Mazel tov to all those not getting married in a castle today.
Mazel tov to all whether you are straight or you are gay.
I'll drink a l'khayim with my best bottle of booze,
And dance with my wife without any shoes.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Good Light Bulb Joke
How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?The answer is 10.1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed.2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed.3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb.4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the light bulb or for darkness.5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Haliburton for the new light bulb.6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a stepladder under the banner, "Mission Accomplished."7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark.8. One to viciously smear #7.9. One to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light bulb-changing policy all along.10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb, and screwing the country.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Emma Lazurus Statue Of Lberty, Immigration and Judaism
America's voice of liberty, the writer of the Statue of Liberty sonnet is honored around the same time as the election that may decide the fate of immigration.By Esther Schor, ESTHER SCHOR is professor of English at Princeton University and author of a new biography, "Emma Lazarus."October 28, 2006 THIS WEEKEND, Emma Lazarus, whose eloquent words are engraved in the Statue of Liberty, will be honored with a stone in the Poet's Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan. The timing is auspicious because 10 days later, when Americans go to the polls, we will decide anew the fate of her vision for our country as a refuge for immigrants.
These days, famous phrases from Lazarus' resonant 1883 sonnet - "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" - are hurled like salvoes from all sides of the immigration controversy. Those who view immigrants as a threat to our security, our economy and our democracy contrast the accomplishments of the heralded immigrants of the past with the woes they feel are imported by the current wave of arrivals. They would prefer the statue to proclaim, "Keep your huddled masses." Bloggers on the left ask the statue to admonish and accuse: "Huddled masses; muddled laws." And on and on; a Google search for "your tired, your poor" yields about 200,000 results, while "huddled masses" nets almost twice that number.
Voters and politicians alike understand that the lawmakers chosen Nov. 7 will again face the question of whether to slam the door on new immigrants and, if so, how hard. Nevertheless, most candidates have learned something from the debacle of the bipartisan Senate immigration bill that split even the president's party: Immigration is simply too divisive an issue to depend on for votes.Lazarus wrote her famous words in a climate just as divisive. In December 1883, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi's statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World," languished in pieces in Paris because fundraising in the United States to build a pedestal had been abysmally slow. As Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, wrote: "We have more than a hundred millionaires in this city, any one of whom might have written a check for the whole sum. But do they care for a Statue of Liberty, which only reminds them of the equality of all citizens of the Republic?"
Born in 1849 to a wealthy Jewish family of Sephardic descent, Lazarus had been an enfant terrible. Her doting father, a sugar merchant, used his fortune to turn her into a publishing superstar at 17. Her precocious fame, along with her magnetism and wit, won her the friendship of such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James. She called herself an "outlaw" Jew, was secular and fiercely identified with the Jewish people rather than with Jewish observance. Writing in the mainstream, middlebrow Century magazine, she introduced a national American audience to Jewish culture, history and nationhood and wrote vignettes about the history of anti-Semitism.
With the bloody Russian pogroms of 1881-82, boatloads of Jewish refugees arrived in New York, sometimes at the rate of 2,000 a month. Aid groups raised the specter of "an army of Jewish paupers," and even Jews who could trace their American ancestry back two centuries began to fear anti-Semitic reprisals. If those who raised the alarm had had the genius to invent the term "homeland security," they would surely have done so. Lazarus, in a weekly column in the American Hebrew newspaper, hectored and browbeat complacent American Jews into opening their hearts and pockets to the refugees. She refused to soothe ruffled feathers and calm fears. "It will be a lasting blot upon American Judaism if we do not come forward now with encouragement for the disheartened and help for the helpless," she wrote.
Traditional Jews reviled her disparaging of Jewish law; Reform Jews disparaged her for speaking candidly about anti-Semitism. A lesser figure might have retreated, but she was made of stern stuff. Instead, she advanced. In "The New Colossus," what she had once said to Jews - "Until we are all free, none of us is free" - she said to the nation. Just as Jews were morally obliged to repair the world, she argued, America was morally obliged to succor the nations, to open its doors to the poor and oppressed. That obligation was incurred along with a legacy of rebellion against tyranny.
As unambiguous as she was on the immigration question, Lazarus herself was a woman of contradictions. She was a champion of the oppressed; she was also a snob with an exquisite sense of entitlement. She flaunted her dual identity as an American and as a Jew, believing, unlike her contemporaries, that to be more openly Jewish was to be more deeply American. She pleaded the cause not of a chosen people but of a people who deserved the freedom to choose: what to think, whom to love and befriend, how to earn their bread.A spinster who lived out her life under her father's roof, she inscribed in her poetic legacy an explicit sonnet of erotic desire for a woman that, after her death at 38 from Hodgkin's disease, her grieving sisters squelched. Despite how prolific Lazarus was in her time, her oeuvre of poems, plays, essays, translations and a novel has been whittled down to a single sonnet, "The New Colossus," mounted only after her death in 1887 inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.Enriched by her contradictions, Emma Lazarus spoke with a clear, prophetic fervor, telling the nation that its complexion would change, along with its soul. Within the hard, cold, haughty visage of Gilded Age America, she discerned a mother's face and gave that face a voice.
Thanks To HH for sending me this.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
911 Conspiracy Theories
Thanks again to Bob T. for this.
By a writer who I often think takes extreme positions, a well thought out article.
The Nation September 25, 2006 :THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY NUTS by Alexander Cockburn. You trip over one fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts in the first paragraph of the book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin,The New Pearl Harbor. "In many respects," Griffin writes, "the strongest evidence provided by critics of the official account involves the events of 9/11 itself.... In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes...not one of these planes should have reached its target, le talone all three of them."The operative word here is "should." One central characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous, belief in American efficiency, and hence many of them start with the racist premise that "Arabs in caves" weren't capable of the mission. They believe that military systemswork the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they shouldwork. They believe that at 8:14 am, when AA Flight 11 switched off its radioand transponder, an FAA flight controller should have called the NationalMilitary Command center and NORAD. They believe, citing reverently (thisfrom high priest Griffin) "the US Air Force's own website," that an F-15could have intercepted AA Flight 11 "by 8:24, and certainly no later than8:30."They appear to have read no military history, which is too bad because ifthey had they'd know that minutely planned operations--let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency--screw up with monotonous regularity, by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality and other whims of Providence.According to the minutely prepared plans of the Strategic Air Command, animpending Soviet attack would have prompted the missile silos in NorthDakota to open and the ICBMs to arc toward Moscow and kindred targets. Thetiny number of test launches actually attempted all failed, whereupon SAC gave up testing. Was it badly designed equipment, human incompetence,defense contractor venality or... conspiracy? Did the April 24, 1980, effortto rescue the hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran fail because a sandstormdisabled three of the eight helicopters, or because agents of William Casey poured sugar into their gas tanks in yet another conspiracy?Do the military's varying attempts to explain why F-15s didn't intercept andshoot down the hijacked planes stem from predictable attempts to cover upthe usual screw-ups, or because of conspiracy? Is Mr. Cohen in his littlestore at the end of the block hiking his prices because he wants to make abuck, or because his rent just went up, or because the Jews want to takeover the world? Bebel said anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools. Thesedays the 9/11 conspiracy fever is fast becoming the "socialism" of the left.My in-box overflows each day with fresh "proofs" of how the towers were demolished. I meet people who start quietly, asking me what I think about9/11. What they are actually trying to find out is whether I'm part of th ecoven. I imagine it is like being a normal Stoic in the second century ADgoing for a stroll in the forum and meeting some fellow asking, with seeming casualness, whether it's possible to feed 5,000 people on five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.Indeed, at my school the vicar used to urge on us Frank Morison's book WhoMoved the Stone? It demonstrated, with exhaustive citation from the Gospels,that since on these accounts no human had moved the stone from in front ofJoseph of Arimathea's tomb, it must have been an angel who rolled it aside,so Jesus could exit, astonish the mourners and then ascend. Of course,Morison didn't allow the possibility that angels never existed or that theGospel writers were making it up.It's the same pattern with the 9/11 nuts. There are photos of the impact ofthe "object" that hit the Pentagon--i.e., the Boeing 757, Flight 77--thatseem to show the sort of hole a missile might make. Ergo, it was a missileand a 757 didn't hit the Pentagon. As regards the hole, my brotherAndrew--writing a book about Rumsfeld--has seen photos taken within thirtyminutes of impact clearly showing the outline of an entire plane, includingwings. This was visible as soon as the smoke blew away.And if it was a missile, what happened to the 757? Did the conspiratorsshoot it down somewhere else, or force it down and then kill the passengers?Why plan to demolish the towers with pre-placed explosives if yourconspiracy includes control of the two planes that hit them? Why bother withthe planes at all? Why blame Osama if your fall guy is Saddam Hussein?The demolition scenario is classic who-moved-the-stonery. The towers didn't fall because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption,incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority and because theywere struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, they collapsed because Dick Cheney's agents methodically planted demolition charges in thepreceding days. It was a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom--party to massmurder--have held their tongues ever since.Of course, the buildings didn't suddenly pancake. People inside who survived the collapse didn't hear a series of explosions. As discussed in Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins's marvelous Grand Illusion, about Rudy Giuliani and9/11, helicopter pilots radioed warnings nine minutes before the final collapse of the South Tower that it might well go down, and similarwarnings, repeatedly, as much as twenty-five minutes before the NorthTower's fall.What Barrett and Collins brilliantly show are the actual corrupt conspiracies on Giuliani's watch (see also their article in this issue); the favoritism to Motorola, which saddled the firemen with radios that didn't work; the ability of the Port Authority to scrimp on fire protection; the mayor's catastrophic failure in the years before 9/11 to organize an effective emergency command, meaning that many lives could have been saved,cops and firemen could have communicated and firemen could have heard the helicopter warnings and the Mayday messages that saved most of the police.That's the real world, in which Giuliani and others have never been held accountable. Instead, the conspiracy nuts have combined to produce a ludicrous distraction.
By a writer who I often think takes extreme positions, a well thought out article.
The Nation September 25, 2006 :THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY NUTS by Alexander Cockburn. You trip over one fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts in the first paragraph of the book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin,The New Pearl Harbor. "In many respects," Griffin writes, "the strongest evidence provided by critics of the official account involves the events of 9/11 itself.... In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes...not one of these planes should have reached its target, le talone all three of them."The operative word here is "should." One central characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous, belief in American efficiency, and hence many of them start with the racist premise that "Arabs in caves" weren't capable of the mission. They believe that military systemswork the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they shouldwork. They believe that at 8:14 am, when AA Flight 11 switched off its radioand transponder, an FAA flight controller should have called the NationalMilitary Command center and NORAD. They believe, citing reverently (thisfrom high priest Griffin) "the US Air Force's own website," that an F-15could have intercepted AA Flight 11 "by 8:24, and certainly no later than8:30."They appear to have read no military history, which is too bad because ifthey had they'd know that minutely planned operations--let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency--screw up with monotonous regularity, by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality and other whims of Providence.According to the minutely prepared plans of the Strategic Air Command, animpending Soviet attack would have prompted the missile silos in NorthDakota to open and the ICBMs to arc toward Moscow and kindred targets. Thetiny number of test launches actually attempted all failed, whereupon SAC gave up testing. Was it badly designed equipment, human incompetence,defense contractor venality or... conspiracy? Did the April 24, 1980, effortto rescue the hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran fail because a sandstormdisabled three of the eight helicopters, or because agents of William Casey poured sugar into their gas tanks in yet another conspiracy?Do the military's varying attempts to explain why F-15s didn't intercept andshoot down the hijacked planes stem from predictable attempts to cover upthe usual screw-ups, or because of conspiracy? Is Mr. Cohen in his littlestore at the end of the block hiking his prices because he wants to make abuck, or because his rent just went up, or because the Jews want to takeover the world? Bebel said anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools. Thesedays the 9/11 conspiracy fever is fast becoming the "socialism" of the left.My in-box overflows each day with fresh "proofs" of how the towers were demolished. I meet people who start quietly, asking me what I think about9/11. What they are actually trying to find out is whether I'm part of th ecoven. I imagine it is like being a normal Stoic in the second century ADgoing for a stroll in the forum and meeting some fellow asking, with seeming casualness, whether it's possible to feed 5,000 people on five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.Indeed, at my school the vicar used to urge on us Frank Morison's book WhoMoved the Stone? It demonstrated, with exhaustive citation from the Gospels,that since on these accounts no human had moved the stone from in front ofJoseph of Arimathea's tomb, it must have been an angel who rolled it aside,so Jesus could exit, astonish the mourners and then ascend. Of course,Morison didn't allow the possibility that angels never existed or that theGospel writers were making it up.It's the same pattern with the 9/11 nuts. There are photos of the impact ofthe "object" that hit the Pentagon--i.e., the Boeing 757, Flight 77--thatseem to show the sort of hole a missile might make. Ergo, it was a missileand a 757 didn't hit the Pentagon. As regards the hole, my brotherAndrew--writing a book about Rumsfeld--has seen photos taken within thirtyminutes of impact clearly showing the outline of an entire plane, includingwings. This was visible as soon as the smoke blew away.And if it was a missile, what happened to the 757? Did the conspiratorsshoot it down somewhere else, or force it down and then kill the passengers?Why plan to demolish the towers with pre-placed explosives if yourconspiracy includes control of the two planes that hit them? Why bother withthe planes at all? Why blame Osama if your fall guy is Saddam Hussein?The demolition scenario is classic who-moved-the-stonery. The towers didn't fall because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption,incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority and because theywere struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, they collapsed because Dick Cheney's agents methodically planted demolition charges in thepreceding days. It was a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom--party to massmurder--have held their tongues ever since.Of course, the buildings didn't suddenly pancake. People inside who survived the collapse didn't hear a series of explosions. As discussed in Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins's marvelous Grand Illusion, about Rudy Giuliani and9/11, helicopter pilots radioed warnings nine minutes before the final collapse of the South Tower that it might well go down, and similarwarnings, repeatedly, as much as twenty-five minutes before the NorthTower's fall.What Barrett and Collins brilliantly show are the actual corrupt conspiracies on Giuliani's watch (see also their article in this issue); the favoritism to Motorola, which saddled the firemen with radios that didn't work; the ability of the Port Authority to scrimp on fire protection; the mayor's catastrophic failure in the years before 9/11 to organize an effective emergency command, meaning that many lives could have been saved,cops and firemen could have communicated and firemen could have heard the helicopter warnings and the Mayday messages that saved most of the police.That's the real world, in which Giuliani and others have never been held accountable. Instead, the conspiracy nuts have combined to produce a ludicrous distraction.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
An Alternative Israeli Voice
The turnabout will come quickly
By Meron Benvenisti
No one can predict when the reversal will come, when all the experts will begin competing for first place in revealing the failures of the war: mistaken strategy, political dilettantism and shooting from the hip; the weakness disguised as courageous determination; the illusions, arrogance and boasting; the addiction to an impulse of revenge; the cruelty and the lack of moral inhibitions. But the manipulators and the self-declared heroes should not delude themselves, nor should the naive, or those who are drunk with patriotism or those who consider themselves experts: the moment will arrive more quickly than they imagine and within a short while everyone will be hiding behind the pose of "we told you so" when they know which way the wind is blowing. That is when all the declarations, the assessments and the excuses - that could be uttered and written only in an atmosphere of lack of critical skepticism that prevails when a "state of war" is declared - will be revealed.
It is only in an atmosphere of this kind that serious people can justify the destruction of a country on the grounds that they "are helping its government in this way" to gain the upper hand over Hezbollah - a kind of variation on the theme of "the raped woman actually enjoyed herself." It is only in an atmosphere of this kind that a well-bred person can be glad that the lack of American pressure to stop the bombings makes it possible to continue the killing and destruction. Only reliance on patriotic emotions, which cloud any rational thinking, makes it possible to state without shame - after many days of multi-casualty pounding and the inexplicable destruction of an airport, highway interchanges, power stations and entire neighborhoods - that actually this activity was in vain, since it was known in advance that the bombs could not achieve their objectives and that a massive ground invasion was unavoidable. Only people who unabashedly exploit primitive urges allow themselves to personalize the war and focus it on the annihilation of their enemy, Hassan Nasrallah. Only those who are convinced the war will bring down a smoke screen over any cynical or hypocritical act can brag that they are assisting in an international humanitarian activity after they themselves brought about the catastrophe. No one is able to predict the minute when the opposition to the war and the bloodshed turns from an act of betrayal into a legitimate and even correct stance; when a moral condemnation of the war's evil effects becomes acceptable from a patriotic point of view and when slogans like "uprooting terror," "a war for our homes," "an existential struggle" and their like, turn from resonant war-cries into empty rhetoric. No one can predict this, but experience teaches us that the turnabout from patriotic criticism to rational behavior based on moral norms occurs sooner or later, sometimes within weeks or months and sometimes after a generation. It seems that in the current outbreak of violence, the change will come very quickly; its conduct, objectives and results do not encourage too much enthusiasm and it has not even been granted the title of "war" since those who waged it are not sure if they want to commemorate it among the state's official wars or if they believe it would perhaps be better to forget it. They cannot allow themselves to think that all should know their assessments were incorrect, and therefore they will seek a "victory" that will justify all the loss of life and destruction, and the very need for such a victory will merely prolong the suffering and bereavement. The public that supports them will have difficulty demanding soul-searching of them since the tribal solidarity will protect the political and military leaders. Very soon everything will return to what it was before - apart from those who sacrificed their lives and those who were killed in the shellings and bombings. And the major loser will be the people of Israel who, by an unmeasured reaction to a provocation, established their position as a foreign element in the region, as the neighborhood bully, the object of impotent hatred.
From Haaretz. www.haaretz.com
By Meron Benvenisti
No one can predict when the reversal will come, when all the experts will begin competing for first place in revealing the failures of the war: mistaken strategy, political dilettantism and shooting from the hip; the weakness disguised as courageous determination; the illusions, arrogance and boasting; the addiction to an impulse of revenge; the cruelty and the lack of moral inhibitions. But the manipulators and the self-declared heroes should not delude themselves, nor should the naive, or those who are drunk with patriotism or those who consider themselves experts: the moment will arrive more quickly than they imagine and within a short while everyone will be hiding behind the pose of "we told you so" when they know which way the wind is blowing. That is when all the declarations, the assessments and the excuses - that could be uttered and written only in an atmosphere of lack of critical skepticism that prevails when a "state of war" is declared - will be revealed.
It is only in an atmosphere of this kind that serious people can justify the destruction of a country on the grounds that they "are helping its government in this way" to gain the upper hand over Hezbollah - a kind of variation on the theme of "the raped woman actually enjoyed herself." It is only in an atmosphere of this kind that a well-bred person can be glad that the lack of American pressure to stop the bombings makes it possible to continue the killing and destruction. Only reliance on patriotic emotions, which cloud any rational thinking, makes it possible to state without shame - after many days of multi-casualty pounding and the inexplicable destruction of an airport, highway interchanges, power stations and entire neighborhoods - that actually this activity was in vain, since it was known in advance that the bombs could not achieve their objectives and that a massive ground invasion was unavoidable. Only people who unabashedly exploit primitive urges allow themselves to personalize the war and focus it on the annihilation of their enemy, Hassan Nasrallah. Only those who are convinced the war will bring down a smoke screen over any cynical or hypocritical act can brag that they are assisting in an international humanitarian activity after they themselves brought about the catastrophe. No one is able to predict the minute when the opposition to the war and the bloodshed turns from an act of betrayal into a legitimate and even correct stance; when a moral condemnation of the war's evil effects becomes acceptable from a patriotic point of view and when slogans like "uprooting terror," "a war for our homes," "an existential struggle" and their like, turn from resonant war-cries into empty rhetoric. No one can predict this, but experience teaches us that the turnabout from patriotic criticism to rational behavior based on moral norms occurs sooner or later, sometimes within weeks or months and sometimes after a generation. It seems that in the current outbreak of violence, the change will come very quickly; its conduct, objectives and results do not encourage too much enthusiasm and it has not even been granted the title of "war" since those who waged it are not sure if they want to commemorate it among the state's official wars or if they believe it would perhaps be better to forget it. They cannot allow themselves to think that all should know their assessments were incorrect, and therefore they will seek a "victory" that will justify all the loss of life and destruction, and the very need for such a victory will merely prolong the suffering and bereavement. The public that supports them will have difficulty demanding soul-searching of them since the tribal solidarity will protect the political and military leaders. Very soon everything will return to what it was before - apart from those who sacrificed their lives and those who were killed in the shellings and bombings. And the major loser will be the people of Israel who, by an unmeasured reaction to a provocation, established their position as a foreign element in the region, as the neighborhood bully, the object of impotent hatred.
From Haaretz. www.haaretz.com
Monday, July 10, 2006
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Song For July 4th
Tears of Rage
by Bob Dylan and Richard Manuel. Album: Music from Big Pink© 1967, 1970 Dwarf Music
See Peter Viney's article on "Tears of Rage" for more about this song.
C Am F Dm
We carried you in our arms on Independence Day
Bb F C
And now you'd throw us all aside and put us all away
Am F Dm
Oh, what dear daughter 'neath the sun could treat a father so?
Bb F C
To wait upon him hand and foot and always tell him "No"
(Chorus:)
E7 Am
Tears of rage, tears of grief
F C
Why must I always be the thief?
E7 Am
Come to me now, you know we're so low
F C7 Fmaj7 C
And life is brief
It was all very painless
When you went out to receive
All that false instruction
Which we never could believe
And now the heart is filled with gold
As if it was a purse
But, oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?
(Chorus)
We pointed you the way to go
And scratched your name in sand
Though you just thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand
I want you to know that while we watched
You discovered no one would be true
And I myself was among
The ones who thought
It was just a childish thing to do
(Chorus)
[History] [Members] [Library] [Discography] [Videography
by Bob Dylan and Richard Manuel. Album: Music from Big Pink© 1967, 1970 Dwarf Music
See Peter Viney's article on "Tears of Rage" for more about this song.
C Am F Dm
We carried you in our arms on Independence Day
Bb F C
And now you'd throw us all aside and put us all away
Am F Dm
Oh, what dear daughter 'neath the sun could treat a father so?
Bb F C
To wait upon him hand and foot and always tell him "No"
(Chorus:)
E7 Am
Tears of rage, tears of grief
F C
Why must I always be the thief?
E7 Am
Come to me now, you know we're so low
F C7 Fmaj7 C
And life is brief
It was all very painless
When you went out to receive
All that false instruction
Which we never could believe
And now the heart is filled with gold
As if it was a purse
But, oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?
(Chorus)
We pointed you the way to go
And scratched your name in sand
Though you just thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand
I want you to know that while we watched
You discovered no one would be true
And I myself was among
The ones who thought
It was just a childish thing to do
(Chorus)
[History] [Members] [Library] [Discography] [Videography
Doo-Wop Horses
I enjoyed this quite a lot.
Click on the link below. Wait for the entire screen to load up with all four horses and a fence in front of them. Then click on each horse. Make sure your sound is on. Re-click on any horse to make it turn off or turn it back on again . Somebody did some real wizardry of programming to coordinate this! Try clicking on the horses from left to right then right to left then just one or two at a time... It's fun and a good stress reliever.Have fun! Doo-Wop Horses .
Thanks to Will Fudeman for passing this on,
Click on the link below. Wait for the entire screen to load up with all four horses and a fence in front of them. Then click on each horse. Make sure your sound is on. Re-click on any horse to make it turn off or turn it back on again . Somebody did some real wizardry of programming to coordinate this! Try clicking on the horses from left to right then right to left then just one or two at a time... It's fun and a good stress reliever.Have fun! Doo-Wop Horses .
Thanks to Will Fudeman for passing this on,
Noah Tenney's Woodstock Debut Colony Cafe
June 22, 2006From left to right: Tim Kapeluck, Noah Tenney, Brian Hollander and Gerry Tenney.
Noah, my son, had sung with me at the Woodstock (NY), library at kids concerts before. This was his first time there for the "older folks ". He sang "Act Naturally"
The Colony Cafe on Rock City Road is a great place to hear music.
The Bluegrass Clubhouse plays there every Thursday from 8 to 10:30, often featuring the legendary Bill Keith on banjo.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Shabbes Goy
From: "Mike Kramer" Date: 2006/07/01 Sat PM 04:52:17 EDTTo: "'Nora Adelman'" Thanks to BT for passing this along to me: - Worth the read!!! _____ The Shabbes Goy by Joe Velarde. Snow came early in the winter of 1933 when our extended Cuban family moved into the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. I was ten years old. We were the first Spanish speakers to arrive, yet we fit more or less easily into that crowded, multicultural neighborhood. Soon we began learning a little Italian, a few Greek and Polish words, lots of Yiddish and some heavily accentedEnglish.I first heard the expression Shabbes is falling when Mr. Rosenthalrefused to open the door of his dry goods store on Bedford Avenue. Mymother had sent me with a dime to buy a pair of black socks for my father.In those days, men wore mostly black and Navy blue. Brown and gray weresomehow special and cost more. Mr. Rosenthal stood inside the locked door,arms folded, glaring at me through the thick glass while a heavy snow and darkness beganto fall on a Friday evening. "We're closed, already Mr. Rosenthal had said shaking his head, can't you see that Shabbes is falling? Don't be a nudnik! Go home." I could feel the cold wetness covering my head and thought thatShabbes was the Jewish word for snow. My misperception of Shabbes didn't last long, however, as the area's dominant culture soon became apparent; Gentiles were the minority. From then on,as Shabbes fell with its immutable regularity and Jewish lore took over the life of the neighborhood, I came to realize that so many humanactivities, ordinarily mundane at any other time, ceased, and a palpablesilence, a pleasant tranquillity, fell over all of us. It was then that a family withan urgent need would dispatch a youngster to get the Spanish boy, and hurry."That was me. In time, I stopped being nameless and became Yussel, sometimes Yuss or Yusseleh. And so began my life as a Shabbes Goy, voluntarily doing chores for my neighbors on Friday nights and Saturdays: lighting stoves, running errands,getting a prescription for an old tante, stoking coal furnaces, putting lights on or out, clearing snow and ice from slippery sidewalks andstoops. Doing just about anything that was forbidden to the devout by their religious code. Friday afternoons were special. I'd walk home from school assailed by the rich aroma emanating from Jewish kitchens preparing that evening's special menu. By now, I had developed a list of steady clients," Jewish families who depended on me. Furnaces, in particular, demanded frequent tendingduring Brooklyn's many freezing winters. I shudder remembering brutally cold winds blowing off the East River. Anticipation ran high as I thought of the warm home-baked treats I'd bring home that night after my Shabbes rounds wereover. Thanks to me, my entire family had become Jewish pastry junkies. Moi? I'm still addicted to checkerboard cake, halvah and Egg Creams (made only with Fox's Ubet chocolate syrup).I remember as if it were yesterday how I discovered that Jews were the smartest people in the world. You see, in our Cuban household we all loved the ends of bread loaves and, to keep peace, my father always decided whowould get them. One harsh winter night I was rewarded for my Shabbes ministrations with a loaf of warm challah (we pronounced it "holly") and I knew I was witnessing genius! Who else could have invented a bread that had wonderfully crusted ends all over it -- enough for everyone in a large family? There was an "International" aspect to my teen years in Williamsburg. TheSternberg family had two sons who had fought with the Abraham LincolnBrigade in Spain. Whenever we kids could get their attention, they'd spellbind us with tales of hazardous adventures in the Spanish Civil War.These twenty-something war veterans also introduced us to a novel way of thinking, one that embraced such humane ideas as From each according to his means and to each according to his needs. In retrospect, this innocen texposure to a different philosophy was the starting point of a journey that would also incorporate the concept of Tzedakah in my personal guide to the world. In what historians would later call The Great Depression, a nickel was a lot of mazuma and its economic power could buy a brand new Spaldeen,our local name for the pink-colored rubber ball then produced by the Spalding Company. The famous Spaldeen was central to our endless street games: stick ball and punchball or the simpler stoopball. On balmy summer evenings our youthful fantasies converted South Tenth Street into Ebbets Field with the Dodgers' Dolph Camilli swinging a broom handle at a viciously curving Spaldeen thrown by the Giant's great lefty, Carl Hubbell. We really thought it curved, I swear.Our neighbors, magically transformed into spectators kibitzing from their brownstone stoops and windows, were treated to a unique version of major league baseball. My tenure as the resident Shabbes Goy came to an abrupt end after PearlHarbor Day, December 7, 1941. I withdrew from Brooklyn College thefollowing day and joined the U.S. Army. In June of 1944, the Army Air Corpsshipped me home after flying sixty combat missions over Italy and theBalkans. I was overwhelmed to find that several of my Jewish friends and neighbors had seta place for me at their supper tables every Shabbes throughout my absence,including me in their prayers. What mitzvoth! My homecoming was high lightedby wonderful invitations to dinner. Can you imagine the effect after twenty-two months of Army field rations? As my post-World War II life developed, the nature of the association I'd had with Jewish families during my formative years became clearer. I hadlearned the meaning of friendship, of loyalty, and of honor and respect. I discovered obedience without subservience. And caring about all livingthings had become as natural as breathing. The worth of a strong work ethicand of purposeful dedication was manifest. Love of learning blossomed and I beganto set higher standards for my developing skills, and loftier goals forfuture activities and dreams. Mind, none of this was the result of any sortof formal instruction; my yeshiva had been the neighborhood. I learnedthese things,absorbed them actually says it better, by association and role modeling, by pursuing curious inquiry, and by what educators called "incidental learning"in the crucible that was pre-World War II Williamsburg. It seems many of life's most elemental lessons are learned this way. While my parents' Cuban home sheltered me with warm, intimate affection and provided for my well-being and self esteem, the group of Jewish familiesI came to know and help in the Williamsburg of the 1930s was a surrogate tribe that abetted my teenage rite of passage to adulthood. One might even say we had experienced a special kind of Bar Mitzvah. I couldn't explain thent he concept of tikkun olam, but I realized as I matured how well I had been oriented by the Jewish experience to live it and to apply it. What a truly uplifting outlook on life it is to be genuinely motivated "to repair the world." In these twilight years when my good wife is occasionally told "Your husband is a funny man," I'm aware that my humor has its roots in the shticks of Second Avenue Yiddish Theater, entertainers at Catskill summer resorts, and their many imitators. And, when I argue issues of human or civil rights and am cautioned about showing too much zeal, I recall how chutzpah first flourished on Williamsburg sidewalks, competing for filberts(hazelnuts) with tough kids wearing payess and yarmulkes. Along the way I played chess and one-wall handball, learned to fence, listened to Rimsky-Korsakov, ate roasted chestnuts, read Maimonides and studied SaulAlinsky. I am ever grateful for having had the opportunity to be a Shabbes Goy. Aleichem sholom
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
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