Sunday, March 29, 2015
Off to Amish Country
I was relieved that both the documentary and the series were balanced, and not sensationalistic as I expected them to be. Both focused on the stories of individuals, and in doing so told the universal story of Man's search for meaning, whether it be that of the Amish "old maid" at 23 whom we suspect leaves because she can't find a husband or the "English" girl from a broken home who at 16 desperately wants family.
The series was a bit problematic; producer/director/star Mose Gingerich's scruples at expsoing tthe Amich to publicity by giving a lecture at a university don't come up while making a ten-part "reality" series. Still, introduces us to some interesting and likable characters.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Pennsylvania, Separated Brethren, The Seventh Art, The Telescreen
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Tanya Tagaq's Improvised Performance and Interview
Throat singing is something I decided to try to teach myself today, and stumbled across the above video. It's a style I've been somewhat interested in for some time — Hanggai Perform Four Seasons, Batubagan, Borulai's Lullaby, Tyva Kyzy Perform "Aylanmaa Damyran," "Chandagajty" and "Setkilimden Sergek Yr-dyr" and Baby Gramps and the Akron Family Perform "Cape Cod Girls".
Up in Toronto just a few days ago for a conference, I shared an elevator with some similarly striking ladies, who were talking about a familial baptism, a reminder of just how close the Great White North is.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music, Her Majesty's Dominion of Canada, Inuit, Mongolia, The Catholic Faith
The Greatest Generation (of Rapist War Criminals)
Labels: Albion, America the Beautiful, Atrocities, Deutschland, The Eldest Daughter of the Church, War and Rumors of War
Saturday, March 21, 2015
J.S. Bach's "Mass in B Minor," Performed by Joélle Harvey, Carolyn Sampson, Iestyn Davies, Ed Lyon, Matthew Rose, Choir of the English Concert, and The English Concert, Directed by Harry Bicket
"To commemorate the 330th anniversary of the March 21, 1685 birth of Johann Sebastian Bach," Bach's Mass in B minor will be performed tonight in town at Asbury First United Methodist Church.
Labels: Classical Music, Early Music, High Church Lutheranism, Musica Sacra, Rachacha, Separated Brethren, The Catholic Faith
Saint Chesterton
"The case for canonizing G. K. Chesterton, the bombastic man of letters and paradoxical militant for God," examined by The Atlantic's James Parker — A Most Unlikely Saint. An exceprt:
- Chesterton was a journalist; he was a metaphysician. He was a reactionary; he was a radical. He was a modernist, acutely alive to the rupture in consciousness that produced Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”; he was an anti-modernist (he hated Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”). He was a parochial Englishman and a post-Victorian gasbag; he was a mystic wedded to eternity. All of these cheerfully contradictory things are true, and none of them would matter in the slightest were it not for the final, resolving fact that he was a genius. Touched once by the live wire of his thought, you don’t forget it.
Labels: Albion, The Catholic Faith
Genny Light
- No joke, no snark. This is my all-time favorite beer. It's what I grew up with. It's always in my fridge.
- I don't understand the scorn that Genny Light garners from many. It's a classic American light lager. It's miles ahead of Coors Light, Bud Light, Labatt Blue Light or Miller Lite. It offers more flavor than those other options, and it's usually fresh and readily available. It can usually be found in the bottom left corner of the Acme cooler. It's cheap and reliable.
The Mynabirds Perform "Nmbers Don't Lie," "Let the Record Go," & "What We Gained in the Fire"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Soul Music
Thursday, March 19, 2015
St. Paul and the Broken Bones Perform "Grass is Greener" and "Like a Mighty River"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Dixie, Soul Music
"Never Trust a President"
The Buffalonian "hailed by many libertarians as an honest champion of limited government and the constitution" exposed — JP Morgan Man, Grover Cleveland, and His Trend Away From Liberty. Quoted is Murray Rothbard:
- The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early 1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad.
I recently finished reading novelist Lauren Belfer's great City of Light, in which the president serves as an antagonist, a fact that almost wrongly stopped me from reading the book. I'm glad it didn't. The novel focuses not on his political failings but his personal ones, which were well publicized, as the popular ditty from the day attests: "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, Family, Foreign Policy, Paleolibertarianism, The Queen City, The Written Word
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Lisa Hannigan Performs "Knots," "Little Bird," & "Passenger"
The lovely colleen returns to sing for us on St. Patrick's Day, with the set that she first charmed me with.
Labels: Eire, Folk Music, Popular Music, The Catholic Faith
Monday, March 16, 2015
Tweedy Perform "World Away," "Summer Noon," "The Losing End (When You're On)," & "Low Key"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music, Rock 'n' Roll
A Legendary Vegetarian Restaurant
The best vegetarian restaurant I ever ate at was Sanchon in Insa-dong, Seoul, specializing in Buddhist temple food. And the International Society for Krishna Consciousness's global Govinda's Restaurant chain is always good.
Labels: Buddhism, Corea, Food, Hinduism, The Empire State, The Finger Lakes
Drunk Drivin'
The Religious Society of Friends-founded Orchard Park, New York would be wise to follow Lew Rockwell's fifteen-year-old advice — Legalize Drunk Driving.
Labels: Drink, Paleolibertarianism, The Queen City, Traffic, Tyranny
Man's Best Friend's Best Friend
Labels: Gotham, The Animal Kingdom, The Finger Lakes
The Punch Brothers Perform "My Oh My," "Boll Weevil," "Magnet," & "Julep"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music
Thursday, March 12, 2015
The Punch Brothers Perform The Cars' "Just What I Needed"
Something to accompany this post from Roissy — Alpha Male Of The Month: How Did Ric Ocasek Get Paulina Porizkova?.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music, He Made Them Man and Woman, Rock 'n' Roll, The Manosphere
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Kris Kristofferson Performs "Quinn the Eskimo"
Bob Dylan's "Quinn the Eskimo (Mighty Quinn)" was the song I learned to sing and play on my guitalele over the weekend after listening to it a few times in the car with my daughter, who wanted to figure out "what's the big deal with this Eskimo" and then independently came to the exegesis that he was a Christ figure.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music, The Catholic Faith
Slacker (1991)

Above, a still from the film Slacker (1991), the movie of my era, which, Generation X slacker that I am, I never got around to watching until today. Glad I did. A walk down memory lane. The film's credits role with "Strangers Die Everyday" by the setting Austin, Texas's Butthole Surfers. Director Richard Linklater:
- Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Punk Rock, Ron Paul for President, Talk, The Great State of Texas, The Seventh Art
Tibetan Buddhism
Saturday, March 7, 2015
The Lumineers Perform "Flowers in Your Hair," "Ho Hey," "Submarines," "Ain't Nobody's Problem," "Classy Girls," & "Stubborn Love"
Bought their album, which I had had on digital media, last night on vinyl; sounds fuller and richer.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music
Whither Philology?
- At times there was something decidedly otherworldly about other philologists I met. In the 1970s, when I studied at the University of Tübingen and had the good fortune to work with Manfred Ullmann, the great lexicographer of Classical Arabic, he startled me one day by excitedly brandishing a file card on which was written the Arabic word for “clitoris” (bazr) and exclaiming, “Kli-tO-ris! What do ordinary folk know about Kli-tO-ris?” (More than you imagine, I thought.) Needless to say, it was the word—its etymology, its cognates, its morphology—that captivated him.
Labels: Europa, Linguistics
Toss a Couple of Extra Bucks in the Collection Plate Tomorrow
Labels: The Catholic Faith, The Queen City, The Weather
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Bob Mould Performs "Fire In The City," "If I Can't Change Your Mind," "Hey Mr. Grey," "Come Around," "Tomorrow Morning," "Something I Learned Today," & "Chartered Trips"
From the Pittsford Community Library tonight, I checked out Every Everything: The Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart (2013), about Mr. Mould's drummer from his Hüsker Dü days.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Punk Rock
Another Neocon Chickenhawk Fraud Exposed
Labels: America the Beautiful, Conspiracy Analysis, Neoconnerie, The Fourth Estate, War and Rumors of War
The Nanny State at Her Most Sinister
Labels: America the Beautiful, Family, Paleolibertarianism, Tyranny
Not The Waltons
- My Greatest Gen grandparents lived and died with my family growing up in the 70s and 80s. Every bit of wisdom I learned was imparted to me from my Mississippian grandmother.
With such positive memories, I naturally invited my own Boomer parents to move in with us now that they're old. Biggest mistake of my life! They act like they own my house. They do nothing but watch TV all day (in an average day more than I do in a year). They cause discord with their daughter-in-law, my wife. My father spends more time tending his Keurig coffee maker than he has with his grandson. My mother moans to no end when she's left at home an hour or two with the kids, 10 and 11, although they need nothing from her as they keep to themselves upstairs and my daughter is a Red Cross certified baby sitter.
Labels: Decline and Fall, Family, Talkin' 'Bout My Generation
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Israel Nash Performs "Woman At The Well," "Mansions," "Rain Plans," & "Rexanimarium"
American interest should lie with this Israel, not the Zionist entity.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Folk Music, Rock 'n' Roll, The Middle East, Zionism
Monday, March 2, 2015
Chickenhawks
Labels: America the Beautiful, Neoconnerie, War and Rumors of War
"Sapience, not Sentience"
Labels: America the Beautiful, Decline and Fall, Democrazy
The Decline and Fall of Classical Music
"With the many subversive and insidious forces of globalisation beginning seriously to undermine the legitimacy of the nation state, and with Christianity under attack from a new liberal bigotry which has made expressing Christian sentiments all but taboo in much public life, what we need now are forms of culture that will help us to shore up these foundations."
Labels: Classical Music, Decline and Fall, Europa, The Catholic Faith