Iron Maiden, Barclay Center. 7/26/19.

In terms of sheer musicianship and stage theatrics probably the greatest concert I’ve been to — coupled with the element of childhood nostalgia: so many classic songs sung by a sold out stadium of multi-generation fans ... “Run to The Hills”; “Aces High”, “2 Minutes to Midnight”, “The Trooper”, “Flight of Icarus” ...

With Iron Maiden it just takes that opening riff and I’m a giddy 8 years old, rocking out with my Walkman under the covers, staying up well past my bedtime to catch @ WXRC’s midnight metal hour ... or trading metal cassette tapes with friends, rushing to the music store when a new album came out; scrawling band logos on the blue-lined paper of your elementary school notebooks.

Those were the days where as a kid I could spend hours in my room, listening to an album ALL THE WAY THROUGH, wholly engrossed, no interruptions -- and had the attention span and dedication to do so. (I still do, sometimes; though it gets harder as life goes on, parenting and all that).

There was something special about those moments: that fascination with a band or memory an album -- an unconstrained love of metal (or music in general) that I wish I could communicate to my own kids, especially in our fast-paced, video-game saturated internet age.

"But Love Does Such Things!"

What we have just attempted to grasp in the obscurity of divine action now presents itself to us in visible form. At first a child like any other, it cries, is hungry, sleeps, and yet is "the Word ... become flesh. " It cannot be said that God "inhabits" this infant, however gloriously; or that heaven has set its seal upon him, so that he must pursue it, suffer for it in a manner sublimely excelling all other contacts between God and man; this child is God in essence and in being.

If an inner protest should arise here, give it room. It is not good to suppress anything; if we try to, it only goes underground, becomes toxic, and reappears later in far more obnoxious form. Does anyone object to the whole idea of God-become-man? Is he willing to accept the Incarnation only as a profound and beautiful allegory, never as literal truth? If doubt can establish a foothold anywhere in our faith, it is here. Then we must be patient and reverent, approaching this central mystery of Christianity with calm, expectant, prayerful attention; one day its sense will be revealed to us. In the meantime, let us remember the directive "But love does
such things!

Romano Guardini, The Lord "The Incarnation" pp. 17-18.

Paul Johnson's "Mozart: A Life"

I'm what you probably call mostly illiterate when it comes to classical music -- I an't read a sheet of music; never learned to play a musical instrument, have no appreciation beyond whether I personally enjoy it or not. So when it comes to reading a book like Johnson's "Mozart" I was not prepared to enjoy Paul Johnson's Mozart: A Life (2013) as much as I did.

One is naturally informed that "Mozart was a genius, yadda yadda yadda ..." -- the strength of Johnson's biographical portrayal is that, in the brief space he has (the book is only 162 pages), he effectively communicates an understanding of precisely WHY Mozart is considered a genius -- and why people love his work. Some impressive observations:

• Mozart's earliest compositions were done when he was five
  
• His musical personality began to emerge at the age of eight; by eight or nine he "played all keyboard instruments, reading at sight, even including the organ, though his small size raised difficulties with the foot pedals";
  
• by ten or eleven he was already an accomplished musician with an admirable familiarity with most orchestral instruments. (One notable exception was the harp, which he could not play).
  
• By the age of twelve Mozart was a mature composer -- from which point on there was "never a month, scarcely a week, when he did not produce a substantial score"
  
• The sheer volume of his work is phenomenal. Franz Liszt once remarked the Mozart actually composed more bars than a trained copyist could write in a lifetime
  

Mozart "had a highly personal approach to music. He associated each instrument with particular people he knew who were especially good at playing it, and wrote with them -- or often one of them -- in mind. Nothing pleased him more than an intimate talk with a player about his instrument, what it could do or not do, and what it could be MADE to do by a masterful player." Johnson ventures into great detail regarding the nature and challenges of the instruments that Mozart worked with, such as the organ, the violin, the viola, the flute, the clarinet, and other horned, reed and timpany instruments. (The most fascinating for me being the bassoon, as I had no idea just how delicate it was).

One gets a genuine sense of Mozart's personality. He could treat with utmost seriousness those things one ought to treat with gravity (his Catholic faith and the Last Things, writing to his father: "I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity (you know what I mean) of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness") but also possessed a robust sense of humor and a joy in life.

"Gay himself by nature, he saw no reason why people should not enjoy a little innocent pleasure, or not-so-innocent pleasure, for that matter. He might conduct a Stations of the Cross in the morning [...], or a Stabat Mater, a similar service centering on the Virgin Mary, or even a requiem, then turn to and arrange a riotous set of German dances in the afternoon.

Mozart loved and appreciated jokes, and was fond of inserting into his works segments that were literally impossible for instrumentalists to play.

What I found particularly beneficial is Johnson's sympathetic treatment of various figures in Mozart's life, particularly his father, his sister, and his friendships with other composers of his day (Bach, Hayden). Thankfully, Johnson also address various historical myths that have sprung up regarding Mozart's life, from what are relatively benign (ex. that he "disliked the flute") to those that are more pernicious. Concerning the unfavorable portrayals of his wife, Constanze he concludes the following:

The truth, so far as I can judge, is that Constanze was always a good wife and mother, ran the household well, but was out of action a large part of the time, either pregnant or nursing or in Baden in desperate attempts to regain her health and strength. Nor was Mozart a bad husband.

and of their financial difficulties, a subject which it seems is often over-emphasized:

Indebtedness was almost a universal habit among married couples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ... [despite being in debt] his total liabilities never exceeded his assets. At his death, his debts were small by prevailing standards and were rapidly cleared from current income.

and of the negative portrayals of his father, Leopold Mozart:

We have been taught to see Leopold Mozart as a bossy, overpossessive and tyrannical figure, eager to control every aspect of his son's life down to the smallest detail.. There is something to this, but in may ways he was an admirable father, who sacrificed his own promising career as performer and composer entirely in order to promote his son's and who behaved in many ways with heroic unselfishness.

and of course Salieri, villified in Peter Shaffer's play and in the 1984 cinematic adaptation Amadeus:

The story that he was poisoned is a complete fantasy, and the naming of Salieri as the murderer is a gross libel on that hardworking and innocent man."

Johnson's own appreciation of classical music is on display, as he employs a number of musical terms that had me thumbing the dictionary, though not overwhelmingly so. Had I a better grasp of musical terminology I would have better understood certain segments of this book, but my own personal impediments aside, I found this one of the most thrilling books I've read this year. To such an extent that I'm now motivated to spend the coming year to seriously investigating Mozart's many works (and not just those I'm familiar with).

Cheese! Cheese! Cheese!

If you like cheese -- and really, who doesn't? -- one of our friends/neighbors has a soon-to-be published book due out in October: Melt, Stretch, & Sizzle: The Art of Cooking Cheese: Recipes for Fondues, Dips, Sauces, Sandwiches, Pasta, and More.

Tia Keenan is a cheese specialist, cook, author and writes the "Cheese Wisely" column for the Wall Street Journal; she has also authored The Art of the Cheese Plate: Pairings, Recipes, Style, Attitude.

Black Friday.

The Grateful Undead

A tribute to Jerry Garcia and George Romero, two American icons!

Like it? ~ Get the t-shirt | postcard @ Zazzle.com

Great News for Fans of "Bloom County"

Not subscribing to a newspaper I rarely have occasion to read the comics these days -- but my childhood and teenage years were spent devouring "Calvin and Hobbes", Trudeau's "Doonesbury" and Berkley Breathed's "Bloom County" (circa 1980-1989). For those who don't recognize the latter, IDW Publishing has announced the launch of The Bloom County Complete Library -- "a five volume collection featuring every daily and Sunday strip in chronological order, many reprinted for the first time."

The Bloom County Library will also contain a series of "Context Pages" sprinkled throughout the volumes, providing perspective for the reader and presenting a variety of real-life events and personalities that were contemporary at the time of original publication.

In a recent interview with Los Angeles Times' "Hero Complex", Breathed describes the circumstances that led to his decision to relenquish cartooning:

“When you’re young, you miss things, you just don’t see them,” said the 52-year-old Breathed, who walked away from comic strips last year because the Digital Age had eroded his newsprint audience and, worse, his artistic vigor and sense of whimsy. [...]

“Not to sound like someone swinging their cane, but in the 1980s there weren’t a thousand other voices screaming to be heard at the same time,” Breathed said of the decade when his “Bloom County” was featured in more than 1,200 newspapers and he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. “There was a quiet in the room that made being a commentator very exciting. There was no Web, there was barely any cable TV. If you were looking for humorous topical commentary, you would go to the Johnny Carson monologue, ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘Doonesbury.’ That was it. After you have the silence of that room, you get really weary with the screaming it takes today. There’s also this bitterness in the public square now that is difficult to avoid. I never did an angry strip, but in recent years I saw that sneaking in.”

Breathe goes on to discuss Peanuts' Charles Schulz ("The major regret in my cartooning life is I didn’t get to know him"); Doonesbury's Garry Trudeu ("He came as close to a hero for me as I was going to have in the comics world") and Calvin & Hobbes' Bill Watterson ("Breathed’s fan, friend and rival").

Having departed from the world of comic-strips, Breathed now writes and illustrates children's books.

“It’s the technology,” the roofer said. “They don’t know how to deal with a human being. They stand there with that text shrug”—he hunched his shoulders, bent his head down, moved from side to side, looking anywhere but at me—“and they go, ‘Ah, ah, um, um,’ and they just mumble. They can’t talk any more.” This inadequacy with physical space and direct interaction was an affliction of the educated, he said—“the more educated, the worse.” His poorer black customers in Bedford-Stuyvesant had no such problem, and he was much happier working on their roofs, but the recession had slowed things down there and these days he was forced to deal almost entirely with the cognitively damaged educated and professional classes.

“They hire someone—this has happened several times—so they don’t have to talk to me,” he went on, growing more animated and reddening with amazement. “It’s like they’re afraid of me! So they hire a guy who’s more comfortable dealing with a masculine-type person. I stand there and talk to the customer, and the customer doesn’t talk to me or look at me, he talks to the intermediary, and the intermediary talks to me. It’s the yuppie buffer.” He wasn’t slurring gay men—he described these customers as mainly “metrosexuals”—nor was the problem all yuppies, some of whom had been his customers for years. It was a new group who had moved from Manhattan in the past few years, and who could not detach themselves from their communications devices long enough to look someone in the eye or notice the source of a leak. This was a completely new phenomenon in the roofer’s world: a mass upper class that was so immersed in symbolic and digital cerebration that it had become incapable of carrying out the most ordinary functions—had become, in effect, like small children with Asperger’s symptoms. It was a ruling class that, out of sheer over-civilization, was quickly losing the ability to hold onto its power.

The view from a roofer's recession, by George Packer. New York Times

Selling Your Own Advertising Campaign as News

CNN has tried to spin its disproportionate coverage of this “Twitter duel” as relevant to the growing importance of “new media” in breaking down barriers between celebrities and the public. Yet this obscures the real story: namely, the amazing ease with which traditional news outlets can create “news” that is useful to their marketing purposes, and then use “new media” platforms (and other networks’ gullible coverage of the pseudo-event) to spread their advertising gimmick “virally.” Indeed, with unnerving efficiency, CNN staged an event that put its brand-name front and center (i.e., “Kutcher vs. CNN”); hyped this as news-worthy on its network and website; recruited a famous dupe to ensure that its content was pumped throughout the blogosphere and reported in the MSM; and - in its most shameless act yet - broadcast “Kutcher supporters” wearing CNN-branded “Kutcher hands CNN its lunch in Twitter feud” t-shirts, which, naturally, are available for $15 apiece on CNN’s website!

In turn, CNN’s bold fabrication of the news suggests that “new media” isn’t necessarily “democratizing” the flow of information. Rather, insofar as the MSM is still responsible for determining what counts as news, “new media” platforms have provided traditional media outlets with enhanced capabilities for packaging - and broadly disseminating - their own advertising campaigns as “news.”

Eric Trager, "CNN Invents the News" Contentions 4.18.2009

Coffee - "Drink of God's Glory"

The design ...

... The Coffee Mug.

The great NYU Kimmel Food Court Occupation comes to a bloodless end. (Or “how NOT to spend your college tuition”)

Last week a group of "student-empowering, social-justice-minded" students and assorted ragamuffins and rabblerousers from neighboring colleges (many affiliated with TakeBackNYU) had the stunningly-brilliant idea of barricading themselves in a food court in New York University's Kimmell Center, "in a historic effort to bring pressure on NYU for its administrative and ethical failings regarding transparency, democracy and protection of human rights."

Eugene Edward Blosser 1917-2008

* * *

Eugene Edward Blosser (March 27, 1917 – June 8, 2008), career missionary in China and Japan cited in The Mennonite Encyclopedia (1955+), died Sunday morning at Parkview Manor in Wellman, Iowa, following a long respiratory illness. The son of Perry and Ada V. Lahman Blosser of South English, IA, Eugene was the eighth of nine children. In 1932, he discontinued his education at South English High School in order to help his father farm. During WWII he served in the Civilian Public Service corps in Nebraska and Wisconsin. After passing his General Education Development exams, he was admitted to Goshen College in Indiana, from which he graduated with a Bible major in 1949. He later continued his studies at Goshen Biblical Seminary and post-graduate work in Far Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

In the summer of 1949, Eugene was commissioned by the Mennonite Board of Missions to serve as a missionary in China. Upon arriving in Hong Kong that September, he was married to Louella Gingerich, whom he had dated at Goshen, and who had preceded him to China as a medical missionary in 1947. They served together in Chengdu, Sichuan, from 1949 to 1951. Their efforts continue their work following the Maoist takeover of Chengdu on December 30, 1949, are chronicled in Dorothy McCammon's We Tried to Stay (1953). In March 1951 they returned to the U.S., and were reassigned to Japan in 1953. They planted new churches in Hokkaido (Taiki, Sapporo, Hiroo), served established congregations (Obihiro, Kushiro), and administered a boarding facility for missionary children attending Hokkaido International School in Sapporo. In 1981 they returned to the U.S. after Luella was diagnosed with brain cancer. She died in 1982. After serving as interim pastor in Oregon and Nebraska, Eugene married Elsie Zook of Wellman in 1984. The couple lived together in Wellman for 24 years, where they continued active involvement in the local Mennonite church after retirement.

Eugene was preceded in death by his first wife, Luella; and adopted son, Thomas Yoshiro; his parents, and all of his siblings, including six brothers, Wilmer, Aquila, Dwight, Menno, Oren, and Amos; and two sisters, Abbie (Zook) and Mary Kate (Yoder). He is survived by his second wife, Elsie; his children, Philip, Rachel (Derstine) and Meiko (Schoemig); eight grand-children (Christopher, Jonathan Benjamin, Nathaniel, Hannah, Katherine, Elizabeth, and Julia); and four great-grandchildren (Augustine, Ambrose, Cyprian, and Raphael).

George Bush, Zombie Killer

"A Critical Look at Energy Drinks"

Pure Energy: A Critical Look at Energy Drinks Kotaku.com:

What follows is a listing of the drinks I partook of, their manufacturers, and a few facts about their history where applicable, along with descriptions and grades given in two categories - flavor and buzz. I consumed a full can of each product, with several hours in between each drink in order to separate the effects. Of course this is not a scientifically sound test - this is strictly my opinion, but after drinking thirteen different cans of energy drinks over the course of a long weekend I am convinced that my opinion is completely awesome and I could - if needed - run completely through the living room wall into the neighboring apartment. . . .

Is Barack Obama the Messiah?

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