Election Day 2010

When October goes...

Barry Manilow has never been my favorite singer, and I have heard him when he was in better voice, but there’s something about this particular clip that reaches way down inside me and turns me inside out.

When October Goes (4:50)

I get the almost-a-cliché metaphor about a person’s lifespan (“Oh, it’s a long, long time from May to December, and the days grow short when you reach September” and so forth), and the leaves have turned red and gold and many of them have already fallen, and flocks of geese are in the air making their way south, and my mother died in the month of October in 1957, so this time of year always makes me a bit melancholy, but still...Barry Manilow?

There’s a little quiver in his voice -- and, yes, it may even be fabricated for effect -- but when he sings this song he somehow seems on the verge of losing his composure altogether. Maybe that’s what I’m responding to viscerally, I don’t know, the fact that we’re all in this thing together and we’re all putting on some sort of act and we’re all always dangerously close to losing control and letting everybody see how we really feel, and we certainly wouldn’t want to let that happen. Would we?

But still...

Barry Manilow?

Or it could be that it’s the day before the American elections.

I love you, you love me, we’re as happy as can be.

Around the time of the next vernal equinox, I will be celebrating having lived 70 years on this earth, if I live until then. In the relatively short time span of 70 years (and it is short when you take into consideration all the time that passed before my arrival), earth has seen:

15 major wars:
World War II (1939-1945)
French Indo-China War (1945-1954)
Chinese Civil War (1945-1949)
Korean War (1950-1953)
French-Algerian War (1954-1962)
First Sudanese Civil War (1956-1972)
Arab-Israeli War (1947-1949) (1956) (1967) (1968-1970) (1973) (1982) (2006) (ongoing, with occasional pauses)
Biafran War (1967-1970)
Vietnam War (1965-1973)
Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)
Russian-Afghanistan War (1980-1989)
Persian Gulf War (1990-1991)
Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005)
Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003 - 2010)
Afghanistan (2001 - present)

and I didn’t even mention apparently minor ones like the disagreements between India and Pakistan over the partitioning of the sub-continent in 1947 or the United Kingdom’s little tête à tête with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982 or Ronald Reagan’s two-month adventure in the Caribbean island nation of Grenada in 1983 or the first George Bush’s confrontation with Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989-1990 or the Rwandan Genocide in which between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi people were killed by the Hutu in 1994. The list could be quite a bit longer if only I (a) had more time to do research and (b) knew what “major” means.

13 Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom:
Winston Churchill (twice)
Clement Atlee
Anthony Eden
Harold Macmillan
Alec Douglas-Home
Harold Wilson (twice)
Edward Heath
James Callaghan
Margaret Thatcher
John Major
Tony Blair
Gordon Brown
David Cameron

13 Presidents of the United States:
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry S Truman
Dwight D. Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard M. Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama

8 Secretaries-General of the United Nations:
Trygvie Lie
Dag Hammarskjöld
U Thant
Kurt Waldheim
Boutrous Boutros-Ghali
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Kofi Annan
Ban-ki Moon

7 Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court:
Charles Evans Hughes
Harlan Fiske Stone
Fred M. Vinson
Earl Warren
Warren E. Burger
William Rehnquist
John G. Roberts

6 Popes of the Roman Catholic Church:
Pius XII
John XXIII
Paul VI
John Paul I
John Paul II
Benedict XVI

6 (or thereabouts) Leaders of China:
Chiang Kai-shek
Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung)
Zhou Enlai (Chou Enlai)
Deng Xiaoping
Zhao Ziyang
Jiang Zemin


3 Queens of The Netherlands:
Wilhelmina
Juliana
Beatrix

2 Emperors of Japan:
Hirohito
Akihito

2 British Monarchs:
George VI
Elizabeth II

1 Dalai Lama:
Tenzing Gyatso

and a partridge in a pear tree 1 Me.

I would bet dollars to doughnuts there’s been only 1 You too.

Aren’t we special?

According to both the late Mr. Fred Rogers and Barney (who, Wikipedia says, is a purple anthropomorphic Tyrannosaurus rex who conveys learning through songs and small dance routines with a friendly, optimistic attitude), we are.

If you do not like to think of yourself as special (and I’m given to understand that some people don’t), consider this:

You and I are at least as special as the Dalai Lama.

We may not be as highly regarded, but that is a topic for another day.

Thanksgiving comes first.

This is a post about the way Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier every year and how this is not a good thing. One year, I saw Christmas merchandise for sale on September 28th. For crying out loud, people, SEPTEMBER 28TH.

Mr. Jim “Suldog” Sullivan of Watertown, Massachusetts, says it far better than I could. I defer to him.

P.S. -- This year, though, what seem to be more common on television than even Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas are commercials by politicians who want our votes on November 2nd.

Satori Redux

Almost a year ago -- on October 30, 2009, to be exact -- I wrote about the Japanese concept of satori in this post. Now, I have had one.

I suddenly realized something recently (and am about to share it with you) about how Blogger (or google, or something) works. I happened to look at my Feedjit Live Traffic Feed list and saw that it included the following text next to a little flag of The Netherlands:

Leidschendam, Zuid-Holland arrived from google.com on “rhymeswithplague: East is east, and west is west, and the wrong one I have chose.**” by searching for jaroussky philippe. 05:58:41

jaroussky philippe?

“East is east, and west is west, and the wrong one I have chose.**” was the title of my then-latest post, but it contained nothing at all about either jaroussky philippe or, as he is more commonly known, philippe jaroussky. However, I remembered that back on July 29th of this year I published a post entitled “Stabat Mater” in which not only did I mention the French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky but
I also included a video clip of his singing and (here’s the frosting on the cake) typed his name in the Labels section at the end of the post.

Aha! Or as Archimedes once screamed, “Eureka!” (which means
“I have found it!” in Greek). [Editor's note. For the record, what Archimedes actually screamed was “εὕρηκα”. --RWP]

So the thing I suddenly realized, in a quasi-Archimedean, satori sort of way, is that sometimes when a person has searched for something that happens to be a label somewhere in your blog, Blogger (or google, or something) will bring that person to your most recent post, even if that particular post has nothing whatsoever to do with the person’s search criteria (for example, “East is east, and west is west, and the wrong one I have chose.**”), and stop.

It’s as though Blogger (or google, or something) is saying, “I have gone this far but I will go no further. I brought you to the threshold. What you’re searching for is in there somewhere. Do I have to do all the work? The rest is up to you, Meathead.”

Conversely, if you yourself have typed in a search for something, say “Dietrich Buxtehude” or “the Malay archipelago,” and you land on a post in someone’s blog but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Dietrich Buxtehude or the Malay archipelago, if you see a sidebar list of labels associated with that particular blog and scroll down into it you may find yourself, like Archimedes, screaming “Eureka!” [Editor’s note. Running naked through the streets at this point also has historical precedent, but I am not recommending that you do it. --RWP]

Live and learn.

P.S. -- You needn’t waste time trying to find Dietrich Buxtehude or the Malay archipelago in the randomly selected blog in the paragraph above. They aren’t there. I didn’t mean to imply that they were.

One of these things is not like the others.

My friend Snowbrush out in Oregon (way beyond the Central Time Zone) wrote a post entitled “Who would you like to go back in time and kill?” and included his own list. You can read it here if you like.

I am shocked that Snow includes Jesus in his list. I can’t get it out of my mind.

Hitler, Stalin, George W. Bush -- and Jesus.
Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan -- and Jesus.
Columbus, Ted Bundy, serial killers, mass murderers -- and Jesus.

If I may be so bold, something does not compute, and I don’t mean Columbus.

I know Snow is an atheist and all, but still.

In case you didn’t click on the link, here’s more from his list.

Torturers, drug lords, child molesters, slave owners -- and Jesus.
Mohammed, Jim Jones, David Koresh, union busters -- and Jesus.
Rapists, murderers, druggie moms who have multiple babies that are taken away by Child Protective Services -- and Jesus.

One of these things is not like the others.

People who breed animals to fight, people who dump their pets on the side of the road, men who beat women -- and Jesus.
Rich persons who became wealthy off the backs of others (including Queen Elizabeth II), profoundly retarded persons who are kept alive at taxpayer expense, Sarah Palin -- and Jesus.
Pol Pot, Kim Jong-Il -- and Jesus.

Really?

I think one reason Snowbrush included Jesus in his list is that people who have claimed to be followers of Jesus but probably were not have done some terrible things over the centuries. Some atheists like to mention this. Frequently. (I know this blog has some readers who are atheists. Present atheists excepted.)

Maybe everyone is afflicted with a little megalomania, as it is a very human trait to think moi could do a better job than vous. As well-intended as Snow probably thinks himself to be, however, I do not think he would be a good substitute for God. The God I believe in loves and forgives. Even when we kill him.

Snow began his post with a picture of Hitler as an infant. So I will end mine with Big Bird.

In the race to see who is more insane, I think I’m winning.

East is east, and west is west, and the wrong one I have chose.**

Did you know that in most -- okay, many -- cities the north and west sides are more affluent than the south and east sides? I’m given to understand that the root cause is related to the fact that the prevailing winds on our planet flow from west to east and from north to south, a phenomenon due primarily to the rotation of the earth and the tilt of its axis. So by building their homes north of the smokestacks, the factories, the stock yards, the lumber mills, whatever, the industrial barons of old avoided having their nostrils and the nostrils of their families offended by the smells and odors of what put money in their pockets in the first place. And their skies were clearer and less polluted as well. Think Dallas. Think Philadelphia. Think Chicago. Think Houston (well, maybe not Houston; Houston stinks in all directions). I rest my case.

In Birmingham, Alabama, though, it’s just the opposite. The Magic City is built in a shallow basin, and everyone who can afford it lives “over the mountain” south of the city in the affluent suburbs of Hoover, Homewood, Mountain Brook, and Vestavia, to name just a few places. Topped by a statue of Vulcan, god of the fire and forge (who is supposed to remind observers of Birmingham’s history as an iron and steel center), Red Mountain south of the city serves as a barrier for suburbanites with delicate sensibilities. Locally it is a geographical feature that separates them that have from them that have not.

I’m kidding, sort of. But sort of not.

Having returned recently from a visit to our daughter in Birmingham, I want to make you aware of a blog Mrs. RWP discovered a while back called Birmingham, Alabama Daily Photo. It is presided over by a nice lady named Virginia who lives in one of the aforementioned suburbs of Birmingham and who spends her days dutifully recording for the rest of us the faces and places of her world. An excellent photographer, Virginia also spends a great deal of time in her beloved Paris, France, so we are often the beneficiaries of her photographic expertise there as well.

Watching this may help take your mind off slag heaps and industrial waste.

But in secret places all over Alabama, far from the prying eyes of the Department of Homeland Security, the less affluent and less fashion-conscious express themselves this way.

**[Editor’s note. This line from a song called “Buttons and Bows” is meant as a little joke. The rhymeswithplague household is located north of Atlanta. --RWP]