12.31.08
They know you have the guy who cooked this up, so turn him over
So says the US to Pakistan about the mastermind of the Mumbai attack.
Pakistan’s response, “We don’t think so.” Not so helpful.
12.29.08
Freddie Hubbard, R.I.P.
1938 – 2008. Although he got his start as a teenager on the Avenue, he went to Shortridge High School rather than Crispus Attucks. He was in NYC by age 20. Started making the rounds of the Blue Note sessions. Dexter Gordon’s Doin’ Alright album. His stint with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. His debut as a leader on Open Sesame. His contributions to Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage and John Coltrane’s OM. The landmark 1972 album Sky Dive on the CTI label. The 1981 collaboration with Oscar Peterson.
He came home to play the Indy Jazz Fest last summer. I didn’t get to go, but I’m told it was a good set.
The summer before last, while I was attending the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshop in Louisville, one day at lunch, I was scouring the bins of CDs Jamey has for sale in the workshop bookstore. I ran into David Baker, who was my theory teacher that year and showed him a find I’d come across. It was a Wes Montgomery album called Fingerpickin’. I was struck by the early date of the recording – December 1957. Then I noticed that it was recorded in Indy. Had a bunch of Naptown greats on it – Pookie Johnson, all three Montgomery brothers, and Freddie Hubbard. I asked Dr. Baker what studio they would have used, given that Indy was not a recording center at the time. He said, “That wasn’t any studio. That was recorded at George’s Bar. I was there.” I later read in the liner notes that it was Freddie’s first appearance on a record. It’s good. His seventeen-year-old chops are already in place. He holds his own with eloquence and poise in some pretty formidable company.
A big loss, indeed.
(HT: Long-time BN community member Mr. Dings)
23- 0
In Lucas Oil Stadium. Marvin Harrison got emotional when he set the number two all-time receiver record. It was cool to watch, because it was one of those “I-did-that” moments. I know when I’ve achieved something that really meant a lot to me, I’ve felt that way.
Jim Sorgi proved himself an able backup to Peyton.
To be sure, Tennessee was just plain off-stride.
12.27.08
It’s big, but it’s just the beginning
So say Israeli officials about the strikes against the heart of Hamas in the Gaza.
Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch has a roundup of various nations’ reactions: Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Yemen, the EU, Ireland and Russia. What do they all have in common? A call for Israel to cease and desist. How much more proof do you need that fretting about Israel’s or the U.S.’s standing in the “international community” doesn’t amount to diddly?
It never was the proper term for humankind’s natural way of organizing into societies
Bruce Walker at the American Thinker has a great piece on why it’s time to drop Marx’s term for free human interaction – “capitalism.” It’s meaningless, but deceptively so. It ain’t about the money.
Money line (ha ha – your pun for the day): “The continuum of human relationships, the “market,” is simply all the voluntary interactions that human beings have ever engaged in since the beginning of time. ‘Capital’ is a tiny part of this.”
12.26.08
The current state of Western civilization and American culture . . .
. . . can be distilled into one incident on one university campus, involving one fairly unassuming individual who came into contact with the ravenous powers of the FHer cancer and decided to resist. This is his story.
Full disclosure necessitates me stating that the university in question is one of my employers.
12.25.08
Having been put off for six months, the inevitable is about to occur
Israel is about to invade Gaza. Hamas, you see, called off the six-month ceasefire a day early and has been lobbing rockets into Israel ever since.
Can I spread the contents of my stocking on the coffee table before I flagellate myself?
The postmodern controversy enshrouding Christmas gets thicker.
Michael Medved has a Townhall column in which he says that it’s come to the point where Christmas as a holiday is under attack from the left and right. The lefties, of course, attack it from the angle of all that smartass separation-of-church-and-state stuff, which is actually justification for their mindset that religion per se is an outmoded human institution. But then he points out that there is a growing number of fundamentalist / Calvinist ministers and spokespeople who insist on proclaiming as loudly as possible that nearly everybody is missing the real reason why Christmas is worth celebrating, which is that, despite God’s wrath over our innate and total depravity, there is a way to gain his mercy. Medved says that, even though polls show that most Americans pray and consider themselves religious – and that, in effect, means they consider themselves Christian – you’re just not going to get them on board with the idea of spending the Yuletide season examining the finer points of erternal damnation and the way to avoid it. He implores America to reclaim the middle ground, which is its traditional attitude toward the holiday, focusing on its role as a time for families and friends to gather and eat good food, sing carols and other seasonal songs, and exchange gifts.
Now, one may say, “Medved is a mere Jew; how is he qualified to address theological disputes withing Christianity?”
Well, perhaps he’s uniquely qualified, given that he’s a devout Jew and is steeped in what the Old Testament has to say about this God everyone is discussing.
Then I came across a post at the theological blog Parchment and Pen that said forthrightly – even in sort of a bragging tone – that if the easily offended postmodern really wants to be offended by something when it comes to Christianity, it would be the premise that God, in his wrath, finds you to be a vile and unworthy being. Pretty much the kind of thing Medved meant when he discussed the complications of Christmas coming from the right.
It’s at this point that the dialogue starts up in my head again.
A: What if the wrath-of-God folks are right?
B: Well, I doubt if they are. It looks like blackmail to me, a bastardization of Pascal’s Wager into a bumper sticker: “If you say there’s no God, you’d better be right.”
A: Are you sure you’re not embracing Kathleen Parker-style snobbery, looking down your nose at “oogedy-boogedy” types?
B: That’s a danger, and I want to make sure I’m not doing that. In fact, dismissiveness is intellectual laziness. (A few years ago, I met an old high school buddy for beers and at some point our conversation turned to our spiritual lives. He said he viewed Christianity as “some sort of blood cult.” To makes such a pronouncement and then be completely done with the world’s largest and most influential religion smacks of an incuriosity that will come back to disqualify one from participation in a variety of debates, it seems to me.)
A: So you’re willing to keep reading, asking questions?
B: Certainly. To say, however, that I go forward without any opinions on what I know so far – well, that would be dishonest, too.
A: Is it okay to wish you a Merry Christmas?
B: Of course. I find more reasons to love Jesus every day.
12.24.08
The Christmas Eve post 2008
The challenge here is to systematize all that swirls within my skull today. I shall pour a fresh cup of coffee and marshal my resources.
I think I have zeroed in on both the most significant spiritual insight I’ve had all year and also the most significant sticking point I still come up against.
I think.
I’d say the most significant spiritual insight is the consideration that none of this is ours save for having been given to us as gifts. Not the view outside our window, not the house from which we peer, not our cars, clothes, pets, family members, friends, careers, talents, knowledge we have amassed. Not even our minds or our bodies.
As I am wont to do, I work these things out as dialogues – arguments – in my head, and as I first started articulating this, Argument Participant Number Two said, “But, of course they’re ours. Certainly our minds and bodies. Look at what Jefferson said in his thunderous Declaration. Our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights.”
To which Participant Number One replied, “I remind you of the clause that preceeds that assertion, which is that we are endowed by our Creator with these rights. They are gifts, which God did not have to bestow on us when he willed us into existence.”
Now, the reassuring thing is that a real gift cannot be taken away. If someone who loves you hands you something wonderful and says, “Here, this is yours now,” you can be sure that there are no strings attached. That said, the appropriate attitude for you to take as recipient is gratitude, which involves a resolve to remember that you came into the wonderful thing in question through no effort of your own. You did not earn it in the marketplace. You did not win it in a competition. Nonetheless, it’s yours.
So even our rights, our possession of which is as close to individual sovereignty as we come, were not ours until they were given to us.
Wouldn’t it be pretty crummy of us to use these gifts in ways for which they were not designed, much as if we were to operate an appliance or toy we’d found under the tree with no regard for the owner’s manual? Furthermore, wouldn’t it be really crummy to put out of our minds the manner in which we’d come into possession of them?
So there’s something humbling about returning to a remembrance of how we came to have such basics as our breath and our ability to make choices.
Okay, that’s the insight.
The most significant sticking point against which I bump is the frustration of everybody’s zeal to think my insights mean that I’m in agreement with them. I use the term “everybody” deliberately; see the post below for the gamut of professors of spiritual truth with whom I come in contact in my life. It spans the spectrum from New Agers through fundamentalists.
Christmas Eve is for me, as it is, for a wide range of people, an emotional day. I spend a lot of time with scripture as well as theological and apologetic writings. I contemplate fervently the historically verifiable facts of the first Christmas, and the entire life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Usually, I’m moved to offer some thoughts and feelings, as I’m doing right now in this blog post. The irony is that I bristle if someone responds by saying, “Yes! Yes! Now you’re getting close!”
Getting close makes me skittish. The way folks on the happy-happy side of the spectrum (the New Agers, the left-o, inclusive and diverse and green mainline Protestants, and the bestselling pep-talk pop icons) interpret that is to say I’m zeroing in on how much I’m loved by God, or Source energy or whatever. The way the fundies and hyper-Calvinists interpret it is to say that I’m coming to see how important a word-by-word digestion of inerrant scripture is. I think I may have recounted, at some point, my experience a while back when I wrote a newspaper column in which I publicly worked out some of this effort tofeel my way toward a solid and consistent faith. A couple of days later, I got a note in the snail-mail from a total stranger who said he’d read the column and was glad to see that I was seriously inquiring about such things. The very next thing he said was that since he’d become a fundamentalist the ultimate truth had opened up for him and changed his life. He invited me to come to his church and get going on such a path. I felt like mailing the guy back a photo of my middle finger. He was talking right past my entire body of thought and shoving his agenda in my face.
So at age 53, at 10:08 AM on December 24, 2008, I still reserve the right – after all, it’s a gift from my Creator, is it not? – to proceed at my own pace, proclaiming truth when I know it to be so, and refraining from drawing conclusions when they don’t really feel like conclusions. To do any less would be to act out of worry over someone else’s conclusions about salvation and Hell. Surely a God who really loves me would be in support of such a degree of self-honesty.
I guess the shorthand for all this is that I know what I buy with my gut, and that’s all I can bring to my friendship with God this Christmas Eve.
I do pray that His guidance will pull me the rest of the way.
And this is how that crud plays itself out on the theological level
Here’s a conference that’s going to take place next June in Cincinnati.
There is no end to the variety of poisonous hooey and garbage and dog vomit put forth in the name of the Creator.
I have so much to say about this as we approach Christmas Eve, and as we all digest the onslaught of headlines about economic apocalypse and geopolitical volatility.
It’s not just these New Age / green types. In the background as I write this I’m hearing Joel and Victoria Osteen being interviewed by Larry King on the television. They have no clue as to how to really minister to a human soul in hurt. People are calling in with real questions and issues and all these two have to offer is happy talk of the most insipid and dentally correct kind.
Then there’s the whole panoply of fundie zealotry that I address in the comment thread under the post below.
On the advent of this year’s Christmas, I can honestly say I’ve never more hungrily demanded the honest-to-God truth from this universe than I do as I type this.
I’ll develop this in a fully-fleshed-out post tomorrow. For now, I close and retire with this prayer on my raised fist.
There’s so much counterfeit in this stinking world, Lord. Where is the Truth?
12.23.08
Those wacky Seattle greens prove once and for all that human life is way down their list of concerns
In that city, you see, they refuse to use salt on their snow-and-ice-covered roads. The result? Lots of crashes. File under “well, duh.”
This is the same mentality that spurred climate expert Sheryl Crow to admonish us all to use one square of TP to adminster hygiene after a trip to the water closet. It doesn’t achieve the needed result by any means, but, by Source Energy, Mother Gaia is unsullied.
Mass numbers of grown adults signing on to sheer idiocy. That’s how we get soiled trou, smashed-up cars, and a Marxist president.
An enthusiastic endorsement from expected quarters
. . . for the Chicago Marxist’s pick for labor secretary, from the People’s Weekly World.
12.22.08
He’s nobody’s Reasonable Gentleman
. . . and that’s one of the many reasons why here at BN we love Vice President Cheney.
He and his boss do exude character of a degree that’s rare in Washington, though.
Bg-time confirmation of the global scope of this thing
Toyota posts a loss for the first time since 1941.
Destiny imposes one of those little sets of parameters
I’ve had something confirmed for me that’s rather a drag to fully let in: I’ve become allergic to dogs.
I love dogs. Had dogs all through my growing-up years, and two of my most beloved family members in my adult years have been dogs. Since the last one passed on, we’ve been a cat household, but I’d figured someday I’d get another canine companion. I guess that won’t be.
Over the past year, I’ve had three or four episodes in which dramatic upheavals of my physical condition were clearly attributable to my having palled around with pooches. About a year ago, Mrs. BN and I went to my sister’s house for a dinner / holiday get-together. My nephew and his wife brought their little terrier, Oscar. We frolicked as we usually do. On the drive home, my eyes swelled nearly shut and tears cascaded down my puffy, blotchy cheeks. In the spring, I dog-sat for a family that went on vacation to Florida. The first day, I went to their house for a get-acquainted session, which involved much climbing on the couch, paws in the lap, licking and such. Within five minutes of leaving, I got the balloon-face syndrome again, this time with a little difficulty in breathing. Got some benadryl at the store and that’s how I made it through the week.
Last night, Mrs. BN and I attended a Christmas party. Great folks, great chow. good drinks, and two black labs with whom I engaged in human-canine fellowship. There was another guitarist there, and we played some music – carols, plus some blues and folk music. While we were playing, I noticed I couldn’t draw a decent breath. Also, again, my face felt all hot and itchy. Not wishing to appear melodramatic, I didn’t say anything at the time, but as we left and walked to our car, I mentioned it to Mrs. BN, told her I could feel my bronchial tubes swelling shut. I let her drive home. She seriously considered taking me to the ER, but I convinced her just to go on home. She let me puff on an inhaler she keps handy for her occasional bouts of athsma, and the relief was instant. I took two benadryls and went to bed.
This morning, while WS was out, she ran into a physician friend of ours and told him of my experience. He told her to have me get to a heallth-care provider first thing tomorrow morning and get tested. He said I’d probably given something I’ll need to keep with me at all times. He firmly told her to convey his admonishment to me that I must do this. He said that otherwise the next encounter could kill me.
Man, if anything can be filed under the category “aw, dang,” it’s the prospect of not making any more dog friends the rest of my life.
12.20.08
This option may yet look viable to Western decision-makers
Michael Ledeen is one of those bracingly plain-spoken observers who tries to give good sense an airing despite the cacophony. In this Pajamas Media post, he looks at the implications of The Chicago Marxist’s promise to Israel to protect it under a nuclear umbrella (which is tantamount to accepting an Iranian nuke), and concludes that such a move, and Iran’s strategic response, may force TCM to consider the one option that should have been pursued – well, probably way back in the Dutch era: regime change.
