(If you still have no plans, go to:
Sunday, December 31st, 2017
BOURBON STREET ON THE BEACH
Early New Year's Eve Party with OHO - 4:00PM
Coastal Highway & 116th Street
Ocean City, MD21842
443-664-2896[map]
Price: no cover
Enjoy Chef Barry's cajun-inflected cuisine and the folk/prog/jazz/rock/pop of Baltimore's iconic OHO before 2018 arrives. . .
Or have a great meal with some infectious music and get to bed early)
Waited all these nights for the day to come
Nevermore will I ever suck my thumb
Imaginary pains from my misery
Merely phantoms peopling my fantasy
I believe in everything good
Though my body feels its decrepitude
How is where we go.
Where is how we go.
Severing the strings of the puppeteer
No longer victimized by the petty fears
Swinging round the pole of infinity
Now I am “in the know”
How is where we go, where we go.
Where is how we go, how we go.
How is where we go, where we go.
Where is how we go, how we go.
Cupid hurled his dart; aim was true, hit its mark.
I know that I will never be the same.
Writes across my soul in a secret, sacred code,
Pouring cream so sweet into my tea
Chiming bells ring. See this living take wing.
My identity’s been revealed to me.
I am in accord with my mystery.
How is where we go, where we go.
Where is how we go, how we go.
How is where we go, where we go.
Where is how we go, how we go.Third-Hand Intelligence
. . . in his shoes before you judge (a person). . . Many foreign policy problems would be eliminated if this proverb was sincerely put into practice. . .
(from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60098-2005Feb28.html - way back in 2005)
". . . "It's not clear how well Putin understands the controversy that led to the dismissal of four CBS journalists over the discredited report on Bush's National Guard service. Yet it's all too clear how Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media -- just like his own. Bush's aides have long feared that former KGB officers in Putin's inner circle are painting a twisted picture of U.S. policy. So Bush explained how he had no power to fire American journalists. It made little difference. When the two presidents emerged for their joint press conference, one Russian reporter repeated Putin's language about journalists getting fired. Bush (already hot after an earlier question about his spying on U.S. citizens) asked the reporter if he felt free. . ."
At the risk of being redundant, I am mercilessly pursuing a final version of Merciless. This particular edition contains forays into the verse/mid-section looking for the right chords and not finding many of them and ends inconclusively. The first chorus-verse-chorus section is holding together. Trying to evoke a gospel-inflected vibe. Good things come to those who wait.
Sunday, December 31st, 2017
BOURBON STREET ON THE BEACH
Early New Year's Eve Party with OHO - 4:00PM
Coastal Highway & 116th Street
Ocean City, MD21842
443-664-2896
Price: no cover
Enjoy Chef Barry's cajun-inflected cuisine and the folk/prog/jazz/rock/pop of Baltimore's iconic OHO before 2018 arrives.
Or have a great meal with some infectious music and get to bed early.
(from http://www.ohomusic.com/gig/)
OHO - Live
Sunday, December 31st, 2017
BOURBON STREET ON THE BEACH
Early New Year's Eve Party with OHO - 4:00PM
Coastal Highway & 116th Street
Ocean City, MD21842
443-664-2896
Price: no cover
Enjoy Chef Barry's cajun-inflected cuisine and the folk/prog/jazz/rock/pop of Baltimore's iconic OHO before 2018 arrives. . .Or have a great meal with some infectious music and get to bed early.
(from http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/Bells/1/index.html)
Around, around, Companions all, take your ground, And name the bell with joy profound! Concordia is the world we've found Most meet to express the harmonious sound, That calls to those in friendship bound.
-Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller Quotes , Source: Song of the Bell
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow.
-Lord Alfred Tennyson Quotes , Source: In Memoriam (pt. CVI)
The bells themselves are the best of preachers, Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon and now a prayer.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes , Source: Christus--The Golden Legend (pt. III)
Softly the loud peal dies, In passing winds it drowns, But breathes, like perfect joys, Tender tones.
-Frederick Tennyson Quotes , Source: The Bridal
How soft the music of those village bells, Falling at interval upon the ear In cadence sweet; now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on! With easy force it opens all the cells Where Memory slept.
-William Cowper Quotes , Source: Task (bk. VI, l. 6)
The vesper bell from far That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
-Dante ("Dante Alighieri") Quotes , Source: Purgatorio (canto 8, l. 6)
(from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-ha-guns-churches-20171212-story.html)
". . . Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler has asked state lawmakers to let handgun owners bring their weapons to worship, saying he wants congregations to be able to defend themselves against a mass shooting like the one that happened last month in Texas. . . Gahler backs a proposal that would let parishioners who have the written permission of church officials wear and carry a handgun on church property. The parishioner would need a state handgun license, but not a concealed-carry permit. . ."
(from http://theothercloset-atheism.blogspot.com/2009/12/19-atheists-christmas-prayer.html)
This Christmas, I pray that the struggle over the “true meaning” of the holiday is wiped away, replaced by the desire to honor what Christmas means to you and not to your neighbors.
I pray that we as a nation can learn to put aside the party lines and shields of segregation to leave the world better than we found it.
I pray that we as a race can learn to prosper without greed, without indifference.
I pray that the good times outweigh the bad, and that we enter the lives of those we are lucky enough to encounter with the grace and respect that everyone deserves, regardless of their status, regardless of our creed.
I pray we wake up one day with the recognition that – black or white, rich or poor, religious or not – we all want the same things, even if we disagree on how best to achieve them.
I pray that those who need shelter will find it.
I pray that those in pain will find an end to suffering.
I pray for peace.
I pray for hope.
Most of all, I pray that tomorrow will be better than it was today.
For all of us.
(from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-tax-overhaul-fact-checking-lopsided-political-arguments/)
". . . The tax cuts are not nearly as lopsided as many Democrats are portraying them. Almost all of the middle class would initially pay less in taxes. . . For the next eight years, the vast majority of middle-class taxpayers — those earning between $49,000 and $86,000 — will receive a tax cut, albeit a small one. In 2018, nine-tenths of the middle class will get a cut, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2025, 87 percent will. The tax cut won't be very big: just $930 next year for the middle one-fifth of taxpayers, the center's analysis concludes. For those paid twice a month, that's about $40 a paycheck. . . . Schumer and other Democrats are basing their assertions on the fact that nearly all personal tax cuts expire after 2025, which would result in a slight tax increase for about two-thirds of the middle class by 2027. The top 1 percent would still get a cut that year. . . Only in 2027 do the wealthiest taxpayers get 83 percent of the benefit, as Schumer says. In 2018, roughly 21 percent of the tax cut's benefits go to the richest 1 percent, a much smaller figure, though still a disproportionate share. Just 11 percent will go to the middle one-fifth. . ."
(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_tango)
". . . Tango is a dance that has influences from African and European culture. Dances from the candombe ceremonies of former slave peoples helped shape the modern day tango. The dance originated in lower-class districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The music derived from the fusion of various forms of music from Europe. The words "tango" and "tambo" around the River Plate basin were initially used to refer to musical gatherings of slaves, with written records of colonial authorities attempting to ban such gatherings as early as 1789. . . Initially, it was just one of the many dances, but it soon became popular throughout society, as theatres and street barrel organs spread it from the suburbs to the working-class slums, which were packed with hundreds of thousands of European immigrants. . . In Argentina, the onset in 1929 of the Great Depression, and restrictions introduced after the overthrow of the Hipólito Yrigoyen government in 1930, caused tango to decline. Its fortunes were reversed as tango became widely fashionable and a matter of national pride under the government of Juan Perón. Tango declined again in the 1950s, as a result of economic depression and the banning of public gatherings by the military dictatorships; male-only Tango practice—the custom at the time—was considered "public gathering". . ."
(from https://www.nbcnews.com/)
"Sessions orders fresh look at Uranium One deal"
"U.S. life expectancy falls for second straight year — as drug overdoses soar"
"With CHIP funds running out, 'there are no good options,' official says"
"Car that hit crowd in Australia's Melbourne was deliberate act, police say"
"What the tax win means for Trump, now and in 2020"
"South Korea fires warning shots at DMZ after soldier defects from North"
". . . 80% of individuals affected by depression do not receive any treatment. . . statistics show that diagnoses are growing at an alarming rate. In addition, states with higher rates of depression also show high rates of other negative health outcomes, such as obesity, heart disease, and stroke. Individuals suffering from depression are more likely to be unemployed or recently divorced than their non-depressed counterparts, and women experience greater risk of depression than men. Despite all of these statistics on depression, this infographic shows that many people suffer symptoms of depression without seeking care, and that undiagnosed depression costs the U.S. millions of dollars each year. Now a global health issue, depression awareness, diagnosis, and treatment are matters of crucial significance in building a healthier, happier world. . ."
You've always been ahead of me
One fact that I
In my infinite wisdom
Could not always see
But in the end you always convinced me
Things aren't always
What they appear
The things I've always looked for
Once long ago before we met
I thought I could
Singlehandedly make the
Spinning world go away
Just like some king
from back in those bygone days
But I was wrong
I don't belong
Inside this category
Seemed to be
At the time to me
To my advantage
Missing why
Not knowing
When to try
To start believing
In my very own
Self determination
Sometimes at night
When I'm alone
The solitude
And the quiet can bring out
All the worst in my head
But now it seems that isn't so big or bad
I've learned a thing
". . . Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., has for years been working to overturn the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law that barred Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses. . . is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and auditor who in 2008 untangled a dense web of tax fraud and graft involving 23 companies and a total of $230 million linked to the Kremlin and individuals close to the government. Magnitsky was the target of investigations, arrested by authorities and kept in jail without charges. He was beaten and later died under mysterious circumstances in jail just days before his possible release. . . The Magnitsky Act was signed by President Barack Obama in December 2012 as a retaliation against the human rights abuses suffered by Magnitsky. The law at first blocked 18 Russian government officials and businessmen from entering the United States, froze any assets held by U.S. banks and banned their future use of U.S. banking systems. The act was expanded in 2016, and now sanctions apply to 44 suspected human rights abusers worldwide. . ."
(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Browder)
". . . William Felix Browder (author of Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice)is an American-English financier, the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, an investment firm that at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. . . After the death in prison in 2009 of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and auditor who had represented his company and conducted an investigation into massive tax fraud related to it, Browder lobbied for Congress to pass the "Magnitsky Act", a law to punish Russian human rights violators. . ."
(from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-wrongly-says-he-won-t-benefit-gop-tax-plan-n825066)
". . . Trump made another sales pitch for his tax plan . . . repeating his erroneous claim that the Republican bill, if passed, would cost him and other rich Americans “a fortune.”. . . He added that his “very wealthy friends” were “not so happy with me” when it came to the bill . . . In fact, Trump and his family could save more than $1 billion under the House tax plan . . . according to an NBC News analysis. . . "
(from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/06/ten-best-bells-in-literature)
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers
In sleepy Fenland St Paul, the death of a villager is marked by nine rings of the great bell, Tailor Paul, in the tower of the church. The visiting sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, finds himself challenged by a mystery involving jewel theft and murder that centres on the bell tower. Only Wimsey's knowledge of campanology allows him to decipher the coded message that unravels the tale.
Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo
Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer, lives in the belfry of Notre Dame and has been made deaf by the bells. He loves ringing them, "long morning serenades, which lasted from prime to compline; peals from the belfry for a high mass, rich scales drawn over the smaller bells for a wedding". But when he encounters the beautiful Esmerelda, he abandons the bells for a greater love.
"Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Street Station" by John Betjeman
Betjeman's characteristic celebration of the City of London's "steepled forest of churches" evokes the sounds of bells breaking the "Sunday silence". It begins with the "tingle tang" of "the bell of St Mildred's Bread Street", and ends by drowning in "the roaring flood of a twelve-voiced peal from Paul's".
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray
One of the best-known opening lines in English poetry is the sound of a bell ringing: "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." Gray's tolling curfew was the traditional sound of the country parish. Since the days of William the Conqueror, the curfew bell had been rung to signal that it was time for bed.
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
A wonderfully batty cast of characters converges on Imber Abbey in Gloucestershire. According to legend, the abbey bell flew into the lake centuries earlier when a bishop cursed the place because of the sexual misdemeanours of one of the nuns. A new bell is to be installed, but Toby and Dora find the old bell in the lake and decide to effect a bell-swap. Chaos ensues.
Peter Pan by JM Barrie
Tinkerbell the fairy communicates with the sound of a tinkling bell, which can only be understood by initiates. "It is the fairy language. You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once before."
The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis
In the distant, dying world of Charn, Digory comes upon a small golden bell with a hammer next to it and this needling rhyme: "Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; / Strike the bell and bide the danger, / Or wonder, till it drive you mad, / What would have happened if you had." He cannot resist striking the bell, whose reverberations bring the witch Queen Jadis to life.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Macbeth waits for his wife to signal that the sleeping Duncan's guards have been drugged. She rings a bell, and Macbeth exits to do the terrible deed. "I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. / Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell."
"The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe
Poe's lyric starts cheerily with sleigh bells, proceeding to wedding bells and then alarum bells, before the poem's final section evokes the "iron bells" that make us shudder with terror. "For every sound that floats / From the rust within their throats / Is a groan".
In Memoriam AHH by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Ring out the old, ring in the new." In section CVI of Tennyson's elegy, church bells ring out across the Lincolnshire snow at Christmas, lifting the poet from the gloom and pain that have engulfed him. "Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, / The flying cloud, the frosty light: / The year is dying in the night; / Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."
(from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-cdc-forbidden-words-20171215-story.html)
". . . Trump administration officials are forbidding officials at the nation's top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases - including "fetus" and "transgender" - in any official documents being prepared for next year's budget. . . Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are: "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based." . . . The longtime CDC analyst, whose job includes writing descriptions of the CDC's work for the administration's annual spending blueprint, could not recall a previous time when words were banned from budget documents because they were considered controversial. . . The reaction of people in the meeting was "incredulous," the analyst said. "It was very much, 'Are you serious? Are you kidding?' " . . . "In my experience, we've never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint," the analyst said. . . News of the ban on certain words hasn't yet spread to the broader group of scientists at the CDC, but it's likely to provoke a backlash, the analyst said. "Our subject matter experts will not lay down quietly - this hasn't trickled down to them yet.". . . "
". . . (former Texas Governer and current U.S. Energy secretary-Rick) Perry has cultivated an adversarial relationship with the Environmental Protection Agency going all the way back to his days as Texas’ agriculture commissioner. Perry contends the “mandates and overreaching regulation” of the EPA cost Texas jobs and that Texas is better equipped to tackle air quality issues than “a centralized, all-knowing, one-size-fits-all federal government.” And, he says, Texas has done just fine cleaning up its air without the EPA’s interference (a claim many environmental groups in Texas contest). . . One of Perry’s most heated battles with the EPA is over global warming and the Obama administration’s use of the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the state’s many oil refineries and power plants. Perry is skeptical of scientists who say global warming is a man-made problem. Tensions reached a boil when, earlier this year, the EPA announced it was taking over control of the greenhouse gas permitting in Texas because the state refused to implement its rules. Texas has led several other states in a legal challenge to the global warming regulations. The issue is still pending in federal court. . ."
