11.30.06
Posted in Culture, High C at the Sunset Terrace, Music at 10:03 pm by Administrator
It’s called High C at the Sunset Terrace. You can order it here. It’s set in Indianapolis in 1948, in the jazz clubs along Indiana Avenue. My main characters are fictional, but I bring in lots of historical figures as well. It’s an outgrowth of an article I wrote for Arts Indiana in the early 90s on Indy’s jazz legacy. At the time, several of the great figures of the glory days of the Avenue were still alive, and I had the priviledge of meeting them and hearing first-hand about nights on the bandstand years before.
Not only is it a great read, it’s a swingin’ Christmas present!
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Posted in Middle East, National Security at 5:31 pm by Administrator
Dean Barnett does an excellent job of assessing the damage that will be done by the insane and supremely dangerous Baker-Hamilton report.
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11.27.06
Posted in Culture, Educational dhimmitude, Music at 4:49 pm by Administrator
The university has me teaching rock history again next semester. I’m in the process of getting my syllabus together.
We all know that this subject is generally “taught” from the angle that it’s yet another excellent opportunity to propagandize to the kiddies. Most of the overall-rock history books that are used as textbooks out there come at it from a “the-music-reflected-the-social-attitudes-of-the-times” slant. And we all know what that’s about: opening the door to the whole peace-activism-feminism-environmentalism-tossing-age-old-social-customs-out-the-window-was-a-good-thing way of seeing the last half of the twentieth century.
Now, my view is that any kind of history begins with an aquaintance with the names, dates and events that comprise the development of the human endeavor being examined. Only after you have a firm grasp on that can you start to draw inferences about how it “reflected social attitudes” or whatever.
Let’s take a concrete example that usually comes up for me when I teach this course. Invariable, either on the first night when I go around the room and ask, as an ice-breaker, what the students’ choice for all-time greatest rock recordings would be, or a few weeks later, when they’re submitting their paper topics, some bright-eyed young scholar-in-the-making will gush about how John Lennon was a man of peace and “Imagine” was such a great song. The way I’ve generally handled that is to just let the student reconsider that as he or she absorbs the material as the course unfolds. He or she (usually a she) generally has no idea that Lennon had such an explosive temper, had such infantile expectations of the women in his life, flitted so fitfully from one spiritual approach, therapy technique and political philosophy to another, and had such addictive tendencies. (I generally try to just leave “Imagine” alone. For me to point out that it’s a nihilistic and anarchistic – not to mention musically plodding – pie-in-the-sky exercise would be to engage in opinion-dispensing beyond what I feel my academic code of ethics would allow.)
You can imagine (excuse the pun) that I am tempted to just spew out all the above on that first night, but of course I don’t want to encourage attrition by stirring up talk along the lines of “Man, I don’t think this guy really likes rock and roll. What is the university doing having him teach this course?”
I do what I can to make this a serious course that can enhance a student’s understanding of Western civilization. For instance, when it comes time to discuss Vietnam, I go all the way back to the French missionaries arriving in the early 19th century, up through Napoleon III, and on into how Ho Chi Minh studied at the feet of Josef Stalin in Moscow in the 1930s, and how the North was directly aiding the National Liberation Front (Vietcong) by 1960, in violation of what was agreed upon at the post-Dienbienphu conference in 1954.
What I’m thinking about doing at the outset this time is inviting the students to consider that those elements in our society that have had concerns about rock’s impact may have been on to something. I think this is important because the general trend, in those books and in places like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, is to make light of any anti-rock sentiments as square and fuddy-duddy and reactionary.
But, jeez, has there ever been a field, even within the arts-and-entertainment realm, so peopled with cartoonish, sociopathic, perpetually adolescent characters? It’s important for someone to say, “There are other ways to regard these people than veneration.”
Anyway, it’s a weird little way that I’ve been handed to take my stand in postmodern America.
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11.26.06
Posted in Middle East at 5:33 pm by Administrator
The Washington Post is to the right of Chuck Hegel this morning. Compare and contrast the Nebraska Republican’s column “We Need To Leave Iraq Honorably,” in which he signs on to Baker-Hamilton footsie with Syria and Iran, with the unsigned editorial “We Need A Bigger Stick.”
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Posted in Middle East at 5:26 pm by Administrator
AP’s reporting Hamas rocket fire since the big truce has supposedly gone into effect. Says it’s “dimmed hopes.”
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11.25.06
Posted in Culture, Religion & Spirituality at 5:29 pm by Administrator
It’s none too early to begin thinking about my next Republic column. I’m thinking about musing on the way people often contribute to conversations about personal virtue and societal order. When the two are tied together, you often hear people say, “Yeah, but people are gonna . . . ,” followed by any number of shortcomings: People are gonna find somebody with whom to get sexual gratification, whether they’re married (or even in love) or not, people are gonna get loaded on some substance or another, people are gonna cut moral corners on their jobs.
The rejoinder that immediately comes to my mind begins with, “Well, that is, unless they . . . “ Ah, then it gets interesting. Unless they what? Can a person consistently exert enough will to stave off temptation?
This can get real deep. The original-sin proponents might chime in with an assertion of humanity’s nature having been depraved since the whole apple-in-the-garden incident. (And then you get into how literally to take that, with the creationists squaring off against the wide-berth-for-scriptural-interpretation types,) Libertarians might say, “This whole conversation is dangerous because it dilutes the notions that personal conduct is one’s own business.”
Gotta think some more about this. Any Bent Notes aficionados ever pondered this one?
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11.23.06
Posted in Food at 9:20 pm by Administrator
Oh, have mercy! I do believe that pancetta, walnuts and prunes dressing has caused me to merge with the clear light of the void! Recipe is on page 198 of the November issue of Gourmet.
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Posted in Food at 11:53 am by Administrator
It’s 6:40 AM. I’ve had the bird in the oven for an hour. We store it in the fridge down at the salon, so I got up about 4:30 and went down and got it. The pies, too. Came home, prepped it and stuffed it.
This year I’m stuffing it with a classic sage-and-celery stuffing. Fans of my thanksgiving feast have come to expect my customary apple, sausage, pecan & cornbread dressing, but I wanted to do something a little different this year, so I’ve made a few casserole dishes of a pancetta, chestnuts and prunes dressing, the recipe for which I found in the November issue of Gourmet. (Actually, I had to use walnuts. Couldn’t find chestnuts. I hate to replace ingredients in a recipe, especially the first time, but we live in a world of conditions and parameters.) That same issue had a recipe for roasted brussels sprouts, shallots and wild mushrooms, which I will also do. Mrs. Q is taking care of the tubers, both russet and sweet.
Folks are supposed to arrive at 1 this afternoon, with some buds dropping by in the late afternoon / early evening.
Socked in a jar of full-strength Hellman’s mayo for that first leftover-turkey sandwich tonight!
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11.21.06
Posted in Middle East at 8:00 pm by Administrator
Consider the recent sequence of events in the middle east. Reports of Hezbollah rearming right under UNIFIL noses. The Gaza human shield. Iraq and Syria renewing diplomatic ties. Iran calling a “regional conference” to which the leaders of Syrai and Iraq have accepted invitations. The assassination of Pierre Gemayel in the Christian section of Beirut.
This conference ought to be interesting. Lots of punditry discussing the fact that the Gemayel assassination is meant to send a message to the other anti-Syrian domination-type politicians in Lebanon. It seems pretty clear that it will likewise be conveyed to Iraqi PM Maliki when all these reasonable gentlemen, these distinguished statesmen, gather for calm and deliberative conversation in Teheran.
Oh, by the way, guess who’s in Teheran for a state visit right now? Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.
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Posted in Music at 1:41 pm by Administrator
The Perfect Gift, the new CD by my musical buds Sarah’s Swingset is available at the group’s website. Soon to be also available at CD Baby, Borders, etc. The Swingset is a trio – Sarah Flint on vocals, Bob Stright on vibes, and Ron Kadish on bass. Lots of guest artists. Great holiday tunes. Sure to add some sparkle to your season.
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11.19.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:38 pm by Administrator
In my pokings-around on the Net, I ran across this fantastic blog emanating from Italy. It’s called Free Thoughts. Its scope is global, though, and I can see that it’s gonna be a great place to get a heads-up on late-breaking developments anywhere. I’ve added it to the blogroll links on the right-hand side for your convenience.
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Posted in Middle East at 3:50 pm by Administrator
Syria says “We want the Golan Heights back in exchange for any help on Iraq.”
One reason it was dumb to even float such an idea as a possibility is that it gives Syria a chance to play the leverage game like this.
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Posted in Middle East, Uncategorized at 3:46 pm by Administrator
So the howling at the UN (alluded to in the post about John Bolton below) has made Israel skittish about collateral damage. Well, it sure didn’t take long for Hamas to take advantage of that, setting up a human shield around a house of a wanted terrorist leader. And what were all these nice little shopkeepers and homemakers and children shouting as they crowded around? “Daeth to Israel!”
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Posted in Free-market Economics, Politics at 3:39 pm by Administrator
So Barney Frank wants to “offer the business community a grand bargain” – favorable free-trade legislation in exchange for higher wages and more benefits. Hey, Representative Pimp, why don’t you just keep your Stalinist mitts off the privately-owned organizations of this land that have done more for the betterment of American lives than you could do if you had five centuries?
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11.18.06
Posted in Middle East, National Security at 8:00 pm by Administrator
He once again speaks the plain truth. It’s been months since I’ve heard this kind of moral clarity from a U.S. government official. I sure hope W ignores the howls of the freedom-haters and gives this guy another recess appointment.
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11.16.06
Posted in National Security at 9:16 pm by Administrator
Add this tidbit to the flurry of our modern world’s headlines with the word “nuclear” in them.
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Posted in Free-market Economics at 7:52 pm by Administrator
He passed away today in San Francisco at age 94. One of the towering giants of the theory of liberty. His importance may never be fully understood.
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11.15.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:56 pm by Administrator
Some other bloggers are underwhelmed, as I am, by the Senate Republicans’ pick for minority whip.
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11.14.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:15 pm by Administrator
I don’t spend a lot of time doing this – mainly because I know myself well enough to know that idle what-if games can easily consume large portions of my time on this earth – but sometimes I try to imagine transporting the self I was – or maybe somebody like my late father, or an old buddy – say, forty years ago, thirty, even twenty years ago – to the present to let them see what daily American life is like in 2006.
I was sparked to do some imagining along these lines by the tail end of a radio talk-show segment, the general theme of which was the grave threat we face, which segued into a commercial for firewall software, in which the voiceover guy talked about viruses and identity theft.
Personal computers were still a novelty twenty years ago. The future looked like it was going to be such fun, with the convenience, cool menus and toolbars and festive graphics of word processors and spreadsheets, the real-time thrill of action games, the possibilities for interactive multimedia. Now, while fun stuff abounds in cyberspace, there’s also a definite wild-west aspect to it, and you don’t go out on the web without being fully armed against all manner of banditry.
How about the me of decades ago – or, here, someone older like my father might be interesting to speculate upon – watching a little 2006 television?
Twenty years ago we had low-level jitters in the backs of our minds about the massive nuclear arsenals each side in the Cold War had aimed at the other, but there was a consensus that the Soviets were rational enough to know that only a West that was plump and juicy would be worth taking over, not one devastated by apocalyptic blasts. We looked back to October 1962 and said, “Boy, we sure came close to the brink there. Glad we moved past that.” The Cuban missile crisis looked like a blip of potential doom, succeeded by “realist” foreign policy and arms-control agreements.
How would I explain the feel of the times we live in to the 1986 me? Or the 1966 me? Who, among the players in this drama currently occupying the world stage, would look sane or silly? Rational or reckless?
As I say, I don’t indulge this line of thinking too long, but it can be a useful tool for getting your brain around the magnitude of what we’re up against. I sort of think a transported 1966 or even 1986 – or even a 1996 – person would say to the transporter showing him or her around, “How do you live with that?”
Or, how about this? What if you could transport the 1943 Franklin Roosevelt or the 1986 Ronald Reagan to the present day and let them take in the full measure of our times?
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11.13.06
Posted in Middle East, National Security at 11:28 pm by Administrator
W and Olmert, talking to the MSM after their meeting today, said there would be no talks with Iran or Syria until Iran suspended enrichment and Syria quit harboring and training terrorists.
Over in the UK, Tony Blair reassured the world that his latest statements about looking at a way forward in Iraq did not constitute a softening of his stance toward Iran or Syria.
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