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The cats are mewling to be let out. I open the front door to have a little feel for myself, and I am not even going to do my usual routine of letting them out to learn for themselves that they really want to be inside the house. We’re in the middle of yet another frigid cold snap, with temperatures sinking into the low thirties. The wind is even blowing now. I’m not taking any chances. The cats will just have to hate me a little.
Jan. 28th, 2014
Pete Seeger Dies at 94
Jan. 28th, 2014 08:01 am “The key to the future of the world is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.”
-- Pete Seeger
One of our legendary folk singers and old-style lefties. I want to keep this humorous note.
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Along with many elders of the protest-song movement, Mr. Seeger felt betrayed when Bob Dylan appeared at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with a loud electric blues band. Reports emerged that Mr. Seeger had tried to cut the power cable with an ax, but witnesses including the producer George Wein and the festival’s production manager, Joe Boyd (later a leading folk-rock record producer), said he did not go that far. (An ax was available, however. A group of prisoners had used it while singing a logging song.)
-- LJ-NYT
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-- Pete Seeger
One of our legendary folk singers and old-style lefties. I want to keep this humorous note.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Along with many elders of the protest-song movement, Mr. Seeger felt betrayed when Bob Dylan appeared at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with a loud electric blues band. Reports emerged that Mr. Seeger had tried to cut the power cable with an ax, but witnesses including the producer George Wein and the festival’s production manager, Joe Boyd (later a leading folk-rock record producer), said he did not go that far. (An ax was available, however. A group of prisoners had used it while singing a logging song.)
-- LJ-NYT
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Loving God
Jan. 28th, 2014 02:01 pmDavid Brooks talks religion in his column today. He gives us a good quote from St. Augustine, a passage titled as “What do I love when I love my God”.
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“It is not physical beauty nor temporal glory nor the brightness of light dear to earthly eyes, nor the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs, nor the gentle odor of flowers, and ointments and perfumes, nor manna or honey, nor limbs welcoming the embraces of the flesh; it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet there is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God — a light, voice, odor, food, embrace of my innerness, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I love my God.”
-- St. Augustine
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“It is not physical beauty nor temporal glory nor the brightness of light dear to earthly eyes, nor the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs, nor the gentle odor of flowers, and ointments and perfumes, nor manna or honey, nor limbs welcoming the embraces of the flesh; it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet there is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God — a light, voice, odor, food, embrace of my innerness, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I love my God.”
-- St. Augustine
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Writing Life
Jan. 28th, 2014 09:33 pmI wanted to get back in the blurty mood today. It has been on my mind in recent weeks, and last night I decided to make a go of it. My Three Journal has been taking all the oxygen. Not only in terms of time and energy. More subtly, the Three Journal has become a demanding editor: if something doesn’t have an appreciable chance of making it into that journal, then I tend to forget about it, not seeing any point in writing it at all.
However, I still feel an abiding satisfaction in just writing down the mundane, trivial observations of my days, and that is true even if there is not much thought of ever reading such writing again. Though, I wouldn’t go too far and say that it would be just as fine to then throw away or delete what I wrote for the day, not even in the spirit of that movie “Light Sleeper”. I want to keep what I write on the off chance that I might want to read it later and, yes, possibly use it, nor am I truly above the thought that others may read and appreciate my bare offerings.
I am even playing again with the idea of using another account for my blurting, including possibly going back to Blurty itself yet again. There is even the thought of opening a Twitter account. It is hard to be too self-conscious when you are forced to keep an observation down to 140 characters. The idea is that it might be easier to maintain the blurty mood if there is a blog that is devoted to only that.
For now, I am sticking to my so-called scribble blog on Dreamwidth, a blog which has really become more of a shadow blog for LiveJournal, in case the Russians go too far in alienating we English users.
Sometimes I miss my first Blurty days, when my blurting was much freer. My time was much more open. I did not have the Three Journal, nor any other blog for that matter, and my reading life was much more easygoing than it is now. And although I did put some care in my writing, it was essentially a one-shot deal. There was no rough-drafting and coming back later to take another crack at the writing. Most importantly, although I was self-consciously aware that I was no longer a youth, being thirty-seven years old at the time, I now appreciate that I still had an effective sense of a practically endless array of tomorrows in front of me, so that I did not feel that time was in any way a meaningful constraint. By contrast, today, I feel like I am staring straight ahead at the ultimate, even literal, deadline, and I know that I will never get done a fraction of what I had hoped to do. I feel as though I have only just hardly begun, that I am only beginning to figure out what I want to do.
However, I still feel an abiding satisfaction in just writing down the mundane, trivial observations of my days, and that is true even if there is not much thought of ever reading such writing again. Though, I wouldn’t go too far and say that it would be just as fine to then throw away or delete what I wrote for the day, not even in the spirit of that movie “Light Sleeper”. I want to keep what I write on the off chance that I might want to read it later and, yes, possibly use it, nor am I truly above the thought that others may read and appreciate my bare offerings.
I am even playing again with the idea of using another account for my blurting, including possibly going back to Blurty itself yet again. There is even the thought of opening a Twitter account. It is hard to be too self-conscious when you are forced to keep an observation down to 140 characters. The idea is that it might be easier to maintain the blurty mood if there is a blog that is devoted to only that.
For now, I am sticking to my so-called scribble blog on Dreamwidth, a blog which has really become more of a shadow blog for LiveJournal, in case the Russians go too far in alienating we English users.
Sometimes I miss my first Blurty days, when my blurting was much freer. My time was much more open. I did not have the Three Journal, nor any other blog for that matter, and my reading life was much more easygoing than it is now. And although I did put some care in my writing, it was essentially a one-shot deal. There was no rough-drafting and coming back later to take another crack at the writing. Most importantly, although I was self-consciously aware that I was no longer a youth, being thirty-seven years old at the time, I now appreciate that I still had an effective sense of a practically endless array of tomorrows in front of me, so that I did not feel that time was in any way a meaningful constraint. By contrast, today, I feel like I am staring straight ahead at the ultimate, even literal, deadline, and I know that I will never get done a fraction of what I had hoped to do. I feel as though I have only just hardly begun, that I am only beginning to figure out what I want to do.
1980 Reagan Acceptance Speech (Part 1)
Jan. 28th, 2014 10:43 pmPresident Obama gave his State of the Union Speech tonight. I did not tune in. The State of the Union is usually a pretty pointless and blah affair. As it so happens, I have actually been more focused on President Reagan's speech accepting the Republican nomination for the presidential ticket in the summer of 1980, gearing up for the campaign against President Jimmy Carter. We will be drawing a few excerpts from that speech.
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Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.
The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic party leadership-in the White House and in Congress-for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.
My fellow citizens I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves. Those who believe we can have no business leading the nation. I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose. We have come together here because the American people deserve better from those to whom they entrust our nation’s highest offices, and we stand united in our resolve to do something about it.
-- Ronald Reagan at the Republican Convention in 1980
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Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.
The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic party leadership-in the White House and in Congress-for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.
My fellow citizens I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves. Those who believe we can have no business leading the nation. I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose. We have come together here because the American people deserve better from those to whom they entrust our nation’s highest offices, and we stand united in our resolve to do something about it.
-- Ronald Reagan at the Republican Convention in 1980
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