Howard Zinn On Impeachment

Listen to PSA by Howard Zinnhttp://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/zinn.mp3

Yogi Berra On Jazz

This comes from a friend. I don't know if it's real but its funny. Perhaps Yogi was on something else as well!

Interviewer to Mr. Berra: "Can you explain jazz?"Yogi: "I can't, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, it's right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it's wrong."Interviewer: "I don't understand."Yogi: "Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it."Interviewer: "Do you understand it?"Yogi: "No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn't know anything about it."Interviewer: "Are there any great jazz player alive today?"Yogi: "No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it."Interviewer: "What is syncopation?"Yogi: "That's when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other kinds."Interviewer: "Now I really don't understand."Yogi: "I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well."

Great Beatles Parody : I'm The Decider

http://decider.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

Trumpet Guy :A Friend I Play Music With Sometimes

Trumpet Guy : Musician, A's booster
By Brenda Payton, STAFF WRITER
IT started as a fluke. Stephen Saxon was going to an A's game with a friend.
"I thought, 'I can do better than those big plastic horns,'" he said. So he took along one of his trumpets. "The piccolo trumpet. It's used mostly in Baroque music. I thought it would stand the least chance of getting hurt. Also, it really carries."
He took it along to the next game he attended as well.
"I was listening on the radio, and I heard (Ken) Korach and (Bill) King say, 'Hey, the Trumpet Guy's back.'"
And so an Oakland A's tradition was born. That was 2000.
Saxon held up his jersey to show off the words "Trumpet Guy," newly applied to the back. "I just got this back last week."
If you're an A's fan, you know the Trumpet Guy doesn't just blow his horn or play "Take me out to the ballgame."
He makes musical commentaries, or quotes as he calls them, responding to what's happening on the field or communicating with the radio play-by-play announcers.
So when A-Rod — the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, the highest-paid player in baseball — comes to the plate, he plays "If I were a rich man."
Miguel Tejada inspired a few bars from "Tequila," also played by the drummers who used to play in the bleachers. David Justice? The theme from "Perry Mason." The theme from "Perry Mason"?
"You know, justice," Saxon said. "The odder the connection, the better."
Most of his commentaries are whimsical, but at least one was serious.
"John Rocker was warming up and getting booed," he recalled. Rocker, a former reliever for the Atlanta Braves, created a furor when he insulted gays and immigrants in an interview.
"I thought, 'What would be the most meaningful response?'" Saxon said. He started quietly playing "We Shall Overcome."
"I played it all the way through. The sections on either side of me joined in and sang along. It said, 'That doesn't fly here. This is Oakland.' It was one of my favorite moments."
He loves it when he gets a laugh from the play-by-play announcers.
"I feel like I'm there contributing," he said.
The only autographed baseball he owns was signed by King, the legendary announcer who died last year.
He'll also play requests from people sitting around him.
"If they can sing it, I can play it," he said.
If you've noticed the Trumpet Guy sounds pretty good, there's a reason. He's a musician, trained in classical, jazz and Klezmer music. He also sings. In college he focused on the trumpet to let his bass voice mature. He credits a high school voice teacher, Cathy Hudnall, with teaching him everything he's needed to know as a singer.
"I thought the trumpet was the quickest route to learning music, reading, analysis. And it wouldn't hurt my voice."
Most recently, he has found himself immersed in arranging and composing for Clockwork, an a cappella quintet he sings with.
"I've done maybe 30 arrangements in the past three years. It's the first time I've been writing so much," he said.
He patiently explains the process and goal of arranging.
"It's a way of coming up with a new way of saying something through an existing piece of music," he said. "I try to maintain the voice of the group and at the same time to stretch it. I look for a melody that's stylistically happening, harmonize on that and come up with a counter point. Most groups are not able to pull it off."
And as he has gotten further into arranging, he has been doing more composing.
The Trumpet
Guy. Who knew?
"I've had people who know my playing but didn't know I was the Trumpet Guy recognize me from what I play at the games."
Clockwork, which also includes Angie Doctor, Eric Freeman, John Paddock and Jim Hale, rehearses every week.
"If we're working on new music, we'll sit around the table with our binders and a pitch pipe and read through it. When we know the notes, we go downstairs and work with the sound system and rehearse with microphones."
The group is looking forward to competing in the National Finals Harmony Sweepstakes in San Rafael on May 6.
"We came in second in 2004 when we had only had seven performances. So we have high hopes for this year."
At the games, he prefers Section 217, behind home plate but not on the first deck.
"No, I haven't gotten any complaints yet. But I choose my moments and place. I like the front row because no one is in front me," he said. "A lot of people come up and shake my hand. A few buy me beers."
Catch the Trumpet Guy at about 20 A's games a year. (Although he has become part of the A's experience, he doesn't get a free pass because of copyright and licensing requirements.) Clockwork's CD, "Tesseract,' is available at CDbaby.com or clockworksingers.com.

A Warning From Australia 1934

Peace Between Israeli and Palestinian Soldiers

120 FORMER ISRAELI, PALESTINIAN COMBATANTS START PEACE DRIVEREUTERS - After a year of meeting in secret, 120 former Israel Defense Forces combat soldiers and Palestinian militants unveiled a unique peace group on Monday, hopeful their union will spur dialogue and end bloodshed. Formation of the "Combatants for Peace" is a rare sign ofcomradeship at a time when separation increasingly characterizes relations between Israelis and Palestinians. . .In a school yard in the Palestinian town of Anata north of Jerusalem,former enemies exchanged handshakes and hugs as they inaugurated what they called the first joint group of its type. . . The former combatants have been meeting for a year in different towns around Jerusalem after founders on both sides decided to do something to tryto foster peace.But they kept the group's existence secret to first build trust at gatherings where emotions often spilled over as both sides told stories of what they had done in the conflict. . .The group aims to put pressure on both governments to talk peace, halt violence and establish a Palestinian state. They plan to visit Israeli and Palestinian schools and universities and set up joint media teams to influence public opinion. {For more go to} http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/704675.html

Thoughts on Pesakh and Immigration From Rabbi Arthur Waskow

A prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, & American life Passover in Spanish – in the Streets of AmericaBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow * "Passover" is happening in the streets of America this week . It is coming not from a written book, but from the hearts and minds and legs and prayers of a people. It is happening in Spanish and "Spanglish" more than in Hebrew. Two million people in the streets against a Pharaoh who is saying "Let us make it a criminal act, a felony to be punished with prison at 'hard labor,' to live in the United States without a document. Let us make it a felony to feed or heal or educate or comfort these criminals. "Let us build a wall, with guns to kill anyone who dares to cross it; – just as the ancient Pharaoh ordered the murder of the boy-children of this folk whose name, "Hebrews," meant "the ones who cross over"; the wetbacks. Read Exodus 1: 9-10: "Now Pharaoh said: "Here, this people is many-more and mighty-numerous. Come now, let us use our wits against it, lest it become even many-more!" So they made them subservient with crushing-labor; they embittered their lives with hard servitude." Why did the ancient rabbis teach that the lunar Jewish calendar must be con stantly adjusted so as to keep Passover in the spring? Because just as the flowers rise up against winter in the springtime, so the People rise up against Pharaoh in springtime. Because as lambs are born and barley sprouts in the springtime, so new peoples are born and freedom sprouts new in the springtime. Just as the palm-waving street demonstration in Jerusalem two thousand years ago that we call "Palm Sunday," and then the Last Supper and Good Friday and Easter came from the new-uprising hopes of the Jewi sh community of ancient Palestine during Passover – when else? -- so millions are marching in the streets for this same holy time, these weeks. Just as the Roman imperial authorities tried to smash the uprising energies by torturing and killing its leaders two thousand years ago, so the Empire can be expected to try to repress this energy today. (It has already justified using torture against even people later found to be utterly guiltless.) It was not only Jesus who was tortured to death; on Yom Kippur, Jews recite the stories of ten other great rabbis who were tortured to death for refusi ng to obey the Roman edicts. The real answer to the immigration puzzle is certainly not cruelty: imprisoning the hopeful, shooting at the desperate, breaking up families. It must include an invitation to become US citizens. But even more basically, it demands addressing the question of poverty and despair BOTH in the US and in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean. It means taking the steps to help grass-roots organizers -- labor unionists, farmers, teachers, clergyfolk, environmentalists, often women – to lift the wages and working conditions below the Rio Grande, as well in the US. To make "Free Trade Agreements" into Fair Trade Agreements, wiping out sweatshops and sweated fields on both sides of the river. To set the Federal minimum wage in the US at what is a decent "living wage" for a family, To insist not only on a living wage but "livable hours" -- decent working hours that allow for freeing the time that a free people needs if it is to learn, sing, govern itself, breathe . The ancient Israelites turned the tight spot and narrow space of ancient Egypt into a narrow but fruitful birth canal that brought them into open space and time. Once they had broken the waters of the Red Sea, they were able as their first collective act to make the Sabbath -- to live in broad spaces and open-ended time, with elbow room to create, to explore, to hear God's Word, to make a new society. So may it be with us. _____________________________________________________* Rabbi Arthur Waskow directs The Shalom Center and has written many books on spiritual renewal and public policy, including Godwrestling – Round 2. The Shalom Center www.shalomctr.org voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multireligious, and American life. To receive the weekly on-line Shalom Report, click on --http://www.shalomctr.org/subscribe

Recordings From Cylinders

http://www.cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php This contains some of the earliest recordings ever made. So far my favorite is perhaps the earliest version of Abba Dabba Honeymoon.

Out Of The Ashes SDS

http://www.studentsforademocraticsociety.org/ Another thanks to Bob Tomashevsky for this item.