Monday, November 14, 2011

"The First Amendment. . .

. . .DOES NOT bar religion from the public square and from government in general. Under the First Amendment, the resulting separation of Church and State puts restrictions on government but does not put restrictions on religion. . ."

(reaction to a recent blog by Howard Bess. See bottom)
The good Reverend seems to hit it on the head on a regular basis. He says that the current crop of republican presidential candidates, as well as the media 'reporting' on them, all miss the boat on their interpretation of the First Amendment. He would like to know how the religion of the candidates informs their views and intentions with regard to the following issues. "As president, would the candidate pursue the teachings of his religion?"

WAR AND PEACE - religions generally favor a path toward peace

POPULATION CONTROL, BIRTH CONTROL, AND ABORTION SERVICES - how long will the earth be able to sustain the needs of this huge (and growing) population so highly encouraged by their right to life 'philosophy'?

FULL RIGHTS FOR GAY, LESBIAN, TRANSGENDERED AND BISEXUAL PERSONS - many/most organized religions do not favor these just and necessary rights

PRESERVATION OF THE INTEGRITY OF THE WORLD’S ENVIRONMENT - what will the candidate do when scientific knowledge directly confronts the teachings of his religion?

PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION - parochial schools have been known to practice discrimination

PROVISION FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE LESS FORTUNATE - entitlements and being 'thy brother's keeper'

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. His email address is HYPERLINK "mailto:hdbss@mtaonline.net" hdbss@mtaonline.net

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING HIM!




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The poet said . . .

. . . trailing clouds of glory we come and go
What do we really know
Smiling so brightly betraying the years
They have still to try
Those little men
with that glory
Riddles and bedtime stories
Little men
With that glory
In their eyes

Innocence and wisdom coexist inside their minds
Together with appreciation for the the things we miss
In our haste and our big business
Always in awe of the wheels spinning round
With a laugh for the foolish things big men do

The poet said trailing clouds of glory we come and go
What do we really know
Smiling so brightly betraying the years
They have still to try
Those little men
with that glory
Riddles and bedtime stories
Little men
With that glory
In their eyes

Everybody thinks about the world and what the future brings
Who really knows the plan and all its subtleties
We're really smart at least that's what we think
Going our own way in blissful retreat
From the prospect of seeing things too clearly

The poet said trailing clouds of glory we come and go
What do we really know
Smiling so brightly betraying the years
They have still to try
Those little men
with that glory
Riddles and bedtime stories
Little men
With that glory
In their eyes

LITTLE MEN
©1992 Raymond M. Jozwiak


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Saturday, November 12, 2011

Just because you're not a drummer. . .

. . . doesn't mean that you don't have to KEEP TIME.

(from T. Monk's advice. . . )
Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.

Stop playing all (that bullshit) those wierd (sic) notes, PLAY THE MELODY!

Make the drummer sound GOOD.

Discrimination is important.

You've got to dig it to DIG IT. YOU DIG?

All Reet!

It must be always NIGHT, otherwise they wouldn't need the LIGHTS.

Let's lift the bandstand!!

Avoid the HECKLERS.

Don't play the PIANO PART. I'm playing that. Don't listen to me. I'm supposed to be accompanying YOU.

The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.

Don't play EVERYTHING (or EVERYTIME); let some things go by. Some music (is) just imagined. What you don't play can be more important than what you DO.

A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world. It depends on your IMAGINATION.

Stay in SHAPE! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig and when it comes, he's out of shape and can't make it.

When you're SWINGING, swing some MORE!

Always leave them wanting MORE.

Don't sound ANYBODY for a gig, just be on the scene. Those pieces were written so as to have something to play and to get cats INTERESTED enough to come to rehearsal.

You've got it! If you don;'t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case YOU GOT IT! (to a drummer who didn't want to solo)

Whatever you think CAN'T be done, somebody will come along and DO IT. A genius is the one MOST LIKE HIMSELF!

They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along and spoil it.





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Real change . . .

. . . we are all evolving. . .

(from THE SINS OF SCRIPTURE by John Shelby Spong
© 2005 John Shelby Spong)
". . . if change is the tactic to be adopted, the change cannot be simply cosmetic, an adjustment around the edges of our faith story. It has to be so total and so radical that many will think such a change is either impossible or will result in the death of the patient. It would be easier, some say, to start over by building an entirely new religious system than it would be to seek to reform this one so totally that continuity might be strained to the breaking point. . . Our task is not to build tomorrow's church. That is something into which we have to live one day at a time. Our task is rather to face the need for radical change and take the first, probably tiny step necessary to erect a totally new foundation. That step is found, I believe, in acknowledging our evolutionary origins and dispensing with any suggestion that sin, inadequacy and guilt are the definitions into which we are born. This also means that we rid ourselves of the idea that the world was created for the benefit of human beings, or even that the planet earth is somehow different or special in the universe. . . "




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Friday, November 11, 2011

Let's see -- I can't..., I can't. . . I'm sorry ... oops...

. . . (based [loosely] upon http://www.rickperry.org/issues/)
America is at a crossroads. One in six work-eligible Americans cannot find a uh, the uh...struggling to avoid foreclosure or to just make ends meet. As national leaders spend more time assigning blame than laying out a clear vision, the prospects for recovery seem let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops..

Rick Perry will get America working again.
As Governor of uh, the uh...let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops, Rick Perry has helped build the nation's strongest economy. Since June 2009, more than 40 percent of all net new jobs in America have been created in Texas. Thanks to his fiscally conservative leadership, Texans enjoy one of the lowest tax burdens in the country and one of the uh, the uh...

The principles that have guided Rick Perry's leadership in Texas are the same principles that will guide him as let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops:
Don't spend all the money. Keep taxes low and regulations fair. And invest aggressively in job creation, because good jobs make the American Dream possible. It's time for a leader who will allow us to believe again – to believe that America's best days are ahead, that we are not consigned to a fate of high unemployment and economic uh, let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops., and that our place in the world can once again be secure with a policy of peace through strength. That leader is Rick Perry. And the restoration of the American Dream begins today.

The Issues

Jobs
Rick Perry will get government out of the way so we can get America working again. By cutting taxes, repealing regulations, balancing our budget and uh, the uh...America can create millions of new jobs. Perry not only espouses conservative economic ideas – he has put them to work in his home state, where nearly 40% of uh, the uh...let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops.

Fiscal Responsibility
Washington is broken. President Obama and other establishment politicians think it can be fixed with let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops. Rick Perry knows it will require taking a wrecking ball to the three pillars of big government: overtaxing, overspending and overregulation.

Security
As a proud Air Force veteran, Rick Perry believes we must pursue peace through strength and provide the resources to maintain uh, the uh... Perry will advance American interests abroad by standing firm with our allies, and ensuring American blood and American Treasure are spent only when American interests are threatened. Equally important, he will protect the American homeland by forcing Washington to let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops.

Healthcare
Rick Perry believes government must stimulate job creation so more Americans are covered by employer-sponsored health plans. We must repeal Obamacare, and completely transform the uh, the uh...let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops.

Social Issues
Rick Perry is a conservative of conviction, not of convenience. On the bedrock issues of life, marriage and uh, the uh..., Perry’s conservative values are clear and uh, the uh...let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops.




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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Good or bad. . .

. . . music brings something out of EVERYBODY. . .


(from http://www.quotegarden.com/music.html)
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach


All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! ~Thomas Carlyle


If the King loves music, it is well with the land. ~Mencius


Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche


Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ~Gustav Mahler


Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass? ~Michael Torke


And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done


He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes


Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name


Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. ~Benjamin Disraeli


Music is what feelings sound like. ~Author Unknown


There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
~Lord Byron


Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket. ~Henri Rabaud


Music is the poetry of the air. ~Richter


If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. Sydney Smith


There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is. ~William P. Merrill


If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada


Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. ~Henry David Thoreau


Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. ~Ludwig van Beethoven


I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet


My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. ~Edward Elgar


Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. ~Charlie Parker


Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. ~William F. Buckley, Jr.


Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. ~Henry Ward Beecher


Play the music, not the instrument. ~Author Unknown


Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. ~Ludwig van Beethoven


Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence. ~Robert Fripp


[An intellectual] is someone who can listen to the "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger. ~John Chesson


Music's the medicine of the mind. ~John A. Logan


You are the music while the music lasts. ~T.S. Eliot


Music is the universal language of mankind. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer


Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music. ~Ezra Pound


He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once. ~Robert Browning


You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. ~Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket


The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven't got the joke yet. ~Oliver Herford


What we provide is an atmosphere... of orchestrated pulse which works on people in a subliminal way. Under its influence I've seen shy debs and severe dowagers kick off their shoes and raise some wholesome hell. ~Meyer Davis, about his orchestra


Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. ~Victor Hugo


...where music dwells
Lingering - and wandering on as loth to die...
~William Wordsworth, "Within King's College Chapel, Cambridge"


Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel. ~Buffy Sainte-Marie


Music is an outburst of the soul. ~Frederick Delius


Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory. ~Oscar Wilde


In music the passions enjoy themselves. ~Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886


Music is what life sounds like. ~Eric Olson


If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound. ~John Cage


Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. ~Arnold Bennett


Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. ~Robert G. Ingersoll


Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends. ~Alphonse de Lamartine


There is in souls a sympathy with sounds:
And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
~William Cowper


When words leave off, music begins. ~Heinrich Heine


Truly to sing, that is a different breath. ~Rainer Maria Rilke


Music is the shorthand of emotion. ~Leo Tolstoy


Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together. ~Anais Nin


There is no truer truth obtainable
By Man than comes of music.
~Robert Browning


Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific. ~Aaron Copland


What passion cannot music raise and quell! ~John Dryden


The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. ~Leonard Bernstein


Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die. ~Paul Simon


Music, when soft voices die
Vibrates in the memory -
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. ~Benny Green


The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides! ~Artur Schnabel


The pause is as important as the note. ~Truman Fisher


The city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built forever.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson


Silence is the fabric upon which the notes are woven. ~Lawrence Duncan


Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. ~Confucius


Rock music in its lyrics often talks ahead of the time about what's going on in the country. ~Edmund G. Brown


Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love,
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
~Joseph Addison


My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle. ~Liberace


Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson


Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music. ~Ronald Reagan


The discovery of song and the creation of musical instruments both owed their origin to a human impulse which lies much deeper than conscious intention: the need for rhythm in life… the need is a deep one, transcending thought, and disregarded at our peril. ~Richard Baker


Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains. ~John Philip Sousa


Music is the medicine of the breaking heart. ~Leigh Hunt


Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard, Comments of Abe Martin and His Neighbors, 1923


Country music is three chords and the truth. ~Harlan Howard


An artist, in giving a concert, should not demand an entrance fee but should ask the public to pay, just before leaving as much as they like. From the sum he would be able to judge what the world thinks of him - and we would have fewer mediocre concerts. ~Kit Coleman, Kit Coleman: Queen of Hearts


I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms, could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies. ~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton


A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it? ~Charles Ives


The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. ~Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz


After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays


Music is love in search of a word. ~Sidney Lanier


It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible. ~Victor de LaPrade


Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life. ~Jean Paul Richter


All the shopping malls and restaurants and airports are riddled with low-fidelity loudspeakers, which apparently have developed the ability to reproduce by themselves; these are all connected to a special programming service called Music That Nobody Really Likes, and you cannot get away from it. ~Dave Barry


Music is a friend of labor for it lightens the task by refreshing the nerves and spirit of the worker. ~William Green


If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong. ~Simon Rattle


Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all. ~Helmut Walcha


I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else. ~Lily Tomlin


The scratches in Yoko Ono records are moments of relief. ~S.A. Sachs


Music is well said to be the speech of angels. ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera"


Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. ~Robert Benchley


The taxpayers cannot be relied upon to support performing arts such as opera. As a taxpayer, I am forced to admit that I would rather undergo a vasectomy via Weed Whacker than attend an opera. ~Dave Barry


No good opera plot can be sensible:... people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. ~W.H. Auden, Time, 29 December 1961





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Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Junk, stuff, things, baggage. . .

. . . whatever you call it, everybody's got it; and probably more of it than they need. And I mean actual, PHYSICAL junk and not the mental baggage we all carry, which will indeed be the topic of another blog at another time.

My wife and I just got rid of a lot of junk in the last two weekends and it really feels good. As each of our parents passed away, I vowed to myself that I did NOT want to leave a lot of stupid junk laying around so our children would have to sift through it, and as is so often the case, throw out most of it in the end. We both are taking that idea a little more seriously now. Of course it is also somewhat selfish on our part. The more we clean out now, the easier it is to find the things we actually need and everything is just so much neater.

Why does it seem that human nature has a tendency to collect, store, hoard, whatever you want to call it? Maybe after additional research in the field of evolution it will finally be revealed that we have not, after all, evolved from the apes (a prospect that troubles so many 'traditional' thinkers) but that we have indeed evolved from a much more noble creature - THE SQUIRREL!




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