Daily Archives: December 18, 2013

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Politics, US History

Sexism and Privacy

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Samhain                                                                        Winter Moon

Snowden did us all a good turn.  I don’t see others saying it, so I will.  It’s no accident that a US Judge for the first time applied the 4th amendment to the NSA’s actions.  Without Snowden’s leaks we would have no idea how far this opaque bureaucracy had gone in eroding our privacy rights.  We could not have a debate about the reasonable limits of super snooping with cyber tools. Though computer surveillance was not imaginable in the Revolutionary era, abuses perpetrated by the powerful were.

Franklin’s famous quip applies here:  “They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”  the original quote according to this wiki site.

Also, how about those Catholics?  Did John Nienstedt really touch a confirmand’s butt? Who knows?  What is known is that the Nixon lesson is difficult to learn for those in positions of power.  The cover up is often worse than the crime.  That’s true in this case.

Why?  Well, covering up sexual abuse by priests is on the face not as bad as the act itself; but, when that cover up allows known offenders to circulate through different parishes and ministries with the laity ignorant, then the cover up facilitates the abuser, gives them opportunities to offend they would not have had in a transparent system.

This is an old boy’s club where a wink here and a nod there pass for scrutiny.  Much like the NSA.

One more place where secrecy and male domination protect abusers.  The military.  When rapists know their crimes will go up the chain of command, up the ladder in a buddy system, then the logic of deterrence due to exposure lessens.  A lot.

In all three of these large institutions run by men the rationalizations of the powerful take precedent over the needs of the powerless.  This is sexism in the service of sexual abuse and the erosion of personal privacy.  Considered from one perspective sexual abuse is, too, a dramatic case of the erosion of personal privacy.

Where is the Ed Snowden in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul?  They need to step forward, files and computer discs in hand.  We need them.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

A Bit of Divine Pragmatism

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Samhain                                                                     Winter Moon

Another 6 lines of the Lycaon story.  Sort of.  Lycaon’s story per se ends with the piece I published the other day.  It continues, however, as Ovid recounts how the enraged Jupiter goes from transforming Lycaon into a wolf to plans for a deluge, a wiping out of humans. The other gods are mostly okay with this except they do ask, “who will carry incense onto our altars?”  A bit of divine pragmatism.

Must of been eating my Latin wheaties because the translation is coming faster and faster now, the results of my work most often squaring with the Loeb English translation.  That’s not to say they match but I understand how Miller got his translation and how mine differs in a way that makes sense.  The Loeb’s purpose, as I understand it, is to offer a close to literal reading of the Latin, though once you learn the Latin it’s clear how far from the Latin even the literal readings are.  This is not criticism; rather, it shows the gap between languages and how bridging those gaps is a quirky business, yielding all manner of contraptions from elegant trussed spans to rickety ropes.

This is what I got into it for, yeah these many years ago.  After studying the Bible, written in Hebrew and Greek, you learn the need for careful attention to this work, exegesis.  I never mastered either Hebrew or Greek, but I really wanted to experience the world behind the Wizard’s curtain of the translator.

As a vehicle for that journey, I chose the Metamorphoses because it is the reference text for the entry of Greek and Roman mythology into the Western stream of the humanities. This way I ground myself in mythology while satisfying a more abstract desire.  It’s working.

Aging, Third Phase, Travel, Weather +Climate

NoSnowBirds

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Samhain                                                            Winter Moon

They leave.  This is the time.  Lois, our cleaning lady, poked her head in and said, “Good-bye.  See you in April.”  Mark and Elizabeth leave on the 29th for Grass Valley in California.  Many others are already gone to Florida or Arizona or New Mexico or Mexico.

We call them snowbirds, though it should be nosnowbirds, since they fly away at dropping temperatures and clouds of frozen moisture.  The reasons they go are diverse, I imagine, but cluster around icy roads, slick sidewalks, the uninviting nature of cold air for being outside.

It makes sense.  At a certain age, one I’ve reached, driving on roads and navigating sidewalks slick with ice and polished snow can be scary.  To get outside requires more thought in dress and more intention.  Just going out for a stroll can mean preparation. There is, too, the lure of a different place.  The beaches of Florida, the culture of the Southwest and Mexico.  A way to break up the year, give it a punctuation when work no longer provides it.

Still.  I love the snow, the cold, the quiet, the coming of the inside season.  The holiseason makes a good deal more intuitive sense with distinct seasonal changes, seasonal changes I find crucial to my own spiritual practice.  Putting the garden to bed, letting it rest for a season plus also feels right to me.  I would not want to continue my gardening season past the end of September, early October.

No.  We’ll stay.  Here.  In Andover.

Aging, Art and Culture, Music, Third Phase

.5%

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Samhain                                                            Winter Moon

Last night Jerry, who has a big band show on KBEM, gave us some statistics.  “2% say jazz is their favorite music.  Another 2% say classical.  .5% like both.”  That puts Kate and me into the .5% bracket.

(Coltrane)

Jazz and classical music are an acquired taste.  Rock and roll and the other forms of popular music are, too, I suppose, but their acquisition comes laced into high school, i-tunes, radio.  Support of their sound comes through commercial channels that, though increasingly fractured, still provide marketing and distribution for them.  They also have youth culture on their side.

Jazz still has a certain underground feel, a music played off the main streets of American culture and by the marginal and marginalized.  It is a music that languishes if it becomes popular, witness the fusion era and the cool jazz played on easy listening stations.  Now, with it’s popularity dwindling again, it can regenerate, offer the lure of the hidden, the cult.

Classical music has a dwindling band of listeners, too, graying as are the jazz audiences. Classical music will find itself refreshed as it, too, becomes the province of smaller gatherings, people devoted to musicology, to the repertoire of yesterday.

Neither of the significant aural art forms will disappear.  Yes, the opportunities to hear them may diminish, but there will always be live performances somewhere for both. The availability of recorded and digital music ensures that they will survive until other audiences find them.

(Musical_Instruments  Evaristo Baschenis (1617–1677)

So it may be that classical music aficionados will attend trios and quartets in performance more than orchestras, though here the SPCO seems to be on firm footing at last.  Jazz followers will head to clubs and bars, much as they always have, and to the occasional festival.  Performers in both will gain renown in smaller groups, but they will be remembered.  Popularity is not the mark of good art, though you can’t deny its value for paying bills.