Sunday Reflection: Shhh

"Shh. Listen to the sounds that surround you. Notice the pitches, the volume, the timbre, the many lines of counterpoint. As light taught Monet to paint, the earth may be teaching you music." Singer, composer, and activist Pete Seeger, (5/9/1919 - 1/27/2014), from his book "How Can I Keep from Singing" (1981).

Seeger's career spanned decades, from his part in The Weavers ("Good Night Irene") to his seminal role in the folk music revival of the '50s and '60s.  He wrote or co-wrote some of the most cherished songs of the period, including "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?", "Gotta Travel On," and "If I Had A Hammer," as well as his popular adaptations of other songs like "Turn, Turn, Turn," "Guantnamera," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," and the civil right anthem "We Shall Overcome."  He supported environmental and anti-war causes his entire life, from a leftist perspective, stemming from his union activities from the 1930s and involvement in the Communist Party until 1949.

 

Sunday Reflection: Infamous Anniversary

 

On April 19, 1995, two white supremacist militia members set off a truck bomb outside the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, OK, killing 168 people, including 19 children. Five hundred more were injured in the enormous blast which ripped off the front of the building:

"Timothy McVeigh, a veteran of the Gulf War and a sympathizer with the U.S. militia movement, planned and carried out the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh detonated the Ryder rental truck full of explosives that he parked in front of the building.

Terry Nichols, a fellow veteran who met McVeigh during their time in the U.S. Army, assisted in the planning and preparation of the bombing.

In a federal case, McVeigh received the death sentence for his role in the bombing and the deaths of eight federal agents. He was executed by lethal injection in 2001. Nichols was sentenced in the federal case to life in prison without the possibility of release. [snip]

The Ruby Ridge standoff of 1992 and the 1993 Waco siege came just two years before the bombing. However, McVeigh's plans had already started forming and instead only solidified the view that the government was going to disarm the public and take away the Second Amendment right, according to History.com. 

McVeigh chose to bomb the Murrah Building on the two-year anniversary of the fire at Waco that left 75 members of the Branch Davidian religious sect dead, 25 of whom were children. Before his 2001 execution, McVeigh said that he intended the 1995 bombing to be retribution for the deaths at Ruby Ridge and Waco, History.com reports."  (our emphasis)

The bombing marked the first major exhibition of the right-wing's virulent, anti-government movement's willingness to use violence to strike back against what they saw was a violation of their a' Second Amendment rights", a core feature of right-wing beliefs which, if anything, is stronger today with rulings by the Supreme Court and actions by the Malignant Fascist in each of his terms in office against gun safety. The red flag couldn't have been more clear then, and it's has largely been dismissed or explained away since then. 

(photo: Associated Press)

 

Sunday Reflection: Blank Piece Of Paper

 

“Everybody faces a blank piece of paper, no matter what they’ve written or painted or composed before. I can’t imagine approaching every single new project without doubt.” -- legendary composer / lyricist Stephen Sondheim (3/22/1930 - 11/26/2021).  Mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, Sondheim wrote the lyrics for the hit Broadway musicals "West Side Story", "Gypsy", and the music and lyrics for "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum", "A Little Night Music", and "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street."  He is seen as reinventing the American musical through his innovative themes and lyrical sophistication.

The winner of eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy awards, an Oscar, and the Pulitzer Prize, Sondheim was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  The doubts he faced with the blank piece of paper were fortunately set aside in the memorable work he created.

(photo: Douglas Elbinger/Getty Images)

 

Sunday Reflection: The Boob Tube

 

“A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing.” -- pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, (5/2/1903 - 3/15/1998), from his landmark book "Baby and Child Care," which was one of the best selling books of the 20th century (50 million copies).  With generations raised on television as entertainment / diversion, Spock's warning about its ill effects on damaging a child's exploration instincts is still impactful.

The TV-obsessed Malignant Fascist watches TV more than any other President by far, as evidenced his thin-skinned reactions to adverse coverage.  He's also been described as "profoundly ignorant" and "an f-ing moron" by those who have worked with him in the White House, which also confirms Dr. Spock's theory.

(photo illustration: Getty/Jessica Kourkounis/Chip Somodevilla/Mireia Triguero Roura)

 

Sunday Reflection: "We Measure Shadows"

 

"With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary-the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial." -- astronomer Edwin Hubble, in his "The Realm of the Nebulae" (1936).

On March 8, 1934, Hubble, using Mount Wilson observatory's powerful Hooker telescope, demonstrated that the universe consisted of as many galaxies as stars in the Milky Way galaxy.  Previously, the assumption among most astronomers was that the universe was limited to our own Milky Way galaxy. In that discovery, Hubble exponentially increased the knowledge of the universe to other astronomers through a galaxy classification system, measuring the distance to galaxies and laws governing  galactic movement. 

(photo: historic image of Hubble's view through the telescope taken on March 8, 1934)

 

Sunday Reflection: Shoulders

 

"You are where you are today because you stand on somebody's shoulders. And wherever you are heading, you cannot get there by yourself. If you stand on the shoulders of others, you have a reciprocal responsibility to live your life so that others may stand on your shoulders. It's the quid pro quo of life. We exist temporarily through what we take, but we live forever through what we give."  -- Civil rights leader, director of the National Urban League Vernon Jordan (8/15/1935 - 3/1/2021) addressing students at Howard University in 2002. Jordan was highly influential, with access to top leaders in business, and the Government, advocating for minority rights and economic opportunity.

 

Sunday Reflection -- Honesty

 

"I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is the best policy." -- George Washington, born on this day in 1732.  A Founding Father and our first President's view thus stands in direct opposition to the beliefs of the "thing" Americans voted into office twice -- a dishonest, criminal, evil person to his core who, as one yardstick, has told many tens of thousands of lies during his time on Earth (30,573 alone in his first term).  Washington famously declined to run for a third term, setting a tradition that was observed until FDR, and is now enshrined in the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution (something, like honesty, the MF has no interest in or respect for).  As one of the most researched of American presidents, Washington's strengths and flaws have been written about by numerous historians and biographers.  But most can agree that he set a standard of integrity, courage, resolve and honesty that we are sorely missing in our "leaders" today.

(Image: Francis G. Mayer/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images)

 

Sunday Reflection

 

"The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion."

"The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears."  -- French author (and often considered the father of science fiction) Jules Verne (2/8/1828 - 3/24/1905), from his "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (1870).  Verne also authored such classics as "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1864), and "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1872).

Verne wrote movingly and respectfully about the Earth's grandeur and about man's relationship with it, good and bad.  In his lifetime, he was rebuffed by established authors and poets, and was snubbed by the Académie Française, but awarded France's Legion of Honour in 1892, its highest civilian order of merit.

 

Sunday Reflection: "Never Was America To Me"

 

"Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

-- an excerpt from "Let America Be America Again" by renowned poet, novelist, playwright and activist Langston Hughes (2/1/1901 - 5/22/1967).  Hughes was one of the giants of the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century, one of the great cultural and artistic movements in American history that redefined what it meant to be an African American in the U.S.  His words reflected the bitter reality of the racism, inequality, and hatred that gave lie to many myths about our nation, and still hold true today.

(photo: Hughes in Harlem, 1958. Robert W Kelley/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

 

Sunday Reflection

 

“Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.” -- naturalist and ecologist Aldo Leopold (1/11/1887 - 4/21/1948), from his landmark book "A Sand County Almanac," considered along with Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" the most important work in conservation studies in the 20th century.  Leopold's work on wilderness preservation, wildlife ecology and land use led him to work in research at the U.S. Forest Service, and later the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he was a professor. 

(photo: Leopold in 1940. The Aldo Leopold Foundation)

 

Sunday Reflection

"When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though the war may well be 'too stupid,' that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves." -- Nobel laureate in Literature Albert Camus (11/7/1913 - 1/4/1960), in The Plague (1947).  A fitting quote for our Trumpian dystopia.

Best known for his novel The Stranger (1942), Camus' work embraced the absurdity of life, and while he rejected his categorization as an "existentialist," Camus' philosophy dealt with existential questions.

(photo: from Famous Authors)

 

Sunday Reflection: Opposing Ideas

 

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the 'impossible,' come true." -- author F. Scott Fitzgerald (9/24/1896 - 12/21/1940) in The Crack Up.  His novels -- The Great Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, This Side of Paradise,  The Beautiful And The Damned -- along with his memorable essays and short stories from the "jazz age" are timeless American classics. 

(photo: Granger / Bridgeman Images)

 

Sunday Reflection: Shade

"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." -- attributed to investor, philanthropist and Dem donor Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.  Buffett co-founded the "Giving Pledge" in 2010, pledging to give away at least half of his fortune (Buffett is reportedly worth $160 billion, according to Forbes).  That pledge represents some hefty tree planting.

(photo: (c) Michael Prince)

 

Sunday Reflection: "We Shall Not Repeat The Evil"

 

"Let all the souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil." -- the inscription on the Hiroshima Memorial Cenotaph, pledging that war would not be repeated. The attack on Pearl Harbor eighty four years ago today unleashed a terrible war in the Pacific, taking hundreds of thousands of  U.S., Japanese, and allied forces' lives. Four bloody years later, the war ended after the horrific atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. 

In the decades since, Japan has become a close friend and ally of the U.S. and a prosperous beacon of democracy to Asia and the world.  The enlightened policy of assistance and rehabilitation toward Japan after the war sped their recovery as an advanced democratic nation and strong ally, and showed former enemies could transform into friends and partners.  We hope we've learned that lesson.

 

Sunday Reflection: "Course By Course"

 

“I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and France has suffered even more than we have….the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course."—former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (11/30/1874 - 1/24/1965), in a House of Commons address, October 5, 1938, after the Munich agreement began the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. 

It's striking how prescient Churchill was about how the serial capitulations to Hitler were simply whetting his appetite for more ("course by course").  And today?  We have the venal, deceitful, and corrupt Malignant Fascist and his like-minded cronies attempting to carve up Ukraine and it's wealth on their and Russia's behalf, not grasping that the war criminal Putin has greater ambitions, serving him one course of the meal at a time.  We don't have a Churchill in the Oval Office, we have a narcissistic crime boss making "deals" that benefit him.

(portrait of Churchill on display at Blenheim Palace)

Sunday Reflection: Power

 

‘Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.’ -- British author, poet, screenwriter and WW II fighter pilot Roald Dahl (9/13/1916 - 11/23/1990), famous for his "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Matilda", and other children's stories. 

Dahl's words would have been lost on the current corrupt regime of the Malignant Fascist, for whom accumulating power and wealth is the end in itself, all the while cutting food assistance programs for working families, and eliminating food aid for those abroad who suffer from mass famine. The infamous list goes on. 

 

Sunday Reflection: "My Whirligig Mentality"

 

"Give me a sheet of paper & I can’t help filling it in. The result—more often than not—is good & bad, serious & comic, sincere & insincere, lucid or nonsensical by the turns of my whirligig mentality, started from the wrong end, a mentality that ran before it walked, & perhaps will never walk, that wanted to fly before it had the right even to think of wings." -- iconic Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas (10/27/1914 - 11/9/1953) in a letter to Trevor Hughes, February, 1933. 

Author of such works as Under Milk Wood, Deaths and Entrances, Twenty Five Poems, 18 Poems, and of such famous lines as "And death shall have no dominion," and "Do not go gentle into that good night," Thomas's creative use of images and words divided contemporary critics, but in retrospect his body of work remains some of the most significant and groundbreaking of the 20th century.

(photo: Thomas in 1946. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

 

Sunday Reflection

"If the people have no bread, let them eat cake." -- a quote famously, if apocryphally, attributed to Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (11/2/1755 - 10/ 16/ 1793) before the French Revolution toppled her and her husband, King Louis XVI.  Marie Antoinette was well known for her extravagant lifestyle: she never wore a gown twice and was known as "Madame Déficit" for her profligate spending while France was experiencing severe economic problems. 

If all of this sounds familiar, one has only to look at the delusional, narcissistic oaf in the White House who is busy making it in the image of a royal palace, complete with a massive gaudy ballroom and gilded ornamentation for the Oval Office and Lincoln bathroom, and who threw a "Great Gatsby" themed party at Mar-a-Lardo as SNAP benefits lapsed.  Meanwhile, because of his mismanagement and cruelty, Americans are going without food, having their health insurance premiums skyrocket, paying more for groceries and clothing due to his vindictive tariffs, and watching armed thugs attack people on the streets of American cities.  Another apocryphal quote by Louis XVI's predecessor Louis XV also may be timely: Après moi, le déluge / After me, the flood.

(image: Donnie Antoinette / Gavin Newsom, AI)

 

Sunday Reflection -- Protecting Our Values

 

“One thing we know for sure is that change is certain. Progress is not. Progress depends on the choices we make today for tomorrow and on whether we meet our challenges and protect our values.”  -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, First Lady, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, and Democratic nominee for President, in her book "Living History."  Born in Chicago, IL, on this day in 1947, Clinton is one of the most accomplished American public figures of her or any other generation.  Her words, published in 2003, are especially prescient and relevant today, when the challenges we face are perhaps more daunting than at almost any other time in our history.  Trump and his fascistic Trumpism will someday be gone;  that's the nature of time and change.  We must be certain that the choices we're making today ensure that our future protects our values better than they've been protected up to now.

Sunday Reflection: Good Trouble

 

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.” —John Lewis, Congressman and Civil Rights icon, speaking at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 1, 2020. As he prayed along with other marchers, Rep, Lewis was beaten by racist police on Sunday, March 7, 1965 -- now known as "Bloody Sunday" --  as he non-violently protested continued discrimination against African Americans. 

The "No Kings" events that were held yesterday around the country and the world were a wonderful example of the "good trouble, necessary trouble" that Lewis referred to.  More of that "good trouble" is coming, until the depredations of the Trump regime and his racist MAGA movement are consigned to history's ash heap.

(photo: Lewis at the Edmund Pettis Bridge. Jeremy Moorhead / CNN)