On This Day: Wren

Architect Christopher Michael Wren was born 20 October 1632 in East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England.

The design of many churches in London bare his stamp. I am more familiar with St James's, Piccadilly, as it was my parish when I lived for a year in London.

“I can hardly think it practicable to make a single room so capacious, with pews and galleries, as to hold 2,000 persons, and all to hear the service and see the preacher. I endeavoured to effect this in building the parish church of St James’s, Westminster [Piccadilly], which I presume is the most capacious, with those qualifications, that hath yet been built.”
Sir Christopher Wren

On This Day: Charles Ives

From the G. Schirmer (music publishers) website:

"Born in Danbury, Connecticut on 20 October 1874, Charles Ives pursued what is perhaps one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. Businessman by day and composer by night, Ives's vast output has gradually brought him recognition as the most original and significant American composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, Ives sought a highly personalized musical expression through the most innovative and radical technical means possible."

Ives was a complex composer. He drew on a range of influences, particularly military music (his father was a US Army band leader). He also wrote for the church. This is a lovely setting for Psalm 135.

Seumas Milne: The Real Lessons of The First World War

Seumas Milne in The Guardian,  The first world war: the real lessons of this savage imperial bloodbath

"The idea that the war was some kind of crusade for democracy when most of Britain's population – including many men – were still denied the vote, and democracy and dissent were savagely crushed among most of those Britain ruled, is laughable. And when the US president, Woodrow Wilson, championed the right to self-determination to win the peace, that would of course apply only to Europeans – not the colonial peoples their governments lorded it over.

"As the bloodbath exhausted itself, it unleashed mutinies, workers' revolts and revolutions, and the breakup of defeated empires, giving a powerful impetus to anti-colonial movements in the process. But the outcome also laid the ground for the rise of nazism and the even bloodier second world war, and led to a new imperial carve-up of the Middle East, whose consequences we are still living with today, including the Palestinian tragedy."

Dealing with Nature

"...Then we ask, 'How should we deal with nature?' We should deal with nature the way we should deal with ourselves! Nonviolently. We should not harm ourselves, and we should not harm nature...Human beings and nature are inseparable. By not caring properly for either, we harm both." -from Love In Action: Writings On Nonviolent Social Change, by Thich Nhat Hanh

ATTACK DEAD PEOPLE YOU USELESS FUCKS

AMERICAblog

A lead religious right “research” group has concluded that Dr. Sally Ride’s pancreatic cancer may be due to her being a lesbian.  They deduced this from looking at the obituaries of lesbians in San Francisco papers.  Seriously.
Dr. Ride was the first US woman astronaut. She recently died of pancreatic cancer.
The attack comes from a well-known hate group, the Family Research Institute, that’s been promoted by all the lead groups of the religious right, including the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and the Concerned Women for America.

The Episcopal Church Exposes the Doctrine of Discovery

This video is intended to inform people about the impact of the Doctrine of Discovery in an effort to respond to God's direction; that we, the Episcopal Church, "act with justice and...do what is right" (Psalm 106:3, Book of Common Prayer), and about the unjust way the Americas were settled, and the on-going consequences of those events. Resources Now Available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/doctrine-discovery-resources

MENIL COLLECTION AT 25

The Menil Collection celebrates its 25th anniversary today. OffCite recalls how revolutionary John and Dominique were to the Houston community before the collection was even built! I lived less than a block from the Menil, and it was my oasis from the dog eat dog of Houston life.

Before they brushed their great gray wings across an otherwise ordinary neighborhood of bungalows in lower Montrose, before their place in Houston’s history felt as ordained as the live oaks, and before Houstonians began trading stories about sightings of a thin and ethereal woman seated in front of her museum’s great paintings, there was simply a couple: John and Dominique de Menil. A pair of émigrés who fled France after the Nazi invasion with their three small children in tow. A couple whose wealth, a prominent Houstonian once told Grace Glueck for a May 18, 1986, New York Times Magazine article, was “really peanuts,” when measured on the same scales as Houston’s old oil aristocracies. A couple whose story is as much about Houston’s coming of age during a time of social upheaval as it is about their pushing a cadre of visionaries to accomplish the extraordinary wherever an institution gave them the space and freedom to act. To recall just a few of the details of this story is as much an elegy as it is a celebration.

New, helpful technologies. Just amazing, really

24Oranges

Meet Hector, a robot developed by Dutch company Smart Homes (with the help of a lot of partners across Europe). His task is to help dementia sufferers around the home, and as a result help them be able to live at home longer.

If he'd made an offensive film about Islam he'd be a hero of free speech

BBC NEWS

A teenager has been found guilty of posting an offensive Facebook message following the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Azhar Ahmed, 19, of Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, was charged with sending a grossly offensive communication.

He told Huddersfield Magistrates Court he accepted the message had been "unacceptable" but had denied it was "grossly offensive".

The judge said his comments were "derogatory" and "inflammatory". [...]

The offensive message, which said "all soldiers should die and go to hell", was posted by Ahmed just two days later on 8 March.

Ahmed told the court he was only trying to make his point that many other deaths in Afghanistan were being ignored and added he had no idea it would cause so much upset.

He said he replied with apologies to many people who commented on his Facebook page and when some told him they had lost relatives in Afghanistan he realised how serious it was.

"That's when I realised it was unacceptable for them to see something so upsetting and distressing, to write something like that," he added.

STILL A CLASSIC

Americans Observing 9/11 By Trying Not To Masturbate

Seductive Beauty

Queen Paola of the Belgians celebrates her 75th birthday on 11 September. She married then Prince Albert when she was twenty-one years old. I always thought she was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen. Flandersnews has a video up in English. And there are some photos from an old family album.

Photo credit: De Standaard.

STRAIGHTENING OUT THE YELLOW SHIRTS

Burlington Farmers Market Attempts (and fails) to Ban Political Speech in City Hall Park

NOT TO BE MISSED

Actor John Cusack examines Barack Obama and a few issues about him -  with a bit more scrutiny than we hear from the "progressive left." Read his conversation with Jonathan Turley about the Obama administration’s "War On the Constitution."

Demand accountability this Tuesday at 6:00pm at 1 North Ave (Burlington Police Department).

This Tuesday evening come show your support for an INDEPENDENT investigation into the police brutality in Burlington.

Mayor Weinberger has let the Burlington Police investigate themselves as to whether shooting protesters performing civil disobedience on July 29th was justified. The police preliminary incident report itself is marked by many factual errors and misrepresentation and a sheer lack of accountability that many feared would be the result of having an organization with such a vested interest investigate themselves. T

Tuesday August 28th, Burlington Police Commission will receive the BPD incident report about July 29th. The meeting is open to the public.

Last week, four City Councilors (Vince Brennan, Sharon Bushor, Rachel Siegel, and Max Tracy) wrote Mayor Weinberger, demanding an independent investigation. Their request echoed many, many Burlington citizens wishes at a City Council meeting on August 13.

Here is part of their letter:

"While we are grateful to the BPD for conducting their own investigation, we hope that an independent investigation will help build public trust in our police force and provide a forum through which to answer pressing questions...

"It is our sincere hope that with a complete and independent review, we can determine the sequence of events and why actions were taken and, more importantly, how we can respond differently in the future."

Some of the questions that this preliminary action/incident report (conducted by the police themselves) did not answer and still need answering include:

■ An understanding of the kind of training officers receive to deal with “de-escalating protests.”
■ The mayor’s involvement in preparation for the protest and whether he authorized the use of “pepper spray and rubber bullets.”
■ Whether the police had exhausted methods short of force to disperse the protesters.
■ Why, as no arrests were made, the police used pellets and pepper spray.
■ Why those pellets were beyond their expiration date.
■ Whether officers removed their badges, and if so, why?
■ Whether all of the officers involved in the use of force were Burlington police officers.
■ Whether the officer who gave the order to use force was present.

Neither of our Ward 5 City Councilors, Joan Shannon nor Chip Mason, have signed on to their colleagues' letter to the mayor. Why haven't they? Don't they have questions, too? Why are they not demanding an independent review? As City Council President, why has Joan Shannon not demanded that the police incident report be presented to the full city council on the day that the police commission receives their copy?

I've seen first hand how police wrongdoing and abuse has lead to a breach of trust in other cities where I've lived. And I won't stand by and let that happen in Burlington.
With people's rights being trampled by police all over the country, it is crucial that we set a precedent that this is unacceptable in Vermont, and that Vermonters
don't just let something like this happen and then do nothing and forget about it.

Show up, pay attention, speak out on August 28.

On This Day: Sara Teasdale

Poet Sara Trevor Teasdale was born 8 August 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri.

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale, published in 1920

The poem was written right after "the war to end all wars." An indictment surely on the devastation of nature by humans, who would not be missed by the birds and the trees. Our disrespect towards every living thing continues in this century.

Unfortunately now we make the robins and other creatures pay too with our radiation and chemicals.

My mother's favorite poet. We read this poem at my parents' memorial service when their ashes were deposited in the ground with a cherry tree at the Vos summer house in Zeeland (NL). We read Sea Fever, by John Masefield, too, because my father had sailed ships in his career.

On going in Burlington: JOIN THE CITIZENS BANK PICKET

On April 29th, the Occupy Burlington General Assembly issued its first demand: that Citizens Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of the most bailed out bank in the world (RBS) which had recently settled for $137.5 million after being caught defrauding its low income customers, close its downtown branch and leave our city. To make this demand a reality, the local movement has been maintaining pickets four days per week in front of the branch, waving signs, unfurling banners, handing out literature, and encouraging the bank's customers to move their patronage to a cooperative, member-owned credit union. If you'd like to learn more about this campaign and help stick it to one of the world's biggest "Too Big to Fail" banks, join us at the corner of College and St. Paul Streets. They're every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 4 to 5 P.M. and on Saturday mornings from 11 until Noon. Citizens Bank is Closing!

Citizens Bank's parent company, RBS, was fined in excess of $200 million for their participation in the LIBOR affair.

"There was plenty of harm and plenty of foul," says Eliot Spitzer.

Photos credit LisaAnn Oberbrunner.

O my chevalier!

Poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844 in Stratford, Essex (now part of Greater London). He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1866 and was ordained priest in 1877. He died of typhoid fever in 1889.

 A brilliant man...and so tormented both by his attraction to men and by his love for poetry.  I would have liked to have been his friend.

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

written 1877, published 1918

PLAYING CHICKEN

For today, two quotes from a local Vermont blog I have just discovered - a friend has posted/linked them on his Facebook. They are worth pondering.

"You ignore the cyclist making a frantic "stop/slow down" signal (left arm out straight, forearm down, waving frantically at the ground) and you maybe even hear him cry out "YOU HAVE NO SAFE PASS ! NO SAFE PASS! before accelerating around him. Then you make a panic braking/right merging movement so as to avoid a head-on collision with the oncoming maroon pickup truck."

...

"We have ingrained car culture so deeply in our psyches, we have assumed the risks of injury inherent in driving so completely, we don't even think about them any more."

Lordy, Lordy! The way some automobile drivers behave, it's like they're playing chicken with cyclists. I've seen it. "I double-dare you, sonofabitch," they seem to say to the cyclists. (While they play with their iPad app or text "Honey, I'll be late for dinner, because this guy on a bike is slowing me down!" ) :(

I respect cyclists on the road. I guess it's from my experience bicycling in The Netherlands (where there are real bike paths). I used to get miffed by the stupid bicyclists on roads in Burlington - the "share the road" graphics on the lane and signs advising that bikers can use the complete lane. Tap, tap, tap. Hurry the fuck up! Now I realise it's a way for us to slow down, too. I mean, I left Houston because of the dog-eat-dog, frenetic pace. Burlington's rush hour is a nanosecond compared to Houston's. Yeah, slow down, Jay. Now, if only the cyclists would take off their ear pieces and listen to what's going on, and realise they are driving vehicles (cyclists are not pedestrians according to Vermont law) and should stop at 4-way stop signs, too. Grrr.

On This Musical Day: Dawn Upshaw

Dawn Upshaw, soprano, was born 17 July 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee.

I remember seeing several musical notables during the twenty-three years I lived in Houston. I had the wonderful opportunity to see her in Rosenkavalier with HGO in 1995. Three stars in one evening: Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw and Suzanne Mentzer. (Craig Gallagher, who was choirmaster at St Stephen's Episcopal Church, where I was a member, recruited Suzanne to sing with the choir when she was at the HGO Studio - I was in the choir then, too.)

Her singing of Barber's Knoxville Summer in 1915 is just lovely.



I adore Barbara Cook, but my next-favourite rendition of Glitter and be Gay from Bernstein's Candide is Upshaw's.

On This Day: Clement Clarke Moore

Clement Clarke Moore was born July 15, 1779 in New York City; he grew in the family home in Elmhurst, Queens. This professor of Oriental and Greek literature at Columbia College had great effect on New York City. The neighborhood "Chelsea" is still named for his family estate, which he inherited from his mother's father and later divided and developed. He gave an apple orchard as land to develop the General Theological Seminary. He helped Trinity Church organize St. Lukes in the Fields. And, of course, children around the world who celebrate Christmas, know and love his poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (better known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."