I looked for a new, small Bush countdown widget this morning and was amazed at the number I turned up in a Google search. They come in all sizes for all operating systems. Here’s one from Credo Action. I wonder if it will self destruct on January 20.
And somehow I missed this video during the presidential campaign. Thanks to Liberal Revolt for the reference. It’s a good reminder that my guy is trying to become the president of all of us, not just nerds like me.
No spiel promised: A caller from the democratic congressional hoo-ha, just now, promised “no spiel,” then cozied up with a couple of comments designed to make me feel part of the in-group, I guess, and wound up by suggesting that I contribute $209 to the cause of keeping the congress Democratic. Myomy! I’d have been more inclined not to hang up if the leaders of my party, Pelosi, Reed, Feinstein, etc., would rein in their egos and get to work.
Rick Warren: Beating a horse that perhaps ought to be dead, I intend to listen very carefully to Rick Warren’s prayer on inauguration day. I don’t like Warren, don’t like religion hucksters generally–from Joyce Meyer to Deepak Chopra. And I think my guy could have chosen any number of better people to deliver the invocation before he, himself, delivers the most important speech of his career thusfar. Nor do I think the choice is clarified by the claim that we have to listen to folks with whom we disagree. But what the hell–this is America, God love us:
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
No child left: Two interesting pieces in today’s Washington Post (here and here) tell an ironic tale about education in the land of the free. The Shrub of legacy-seeking touts his putative achievements in the realm of education reform whilst a political pressure group lobbies a DC area school system for lower grading standards, complaining that “students [are] at a disadvantage when they seek college admission or scholarships.” I’m remembering a Czech graduate student who worked for me back in the last century. She told me one day that she was grateful to have come to the United States for graduate school because education in her country consisted of “dictionary learning” only; whereas she found herself surrounded by intellectual stimulation and creativity at our large, public, provincial, American university. That’s what we stand to lose by the pursuit of education as measurement and measuring up, what Jill Ker Conway found at Harvard in the ’50s and details in her book, True North (1994). My guy got a very good education that also included Harvard. His education secretary-in-waiting notwithstanding, I very much hope he doesn’t sign on to the Nicklebee ideology.
All we like sheep: As part of my holiday reading binge, which is by no means done yet, I read last week a wonderful little book entitled Three Bags Full (2005), characterized by author Leonie Swann as “A Sheep Detective Story.” It reminded me that The Good Shepherd remains a powerful a myth of leadership, and rightly so. A classical evocation of the myth (designed to do honor to a secular prince and not to God as is sometimes thought) occurs in Bach’s hunt cantata, #208. Everyone knows the tune, but it isn’t every day one gets to hear it performed by authentic sheep. Read through the comment thread attached to this lovely performance of “Schafe können sicher weiden.”
Here’s a wonderful piece of fun. I stole it from Fr. Mark Harris, who, in turn, stole it from TitusOneNine. To non-Anglicans, this is Anglican chant (actually sung rather well) complete with affected pronun-ci-a-ti-ons of a kind one sometimes hears from high-class British choirs.
The joke might have been better (nah, it wouldn’t), if “The Weather Report” had been sung in the manner of American congregations from the bad old days when Morning Prayer was the standard low-church Sunday service. Imagine every cadence thumped to death as congregation and choir rendered the canticles and the psalms in a manner undeviating from established parish norms, week in and week out, so that parishioners who were inclined to sleep through the service need not be disturbed by anything untoward. The chanting here is a positive delight in comparison. Give it a listen.
It turns out that “The Weather Report” was cooked up by a group of British schoolteachers who called themselves the Master Singers for a while. It was first recorded in 1966 and produced by George Martin, the producer of the Beatles. Here are links to two accounts of the whole thing from the same blog, that don’t entirely agree; and here’s another to “The Highway Code,” an earlier similar spoof, also recorded by George Martin. Both recordings “hit the British charts” in 1966, according to my source.
Anglican chant is serious, of course. It would hardly be worth parody otherwise. A Wikipedia acount, which isn’t bad, is here. In addition, here’s the best serious Anglican chanting I could find on the web. It’s the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, chanting Psalm 50. Such chanting may be accompanied or not. The Kings College video is accompanied, of course. It is also heard as sung in a big reverberant gothic building, not up close and personal to the microphone, like “The Weather Report.”
I’ve been reading about slow blogging, which Laura McKenna calls an oxymoron. Some time back I discovered Michael Pollan and slow food. Here’s what Sharon Otterman says about it in The New York Times.
The practice is inspired by the slow food movement, which says that fast food is destroying local traditions and healthy eating habits. Slow food advocates, like the chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., believe that food should be local, organic and seasonal; slow bloggers believe that news-driven blogs like TechCrunch and Gawker are the equivalent of fast food restaurants — great for occasional consumption, but not enough to guarantee human sustenance over the longer haul.
But I’m just slow.
And I’m not sure I’m ready to make any grandiose claims for my writing and thinking, though I suppose it takes some hubris to keep posting, mostly for myself — though I protest I do have some readers.
I’m aware of being old-fashioned and uncool. For some time I’ve written mostly about politics as the presidential election has caught my attention. But I like to write about other things, too; and I’m not above an occasional piece of fluff. Mostly, I think I search for common sense.
[November, 28: I’ve removed part of the previous paragraph because after five days I didn’t like it.]
So, slow blogging — it’s OK.