Music Monday ~ Meaningful Lyric Lines

I didn't answer this question at Quora, and from the 7 answers available when preparing this post I recognised only one song.

What are some of your favourite one-liners or catchphrases from songs you've heard? Ones which pack a lot of meaning into few words or which are particularly punchy?


Later, I pondered on the question for possible use this Music Monday. I came up with a few lines from songs which have embedded themselves into my memory - no need for Google search. These come to the surface from time to time, unbidden, and do "pack a lot of meaning into a few words".


Our lives
Are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd have had to miss
The dance.

(The Dance - Garth Brooks)
https://youtu.be/bpwdwbO1uvM



Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.

(Me and Bobby McGee - Kris Kristofferson)
https://youtu.be/5COkfKywjJA



You don't know about lonely
Till it's chiseled in stone.

(Chiseled in Stone Vern Gosdin. Songwriters: Max Barnes / Vern Gosdin)
https://youtu.be/sTrPJvEzmwQ



Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks,
And the rich folks hate the poor folks.
All of my folks hate all of your folks,
It's American as apple pie.

(National Brotherhood Week - Tom Lehrer)
https://youtu.be/aIlJ8ZCs4jY



The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.

(My Way - Frank Sinatra. Songwriters: Claude Francois / Gilles Thibaut / Jacques Revaux / Paul Anka)
https://youtu.be/onWf4_yl-pY




And, on that note I shall put up the "Back Soon" sign and take a week off.

Think Brexit is a Nightmare? It's a walk in the park compared with Battle of Hastings and The Harrying of the North.

Tomorrow, 14 October, in 1066 saw the Battle of Hastings, and Norman Conquest of England. It took place on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, on England's south coast. The forces of William the Conqueror defeated the English army and killed King Harold II. The full story of the Norman Conquest, and lead-up to it is told at Wikipedia, HERE.

The Norman Conquest was a pivotal event in English history. It largely removed the native ruling class, replacing it with a foreign, French-speaking monarchy, aristocracy, and clerical hierarchy.


Battles didn't end in 1066. What is known as "The Harrying of the North" followed:

The Harrying of the North was a series of campaigns waged by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069–70 to subjugate northern England, where the presence of the last Wessex claimant, Edgar Atheling, had encouraged Anglo-Danish rebellions. William paid the Danes to go home, but the remaining rebels refused to meet him in battle, and he decided to starve them out by laying waste to the northern shires, especially the city of York, before installing a Norman aristocracy throughout the region.

[NOTE: One of my ancestors, on my father's mother's side, could well have originated from one such individual, his name does derive from the French - though whether he was an "aristocrat" or just some well-behaved servant elevated to overseeing a parcel of land and its inhabitants in the wild north is another matter!]


Contemporary chronicles vividly record the savagery of the campaign, the huge scale of the destruction and the widespread famine caused by looting, burning and slaughtering. Some present-day scholars have labelled the campaigns as genocide although others doubt whether William could have assembled enough troops to inflict so much damage and have concluded that the records may have been exaggerated or misinterpreted.

Pupils in English schools have the year 1066 engraved on their hearts (or they did in my school days) - it's often one of few dates to be so well remembered. A couple of 20th century humourists, W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman wrote a series under the title 1066 and All That, for the famous British Punch magazine. The series, later developed into a play and a book, is a parody of English history. I have a copy of the book on my shelf, so immediately reached for it when faced with Wikipedia's reminder of the date of the Battle of Hastings.

I'll not go into much detail of the book's content, it truly is an acquired taste, to the uninitiated, those unused to this type of humour, it'd sound just silly. You really had to be there (in England over many years) to "get it". I did notice something worth mentioning here though, with a possible astrological link.

Skipping through the years from 1066 to what's known as the Tudor Age (or Middle Ages), we come to King John, noted in the book as "An Awful King". During his reign, in 1215, came the Magna Carta, which I guess could be likened to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

1066 and All That parodies the intent of the Magna Carta, which King John was compelled to sign by the Barons (members of the nobility/aristocracy, mainly of French descent).
The Magna Carta, as described in the book, said:

1. That no one was to be put to death, save for some reason - (except the Common People).

2. That everyone should be free - (except the Common People).

3. That everything should be of the same weight and measure throughout the Realm - (except the Common People).

4. That the courts should be stationary, instead of following a very tiresome medieval official known as the King's Person all over the country.

5. That no person should be fined to his utter ruin - (Except the King's Person).

6. That the Barons should not be tried except by a special jury of other Barons who would understand.

Magna Carta was therefore the chief cause of Democracy in England, and thus A Good Thing for everyone (except the Common People).

The Common People in most countries, even nowadays, are still in the category "except for"! And Number 6 sounds eerily familiar too. Things do change, but remain much the same.....as the French are wont to say, but rather more prettily - "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."


An astrological note:
Does anything in astrology link to Magna Carta? Google searches some years ago uncovered something of interest relating to Jupiter/Uranus and Saturn/Uranus cycles, but the link I had has become defunct - as Monty Python would say "It's an ex-link!" Here are the details from that ex-link that I used in a post on this subject some years ago:

Human Rights: The planetary cycles of human rights

In astrology the development of human rights is often associated with Uranus and Aquarius, and the periods of history that coincide with the rise in awareness of human rights and human wrongs are usually linked with the Jupiter-Uranus and Saturn-Uranus cycles. But does this stand up to scrutiny?

This article examines landmark events in human rights in the UK, the USA and France, as well as major political thinkers/philosophers whose work influenced the way human rights were thought about and practiced, and looks for correlations between these and the Jupiter-Uranus and Saturn-Uranus cycles.

Landmark events
These are said to be some of the major landmarks in the development of the current Western thinking on and practice of human rights :

Magna Carta
15th to 19th June 1215
Saturn conjunct Uranus (approaching)


USA - State of Virginia's Declaration of Rights
12th June 1776
Saturn trine Uranus


USA Constitution
4th March 1789
Jupiter conjunct Uranus (the aspect is wide but approaching and growing in strength)

USA Bill of Rights
15th December 1791
Jupiter just past sextile Uranus
Mars on the midpoint of Jupiter/Uranus

Other examples were included too, but I have not kept a note of them.

The astrological observations on Jupiter-Uranus and Saturn-Uranus seem to hold true. Awareness of human rights, and the relationship between the establishment and the people, does seem to correlate with the cycles of these planets. How, or if, the fact that Saturn and Uranus are currently in trine aspect, between early degrees of Taurus and Capricorn (Earth signs), relates to the above remains to be seen. Guess what might soon become a "landmark event", major or minor, regarding human rights, and relationship between the establishment and the people!

Arty farty Friday ~ James Tissot & Those Gowns

 Self portrait

James Tissot

Jacques Joseph Tissot ( 15 October 1836 – 8 August 1902), Anglicized as James Tissot, was a French painter and illustrator. He was a successful painter of Paris society before moving to London in 1871. He became famous as a genre painter of fashionably dressed women shown in various scenes of everyday life. He also painted scenes and characters from the Bible.

Jacques Tissot was born in the port town of Nantes, France and spent his early childhood there. His father, Marcel Théodore Tissot, was a successful drapery merchant. His mother, Marie Durand, assisted her husband in the family business and designed hats. A devout Catholic, Tissot's mother instilled pious devotion in the future artist from a very young age. Tissot's youth spent in Nantes likely contributed to his frequent depiction of shipping vessels and boats in his later works. The involvement of his parents in the fashion industry is believed to have been an influence on his painting style, as he depicted women's clothing in fine detail.

Detail in his paintings of the beautiful gowns featured is incredibly fine - do take a look at the 6 minute video, to admire his talent - and those gowns!





ASTROLOGY

Any stray passing reader interested in astrology can find Tissot's natal chart at Astrotheme. I see that his natal Sun and ascendant are in Libra - sign ruled by Venus planet of the arts and of beauty in general, with Venus itself in Virgo, the sign known for meticulous detail - what an excellent fit for Tissot's particular art style and subject matter!

Identity Politics = Divide & Conquer

Who Doesn’t Love Identity Politics? by satirist and political pundit C J Hopkins is a must read:


Excerpt

…Why do we love identity politics? We love them for many different reasons.

The ruling classes love identity politics because they keep the working classes focused on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and so on, and not on the fact that they (i.e., the working classes) are, essentially, glorified indentured servants, who will spend the majority of their sentient existences laboring to benefit a ruling elite that would gladly butcher their entire families and sell their livers to hepatitic Saudi princes if they could get away with it. Dividing the working classes up into sub-groups according to race, ethnicity, and so on, and then pitting these sub-groups against each other, is extremely important to the ruling classes, who are, let’s remember, a tiny minority of intelligent but physically vulnerable parasites controlling the lives of the vast majority of human beings on the planet Earth, primarily by keeping them ignorant and confused.

The political parties love identity politics because they allow them to conceal the fact that they are bought and paid for by these ruling classes, which, in our day and age, means corporations and a handful of obscenely wealthy oligarchs who would gut you and your kids like trout and sell your organs to the highest bidder if they thought they could possibly get away with it. The political parties employ identity politics to maintain the simulation of democracy that prevents Americans (many of whom are armed) from coming together, forming a mob, dismantling this simulation of democracy, and then attempting to establish an actual democracy, of, by, and for the people, which is, basically, the ruling classes’ worst nightmare. The best way to avoid this scenario is to keep the working classes ignorant and confused, and at each other’s throats over things like pronouns, white privilege, gender appropriate bathrooms, and the complexion and genitalia of the virtually interchangeable puppets the ruling classes allow them to vote for.

The corporate media, academia, Hollywood, and the other components of the culture industry are similarly invested in keeping the vast majority of people ignorant and confused. The folks who populate this culture industry, in addition to predicating their sense of self-worth on their superiority to the unwashed masses, enjoy spending time with the ruling classes, and reaping the many benefits of serving them … and, while most of them wouldn’t personally disembowel your kids and sell their organs to some dope-addled Saudi trillionaire scion, they would look the other way while the ruling classes did, and then invent some sort of convoluted rationalization of why it was necessary, in order to preserve democracy and freedom (or was some sort of innocent but unfortunate “blunder,” which will never, ever, happen again).

The fake Left loves identity politics because they allow them to pretend to be “revolutionary” and spout all manner of “militant” gibberish while posing absolutely zero threat to the ruling classes they claim to be fighting. Publishing fake Left “samizdats” (your donations to which are tax-deductible), sanctimoniously denouncing racism on Twitter, milking whatever identity politics scandal is making headlines that day, and otherwise sounding like a slightly edgier version of National Public Radio, are all popular elements of the fake Left repertoire.

Marching along permitted parade routes, assembling in designated “free speech areas,” and listening to speeches by fake Left celebrities and assorted Democratic Party luminaries, are also well-loved fake Left activities. For those who feel the need to be even more militant, pressuring universities to cancel events where potentially “violent” and “oppressive” speech acts (or physical gestures) might occur, toppling offensive historical monuments, ratting out people to social media censors, or masking up and beating the crap out of “street Nazis” are among the available options. All of these activities, by herding potential troublemakers into fake Left ghettos and wasting their time, both on- and off-line, help to ensure that the ruling classes, their political puppets, the corporate media, Hollywood, and the rest of the culture industry can keep most people ignorant and confused.

Oh, and racists, hardcore white supremacists, anti-Semites, and other far-Right wing nuts … my God, do they love identity politics! Identity politics are their entire worldview (or Weltanschauung, for you Nazi fetishists)…..

My favourite comment beneath the piece is by Tom Welsh:

"The Romans were crisp and down to earth. They needed only three words":

“Divide et impera”.

[Divide and rule (or divide and conquer), from Latin dīvide et imperā, in politics and sociology is gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy.]

"If a meteor were spotted....." with Ian Lang

Let us, today, forget all about the Supreme Court, the travesties of Kavanaugh, Susan Collins, et al for a mo and imagine something else, equally horrendous - something such as this, which appeared at Quora a while back:

If a meteor was spotted heading towards Earth, one week before collision, what would happen in that one week?

Someone whose name has appeared before in these blog pages had an answer:
From Ian Lang, Leading Technician, with his kind (blanket) permission:

"Donald Trump would declare it fake news on Monday, blame the Mexicans on Wednesday, and go on a molesting rampage on Saturday.

Certain writers on Quora would blame Brexit. And then disable comments so that we couldn’t point out that it’s got nothing to do with Brexit.

By Monday afternoon somebody would accuse it of “cultural appropriation”.

The BBC would run a rolling news service devoted to it, in which the word “doom” is never uttered. ITV would do newsflashes on it, in which the word “doom” is mentioned in one in three. Sky News would have the word “DOOM!” in big flashing letters underneath the newsreader, and Radio one would have it as a ten-second briefing, after the bit about Adele.

Flat Earthers would be insufferable. They’d be going about saying “even you globeheads won’t be able to claim it’s round when that hits!”

If it was heading to hit the UK the politicos would be screaming about Brex-hit and castigating Theresa May for not doing a deal with it.

If it’s found to be heading smack for the Brazilian Rainforest every Greenie in the world will be rocking up to NASA’s doorstep demanding that they do something about it.

The average British man or woman would go down the pub. About four seconds before impact, they’d be draining the last pint.

UK Railway operators would use it as an excuse for the trains being late. Japanese railway operators would do nothing visible until it hits, and then thirty-eight seconds later (assuming total destruction of their railway system) would have the trains running again and be apologising profusely for the 8:15 being twelve seconds delayed in departing.

In North Korea, nothing unusual would happen all week, because nobody will be told anything about it.

Sales of patio heaters, umbrellas, and Spam will go through the roof.

The UK government will advise us to paint our windows white and take off our doors four minutes before the meteor hits.

We’ll all ignore this because, as I mentioned before, we’ll all be down the pub finishing our pints. And probably watching football.

Extinction Level Event? Balls to that. We’re taking our beer with us."

Music Monday ~ Jeff & Haley (Goldblum & Reinhart)

I wasn't aware that Jeff Goldblum had musical as well as acting talent, until I listened to the video below and read about his upcoming album release (HERE).

‘The Capitol Studios Sessions’ is the highly anticipated album from Jeff Goldblum and The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.

Goldblum, who has been playing the piano since he was a child, has performed with his jazz band at venues in Los Angeles and New York City over the past few decades. When he’s not filming, the actor hosts a weekly jazz variety show at LA’s Rockwell Table and Stage. Frequented by locals and A-listers alike, the show intersperses Goldblum’s love of jazz with his passion and skills at improvised comedy.

I was aware, however, that Haley Reinhart is a superb jazz singer. We first saw Haley some seven years ago when she was a contestant on American Idol. She didn't win, but came third. It's good to see her name popping up now and again; it appears she is, gradually, making quite a name for herself. Good!

Truth, Lies, Words - Why Bother?

Sam Smith - not the popular British singer - this is a different Sam Smith. He covered Washington DC under nine presidents, edited the Progressive Review for over 50 years, wrote four books, helped to start six organizations including the national Green Party, the DC Humanities Council and the DC Statehood Party, and played in jazz bands for four decades.

FROM THE WRITINGS OF SAM SMITH -
POCKET PARADIGMS


I've picked out just a few currently appropriate examples of Sam Smith's paradigms for this weekend:

Lies

The endless argument about who said what to whom about what demonstrates an illusion about honesty shared by all sides. America – including its politicians, media and ordinary citizens, have accepted a legal definition of honesty, to wit: if a public person can not be proved to have lied by the rules of a criminal court, he or she can’t be called dishonest and, in the case of a nominee, remains qualified for office. In other words, our standard for confirmation to high office had become no better than that for acquittal of a common thief.

But lying often has little to do with court-defined perjury. It more typically involves hyperbolic hoodwinking, unsubstantiated analogy, cynical incitement of fear, deceitful distortion, slippery untruths, gossamer falsehoods, disingenuous anecdote, artful agitprop, and the relentless repetition of all the foregoing in an atmosphere in which facts are trampled underfoot by a mendacious mob and their semantic weapons.

One does not have to analyze such language legally to understand its evil. One need only have enough understanding of the manner of the honest, the sincere and the candid to know almost instinctively when their opposite is in command..

Truth

The endless argument about who said what to whom about what demonstrates an illusion about honesty shared by all sides. It is yet another iteration of a phenomenon I first noticed during the Edwin Meese nomination hearings. It became clear then, and so many times since, that America – including its politicians, media and ordinary citizens, had accepted a legal definition of honesty, to wit: if a public person can not be proved to have lied by the rules of a criminal court, he or she can’t be called dishonest and, in the case of a nominee, remains qualified for office. In other words, our standard for confirmation to high office had become no better than that for acquittal of a common thief.

In real life, the truth must always be spoken, but the truth need not always be told. In politics, neither are necessary and both are sometimes fatal.

In 2003, I was asked by Harper’s to compile a history of the beginning of the Iraq war told entirely in lies by Bush officials and advisers. As I began to work on the project, I was reminded over and over of how little lying often has to do with court-defined perjury. It more typically involves hyperbolic hoodwinking, unsubstantiated analogy, cynical incitement of fear, deceitful distortion, slippery untruths, gossamer falsehoods, disingenuous anecdote, artful agitprop, and the relentless repetition of all the foregoing in an atmosphere in which facts are trampled underfoot by a mendacious mob and their semantic weapons.

One does not have to analyze such language legally to understand its evil. One need only have enough understanding of the manner of the honest, the sincere and the candid to know almost instinctively when their opposite is in command.

Yes, some of the Bush capos may have done it so poorly from time to time that they can be successfully prosecuted. But our ultimate standard for judging their words and claims – whether as a Sunday talk show commentator or as an ordinary citizen – should be an ethical and not a legal one. If we let such con artists get away with their ultimate trick – which is having us believe that if we can not prove their swindle we must accept it – we will have fully surrendered to their treachery.

I thought the truth would set us free. Instead it just seems to have made us lethargic.


Words

We don’t have to worry about Trojan horses much any more. The real danger comes from Trojan words and phrases — appealing statues of rhetoric concealing the enemy.



Why bother?

Let’s turn off the television, step into the sunlight, and count the bodies. As we were watching inside, the non-virtual continued at its own pace and on its own path, indifferent to our indifference, unamused by our ironic detachment, unsympathetic to our political impotence, unmoved by our carefully selected apparel, unfrightened by our nihilism, unimpressed by our braggadocio, unaware of our pain. Evolution and entropy remained outside the cocoon of complacent images, refusing to be hurried or delayed, declining to cut to the chase, unwilling to reveal either ending or meaning.

We shade our eyes and scan the decay. We know that this place, this country, this planet, is not the same as the last time we looked. There are more bodies. And fewer other things: choices, unlocked doors, democracy, satisfying jobs, reality, unplanned moments, clean water, a species of frog whose name we forget, community, and the trusting, trustworthy smile of a stranger.

Someone has been careless, cruel, greedy, stupid. But it wasn’t us, was it? We were inside, just watching. It all happened without us — by the hand of forces we can’t see, understand, or control. We can always go in again and zap ourselves back to a place where the riots and tornadoes and wars are never larger than 27 inches on the diagonal. We can do nothing out here. Why bother?

Why bother? Only to be alive. Only to be real, to be made not just of what we acquire or our adherence to instruction, but of what we think and do of our own free will. Only, Winston Churchill said, to fight while there is still a small chance so we don’t have to fight when there is none. Only to climb the rock face of risk and doubt in order to engage in the most extreme sport of all — that of being a free and conscious human. Free and conscious even in a society that seems determined to reduce our lives to a barren pair of mandatory functions: compliance and consumption.

Life is a endless pick-up game between hope and despair, understanding and doubt, crisis and resolution.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Birthdays today: James Rizzi & Carson Ellis

James Rizzi, born on October 5, 1950; died December 26, 2011. He was an American pop artist who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.




HIS MOTTO WAS:"Keep on smiling"..James Rizzi studied Fine Arts at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He came up with the idea of 3D multiples now mostly associated with his name when, having taken classes in painting, printmaking and sculpturing, he had to hand in grade work for all three subjects, but only had time for doing one. So he created an etching, printed it twice, handcolored it, and mounted parts of the one print on top of the other, using wire as a means of adding depth. Having received good grades from all three teachers, he stuck with the idea and developed it further.

Carson Ellis, born October 5, 1975 in Vancouver, British Columbia is an artist known for her children's book illustrations and her album art.

Influential artist Carson Ellis made her solo picture-book debut with a whimsical tribute to the many possibilities of home:

That Club located in the Swamp

Brett Kavanaugh is the Swamp
by Thomas Knapp

SNIP:

In the hearings, Kavanaugh tried to pass himself off as a regular guy who worked his way up the ladder on merit, not connections: “I got into Yale Law School,” he pointed out. “That’s the number one law school in the country. I had no connections there. I got there by busting my tail in college.”

Nope, no connections. It’s just coincidence that he’s a Yale “legacy” (his grandfather graduated Yale in 1928), that he attended high school at the exclusive Georgetown Prep (his father graduated Georgetown University), and that his father headed a large DC lobbying group representing more than 600 companies (the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association, now known as the Personal Care Products Council). Surely Brett Kavanaugh would have risen to the top of his field even if he’d been born in a public housing project and attended public schools, right?

Kavanaugh is “in the club” and has been from birth. His arrogant and even angry demeanor in the Senate hearings seems less about the sexual battery allegations than about the gall and temerity of anyone to question his entitlement to a Supreme Court throne.

Brett Kavanaugh is the swamp. If Trump and the Republicans were serious about shaking up the federal government and breaking the grip of politically connected careerists on power, he’d never have made the presidential “short list” for SCOTUS, let alone have been nominated.

But they aren’t — and never were — serious.

Kavanaugh - Astrological

A quick look at the astrological side of Brett Kavanaugh. I did, initially, take a passing glance at Brett Kavanaugh's natal chart - a 12 noon version as time of birth, unfortunately, remains unknown. My first, and mistaken, thought before emergence of the current spate of investigations and accusations, on seeing an Aquarius trio of planets including natal Sun, was that perhaps Kavanaugh would be another Justice along the same lines as Chief Justice John Roberts, who by the way has a birthday on the same day as my own, 27 January - different year. I've since come to different conclusions.

Brett Kavanaugh born on 12 February 1965 in Washington DC. 12 noon chart, time of birth unknown.

Looking more closely at Kavanaugh's chart now, digging a little deeper into those Aquarius planets I noted that his natal Sun, at 23 Aquarius, is conjunct Fixed Star Deneb Algedi. How is that interpreted?

With Sun: Loss through false friends, high position but final disgrace and ruin, loss of money or property, sickness, worry through children. [Robson*, p.159.]
http://www.constellationsofwords.com/stars/DenebAlgedi.html

I also noted there could be (depending on exact Moon position) a Yod (Finger of Fate), a formation linking a possible sextile between Moon in Cancer and a conjunction of Uranus and Pluto in Virgo, to two quincunx (150 degree) aspects to Mercury and/or Venus in Aquarius. I'd see this formation, if it does exist, depending on time of birth, as an indication of an overly sensitive Cancer Moon being modified (corrupted even) by the eccentricity of Uranus and the potential darkness of Pluto, then emerging as inborn attitudes via natal Mercury and Venus.

Here's a good, and recent, rundown of Kavanaugh's natal chart by an astrologer I've admired since my first blogging days - Lynn Hayes, who now writes at Astrodynamics.

The astrology of Brett Kavanaugh

Music Monday ~ "Everybody knows that the captain lied..."

The most appropriate song for this week didn't take much choosing!

EVERYBODY KNOWS by Leonard Cohen.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that its now or never
Everybody knows that its me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that its moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that youre in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows its coming apart
Take one last look at this sacred heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

RIP Charles Aznavour who has died, aged 94. He may not have had the best voice of his generation, but his voice always, for me, had a certain warmth and ability to engage the listener, even when I didn't fully understand the French lyrics. Here, singing in English, for Music Monday:

Saturday & Sundry Words on this Week's Kavanaugh Circus

Although I've lived in the USA for 14 years, I still retain innate Britishness - sufficiently so to agree with the following piece on this week's Supreme Court nomination circus. I worked for a quarter century in a government department, in the UK, where judges and lawyers were main players. I gained a sincere and abiding respect for those people. Measuring them against the types in high office in the courts here, I shudder.


The Kavanaugh Hearings Encapsulate the Rampant Emotionalism of American Politics
by Benjamin Studebaker.

Opening paragraph:

The British have a visceral hatred for Donald Trump. It’s not because of his positions on immigration or tax policy–there are plenty of European politicians who are at least as far right as Trump is, substantively. No, it’s because of the way Trump presents himself. He’s combative, he gets angry, he makes flippant, emotional remarks. When British politicians show emotion it exposes them as weak, out of control, and unstable. If a British politician shouts or cries in public–especially in a formal setting–it’s embarrassing. It’s not proper behaviour. Everyone in Britain knows, from an early age, that this is just not how politicians are supposed to behave. They like their leaders calm, stoic, controlled. This is less true than it used to be–for a time, Tony Blair got away with wearing his heart on his sleeve. But there were always those who made fun of it, who thought it “un-British”. Whenever a British politician makes an emotional display and gets away with it, there is a chunk of British people who write nervous columns about creeping Americanisation. Having spent some years in the UK, I can spot the kind of American politics they hate a mile off. And it has never been so blatant, so in-your-face, as this senate hearing for Brett Kavanaugh...............

Closing paragraphs:

That’s the level at which we’ve been making personnel decisions as a country, and it’s landed us a congress full of emotionally manipulative con artists, a president who knows nothing about statecraft, and now a judicial nominee who helps presidents torture people and then lies about having done that to save his own skin. And the only question senators are asking themselves as they consider whether or not to vote for this reactionary patsy is “Do the voters at home like Kavanaugh? Do they think he’s a nice guy? Would they have a beer with him?”


Disgraceful. Disgusting. Despicable.

Still on the Kavanaugh issue, this excellent answer at Quora to the question
Why is Brett Kavanaugh a bad choice for the Supreme Court?
was written by Judy Klass, Truman Scholar, D.Phil Political Science/Latin American Studies. Ms Klass has kindly given me permission to post her words here.

Before any women stepped forward, Kavanaugh reminded me of Clarence Thomas. He’s that shallow and callow. His repetitive, weaselly, evasive answers to Senators’ questions annoy me. There are some men (John Roberts comes to mind) most of whose opinions on the Court I violently disagree with, and yet they have gravitas and comport themselves with dignity; they at least seem smart and thoughtful enough to be Supreme Court justices. Before we heard about the binge drinking of Kavanaugh, and the gambling addiction (all that money spent on baseball tickets? Really?), and him damaging someone’s truck while a drunken senior at Yale and refusing to apologize or pay for it, and the sexual allegations — before we’d heard all that, there was a snotty, bratty, inauthentic quality to Kavanaugh that I found quite off-putting. I went to prep school in the 1980s. I watched him and thought: I went to school with that kid. I know that type. Yuk.

Senator Leahy and others exposed the ways he lied before the Senate at earlier confirmation hearings for a lower judgeship — how he lied about whether he’d been part of W. administration conversations about the legality of torture (he said he wasn’t part of those talks and he was) and his disingenuous answers about illegally obtained information on Democrats that was shared with him … It just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Then I learned that he was the one pushing the garbage story about Vince Foster. Vince Foster battled depression, and was used to the more gentle, small-town feel of political life in Arkansas, and was overwhelmed by life in Washington DC, and was smeared by the Wall Street Journal, and committed suicide, and it caused his family great pain when Republicans pushed the BS story that the Clintons killed him. We learned during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings that Kavanaugh was pushing that BS story about Foster harder than anyone; he wouldn’t let it go. And then we learned he was the one pushing for both President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to be forced to answer graphic, detailed, humiliating sexual questions about a consensual relationship that she initiated, he broke off and that they both preferred to keep private. That sewer bilge that was such a distinctive part of (college rapist enabler) Ken Starr’s investigation … apparently, a lot of it originated with Brett Kavanaugh.

If you watch Monica Lewinsky’s TED talk, she talks about how being publicly slut-shamed ruined her life. She compares herself to the Rutgers student who was gay and had his first sexual encounter, then learned his roommate had filmed and broadcast it — and the student who had been humiliated jumped off the George Washington Bridge. It was Brett Kavanaugh and Ken Starr who played the roommate’s role in her life, not the Clintons; Starr and Kavanaugh slut-shamed her and President Clinton, both. I’ve been thinking about that for the last few days: about Julie Swetnick’s statement that Kavanaugh loved to talk in crude, ugly, sexual terms, and talked about women in demeaning ways … and I thought of that TED talk when I read how Kavanaugh’s freshman college roommate said it would be totally in character for Kavanaugh and his crowd to have gotten Debbie Ramirez drunk on purpose and done what she says he/they did to her.

One of these personas was his prep school/frat boy incarnation, and one was his self-righteous, hyper-partisan, moralizing Republican lawyer incarnation — but are the two personas really all that different? Each persona adds up to a shame-challenged, potty-mouthed guy, an enemy of human privacy and dignity, into rude, crude humiliation games …

It’s unprecedented that Republicans refused to release SO MANY documents about Kavanaugh’s time in the W administration for Senators to consider before voting on his nomination. And the way they are refusing to have the FBI investigate credible claims of sexual assault is equally unprecedented — and a testament to how little faith they have in him, and how much they think they and he have to hide.

Seeing him yelling at the start of the hearing today, a hearing he asked for, calling it a disgrace, wallowing in self-pity, snippily scolding Democrats, showing no respect for US Senators … It was the same callow brat, just demonstrating more of his ugly side in public. He’s a Republican Party stooge, a party hack, a man who was all for destroying a president for purely partisan reasons, who then, with breathtaking hypocrisy, did a 180 and said oh, a president could commit any crime and still should not get prosecuted for it while in office … He’s Trump’s safety, his Get Out of Jail Free card, and it stinks to high heaven.

And if Republicans go ahead and hustle him through, and confirm this lying, boorish, unstable, contemptible creature to the United States Supreme Court, I won’t be a bit surprised.

After I'd prepared the above yesterday, what happened next?

Senate Republicans voted to advance the confirmation of US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after an extraordinary display of 11th-hour drama that saw a key Republican senator break ranks and call for an FBI investigation into the sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court.

Just before the Senate judiciary committee voted 11-10, along strict party lines, to send Kavanaugh’s nomination to the floor for the full chamber’s consideration, Republican Senator Jeff Flake (Arizona) announced he would support a “limited” FBI investigation and threatened to oppose Kavanaugh if there was no further examination of the allegations against him.

President Donald Trump said he has ordered the FBI to "conduct a supplemental investigation to update Judge Kavanaugh’s file" but clarified that he wanted it "limited in scope and completed in less than one week."

So on we go, the circus remains in town for another week.

Arty Farty Friday Off the Beaten Track

A few unusual approaches to the world of arty farty:



Animal & Plant Balloon Sculptures by The Japanese artist Masayoshi Matsumoto.




Digitally Altered Portraits Superimposed with Flowers, Antique Patterns, and Wildlife Illustrations by Tawny Chatmon.



A photographer traveled the world to explore over 100 abandoned locations in 6 months — and the photos are incredible. Simon Yeung spent the last six months traveling the world to photograph abandoned places.


PLUS - and this is fun - we meet Professor Arty Farty!

Professor Arty Farty explains economics
using amusing pictures and illustrations.

Still Equinoctially Inclined - Tracking Inequality

A question at Quora on Saturday had me shuffling through my archives to discover what I was doing 5 years ago from that day (22 September). In 2013, 22 September must have been a Sunday, I hadn't written a post, so I couldn't answer the question, as asked. However, on Saturday 21st September I'd posted a lengthy screed which brought forth some interesting comments. As we're still in equinoctial territory, I'm going to add, here, a summary of that 2013 post and some of the comments, because on re-reading I found it all quite interesting - perhaps another stray passing reader will, also. I'll add a link to the full 2013 post + comments lower down. This a longer post than usual, so will cover the whole of mid-week.


Thoughts at Equinox - Who Laid the Tracks?
(Summarised version).

The USA's version of "middle class" is different from the UK's version. Here in the USA the middle class seems to refer to anyone not living in actual poverty, but not of the 1% of elite bankers, financiers, corporate CEOs, "celebs", multimillionaires and billionaires. In the UK, middle class is understood to relate to the professions: doctors, lawyers, professors, scientists - that sort of thing. Ordinary folk, tradespeople, craftsmen, office workers, factory workers, store assistants etc. are the working class. Bearing that difference in mind, I recntly read an article by Edward McClelland at Salon website.

RIP, the middle class: 1946-2013
The 1 percent hollowed out the middle class and our industrial base. And Washington just let it happen

Snip

For the majority of human history – and in the majority of countries today – there have been only two classes: aristocracy and peasantry. It’s an order in which the many toil for subsistence wages to provide luxuries for the few. Twentieth century America temporarily escaped this stratification, but now, as statistics on economic inequality demonstrate, we’re slipping back in that direction.

At this time of equinox, and balance in the natural world, doesn't it seem peculiar that any kind of equinox or balance has never, ever existed for humans - anywhere on Earth? Balance, even partial balance, of the distribution of wealth and bounty of planet earth?

We, in the west at least, have moved in cycles of vicious feudalism/slavery, to a much milder disguised form of the same, back to a variation of the more intense form, under a different name.

Why is this? Why does it have to be like this? Karl Marx and others throughout history must have asked the question and tried to answer it. Their solutions didn't take, anymore than it would be feasible to try stopping a toy train on circular track and causing it to take a different route where no tracks existed.

But who laid those tracks in the first place? The elite (for want of a better description of the planet's early rulers). How did they become rulers, and capable of doing this? Why did they think it was the right thing to do?

If astrology works at all, it has to be something inherent in humans due to our physical position in our solar system. Our very nature must drive us along these already laid tracks, and divides us very unequally into rulers and ruled. I wonder where it says that in planetary language? Is it due to the Sun's rule over life itself? That could explain the need for leaders - a ruler: king, emperor, president, whatever, but it doesn't explain why things are, and have always been, so unbalanced; or when efforts to bring about even minor adjustments are made, results are short-lived at best. We soon veer back to the same old tracks. The part of DNA relating to greed for wealth and control must be fairly rare but very, very powerful.

That little lot spewed, unbidden, right off the top of my head and could well be utter rubbish. I needed to let off some steam.


Some interesting points made by commenters

From "mike"

mike said...

I suspect it's the "survival of the fittest" part of our DNA. We humans have become domesticated and "civilized", but our primal DNA still rules. Seems that all animals have a physically superior alpha-type that aggressively asserts fiefdom over the lesser.

With "civilization" has come the ability to compete with our brain rather than brawn. The ability to out-smart, cheat, lie, steal, and out-maneuver rivals pays dividends and allows an individual to amass superior resources, hence a social dominance. An honest and clever individual will easily succumb to a dishonest and clever individual...particularly when the underlings judge the dispute. Underlings are easily swayed by manipulation and deceit. Just look at how politics are played...it only matters what doubt can be instilled in the public's opinion of an honest individual. Truth does not matter with a manipulated public.

With every group of people, there is always a need for several individuals to assert themselves and vie for leadership. I have seen this need for superiority and desire for leadership at every job I've ever had and within every group I've been a member. We humans and most animals assemble ourselves in a hierarchy.

You said, "The part of DNA relating to greed for wealth and control must be fairly rare but very, very powerful." I think this is a very COMMON attribute of humans. There are leaders and there are followers.

It's ironic that the powerful usually feel superior and condescending toward the followers and lesser individuals. The followers and lesser individuals usually feel contentious and resentful of the powerful. Yet, one begets the other.

Recent findings regarding the neanderthals indicates they were a much more peaceful species than us sapiens. So, maybe the sapiens' DNA is particularly tainted.

There are and have been cultures where leadership did not equate to power, except for collective decision making. Many of the more primitive tribes (hunter-gather) on Earth today, of which there aren't many remaining...most are in S.America's rainforest, and the original Native American tribes did not possess the knowledge of wealth and ownership...they did know rival-tribal warfare, though.

I responded
mike ~ The "survival of the fittest" accounts for part of the story, as it relates to the masses, I agree. Any group of ordinary people does tend to eventually form some kind of hierarchical pattern.
Native Americans had tribal chiefs, as I suppose do other early tribal groups elsewhere in the world.

Perhaps the king/emperor-rulers/peasants pattern has to be just an extension and perhaps, in some ways, a corruption of that innate hierarchical pattern of ours.....maybe dictated by the planets.....maybe not.

Ideally the leaders should protect the followers. In the past there was some of this going on. Now, not so much....in fact not at all. The pattern has been corrupted.

I like your last point - that homo sapiens DNA come have become somehow tainted; neanderthals, derided as they usually are, could have, if they had survived, aeons later might have brought us to a better place.




"LB" said, quoting from Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress :

"Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea. While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible: a city isn't easily moved. This human inability to foresee -- or to watch out for -- long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer. (109)"

LB - I think mike makes some good points about some (not all) of society's more successful leaders and the ways in which we're easily manipulated, at least initially. Whether it's politics, business, medicine, church, or even within our chosen spiritual or social-groups, studies have suggested people lacking conscience (those with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies) are more likely to hold positions of power.

Which isn't to let those of us who are led completely off the hook. Sometimes, though not always, there's a choice involved. We often most admire those self-made men and women (frequently ruthless) who've risen to the top, holding them up as shining examples of self-sufficiency and what it takes to make it in our world.

Or, we readily mistake charm for character and/or place a higher value on quick fixes that promise us MORE of something -more convenience, more power, more money, more success, more happiness, more immediate gratification- and in the process lose sight of a longer range vision that includes truth, personal integrity and compassion, a vision that honors our connectedness by including and caring for *all* members of society - especially the "least among us". Nothing worthwhile is ever gained without restraint and sacrifice, words we seldom like to hear.

I responded
LB ~ You wrote studies have suggested people lacking conscience (those with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies) are more likely to hold positions of power.

This has to be the crux of what I see as a corruption of the old straight-forward leader/follower pattern. Maybe the occasionally sociopathic tendency found in humans is what defines homo sapiens as against neanderthals, maybe that was the "gift" sapiens gave us.

As you say, those being led bear some blame for allowing corruption to spread, by being naive, lazy or manipulated by brain-wash.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a time-lapse-type movie of history from the very first leader/king we know of, to discover how he came to be king or leader, and follow through all of history until now, in a chosen group of countries - those which would best illustrate how it all developed. Massive, impossible job, though, delving too far back into mists of time to be in any way accurate.



From "Juno"
A good friend of mine (much older and wiser, in his mid 60's now) said back in the 90's when NAFTA passed, "They are not satisfied - not until they destroy the middle class." He has referring to the corporate elite and the politicians that colluded with them. My friend, an old Labour type, saw teh beginning of the end when the Soviet Union collapsed, because the U.S. no longer had to present an alternate economic model. Marx may have promised a worker's paradise, but here in the U.S. we actually had it.

I responded
Yes, I've come to understand from my husband that "things were not always like this here". Which means, logically, that things will not always remain as they are now , because we do move in cycles.

Let's hope that we're experiencing a relatively short cycle which could end with another collapse somewhere, somehow (I hope it will not be our own collapse, but....)


LINK TO ORIGINAL POST & COMMENTS.

“Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can turn it into a fact.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“If human equality is to be for ever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Music Monday's Ups and Downs

We are currently making our way through sets of DVDs of that old British TV series from the early 1970s, Upstairs Downstairs. It's a far better series, in my opinion, than the much-lauded Downton Abbey - a series that might never have existed without inspiration from its predecessor.

For Music Monday, do take a listen to the pleasant theme music from the show. It was composed by Alexander Faris, who died some three years ago, aged 94. An obituary piece from The Independent is HERE.

The rather courtly, early part of the theme reflects the times depicted in Upstairs Downstairs - London, around the turn of 19th/20th centuries. At 1 minute 36 seconds in, there's a change of rhythm and a more jaunty, cheeky theme develops - an echo of the song, "What are we going to do with Uncle Arthur?"
sung in the show by "Sarah", played with much verve by Pauline Collins.




Clips of the song:

Equinox is Here Again!

Are we there yet? We are indeed - but you wouldn't know it, in Oklahoma. It'll be many more weeks before the leaves begin to turn colour and fall, or before temperatures start to tumble too. Yet, officially we are here...

“But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”
― Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot

Here's an autumnal equinox-related oddity I hadn't not come across before - from the ancient Roman world:

Equinox and medical theory

The Aëtius parapegma is an almanac that appears as a chapter in the 6th-century Tetrabiblos of Aëtius of Amida. It treats the rising and setting of constellations, weather forecasting, and medical advice as closely intertwined, and notes of the equinox (placed on September 25) that -

There is the greatest disturbance in the air for three days previous. Thus it is necessary to be careful neither to phlebotomize, nor purge, nor otherwise to change the body violently from the 15th of September through the 24th.

The passage is presented as advice for physicians, based on the principle that "the bodies of healthy people, and especially those of sick people, change with the condition of the air".

So, blood-letting and purging are not recommended. Alrighty then!

Arty Farty Friday ~ Merciless Pursuit of Colour

Two interesting articles, about past methods of creating the colours yellow and blue, have lingered in my bookmarks, awaiting a suitable Arty Farty Friday.

The Murky History of the Colour Yellow, by Kelly Grovier. The full piece, available from the link, contains images of relevant paintings, and tells that:
[SNIPS}

Yellow is the cruellest colour. Long before it came to signify cowardice sometime in the middle of the 19th Century (the later insult “yellow-bellied” is from the Jazz age), yellow was the colour most often reached for by Medieval and Renaissance artists when cloaking the callous betrayer, Judas Iscariot, whose duplicitous kiss singled Christ out for the tortures of crucifixion.

If legend is to be believed, some of the most memorable instances of yellow in art history – from the transcendent shimmers of JMW Turner’s lucent landscapes to the troubled music of Vincent van Gogh’s whorling constellations – are caked in cruelty, said to be fashioned from the sickly urine of malnourished cows.

The waste of wasting beasts that had been force-fed nothing other than mango leaves in the Bengalese city of Monghyr was reputedly caught in terracotta pots and clarified to a syrup over an open flame. Believed to be filtered, dried, and clenched into pigment clumps called ‘piuri’ that were then sold to artists, the chalky spheres were crumbled onto the palettes of every artist from Turner to Van Gogh, who in turn smeared their lurid lemony luminescence across the surfaces of their iconic canvases and into cultural consciousness.

All that glistens is not gold

Allegedly born of abuse, surviving vestiges of so-called 'Indian Yellow' glisten with an obscene poignancy from the walls of museums all around the world. When seen in such unsettling light, masterpieces such as Turner’s The Angel Standing in the Sun (1846) and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1889) take on a different sheen, appearing to be steeped in the enduring residue of bygone brutality. No longer merely a metaphor for inner unrest, Van Gogh’s whorling stars, painted a month after the artist admitted himself to the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in May 1889, become gritty and real in their aching yellow glister.
...... the process was finally outlawed in Bengal and its use abandoned in Europe....

The second piece:

"The Bible described it as the perfect, pure blue. And then for nearly 2,000 years, everyone forgot what it looked like"
By Noga Tarnopolsky

Forty-nine times the Bible mentions a perfect, pure blue, a color so magnificent and transcendent that it was all but impossible to describe. Yet, for most of the last 2,000 years, nobody has known exactly what “biblical blue” — called tekhelet in Hebrew — actually looked like or how it could be re-created.
At the time of the Second Temple, which towered above Jerusalem until it was destroyed by the Romans, a blue dye of the same name was used to color the fabric used in the clothing of the high priests. Jewish men are still commanded to use a tekhelet-tinted thread in the knotted fringes of their prayer shawls, though what that might look like remained unclear for years....

A possible clue to the ingredients that combined to make tekhelet came from the Talmud, the canonical body of rabbinic texts, in which a man named Abaye asked an elder “this thread of tekhelet, how do you dye it?” He was told that “the blood of the snail and chemicals” (apparently caustic soda or sodium carbonate) had to be boiled together to create the dye. Knowing that the dunes of Dor Beach, a popular spot on Israel’s northern Mediterranean shore, hid ruins of ancient dyeing vats and unexplained mounds of discarded snail shells, the explorers set off in the mid-1980s to identify the species of sea snail they believed might hold the key to finally revealing what tekhelet looked like.

Dor Beach’s Murex trunculus snails seemed promising, but the purplish ink produced by secretions of their glands ended up dyeing cloth yellow. It fell to Otto Elsner, a chemist at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design near Tel Aviv, to discover that when the ink extracted from the snails was exposed to the sun, it transformed into “deep sky blue.”

Was it, finally, tekhelet? With a blue similar to that of a flawless sapphire, tekhelet was an arresting hue, and everyone seemed satisfied that the mythic color had finally reappeared......

From earliest human history, from the Levant to North Africa, blue has been considered a lucky color. It is still common to see shutters or rooftops painted bright blue as a protective amulet. One legend has it that as the evil eye descends toward Earth, a flash of sky-blue disorients it, sending it away. The superstition reached Europe, and from there the New World. An 1898 compilation of British customs published in the quarterly journal Folk-Lore explains that the “something old” and “something blue” a bride wears “are devices to baffle the Evil Eye,” without which the malevolent forces would “render her barren.”........

Accelerated Pace!

Further to yesterday's post...

Our trip to the Hospital in Oklahoma City went smoothly and more speedily than we expected. Left home 7 AM, arrived at the hospital around 8.35 AM. Registration was fairly quick; not long after 9 AM we were already in the Cath Lab, Himself in hospital gown and socks waiting for a catheter to be fixed up. No blood work was needed (contrary to our expectations). After a wait of about an hour the doctor who was to perform the procedure - a very pleasant guy he was too - came to have a few words with us (husband, me and K. - husband's daughter). After another short wait husband was off to have his pacemaker "seen to".

We joined our other companion, K's husband, for a wait of some 30 minutes, then returned to the Catheter Lab to await husband's return. The doctor came first, reassured us that all had gone well, according to plan, and confirmed that, after an hour or so, husband would be able to leave.

Amazingly, we were back home by 3 PM, after having a spot of lunch at a Greek restaurant on the way out of The City. Husband has to take it easy on his left arm for a day or two, and should be alright to drive after a couple of days.

So all's well. Husband has a new companion too, a magic 'box' which somehow monitors his pacemaker and sends messages, once every 24 hours, to some place beyond the back of beyond. Ideally it is to be kept close to his bed. If by any chance he's not around his bed when box attempts to contact his pacemaker, sometime in the early hours, it will "search for it" - and for him. Yeah - I know!

Pace Changing... Again

What's happening, for us, today is a sequel to what was described in this post from October 2010, some 8 years ago:

Change of Pace for Mañana


Around 10 days ago husband's pacemaker went into "safe mode" - he noticed, when monitoring his blood pressure, that his heart rate was always spot on 65 - this went on for several consecutive days. We looked for information online and discovered the likely reason: new pacemaker battery/generator needed!

First stop was at our family doctor's office, husband was given an appointment within a couple of hours, then and referred straight away to the nearby local hospital where, fortunately, a cardiologist was present, on one of his duty days there. The cardiologist confirmed that our findings were correct. Next step was to get the pacemaker "interrogated" by a representative technician from the pacemaker's manufacturer. This was done the next day, a quick job, just to confirm there was no malfunctioning going on.

An appointment to have a new generator inserted was made. This has to be done at a hospital in Oklahoma City - as was the case in 2010. So, that's where we'll be today. Husband's daughter and son-in-law will drive us to The City. We understand the procedure will be fairly routine, with local aesthetic this time, small incision - out with the old bits, in with the new. Including registration, waiting time, and a bit of bed rest and monitoring for the husband afterwards, it'll be an all day job - 9 to 5 at least.

Husband's pacemaker has given sterling service for the past 8 years; we shall be wildly optimistic and with glass half full say, "Here's to the next 8!" (Husband was 81 in March by the way.)

Music Monday ~ Willie & Beto

Texas senatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke (Democrat) joined Willie Nelson onstage to play and sing "Will the Circle be Unbroken" among other numbers at Nelson's annual July 4 Picnic in 2018.

"In two weeks’ time, Willie is scheduled to be one of the headliners for an O’Rourke rally in Austin -- the first time in the singer’s long career, according to Rolling Stone magazine, that he’s done a public performance for a political candidate."
See HERE

Willie's Republican fans are not impressed
Fox News headline:

"Willie Nelson fans furious over announcement that he'll headline a rally for a Dem candidate."

I like many of Willie's songs but I'm not an avid fan, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings were more my cup o' tea - and I'm probably as left as they come, politically, in this 'ere Bible Belt of the USA. When my country music fandom was honed, back in England, I had no knowledge of American politics, didn't care a jot about that, I loved what I heard, that was the end of it - still is, where music is concerned.

As it's Music Monday, here's one of Willie's lesser known renditions - a Bob Dylan song. The lyrics are kind of apt for current circumstances.

Gotta Serve Somebody



Full lyrics HERE

Snip:

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody............