First day of the year musings

The New Neo Posted on by

January first always feels like a clean slate day. And yet it’s really just a continuum.

But that “clean slate” feeling is why people make resolutions. I don’t make formal ones anymore – I know better. But I’m always resolving to improve, especially on two dimensions of my life: make more of a dent in my nightowl proclivities, and figure out a way to lose ten pounds. Whenever I mention that last bit on this blog, I get a ton of suggestions involving low-carb and/or Taubes and/or keto and/or intermittent fasting. I’ll say right here and now – once again – that I’m very happy those eating programs worked for you, but they don’t work for me for various reasons too tedious to go into here for the umpteenth time.

Do I sound grumpy? Well, maybe I am. I find I’ve been more short-tempered than usual this past year. The bad news of the world grates on me and of course Gerard’s death, which occurred close to a year ago now. I’ve taken time off since Thanksgiving from working on his book, and now I’m taking the task up again. I predict – loosely – that I’ll get it out about two months from now. For various reasons, the process has been far more complicated than I imagined.

I’m grateful for the friends and family I still have, especially my precious – although far away – grandchildren. And of course for all of you, my readers.

Auld Lang Syne

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of an older post.]

The lyrics were written in Scots dialect by the poet Robert Burns in 1788. That’s a lot of auld lang syne ago.

But the song—set to a traditional folk tune—has endured, particularly at New Year’s to be sung right after midnight. Nostalgia is a common theme at the turn of the year.

What I hadn’t known till I read that Wiki entry is that the song has spread all over the world, either in translation or just the tune:

“Auld Lang Syne” has been translated into many languages, and the song is widely sung all over the world. The song’s pentatonic scale matches scales used in Korea, Japan, India, China and other East Asian countries, which has facilitated its “nationalisation” in the East…

—In West Bengal and Bangladesh, the melody was the direct inspiration for the popular Bengali folk song[23][24] “Purano shei diner kotha” (“Memories of the Good Old Days”), composed by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, and forms one of the more recognisable tunes in Rabindra Sangeet (“Rabindra’s Songs”), a body of work of 2,230 songs and lyrical poems that form the backbone of Bengali music.

—In Denmark, the song was translated in 1927 by the famous Danish poet Jeppe Aakjær. Much like Robert Burns’ use of dialect, Aakjær translated the song into Sallingbomål, a form of the Jutlandic dialect often hard for other Danes to understand…

—In Thailand, the song “Samakkhi Chumnum” (“Together in Unity”), which is set to the familiar melody, is sung after sporting fixtures, and at the end of Boy Scout jamborees, as well as for the New Year. The Thai lyrics are about the King and national unity, and many Thais are not aware of the song’s “Western” origin…

Auld Lang Syne has been used in other works such as movies and poems. My favorite reference is in a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, one you may have encountered in poetry anthologies, “Mr. Flood’s Party.” It’s a poem about time and age and isolation. Old Eben Flood climbs a hill and drinks from a jug, talking to himself—that’s the gist of the poem. But of course it’s much more than that.

Here’s the reference (the last 3 stanzas of the poem). It begins with Flood talking to himself as though conversing with an old friend:

…“Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!”
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
“Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

“Only a very little, Mr. Flood—
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.”
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang—

“For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below—
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.

Don’t mean to be gloomy, although the poem is. Here’s to a better 2024 for all of us, and for the whole world!

What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

The New Neo Posted on by

And me? Glad you asked.

Nada, zip, zilch.

Oh, I might visit a nearby friend for a short while and have a sip of champagne, a tiny toast to the end of 2023, a year I’m pretty sure most people are not going to look back on with inordinate fondness. And I’ll toast with a fervent hope that 2024 will be a lot, lot better.

Staying up till midnight is no problem for me, since I’m a night owl and always have been. Actually, even when young, I had somewhat of an aversion to New Year’s Eve. To the idea of a night when you were supposed to have fun or else. A reminder of the speedy passage of time. With alcohol drinking. And the obligatory midnight kiss, which wasn’t a fun moment if you didn’t like your date.

Once or twice I went to Times Square to see the ball go down in person and not just on TV. Curiously, those were some of my better New Year’s Eves. Maybe it was the people I was with those nights. We ate at Tad’s Steaks, just for laughs, but Tad’s wasn’t bad at all.

And four years ago the very last Tad’s in New York City closed down. I had no idea any of them had lasted that long.

So let’s drink to Tad’s:

The cafeteria-style chophouse is known for hawking inexpensive meat-and-potato dinners on red trays — meals that cost little more than $1 each when the first one opened in 1957. A steak lunch today can be had for as little as $9.

At its height, Tad’s had eight New York locations out of 28 nationwide. But come Jan. 5, 2020, the red neon sign in the window advertising “broiled” steaks at 761 Seventh Ave. will go dark — as will the vast grill that played host to smoky “steak shows,” where dozens of cuts could be grilled at once during the thick of lunch hour.

Happy New Year, everyone! I’m very grateful for all of you. Here’s to a wonderful 2024, full of love, joy, and good health!

[NOTE: Some of this appeared in a previous post.]

Fouettes and The Nutcracker

The New Neo Posted on by

For me, it was easy to see what was unusual about this dancer’s fouettes – because of my long ballet background which includes some teaching. The narrator explains somewhat, but I’ll add that holding the arms above the head increases the difficulty immensely because it creates drag, and the style of fouette with the whipping leg to the side when the supporting leg is in plie is more difficult because you don’t get as much oomph from the whip. I was initially taught fouettes that way, but later on was relieved to learn the other type, which is easier.

Fouettes are far from easy, though, especially on pointe. I could do them in soft shoes but was very bad at doing them on pointe:

Last night I went to the Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker, something I hadn’t done in ages and ages and ages. The Boston Opera House is as lovely and opulent as ever. This is a photo I took of the main lobby, designed in the days when the arts were elegant. The colors were actually much more intense, but the sparkly chandeliers washed them out somewhat in the photo:

The rest of the building is just as beautiful, although I didn’t take photos. The production was – well, let’s just say I thought that the dancing was of the modern mechanical variety for the most part, technically proficient but no more – except for the guy who played Drosselmeyer, who had a magnetic and riveting presence and paid attention to the details of every single gesture.

Ah, but the costumes and scenery – gorgeous! Again, no photos, but I’ll mention three things. The first is the design of the lovely Waltz of the Flowers costumes. The second is that the snow scene was practically a blizzard, very impressive and effective and the audience was enthralled. The third is that in the Kingdom of Sweets scene (Act II), I suddenly realized after about twenty minutes that the set designer had done something exceptionally clever – he had made the proscenium stage ballroom in which the dancing takes place an extension of the room in which the actual audience was sitting, with similar pillars decorated with gold, matching chandeliers, and murals in the same style. Bravo!

And Tchaikovsky’s music is always a treat.

The audience loved the whole thing, but they especially loved the fouettes. To me, fouettes are some of the least interesting steps in dance, although I understand how much strength and balance it takes to do them well.

And fortunately I’ve managed to find a video of the Boston Ballet’s snow scene that shows the profuse amount of snow the production manages to generate. I’ve never seen a snow scene with a snowfall this thick, which can be a hazard to the dancers but last night nobody slipped. In this video the snow really gets going starting around 0:20:

Oh Canada … glorious and free

The New Neo Posted on by

Our neighbors to the north are apparently about to allow assisted suicide for the mentally ill:

Canada already has one of the most liberal assisted death laws in the world, offering the practice to terminally and chronically ill Canadians.

But under a law scheduled to take effect in March assisted dying would also become accessible to people whose only medical condition is mental illness, making Canada one of about half a dozen countries to permit the procedure for that category of people.

That move has divided Canadians, some of whom view it as a sign that the country’s public health care system is not offering adequate psychiatric care, which is notoriously underfunded and in high demand.

I can well believe that’s the reason. My own experience with the Canadian health care system involves knowing many chronic pain patients in Canada during the 1990s. Their care was abysmal at the time.

And note the more neutral phrase “assisted death” rather than “assisted suicide.”

More:

… Dr. John Maher, a psychiatrist in Barrie, Ontario, who specializes in treating complex cases that often take years to improve said he was concerned that hopeless patients will opt for assisted death instead.

“I’m trying to keep my patients alive,” he said. “What does it mean for the role of the physician, as healer, as bringer of hope, to be offering death? And what does it mean in practice?”

It means we have slid way down a very slippery and destructive slope.

The Jews and the Rosenbergs

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “y81” writes:

… [I]f you had polled American Jews in 1960 on whether the Rosenbergs were guilty: a large number, perhaps a majority, would have said that they were innocent, by which they meant primarily that the Rosenbergs’ hearts were in the right (i.e., far left) place, that they didn’t generally approve of the death penalty (unless administered by the Soviets), that Judge Kaufman should not have betrayed his religious compatriots, that David Greenglass should not have betrayed his family members, etc.

There are a lot of assumptions there. I happen to disagree with them – and in a moment I’ll explain why – but I highlighted this particular comment not to pick on y81 but because I think he or she is expressing views that are not uncommon.

The fact that there are many Jews prominent on the left does not mean that most Jews are on the left, even today when leftism seems more common among the general population, especially the young. Many famous lawyers are Jews, but most Jews are not lawyers; the American musical theater featured an enormous number of Jewish composers and lyricists but most Jews have never been composers or lyricists; and … well, you get the idea. Even in 2021, only half of Jewish voters described themselves as liberal; 32% described themselves as moderate, and 16% as conservative. The liberals were especially concentrated among reform Jews and those of no religious affiliation. Most of the Jewish voters I know are not leftists themselves but vote reflexively Democrat – which these days means they end up supporting leftists, of course. Among the Orthodox in that 2021 poll it was quite different: 60% described themselves as politically conservative, 26% as moderate, and 9% as liberal.

But what of the era of the Rosenbergs? We don’t have polls on that subject in the 1950s or in 1960 – at least, I couldn’t find any. But having grown up in New York City during the 1950s, I can say that my perception is that most Jews were middle-of-the-road Democrats – which in those days meant they were equivalent to moderate Republicans today. They were anti-Communists and did not support the Rosenbergs or the Soviet Union. However, what they were was frightened by the case, for very good reasons:

For Jews, the most important aspect of the Rosenberg case was the Jewish background of all four of the major defendants. All had obviously Jewish names. American Jews feared the Rosenberg trial would be a godsend to anti-Semites. What better proof could there be of the Communist sympathies of Jews and their support for the Soviet motherland? Never in American history was the hoary anti-Semitic association of Jews with Communism more believable than in the early 1950s.

The fear that the Rosenberg case would exacerbate anti-Semitism was heightened by the emphasis of European and American Communists on the couple’s Jewish background once it became clear that they were not going to talk.

The Jewish left defended them; the rest of the Jews did not, and “the rest” was a strong majority and an influential one. In fact

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) Collection at YIVO contains several files about the Rosenbergs and their trial. The AJC was founded in New York in 1906 to defend the civil and religious rights of Jews and other minorities throughout the world. Given the illustrious history of the organization and their strong stance against discrimination, one might expect the AJC files to contain materials about their defense of the Rosenbergs, or at a minimum, their denunciation of the antisemitism surrounding the affair or the severity of the punishment. But the archives tell a different story.

The cover letter for a memorandum called “The Defense of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg: A Communist Attempt to Inject the Jewish Issue,” dated March 27, 1952, warns, “In recent months Communists have been attempting to agitate concerning these condemned persons and to inject into the situation a suggestion that there are anti-Semitic implications to the conviction and the sentences. The AJC believes there is no foundation for such charges.” …

The AJC circulated another article defending the proceedings in June of 1952, entitled “The Communists Find a New Opening,” in which they denied any evidence of antisemitism, concluding: “Once more we find Communists and fellow-travellers trying to make anti-Semitism and anti-communism appear synonymous…The net that is being woven from spurious threads of the Rosenberg case must be regarded as one more example of Communist trickery.” …

In this environment, all of the mainstream Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League of B’nei B’rith, the American Jewish Congress, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, banded together with the American Jewish Committee to issue a statement condemning the efforts by the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case to “inject the false issue of anti-Semitism.”

As for the number of Jews who were Communists, there’s this:

Although Jews made up a disproportionate share of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) — perhaps as much as 40 percent in 1939 — the party itself never held more than 100,000 members. So, in an American Jewish population of several million, a tiny percentage were Communists. Of course, this is not to count the many sympathizers and “fellow travelers,” drawn by the Soviet Union’s war against Nazism and its seeming opposition to anti-Semitism.

But there was also among Jews a greater number of fierce enemies of Communism than is sometimes credited. In the socialist garment unions, the Zionist enclaves, and the religious world, Jews who understood that Communism was a pernicious doctrine waged a continuous war against its influence. Indeed, for most of the Jewish community, the highly visible presence of so many Jews in the CPUSA, amplified by the location of so many of them in New York, the cultural and intellectual center of American life, was a constant source of tension and embarrassment. …

American anti-Semites had routinely insisted that the 1917 Bolshevik revolution was led by Jews as part of a far-reaching conspiracy against the Christian civilization of the West. Henry Ford linked Jews with Communism in his paper the Dearborn Independent, which also translated and circulated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. During the 1930s, Father Charles Coughlin excoriated Jews on his widely popular radio show. Charles Lindbergh, one of the leaders of America First, cited American Jews’ hostility to fascism as evidence of their alleged disloyalty to the U.S.

After World War II, the beginning of the cold war created a new and potentially even more fraught situation for American Jews. It was one thing for a number of Jews to have supported the USSR in the 1930s when Communists were temporarily on the same side in the fight against fascism in Spain, or later during World War II when the U.S. and the USSR were military allies. It was another thing when, in the late 1940s, the perception of Jewish support, however statistically insignificant, for an enemy of American democracy became much more disturbing.

A series of high-profile events amplified the concern.

The article goes on to list some of them. The Rosenberg case was, of course, prominent among them.

What I wrote back in 2005, when Israel first withdrew from Gaza

The New Neo Posted on by

I knew I must have written about the withdrawal at the time. But I didn’t have a clue what I had said or what I predicted, if anything. So I went back to look and here it is (the comments transferred backwards from the old blog site to the new, by the way, so if you want to read them in the proper order you must go to the bottom and work upwards).

I now reproduce the entire post verbatim. The following was originally published in September of 2005; I’ve updated the links whenever possible, because some of them are dead and some were to my old site:

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (which I supported, by the way, as the best alternative among all the lousy choices available to the Israelis at the time) has had some disheartening results.

First we had the inevitable but sorrowful spectacle of Israeli soldiers forcing weeping Israeli settlers from their homes. And now we have another inevitable spectacle [dead link from The Scotsman], this one of destructive fury: a Palestinian wilding that is annihilating what’s left of the settlements, including the synagogues and the greenhouses.

The article from The Scotsman that I linked describes the festivities. It’s an example of what I called the Martin Higby phenomenon (see here for an explanation) run amok. Imagine a society that nurtures rage in its children, feeding it and watering it like a precious crop. This is the harvest: a society in which those who would be moderates, those who would just like to get on with the sober and hopeful business of building a just and decent society, are overwhelmed by the explosion of carefully fostered rage.

It’s not surprising, of course, that people are helping themselves to what’s there, a sort of recycling. What should be surprising, however, is that they are even destroying their own potential livelihood, [dead link here] the flourishing greenhouses the Israelis had built, and which the Palestinians themselves had hoped to make the basis of their post-withdrawal economy.

But somehow it’s not surprising. Why? In certain situations, rageful crowds can be as hard to contain as the force of a ferocious hurricane spilling water over and through inadequate levees. Not only has Palestinian culture long been in the business of whipping up destructive rage for its own propaganda purposes (not to mention keeping its citizens in weakened economic conditions the better to further those very same purposes), but it’s a society in which the restraints on violence are not at all strong. Among the Palestinians, their sheepdog protectors–both of the herding and the guard variety – are extremely weak or even non-existent. In many cases the sheepdogs are probably even wolves in sheep’s clothing. Without police as effective brakes on the impulse to destroy, and without the will to apply these brakes, that impulse can expand unchecked and, in the end, feed on the society itself.

I have no doubt that moderates – or at least would-be moderates – exist among Palestinians. How many there are I cannot tell. Are they rare? Or are they numerous but silenced into invisibility by the fact that speaking out would get them killed in short order? I do not know. But I don’t think that they have a chance right now.

Part of the terrible calculus of the Israeli withdrawal was a hope that the world might finally see the Israelis as doing the right thing this time, and see that the resultant Palestinian response would either be to finally make a decent society for themselves or to show themselves to be hopelessly at war with each other. The latter – a vicious civil war – is the one I’d bet on at the moment, I’m afraid.

As for how the world sees the Israelis, articles such as this one from Reuters [another dead link] are not exactly what you’d call sympathetic to them. Reuters continues to subtly – and sometimes not so subtly – present what amounts to the Palestinian point of view.

The Reuters article, as well on another from the London Times discussed here by Wretchard of Belmont Club, uncritically present the Palestinian accusation that the Israelis left the synagogues intact as a way to make the Palestinians look bad when they destroyed them.

Well, of course – the Israelis are the evil puppeteers, as usual. The Palestinians have been raised on the idea that they themselves are responsible for nothing and that their endless victimhood entitles them to endless revenge, and much of the world has reinforced them in that perception. So this blaming of the Israelis for the acts of Palestinian crowds in destroying the synagogues comes as no surprise, either, although it bodes ill not only for the Israelis, but for the Palestinians, too – and for the world.

Hamas: sexual sadists

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought long and hard before deciding to give this link to a post at Legal Insurrection that details the sexual sadism of the Hamas operatives and Gazan civilians who participated in the October 7 murder and torture rampage in Israel.

I have not watched the videos though, although I read some of the descriptions and then stopped. I think people need to decide for themselves how much to be exposed to things so horrific that even a vivid imagination doesn’t compare with the terrible terrible reality.

I’ve read plenty in the past about some of the most barbaric acts of humanity, but this seems worse. Perhaps it’s because the element of sadism – and sexual sadism at that – is so profound. Perhaps it’s because of the sheer numbers of perpetrators and victims. Perhaps it’s because so many victims were young people in the prime of life. Perhaps it’s because it happened so recently and not in some distant ancient past. Perhaps it’s because of the exultant glee of the perpetrators and the fact that in some cases they filmed their abominations. Perhaps all of these things.

I continue to wonder whether some of these sadists have been exposed to violent pornography, and what effect that had on them. I know that they were also taught that Jews and Israelis deserve to be tortured and “dirtied,” and that this somehow would be compatible with their religious duties and perhaps even required. I think of things like the Aztecs ripping hearts out, the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the sacking of cities by barbarians, and all of the long history of crimes against humanity. It is still with us.

At any rate, you should decide for yourself whether to read the link and/or watch the videos.

As Colorado goes, so goes Maine

The New Neo Posted on by

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has removed Trump from the 2024 primary ballot – sort of:

“I do not reach this conclusion lightly. Democracy is sacred,” Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision on multiple complaints challenging the 77-year-old Trump’s eligibility for the primary ballot in Maine based on his actions leading up to and during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.

“I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection,” she stated, calling the riot at the Capitol “unprecedented and tragic.”

Oh, sacred sacred democracy – unless the people might vote for someone the left doesn’t like. Then democracy must go.

Oh, and Trump not only didn’t engage in insurrection but also has never been charged with it or convicted of it. But Bellows Knows Best.

Yes, the riot at the Capitol was tragic – for those who were then deprived of liberty in political show trials, and those who were murdered by the Capitol Police. And for their families.

Why did I write that Bellows “sort of” removed Trump from the ballot? Her decision doesn’t take effect until the courts approve it – first the Maine Supreme Court and then SCOTUS if the Supreme Court takes the case (this is similar to the situation in Colorado, although in the latter state they’re just waiting for a SCOTUS ruling).

Ramaswamy and DeSantis weighed in:

“This is what an actual threat to democracy looks like,” entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy wrote on X. “The system is hellbent on taking this man out, the Constitution be damned.”

He added that he would stand by his prior pledge to “withdraw from any state’s ballot that ultimately removes Trump,” and called on his opponents to do the same.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said “the idea that one bureaucrat in an executive position can simply unilaterally disqualify someone from office – that turns on its head, every notion of constitutional due process that this country has always abided by for over 200 years.”

“It opens up Pandora’s Box,” he argued during an interview with Fox News. “Can you have a Republican secretary of state disqualify Biden from the ballot because he’s let in 8 million people illegally?”

DeSantis added that he doesn’t believe the Maine ruling and other challenges to Trump’s ballot access will hold up in the Supreme Court.

I agree with DeSantis’ prediction. And I think Bellows is also aware that’s the likely endpoint. I believe she’s nevertheless doing this to get attention.