Talkin’ ’bout a revolution: it may be almost 2013, but…

The New Neo Posted on by

…this story recalls the revolutionary ardor of the 60s:

The daughter of a prominent New York doctor and her Occupy Wall Street-organizer boyfriend were arrested after police discovered an explosive used for making bombs and a cache of weapons in their upscale New York City apartment, it was claimed.

Morgan Gliedman, 27, and Aaron Greene, 31, were taken away from their home in Manhattan’s pricey Greenwich Village on Saturday.

Gliedman, who is nine months pregnant, is the daughter of a top Brooklyn cancer doctor and was educated at the Dalton School…Greene, the father of the child, went to Harvard University for his undergraduate degree and did graduate work at the Kennedy School of Government there, as well.

The New York Post reports that police found seven grams of HMTD, a high explosive powder that was reportedly used in the 2005 London Underground bombings.

Officers discovered bomb-making instructions, including one document titled ‘The Terrorist Encyclopedia,’ according to the newspaper…

There’s much more, but you get the picture. The 60s-era incident it reminds me of actually occurred in the very early 70s (March 6, 1970, to be exact), and it was another one in which highly privileged, Greenwich-Village-dwelling scions of the wealthy were involved in planning political terrorist activities that did not come to fruition. That earlier bomb-making spree cost some of them their lives (one of the hazards of their dangerous trade is the work-related accident; these people are literally playing with fire):

The Greenwich Village townhouse explosion occurred on March 6, 1970, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. It was caused by the premature detonation of a bomb that was being assembled by members of the American radical left group, the Weather Underground. The bomb was under construction in the basement of 18 West 11th Street when it accidentally exploded ”“ the blast reduced the four-story townhouse to a burning rubble-strewn ruin. Three persons preparing the bomb were killed instantly, and two others were injured but escaped from the scene.

The townhouse was owned by the father of one of the survivors, Cathlyn Wilkerson, who along with another survivor (and daughter of a prominent leftist attorney) Kathy Boudin went underground for many years and later served some time for her misdeeds. In the case of Wilkerson it was less than a year; Boudin, on the other hand, was convicted of felony murder for her part in the related Brinks robbery in which two police officers and a security guard were killed, and served approximately twenty years, the result of a plea bargain. Wilkerson was not a participant in the robbery, but “surrendered in 1980 [after 10 years of hiding] and pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of dynamite” connected with the townhouse explosion and was sentenced to three years of which she served only eleven months.

There are so many ironies in these cases it’s hard to know where to begin. For one thing, the inadequate sentences the perpetrators received (for example, the bomb on which the Greenwich Village crew were working that night was apparently intended “an attack on a non-commissioned officers dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey that night”). For another, the largely unrepentant attitudes of some of the survivors (for example, Wilkerson’s 2003 views are discussed in some depth, here—and note that she’s been a teacher for many years). Still another is that Boudin’s son was adopted by none other than fellow-educators Bill Ayers and wife Bernardine Dohrn during Boudin’s prison sojourn.

More about other 60s radicals and what they’re doing today (that is, ten years ago, when the article was written):

Linda S. Evans, who was granted clemency by President Bill Clinton for convictions related to bombings and released from prison in 2001 after serving nearly 16 years, lives in Santa Rosa, Calif. She received a Soros criminal justice fellowship from the Open Society Institute and works to restore civil rights to felons. ”I’m trying to make things better in our society,” she said in a telephone interview. ”I just feel really strongly that the policies of our government are just anti-human at every level.”

Mark Rudd, the Students for a Democratic Society leader from Columbia, teaches mathematics at the Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute, a community college. He, too, has called the group’s violence a ”terrible mistake.”

Of course it was a mistake, compared to the turn the left has taken in recent decades, which is to accomplish the same leftist ends by using the inattention of most people to the agenda, as well as the leniency of the system itself, to undermine that system by means of that long Gramscian march we’ve heard so much about.

Grow old along with me: twins

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are the oldest living identical twins in the world:

twins

Looking pretty good, aren’t they—for 103?

What’s more, they’re feeling pretty good. They both have all their mental faculties, which in itself is extraordinary. They do not use hearing aids or glasses. They each live independently, although both are recovering from recent falls. And from the looks of the photo, they both have a ton of hair for their age.

There are a few health divergences. One had ovarian cancer years ago and recovered. One appears (as best I can tell from the photo, anyway) to have a slightly different graying pattern, and although hair dye might be involved I don’t think it is because the hair looks gray rather than dyed.

As far as their lives go, these have been similar as well. They each had one child. They both outlived their husbands, and live in Florida. And they’re both pretty mum about the cause behind their longevity:

According to the Daily Mail, Primack credits genes and “never being fat” while her twin Eisgrou says it’s because she drank lots of milk.

“Everybody asks me that. I don’t know what it was,” Primack told ABC. “I didn’t watch my food when I was young. I smoked. We all smoked.”

Eisgrou added: “I don’t know the secret to a long life. And I wouldn’t tell you if I knew it.”

“We love each other and we always will,” Primack told ABC.

That last sentence may hold the key to at least some of it. Twins don’t always get along, but when they do the bond is like no other. As for the rest, I highly suspect genetics, although with identical twins both nature and nurture conspire to make them similar.

Oh, and as for the hair, this article from the time of the 100th birthday tells the tale (although the color looks somewhat different back then):

While they both used to dye their hair red, Primack let hers grow out to a natural gray when the dye began to bother her scalp.

But Eisgrou keeps the color on.

“I didn’t want to go all gray,” she said. “Everybody tells me ‘you look younger.'”

Is “everybody” right about that?

twins100

[NOtE: Here’s the literary reference for the post’s title.]

The same—but not the same

The New Neo Posted on by

“Dances At a Gathering” is a ballet choreographed in 1969 by Jerome Robbins for the New York City Ballet. I saw it about five times with the original never-to-be-equaled cast, and it’s one of my favorite ballets ever.

I haven’t seen it in over thirty years, or with a different group of performers. Maybe it’s just as well; perhaps some things are better left undisturbed in memory. I can’t imagine that today’s dancers could even begin to approach the artistry of that first ensemble, although the newer ones could no doubt exceed their technical prowess.

I wrote that the original cast was “never-to-be-equaled,” but it’s obvious that I have no way of knowing that. Even if I were to finally attend a modern-day performance of the piece, I wouldn’t be able to compare it to the original except in memory, because videos of that first cast are not readily available. YouTube, for example, has only a very short excerpt.

But I did manage to find two relatively recent videos of the man’s solo that I recall as opening the ballet. That dance was originally performed by my heartthrob Edward Villella, but there’s no online video of him in the role.

Villella was very different, both in body type and dance quality, from either of the modern-day dancers who perform the exact same choreography on those two YouTube videos. Villella was short and compact—muscular, masculine, coiled, and explosive. Here’s a still photo (in a different role) that might serve to give you a small idea of his particular gifts:

The two videos of the other dancers doing that introductory solo interest me because of the contrast between the dancers in them. I watched about ten seconds of this first man, Mathieu Ganio, and immediately thought “You haven’t a clue what you’re trying to convey here, do you?” Not that Ganio lacks technique—he certainly knows the steps, and is exceedingly fluid and lyrical. Actually, he’s way too lyrical; the life of these particular steps is simply not there, their intent and style and spirit, their emphasis and timing and color. He’s blanded-out and smooth, there’s not enough emphasis and shading, and he completely lacks the dance quality known as attack.

After a moment of walking, the dance starts with a mazurka-type step that should have a slightly ethnic flavor. But Ganio doesn’t seem to understand what the choreographer is trying to conjure up with that step (watch especially the folksy passage that starts around 1:06 and goes to about 1:40):

Now take a look at Simon Valastro. He’s no Villella, either—he lacks his fire and intensity. But he gets the point of the dance and the music, understands its shadings and emphases and especially its folk echoes. You can see it almost from the moment he walks on, and certainly within a few seconds after he begins to dance. And compare that passage I pointed out above that started around 1:06; with Valastro it beings around :59 and goes to about 1:35:

Maybe I’m being too hard on them. Maybe if I had a video of Villella to compare with them now, I’d see that the passage of time had given his performance more of a glow than it really had, and I’d decide that the current crop of dancers (especially Valastro) are his equal or even surpass him.

And although I doubt it, I wish I had the chance to find out.

Oh, and here’s that clip I mentioned, the one that shows the only bit of the original cast I could find on all of YouTube. It’s this pas de deux with Patricia McBride and Anthony Blum. Is it possible that any human being can be as light as McBride?

[NOTE: Here’s a Village Voice review of the original production. It was all that, and more.]

What about gun insurance?

The New Neo Posted on by

Megan Mcardle mulls over the proposal to make gun owners buy gun liability insurance, and finds it wanting for a host of reasons.

Most of her arguments make sense to me, although I disagree with this particular point of hers:

[Reason] [n]umber one [posited for the proposal, to make gun ownership more expensive], is unfair to advocates of stronger gun control, most of whom say that they do not want to take all guns away from law abiding citizens. I see no reason to doubt them, and so I’m basically discounting any interpretation of this proposal that seems like it would just raise the cost of guns until they were unaffordable for all but the very wealthy.

She sees no reason to doubt them? I see plenty of reasons to doubt a great many of them.

Fiscal cliff…

The New Neo Posted on by

…blah blah blah…fiscal cliff, blah blah blah…fiscal cliff, blah blah blah.

Sorry to be so cynically dismissive. But my sense is that nothing will happen for a while, and when it does happen it won’t solve a thing, and Republicans will be blamed. And also that this result has been baked in the fiscal cliff cake from the moment Obama won the 2012 election.

This is a nice summary:

Plus, Obama’s polling [is] in the mid-50s on his handling of the fiscal cliff situation, according to Gallup. Republicans are mired in the 20s. Why cave to the GOP when the president is winning?

The public seems reluctant to blame Obama for anything, including the economy in general. And Obama knows it. He has supreme confidence that his PR is better than that of the GOP, and in this he is obviously and resoundingly correct. GOP “leaders” (in name only) have looked like the Keystone cops in this matter, only significantly less competent.

RIP General Schwarzkopf

The New Neo Posted on by

General Norman Schwarzkopf has died at the age of 78 of complications from pneumonia. Those of us who were around during the 1991 Gulf War remember him as a television personality explaining it all, and a man who was popular enough to cause some people to wish he would run for office.

The US didn’t stick around after that war to deal with the complications of the aftermath, and left Saddam Hussein in power. Schwarzkopf himself later admitted that decision may not have been so great in light of later events.

I hadn’t realized some interesting things about Schwarzkopf’s father until I read the son’s AP obituary. It turns out that right around the time Norman was born, his father, “Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., founder and commander of the New Jersey State Police, was then leading the investigation of the Lindbergh kidnap case.” Later on, father (and son) had another brush with history when “as a teenager Norman accompanied his father to Iran, where the elder Schwarzkopf trained the country’s national police force and was an adviser to Reza Pahlavi, the young Shah of Iran.”

Interesting.

In a strange accident of timing, it appears that President George H.W. Bush, another man intimately involved with decisions during the Gulf War, is fading. He’s in the ICU right now, after having been hospitalized for over a month for bronchitis and now an unexplained fever.

More lookalikes

The New Neo Posted on by

If you enjoyed yesterday’s thread about Morsi/Mamet, you might like this site. Instead of celebrities who look like each other, it features non-celebrities who send in their photos because they think they look like a particular celebrity.

Some really really do, although others don’t all that much.

And if you’ve long been told you look like someone famous, you can send your photo in there and have your tiny little moment of reflected glory.

Ted Kennedy Jr. not running…

The New Neo Posted on by

…for John Kerry’s Senate seat.

That opens the way for Scott Brown to return to the Senate, if he can win the special election. And if there’s no Kennedy scion to claim the throne, it’s highly possible.

Not that it matters all that much at this point; the GOP threw away too many Senate seats they might have had. But still, every one counts, and it would be nice to have even a RINO occupying that particular Massachusetts seat rather than a die-hard liberal.