text:
Tom Hanks admits he doesn't always have his finger on the pulse when it comes to music — but he knows Joni Mitchell is a classic.
The actor, 62, was among the many famous music lovers to pay tribute to the legendary singer/songwriter for her 75th birthday on Wednesday at the JONI 75: A Birthday Celebration Live event in Los Angeles. It was a rare public appearance for Mitchell, who suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015 and last stepped out at a James Taylor concert in June.
"I'm not the hippest dude in the world, but I knew great stuff when it came along," Hanks told PEOPLE about hearing songs like"Big Yellow Taxi" for the first time.
"There was an unspoken rule that you didn't change the station when Joni Mitchell stuff came on, whether you dug it or not. Whether you had a lot of house plants or not. Whether you wore a macrame belt or not, you did not change the station on Joni Mitchell," the You Are My Friend star quipped.
The two-time Oscar winner — who attended the event with wife Rita Wilson and joked to PEOPLE, "I couldn't score with women until I met her" — also recalled one of his earliest memories hearing Mitchell's songs.
"I remember very distinctly, you know, that famous Dick Cavett Show … we would stay up late at night because Johnny Carson didn't have Sly and the Family Stone. They didn't have Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix on, Dick Cavett did," Hanks said. "[Then] here was this angel from Canada playing dulcimer on her lap. Her voice was hypnotically special. I'd never heard anything like it, and kind of like, from that moment, there was this concept of Joni, it's a one-word name. How many great artists can get by with just their first name? Elvis, Joni, Cher, Prince."
Hanks also lauded Mitchell as being one of the greatest musicians of all time.
"As long as Beethoven lasts, there'll be Joni Mitchell," he said. "I'm in awe of a great cultural power that I just bow down and humbly submit before because there is something of a huge, important magnitude there that is never gonna go away."
Joining Hanks in the multi-generational audience were Mandy Moore, Jake Gyllenhaal, Lily Tomlin, Jon Hamm and Angela Bassett, who all watched and cheered on performers James Taylor, Rufus Wainwright, Norah Jones, Chaka Khan, Diana Krall and Graham Nash.
Among the performers, Seal was especially impressive, drawing the first big standing ovation of the night with his dramatic take on Mitchell's classic "Both Sides Now."
Other standouts in a series of terrific performances were Rufus Wainwright who sang her hits "Blue" and "All I Want" while James Taylor performed a terrifically moody rendition of "Woodstock." Mitchell's former beau Graham Nash performed his own composition "Our House," which he wrote for her when they were in their early 20s.
At the end of the star-studded concert, all the performers gathered onstage for a group rendition of Mitchell's classic, "Big Yellow Taxi."
Source: Read Full Article


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text: Leya at lagottocattleya.wordpress.com kindly asked me to participate in the 7-days nature photo challenge. Today I make only the first part and I don't ask anybody else to participate. Perhaps one day… I don't know. Today was very fine day. I went to see something to the lake and there were these two very near and for a long time – wonderful! Usually they are far away.


text:
Penalty kick shootouts generally turn into a battle of the goalkeepers. After 120 minutes of dazzling saves, Brad Knighton of the New England Revolution came out the winner, leading his team to a 4-2 penalty kick victory over the Philadelphia Union.
After making four saves en route to a 1-1 tie after 120 minutes, Knighton turned it on during penalty kicks. He stopped two of the Union's four attempts, while his Revolution teammates only missed one.
The victory sends the Revolution to the US Open Cup semifinals for the first time since 2008 as they will play the Chicago Fire. The Union were looking to play in their third straight Open Cup final and fourth semifinal in five years.
New England and Philadelphia were meeting for the second-ever time in Open Cup play. The first matchup also came at the quarterfinal stage, with the Union winning 2-0 in 2014. That game was played in Philadelphia's home stadium; this one was played at Harvard University.
Playing US Open Cup games away from their home at Gillette Stadium is nothing new for the Revs. Midweek Open Cup crowds are tough to justify the cost of opening the nearly 70,000-seat NFL stadium, so the team often finds locations in and around New England to host their cup matches. This was the club's third trip to Harvard.
Harvard's turf field seemed to give both teams some trouble, with the first good chance not coming until a powerful shot from the Revolution's Kei Kamara in the 27th minute, saved well by Union goalkeeper Andre Blake.
However, Blake could not do anything about the goal the Revs scored in the 44th minute. Diego Fagundez quickly took a free kick, and an unorganized Union defense left Je-Vaughn Watson wide open to easily slot the ball past Blake to give the Revolution the 1-0 lead.
Knighton and Blake stood strong and blocked away plenty of good chances in the second half. But just when it seemed as if New England had the game sewn up, the Union equalized at the stroke of 90 minutes.
Ray Gaddis made a run down the right side and passed it into the box to Sebastian Le Toux. The Open Cup's modern era leading goalscorer, Le Toux set up Fabian Herbers for his first Open Cup goal to tie the game.
In the 104th minute, the crossbar helped Knighton out by stopping Ilsinho's shot. A minute later, Blake made a spectacular double save that kept the game level. Not to be outdone, Knighton stopped a Herbers shot in the 110th minute that seemed destined for the net. At the end of extra time, the game was tied at one. Knighton had four saves and Blake had seven.
Knighton was stellar in penalty kicks, saving the first shot he faced against Le Toux and the third shot against CJ Sapong. Blake had no answers, and Watson bagged the final goal to keep the Revolution alive for its first Open Cup title since 2007.


text:
You can read an introductory essay here and can download the series from iTunes and elsewhere.
Monday, 29 October 2012
The Anglo-Saxons
You can read an introductory essay here and can download the series from iTunes and elsewhere.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:11 No comments:
Labels: Anglo-Saxons
Saturday, 27 October 2012
Mo Yan and the Nobel Prize
There might well be room for debate about this year's recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize but I reckon Mo Yan fully deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ever since the death of Shen Congwen, China has lacked a serious contender for the prize, mainly because Chinese literature had such a desperate time between 1949 and the late 1970s. During the Cultural Revolution a mere 12 novels were published per year on average but, even before then, Chinese fiction suffered terribly. However, when China began to open up in the late '70s and early '80s, there was also a renaissance of Chinese writing and the greatest author to have emerged at that time was Mo Yan.
(And no, I haven't forgotten Gao Xingjian, who won the Nobel Prize in 2000. I suspect it came as as much of a surprise to him as to followers of Chinese literature both inside and out of the country.)
Arguably Mo Yan's greatest novel was one of his first, Red Sorghum, a great war novel which, like J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun, redefines the very way in which we see the Second World War. For a start it reminds us that there was more to the war than what happened in Europe between 1939 and 1945. More significantly, it also challenged Maoist versions of Chinese history, which is why it was originally published by the Liberation Army Publishing House with some rather significant cuts.
I haven't got space here to give a full book review but it's certainly worth a read, though you'd have to tread carefully before teaching it to school children.
Mo Yan often raises deals with topics which are of great interest to Catholics even if the way in which he deals with such topics is often far from Catholic. For example, from as early as his 1986 short story, 'Abandoned Child', through to later works such as the often savagely surreal The Republic of Wine and Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (perhaps the most readable of his later works), he examines the place of children in modern China, showing a specific interest in children, child abandonment, and adoption.
I haven't got space here to give a full book review but it's certainly worth a read, though you'd have to tread carefully before teaching it to school children.
Mo Yan often raises deals with topics which are of great interest to Catholics even if the way in which he deals with such topics is often far from Catholic. For example, from as early as his 1986 short story, 'Abandoned Child', through to later works such as the often savagely surreal The Republic of Wine and Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (perhaps the most readable of his later works), he examines the place of children in modern China, showing a specific interest in children, child abandonment, and adoption.
Another common approach in his work is the use of an unconventional family history to challenge conventional Chinese political history. Sadly, he has not always escaped religious prejudice in his attempt to challenge political prejudices. In Big Breasts and Wide Hips, for example, one of the main characters develops a bizarre breast fixation that stunts his emotional growth into adulthood partly because he is the illegitimate son of a cowardly Christian (and possibly Catholic) missionary priest.
Mo Yan's work is challenging in many ways but he's clearly a highly significant author from a country which is going to become culturally as well as politically and economically more important as the century progresses. We in the West need to engage with works like his.
So let's finish, slightly flippantly, with a view from China: it's a real sign of the times when the People's Daily seems to be more interested in how much money Mo Yan is going to make from winning the prize than in his cultural value.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 19:00 No comments:
Labels: Ballard J G, Gao Xingjian, Mo Yan, Shen Congwen
Friday, 26 October 2012
Lord Alton on Tolkien
What's particularly useful is that David Alton offers not only the transcript of his talk but also the accompanying PowerPoint presentation and an audio recording.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:09 1 comment:
Monday, 22 October 2012
I can't say that the title greatly inspires me - the fact that Christianity still makes emotional sense is neither surprising nor a great basis for belief in my view - but the book certainly sounds intriguing and worth a read even so.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 07:36 No comments:
Labels: Spufford Francis
Saturday, 20 October 2012
Hemingway's 47 Endings
A new edition of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms has just been published. What makes this particular edition a must-have for admirers of Hemingway's work is the inclusion of the 47 alternative endings the author came up with. I, for one, find it tremendously reassuring that a great author like Hemingway should have had so much difficulty (and taken so much care) over his novel's final words.
To hear some of these other endings and an interview with Seán Hemingway, the author's grandson, click here.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 20:00 1 comment:
Labels: Hemingway Ernest
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Newman, Hopkins, the Saints and Literature
Today is the Memorial of Blessed John Henry Newman, the only novelist (I think) to have been recognised as a saint (see here, here, here and here for my earlier thoughts on Newman). Not that his work as a novelist (any more than St Thomas More's work as a writer) was what led to him being beatified.
Newman was an inspirational figure in all sorts of ways even during his own lifetime as I was reminded when I was in the Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga in Oxford this weekend, because not only did Newman preach there but it was also where Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was received into the Church by Newman, was a curate (see also here).
In recent days we have remembered St Francis of Assisi (4th October) about whom the novelist Julien Green (among many others) has written, Blessed Columba Marmion (3rd October) whose Christ in His Mysteries (available here for free in French and here for a price in English translation) inspired Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jesus, and the Holy Guardian Angels (2nd October), whom I mentioned the other day. And that's without even starting on those great writers: St Therese of the Child Jesus and St Jerome.
I should also mention Henry Garnett's The Blood Red Crescent and the Battle of Lepanto in connection with the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary last Sunday.
That should keep us going for a while.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:10 No comments:
Labels: Garnett Henry, Green Julien, Hopkins Gerard Manley, Marmion Columba, Messiaen Olivier, Newman John Henry
Monday, 8 October 2012
Fr Tim Finigan on Evelyn Waugh's 'Vile Bodies'
Posted by Roy Peachey at 18:46 No comments:
Labels: Waugh Evelyn
This Week's Catholic Herald
This week's Catholic Herald is definitely worth getting hold of. There is a fascinating interview with Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis's personal assistant in the last months of the writer's life, and a good article on Jack Kerouac's rather tortured Catholicism.
However, that's not all. There's a great article by Edward Norman on why he has converted to Catholicism and an interesting series of articles on the documents of Vatican II.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 18:46 No comments:
Friday, 5 October 2012
Good to Read
One website that's good to read is goodtoread.org, a parent's guide to children's books. Here is part of what the site's creator says about his approach:
Why another site about children's books? One answer to this is easy: you can't have too much of a good thing. Why have more than one sweet shop on the High Street? They all sell much the same things at much the same price, but perhaps you find the people in this one easier, or the display in that one more appealing. There are many websites that give information about children's books, and there are many people with different tastes in websites.
On another level, this website offers a slightly different approach from the majority: it doesn't assume that a well-structured book with a good spread of vocabulary and a certain depth of subject matter is unquestionably a book any child should read. At goodtoread.org we believe that children and young people can benefit from some guidance as to their reading. This may mean recommending a book especially or discouraging a certain book or author on account of the poverty of style or unsuitability of the subject matter. Especially when a series is popular or often recommended, it might mean going over the subjects presented in the book with your child to make sure the youngster has benefitted from it and not been harmed.
To read the whole page (and it's a page worth reading), click here.
All this sounds very good but the test is what happens in practice. A useful test case might be what goodtoread.org makes of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy so here's the link.
That seems to me to be a very fair-minded, balanced and honest appraisal from a thoughtful Catholic so I'd heartily recommend the rest of the website.
Why another site about children's books? One answer to this is easy: you can't have too much of a good thing. Why have more than one sweet shop on the High Street? They all sell much the same things at much the same price, but perhaps you find the people in this one easier, or the display in that one more appealing. There are many websites that give information about children's books, and there are many people with different tastes in websites.
On another level, this website offers a slightly different approach from the majority: it doesn't assume that a well-structured book with a good spread of vocabulary and a certain depth of subject matter is unquestionably a book any child should read. At goodtoread.org we believe that children and young people can benefit from some guidance as to their reading. This may mean recommending a book especially or discouraging a certain book or author on account of the poverty of style or unsuitability of the subject matter. Especially when a series is popular or often recommended, it might mean going over the subjects presented in the book with your child to make sure the youngster has benefitted from it and not been harmed.
To read the whole page (and it's a page worth reading), click here.
All this sounds very good but the test is what happens in practice. A useful test case might be what goodtoread.org makes of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy so here's the link.
That seems to me to be a very fair-minded, balanced and honest appraisal from a thoughtful Catholic so I'd heartily recommend the rest of the website.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 18:44 No comments:
Labels: Children's literature
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
La Porte des Anges
I was going to save this post for a little while but given that Saturday was the Feast Day of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, Archangels, yesterday was the Feast Day of St Therese of the Child Jesus, and today is the Feast Day of the Holy Guardian Angels, it seemed appropriate to post it now.
La Porte des Anges is a wonderful French language series of fantasy novels for children of 12 upwards. Le Complot d'Ephese starts with a 15 year old boy, Jean-Baptiste, unxpectedly witnessing a fight between the Archangel Michael and a demon in his back garden. They are fighting over a boy (who turns out to be Eutychus, the boy who fell asleep and out of the window while listening to St Paul) and, when interrupted by Jean-Baptiste, drop an old nail, which turns out to be not only one of the nails that held Jesus to the cross but a key to la porte des anges.
It's action-packed, fast moving, often funny, and jam packed with angels; I'll post a full review when I've got to the end.
What is fascinating is that this sort of book should exist at all. The author draws upon a range of sources to develop his Catholic fantasy novels and has clearly made a big impact in France. These books, as one reviewer on amazon.fr puts it, are "mieux qu'Harry Potter". And the first volume is also now available as a graphic novel. Let's hope for an English translation before too long.
But what about St Therese? Let's just say that Michael Dor is not the author's real name and that you can discover more about his background from this site.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:15 No comments:
Labels: Dor Michael
Monday, 1 October 2012
An Unusual Patron Saint of Lost Causes
A few days ago it was the Hail Mary pass, now it's "Seve Ballesteros, the patron saint of lost causes". At least that's what Iain Carter, the BBC's Golf Correspondent reckons.
So what's going on here? Sport seems to be bringing out the religious (or pseudo-religious) in people this year in all sorts of different ways. I suspect calling Seve the patron saint of lost causes is just a throwaway comment but it's tempting to see it as something more: a residual belief in the efficacy of praying to saints or, even more interestingly, a new influence to Britain coming from Catholic countries like Spain.
And it's not just golf. Now that so many footballers cross themselves when coming onto the pitch it's almost as if Henry VIII never broke with England's thousand-year Catholic past. Almost.
So what's going on here? Sport seems to be bringing out the religious (or pseudo-religious) in people this year in all sorts of different ways. I suspect calling Seve the patron saint of lost causes is just a throwaway comment but it's tempting to see it as something more: a residual belief in the efficacy of praying to saints or, even more interestingly, a new influence to Britain coming from Catholic countries like Spain.
And it's not just golf. Now that so many footballers cross themselves when coming onto the pitch it's almost as if Henry VIII never broke with England's thousand-year Catholic past. Almost.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:56 No comments:
Labels: Ballesteros Seve
Saturday, 29 September 2012
The Hail Mary Pass
The BBC (online) Magazine has had some really interesting English Language articles recently, including this one on 'Britishisms and the Britishisation of American English'.
However, it wasn't until I read this article on 'The shared language of politics and sport' that I came across the Hail Mary pass, which probably says more about my British parochialism than about the prevalence of the term. For fellow Brits, a Hail Mary pass is a long forward pass made in the closing stages of an American Football game. Chuck it - say a Hail Mary - hope someone catches it in the end zone. That's the basic idea.
"Stepping up to the plate" has become something of a cliche in British political discourse. Somehow I can't see the Hail Mary pass catching on in the same way.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 23:35 No comments:
Labels: Language
Sunday, 23 September 2012
Hobbitus Ille
Fr Tim Finigan has a welcome reminder of the lure of The Hobbit on his blog today. He also provides a useful link to this tremendously interesting page from the New Liturgical Movement on Tolkien's liturgical views.
However, what made me chuckle was the link in the Com Box to the new Latin translation of The Hobbit and, especially, the learned discussion of the finer points of translation in the Amazon reviews.
It reminded me of one of my tutors at university. A learned but rather eccentric man, he gave his young son Asterix books to read. This rather surprised us until we heard that it was Asterix translated into Latin.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 18:26 2 comments:
Sunday, 16 September 2012
Chinese Catholic Literature Then and Now
There have been - and still are - some wonderful Chinese Catholic authors. One of the best known of these writers is Wu Li, who was not only one of the orthodox masters of early Qing-dynasty painting but also a poet and Jesuit priest.
The most comprehensive guide to Wu Li can be found here (with further details here) but a more accessible introduction to his work can be found here. According to Chaves, his poetic sequence "'Singing of the Source and Course of Holy Church' succeeds in achieving Wu Li's goal of creating a Chinese Christian poetry, true to Chinese traditions of allusion, parallelism, and other familiar poetic techniques and true also to orthodox Christian theology, piety, and liturgical solemnity." Rather than do him the injustice of a brief quotation, I'll try to return to some of the poems themselves (in Chinese and in English translation) in a later post.
Another great Chinese Catholic writer who is only now beginning to be given her due is Su Xuelin. This article from Harvard's Divinity School is encouraging, though also a little baffling. Although Su Xuelin converted to Catholicism in the 1920s while studying in France, Zhange Ni argues that the religion her alter-ego embraces in Ji Xin, the novel Su Xuelin wrote about her conversion, "is not Catholicism or Western religion per se, but a not-so-readily-available, still-struggling-into-being Chinese discourse of religion, which cannot be reduced to a slavish adoption of modern Western concepts of religion."
But what about today? I've written before about Fan Wen and the good news is that the first volume of his 水乳大地 trilogy is due to be published in French translation in January 2013. Maybe an English translation will follow?
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:04 No comments:
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Lourdes and Literature
I have just come back from Lourdes where I eventually got round to reading Ruth Harris's fascinating Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age. Harris is a historian at Oxford University and an exceptionally fair-minded historian. Coming from a Jewish secularist background, she went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes while writing this book and is clearly a sympathetic outsider.
Just occasionally her secularism struggles in the face of the miracles of Lourdes but, for the most part, she writes with an impressive open-mindedness and objectivity. Take this sentence, for example: "Of all the many marvels that Lourdes produced, de Rudder's cure shows the limits of historical explanation: while so many other healings could be the result of misdiagnosis - even in the apparently 'certain' realm of cancer, tuberculosis or paralysis - the case of de Rudder dismays and perplexes." (344-5)
The lack of a direct object is fascinating. Does she mean it dismays and perplexes her? Or historians? Or secularists? The intransitive use of transitive verbs perhaps only draws attention to the limits of the historical method.
But that's slightly by the by.
One reason I enjoyed the book was because Harris writes so well about Emile Zola and Lourdes. It is rather ironic that two of the most well-known novels about Lourdes were written by non-Catholics: Zola's anti-clerical and anti-Catholic Lourdes and Franz Werfel's much more sympathetic The Song of Bernadette (which was written to fulfil the vow the author made when he found shelter in the town while fleeing the Nazis during World War II).
According to Harris, "Zola's journal shows how his journey [to Lourdes] produced in him powerful emotions and an intense ambivalence, feelings that he would repress once he returned to the familiar philosophical, literary and political world of the capital. The resulting book returned to the terrain of literary naturalism, and many of the ambiguities of his experience were stripped away."
Most disturbing of all was his rewriting of history. As Harris again points out, "his reworking of the case of Marie Lebranchu was palpably untrue: she never did relapse [as described in Zola's novel] and remained the living embodiment for Catholics of his bad faith."
So where do we look for less jaundiced novelistic descriptions of Lourdes?
So where do we look for less jaundiced novelistic descriptions of Lourdes?
Brian Sudlow - who is a very interesting academic - has a short section on Lourdes in his Catholic literature and secularisation in France and England, 1880-1914. He mentions, among other mainly non-fiction accounts, Emile Baumann's L'Immolé in which one of the characters "prays in vain for a miracle to cure her invalidity, and obtains it only later in the novel through the miraculous waters of Lourdes."
I also came across the much more recent, but still untranslated, work of Bernadette Pécassou-Camebrac while in Lourdes. Both La Belle Chocolatière and Le Bel Italien look as though they would be well worth reading.
I also came across the much more recent, but still untranslated, work of Bernadette Pécassou-Camebrac while in Lourdes. Both La Belle Chocolatière and Le Bel Italien look as though they would be well worth reading.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:13 No comments:
Monday, 27 August 2012
Emily Hickey
Just over a year ago - I'm slow on the uptake - Carol Rumens chose 'The Ship from Tirnanoge' by Emily Hickey as her poem of the week in The Guardian. Like Rumens, I'd not heard of Hickey before but she sounds quite a fascinating figure: "A talented and complex writer, scholar and translator, Emily Henrietta Hickey, 1845-1923, was the daughter of a Protestant rector of Goresbridge, County Wexford. She eventually become a lecturer at Cambridge University, and a Catholic convert."
Rumens also recommends Hickey's Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days which begins like this:
"This little book makes no claim to be a history of pre-Conquest Literature. It is an attempt to increase the interest which Catholics may well feel in this part of the great 'inheritance of their fathers.' It is not meant to be a formal course of reading, but a sort of talk, as it were, about beautiful things said and sung in old days: things which to have learned to love is to have incurred a great and living debt."
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:26 No comments:
Labels: Hickey Emily
Sunday, 19 August 2012
Catholic Sci-fi
It's an interesting story not just because it contains a short account of a mass on Mars but also because it depicts the quasi-redemptive nature of labour in the harsh Martian environment. However, although it's worth reading, I can't honestly say that it's anything more than interesting. The problem with sci-fi is that it dates so quickly; this particular story is ultimately unconvincing largely because science and technology moved on so much more quickly than Miller envisaged they would in 1953.
A better bet is Miller's best-known work, A Canticle for Leibowitz, which I remember being (surprisingly) very popular in evangelical circles during my student years. Miller wrote the book after being involved in bombing raids on the great Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino during World War II. His own relationship with the Church - and, indeed, his own life - was complicated but this is one science-fiction novel that has stood the test of time. (Though see this interesting comparison with Cormac McCarthy's The Road.)
I'm not a great sci-fi expert so I can't write with great assurance but Gene Wolfe (who is a great fan of G. K. Chesterton) is often held out as the greatest Catholic writer of science fiction. His The Book of the New Sun is recommended in particular.
There's also an interview with Sandra Miesel at Ignatius Insight here which provides a list of other authors worth looking out for.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 20:47 4 comments:
Sunday, 12 August 2012
More on Tolkien in Love
BBC Radio recently broadcast a programme about Tolkien in Love but I suspect Tolkien was actually more interested in love than in being in love."The essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization' (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him – as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that – even those brought up 'in the Church'. Those outside seem seldom to have heard it.
One of his most interesting letters (No 43 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien to his son Michael from March 1941) deals with love, marriage and his relationship with Edith, his wife. I could happily quote chunk after chunk of it but I'll restrict myself to two powerful passages. I have add one paragraph break for the sake of clarity in the limited space available here:
One of his most interesting letters (No 43 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien to his son Michael from March 1941) deals with love, marriage and his relationship with Edith, his wife. I could happily quote chunk after chunk of it but I'll restrict myself to two powerful passages. I have add one paragraph break for the sake of clarity in the limited space available here:
"When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along. Someone whom they might indeed very profitably have married, if only -. Hence divorce, to provide the 'if only'. And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to."
The letter ends - or at least the extract we are given by Humphrey Carpenter ends - with this amazing passage:
"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament….. There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all you loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires."
Posted by Roy Peachey at 22:04 No comments:
Tuesday, 7 August 2012
James MacMillan - a world premiere and a fascinating discussion
James MacMillan's Credo is receiving its World Premiere at the Proms this evening. During the interview MacMillan will discuss Religion in Music with Louise Fryer and the Director of Music at St Paul's Cathedral.
MacMillan is quite an inspirational figure. Speaking on Radio 3 this morning, he was quite happy to refer to himself as a Catholic composer, which may not seem surprising until you think about how many people are happy to call themselves Catholic authors.
As I have suggested elsewhere, Catholic writers have something to learn from the example of Catholic composers like him.
As I have suggested elsewhere, Catholic writers have something to learn from the example of Catholic composers like him.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 10:27 No comments:
Labels: MacMillan James
Sunday, 5 August 2012
Tolkien in Love
Tolkien rightly distrusted all attempts to find links between authors' biographies and their books, not because such links don't exist but because of their complexity:
"An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that i inadequate and ambiguous." (from the Foreward to The Lord of the Rings)
With that proviso, I'd like to draw attention to this programme from BBC Radio 4:
Novelist Helen Cross, who herself lives in Birmingham, uncovers the story of the young J.R.R. Tolkien, falling in love with Edith Bratt. The love story of Beren and Luthien at the heart of his novel The Silmarillion was inspired by their relationship. They were both orphans, living in a boarding house in Edgbaston, Birmingham. The teenagers would talk out of their respective bedroom windows until dawn, and go for cycle rides to the Lickey Hills. However, when their romance was discovered, Tolkien's guardian, Father Francis Morgan, forbade Tolkien to see Edith until he came of age.Tolkien won an Exhibition to Oxford and Edith went to live in Cheltenham. But at midnight, as he turned 21, Tolkien wrote to Edith saying his feelings were unchanged. Unfortunately, in the intervening years, Edith had got engaged to someone else. Tolkien got on a train and she met him at Cheltenham station. They walked out to the nearby countryside and Tolkien persuaded her to break off her engagement and marry him instead. But the First World War was about to intervene, and Tolkien volunteered and was sent to the Somme.
Helen Cross visits key locations in Birmingham, Cheltenham and Oxford, to tell the story of Tolkien's young life and the love story at the heart of it.
Readings by David Warner as Tolkien and Ed Sear as the young Tolkien.
I'd want to point out that The Silmarillion is clearly not a novel but, nonetheless, it's always worth hearing more about Tolkien and this programme is available online only for five more days.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 08:43 No comments:
Friday, 3 August 2012
Articles now available online
The Catholic Herald archive is now available free and online which means that all sorts of interesting articles and reviews are available without a subscription. It also means that three of my articles are now easier to access.
Click here for my review of Amy Hungerford's Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion Since 1960.
Click here for my article on the Chinese Prime Minister who became a Catholic Monk and Priest.
Click here for my article on adoption. (Not strictly relevant, I realise, but there you go).
Posted by Roy Peachey at 11:15 No comments:
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
What Happened to Sophie Wilder
However, having read about it on the ever-informative Image Update and seen that it received a favourable review from the New York Times and rave reviews from readers at Amazon, I became more intrigued, so I'm putting the information out there.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:48 1 comment:
Labels: Beha Christopher R
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Frank Cottrell Boyce on "the great Catholic artist"
"Hitchcock is the great Catholic artist, returning again and again to the themes of the fallen nature of creation. Sometimes – The Wrong Man,The Birds – this comes out as a bleakly thrilling feeling that everyone is guilty. In Notorious, however (and in Shadow of a Doubt, Psycho, North by Northwest and Vertigo), it plays the opposite way – that the world is fallen and therefore the best are only different from the worst by the grace of God; that our worst failings are forgivable and repairable; and that no matter how compromised we are, we can – and must – love one another. It's the reason his great thrillers are also great love stories. It's the source of the power of that last shot – a hungover pietà – of Grant carrying Bergman out of the house of shadows and into the possibility of love."
Perhaps that's a question for some future exam paper: "Hitchcock is the great Catholic artist. Discuss."
Posted by Roy Peachey at 16:16 1 comment:
Labels: Cottrell Boyce Frank, Hitchcock Alfred
Saturday, 14 July 2012
The Tour de France, World War II and an Italian, Catholic Schindler
Road to Valor, which has just been published, looks absolutely fascinating. Here's how the publishers describe it:
Road to Valor is the inspiring, against-the-odds story of Gino Bartali, the cyclist who made the greatest comeback in Tour de France history and secretly aided the Italian resistance during World War II.
Gino Bartali is best known as an Italian cycling legend: the man who not only won the Tour de France twice, but also holds the record for the longest time span between victories. During the ten years that separated his hard-won triumphs, his actions, both on and off the racecourse, ensured him a permanent place in Italian hearts and minds.
In Road to Valor, Aili and Andres McConnon chronicle Bartali's journey, starting in impoverished rural Tuscany where a scrawny, mischievous boy painstakingly saves his money to buy a bicycle and before long, is racking up wins throughout the country. At the age of 24, he stuns the world by winning the Tour de France and becomes an international sports icon.
But Mussolini's Fascists try to hijack his victory for propaganda purposes, derailing Bartali's career, and as the Nazis occupy Italy, Bartali undertakes secret and dangerous activities to help those being targeted. He shelters a family of Jews in an apartment he financed with his cycling winnings and is able to smuggle counterfeit identity documents hidden in his bicycle past Fascist and Nazi checkpoints because the soldiers recognize him as a national hero in training.
After the grueling wartime years, Bartali fights to rebuild his career as Italy emerges from the rubble. In 1948, the stakes are raised when midway through the Tour de France, an assassination attempt in Rome sparks nationwide political protests and riots. Despite numerous setbacks and a legendary snowstorm in the Alps, the chain-smoking, Chianti-loving, 34-year-old underdog comes back and wins the most difficult endurance competition on earth. Bartali's inspiring performance helps unite his fractured homeland and restore pride and spirit to a country still reeling from war and despair.
Set in Italy and France against the turbulent backdrop of an unforgiving sport and threatening politics, Road to Valor is the breathtaking account of one man's unsung heroism and his resilience in the face of adversity. Based on nearly ten years of research in Italy, France, and Israel, including interviews with Bartali's family, former teammates, a Holocaust survivor Bartali saved, and many others, Road to Valor is the first book ever written about Bartali in English and the only book written in any language to fully explore the scope of Bartali's wartime work. An epic tale of courage, comeback, and redemption, it is the untold story of one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century.
It's also worth pointing out that Bartali was driven by his strong Catholic faith and that when he delivered messages that had been hidden in his bicycle frame he was delivering them to a network of Catholic priests who were helping Jews to escape from the Nazis. Which is not a side of World War II we hear enough about.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 22:06 No comments:
Labels: McConnon Aili & Andres
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
World War II and Children's Literature
It's a fair bet that any Key Stage 3 (11-14 year old) students who are studying World War II will have come across either John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or Morris Gleitzman's trilogy: Once, Then and Now. One of the most striking features of these books is the narrative technique. Though Boyne uses a third-person narrator in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the focaliser (for all but the last section) is Bruno, the 9-year-old son of the Auschwitz commandant. Gleitzman's novels are narrated by Felix who, at ten years old, is even more clueless than Bruno, at least at first. As Leo Benedictus has pointed out in an excellent article about hindered narrators, "this kind of novel, told in the first person by a character with a limited ability to understand the world or write about it, is the genre that defines our times".
So what's going on here? Using a hindered narrator often helps an author create a sense of complicity between the writer and the reader. We are encouraged to read between the lines, to bring our contextual knowledge to bear on the book, to judge the narrator. However, with children it's not so straightforward. They may or may not have contextual knowledge. They may not be able to stand back so easily (depending on their age, quite apart from anything else).
It would, in other words, be easy to see The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Once, Then and Now as fundamentally different from earlier children's fiction, from, say, The Silver Sword or Hilda van Stockum's The Winged Watchman. The authors are more knowing and the readers are expected to be so as well. But it may not be quite as simple as this.
Like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, The Winged Watchman, a novel about the Dutch Resistance, is written in the third person but gives us a child's perspective. It differs not in kind but in degree. The setting, and many of the characters, are openly Catholic but, more significant, is the subject matter. Rather than dealing directly with the holocaust, van Stockum focusses on resistance to the Nazis and so has to have write differently.
What has changed since her time is that children's literature has increasingly addressed the toughest of subjects head on, including the holocaust. It is therefore no surprise that children's authors like Boyne and Gleitzman use hindered narrators. How else could they possibly present such horrifying events to their young readers?
However, we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that the horrors of war have never been addressed in children's fiction before. It's just that in books like The Silver Sword and The Winged Watchman, both of which also focus on the experience of children in the war, the holocaust is held at arm's length.
Does this make them less valid? More escapist? I don't think so. Hilda van Stockum's response to the horrors of the war is no less historically informed and certainly no less valid in its own way than Boyne's or Gleitzman's. Boyne and Gleitzman gained something from having the benefits of historical distance but van Stockum gained something from living when she did and from having relatives who experienced life in the Netherlands during the war.
I haven't got space to deal fully with Boyne's and Gleitzman's books but I'll try to return to them another time. Gleitzman's books, in particular, deal explicitly with Catholicism in interesting but challenging ways and so deserve further consideration.
Boyne's and Gleitzman's novels are certainly worth reading with care but we shouldn't neglect earlier fiction about the war, so if you want to read some more of van Stockum's wonderful children's fiction you could click here.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 10:47 No comments:
Labels: Boyne John, Gleitzman Morris, van Stockum Hilda
Thursday, 5 July 2012
A Sonnet for St Thomas the Apostle
Click here for a sonnet on St Thomas the Apostle by the interesting Anglican poet, priest, academic and musician Malcolm Guite.
I also quite like this villanelle on the purpose of poetry.
And, finally, you can also download the opening chapter of his Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination by clicking here.
I also quite like this villanelle on the purpose of poetry.
And, finally, you can also download the opening chapter of his Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination by clicking here.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:19 No comments:
Labels: Guite Malcolm
Sunday, 1 July 2012
Pictures in the Cave
The stories are not explicitly Catholic tales but there are a few intriguing moments. The first comes when Robert the Bruce seeks refuge in a monastery:
"You understand," said the abbot, "we don't ask here whether a man is a king or a beggar. It's sufficient that he is an immortal soul. The Kingdom of Heaven is of more concern to us than Scotland or England or Norway. This much I grant - a man can work and pray better if he is a free man in a free country."
The second is the wonderful 'The Feast of the Strangers', an Orkney Fable as he called it, which retells the Christmas story with a powerfully Orcadian setting.
And the third is the end of the book when all the characters seem to meet again in the afterlife. Like Muriel Spark, another great Scottish Catholic writer, George Mackay Brown was fascinated by time - God's time, our time, eternity, and the pull of free will, predestination and determinism. His Booker-shortlisted Beside the Ocean of Time famously slips in and out of different historical eras, for example. Some of his novels are coming back into print. Let's hope his children's books follow.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 19:52 1 comment:
Labels: Brown George Mackay
Friday, 22 June 2012
Dana Gioia's poetry
You can read some of Gioia's poems, essays and reviews on his website but I'd like to draw attention to a couple of poems from his most recent collection Pity the Beautiful that might work well in the classroom: 'Majority' and 'Pity the Beautiful' itself.
His lecture on 'The Catholic Writer Today' also sounds fascinating, though I can't find a copy of the text or a recording of the lecture itself. The lecture is summarised here and here.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 19:26 1 comment:
Labels: Gioia Dana
Sunday, 17 June 2012
The Curse of the Darkling Mill
Despite the success of the film of the novel, the book is still very difficult to obtain in English, which is a real shame because it is both "an eerie tale of sorcery and nightmares" (as the publishers describe it) and a deeply Catholic work.
The novel is given an explicit Christian context from the very first pages when Krabat and two friends, dressed as the Three Kings, are begging during the Christmas season.
However, it is Krabat's pride, his rejection of the other magi, which, at least in part, brings about his downfall. By breaking the highly symbolic group of three beggar boys and striking off on his own, he places himself in the power of an evil miller and becomes one of his twelve dark apprentices. Quite what he has let himself in for only becomes apparent later in the novel when he discovers that the mill is grinding not wheat but human bones.
Krabat is an assertion of the importance of the Wendish culture and language in modern day Germany as well as a Christian fable, but it is also a meditation on Hitler's rise to power and the horrors of the holocaust. Krabat becomes, if not one of Hitler's willing executioners, then at least an accomplice as he is seduced by the mill's material comforts into ignoring the evidence of evil around him.
After a while the evidence becomes too hard to ignore completely: each New Year one of the apprentices is murdered and replaced but by then Krabat is in too deeply to be able to escape. When his friend, Tonda, is murdered Krabat tries to say the Lord's Prayer over his grave, "but somehow it had slipped his memory; he began it again and again, but he could never get to the end of it".
Drawn deeper and deeper into the mill's satanic rites, Krabat's only link with the outside world comes each Easter when he hears the voice of a young girl singing as part of the village's Easter procession. Ultimately, it is this young girl and the power of love which overcomes the darkness but to write more would be to spoil the plot even more than I have done already.
This is a book which packs a punch: Preussler, one of Germany's best-loved children's authors, writes about both the banality and the lure of evil. However, in a world where few topics now seem to be off-limits for children's fiction, we should not be concerned about a book which deals with such topics from a Christian perspective and without preaching. The Curse of the Darkling Mill deserves to be more widely read.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 12:33 No comments:
Labels: Children's literature, Preussler Otfried
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Willa Cather's 'My Antonia'
Posted by Roy Peachey at 20:11 No comments:
Labels: Cather Willa
Friday, 8 June 2012
Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy and 'The Road'
It is perilous to attempt to analyse too specifically what any author gains from those who have gone before but I can't help but wonder whether light cannot be shed on the final enigmatic paragraph in Cormac McCarthy's The Road through reading one of Hemingway's fine short stories. [Incidentally, for more on (what I've written about) Hemingway click here and here.]
Many have commented on The Road's unexpected ending:
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
But few have compared it with the opening of Hemingway's 'Big Two-Hearted River' which also deals with a dead landscape and trout that live on in the streams:
"The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of burnt timber. Nick sat down on the bundle of canvas and bedding the baggage man has pitched out of the door of the baggage car. There was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country. The thirteen saloons that has lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground."
So far so apocalyptic, one might think. But the story continues:
"Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there. It swirled against the log piles of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, coloured from the pebbly bottom, and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their positions by quick angles, only to hold steady in the fast water again. Nick watched them a long time."
There are plenty of differences between the two stories, of course. Nick is a solitary character whereas The Road is a novel about relationships; Hemingway's trout survive the fire storm: McCarthy's are only a memory. But I don't think it's too fanciful to see in McCarthy's novel a trace of the Hemingway story.
So what reason could there be for this literary recollection? One possibility, I think, can be found a few paragraphs on in Hemingway's story. "Seney was burned," the narrator tells us, "the country was burned over and changed, but it did not matter. It could not all be burned."
As I've argued before, The Road is a strangely hopeful novel but it is an open-ended one. Does the boy survive? Is the destruction total? What the final paragraph in its literary context may suggest is that the answers to those two questions are 'Yes' and 'No'. There is a place where the fire has not burned. Survival is possible. And with survival may come love, the deep mystery that hums at the heart of this great novel.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 22:14 No comments:
Labels: Hemingway Ernest, McCarthy Cormac
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
Some Scottish Catholic Literature
There is some really interesting work going on in Scotland at the moment. Juliet Linden Bicket, for example, submitted her PhD thesis this year on A 'God-ordained web of creation': the faithful fictions of George Mackay Brown.
Here's the abstract:
"This thesis represents the first extensive examination of the 'faithful fictions' of the Orkney writer George Mackay Brown (1921-1996). Until now, critical appreciations of the Catholic imagination informing Brown's opus have been vague and Brown has been seen as a throwback; his Catholicism only part of a reactionary impulse that denies modernity a place in his oeuvre. Through a thematic critical analysis of four major strands of Brown's corpus that display his Catholic imagination, it is contended that Brown has been misunderstood by the Scottish literary-critical tradition, and that his creative work on religious subjects is diverse, experimental and devotional. The thesis provides a biography of Brown's faith. It looks at his conversion accounts, and it discusses the interaction between these and other accounts of (spiritual) autobiography. The thesis looks in a detailed way at three mediators of grace in Brown's faithful fictions: the Virgin Mary, St Magnus, and Christ, whose nativity Brown frequently depicts. By discussing their different roles, depictions and the various literary forms that tell their stories, this study will discover the ways in which Brown encapsulates his Catholic faith in his creative work.
"The thesis questions whether Catholicism harms his literary output, as some critics have suggested, and shows the ways in which Brown's writing interacts with other Catholic literature – old and new, at home and abroad. Manuscripts, including several unpublished poems, plays and stories, will be referenced throughout, as will rare and unseen correspondence. The thesis takes in the entire scope of Brown's body of work and is not limited to a single mode or genre in his corpus. Ultimately, this study contends that Brown is an excellent case-study of the neglected Catholic writer in twentieth-century Scotland, and that there is much work to be done in appraising the Catholic imaginations of many post-Reformation Scottish Catholic writers."
So let's have a look at some of these neglected Catholic writers. I've blogged here and here about Muriel Spark and there's a huge amount to say about George Mackay Brown himself, including what Juliet Linden Bicket writes here.
We could also mention Bruce Marshall, Compton Mackenzie and others, but I want to draw attention to someone who is virtually unknown south of the border: Fionn Mac Colla, some of whose work can be found here. There is much in his work to challenge any English speaker but it's clearly a challenge worth facing.
As Juliet Linden Bicket rightly points out, "there is much work to be done in appraising the Catholic imaginations of many post-Reformation Scottish Catholic writers." Let's hope that her work is just the beginning of this reappraisal.
As Juliet Linden Bicket rightly points out, "there is much work to be done in appraising the Catholic imaginations of many post-Reformation Scottish Catholic writers." Let's hope that her work is just the beginning of this reappraisal.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 19:31 3 comments:
Labels: Brown George Mackay, Mac Colla Fionn
Sunday, 27 May 2012
Pentecost and Whitsun
I found myself wondering about the etymology of 'Pentecost' and 'Whitsun' today. 'Pentecost' is just about the earlier of the two words in English.
To be absolutely accurate, 'Pentecost' is recorded in various early Old English texts, 'Whit Sunday' is first recorded in c1100 and 'Whitsun' is first recorded in 1297. Here's the Whit Sunday reference: "On þisan Eastron com se kyng to Wincestre, & þa wæron Eastra on x kal. April, & sona æfter þam com Mathild seo hlæfdie hider to lande, & Ealdred arcebiscop hig gehalgode to cwene‥on Hwitan Sunnandæg." (The Anglo-Saxon D Chronicle for 1067)
The epithet 'white' in 'Whit Sunday', according to the wonderful Oxford English Dictionary, "is generally taken to refer to the ancient custom of the wearing of white baptismal robes by the newly-baptized at the feast of Pentecost".
'Pentecost' - "Judaism. The harvest festival observed on the 6th Sivan, fifty days after the offering of the Omer on the second day of the Passover. Also: a synagogue ceremony held on the same day to celebrate the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai." - by contrast, derives from the post-classical Latin 'pentecoste'.
I suppose a discussion about pentagons, pentameter and Whit, the minor character from Of Mice and Men who will one day have a GCSE question all of his own, would be my way into this topic.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:26 No comments:
Labels: Language
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Noah and the Voice of God
This term I was involved with a production of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde which is a version of the 14th/15th century Chester mystery play, a play which begins and ends with the voice of God.
I, God, that all this world have wrought,
Heaven and earth, and all of nought,
I see my people, in deed and thought,
Are set foully in sin.
My bow between you and me
In the firmament shall be,
By very token that you shall see
That such vengeance shall cease,
That man ne woman never more
Be wasted by water, as is before;
But for sin that grieveth me sore,
Therefore this vengeance was.
Where clouds in the welkin been,
That ilk bow shall be seen,
In token that my wrath and teen
Shall never thus wroken be.
The string is turned toward you,
And toward me is bent the bow,
That such weather shall never show;
And this beheet I thee.
My blessing now I give thee here,
To thee, Noah, my servant dear,
For vengeance shall no more appear;
And now farewell, my darling dear.
(Note: these are the words recorded in the Dent Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays edited by A.C. Cawley. For a slightly different version, click here.)
For a modern take on the play click here and for more information about Britten's version click here or here.
Several thoughts struck me while we were rehearsing:
1. Students as young as 11 had no difficulty with the language of the play, partly because the story was familiar and partly because it was being staged. Nonetheless, we can too easily assume that century (pre-Reformation) English is inaccessible. It is not.
2. God is both tender and just in this play. He says: "Man that I made I will destroy, / Beast, worm and fowl to fly; / For on earth they do me noy, / The folk that are thereon" but he also calls Noah "my darling dear". The contrast with the work of Irvine Welsh et al. could hardly be greater.
3. The play is funny. This is no pompous recreation. Noah's Wife, in particular, is a wonderful character. She has to be dragged onto the boat, whether she "will or nought', and so boxes Noah's ears - "marry, this is hot!" he responds. However, by the end of the play, she joins Noah and the rest of the family in offering sacrifices of thanks to God.
It's not a simple issue but maybe there is a place for the voice of God in fiction after all.
Posted by Roy Peachey at 21:34 No comments:
Labels: Britten Benjamin, Mystery plays
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text:
Category: Listening
Free Your Music from the Confines of Your Speaker Space with the Affordable AmbiophonicDSP Plug-in
Howard Moscovitz, is one of the founders of the Electro-Music community (EM 2012 Fextival NY is next weekend btw). That's Howard and Zuzu at the recent Midwest Electro-Music Experience in Indianapolis (photo by Beth Ann Broadhurst). Howard and Robin Miller developed a plug-in called AmbiphonicDSP. I just learned about it last year while at Electro-Music […]


text:
First BanCorp. Announces Payment of Dividends on Preferred Stock
SAN JUAN -First BanCorp., the bank holding company for FirstBank Puerto Rico, announced Thursday that its board declared the following monthly cash dividends on its outstanding shares of Series A through E Noncumulative Perpetual Monthly Income Preferred Stock (the "Preferred Stock"):
In its release, the corporation explains that its "ability to continue to declare and pay dividends on the Preferred Stock is dependent on certain Federal regulatory considerations, including the guidelines of the Federal Reserve Board regarding capital adequacy and dividends and on the Corporation's agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (the "Federal Reserve") to obtain regulatory approval to pay dividends to stockholders.
"Although there is no assurance that any dividends will be declared on the Corporation's Preferred Stock in any future periods, the Corporation intends to continue to request the Federal Reserve's approval to enable it to continue to pay the monthly dividends on its Preferred Stock," it further added.
First BanCorp. is the parent corporation of FirstBank Puerto Rico, a state-chartered commercial bank with operations in Puerto Rico, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands and Florida, and of FirstBank Insurance Agency, LLC.
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Vol 2, No 3 (2016)
- Year: 2016
- Articles: 12
- URL: https://journals.eco-vector.com/transsyst/issue/view/455
Full Issue
On the establishment of vacuum-levitation transport system
The beginning of the twenty-first century is characterized by strengthening of global priorities in the transport system development. The transition to a resource efficient economy requires the development of innovative technologies in transport. Besides innovations the driver of the development of technologies in railway transport is the growing competitiveness of alternative transport modes (aviation, road transport).
Modern estimates of high-speed parameters of transport system are based on the contact pairs «wheel – rail» and «collecting pantograph – contact wire», which predetermine the speed limit at the level of 350–360 km/h. In the paper, the contactless of energy transmission from infrastructure to rolling stock (magnetic levitation method) is substantiated for creation of efficient high-speed transport means. However, due to a high level of environmental air resistance of rolling stock, the speed is limited to 450–500 km/h.
The transport system project, which based on using artificially created vacuum environment for the movement of transport mean by the principle of a magnetic or aero levitation, bases on "disruptive" technologies for traditional transport modes. The physical basis of the project is a multiple reduction of air resistance to the moving transport mean. It predetermines the multiple energy effect.
An algorithm for preparation of the project concept for a high-speed system using vacuum-levitation train system of the organizational represents a sequence of steps. Its goal is to create fundamental scientific principles for development of a high-speed service of up to and over 1000 km/h.
The development of a fundamentally new transport mode – vacuum-levitation «container system» can have a particular importance for Russia and the world community. It could provide a multiple growth of Russian transport system competitiveness in the global goods exchange between Europe and Asia.
Vacuum magnetic levitation transport: definition of optimal characteristics
Known to a wide circle of specialists of the transport, the concept of "Evacuated Тube Тransport Тechnology" (ET3) [1] is an energy efficient complex magnetic levitation, vacuum and superconducting technology for high-speed ground transportation. The concept is presented as the most effective solution to problem increase the speed and capacity of the transport system c is acceptable the cost of moving passengers and cargo, and low cost of energy.
To determine the optimal ranges of working parameters of the considered transportation system the analysis of the characteristics of the rarefied environment. Based on considerations of balance of power the cost of maintaining the vacuum in the system and to overcome aerodynamic drag throughout the speed range of the vehicle (TC) (500÷6500 km/h) it is shown that the lower bound of the optimal depth of vacuum to the vacuum environment, for the vehicle to relatively low speeds, is 25÷80 PA. For vehicles with speeds close to the maximum I would like to have the pressure of 1 PA or less.
Directions of innovative development of railway transport
Introduction. The reform of railway transport radically changes forms and methods of business process management. This reform of JSC "Russian Railways" affects all levels of management and all types of activity. The key method of reform realization is competition development in the sector of railway transportation.
Purpose. The purpose of the article is to identify possibilities of railway transport competitive advantages development as a result of strategic innovations conception applying. In the paper are considered: features of railway transport innovative development; strategic innovations conception as a base of corporation growth and decline of competition level as a result of new business models; directions and volume of financing of innovative process in JSC "Russian Railways"; technological providing of company's innovative strategy realization.
Methodology. For achievement of the research purpose general scientific methods were applied, such as: system approach, analysis and synthesis, comparison.
Results. In the article main directions of railway transport development according to innovative strategy of JSC "Russian Railways" are considered. The alternative way is realization of strategic innovations conception.
Practical importance. Strategic innovations conception which described in the article may be used in JSC "Russian Railways" when changing of strategic aims and priorities of company development.
Conclusion. In the conditions of modern market enterprises and companies have to search new management forms and methods to provide their competitive advantages. Railway transport dev elopement strategy supposes rolling stock updating, rising of transportation services quality, efficiency and safety, building of new railway lines and transport infrastructure modernization. For JSC "Russian Railways" in this context the main perspectives are development of human resources potential, assing to innovative development. Strategic innovations conception is one of the ways of company's competitivenessand efficiency increasing, having a perspective of practical application.
Original papers
The efficiency of the control method of "changing the points of crossing or overtaking of freight trains on the railway section"
An important place in the operational management of traffic on the basis of plan formation, train schedule, technical regulations on the use of vehicles and railway infrastructure is operational control operational regulation.
To date, not enough research which would allow to evaluate the effectiveness of dispatch adjustment techniques in areas in the nodes and marshalling yards, given the nature of their work and infrastructure development.
Goal: to prove the effectiveness of the control method of "Changing the points of crossing or overtaking of freight trains in the area".
Method: simulation.
Since the simulation of station processes enables a comparison of idle time between operations on options: using the adjustment of intake and without its application, we investigated the feasibility and practical significance of its application, based on the goal of reducing the magnitude of the idle time between operations.
Results: it was found that the application of the dispatch of the impact of the Change points of crossing or overtaking of freight trains in the area," the total delay in waiting for service is less than an average of 60% than without using it.
Practical significance of the research: the research results will contribute to improving the efficiency of the dispatching regulation and maintenance in the areas.
Research and define the operational and economic efficiency of application of the adjusting dispatching of methods in areas at the nodes and marshalling yards will increase the effectiveness of Supervisory regulation, as a result, each of the independent participants will receive a specific economic benefit.
Choice of regional passenger transportation development model based on world-wide survey
Introduction. Regional passenger companies (RPCs) split-off was a result of Russian railways restructuring. Now RPCs have some problems of development, one of them is insufficient funding from regional authorities.
Purpose. The purpose of the research is identification of regional passenger transportation general tendencies and features in various countries on the base of international experience survey, including forms of interaction between RPCs and regional authorities. The research is focusing on the following aspects: 1) competition forms at suburban and regional passenger transportation markets; 2) railway infrastructure and vehicles ownership; 3) state or private ownership on regional passenger companies; 4) regional passenger transportation financing schemes; 5) possibilities of regional passenger transportation performance increasing.
Methodology. For achievement of the research purpose general scientific methods were applied, such as: analysis and synthesis, generalization, analogy, comparison, induction, system approach.
Results. The article has the analysis of competition forms at regional passenger transportation markets. Models of regional passenger transportation development in the world are classified into competition model and regulatory model.
Practical importance. Results of the research can be used by regional authorities in case of transportation policy development, transport reforming and further regional passenger transportation improvement.
Conclusion. The survey of regional passenger companies development should be considered in case of suburban railway passenger transportation reforming in our country. It must be kept in mind RPCs operating conditions in certain regions of Russia, the high level of social importance and historical aspects of suburban transportations development.
Auxiliary power supply systems for high speed maglev vehicles with linear synchronous traction motors
Introduction. In linear traction drives of high speed vehicles moving with velocities about 350 – 450 km/h it is expedient to use synchronous motors with stator winding located on track structure and constant magnetic field sources (permanent magnets, superconducting windings or bulk superconductors) located on the vehicle. Such high speed traction system does not require the moving contact for its power supply and it means a considerable advantage of system. Lack of a moving contact on the vehicle involves also the use of contactless system for auxiliary power supply.
Purpose. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the versions of contactless auxiliary energy consumers power supply of high speed maglev vehicles with synchronous traction motors.
Method. Weight, size and energy parameters of maglev vehicles power supply sources for auxiliary consumers are discussed and their areas of use are analyzed.
Results. For contactless power supply of auxiliary energy consumers of maglev vehicles with electrodynamic suspension it is expedient to use linear induction generators and rechargeable batteries. For maglev vehicles with electromagnetic suspension it is expedient to use linear generators, linear transformers and rechargeable batteries.
Practical significance. Results may be used for creation of national commercial high speed maglev transport.
Conclusion. The choice of combination of power supply sources for auxiliary consumers is determined by vehicle magnetic suspension type. For vehicles with electromagnetic suspension it is expedient to use linear transformers, linear induction generators and rechargeable batteries. For vehicles with electrodynamic suspension use superconducting magnetic systems it is expedient to use linear generators and rechargeable batteries.
Determination of transient resistance low-current elektric contacts in dusty conditions the contact surfaces
Introduction. Now on transport, in automotive, aviation, space, household and other vehicles the tiny mechanically managed switches are widely used. The small weight and small dimensions belong to their benefits. However bad contact connection can lead to failure of devices on which work of all difficult technique depends. In household appliances it will not lead to serious problems, but for transport failure of contact system can lead to catastrophic consequences. The most important indicator of reliability of microswitches is non-failure operation of work. Failures of microswitches arise because of the thermal, electric, mechanical and chemical phenomena in a transitional zone of electric contacts. Now big distribution was gained by low-current contacts. Refusals and failures in such contacts appear generally because of hit in intercontact space of dust and other pollution, formation of the films which are not collapsing in case of short circuit of contacts, sudden change of force of pressing of contacts because of breakdown of an elastic element or an expansion spring.
In article the mathematical model of contact systems in case of failure on the example of modern electronic microswitches of rod type is provided.
Purpose. Creation of mathematical model of contact systems at failure on the example of modern electronic microswitches of rod type, research of operation of microswitches in actual practice operation.
Methodology. Theoretical methods of research with use of personal electronic computer were applied to achievement of an effective objective. The theory of contact interaction of rough surfaces, the theory of electric contacts, methods of linear algebra, etc. have been used. The program complexes Mathcad, ANSYS were used. In case of pilot studies methods of mathematical statistics were applied.
Results. In article the technique of determination of transitional resistance of low-current electric contacts considering possible dust content of contact surfaces, formation of films on surfaces of contacts and change of parameters of a roughness of contact surfaces as a result of plastic deformations is offered. For the studied contacts dependence of probability of failure on concentration of particles of dust is received.
Practical importance. The technique described in article allows to determine the transitional resistance of electric contacts both during the normal work, and at failure.
Conclusion. Development of mathematical models of contacts at failure gives the chance to estimate reliability of connections in actual practice of work, to choose key parameters of switching elements taking into account possible pollution, and also to develop new and to specify the available techniques of detection of failures.
Mathematical model of the hybrid system of magnetic levitation energy production equipment autonomous power 97 supply systems
Introduction. Typically, when developing mathematical models magnetocavitation systems (magnetic bearings, electrostatic bearings, hybrid magnetic bearings (GMP, etc.) is considered just the very bearing as a separate, isolated Electromechanical system. This approach allows us to accurately explore the process magnetocavitation systems, but practically does not allow to evaluate the processes occurring in the system of magnetic bearing–object position. To solve this problem, the author proposes a different approach to the analysis of the processes in magnetocavitation systems in General and GPC in particular considering the magnetic bearing–object position, as a single complex.
Goal. The work aimed the creation of a generalized analytical model of high-speed, AMPE with coercivity permanent magnet (VPM) on an elastic bearing supports, taking into account the mutual influence of processes in AMPA and bearing supports. This task is new and relevant and is essential to modern engineering. To solve this problem this paper developed a generalized mathematical model of the rotor system on a hybrid magnetic suspension. Evaluate the impact of hybrid magnetic bearings on the overall behavior of the rotor system. Performed analysis of processes in Electromechanical energy converters and mechanical processes occurring in the rotary system.
Method and methodology. The research methodology is based on the joint solution of Maxwell equations and equations describing the mechanical processes of a rotor system with five degrees of freedom.
Conclusion. The generalized mathematical model of high-speed, AMPE with VPM on a non-contact bearing supports and conducted her research. Based on research of the developed mathematical model, the authors developed an original control algorithm for the rotor position in a hybrid magnetic bearings, which allows for the design of high-speed, AMPE with VPM to abandon the position sensors of the rotor. In addition, on the basis of the results of calculations, a method was developed for diagnostics of eccentricity of rotor are high-speed, AMPE with VPM, as well as new methods of calculation of high-speed, AMPE with VPM, past experimental verification.
Model of deformation of concrete based on flow plasticity theory for analysis of durability of plain concrete and reinforced concrete bridge constractions
The purpose of research - perfection of mathematical approaches to an estimation of durability of reinforced concrete structures. The method of research used in work is based on known positions of theories of plasticity with nonassociated flow rule and double isotropic hardening.
Result of work are the basic mathematical dependences of nonlinear model of concrete on the basis of the nonassociated flow rule, and algorithm of their application for an estimation of durability of concrete and reinforced concrete bridge structures.
The nonassociated flow rule is used. For the description of nonlinear compressibility of a material at the three-dimension stress state, additional loading surfaces and the plastic potential, are entered.
The strength surface of durability is presented in the principle stresses space in the form of the closed volume (cap model). The loading surface is under construction as similar of a strength surface.
Complexity of the received mathematical model is compensated by opportunities of calculation of designs at nonproportionate loadings.
The model can be built in the general model of deformation of concrete and reinforced concrete with cracks, including - in view of cyclic and long term loadings.
The practical importance consists in applicability of model for forecasting durability of statically indefinable concrete and ferro-concrete designs having damages in the form of cracks.
Impossibility of superconductivity electric flow
The solution of an old and urgent scientific and technical problem of superconductivity of electric current is proposed.
Discrepancies to the facts and internal contradictions of a hypothesis of superconductivity of electric current by bodies, in the conditions of cryogenic temperatures are revealed. The new (alternate) comprehension of an essence and the adequate theory of the phenomenon which is inaccurately called by the low-temperature superconductivity of electric current without resistance is formulated. The analysis of an Ohm's law and its restrictions proves impossibility of emergence of superconductivity. It is claimed that when cooling the conductor its resistance increases, but does not decrease.
When overcooling the conductor there is an isolation of electric current by it. The two-current model and the beginnings of the corresponding theory of an electrical conductivity are offered. It is shown that according to the actual two-current theory of distribution (current) of electric energy on the conductor, superconductivity cannot be. The same conclusion is proved by the law of Joule-Lenz and the facts of increase in resistance from action on the conductor of an external magnetic field and decrease of temperature of the conductor.
It is proved that the physical nature of resistance consists in counteraction of an external electromagnetic field (electricity) to the movement on the conductor from the diamagnetic field self-induced in it. It is claimed that at deep overcooling the diamagnetization of the conductor becomes more magnetic field of electricity and the conductor turns into the superdiamagnetic electroisolation center (dielectric).
Replacement of the inaccurate doctrine about superconductivity of electricity on long ago the alternate and most reasonable theory of a cold superdiamagnetization of substances offered by the author of this article allows to solve many problems of practical use of the phenomenon of a superdiamagnetization during creation of new processes and perspective technique of the future.
The method of conditional boundary
The goal of this work is to propose a new approach to the calculation of electromagnetic field that excited by the eddy current induced in the conductive environment the influence of an external magnetic field source. The quasistationary approximation accepted, that is, the bias currents do not take into account.
Method. The main feature of the method is the introduction of so-called conditional boundary. This name is given for mental surfaces, which can be done in the area, free of conductive environment. Boundary form is arbitrary and dictated by considerations of calculations convenience. The agreement that the same boundary conditions, like on the conductor-vacuum boundary are performed.
We prove that this task change leads to a change in its decisions only outside of the conductor and the only for part of the electric field. Magnetic induction vector throughout the space, as well as electric field tension vector in the conductive environment do not change.
At the same time, a good choice of conditional boundary in some cases allows to simplify the task with calculation point of view.
In addition to the conditional boundaries introduction, some formal basic conversion ratios are proposed, describing quasistationary electromagnetic field. These changes had the same goal to simplify calculations.
The result. The new formulation of task of quasistationary electromagnetic field calculation is received in the form of differential equations system and boundary conditions, including both known ratio and the newly received. The new formulation is equivalent to traditional (with the above proviso). However, it has some advantages in terms of ease of calculation.
The practical significance. In practice of specific calculations the method would be useful, particularly in cases when the form guide is close to some "simple" form.
Digital radio based train control for safety assurance of maglev transportation
Introduction. The Control System of Maglev Vehicles (further – CSMV) has key value for development maglev.
Purpose. In article management by safe movement of maglev vehicles with use of digital radio channel are considered, the international experience is analysed and conclusions for Russian practice are drawn.
Methodology. The following methods were used: system approach, analysis and synthesis, generalization.
Results. CSMV should consider physical possibilities of magnetic levitation, factors and the restrictions influencing these possibilities, including – the factors connected with safety. CSMV should possess complex of functions allowing effectively, full and safely to realise possibility of magnetic levitation in conditions of specified factors and restrictions.
Practical importance. The basic practical results, which can be received by working out CSMV, are:
- creation CSMV with high level of control automation and consequently effective and safe;
- working out within CSMV typical design decisions, applicable for adaptation to monitoring and control of problems various systems and maglev vehicles;
- creation of preconditions of design and perfection of all complex of regulatory framework, conformity which provides safety of maglev infrastructure and vehicles;
- reception of interaction experience of the Customer, the research and design organisations, the industry enterprises, the assembly and maintaining organisations at stages of life cycle of CSMV, as key subsystem of maglev.
Conclusion. The main appointment of CSMV – creation and constant provide of conditions for safe and effective functioning and development of this new type of transport.


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Good news, Apex Legends fans. The battle royale's time-to-kill is going back to normal.
Apex design director Jason McCord broke down the team's decision to revert armor values today after widespread complaints from players and pros. The change should hit all platforms today.
"From the start of Apex Legends development, one of our core pillars was that getting the drop on someone should give those players a significant advantage," McCord said. "We aimed to promote strategy in battlefield positioning and map control. When these tactics were executed well, but a team still outplayed you because of mechanical skill – this felt bad."
After the season six Evo Armor changes, internal playtests showed players were hitting Red Armor more often. Since more experienced players were running around with 225 total health, "good players were able to outplay teams more consistently, even if the enemy had worked for a much better position," according to McCord.
Respawn devs felt lowering the armor values by 25 would compensate for players being able to hit Red Armor more often. And since feedback was positive from the internal playtests, the change eventually hit the live servers. But the Apex community didn't share the same philosophy on the changes.
McCord admits that Respawn isn't "always going to get things right," but says it's important to "listen and correct things" when it doesn't go well.


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New York City is a spectacular place – especially at Christmas time when it turns into a sparkly winter wonderland.
Christmas time in New York City is a very exciting time. Santa Clauses on the streets and special wintertime fun make the City extra special. The stores are all decorated for the season and there are holiday lights up everywhere.
New York City turns into a beautiful display of lights and holiday sounds and smells – it's the perfect time for walking or bus tours.
Walking is always the best way to see a place but sometimes there is just too much to see. That's when bus tours are perfect.
Here are a few options for holiday walking and bus tours of New York City.
Holiday Lights Motorcoach Sightseeing Tour
The Holiday Lights Motorcoach Sightseeing Tour is a guided tour in a luxury motor coach. The tour guide will tell stories about and give the history of New York City's most famous holiday displays. The tour stops so that guests can get out and see the holiday displays up close and take photos.
New York City Holiday Lights Tour
New York City Holiday Lights Tour is another option for a bus tour. It's a guided two-hour tour that takes guests around Rockefeller Center famous Christmas tree and ice rink, Fifth Avenue's spectacular department store holiday displays and more.
Christmas Holiday Walking Tour in NYC
This Christmas Holiday Walking Tour in NYC will take guests to see Rockefeller Center, Park Avenue, St. Patrick's Cathedral, some holiday markets, and the Fifth Avenue department store displays. It is a guided tour and there will be all kinds of interesting facts, history and information given on it.
Self Guided Christmas Walking Tour
You can take a self guided walking tour of many of New York City's famous department stores Christmas displays. This tour will take you past Barney's, Bloomingdales, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, Lord & Taylor and (of course) Macy's.


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Dolphins part ways with QB Quinn
DAVIE, Fla. – Brady Quinn's reunion with the Miami Dolphins was seven years in the making.
It lasted two weeks.
Quinn was among the cuts made by the Dolphins on Tuesday, when the team made 11 moves in order to meet the NFL's deadline for paring the roster down to 75 players.
Quinn was on the practice field with the Dolphins in the morning, then announced the news on his Twitter account about two hours after that session ended.
"It was short lived but I enjoyed every second," Quinn wrote on Twitter. "Thank you Miami Dolphins for the opportunity to play the game I love again. Best of luck to all the players and coaches this season!"
The Dolphins put running back Mike Gillislee on injured reserve, along with tight end Arthur Lynch and defensive tackle A.J. Francis.
Wide receiver Armon Binns was perhaps the most notable player waived, a list that included tight end Brett Brackett, cornerback Steven Clarke, defensive end Rakim Cox, defensive tackle Cory Grissom, center Tyler Larsen and wide receiver Ryan Spadola.
Quinn's contract was terminated.
Dolphins coach Joe Philbin said before the cuts were announced Tuesday that he was hardly looking forward to the idea of telling some players that they were not making the team.
"Yeah, that part of it is difficult," Philbin said. "You do your best to talk to the players about the NFL and hopefully their careers can be a long-term thing. There's always setbacks in life and you deal with them and you move on. Certainly, there will be some quality individuals that you have to let go."
The Dolphins signed Quinn on Aug. 12. He completed all four of his pass attempts for 22 yards in his lone preseason appearance for Miami, which famously decided not to take him in the 2007 draft — even though Quinn was under the assumption he was Dolphins-bound. The decision was booed by some fans in the crowd at Miami's draft party as well.
Quinn was brought in this time to challenge Matt Moore for the No. 2 quarterback spot in Miami behind starter Ryan Tannehill. And this move makes it clear, Moore won that battle.
Moore will likely take at least some of the snaps when Miami plays host to St. Louis on Thursday night in the preseason finale for both cuts.
Tannehill said he's learned from having Quinn around, even for a short time.
"He's been around the league," Tannehill said. "He kind of brings a veteran perspective on some plays that maybe he's run in the past. . To have a veteran guy with that kind of knowledge has been good."
Miami was the seventh NFL club to bring in Quinn, who only has seen regular-season action with two franchises — the Browns, from 2007 through 2009, and Kansas City in parts of 10 games during the 2012 season.


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In high-income countries, hospitals use modern technology to diagnose deaf and hard of hearing infants soon after birth. Many deaf and hard of hearing children in the same countries receive cochlear implants when they are very young. The authors of this article argue that it is time to rethink old advice about bilingual education for deaf and hard of hearing children. They acknowledge that children with cochlear implants benefit from using sign language. But they also argue that a bilingual education may be less important for some children with implants. They make recommendations for improving the quality of bilingual education.
The web page is partly accessible for people using screen reading software, but with some difficulty. Images use alternative text to describe them for people who cannot see. But forms may be labeled in a way that is confusing for people using screen reading software. The article published in 2012.
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It's no secret that I love Fleetwood Mac. At least it shouldn't be after you read my post about attending their concert a month ago. Don't get me wrong, I like other bands, but Fleetwood Mac is my ultimate favorite band.
Or so I thought.
My boyfriend wanted to go to Pearl Jam when they announced they were playing in Milwaukee, but tickets were ridiculously expensive so he kind of gave up on that dream. That is, until he was browsing Ebay the day before the concert and found tickets for way below face value. He ended up winning the tickets when the auction ended at 10 p.m., so you can imagine how frazzled I was when I found out I had under a day to pick out my concert attire. #firstworldproblems
But that's not what's important to this story. We go to the concert Monday night (first of all, not too thrilled about it being on a Monday night. This girl needs her sleep after spending the day hungover at work!) and I've never seen the BMO Harris Bradley Center more packed than it was that night. In fact, I've never seen that area of town so busy. We stopped at a few bars for drinks and we were feeling pretty good by the time we made it in the arena. Did I mention we had to wait in line to get inside the arena? I've never had that happen in Milwaukee. NEVER.
We ended up buying some pretty awesome t-shirts (gotta appreciate awesome concert tees) and the concert started shortly after. I knew that Pearl Jam is a good band, but I had no idea how good the concert was going to be. I'm not a fan of not knowing songs when I'm at a concert. It makes me feel awkward and want to go get a beer but then I end up missing half of the next song, which is a song I know and love. I thought I would be borderline miserable for most of the concert because of this, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Yes, I still barely knew any of the songs, but they sang and performed so well that it didn't matter. Their big screens were black and white for the first half or so of the concert, and it gave a really artsy-fartsy vibe that I loved. When they did play a song I knew, it was amazing. My boyfriend and his beer serenaded me for most of the songs and it reminded me of why I am so in love with him.
Blech, feelings! See what this concert did to me?!
I thought I was a classic rock junkie. Yes, Pearl Jam I guess is kind of classic rock? Almost? How long does a band have to be around before it is considered classic rock? But I was always more Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, etc. rather than Pearl Jam, Nirvana, etc. But I can't get over how amazing the Pearl Jam concert was. Maybe I am just high off experience Pearl Jam for the first time. Maybe I am remembering the evening incorrectly since I was pretty buzzed myself. Or maybe I just fucking love concerts and having a good time. Whatever it is, I can't deny it. Pearl Jam is the best concert I've ever attended, and that's including Fleetwood Mac complete with Christine McVie.
I apologize to the classic rock gods and to my past self for admitting that I liked a concert more than the Fleetwood Mac concerts I've attended, but I feel this is an affair I need to pursue.
Anyway, I'm being pretty dramatic which makes awesome writing, right? I know it's fine to like new bands and experience new things, but I'm a white girl so of course I have to make a big deal about it. Plus, Eddie Vedder made a happy birthday video for Tom Petty then sang Won't Back Down. I DIE.