encounter happens, or it doesn't.  When I hear Tetzlaff play Bach, we three meet soul to soul, and, in a concert hall, I'd encounter the other souls listening with me.

With my slow internet connection which allows the video to play only in fits and starts, along with my poor sound system on my laptop, I can't say whether the video is of good quality or not.  I can but hope.... 
 
The quote is from "String Theorist" in The New Yorker by Jeremy Eichler.  Unless you have a subscription, you can read only the abstract of the article.