Last Entry of 2008

Doors Close at About 200 Woolworths in Britain


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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 27, 2008


Filed at 2:48 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- About 200 Woolworths stores in Britain have shut their doors for good.

The stores that closed Saturday represent about a quarter of the company's shops. The rest of the stores are to close within about a week unless a last-minute buyer is found for the failed retailer. It filed for a form of bankruptcy protection last month.

About 27,000 people are expected to lose their jobs.

The company's current debt-laden predicament is a far cry from the clamor that greeted the first British store, which opened in Liverpool, northern England, in 1909 under the FW Woolworths brand -- a subsidiary of the U.S. company.

click here

2008 was a nightmare. I'm lucky I'm alive. I'm curious what 2009 has in store.

Music Education

Public schools no longer support music education. How can they when half of the American people equate taxes and government with an assault on freedom?

My high school education in basic musicianship started a process that saved my life 35 years later.

Take a look at the photostory. Which kids do you want to see dead, and which teachers do you want to become mortgage brokers?

Our Town(2)/North(5)

The Stage Manager's monologue, Act 3
Stage Manager: Paul Newman
Music: Romeo Cascarino
Images: All over the 'net

"Joe the Plumber"

Seems like "Joe the Plumber" exists only at the strange Republican ideological intersection of high school student council politics and an infatuation with a 1950s television sitcom interpretation of suburbia that never existed. Why be a metaphor when you can be a maxiphore in a social hygiene film aimed at brain dead adolescents?

Hiatus

Outer Banks with best friends in the world, new blood, new immune system. Stay tuned...

North (4)

Where is Spoon River (4)

This is what happens when you think too much...

click here first

Stephen, the Musician

Passers-by, reflect and consider...
The gods shall endow us with embryonic tools for our use
To assemble a life and a path.

For the carpenter, braces and shaving planes,
For the cobbler, the pegs and awl,
For the shopkeeper, ledgers and shelves.

For the banker, keen fingers and an eye for gain,
For the farmer, strength to wrest sustenance from barren prairie fields,
For the orator, a shiny tongue of Panglossian appeal.

For the artist, pigments and brushes,
For the poet, language, rhythm, and shades of meaning,

For the musician, dancing notes of color, depth and weight-
non-corporeal violins, piccolos, horns, and bassoons-
swirling in a cacophonous aerial ballet of unheard possibility.

These god-endowed tools shall reside in our heads!

But the tools of mere mortals,
perseverance, diligence, dedication and loyalty,
The tools that cause the quickening of hands-

These man-worshipped tools shall lurk in our hearts!

But I was born inexplicably with music in my heart-
And the tools of mere mortals residing incongruously in my head
Were confiscated by strangers wearing the selfish robes of...
Mentors!
Who with the certainty of the insular
Tried to compel my life and my path.

From the chemist, chalk and fire,
From the doctor, medicinal elixirs and omnipotence,
From the professor, inflexibility and infallibility,

From the lawyer, the precedent, the cruelly twisted logic-
the book, the whig, the obscured agenda-
the spectral comrade of mutual convenience.

I could no more deny the banshee-keen of their leaden demands
Nor dull my misplaced mortal tools of helpless compulsion
Than I could cut music from my heart!

So my hands and arms withered and disappeared,
In a weary bi-brachial waltz towards the Plain of Lethe.
Like sand eroded from the banks of Spoon River,
Washed in surrender to the Father of Waters.

Where Is Spoon River? (3)

Click here

Receiving a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 1998 re-ignited my quest for Spoon River. This time, I realized that I would have to use my knowledge of American literature and my skills as a musician and composer to bring Spoon River to life.

My long time neurologist and treasured friend suggested I write a series of art songs for her daughter, who is studying voice at the music conservatory of Gettysburg College. Since she's the matriarch of a family of accordionists, she specified that the accompaniment be written for the accordion with her son in mind as a performer. I immediately saw that this was an unprecedented but perfect compositional medium. Of course, my textual sources would be from Spoon River.

Much to my surprise, I found that in the nearly 100 years since the publication of "Spoon River Anthology", many musicians had tackled the daunting task of setting Masters' poetry to music. The work is written in an unusual synthesis of blank (free) verse, gravestone epitaph doggerel, mildly archaic Midwestern speech patterns, and artistic license. I had decided to use an amalgamation of the style associated with the masters of 20th-century Philadelphia art song composition (Curtis faculty members past and present including Samuel Barber, Giancarlo Menotti, Vincent Persichetti, Ned Rorem) and traditional American folk song. This approach allowed me to use polychordal harmonization and pandiatonicism in conjunction with simple melody lines. However, Masters' verse did not "scan" well for a smooth incorporation into a song. I was forced to make changes to Masters' words, but strictly maintained his intent and meaning. The natural expressiveness of the soprano voice coupled with the unusually wide range of emotional evocation possible with the accordion produced something, in my opinion, that is unique and mutually reinforcing.

"Spoon River Songs" (Senderoff, 2008) begins with a setting of "The Hill". This narrative poem is the introduction to "Spoon River Anthology". It is stated unequivocally that small town life was not idyllic. It could be horrific. The characters die as a result of wanton acts of cruelty, bad luck, overwork, and alcoholism. Although they are all sleeping, it is probably a troubled sleep. I have set the ominous drone of the accordion against a plaintive vocal melody that moves between loosely defined modal and minor tonalities. The overall mood is sad but resigned. Although I have set only the first verse (involving male characters), the second verse describing the tragedies of female characters could easily be set to the existing melody.

The second song is a setting of the epitaph of "Eugenia Todd". Ms. Todd impressed me as an irritating woman who would corner you at a party and pour out a litany of physical ailments that seem to be of equal importance, or the cause of her bedrock existential decompensations. Although she is essentially unbalanced, she is firmly in touch with her emotional needs and severely affected by disappointment and loss. I tried to illuminate these aspects of her personality by inappropriate use of traditional American Square dance tunes, dissonant polychords, and a mocking "oom-pah" rhythm in accompaniment. The vocal melody is humorously melismatic. It employs awkward rhythms characterized by hemiola, as well as a psychotic bit of Sprechstimme. A poignant central section highlights Ms. Todd's existential sadness.

The third and currently final song of the cycle is the epitaph of "Lucinda Matlock". Masters uses her as a vehicle to extol the virtues possessed by the original settlers of Spoon River: devotion to family, devotion to neighbors, acceptance of hard work as the pathway to accomplishment and happiness, as well as an unfettered joy in the simple pleasures of life. Masters saw these values disappearing during his lifetime, and many of the epitaphs scold the current inhabitants of Spoon River. Ms. Matlock met her husband playing "snap-all to Winchester", a partner-swapping game occurring at dances. They were happily married longer than most people live. During that time, she saw her share of joy and tragedy, but at 96, she had simply lived enough and moved eagerly to the next world. She berates the current inhabitants for expressing anger, sorrow, and weariness in their lives. "Life is too strong for you. It takes life to love life," she says. I have illustrated her love of dancing, child rearing, and constancy with a repetitive rocking figure similar to one used by Samuel Barber in "Knoxville Summer of 1915". Her melody resembles a lilting folk tune. Conflict and dissonance are absent from the accompaniment. The central section is a transcription of a traditional Kentucky fiddle tune called "Rose in the Mountain". I took liberties with the text of her song; I could not let such a wonderful woman refer to people as "degenerate sons and daughters", so I dropped the line.

If you have clicked at the proper place before reading this entry, you have heard one of the original cast members of "Spoon River Anthology" present the epitaph of "Lucinda Matlock". When I composed Ms. Matlock's song, I changed Masters' text as shown below:

Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville, and played snap out at Winchester,
One time we changed partners, driving home in the moonlight of middle June.
And then and then, and then, then, then!
I found Davey!

We were married and lived together for Seven, Seven, Seventy years!
Enjoying working raising twelve children
Eight of whom we lost ere I reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I nursed the sick, kept the house, nursed the sick-

But on holiday-

Ran over fields where sang the pretty larks, and by Spoon River gather'd many shells,
Flowers, flowers, medicinal weed,
Shouting to the wooded hills and valleys green!
Green!
Shouting! Singing! Singing! Shouting!

At ninety six, I had lived enough, That is all.

At ninety six, I had lived enough and passed, passed-
To a land of sweet repose

What's this I hear of sorrow and weariness?
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Life is too strong for you!
It takes life to love life!

Shouting! Singing! Singing! Loving!


Below is a MIDI rendition of the song; when I can get recordings of the concert I'll post them.


Click here

North (3)

Where Is Spoon River? (2)

click here first



I was born in Washington, DC in 1953, and grew up in suburban Cleveland, Ohio.

I pursued my education in Berea and Oberlin, Ohio, Interlochen, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Evanston, Chicago, Urbana, and Granite City, Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri, and finally, Rochester, New York. I established myself in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and settled down with my wife in a suburb of Wilmington, Delaware.

Between 1972 and 1992, I lived in suburban homes, dormitories, crowded apartments, more or less co-operative group houses, a converted Motel 6, an ancient row house in a dead mill town, a basement, and in several instances, an automobile. I rarely lived more than a year and a half in the same place, considerably less in the automobile.

While such an odyssey is not unusual, I noticed something disconcerting. The communities in which I lived appeared to be interchangeable. Surprisingly, I began and ended my journey in what felt like exactly the same place. When people ask me where I am from, I jokingly reply, “anywhere and nowhere".


I found life to be soporific and repetitive in suburban Cleveland (Fairview Park, for God's sake!) by the time I was 13. In desperation, I retreated to fiction and poetry, mostly not age-appropriate. About this time, I discovered "Spoon River Anthology" (1915) by Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950). Although I was not aware of it, this volume of poetry was Masters' magnum opus, and one of the cornerstones of 20th-century American literature. The book held a cobra-like fascination for me, because the characters Masters created were speaking from the grave through epitaphs. I was enthralled by these characters; they had deep passions and strongly held opinions, they were unusually perceptive and tragically unaware, they were brutally honest and criminally deceptive. Most importantly, their lives all seemed to be intertwined inextricably within the unique, confining, small Midwestern town-of-another-time, Spoon River. Little did I know that the characters were inspired by Masters’ fellow townsfolk. Unlike me, they had roots.

My high school drama club presented the Broadway musical adaptation of "Spoon River Anthology" (Aidman, 1963) in 1970. I was selected to be the music director, and helped several

fellow students prepare and perform the music that accompanied the dramatic readings of Masters' poetry. This was an early life-changing experience for me. I learned that poetry read from a page in silence and isolation was flat and listless, but came to life with powerful immediacy


when spoken. I realized that "poetry" could become an emotionally shattering experience within a communal dramatic context. The inhabitants of Spoon River became more real to me than some of my classmates. Most importantly, I recognized that the main character of "Spoon River Anthology" was actually Spoon River itself. I had to find Spoon River. After I devoured Masters' "The New Spoon River" (1924), "Winesburg, Ohio" (Anderson, 1919), and attended several performances of "Our Town" (Wilder, 1938), my search for a physical as well as a metaphorical "Spoon River" became a lifelong obsession.

My initial search for Spoon River was a resounding failure. Obviously, I did not have sufficient knowledge of American history, sociology, nor the maturity to conduct a meaningful search. College and time would remedy those deficiencies. Much to my dismay, I learned that small town life in America began disappearing at the turn of the 20th century, and had completely vanished at least two decades before my birth. I was now living in Evanston, Illinois, only 216 miles northeast of Lewistown, Masters' home during adolescence. He would later model Spoon River on this town, as well as nearby Petersburg, his childhood home. As my feelings of loneliness and disconnection increased, my search became more desperate. I continued my education in Urbana, Illinois. Lewistown was now only 115 miles due west. I made the drive.


Lewistown was a shock. Although it was a small Illinois town, Lewistown appeared, in its salient features, indistinguishable from my home of adolescence! In desperation, I drove to Petersburg, only 35 miles away. I went to Oakland Cemetery and found Masters' grave.


My heart leapt as I read words I had memorized in high school:

Good friends, let’s to the fields...
After a little walk and by your pardon,
I think I’ll sleep, there is no sweeter thing.
Nor fate more blessed than to sleep.
-"Tomorrow is My Birthday" (1918)

I wandered through the cemetery. I saw names I recognized (Ann Rutledge), names I imagined I knew. A cursory exploration of Petersburg gave the same disappointing result as the exploration of Lewistown. If there was a Spoon River, it was long gone. My search for Spoon River was now entirely metaphorical and relegated to the back burner due to the sequential demands of graduate school, a postdoctoral appointment, the establishment of a career, and the settling of a life. Nevertheless, I re-read "Spoon River Anthology" every few years. I realized that Spoon River was a personal myth, located in my emotional and intellectual landscape.

Receiving a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 1998 re-ignited my quest for Spoon River. This time, I realized that I would have to use my knowledge of American literature and my skills as a musician and composer to bring Spoon River to life.

Hiatus

Sorry for the disappearing act...two weeks in the hospital gave me new blood plasma and a new immune system, thanks to ca. 15000 donors...

North (2)

Extreme Bullshit

This was the featured obit in the Times:

Barbara Warren, a champion endurance athlete in the over-60 age group, died in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Tuesday , three days after crashing during the bicycling portion of the Santa Barbara Triathlon. She was 65 and lived in San Diego.

Her twin sister, Alexandra Drake, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Ms. Warren had broken her neck in the fall and was paralyzed from the neck down, breathing with the help of a ventilator, when she signaled, by blinking her eyes and nodding, that she wanted the ventilator turned off.

“She wanted to leave,” Ms. Drake told the newspaper in confirming the death. “No athlete would like to have a life with only their eyes talking.”

Ms. Warren, an Austrian-born psychologist, competed 13 times in the Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Hawaii, a grueling event consisting of a 2.4-mile ocean swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run, finishing eight times in the top five in her age group and winning in 2003, at the age of 60. She ran a seven-day race across the Sahara Desert, competed in double and triple triathlons, and with her sister, also an endurance athlete, often competed in bicycle relays, including the Race Across America, in which they took turns riding, covering nearly 3,000 miles in less than 10 days.

In addition to her sister, her survivors include her husband, Tom Warren, the 1979 Ironman champion, and two daughters.

“This is a woman who understood adventure sport and the risks that go with it,” Bob Babbitt, a triathlete and the publisher of Competitor magazine, said in a phone interview Friday. “We all know that when you do this stuff, going 30 or 40 miles per hour downhill with 130 pounds of pressure in one-inch tires, this stuff happens. You do this in a car, and the car hits a rock, no problem. The bike hits a rock, it’s death. We understand that.”

I have known dozens of people who communicated final wishes with eyeblinks, but they died of ALS, not some damn fool endurance freakshow. I also know of someone who changed the world with eyeblinks. He has lived with ALS his entire adult life. His name is Stephen Hawking.

Here's another link. I'm in there. (view with IE)

Yeah, these events are used as charity platforms, and I saw two ALS nonprofits on the Ironman(tm) recipient rolls. So what? Get real.

The Nice Guy

kunst und mittel Amerika oder "lumpkinproletariat"

• Dramatic Overtures The World's Most Honored Music Longines Symphonette Society
  
• Volume 12 3 Lp Set $10
• Greatest Overtures of Opera The World's Most Honored Music Longines Symphonette Society
• Volume 8 3 Lp Set $10
• Portraits of Many Nations The World's Most Honored Music Longines Symphonette Society
  
• Volume 14 3 Lp Set $10
• America's Favorite Waltzes Family Library of Beautiful Listening Longines Symphonette Society
  
• Volume 12 3 Lp Set $10
• Six Immortal Symphonies The World's Most Honored Music Longines Symphonette Society
  
• Volume 3 3 Lp Set $10
• Keyboard Masterpieces The World's Most Honored Music Longines Symphonette Society
  
• Volume 2 3 Lp Set $10
• Great Opera - Great Stars The World's Most Honored Music Longines Symphonette Society
  
• Volume 11 3 Lp Set $10
• Symphonic HighlightsThe World's Most Honored Music Longines Symphonette Society
  
• Volume 4 3 Lp Set $10
• Musical Landscapes The World's Most Honored Music Longines Symphonette Society
  
• Volume 1 3 Lp Set $10

• Peter I. Tchaikovsky Great Men of Music Time Life Records 4 Lp Set $15
• Ludwig von Beethoven Great Men of Music Time Life Records 4 Lp Set $15

Reader's Digest Music SKU: 77482
Discover a musical escape destined to lighten your days and sweeten your nights.
A rich musical tapestry of classical, film, folk and new age favorites, Symphony of the Senses will calm your mind, body and spirit… and fill you with renewed energy, warmth and hope. 72 best-loved masterpieces from the world's greatest composers.

* Rhapsody In Blue
* The Merry Widow Waltzes
* Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet
* William Tell Overture: Finale
* Tara's Theme from Gone With The Wind
* The Evening Bell
* Adagio for Strings
* Unchained Melody from Ghost
* More

I will not speculate as to why these material culture artifacts exist, except to state that the Franklin Mint is not too far away, and has not collided with matter, and released two 511KeV gamma rays. But wait, there's more..... WHAT IF a golden melody, one of the selections from your collection of EVERY CLASSICAL MELODY YOU'LL EVER NEED was to be given the "Switched-On Bach" treatment, that is to say, turned into electronic music a la Walter Carlos, who now goes by the name of Wendy Carlos, due to a sex change operation? Well, the immortal "Pavanne" by Gabriel Faure has been converted to a MIDI file and passed through the S-D3.01, an UNFINISHED, BUT WORKING hybrid (FM and subtractive) software synthesizer of my own design, programmed in SYNTHEDIT.

click here

Where Is Spoon River? (1)

click here first

Due to America’s historic and present-day cultural diversity, I may be going out on a limb to speak of the American “psyche”. Nevertheless, I will assert that the current, self-woven fabric of the American psyche is being ripped apart by diametrically opposed forces inherent in its weaving. 

On one hand, our mythologized, historically ingrained desire for, and idealization of, the values of independence, mobility (both geographic and social), “rugged individuality”, bravery, and self-reliance has been,  paradoxically, satisfied and intensified by the destructive forces of unprecedented technological change and extreme social dislocation that occurred during the horrific twentieth century. 

On the other hand, in response to the above-mentioned destructive forces, an equally strong, mythologized desire for social continuity, familiarity, communal but family-centric activities (both social and economic), nurturing, and conformity has been manifested. These desires have given rise to a desperate need to belong to a place-specific but time-independent safe, idealized “community”.

This community, or “small town”, is located temporally in an ill-defined mythological and nostalgic agrarian past, and located geographically in New England, the Southeast, or the Midwest. Exploring the forces driving American urbanization and the resulting disappearance of interpersonal and economic bonds characteristic of “small” community life presents a complex topic beyond the scope of this essay.

 
Indeed, the great majority of 18th and 19th century Americans lived in small, stable communities that existed over many generations, as a walk through an older, non-urban church cemetery will confirm. Examination of economic and family records suggest these communities were cemented together by blood and social interdependence. The decline and disappearance of “small town America” is coincident with the end of the “Pax Britannica” during the first decade of the 20th century. The ensuing fifty-year world war, of heretofore-unseen savagery, was fueled by technological advances and extreme social dislocations. The final demise of small-town American life may be dated to the creation of artificial “small-town” communities such as Levittown, NY in the mid-1940s and universal availability of instant communication by telephone, radio, and television by the early 1950s.




Obtaining an answer to the question: What was it like to live in a small American town “back then”? is problematic. History is written by the victors, and is of limited use in the study and interpretation of vernacular culture, which deals with the story of the vanquished. Therefore, capture of unprocessed recollection or narrative is critical to preserve the stories of people ignored by historians. Collection of these data is left to folklorists or enthusiasts operating at the fringes of academia. 19th-century small-town recollections are unfortunately beyond the range of individual human memory. Recollections of early to mid-20th-century small-town life will invariably be colored by the above-mentioned mythology and nostalgia, because this was the time period of rapid urbanization, cataclysmic societal change, and social fragmentation. Study of material culture artifacts is useful, but provides at best equivocal interpretation. Perhaps useful answers to the question: What was it like to live in a small American town “back then”? may be found in art, specifically, in literature. Certainly, not in journalism posing as literature; the small towns of Agee and Evans’ “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” (1941) are a nightmare vision of a dying social order. Alternatively, fiction exemplified by Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” (1919) or drama exemplified by Wilder’s “Our Town” (1938) could provide more “truthful” information. But I think the essence of small-town America may be expressed by a combination of poetry and music.

The Agony of 10 msec....

Hope

"You know my situation, which could be a matter of weeks, or months before the wheel runs off. Nobody likes to run out of time. But it's not nearly as great a tragedy as Hiroshima, or the millions of people blown to hell in a war that could be avoided. Those are the real tragedies in life. What's happening to me and Woody are just mistakes of nature, things that eventually someday will be overcome."....Cisco Houston

Cisco and Woody Guthrie
cancer and Huntington's disease



Huddie Ledbetter
Leadbelly
ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease)




1st US drug for Huntington's disease wins approval
RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR – 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators on Friday cleared the first treatment approved in the United States for Huntington's, a rare inherited disease that causes uncontrolled movements, deterioration of mental abilities and, ultimately, death.

Scientists Discover Major Genetic Cause Of Colorectal Cancer
Main Category: Colorectal Cancer
Also Included In: Genetics; Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 15 Aug 2008 - 6:00 PDT

About one-third of colorectal cancers are inherited, but the genetic cause of most of these cancers is unknown. The genes linked to colorectal cancer account for less than 5 percent of all cases.

Scientists at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and colleagues have discovered a genetic trait that is present in 10 to 20 percent of patients with colorectal cancer. The findings strongly suggest that the trait is a major contributor to colorectal cancer risk and likely the most common cause of colorectal cancer to date.

Scientists Create Stem Cells From Lou Gehrig's Disease Patients

August 1, 2008

In a stem cell research breakthrough, scientists have reprogrammed skin cells from two elderly patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis -- also called ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease -- to act like stem cells.

Brave New SportsWorld

I watched about one minute of the Olympics opening ceremony. I thought I heard Leni Riefenstahl beating on her coffin screaming, "Let me out, I have work to do!" After one minute of exposure to womens' beach volleyball and the Brave New SportsWorld that NBC is ramming down our throats, I decided to make a photostory about reality. I doubt that a world society based on this manifesto is where I want to live:

"Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."

Triumph of the will, and strength through joy...

Images from all over the net, music by Copland.

...Pointed a Watergun at Us...

click here, then click on cartoon

North (1)

North? First, we have to locate North. It is neither a direction nor a place. It is more like a state used to describe phase behavior (e.g. gaseous or liquid), or allotropic designation (e.g. coal, graphite, diamond, buckyball or nanotube forms of carbon). It could be an emotion experienced in complete isolation. Or it could be the timeless existence of people sitting in wooden chairs on an empty stage, forgetting and waiting, while the light from a companion star takes a journey of millions of miles.

Maybe a functional definition of North could be useful.

North reveals itself as a narrowing of perception. There is a decrease in entities to perceive, and the significance of these entities, both structural and conceptual, becomes increasingly questionable. You do not return from North. Your disappearance can be mapped with decreasing accuracy, but never understood nor retraced.

Perhaps this is the sound of North:
"Alle Menschen Müssen Sterben"

"Life is Liberace's momma, Donald Duck and Dalai Lama, Yes Sir!"

240 Creation Research Society Quarterly

Why Mammal Body Hair Is an Evolutionary Enigma

Jerry Bergman*

*Jerry Bergman, Ph.D., Northwest State College 22-600 State Rt 34, Archbold, OH 43543

Received April 4, 2003; Revised October 13, 2003

Abstract: Mammal body hair is a complex structure that involves several basic parts, including a shaft, a root, and a follicle. The most common theory currently in vogue is that hair evolved from reptile scales. Although both scales and hair preserve well in the fossil record, especially in amber, no evidence of hair evolution has been found after more than a century of searching. Another problem is that all primates have thick, coarse hair called fur, and explanations as to how this fur was lost in human evolution are deficient and contradictory.

Nihilism Day

...Harry Smith, nothing, nothing, nothing....

Funnies Day

There is too much seriousness on this blog lately. Here's a cartoon generated by a Web 2 cartoon engine. It will be part of my portfolio when I apply for the CFO job at IndyMAC. Click the image.

It was quaint! Great ice cream!

There are countless towns on the New England seacoast that are idyllic three-season tourist destinations. They used to be working towns. They died. It's like a memory box on the wall. It holds your keepsakes, but used to be used by a Linotype operator who worked all his life for a long-silent newspaper.

Below is a photostory about memories that never made it into boxes. Images are from all over the web. Music is by Bill Morrissey.

Our Town

Our Town, a play by Thornton Wilder, has no scenery, no props, requires no costumes other than street clothes, and has essentially no plot. It does deal with issues such as life and death, temporal limits, and eternity. The play transcends entertainment in much the same way the Bible transcends literature, or relativity transcends a scientific theory. It is estimated that the play is performed every day somewhere in the world. Essentially all performances of this play bring light into the world.

Except two.

The original film adaptation (1940) converted the third act into a dream sequence. Emily didn't die, she woke up, married George, and rendered all the questions posed by Wilder moot. This Hollywood Happy Ending, in my opinion, is a mindless abomination. Perhaps the producer was planning a sequel in which George and Emily's kids join the Navy and single-handedly avenge Pearl Harbor on board the USS Grover's Corners.

There is a musical adaptation (1955) in which Frank Sinatra was the Stage Manager, and sang "Love and Marriage". Perhaps this inspired Mel Brooks' "Springtime for Hitler" lunacy. After all, this swill appeared on a television program called "Producers' Showcase".

Aaron Copland wrote the music for the 1940 film. His thematic synthesis "Our Town" is one of the cornerstones of the American symphonic literature. It is simple, poignant, and beautiful. Most of Copland's music could serve as incidental music for the play, but I have never heard of any such production. . Below is a setting I created of most of Act 3 to some not-too-well-known Copland.

http://home.comcast.net/~steventrish/otown.mp3

Futility

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the only Americans to be executed for espionage.



Ruth Greenglass, whose damning testimony in the Rosenberg atomic-bomb spy case of the early 1950s helped lead to the execution of her sister-in-law Ethel Rosenberg, died on April 7. She was 84. (Times, today)



“I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don’t remember,” David Greenglass said nearly 50 years later.

Then-U.S. Deputy Attorney General William Rogers, when later asked about the failure of the indictment of Ethel to leverage a full confession by Julius, reportedly said "She called our bluff".

"Rosenbergs are pathetic, government Will sordid, execution obscene America caught in crucifixion machine only barbarians want them burned I say stop it before we fill our souls with death-house horror". (Allen Ginsberg, As Ever 150)

From Wikipaedia:
Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were American citizens who received international attention when they were executed after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage in relation to passing information on the American atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.

The guilt of the Rosenbergs and the appropriateness of their sentence have been subject of perennial debate; however, information released after the Cold War has been taken as confirming a charge against Julius about espionage, but not in relation to atomic bombs.



Nearly everyone is dead. The Old Left, the Cold Warriors, politico sludge like Cohn and McCarthy, the Soviet Union...

Living and dead artifacts remain: Levittown, aging currently Quaker red-diaper babies who sadly avert their gaze when you say Russia and Communism in the same sentence, millions of gallons of radioactive shit at Hanford, books, books, books...

They say the Rosenbergs wanted to hear a recording of "Irene Goodnight" before they fried at Sing Sing. The Weavers, not Leadbelly.



I was born late that fall.

George Washington Bridge

George Washington Bridge, a piece for symphonic band by American composer William Schuman, has been played by every American bandsman. Written in 1950, Schuman presents, in a language used by many mid-20th century populist and social realist composers, visual and visceral impressions of the great bridge. Through the use of polychordal harmony, alternately flowing and brutally truncated melodies, jazz-inflected syncopation, and his trademark jagged, almost architectural juxtaposition of the instrumental choirs (Glass! Steel! Concrete!), Schuman evokes images of massive strength, frenzied activity, serenity, desolate loneliness, and the boundless, bare-knuckled optimism of post-war New York City. I first played GWB in the late 1960s at Interlochen. The Bridge, and all bridges in general, had by this time assumed a central place in my personal mythology.

This post refers back to my April 9 post. Bridges and bridge building represent to me a human endeavor that I consider quasi-sacred. People come together to plan and create something real, of "bricks and mortar", that says, with emphatic conclusiveness, "connected". Things, people, and ideas can flow in a bi-directional, facile, and direct fashion, between locales that were separated previously by arduous, mind-numbing, soul destroying, segregation-imposing journeys. The two principal characteristics needed by a bridge to support "connectedness" are immense strength and easy access. Paradoxically, an immensely strong bridge requires continuous loving care and maintenance to survive.

I first met the GWB in 1962 as a passenger in my grandfather's car. He took me (Stevie, look at this!) over to Jersey and back. I had imprinted upon The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by H. H. Swift a number of years earlier, as is common for many people of my generation, but nothing prepared me for the display of benevolent but brutal power by the George Washington Bridge. "HEY STEVIE" it roared, "I'M DA GEORGE FUCKIN' WASHINGTON BRIDGE!!! I'LL TAKE YA OVER AN' BACK OK, BUT DON'T GIVE ME NO SHIT. NONE!! HUH...WASDAT? YEAH, HE'S MY BUDDY, DA LITTLE RED LIGHTHOUSE...WE'RE PARTNERS, SEE? WE DO EVERYTHING LIKE A TEAM! YA GOTTA PROBLEM WIT' DAT??"

Seven summers later, I played Schuman's George Washington Bridge, and images roared through my mind that begged to be expressed. Below is a photostory. The images are from all over the 'net. The music is played by the Keystone Wind Ensemble, Jack Stamp, Director.

You May Already Be a Brand

Totes, the umbrella company, developed a celebrity tie-in to market said umbrellas. The campaign was beneficial to Totes (moved product) and the celebrity (allowed her to establish herself as a brand). The celebrity was Rihanna, a teenage singer from Barbados.

She was launched to brandom with:

(1) A song: “You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh.” (perky!)

(2) A photo spread (eminently fuckable, see entry for 21 may)

(3) Customized Rihanna branded umbrellas featuring sparkly fabrics and glittery charms on the handles, made somewhere in the Third World. (Thinnngssszzz...see entry for 9 apr)

Reported in the NY Times: “We’ve worked hard to build me and my name up as a brand,” Rihanna says. “We always want to bring an authentic connection to whatever we do. It must be sincere and people have to feel that.”

How or why do people wish to shed the surly bonds of humanity and touch the face of brandiosity, to paraphrase the prototype of the modern brand, Ronald Reagan? Obviously money, but the back story is more interesting. Let's examine traditional brands and their modern perversions.

This brand is well known to guitarists. It represents the 170+ year efforts of a single family and their associates to build excellent guitars, mandolins, and ukuleles. (1) The brand is not associated with the actual product, although the brand label (logo) is applied to every instrument. Rather, it is associated with the abstract concept of consistently high quality through a long time period and multi-century utility. (2) Nor is the brand associated with the current head of the family and business owner, who is viewed as merely the custodian of the quality of production associated with the brand. (3) Nor was the association of the brand with the concept of desirability established in the minds of consumers by overwhelming, hyper-repetitive, neo-Pavlovian, electronic injection of stimulus-response operands into an electronically networked, uncritically receptive commercial pseudo-culture, which simultaneously acts as an operand delivery system and a ubiquitous popular-culture.

It is point (3) that highlights the difference between the "Rihanna" brand and the "CF Martin" brand. Marketing experts may say "Times have changed. Your descriptor "pseudo-culture" is inaccurate. These are meta- or neo-cultures! (drumroll...) AS ABE "sincere" HONEST, "authentic connection" LINCOLN SAID, We must think anew and act anew! That's Marketing 101!"

Yep. George Orwell showed us what was in Room 101.