btsflk

Here iss a hot, stimmy gritting from Yoshua Treeshua.

Why doan you open it?

No! ¿Why doan CHEW?!

BTSFLK!

Illustration by Matt Williams, dba überkraaft.

--30--

the theocrat

Writing in this week's New Yorker, Ryan Lizza tells how Michele and Marcus Bachmann while still in college fell under the influence of Christian dominionist author and film-maker Francis Schaeffer, who produced a film series, "How Shall We Then Live?"

Schaeffer died in 1984, but one of his disciples, Nancy Pearcy, carried on his work.

When, in 2005, the Minneapolis Star Tribune asked Bachmann what books she had read recently, she mentioned two: Ann Coulter’s “Treason,” a jeremiad that accuses liberals of lacking patriotism, and Pearcey’s “Total Truth,” which Bachmann told me was a “wonderful” book.

(Read more.)

Ryan Lizza also reports that in a recent Iowa speech, Bachmann asked the audience if they were familiar wth "How Then Should We Live?" and when greeted with applause, said:

That also was another profound influence on Marcus’s life and my life, because we understood that the God of the Bible isn’t just about Bible stories and about Bible knowledge, or about just church on Sunday. He is the Lord of all of life. Every bit of life, including sociology, theology, biology, politics. You name the area and walk of life. He is the Lord of life. And so, as we went back to our studies, we looked at studying in a completely different light. Not for the purpose of a career but for a purpose of wondering, How does this fit into creation? How does this fit into the code and all of life that is about to come in front of us? And so we had new eyes that were opened up as we understood life now from a Biblical world view.

Sounds like theocracy to me.

--30--

the sun's light

What follows is an edited version of a post which first appeared here on February 13, 2009.

The wise man Patanjali, the apocryphal transmitter of early yoga tradition, spoke of a "seer," or that part of us which sees, and taught that the right kind of mental discipline would establish (or reveal) this seer "in our own true nature." The discipline, according to the teaching, will enable a person "to see clearly."

The ancient Indian texts called the Upanishads identify this seer as Atman, also called the self, "hidden in every object of creation," being "the very Self which descends down...through self-projection and participates." According to this view, then, the center of the human being (or any other living thing) is the supreme being itself, incorporating itself into, the individual.

This sounds very much like the "collective unconscious" theory of Dr. Jung, who wrote that "A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious (i.e., subconscious mind) is undoubtedly personal. I call it the 'personal unconscious.' But this personal layer rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the 'collective unconscious.' I have chosen the term 'collective' because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal..." (S.V. Wikiquote: Carl Jung, en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Jung)

Not everyone agrees. Prince Gautama, who became the Buddha, did not believe in a Self separate from the individual, and taught that "Self is but a heap of composite qualities." He believed that what some call the Self or Seer is a bundle of loose ends, and simply another component of the individual.

But for our purposes, defining this part of our brain we see with as God or not-God is not important. What's at issue is the possibility of seeing "clearly," which both Patanjali and the Buddha agree is only possible by overcoming our social conditioning. William Blake expressed this same idea when he wrote that "The sun's light, when he unfolds it / Depends on the organ that beholds it."

This is all very deep stuff, and confusing to one not used to thinking in terms which can only seem abstract until experience has made them concrete. I find myself referring to something I heard my grand-teacher say about the G-word (God) when he expressed his preference for simply lumping all notions of Atman, Self, God, etc. under the phrase "that which never changes." What he's saying is that our attention, as distinct from that upon which the attention is directed, never changes.

The analogy I use to illustrate this principle is a goldfish bowl, which holds fish, water, plants, pebbles, and dirt. The contents of the bowl are the objects of attention, and the bowl is the attention itself. If your mind perceives goldfish in the bowl, you're perceiving accurately. If you see piranhas, you're misperceiving, and if you see miniature sea monsters, you're imagining. If you see not the goldfish swimming in the bowl but the ones who used to swim there and are now departed, you're remembering. And if you see nothing, you're asleep.

But if you empty the bowl and wipe it clean, and allow it to remain empty, avoiding both the temptation and the tendency to fill it with this or that, then there will be nothing to occupy the attention but the attention itself, which unlike its constantly-changing contents, never changes. It's always transparent and reflects accurately, like a clean mirror.

Since beginning a yoga practice I've attempted with limited success to empty my mind's attention of its contents. Changes in the mind have occurred, and I sometimes see things in my mind's eye that I don't understand. Also, life, and even the most mundane daily events, sometimes seem extremely strange and unfamiliar. I'm sure this is some sort of manifestation of the practice. I guess there's nothing to do but go on with it.

--30--

The Lion Sleeps

"The Lion Sleeps Tonight," recorded by the doo-wop group The Tokens in 1961, shot to number one on the pop charts immediately on its release. Part of the song's appeal was its uniqueness, and it certainly sounded completely different from any other American pop music of that or any other time.

Very few people were aware that the Tokens' hit was a cover, and that earlier versions had been done by the Kingston Trio, in 1959, and Pete Seeger's folk revival group The Weavers, in 1952. The Weavers' version had actually gone all the way to number six on the Billboard Top 100, but pop music fans tend to have short memories.

Virtually nobody was aware of the song's South African origins, even when, in 1994, it gained renewed popularity after Ladysmith Black Mambazo recorded it for Disney's animated feature "The Lion King," using its original title, "Mbube." The success of this latter-day version, which was incorporated in a live Broadway musical and a TV series, generated millions of dollars in revenue for Disney and a lawsuit by the dirt-poor descendents of the song's author, Solomon Linda, and the back story of "The Lion Sleeps" finally began to circulate.

Linda, at far left in the photo above, was born in 1909 in South Africa and wrote "Mbube" in the '20's. He was working as a cleaner and record packer for the Gallo Record Company in Roodepoort, South Africa in 1939 when he got the opportunity to record the tune with his vocal group, The Evening Birds. It was a hit in South Africa, selling over 100,000 copies, but Solomon Linda was paid only a small recording fee and sold the rights to the song to Gallo for a pittance. He enjoyed regional success as a singer and songwriter for some years thereafter, but died impoverished in 1962.

In about 1950 the American musicologist Alan Lomax discovered the recording and shared it with his friend Pete Seeger, whose subsequent concert and recorded versions were titled "Wimoweh," a mishearing of the song's Zulu refrain "Uyimbube" (You are a lion).

I became aware of the song's origins in the early 90's when I heard it on the CD "The Secret Museum of Mankind: Ethnic Music Classics; Vol. 4, 1925-48" on the Yazoo label. No American version that I'm aware of conveys the powerful and extremely African essence of the original, in which Linda used three bass singers in his back-up chorus.

If you want to learn more, see the excellent Wikipedia articles "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and "Solomon Linda."

--30--

china is kicking our butts

China tested their new Beijing to Shanghai bullet train last month. They're griping about how much it cost them, but people everywhere and at all times gripe about the cost of things.

We could be building trains like this in this country, and there was a time not so long ago when we would have. Building infrastructure that looks to the future is an investment. One inter-city train project would put thousands of people to work.

Anyway, that's what the Chinese are doing. But we're too busy debating whether or not we should fail, and become a deadbeat to even recognize that there is something called the future.

The train is powered by electricity, and its 5 hour run to Shanghai takes about half as long as a conventional train.

I took a train from Portland to Seattle a few days ago, and it was great! Unlike flying, taking the train is actually fun.

--30--

clock with sphinx, cards, miscellaneous

The mantel clock was manufactured in New York City by the Ansonia Clock Company, probably between 1879 and 1920. It was the kind of mass-produced "luxury" item available in the popular mail-order catalogs of the day, such as those distributed by Sears and Roebuck and the St. Louis Hardware Company.

It's a study in contrasts: the extraordinary late-Victorian ugliness of the clock body seems not to belong to the beautiful cast-iron figure of Calliope, the muse of epic poetry with her wax tablet and stylus.

The face of double-headed iron sphinx looks remarkably like that of a Czech gangster I knew in my youth, a hoodlum named Dennis. It was most likely the ornamental top piece for a now-departed large clock.

The Victorian composition is completed by the inclusion of "fortune-telling cards," popular at the time.

Photo and images on cards created by Dave b and © 2011 by Daveb, Horney, and Smeavey Productions.

Click for bigger.

--30--

Rap

I always thought I didn't like rap at all, and I can still do without most of it. All the posing and gratuitous cussing are, well, adolescent bullshit, if you really wanna know.

I always thought it was mostly just the sound of it I didn't like, but either I was wrong or tastes change.

First I rediscovered the politico-socio-psychological work of Oaktown Mike Franti and the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.

And then, quite by accident, I stumbled across the Polish rapper Dongularesko and his sidekick Dj Kostek doing "5 Chinek."

What's a chinek? Is it currency? I have no idea what this guy is rapping in Polish about except when he says 'Bam bam bam," but I love the sound. It's that synth-loop melody that drives it, I think, a combination of Middle East and old-time carnival carousel.

Listen!

--30--

What it Is

A Very Short History of the US since the Turn of the Century

What it is, cats and kitties? The prelude to the new century, the pro-log as it were, was good old Bill and the good times. We knew it was too good to last. Besides everybody workin and makin money, there was the stuff that was just good plain fun, you know, spunk on a blue dress and all that really hilarious "We gotcha, you pervert!" shit that made everybody's Aunt Anna gasp and clutch at her pearls.

But then it was 2000, and Bill's curtain call where he said "Bye, y'all. I gotta go now. Last one to leave, turn out the lights."

Then came darkness followed by a hangover, then came Bush. And his merry band of mentally deranged palsied harlequin mummers, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul "Smellysox" Wolfowitz.

Under Bush, everything became dreadful. It was still a great country to live in, but only if you were the "right" kind of person.

So we spent the greater part of the first 10 years of the new century in a kind of mental and spiritual gulag, relieved only by occasional outbursts of catastrophe, such as first, 9/11, then the war(s), and finally the bubble bust and collapse. But now, something rather odd has happened.

So along comes (ta da) Mr. Wonderful, that nice young black guy who didn't even sound or act anything like Bill O'Reilly's stereotype of how a nice young black guy is supposed to sound or act. And he was all like, "Hopey," and "Changey," so a lot of people said, "Hey, why not? Things might get a little better, and I sure as hell don't see how they could get worse," so went to bed and to sleep.

Then we woke up to a new day, same old shit. End of story.

And the moral of the story is: Bad situations get worse when they remain the same because they start to look like forever.

--30--

bouquet & brickbat

If I knew her name and address I would send a bouquet to the property owner who hired Seattle muralist David Heck to decorate the oft-graffiti'd blank wall of this vacant building she owns at 105th and Aurora, on the border between my neighborhood and those to the east.

Her thinking is that even spray-paint vandals and would-be street artists will respect competent artistry enough to bypass this location, and she's probably about 90 percent right.

The mural, still a work in progress, takes us on a nostalgic drive down old Highway 99 (Aurora Avenue) as it was during the golden age of our car-centric society, when the automobile was an object of veneration and symbol of liberation rather than an odious impediment to progress, as it is more accurately viewed today. Heck included some still-existing landmarks such as the elephant, eye-catching enough to have survived over a storefront through many changes in ownership and function, and the Klose-Inn Motel, which still offers rooms although it has seen better days.

Most of what you see here, however, is long gone; the beloved Twin Teepees Restaurant is just a memory, the Chubby and Tubby hardware store is a now a used furniture, junk mart, and eyesore called "Stupid Prices," and Playland, the amusement park which stood on the shore of Bitter Lake, was demolished many years ago.

I have mixed feelings about celebrating the advent of something as incredibly destructive of the natural environment, the urban landscape, and social relationships as the car has proved to be, but I suppose it's best viewed as a celebration of innocence. Forty years ago we sat in our gas guzzlers gulping down burgers and fries without the slightest apprehension of what we were doing to ourselves or others. In those days, the answer to too many cars was seen as more of the same -- more and bigger roads, and everybody believed the tremendous traffic jams along Aurora/99 would be solved by building Interstate 5 through town. They were right in a way; Aurora is now a pleasant if somewhat scenically ugly drive most of the time, while I-5 is the largest parking lot in the state.










If I knew the name and address of the owner of this blight on the neighborhood at 107th and Greenwood, I would throw a brickbat at his car, which I strongly suspect is a Cadillac Escalade. I don't know how long this pestiferous blot has stood in its present condition; it was abandoned and trashed when I moved here over a year and a half ago. Why the city has failed to condemn and seize this property as a public hazard and eyesore is beyond me. The "For Sale" sign is still on it, along with a public notice that hearings to assess the environmental impact of erecting a four-storey apartment complex with shops on the ground floor have recently concluded. So there's hope, but the wheels of civic improvement grind extraordinarily slowly.

And it's the automobile (again) that's responsible for this affront to the community festering for years. People driving by it at 40-plus miles an hour don't notice it enough to care. How long do you think such an insult to civic pride would be allowed to stand if all those drivers had to walk past it every day?

Photos by Catboxer. Click on them for larger views; click a second time for even greater embiggening.

--30--

D-generation

June 20, 2011

Dear AARP:

I've been an AARP member for 17 years, but am now resigning from the organization effective immediately.

This was not an easy decision, but considering the AARP's recent announcement that its leadership is now considering cooperating with bipartisan (but chiefly Republican) plans to reduce Social Security benefits to future recipients by raising the full retirement age, I feel I have no choice.

In the wake of the June 17 Wall Street Journal story which announced the AARP's change of position, a spokeswoman for the organization declared that "our position has not changed," when it clearly had. All subsequent AARP pronouncements on this matter have been vague and nebulous, rather than expressed in the language of what was once a vigorous and committed advocacy group for older Americans.

It seems to me that AARP should now be signaling total opposition to this bipartisan sellout, agitating for a restoration of the full retirement age to 65, and turning up the heat on Congress to pass a much-needed cost-of-living increase for 2011, one which would be retroactive to include 2010.

Paying lip service to politicians' attempts to short-change and eventually gut the most successful social program in the country's history indicates the AARP's new willingness to play along with the economic falsehoods we're subjected to daily, courtesy of the corporate-owned mass media. It gives credence to the notion that the need to reduce the debt is the country's most pressing problem (it's not; mass unemployment is), that "austerity" is the way out of recession (it isn't; spending on jobs is), and most ludicrous of all, that Social Security is in trouble, when even an oligarch like Alan Simpson will admit under pressure that the trouble is 26 years away.

For the last 30 years, our bribed-and-paid-for political establishment has been vigorously engaged in attempting to funnel all this country's wealth from the working classes upward, into the hands and pockets of a corporate plutocracy in whose service they labor, and with great success if the income distribution numbers are to be believed. Any advocacy organization for older and retired, working-class Americans must take a clear and uncompromising stand against this trend and its proponents. Searching for "common ground" with fat cats and Republican ideologues sends exactly the wrong message.

We had a saying back in the sixties: You're either part of the problem or part of the solution. The AARP's leadership urgently needs to do some deep soul searching.

Sincerely,
David T Brice
Former Member #--- --- --- -

cc: Editor, Seattle Times

Photo: President Roosevelt signs Social Security into law in August of 1935.

--30--

high water everywhere

Lord, the whole round country,
Lord, river has overflowed;
Lord, the whole round country,
man, is overflowed;

(You know I can't stay here,
I'll go where it's high, boy)

I would go to the hilly country,
but, they got me barred.

--Charlie Patton
High Water Everywhere, Part I

Charlie was singing about the great flood of '27, and probably never imagined there could be a worse one, like the flood of 2011.

One of the differences is the historically record-setting high level of the Missouri River as well as the Mississippi. Another is that the flood of 1927 drew massive newspaper and radio coverage, while today's disaster has so far been covered minimally, if it all.

This begs the bigger question of why the most significant and worthy stories are frequently buried by the corporate media, which instead of reporting them emphasizes shiny objects with personal-interest value, such as Tony Weiner's Excellent Adventure. Jim Kunstler says the national media is being held hostage by Little Caylee.

The biggest story of all is the national media itself, now owned and tightly controlled by the same corporatist influences which have total control over everything that happens in "the village" (Washington, D.C.). So even though the Times ran a story about the Missouri River flood, it was buried in the Greenwire blog of the Business Section, nowhere near page one. And it's not a very good story because it concentrates mainly on the Corps of Engineers response to the flood and politicians' criticisms of the
Corps, rather than the magnitude and significance of the disaster itself.

There's probably some decent reporting on it in the localities where the disaster is occurring (I'll check some of those out today) as well as unofficial places such as blogs and Facebook pages maintained by residents in the affected areas. I've seen some pictures from local sources, and they're scary as hell.

The corporate media is making every effort to downplay and suppress news of the Great Flood of 2011, since reporting it would clearly inform people that global warming is now a life-and-death situation for us, and broadcasting the news would cause unrest. People would start to put two and two together and recognize the situation we're in, and maybe begin to wish they had the terrorists back again as their main worry. Better they should be distracted by Tony's weiner, Kim's wedding, and the trial of Little Caylee's mom.

The Missouri River at Omaha. AP/Sioux City Journal photo by Jim Lee.

--30--

the monolith

Here is the monolith, the beating heart of our contemporary civilization, if we can call it that.

All the organs of government and order but one are housed here. The two top floors are occupied by the Ministry of Truth (Minitru), and are where the templates from which the contents of all mass media -- television, movies, print, and cyberspace -- are hammered out then disseminated. These templates are the raw material of what is commonly called "the Matrix."

The two middle floors include all the operations of the Ministry of Plenty (Miniplenty), and encompass departments as diverse as the Full Employment Wing and the Abundant Retirement Administration.

The ground floor and basements are taken up by the Ministry of Love (Miniluv), where you will find the notorious Room 101 in the deepest sub-basement, hidden away from the eyes of the world due to the overwhelming amount of love constantly dispensed there.

The blank facade of the monolith has shoved aside and rendered obsolete the human face of the old paternalistic social order, with its feudal hierarchies and quaint, polytheistic Christianity, replacing them with the uncompromising monotheism of total devotion to Moloch, whose name is Profit.

Only one ministry, Minipax, is housed outside the monolith, in its own five-sided building. So vast is the domain of Minipax that it constitutes almost a separate nation on its own, for there is much peace to dispense, both domestically and throughout the world. The foundation and global reach of this colossal and remarkable institution will be the topic of another essay.

--30--

defending your rights

The fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right "to be secure in their persons, papers, and houses." Unfortunately, it doesn't confer a right for us to be secure in our electronic transmissions, since those things didn't exist at the time the Bill of Rights was embedded in our law.

"What does it mean" asks the social agitator and journalist Naomi Wolf, "to live in a society in which surveillance is omnipresent?"

It means, she continues, A concerted effort is underway in the US – and in the United Kingdom – to “brand” surveillance as positive. New York City subway passengers are now advised that they might experience random searches of their bags. Activists in America are now accustomed to assuming that their emails are being read and their phone calls monitored. Indeed, the telecom companies Verizon and AT&T have established areas on their premises for eavesdropping activity by the National Security Agency.

The paranoia of a government which conducts blanket surveillance of its citizens is obvious, and it's the reason why a pacifist/anarchist like Scott Crow of Austin, Texas ends up on the FBI's "domestic terrorism" watch list.

Besides monitoring all his phone calls and e-mails, government agencies closely watch Crow's house for any potential acts of terrorism that may be committed by his housemate, his pair of backyard goats, his flock of chickens, his turkey or his vegetables, or possibly enacted through some nefarious use of the solar panels on his roof.

In an article in the May 23, 2011 New Yorker, the award-winning political journalist Jane Mayer details the emergence of a vast new security bureaucracy, in which at least two and a half million people hold confidential, secret, or top-secret clearances; huge expenditures on electronic monitoring, along with a reinterpretation of the law in order to sanction it; and corporate partnerships with the government that have transformed the counterterrorism industry into a powerful lobbying force.

Considering the circumstances in which we now find ourselves, it becomes obvious that the Bill of Rights notwithstanding, the only rights we truly possess are those we're capable of defending.

With this in mind, I've recently cut back my presence on the internet by about 75 percent. I post here once a week and check my e-mails, but I no longer visit Facebook or post on the discussion boards at BeliefNet, since those places, besides being subject to government snooping, are under constant surveillance by armies of advertisers, con men, and scheissters.

At a time like the present, I would encourage fellow-citizens to reconsider the virtues of the United States Postal Service, which is also subject to surveillance, but of a much less comprehensive type due to physical limitations, and to re-visit the habit of letter writing. Also, printed newspapers, published anonymously, may enjoy a renaissance in the near future, since they would provide a much more secure medium for spreading revolutionary information and sentiment than blogs.

One thing is certain: we have a right to privacy, and cannot possibly continue living under the tyranny of a surveillance state, since its existence is incompatible with a free society.

--Cassandro
--30--

us & them

I really hate and despise them with an undying passion.

They stole our _______!

At the Battle of _______ in the _______ Century, they used unfair tactics to defeat us. We can't rest until we get revenge, by fighting fairly, of course.

Their religion is absurd and offensive. Did you know they actually believe __________? And they won't be happy until EVERYBODY believes it!

It's not "politically correct" to say so, but science has proven them to be _______. And they smell weird.

They live like animals. Children, education, and the future don't mean anything to them because they live only for __________.

Their music is crude and primitive, and encourages people to _______.

Can you believe they eat _______? Think about that — they actually put _______ in their mouths.

They want to have sexual intercourse with our women.

There are so many of them because all they do is _______! If we're not careful we'll be submerged beneath a flood of ________!

If there's anything worse than a _________, it's a _________-lover. Those who sympathize with them are, knowingly or unknowingly, helping them, and are on THEIR side.

Yes, there are a few good _________s. But better safe than sorry.

Okay, so, we killed ________ of them. but it was in self-defense. Violence is the only language they understand.

We may seem prejudiced, but only because the media is obviously pro-_______.

They're the reason we're so unhappy. If it wasn't for them, we might be have the time and inclination to confront and deal with our own character defects. And I have no idea what you mean by "projection."

This is a re-working of something I found while randomly surfing the net some time ago. I'd credit the source, but I can't recall where I got it.

--30--

body & soul

Ken Wiley, the host of our excellent weekly jazz history program on KPLU Public Radio ("The Art of Jazz," Sundays from 3 - 6 p.m.), calls this exercise "chasing a song."

"Body and Soul" was an immediate hit from its first appearance over America's radio airwaves in 1930. The melody by Johnny Green, spooky and ominous with its prominent minor chords, and the lyrics by a committee (Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, and Frank Eyton) are an over-the-top lament of a crushed heart, dousing listeners in a bath of bathos. Then as now, America loved a sentimental tear-jerker.

When played well the song is affecting, however, mainly because of its inventive and unusual melody. Its popularity insured that it would be covered by top vocalists and jazz artists, and it was recognized as a standard by 1950. The many versions of this classic give us an opportunity to "chase" it at length, and to compare and contrast the styles and approaches of many famous singers and instrumentalists.

One of the earliest recorded versions (1930), by the gorgeous and talented Ruth Etting, gives us the full vocal treatment of the piece, and includes the only appearance of the song's lyrical introduction I've ever heard.

The month after Etting's record, Okeh released Louis Armstrong's orchestrated rendition, which combines vocal and instrumental virtuosity in one of Satch's greatest sides. Of particular note is Armstrong's beautiful muted trumpet improvisation over the melody, laid down by the sax section, with which the song opens.

Django Reinhardt's version, recorded in France in the mid-30's, is strictly instrumental, and features the legendary guitarist playing what is undoubtedly one of his greatest solos ever, accompanied by his long-time partner, the great Stephan Grappelly. This song is one of the reasons Reinhardt's reputation continues to grow year by year, right down to the present.

One of the most famous recordings of the song was made by tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins for the Bluebird label in 1939. Fronting an orchestra as Armstrong did, Hawkins uses the same approach as Reinhardt's, dispensing with the lyrics and improvising freely on the melody, but always with close attention to the song's chord structure. Hawkins's version was a big hit, unusual for a modernistic improvised jazz solo, and has remained immensely popular with jazz musicians over the decades. It was enshrined by its inclusion in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2004.

There are numerous other well-regarded versions of "Body and Soul" as well, most notably one by Ella Fitzgerald recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957, but I'll leave it to the reader to track them down and continue chasing this tune, as each is so inclined.

--30--

low crimes

Since today's post deals with socio-politico matters, you'll find it at Catboxx under the title JAUCA.

These are momentous times we're living in, and the gravity of what goes on in the world today is discernible in both the large and the small acts of the principle players.

--30--

illusions

My friend Rich is an inspiration. His name is also descriptive, and though not wealthy he leads a rich life, working, tinkering (his most recent project is a restored Model-A), socializing, and mostly spending a lot of time with his wife, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Depression, idleness, and moping are not in his nature.

His medical history has been a rough road full of potholes. Ten years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had the diseased organ surgically removed in a standard procedure which, though common, is a terrifying bloodbath. Today he's cancer-free, but after the operation began showing symptoms of both diabetes and Parkinson's Disease, and today lives with both.

A few months ago he read in a magazine about a contraption that "fools the brain" of Parkinson's sufferers, and can cause the tremors associated with the disease to temporarily stop. Being the practical, hands-on kind of guy he is, Rich built one using just the description in the article to guide him.

Piece of cake.

He brought it into our morning yoga class today so we could try it out, a simple three-sided box, open at both ends, with a mirror mounted on one side. "Stick your right hand inside the box" he says to me. "Now lay your left hand on the table and look at it in the mirror."

I did, and my trembling right hand went slack inside the box. The muscles of the right forearm began to relax and in a few seconds were completely at rest. Apparently what happens is the brain "sees" the mirror image of the left hand as the right while the "real" right hand is invisible. Because the eyes and brain perceive the illusory hand at rest rather than shaking, the brain responds by making manifest what it sees as reality. There are some profound philosophical insights in that last clause.

"We are what we think." So opens the Dhammapada, purported to be the actual sayings of Gotama, the Buddha. "All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world."

An interesting detail of this little experiment is that the box can only short-circuit the brain if it is to one side or the other of the person using it. The mirror trick works because the thumb in the mirror image of the left hand appears to be pointing left when the palm is down, while the thumb on the "real," invisible right hand is pointing left. Also, the fingers appear in reverse order. If the mirror is in front of you, the mirror image doesn't reverse; the left hand is still on the left, with its thumb pointing toward the right.

The human brain is an inconceivably complex and mysterious organ, and the human mind a strange and frightening place. We should never go there alone.

Pencil drawing by M.C. Escher; German, 1930's.

--30--

love and death

Impotence -- the kind originating in physical rather than psychological causes -- is one of the earliest harbingers of death, and generally precedes the final dissolution of a human male into his constituent elements by about 20 years. Since organisms don't require sexual potency to survive, it's one of the first functions cast aside by a dying body.

The physical consequences of impotence, other than the absence of an ability to participate in an act that's usually enjoyable, are negigible, but the psychological consequences are enormous. Only after he has become impotent does the aging male realize how much of his human identity is tied up in and inseparable from his sexuality.

Lately, I've begun to wonder why humans have evolved sexually precisely in the manner that we have. Most species of mammals are ready to mate for a few days every six months or so, but well-adjusted humans in their prime are ready to boogie 24/7. Also, most mammals don't have prominently visible genitals; females have vulvas which only swell to easy visibility (and access) when they're in season, and the males of most species demurely conceal their penises in sheaths most of the time. But human genitals, especially the male's, are quite prominent, and, when the desires supplied by nature have evaporated, unattractive. The genitals of a naked man look like something the designer added on as an afterthought, are disharmonious with the rest of the body's structure, and seem not to belong.

Or maybe my criticism of the creator is just sour grapes of the "life sucks" variety, who knows?

--30--

fearful places

A couple days ago I fell into a conversation about the growth of ethnic studies programs in high school and college curricula, and found most of the people participating motivated mainly by fear and anger. They seemed threatened by the existence of these courses, and zeroed in on boogeymen -- mainly Ward Churchill -- associated with them, although I don't know why they feel this way.

The history of race and ethnic relations in the U.S. is, like any other history, based on documents: letters, diaries, wills and other legal records, books written by the people under study, phonograph records, movies, etc. There may be lies in the documents, but the documents themselves never lie (unless they've been altered -- a whole other topic).

A case in point is the 1929 motion picture "On With the Show," billed as the first all-talking musical review in color (although all color prints have been unfortunately lost). The film itself is mediocre, a variety show whose acts are held together by a flimsy and unnecessary plot, but one scene in it might provide a trove of potential topics for an ethnic history class.

I don't think I've posted this link before -- Ethel Waters singing "Am I Blue" in the above-cited film. In addition to her inspired chirping, the specifics of the director's presentation of this dignified African-American songbird are most interesting. However, as always, I'll leave it to the students to draw conclusions, or not as the case may be, and limit myself to retrieving and presenting the documents.

Note: I would have posted this sooner, but Blogger was down for about 24 hours. That's OK, though, since unlike in the old days, time doesn't mean that much to me.

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the old victrola

I think I need to look for a bigger place so I can have enough room for a victrola. It's not just lack of space that's kept me from getting a hand-crank phonograph, but also the knowledge that as soon as I get one I'll start haunting the record bins at the Salvation Army and antique stores looking for records.

There's a lot of stuff out there that you can only get on old 78's, and there's no other kind. They don't make 'em any more.

The treasures are rare, but are worth the hunt, and pop up in the most surprising places. Listen, for example, to this German-label gem from the twenties, The Peanut Vendor (Der Erdnußverkäufer), played by John Brigs und sein Jazzensemble, and flawless in its straightforward, simple love of beauty. I wonder how many known copies of this baby there are.

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