Daily Archives: April 16, 2009

Art and Culture, Asia

Chinese Calligraphy

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Spring              Waning Seed Moon

Kate’s home for a four day weekend.  She needs the rest.  I hope she will take it easy, though she wants to do garage sale related things.  I’m not sure what that means and I worry about her taking care of herself.

I have a tour of China for Chinese language students from Central High tomorrow.  I decided to go with the history of Chinese calligraphy and its five main styles.  Part of why I’m doing this is that calligraphy is China’s highest art form and its appreciation influences all other forms of aesthetic judgment.  That means I don’t have an inside view of what makes Chinese art tick unless I can better comprehend calligraphy.  This is a start.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Literature, Travel

Each Time I Go To Sleep

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Spring                   Waning Seed Moon

I have been playing a game before I go to sleep.  It soothes me, helps me relax.

It began when I wondered what my five favorite movies were.  Seventh Seal jumped into my mind immediately.  2001:  A Space Odyssey.  The Day The Earth Stood Still. (1951)  Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (1956)  Seven Samurai.  Sleep would come because I knew this was not the list, it was a list, a list I could come up at night as I drifted off to sleep.

Later, five novels:  Glass Bead Game.  The Trial.  Steppenwolf.  Moby Dick.  Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.

Five favorite paintings at the MIA: Goya’s Dr. Arrieta, the Bonnard, the virgin by the master of the mille fleurs, Poet by A Waterfall,  The Cardinal.  again, a list, not the list.

Five pieces of music:  Unanswered Questions by Ives, Messaein’s symphony for the end of time, Coltrane’s A Train,  Drift Away.    definitely a list, not the list.

Five favorite classical sites I’ve visited:  Ephesus, Delphi, Delos, Angkor, Conwy castle in Conwy, Wales.

So on.  Works for me.

Great Wheel, Hydroponics

Garage Sales

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Spring    Waning Seed Moon

In spring mom’s across the land turn their minds to Garage Sales!  The mom in this house has.  That means I’ve spent most of this warm, almost early summer day cleaning out the garage, sorting junk from stuff to sell and trying to make the to keep pile as small as possible.

I started though with planting 5 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, two of heirloom cucumbers and one heirloom tomatillo. They go in small soil + peat plugs, onto a warming mat and under the soothing light of a fluorescent lamp.

Afterward I pushed a broom in the garage and moved items from one place to another, a favorite task in spring.  The intent is to keep some of the things moving right on off the property.  We have the stuff of George Carlin’s famous sketch and we need a place to put it.  Or to get rid of it.

It is 71 right now.  71!

Politics

60’s Ritual Taken Up By Gun Rights Crowd

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Spring            Waning Seed Moon

OMG   The Tea Party at the Capitol.   Don’t know about you but watching so-called patriots straight arming their fists in the sky like the Black Panthers and the protesters at the Mexico Olympics created cognitive dissonance.  A speaker at the rally said, “Do we love our country or what?” then raised her fist high above her head.  The crowd roared.

Personally, I choose “…or what.” in this context.  If love of country demands pulling back from rescuing the economy, taking care of the needs of fellow citizens and killing foreigners, then we have become not a country but a caricature of a country.

We have had 8 years of this kind of chuckle headed, shut the brain off and leave me alone with my righteousness blather.  Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Pearl and other political refugees now await the judgment of history and it will not be kind.

The morphing of political symbols is not new, of course.  The V finger peace sign beloved of my generation had its origin in the V for victory of Winston Churchill in WWII.  This appropriation of the rally style, signboards and pumped fists in the air by the right is not so much blasphemy as it is culture at work absorbing, adapting.

Still, those of us marched and fought the Vietnam War and participated in the struggles for civil rights can be forgiven a twitch of the heart when seeing flag draped anti-socialists holding placards and chanting with their fingers closed in a fist above their head.  Just doesn’t seem, well, you know…right.