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.