this figures:
“Carol Lam, one of eight former U.S. attorneys across the country whose dismissals have ignited a political firestorm and calls for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, has been named outstanding attorney of the year by the San Diego County Bar Association, the organization announced Wednesday afternoon.” link to story
“Freedom of rights management” by Wendy M. Grossman
I know nothing about this person’s music. But I read the linked article and thought it was a good synopsis of a lot of the current hype around Itunes stripping DRM.
Her website is here.
I just listend a bit. Very traditional folk/bluegrass sound. She sings.
Her article linked in “geek musician” Jonathon Coulton. I really like the set up of his website/blog. You can listen to his tunes and/or buy them directly from him. Cool beans.
Just poking around on Coulton’s site, I notice its dearth of visuals (no pics). This is a serious omission in this kind of medium.
I’m listening to him as I write this. I recognize his most popular tune: Code Monkey. You can listen here. It’s the first tune and he has a clever onsite listening plugin.
Wendy Grossman is on CDBaby which she mentions in her article. Looking at her web info, it seems that she has moved from music to journalism.
I have dealt with CDBaby and they are a fun company. They feel like a human is actually on the other side of the internet and have a sense of humor as well as allow you to listen to bits of everything you want to buy. Unfortunately not everything.
Grossman’s article mentions Itunes, Zune, and Naxos. No mention of Napster. They must be off the radar.
Fears for Gaudi masterpiece as rail tunnel approved
These pictures are from our trip to Barcelona in 2004.
The proposed bullet train tunnel would be close enough (2 meters) to pose a real danger of cracking the foundation of Sagrada Familia. If that happens, apparently it’s possible the suspended ceiling would be affected.
Group shot at the Parc Guell (also designed by Gaudi). Quasi-son-in-law Matthew, Eileen in hat, Sarah. It’s on the mountain and is where I took the first shot of Sagrada Familia.
Like all of Gaudi’s work, Sagrada Familia is amazing. Gaudi is a bit religous for me, but I love his use of organic forms. Dave, if you’re lurking, I trace my family’s interest in Gaudi back to you. I’m sure you are the one who showed me him years ago, probably upstais in the Flint library. Heh.
I really like this turtle who is one of several animals (I seem to recall) at the base of huge columns of Sagrada Familia.
Ahem. I arrived home from college yesterday jubilant from handing in grades and found a package from Florida with music by Rene Touzet in it. It felt like a reward.
I have been playing my way through the music and am enjoying it immensely. It feels like a guiltly pleasure because I’m not sure the music is all that good. But he writes a clear piano style in Cuban rhythms that I am really enjoying playing through.
On another guilty pleasure front, I have been delving into Episcopalian liturgical matters. I ordered some pretty expensive crappy books from the Episcopalian web site. Fuck a duck. I decided to take a look at my own liturgical training stuff. I have thrown out a lot of it but not the stuff that I find the most interesting like festschrifts. I found some good stuff in my library I hadn’t actually read.
Also am reading a textbook my priest loaned me from her seminary training.
I feel sheepish doing this. But I have agreed to discuss Holy Week with my boss and it is leading me deeper into a discussion of liturgical theology with her. It makes sense. But it is an area of my life I am not consciously cultivating. Or haven’t been. I ordered two more books today: a festschrift of an Episcopalian liturgitist I like (Marion Hatchett) and an updated parish liturgy handbook by my priest’s teacher: Louis Weil.
I was able to find them used on Amazon so they weren’t as expensive as the crappy books.
I also wrote my boss a memo yesterday outlining some areas I would like to talk about this summer beginning with my meeting with her today.
This all indicates increased ownership in the church part of my job. Hence the feeling of goofiness on my part.
Also started reading Spring Snow by Mishima a few nights ago. Here’s a nice drawing of him I found on the Web.
David Mitchell commented that he thought this was a masterpiece and influenced him quite a bit along Murakami. Haven’t read any Mishima in years. Eileen has read this one. It is the first in a series of four novels.
The Web is watching the government. You can too.
Web Mashups Turn Citizens Into Washington’s Newest Watchdogs by Michael Calore Wired
Sites I linked from this article:
Maplight.org non-partisan connecting of dots. Searches state politics by “interest group,” “legislator,” “subject,” & “bill number,” Did some searches on local legislators and got nothing. It does look interesting, though.
Opensecrets.org This one has an RSS feed. I added it to my google page. On the feed it calls itself “Center for Responsive Politics.”
Follow the money.org more non-partisan state politics. This one had a hit on my local rep, Kuipers, and showed that he had received $ 1,050.00 in donations from A,T&T. I recently wrote to him about a state iniative that I felt was completely in favor of AT&T’s need to tier the internet. He is the chair of a state committee that considers this stuff and completely disagreed with my point of view. According to this web site, he has also received money from Comcast ($1000.00) and Telecommunications Association of Michigan (250.00). Both I suspect would support this non-consumer web iniative that would enable them to charge for services that are currently free.
And of course Wikipedia has Congressapedia which just watches congress and makes info available in an easier format (it’s already available on Government web sties).
This is interesting. I have been getting a lot of spam messages on the blog. Yesterday, I decided to moderate comments (of people the site that haven’t left comments before) and marked a bunch of the spam as spam.
This morning when I got up I thought I would change back to non-moderated comments because I find it a bit annoying myself when I try to leave a comment and it says it will await moderation.
But, I had already received spam since last night and it was awaiting moderation. Hmmm. I guess I’ll leave that on. Apologies to lurkers and new readers who try to leave a comment. I will put comments up as quickly as possible and remove the comment moderation if the spam subsides.
On March 21, 2007, an all-white jury convicted a black community activist, Reverend Edward Pinkney, of five counts of improprieties in connection with a 2005 recall election involving the City of Benton Harbor’s most powerful commissioner
see Travesty of Justice in a Black City in Michigan
Remember the summer of 2003 when Benton Harbor exploded after a young man was killed? Pinkney helped keep the peace by walking the streets…. read it and weep.
Pinkney founded BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization).
Hooray! I’m all done with grades at GVSU. Gave the final, corrected it and did the totals and handed in final grades.
While I was sitting in the office another adjunct came in and asked me how my year went….. Uh… I told him that I liked the students but felt that the department wasn’t very collegial.
He was very friendly but told me that he had found it much different.
I told him that I thought college was bullshit and that the chairperson of the department had spoken to me twice this term and seem to think I was trying to horn my way in.
Eileen says it must be just me. And the heck with them.
Anyway, I’m done. Hooray.
“Enemy of the State: The complicated life of an idealist” by Jianying Zha New Yorker Magazine, April 23, 2007
This will undoubtedly i.d. me as an internet enemy of the people in China but I thought this article in the April 23rd New Yorker was excellent.
The author is a sister of the subject of the article. She writes a clear-eyed devastating portrait of her half-brother who is due to be released from jail next year. He was jailed for founding the first political party to compete with the Communist party in China.
Bush, Cheney and Rove are exhibiting their usual adroit rhetorical abilities and dancing rings around the Democratic opposition with their public comments about Iraq.
They accuse the Democrats of using the war issue for politics by sending a bill for the President to sign that is loaded down with pork issues and a non-binding deadline for troop withdrawal in Iraq. Nevermind that every bill the previously Republican controlled Congress was also full of extra pork issues. And that the public support for the war is eroding.
I can’t believe the Democrats can’t seem to get hold of this issue more clearly. This Republican war has been driven by political considerations from its inception. Yet the message from Bush and Rove (who are definitely on the ropes in terms of their weakening political stance in terms of the popularity of the war, the many corruption scandals of their administration) remains skillfully framed to win the rhetoric war.
If Bush vetos this current funding bill, I think it will come back to haunt him in future debates. On the other hand, I believe that Bush, Rove and Cheney are more clearly idealogues than the Democrats. They share the vision of their more conservative base and are able to articulate it in phrases that sound much more coherent and reasonable than most Democrats.
Pelosi’s recent comments come the closest to clearly stating the opposition to the war when she says it is an ethical issue, and for the President to try to make it a political issue is beneath the dignity of his office.
Iraq continues to be a disaster (death toll is still out of control and now we are going to build a wall in Baghdad that neither the Shiites or the Sunnis want) and still the Bush team insists on taking the rhetorical position that we are in the early stages of succeeding. I can only hope this will be their political undoing and America will move a bit more toward the center of the political spectrum.
“The Lonely Planet guide quotes the idea that some countries have a ‘mission’ attitude towards foreigners, and some have a ‘club’ attitude. ‘Mission’ countries define foreignness by behavior — act like a native, and as far as other natives are concerned, you eventually have as much right to be there as they do. ‘Club’ countries define foreignness by your lineage or passport — it will never matter what you do, how well you learn the language, how many soccer teams or famous department stores you buy — you are foreign and always will be. Japan is a classic club society. Living here, I kiss my sense of social belonging goodbye.”
David Mitchell, “Japan and my Writing”
China is also definitely a “club” experience.
I did my first edit on Wikipedia yesterday. At first I was very skeptical about the notion of a user created information source and then I thought a bit about how much misinformation I have run across in reference books. I guess in a sense all reference books are user created.
Also, Wikipedia can be a good quick source for information, is synoptic and has links.
in my case I was consulting the article on “Ghostwritten” the book by David Mitchell I had just read. After finishing it I wasn’t quite sure that I had picked up enough of the cross references between the ten seperate sections of this book. The article on Wikipedia highlighted these references and I realized that I at least picked up most of what the author(s) of the Wikipedia article did.
At the same time (and this is the way I read most non-fiction books anyway) I realized that all of the information was not necessarily covered in the article. I decided I might still re-read the book to deepen my understanding of it.
BTW, the edit I did was a simple mis-spelling error.
So I was reading in an old Clavier magazine (not that old: April 2006) that my sister-in-law was kind enough to give me and ran across an article on Rene Touzet (I think that’s him in the back of this photo at the piano) with an accompanying little dance by the same.
I sat down at the piano and played through it and thought it was kind of neat. Very rhythmic. So I checked Touzet out a bit. It turns out he’s kind of an interesting musician. He was Cuban and played in Desi Arnaz’s band.
Not only that, but that he actually was responsible for the riff in Louie Louie. It was stolen from him from his song El Loco Cha Cha.
Now I was starting to get interested. He died in 2003. Around 1973, he moved from Hollywood to Miami to “be closer to Cuba.” Apparently as an old man he spent a great deal of time writing piano music.
After extensive googling I could only find one place to purchase his music and that was a store in Coral Gables.
I got the number from the official Rene Touzet web site.
I called the store in Coral Gables this morning. When I told the person on the phone how hard it was to find Touzet’s music, he said that he thought they might be the only source for it in the world. It seems that Touzet basically published his own music and when he died, his widow (who is still alive) brought all his music to this store so they could get rid of it.
The clerk on the phone said he had had a couple of orders in he last couple of months, one from Japan and one from some other place. I ordered some music.
It’s a gorgeous dark Michigan morning. I have the windows open and the wind is not too chilly and is making a fresh breeze in the house.
Yesterday after church, Eileen did some yard work and then set up the hammock. I sat in a lawn chair nearby and read the New York Times. Gorgeous day.
I am beginning to feel the stifling aspect of teaching college (or should I say the painful lack of collegiality?) ebbing. I have been practicing like crazy and even entertaining some small notion of getting back to composing and recording.
“As chess players or writers or mystics know, the pursuit of insight takes you deep into the forest. Days were I’d just gaze at the steam rising from my cofee, or stains on the wall, or a locked door. Days were I’d find the next key in the steam or the stains or the lock.”
from Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
This quote is taking place in the mind of a brilliant physicist who has run away to her home on an island off Ireland (I believe). Her insights will not leave her alone.
I find it quite liberating to look at the upcoming days and realize that I will have more and more time to do the things I love.
Life is good.
I like this article about Michigan.
I have a bit of routine I guess. I’ll sit with the New York Times, read an article then come over to the computer and bookmark the article on my Times account. Sometimes, I do a bit of surfing to find out more about something or listen to music mentioned.
I don’t read too many articles all the way through, maybe one or two at the most each day. Sunday is usually a bit different.
Today, my eye was caught by the front page article, “After Iraqi Toops Do Dirty Work, 3 Detainess Talk” by Alissa J. Rubin. This article was disturbing because the Iraqis not only beat a prisoner to frighten other prisoners, but this seemed to elicit excellent intelligence which led US troops to a house were insurgents were building bombs, thus saving lives. Iraqi law forbids the beating of prisoners (as does US law) but apparently it’s not that unusual. The Iraqi army thinks the US army is far to easy on prisoners and that they pay the price when the insurgents persist in killing them via I.E.D devices. All I can say is I think war is obscene. I have sympathy for the US and Iraqi troops and understand the insane logic in their position. But I can’t help but think of it as another argument for the futility of war. When we (the USA) beat and torture our enemies, we escalate the hate and violence.
On the other hand, “Bush Adminstration Gains Support for New Approach on Food Aid” by Celia W. Dugger is a rare example of something Bush adminstration is doing that is not only sane but actually seems like a good idea. If I understand correctly, the Bush administration is trying to change the way we donate food to the rest of the world. Trying to spend less money on transporting American grown food and using the money to help people who are starving. Of course agribusiness is not happy.
Lastly, Frank Rich decimates the idiocy in the adminstration with some excellent partison points in “Iraq is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac” He voices my thought that Bush’s approach to the Virginia Tech murders seemed a bit too desperate and political. He also points out how the media is missing the point of the recent Gonzales/Wolfowitz debacle: “What’s being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House.”
Book Beauty
Here’s the end of that story about the old woman who wanted
to lure a man with strangecosmetics. She made a paste of pages from the Qur’an to fill
the deep creases on her face andneck with. This is not about an old woman, dear reader. It’s
about you, or anyone who triesto use books to make themselves attractive. There she is,
sticking scripture, thick withsaliva, on her face. Of course, the bits keep falling off.
“The devil,†she yells, andhe appears! “This is a trick I’ve never seen. You don’t need
me. You are yourself a troopof demons!†So people steal inspired words to get compliments.
Don’t bother. Death comesand all talking, stolen or not, stops. Pity anyone unfamiliar
with silence when that happens.Polish your heart with meditation and quietness. Let the inner
life grow generous and handsomelike Joseph. Zuleikha did that and her “old woman’s spring
cold snap†turned to mid-July. Drylips wet from within. Ink is not rouge. Let language lie
bygone. Now is where love breathes.by Rumi …. thank you So Many Books blog
Ran across another interesting opera. It’s called “A Scholar under Seige” and is by Michael Braz and opens tonight in Georgia. I ran across it on Arts Journal Daily’s music section (which I have on RSS feed on my google page). They didn’t link into the Washington Post AP article or the Playbill Arts article by Vivien Schweitzer. Instead they linked into the Atlanta Journal Constitution article which has a short excerpt you can listen to. I listened and I kind of liked it.
The story is apparently based on Georgia governer Eugene Talmudge‘s actions regarding segregation of George state universities and a couple of teachers.
I especially liked this quote from the composer, Michael Braz,
“I’m not an opera fanatic, but to me opera is not a bad way to tell a story.”
These two quotes were rattling around in my head from yesterday:
Our youth must be ready
to shed their blood generously
for the sacred cause of Spain.
Who ever is not with us
is against us.
We’ll exterminate the seeds
of the Revolution,
even in the wombs of their mothers.
Long live death!
From the libretto for Ainadamar (“Fountain of Tears”)
Composer: Osvaldo Golijov
Librettist: David Henry Hwang
&
“Preemptive strike… must mean not declaring war until your cameras are in position.”
From “Ghostwritten” by David Mitchell
The story of Golijov’s opera is about the death of the Spanish poet, Lorca. The name, Ainadamar, refers to the fountain where he was killed by Spanish fascists.
It is striking that the librettist puts words that sound like a press release from the US government (okay just the middle part) in the mouths of fascists.
America is not exactly a fascist country but it’s not exactly free from the taint of authoritarian state control, either.
We are sending our youth to die throughout the world. The supreme court has just ruled out the use of partial-birth “abortion.”
“Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the procedure was good for women in that it would protect them from a procedure they might not fully understand in advance and would probably come to regret. This way of thinking, that women are flighty creatures who must be protected by men, reflects notions of a woman’s place in the family and under the Constitution that have long been discredited, said a powerful dissenting opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer.” NYT Editorial
The current attourney general refuses to consider resignation even though it is clear that something is going on. Even if he does resign, his performance Thursday before the Senate committee raises suspicions that he is deliberately acting like a bumbler in order to hide something. Could anybody in his position really be so dumb? Is this an act of ultimate loyalty? Is he choosing to deflect the investigation from his bosses Bush and Rove or someone else?
While I love the USA, I am troubled by how corrupt the national government is right now. As a cynical participant/observer I expect a certain amount of corruption in politicians and government. But the direction of this country under Bush has been paternalistic lieing to the public coupled with the pursuit of private self interest-of those who govern and the corporations who control the government. It is hard for me to see how history of this time in the USA will avoid noticing that Bush and Cheney (two strong representatives of the oil industry) led the country into a war with a major oil producer.
I could be wrong, but boy does it seem obvious that while this country continues to have its own genius regarding diversity of peoples, idealism and openness, at the same time we are on a new path that is leading us away from these principles and toward something else. In Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell uses the word “Corpocracy.” Maybe that’s close.
I do think that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzalez and others are acting more like good old American CEOs (i.e. scraping off profits and passing the buck and taking public stances that deny facts) than the leaders of our past (who admittedly combined corruption with idealism).
It does weirdly seem to be the government that the voting population of the US has chosen.
I had a nice conversation with Elizabeth in China this morning. I love the internet.
After we hung up, I immediately started working on compiling the music reports from my class. I look forward to this. It interests me to see what songs they choose for their report. And I usually make a playlist on Napster each semester for my own dining and dancing pleasure to listen to all of their selections (that are available). This is fun.
Ironic, that I bitch so much about teaching and then when I get free time (like today) I mess around some more with teaching. This looks dangerously like my obsession with music. God help me.
