Lately there have been so many events that cry out for in-depth analysis that I often feel overwhelmed, and I think I’d feel that way even if my task was limited to reading about them – forget about trying to write something intelligent about them.
But blogging is voluntary, and apparently I choose to do it for some perverse reason.
Today I decided to revisit an old topic and to consolidate two past posts into one. I thought it would hardly take any time at all, but of course I had to find them and reread them and think about them and combine them and update them, and all of that took longer than expected.
So now I could write still another post on Trudeau’s tyrannical moves or on the newest Durham revelations, but I think that instead I’ll just say see this and this.
Last night I actually had a dream about blogging. I think that must be a first for me. In the dream I was in a room, a sort of large office, with some other bloggers. I was having tremendous trouble deciding where to set my computer up and then setting it at just the right height. A great deal of the dream was involved in this essentially boring setting-up process, and when I woke up I was astounded that I’d bothered to dream about such a tedious thing.
There also was a part of the dream in which I was talking to one of the bloggers and saying that even though I’m grateful for the internet, and that it’s a tremendous source of fascinating information, I’m worried that it’s also a tool for tyranny (something I’ve written about here). And then sure enough, today we have this completely and utterly predictable event:
After GoFundMe attempted to steal nearly $10 million in donated funds and give it to charities they liked better — leftwing “charities,” no doubt — people who wanted to donate to the Freedom Convoy truckers began using the GiveSendGo Christian alternative to GoFundMe.
The donors’ information was leaked online. And then published on Twitter.
Note that while Twitter supposedly bans doxxing, it has permitted a leftwing disgraced former Canadian shock-jock nobody to continue posting the donors’ information with no penalty…
And now, Ezra Levant reports, the state media that Justin Trudeau pays — and which is in his pocket politically — is using the hacked dox materials as a hit list to intimidate the donors.
“BREAKING: Trudeau’s CBC state broadcaster is combing through the illegally hacked database of GiveSendGo donors, and emailing donors asking them to explain themselves.”
Just a little friendly journalism, right?
This sort of thing began quite some time ago. The turning point in my own awareness of it was when Brendon Eich of Mozilla was forced to resign in 2014 after it was revealed that he’d made a small donation to an anti-gay-marriage campaign in California back in 2008:
On Monday, OkCupid sent a message to visitors suggesting that they use browsers such as Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer or Google Inc’s Chrome: “Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.”
Eich, who invented JavaScript, apologized for causing “pain” and promised to promote equality for gay and lesbian individuals at Mozilla. However, the campaign continued to call for his ouster.
It may not have been the first instance of this happening to an individual because of a political donation he or she made, but it was a prominent one that underscored where we’d been heading. Now the practice has proliferated and become commonplace. The goal is of course intimidation in order to prevent groups the left doesn’t like from raising much money to support their causes. How many people have the courage to risk the exposure and its aftermath?
[NOTE: Yesterday I noticed that there is a new entry in the JFK assassination conspiracy rolls. And then later, commenter “John Tyler” posted a link to it, wondering what to make of it. I gave a perfunctory answer, but then it occurred to me that it might be good to re-post some thoughts of mine on the subject of the JFK assassination and theories about it. The following is a slightly-edited version of two previous posts, one that first appeared here in June of 2011 and one in August of 2019. I think the information is valuable for its general discussion of how JFK conspiracy theories tend to work, and why some people find them persuasive.]
I’ve mentioned that Vincent Bugliosi’s book on JFK assassination conspiracy theories entitled Reclaiming History is very long, in part because it attempts to deal with every single one. Most people are not going to read the whole thing. But the first 500 pages or so are quite doable, often riveting, and present a ton of facts that in my opinion should be exceedingly convincing to those who attempt to take it all in objectively.
The rest of the book can be considered as a reference—and a handy one at that, since it is also available though Kindle, and a great deal of it is posted online for free at Google Books.
Since Bugliosi has pondered virtually every aspect of the Kennedy assassination and its conspiracy buffs, he’s pondered how they go about their business, and he has this to say (see pp. 951 ff) [emphasis mine]:
It is remarkable that conspiracy theorists can believe that groups like the CIA, military-industrial complex, and FBI would murder the president, but cannot accept the likelihood, even the possibility, that a nut like Oswald would flip out and commit the act, despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence that Oswald killed Kennedy, and not an ounce showing that any of these groups had anything to do with the assassination.
It is further remarkable that these conspiracy theorists aren’t troubled in the least by their inability to present any evidence that Oswald was set up and framed. For them, the mere belief or speculation that he was is a more-than-adequate substitute for evidence. More importantly, there is a simple fact of life that Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists either don’t realize or fail to take into consideration, something I learned from my experience as a prosecutor; namely, that in the real world—you know, the world in which when I talk you can hear me, there will be a dawn tomorrow, et cetera—you cannot be innocent and yet still have a prodigious amount of highly incriminating evidence against you…
…[T]he evidence against Oswald is so great that you could throw 80% of it out the window and there would still be more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt…
The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists display an astonishing inability to see the vast forest of evidence proving Oswald’s guilt because of their penchant for obsessing over the branches, even the individual branches. And, because virtually all of them have no background in criminal investigation, they look at each leaf (piece of evidence) by itself, hardly ever in relation to, and in the context of, all the other evidence.
Bugliosi is describing something I’ve noticed as well. There is indeed a mountain—or a forest, or whatever comparison you like—of solid evidence implicating Oswald, from a multiplicity of sources, such that it could not be planted simultaneously. There are countless witnesses to actions before and after the assassination, and that involve the murder of Officer Tippit as well. There are fingerprints. There are mail orders for firearms and fake IDs written in Owald’s handwriting and photos that are NOT faked (and that his widow attested to having taken herself—did she frame Oswald as well?).
There is an absence of all of this evidence for everyone else. All that is left is “well, this person talked to that person once” or “this person was acquainted with that person” or “this group had reason to want Kennedy dead,” and on and on and on. Tiny discrepancies—common to all prosecutions of all crimes that do not involve a video of the perpetrator committing the act and an uncoerced confession—are found and focused on. Witnesses might disagree on a detail here and there. Sometimes some change their story. Not every single fact is completely nailed down. But, as Bugliosi points out, the evidence for Oswald as the sole perpetrator is so enormously overwhelming that it has been proven not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond a doubt.
However, doubting remains, and is extremely prevalent. A poll from 2003 indicated that 70% of Americans believe there was a conspiracy. The persistence of such ideas reflects, among other things, the fact that people are reluctant to believe that an insignificant individual such as Oswald could have committed an act that changed history. But it happens all the time—and, by the way, it was one of Oswald’s motivations: he wanted to change history and to turn his own insignificance into significance. They also play on the now-rampant – and rather justified – distrust of government and government agencies and institutions. .
Yet another reason for the prevalence of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists is that understanding a huge and unwieldy body of evidence is time-consuming and somewhat boring as well as difficult. Much easier to attempt to poke a hole in a fact or two (often misunderstanding or misinterpreting what a certain piece of evidence signifies) and/or at times to rely on outright lies or misrepresentations of what happened.
Bugliosi makes an especially interesting point in his introduction, one I hadn’t really thought of before, which is that although most of the people who believe in the various conspiracies are probably sincere in their beliefs, many of those who actually write the conspiracy books are not. They are lying and they know it, but they count on their readers not to realize this.
The Kennedy assassination involves an almost unimaginable amount of data and evidence, so much so that most of us have forgotten many of the details although we may think we remember them. Authors of conspiracy books—who generally are exceedingly familiar with these details—are counting on their readers’ faulty or incomplete memories.
On pages xxviii-xxix of the introduction to his book, Bugliosi points out:
The conspiracy theorists [most of those who originate and profit off them, that is] are so outrageously brazen that they tell lies not just about verifiable, documentary evidence, but about clear, photographic evidence, knowing that only one out of a thousand of their readers, if that, is in possession of the subject photographs. Robert Groden (the leading photographic expert for the conspiracy proponents who was the photographic adviser the Oliver Stone’s movie JFK) draws a diagram on page 24 of his book High Treason of Governor Connally seated directly in front of President Kennedy in the presidential limousine and postulates the “remarkable path” a bullet coming from behind Kennedy, and traveling from left to right, would have to take to hit Connally—after passing straight through Kennedy’s body, making a right turn and then a left one in midair, which, the buffs chortle, bullets “don’t even do in cartoons.” What average reader would be in a position to dispute this seemingly common-sense, geometric assault on the Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory?…But of course, if you start out with an erroneous premise, whatever flows from it makes a lot of sense. The only problem is that it’s wrong. The indisputable fact here—which all people who have studied the assassination know—is that Connally was not seated directly in front of Kennedy, but to his left front.
Bugliosi goes on to add that Connally’s jump seat was also three inches lower than Kennedy, and his head was turned to his right (which is clear from the Zapruder film) at the time the bullet hit. The proper trajectory of the bullet was therefore exactly as the Warren Commission stated. None of these facts are all that difficult to ascertain, and there is little doubt that conspiracy author and consultant Groden is (or should be) well aware of them. And this is just a single point on which conspiracists prevaricate; there are countless others.
Bugliosi continues [emphasis mine]:
I am unaware of any other major event in world history which has been shrouded in so much intentional misinformation as has the assassination of JFK.
The question is why? Bugliosi notes that conspiracy sells, and he is correct. There is no question that some of the motivation to write these things is to make money. But for at least some of the conspiracy authors and promoters there is probably another reason, which is that belief in conspiracies undermine faith in our government as a whole. Earl Warren had this to say about the matter (page xxi of the introduction):
To say now that [the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Departments of State and Defense], as well as the [Warren] Commission, suppressed, neglected to unearth, or overlooked evidence of a conspiracy would be an indictment of the entire government of the United States. It would mean the whole structure was absolutely corrupt from top to bottom, not one person of high or low rank willing to come forward to expose the villainy, in spite of the fact that the entire country bitterly mourned the death of its young president.
To add some thoughts based on events that have occurred since then, Russiagate and then the exposure of Russiagate has only underlined the believability of the idea that the government (“deep state”) did something as crooked and awful as killing Kennedy. In Russiagate, we saw a false conspiracy theory pushed about Trump by certain government agencies (or at least people in those agencies who were quite high up), and then we saw that conspiracy theory about Trump and Russia unravel as evidence was presented for the very real conspiracy against Trump by those agencies. Which theory one believes is true should be based on the facts and the clarity and abundance and convincing nature of the evidence, and I think it’s clear that Russiagate was false and the Russia Hoax was conspiracy to promote a false conspiracy (something like the authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). But most Democrats probably still disagree with me, and see the reverse (Russiagate was true and its undermining was false) as quite obvious. I think the evidence is absolutely overwhelming for the side in which I have come to believe, but the others of course disagree, whether they’re even aware of that evidence or not.
And the entire episode only fosters the general idea of government conspiracies on conspiracies on conspiracies.
From my reading of Oswald’s testimony and demeanor, he was well aware that he would be championed and/or exonerated by those who would want to believe him innocent. His famous “I am a patsy” remark was a brilliant statement along those lines. Bugliosi’s book explains that Oswald maintained a resistance to police interrogation that was impressive; he virtually never lost his imperturbable demeanor during the time he was in custody. When confronted with clear evidence of his guilt, he calmly and arrogantly denied whatever implicated him, no matter how powerfully it did so. When asked, for example, to explain a fact that pointed strongly to his guilt, he merely answered, “I don’t explain it” (page 255).
Perhaps Oswald correctly surmised that others would do his explaining for him.
[NOTE II: I’ve limited this post to the question of JFK’s assassination, but the same arguments are true for Ruby’s killing of Oswald – absolutely overwhelming mountain of evidence, and good explanations for whatever may superficially look like a flaw in the argument.
And regarding the book Reclaiming History, to those who point out that Bugliosi has written some rather sketchy books on other topics, my answer is that while this indeed may be so (I haven’t read those), on this one – which I have read – he is both exhaustive and accurate. That is because it is in his wheelhouse, the prosecution of a criminal act, whereas the sketchy ones are not (one, for example, is about Bush being guilty of war crimes, which is not in Bugliosi’s field of expertise as an LA deputy district attorney). I have read Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, about the Manson murder case which he had prosecuted; it is an excellent book on the subject.]
(2) This was very very very predictable: “Distributed Denial of Secrets, a leak site, claimed it received information about donors to the Canadian Freedom Convoy after activists hacked GiveSendGo.” Doxxing contributors to sites on the right is done to – among other things – discourage people from donating to such causes.
A federal judge on Monday threw out a defamation case brought by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin against The New York Times over an editorial the paper published in 2017…
As the jury was deliberating on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that Palin’s suit should be tossed because her legal team failed to produce substantial evidence that the paper knowingly and recklessly published false information about her.
Despite his ruling, Rakoff told the jury to keep deliberating to a verdict, and noted that an appeal in the case was very likely.
It is nearly impossible to prove defamation of a public figure by the standards set in Sullivan, unless the writers are foolish enough to email each other about their malicious and knowingly fraudulent plans. So it’s not the least bit surprising that it wasn’t proven. But the point of this suit always was to go to SCOTUS, and that may indeed still happen.
A saying that became popularized in relation to Watergate was, “It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.” For Watergate, that was apropos. The actual crime of breaking into Democratic National Committee headquarters palled compared to the efforts to cover it up – such as Nixon’s wanting the FBI to tamp down its investigation. That, coupled with the full court anti-Nixon press by the press, as well as the fact that many Republicans became in favor of impeaching and convicting Nixon, was what led to his resignation.
The press considered themselves dragonslayers, and several generations of young people went into journalism hoping for a repeat of something similarly big. Taking down a president they considered bad would be nice, but in addition they saw themselves as soldiers in a cause. The cause was liberalism which morphed almost seamlessly into leftism.
Fast forward to the Donald Trump candidacy and then the Donald Trump election. To Democrats and the press he was the enemy, and not just any garden-variety Republican enemy. They saw him as a uniquely dangerous enemy. And so they united in an attempt to bring him down, ruining the careers of some innocent people along the way, and proving that many of our seemingly trustworthy agencies were hopelessly compromised, in a relentless five-year campaign that was built on lies, undermined the country, and succeeded in turning many people against Trump who might otherwise have given him a fair chance and even approved of many of the things he did as president.
And the MSM patted themselves on the back and gave themselves Pulitzers for their great achievement.
I’ve written many times before about the Watergate-to-Russiagate comparison; just do a search for “Watergate” on this blog and you’ll find them. One of those posts (from September 2021) included this:
Two years ago I wrote a post entitled “Is Russiagate worse than Watergate?” It began this way: “Yes, it is. And not just worse; much worse.” I suppose I could now add another “much” or two – or three or four – to that second sentence. At the time I wrote that post, most of what we knew had to do with the co-opting of government agencies into the Russiagate hoax. Now we’re learning more about individuals such as lawyers and “journalists” and their roles, and of course Hillary Clinton and her aides, and how the whole thing fit into the seamless whole of a hugely influential and corrupt power structure.
So in a way I suppose I’ve said everything already. But here’s still another post, because the revelations keep getting worse. Astoundingly enough – because I gave up long ago on the investigation, and still doubt that much will come of it that will change anything – the Durham investigation marches on at a pace that would make a snail’s progress look speedy. Some of the most recent news about the machinations and plots known as Russiagate follow.
Among the reason the media might want to cover the developments in John Durham's criminal probe of the fraudulent Alfa Bank story and the crimes committed to spread it: the Clinton 2016 official at the heart of it is now Biden's National Security Advisor in charge of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/OpBk4AdDcL
The poll, taken by TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics in New Jersey last month, asked 1300 people about what they thought about the Durham probe. What was astonishing was that almost 3/4 of those polled who were following the story wanted prosecutors to investigate her and members of her campaign for manufacturing dirt on President Donald Trump. What was most surprising about those numbers was that included 66 percent of Democrats who were following the story, a jump in 20 points from October. Among Republicans, the number was 91 percent. Among independents, it was 65 percent.
Yes, but – what percentage of Americans are following the Durham probe? Since the MSM is hardly covering it, the people who know anything about current developments are either on the right or at least read news sources on the right and are probably simpatico with them to a certain extent. In an admittedly quick perusal, I haven’t yet located a link to the poll itself, so I can’t say what sort of response rate they got.
I would be very surprised if most Democrats have heard about what’s been going on recently in the Durham probe, except perhaps that some low-level players did something-or-other that may have been slightly wrong. But all in a good cause, right?
Did you receive anything? Did you give those you love anything? Do you consider this day just an excuse for the greeting card, chocolate, and flower industries to coax us in a rather unsubtle way to buy more stuff (not that there’s anything wrong with that)? Do people (mostly women, I’d imagine) get too demanding on this day? Is it a burden rather than a pleasure? Or do you love, love, love it?
I have an odd relationship to Valentine’s Day. It just so happens that, completely through chance and unrelated to the holiday, I’ve had some hard experiences on that day in the past. So I have no particular affection for it for historical reasons. Plus, as those who read here regularly probably know, for the last couple of decades I’ve been unable to eat chocolate without getting a migraine. Waahh! Woe is me!
But there used to be a wonderful Valentine’s Day candy that I’d look forward to all year: smallish sugar-coated red pectin hearts that were bright in color, cherry in flavor, and achingly, meltingly soft although with a slight toothsome resistance at the same time.
In short, they were perfect. And in due time, they stopped making them. Oh, you still can find cherry jelly hearts galore, but no pectin ones without those little nonpareil thingees on each heart, spoiling the delectable softness with their crunch.
[NOTE: This is a slightly-updated version of a previous post.]
This interview – one among many with the Bee Gees on YouTube – was from around 1989. After the Bee Gees’ early ballad success in the 60s and then their enormous disco domination in the late 70s, American DJs turned on them and wouldn’t play their music anymore. So the trio spent the 80s writing huge hits for other people:
For two examples of the hit songs they wrote for others during the 80s, here they are (also in 1989) performing a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick and another they wrote for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. You may recognize the songs but not realize the Bee Gees wrote them:
[NOTE: This post was inspired by a discussion in the comments in this thread.]
I don’t speak German at all except for a few words. In fact, foreign languages aren’t my forte, although I’m sensitive to sounds.
Until a few years ago I’d always considered German to be an ugly language. It’s got all those gutturals, for example:
In popular consciousness, languages that make extensive use of guttural consonants are often considered to be guttural languages. English-speakers sometimes find such languages strange and even hard on the ear.
But then I had a long talk with a relative who was a linguistics major and who said that German was not really ugly or uglier than other languages, it was the associations it had, both historic and social. We argued about that for a while.
Later I came to agree at least somewhat with him. There’s of course the Nazi connection, but there’s also a tendency to hear the language (in American movies, for example) uttered very harshly even by non-Nazis, and with a barking quality. Was that influencing my perceptions of the sound of the language?
Here’s a person who speaks many languages, and who contends that increased familiarity with a language breeds both contempt and acceptance, tempering the sound of languages originally thought ugly, and uglifying the sound of those originally thought beautiful:
The Italian language isn’t an beautiful art piece being produced by an Italian, it’s the brush used to paint it. The Spanish language isn’t a sculpture presented by Spaniards and Mexicans and Columbians, et al., it’s the chisel being used to form it. It’s a tool.
And the same thing is true in reverse: German and Russian and Polish aren’t the brutal thuggish languages they seem like either. We only assume that because our own attempts to make their sounds feel unnatural. But to the native speaker, these languages are tools. They flow. They glide over those difficult sounds, and in that flow, when you listen, you’ll hear the beauty that you yourself failed to produce in your early attempts to speak it.
Although I still have no idea how to speak German, something of the sort happened to me as I became more familiar with the language through repeated listenings to the opera “Hansel and Gretel,” as well as reading certain German poems. The more I heard German and read the translations, the less ugly it sounded to me and the more neutral (not exactly beautiful, but sometimes bordering on it).
And as my linguistics relation pointed out – look at the list of languages that use gutturals. It contains several languages that many people find rather beautiful or at least charming, such as French (the R sound), Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh. So I really think there’s something about other associations with a language, both good and bad, that make us hear it a certain way.
With “Hansel and Gretel,” at first I much preferred the English version of the opera (there have been many translations over the years). The German sounded alternately harsh, silly, obscure, or almost comical (sometimes it was meant to sound comical).
But as I grew to know the opera better, I began to notice a few things. One was the frequent use of diminutives in the German. I was already familiar with this from Scottish – “wee” this and “wee” that, and in my favorite poem by Robert Burns, “To A Mouse,” it’s really apparent. I challenge you to find any lines in any major poem in any language that are more cutesie-poo than the following by Burns in that poem, and yet I love the poem intensely (including those diminutives which stopped seeming strange and ended up enhancing the effect). The entire poem actually expresses some extremely deep insights into the nature of existence, both human and animal:
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,.
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Likewise, in the “Hansel and Gretel” opera, the libretto is chock full of the suffix “chen,” which isn’t usually translated at all in the English librettos. For example, take the famous “Brother, Come and Dance With Me” song the siblings sing towards the beginning of the opera. In German we have:
Brüderchen, komm, tanz’ mit mir,
beide Händchen reich’ ich Dir;
It’s usually translated into the English version of the song as something like “Brother, come and dance with me, both my hands I offer thee” (that’s what I learned in grade school anyway). Instead, you should have something like “Little brother (or “wee brother”?), come and dance with me, both my little hands (or handsies?) I offer thee…”
Then later in the song we have:
Mit den Füsschen tapp tapp tapp,
mit den Händchen klapp klapp klapp,
That’s usually rendered as “with your foot you tap tap tap/With your hands you clap clap clap” (sung with suitable accompanying gestures). But – and I bet now you’ve got the idea – it’s really something like “With your little foot (your footsie!) you tap tap tap, with your little hands (handsies) you clap clap clap.” In a later verse we get your “Köpfchen” going “nick nick nick,” and your “Fingerchen” going tick tick tick.
Lest you feel that’s so cloying you might just barf this very instant, let me reiterate that it’s not translated into English because English isn’t that sort of language, but German apparently is (like Burns’ Scottish vernacular). Or was. After all, kitsch is a German word (as is schadenfreude, but that’s a very different story). I’ll add that, for whatever reason, all those “chens” are a perfect fit for Hansel and Gretel, and only highlight the contrast between the little children and the evil they encounter – and triumph over – later on.
But “chen” was hardly diminutive enough for the librettist (who was composer Humperdincks’s sister, by the way). And it certainly isn’t enough for German, because when we get tired of “chen” we still have “lein.” Same deal: a “suffix used to create a diminutive form; e.g. Kind ? Kindlein…”
And kindlein it is for “Hansel and Gretel,” a suffix that appears often in the opera (such as, of course, to make Hanselein and Gretelein, nicknames the children call each other but which are never transferred to the English versions, as far as I know). Apparently in modern-day Germany “lein” is considered a bit archaic and poetic, and “chen” is more popular, but back when the opera was composed, “lein” must have been more common.
I’m not making this stuff up. Here’s an article called “How To Make Words Cute in German” that explains it for you:
By adding “chen” to the end of any word, it will automatically become the German Diminutive (meaning, a tiny version of itself) — and always carry the article “das”…
Even though Germans may applaud your grammatical accuracy, if you speak like this too much they will question your sanity and wonder what kind of adorable miniature wonderland you take this place for.
But it’s hardly just cutesiness that made me grow fond of the German used in the opera. There’s a certain gravity to it, as well, for the scary parts. For example, when the children are lost in the forest, and Gretel is getting especially scared – as is Hansel, but although he tries to cover it up – he sings:
Horch, wie rauscht es in den Bäumen! —
Weisst Du, was der Wald jetzt spricht?
„Kindlein!“ sagt er, „fürchtet ihr euch nicht?“
Hark, what a noise in the bushes!
Know you what the forest says?
“Children, children,” it says,
“Are you not afraid?”
The English translation leaves out the diminutive, as usual, but I find it more moving if the forest says “Little children, are you not afraid?” in German. The accompanying music sends a shiver down my spine, being both gentle and ominous. It’s followed by one of the most frightening transitional lines in the opera, the moment when the children go from the world of childhood and home and playing lightheartedly in the forest, to the whiff of very real danger. Hansel sings, very simply:
Gretel! Ich weiss den Weg nicht mehr!
The stage directions in English go like this: “Hänsel spies all around uneasily, at last he turns in despair to Gretel” and makes this terrible admission: “Gretel, I cannot find the way!” (no diminutives, no cutesy stuff at all) as the music slows down and gets rather quiet, and the pitch lowers in a series of steps.
Once I learned what the characters were saying in German – having read the translation – I found the original lyrics more powerful and meaningful than any translation. The German ceased to sound strange and began sounding expressive – and authentic; after all, this is based on a German folktale.
Here’s one version, showing the part where the children get frightened and realize they are lost and at the mercy of the forces of the dark forest. I’ve chosen this one because it’s in German but has handy English subtitles, not because it’s necessarily my favorite version:
[NOTE: I’m not at all sure I’m finished with this topic, but I’ll stop for now. I think I may do another post on translation, particularly in this opera but not limited to it.]
I wish I had something more intelligent to say about the imminent crisis in Ukraine than “I don’t know what will happen.” I’ve read quite a bit about it and can’t get enough clarity on it to write an analytical post. There’s no source I especially trust on this, although I suppose someone‘s prediction will end up being right.
And so I decided to just put up this thread, with links (I like the title of this one, at least: “Only Putin Knows What Happens Next”; see also this and this).
This video has been making the rounds. It shows Las Vegas schoolchildren’s wild glee at being told that starting tomorrow they can ditch their masks.
They’ve certainly suffered more than enough with this, but one of the things I find so interesting about the video is how their reactions differ depending on the personality of each child. For some, the response is a wild physical outburst, jumping for joy over and over or spinning and screaming. But one boy towards the front, seated at a laptop, lets out one scream and then goes back to his computer, and a girl in the back merely claps sedately. Some kids even seem maskless from the start, and others rip off their masks, twirling them around and around in jubilation:
By William Blake, “The School Boy,” circa 1789:
I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
O what sweet company!
But to go to school in a summer morn, –
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.
Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning’s bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring!
O father and mother if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care’s dismay, –
How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?
The Canadian authorities have moved in on the truckers, who have mostly dispersed:
A lot of the people who were there last night went home and haven’t come back yet. It’s not clear if they will ultimately leave, although some did…The protesters are now talking with the police and chastising them for not supporting freedom. The protesters are saying that the government is concerned about the blockage at the bridge being bad for the economy, but they didn’t seem to mind how the restrictions and mandates in Canada have truly harmed the economy, the country, and people’s lives.
Police have moved to push them out. But so far, they have not arrested anyone yet; they just seem to be standing there right now.
That was written this morning. This article indicates that the dispersal may be complete, but it’s not totally clear whether that is the case. If so, though, I’m not surprised. They may regroup elsewhere. I doubt this is over, and of course it has spread to other countries.
But the bottom line with these things is always this: how far each side is willing to go. The ironic thing is that the truckers – who have been so vilified by the government – are so nice. They don’t want to hurt anyone or be hurt, and they don’t want to lose their jobs.
Above all, they don’t want to go to prison and be locked away like the January 6 demonstrators in the US, about whom they’ve probably heard. Our government’s coming down so hard on the 1/6ers (as opposed to on the Antifa/BLM rioters) was extremely purposeful and sent a message that this will be your fate if you defy the government, even peacefully (as all of those charged with trespassing demonstrate) – if you’re on the right or even in the middle, that is.
A turning point would be if the police refused to cooperate in clearing the demonstrators away. That turning point has not been reached, and I don’t know whether it ever will.
When I was a child, Lincoln had a birthday all his own. Nowadays he’s lumped in with other presidents. And who knows where he’ll be in the future?
When I was a child, Lincoln also fascinated me more than any other president. One reason was a superficial one: he was just about the strangest-looking president ever (see this). Another was his eloquence, and a third was his sense of humor.
Which brings us to a series of Lincoln quotes. This first one seems especially apropos today:
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
More:
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
It’s not me who can’t keep a secret. It’s the people I tell that can’t.
I hope this prediction is correct:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
And of course, one of the most famous:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
