...back in the 1960s was to have Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto together on the same stage at the same time.
Here they are in 1964 performing “The Girl From Ipanema.”
I am a very big fan of Getz’s saxophone virtuosity but not a fan of Gilberto’s voice at all.
Because even coolness has limits.
For example:
1. Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. (Cool)
2. Tonight, President Obama gives his annual State of the Union address. (Not cool)
1. The deluges we’ve been having here in Georgia lately will make the flowers grow. (Cool)
2. The deluges we’ve been having here in Georgia lately have made my back yard extremely soggy. (Not cool)
1. Someone -- probably either Louis XV (1710-1774) or Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764) -- once said, “Après moi, le déluge.” (Cool)
2. Between my soggy back yard and tonight’s State of the Union address, it (the deluge) is here. (Not cool)
But the coolest thing of all is that in preparing this post I found
this site, which will tell you more about “Après moi, le déluge” and its classical antecedents than you could ever want to know.
It’s right up my alley.
And speaking of allez, I have to go now. I shall either be listening to more of Stan Getz’s saxophone playing or delving further into my new favorite website.
Perhaps I will do both.
They’re really cool.
Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Waxing philosophical at the O.K. Corral
In our last session, we began by quoting Abraham Lincoln’s statement that if you call a tail a leg, a dog would still have four legs, not five, because calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.
In the comments section, people began waxing philosophical.
I thought it would be good to elevate the discussion to full-post status.
Carolina in Nederland said it was a trick question and she didn’t like trick questions; they make the people who ask such questions seem smart. But it doesn’t mean that they are smart, although you could argue that it is smart to ask questions that make you seem smart. Carolina is a deep thinker.
Putz from Utah agreed with me that Abe Lincoln was one smart cookie and thought the question was clever, not tricky.
Then Snowbrush out in Oregon chimed in with that old conundrum, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, did it make a sound?” Let me just say here that it certainly would have had the capacity for sound, sending out sound waves and all, but if no ear or device capable of receiving the sound waves was anywhere in the vicinity, then no, it didn’t make a sound in the traditional sense, although it could have made a sound in the non-traditional sense. Do I make myself clear?
Katherine from Bay of Plenty in New Zealand (a country in the Southern Hemisphere) presented the possibility that Abraham Lincoln might have invented the wink-smiley emoticon. What that has to do with anything, I’m not sure. Also, the link begins by saying, “While most people believe that Scott Fahlman was the first person to suggest the use of the :-) symbol for representing a smiley face,...” but I challenge that statement. Most people do not believe that Scott Fahlman was the first person to suggest the use of the :-) symbol for representing a smiley face. Most people have never heard of Scott Fahlman.
Then Anonymous, whose origin and whereabouts remain uncertain, posed another rhetorical question: “If snow falls, brushing against the trees in the woods, but no one sees or hears it, does it exist?”
That one’s easy. It most certainly does.
It just doesn’t make a sound.
Next, Elizabeth in the U.K. told us that living in a garage doesn’t make you a car.
I hastened to add that it is also important to remember that a kitten born in an oven is not a chocolate-chip cookie. Elizabeth replied that that was precisely the point she was making.
I asked Snowbrush if he was high on some substance when he made his usual wisecrack (his word) and said that I myself am high all the time without the aid of some substance. He replied, “Wow! You must save a ton of money. Then again, if you tithe, probably not.”
Leaving aside for the moment the question of my financial status and contributory habits, nobody tackled another of Snowbrush’s questions: “What--if anything--might a person’s answer to Lincoln’s question tell us about that person?”
Let me try to formulate an answer to that one.
Persons who answer “Five” find it difficult to focus on the task at hand, are easily led astray, tend to put their hope in unworkable solutions to the dilemmas facing society, and may have used marijuana. They are almost always Democrats.
Persons who answer “Four” harbor no illusions about the total depravity of humankind, are solid as a rock in their personal relationships, refuse to deviate from majority opinion even after it has become a relic from another age, have never let their automobiles drift cross the double yellow line on a highway, and may have sold marijuana. They are invariably Republicans to the fourth generation.
Persons who answer “Seven,” “Nine,” or “I don’t know” attend Star Trek conventions, believe that aliens from another part of the galaxy have been kept alive in Area 51 for at least a half-century, would rather watch a reality show on television about bored housewives in Oklahoma City than attend a concert of live zither and dulcimer music, sit out general elections in a pout because there is not a dime’s worth of difference in the candidates, and may have grown marijuana. In primaries and caucuses, they vote for Ron Paul.
Persons who answer “Twenty-three” obviously did not understand the question.
How am I doing?
Jump in at any time.
I beg you.
In the comments section, people began waxing philosophical.
I thought it would be good to elevate the discussion to full-post status.
Carolina in Nederland said it was a trick question and she didn’t like trick questions; they make the people who ask such questions seem smart. But it doesn’t mean that they are smart, although you could argue that it is smart to ask questions that make you seem smart. Carolina is a deep thinker.
Putz from Utah agreed with me that Abe Lincoln was one smart cookie and thought the question was clever, not tricky.
Then Snowbrush out in Oregon chimed in with that old conundrum, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, did it make a sound?” Let me just say here that it certainly would have had the capacity for sound, sending out sound waves and all, but if no ear or device capable of receiving the sound waves was anywhere in the vicinity, then no, it didn’t make a sound in the traditional sense, although it could have made a sound in the non-traditional sense. Do I make myself clear?
Katherine from Bay of Plenty in New Zealand (a country in the Southern Hemisphere) presented the possibility that Abraham Lincoln might have invented the wink-smiley emoticon. What that has to do with anything, I’m not sure. Also, the link begins by saying, “While most people believe that Scott Fahlman was the first person to suggest the use of the :-) symbol for representing a smiley face,...” but I challenge that statement. Most people do not believe that Scott Fahlman was the first person to suggest the use of the :-) symbol for representing a smiley face. Most people have never heard of Scott Fahlman.
Then Anonymous, whose origin and whereabouts remain uncertain, posed another rhetorical question: “If snow falls, brushing against the trees in the woods, but no one sees or hears it, does it exist?”
That one’s easy. It most certainly does.
It just doesn’t make a sound.
Next, Elizabeth in the U.K. told us that living in a garage doesn’t make you a car.
I hastened to add that it is also important to remember that a kitten born in an oven is not a chocolate-chip cookie. Elizabeth replied that that was precisely the point she was making.
I asked Snowbrush if he was high on some substance when he made his usual wisecrack (his word) and said that I myself am high all the time without the aid of some substance. He replied, “Wow! You must save a ton of money. Then again, if you tithe, probably not.”
Leaving aside for the moment the question of my financial status and contributory habits, nobody tackled another of Snowbrush’s questions: “What--if anything--might a person’s answer to Lincoln’s question tell us about that person?”
Let me try to formulate an answer to that one.
Persons who answer “Five” find it difficult to focus on the task at hand, are easily led astray, tend to put their hope in unworkable solutions to the dilemmas facing society, and may have used marijuana. They are almost always Democrats.
Persons who answer “Four” harbor no illusions about the total depravity of humankind, are solid as a rock in their personal relationships, refuse to deviate from majority opinion even after it has become a relic from another age, have never let their automobiles drift cross the double yellow line on a highway, and may have sold marijuana. They are invariably Republicans to the fourth generation.
Persons who answer “Seven,” “Nine,” or “I don’t know” attend Star Trek conventions, believe that aliens from another part of the galaxy have been kept alive in Area 51 for at least a half-century, would rather watch a reality show on television about bored housewives in Oklahoma City than attend a concert of live zither and dulcimer music, sit out general elections in a pout because there is not a dime’s worth of difference in the candidates, and may have grown marijuana. In primaries and caucuses, they vote for Ron Paul.
Persons who answer “Twenty-three” obviously did not understand the question.
How am I doing?
Jump in at any time.
I beg you.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
That Abe Lincoln was one smart cookie
Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.
If he were still alive, he would be 203.
Happy birthday, Abe!
He said something once that I’m thinking of right now.
Not “Fourscore and seven years ago.” Not “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” Not “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
I’m not thinking of any of those.
No, I’m thinking of something much more profound. During one of his speeches on the campaign trail he asked, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?”
Someone in the crowd called out, “Five.”
“Wrong,” said Lincoln. “It would have four legs. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
It would be good if certain politicians of our own day, both on the right and on the left, would keep that in mind.
If he were still alive, he would be 203.
Happy birthday, Abe!
He said something once that I’m thinking of right now.
Not “Fourscore and seven years ago.” Not “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” Not “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
I’m not thinking of any of those.
No, I’m thinking of something much more profound. During one of his speeches on the campaign trail he asked, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?”
Someone in the crowd called out, “Five.”
“Wrong,” said Lincoln. “It would have four legs. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
It would be good if certain politicians of our own day, both on the right and on the left, would keep that in mind.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Lo, how the mighty are fallen!
Not Hosni Mubarak.
I’m talking about someone born 202 years ago today, someone everyone in the United States used to take notice of every year on February 12th, someone whose name probably won't even be mentioned today by what conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh calls “the drive-by media,” who prefer to report about Lindsay Lohan and LeBron James (each of them has a Wikipedia article, but I am not going to include the links; you can make the effort yourself to look them up if you are really that interested in drug-using actresses and self-absorbed basketball players).
Give up?
I’m talking about the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
When I was a boy, everyone knew that Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Kentucky. Everyone knew his parents were Tom Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Everyone knew his first love was Ann Rutledge, who died of typhoid fever. Everyone knew he married Mary Todd and had four children, Robert, Edward, Willie, and Tad. Everyone knew of the debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Second Inaugural Address, and the assassination by John Wilkes Booth.
Some of the myth surrounding Lincoln’s birth and childhood is questioned today. The Wikipedia article about him does state that he was born in a one-room log cabin, but it also states that his father Thomas enjoyed considerable status in Kentucky, where he sat on juries, appraised estates, served on country patrols, and guarded prisoners. By the time his son Abraham was born, Thomas owned two 600-acre farms, several town lots, livestock and horses. He was amongst the richest men in the area. Makes you wonder why little Abe was born in a one-room log cabin, then, unless one-room log cabins were all the rage, that era’s equivalent of the McMansions we see about us today. Mostly foreclosed-on McMansions, he hastened to add. But I digress.
We were forced as students, forced I tell you, to memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The entire Gettysburg Address. All ten sentences and 271 words. Here they are:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
When I was a boy, we observed Lincoln’s birthday on February 12th and George Washington’s birthday on February 22nd. Nowadays, we lump them together and have “Presidents Day,” ostensibly to remember all the presidents of the United States at once (although, to be fair, Washington and Lincoln are usually the ones mentioned most often) but really to give federal employees a three-day weekend. As Lincoln once said, it is altogether fitting and proper that we do this, and we have Lyndon Baines Johnson to thank for the change.
So forget about Abraham Lincoln as an individual. Forget about George Washington. Instead, on a Monday in the near future, spend your day thinking about Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding, and George W. Bush.
You might even think about Jimmy Carter.
And if you do, and you know your history, you might think about Menachem Begin. And Anwar Sadat.
And then, and only then, should you think about Hosni Mubarak.
I’m talking about someone born 202 years ago today, someone everyone in the United States used to take notice of every year on February 12th, someone whose name probably won't even be mentioned today by what conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh calls “the drive-by media,” who prefer to report about Lindsay Lohan and LeBron James (each of them has a Wikipedia article, but I am not going to include the links; you can make the effort yourself to look them up if you are really that interested in drug-using actresses and self-absorbed basketball players).
Give up?
I’m talking about the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
When I was a boy, everyone knew that Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Kentucky. Everyone knew his parents were Tom Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Everyone knew his first love was Ann Rutledge, who died of typhoid fever. Everyone knew he married Mary Todd and had four children, Robert, Edward, Willie, and Tad. Everyone knew of the debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Second Inaugural Address, and the assassination by John Wilkes Booth.
Some of the myth surrounding Lincoln’s birth and childhood is questioned today. The Wikipedia article about him does state that he was born in a one-room log cabin, but it also states that his father Thomas enjoyed considerable status in Kentucky, where he sat on juries, appraised estates, served on country patrols, and guarded prisoners. By the time his son Abraham was born, Thomas owned two 600-acre farms, several town lots, livestock and horses. He was amongst the richest men in the area. Makes you wonder why little Abe was born in a one-room log cabin, then, unless one-room log cabins were all the rage, that era’s equivalent of the McMansions we see about us today. Mostly foreclosed-on McMansions, he hastened to add. But I digress.
We were forced as students, forced I tell you, to memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The entire Gettysburg Address. All ten sentences and 271 words. Here they are:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
When I was a boy, we observed Lincoln’s birthday on February 12th and George Washington’s birthday on February 22nd. Nowadays, we lump them together and have “Presidents Day,” ostensibly to remember all the presidents of the United States at once (although, to be fair, Washington and Lincoln are usually the ones mentioned most often) but really to give federal employees a three-day weekend. As Lincoln once said, it is altogether fitting and proper that we do this, and we have Lyndon Baines Johnson to thank for the change.
So forget about Abraham Lincoln as an individual. Forget about George Washington. Instead, on a Monday in the near future, spend your day thinking about Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding, and George W. Bush.
You might even think about Jimmy Carter.
And if you do, and you know your history, you might think about Menachem Begin. And Anwar Sadat.
And then, and only then, should you think about Hosni Mubarak.
Monday, November 8, 2010
What we have here is a fail-yah to communicate.
[start semi-rant mode]
We have just come through the American election of 2010.
The liberals think the conservatives don’t get the message. The conservatives think the liberals don’t get the message. The president thinks the American people don’t get the message. The American people think the president doesn’t get the message. The Democrats think the Republicans don’t get the message. The Republicans think the Democrats don’t get the message. The Libertarians and Tea Party members think no one else gets the message. Everyone thinks he or she is right. It’s the other person, obviously, who is wrong.
Clearly, in the words of Strother Martin in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a fail-yah to communicate.
President Obama now says (in an interview aired on November 7, 2010, on the CBS-TV program 60 Minutes) that he doesn’t plan to change his agenda but will attempt to communicate better because people failed to understand his message. My own opinion is that people now understand his message very clearly. Perhaps they didn’t two years ago, but now they do, based not on what he has said but on what he has done. And a very clear majority of the American voting public have firmly rejected it (except in a few apparently very liberal places where people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer and Barney Frank managed, astoundingly, to get themselves re-elected). The president, however, seems to care more about what people in other countries think than what the majority of Americans think. We are expected to follow like sheep and accept whatever he has decided is best for us.
I have an announcement, folks: The American system doesn’t work that way. In fact, it works just the other way; he is supposed to do what the American voters want. In what used to be America (that is, according to the U.S. Constitution), the people were in charge. Abraham Lincoln probably phrased it best as “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” (and just so you know, Abraham Lincoln was not a Democrat; he was the first Republican president.) But right now President Obama does not appear very Abraham Lincolnesque. Instead, he seems to be Strother Martin and the rest of us have become Paul Newman.
Denial, my friends, is not a river in Egypt.
[end semi-rant mode]
If you are a U.S. citizen, whether you agree or disagree with me, I’d love to hear from you. But for this one post, if you are not a U.S. citizen, please follow Archie Bunker’s advice to his wife, Edith, and stifle yourself.
However, if you want to move here and become a citizen of the United States and vote in our elections, I say, in the words of Edith Bunker herself: “I welcome you with open arms.”
We have just come through the American election of 2010.
The liberals think the conservatives don’t get the message. The conservatives think the liberals don’t get the message. The president thinks the American people don’t get the message. The American people think the president doesn’t get the message. The Democrats think the Republicans don’t get the message. The Republicans think the Democrats don’t get the message. The Libertarians and Tea Party members think no one else gets the message. Everyone thinks he or she is right. It’s the other person, obviously, who is wrong.
Clearly, in the words of Strother Martin in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a fail-yah to communicate.
President Obama now says (in an interview aired on November 7, 2010, on the CBS-TV program 60 Minutes) that he doesn’t plan to change his agenda but will attempt to communicate better because people failed to understand his message. My own opinion is that people now understand his message very clearly. Perhaps they didn’t two years ago, but now they do, based not on what he has said but on what he has done. And a very clear majority of the American voting public have firmly rejected it (except in a few apparently very liberal places where people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer and Barney Frank managed, astoundingly, to get themselves re-elected). The president, however, seems to care more about what people in other countries think than what the majority of Americans think. We are expected to follow like sheep and accept whatever he has decided is best for us.
I have an announcement, folks: The American system doesn’t work that way. In fact, it works just the other way; he is supposed to do what the American voters want. In what used to be America (that is, according to the U.S. Constitution), the people were in charge. Abraham Lincoln probably phrased it best as “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” (and just so you know, Abraham Lincoln was not a Democrat; he was the first Republican president.) But right now President Obama does not appear very Abraham Lincolnesque. Instead, he seems to be Strother Martin and the rest of us have become Paul Newman.
Denial, my friends, is not a river in Egypt.
[end semi-rant mode]
If you are a U.S. citizen, whether you agree or disagree with me, I’d love to hear from you. But for this one post, if you are not a U.S. citizen, please follow Archie Bunker’s advice to his wife, Edith, and stifle yourself.
However, if you want to move here and become a citizen of the United States and vote in our elections, I say, in the words of Edith Bunker herself: “I welcome you with open arms.”
Friday, February 12, 2010
Happy 201st Birthday, Abe!
When I was young we observed both Lincoln’s birthday on February 12th and Washington’s birthday on February 22nd. Nowadays there is only “Presidents Day” or “President’s Day” or “Presidents’ Day” or whatever it is. Pick a president, any president. Or pick ’em all, if that suits you. Never mind about stuffy old Abraham Lincoln and even stuffier and older George Washington. Never mind about their individual, laudable accomplishments. In today’s climate of groupthink and political correctness, someone’s self-esteem might suffer if one person is recognized above another.
I don’t care. You can read lots of stuff about our 16th president here.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Here's to you, Abe
Today, in case you didn't know it, is the 199th anniversary of the birth in 1809 of Abraham Lincoln, our sixteenth president. You might have heard of him. His image is on our one-cent coin and also on our five-dollar bill. He is known for the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and for having been assassinated at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth in Washington, D.C., one April night in 1865. The second largest city in the state of Nebraska is named after him. In Washington, D.C., thanks to a sculptor named Daniel Chester French, there is a very large statue of him behind the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous "I Have A Dream" speech in 1963. Lincoln is often referred to as Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, even though he was born in Kentucky. He was the child of a woman named Nancy Hanks who died young, the lover of a woman named Anne Rutledge who also died young, and the husband of a woman named Mary Todd who went insane toward the end of her life. Oh, yes, and one other thing: at a time when the direction of the United States veered toward destruction, he saved the Union. If it weren't for president number sixteen, we might not currently be selecting president number forty-four.
I mention all these things because I encountered a grand total of one, yes, one reference to Abraham Lincoln today, on Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac." Everywhere else, silence. When I was a boy in New England, Lincoln's birthday and George Washington's birthday were both school holidays. Later, when my family moved to one of the states of the Old Confederacy, Washington's birthday was still observed as a school holiday, but no one paid any attention at all to Lincoln's birthday. Sore losers, I guess. Nowadays, neither Washington nor Lincoln is honored personally, only a vague general category known as Presidents on a day that means absolutely nothing to anybody except merchants who put their wares on sale and worker bees who get a three-day weekend.
So while we still can, while there's still time, before he recedes into oblivion altogether, here's to you, Abe. We owe you one.
I mention all these things because I encountered a grand total of one, yes, one reference to Abraham Lincoln today, on Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac." Everywhere else, silence. When I was a boy in New England, Lincoln's birthday and George Washington's birthday were both school holidays. Later, when my family moved to one of the states of the Old Confederacy, Washington's birthday was still observed as a school holiday, but no one paid any attention at all to Lincoln's birthday. Sore losers, I guess. Nowadays, neither Washington nor Lincoln is honored personally, only a vague general category known as Presidents on a day that means absolutely nothing to anybody except merchants who put their wares on sale and worker bees who get a three-day weekend.
So while we still can, while there's still time, before he recedes into oblivion altogether, here's to you, Abe. We owe you one.
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