Loosely Speaking

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Everything Else

Monday, January 21, 2013

LINCOLN and Obama

And the Inauguration Day party--despite the hissing and spitting from those who really seem to believe there was a viable choice in either of the past two elections--goes on... Congratulations, President Obama--and now, get busy with the business that you can get done because the threat of losing the next election doesn't hang over you. I went to the movies last night to see LINCOLN. I wasn't sure what to expect, being one who avoids trailers and spoilers as much as possible. Some move-makers... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

One of the most moving and saddest of Christmas songs

is the Coventry Carol, the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents, which most of us learned in one Bible school or another. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYFDO02Y2aI This is the Kingston Trio's version, my favorite. In fact, this event probably never happened. As horrific as such a thing would be, and as bruited about as it would have been, not a single historian of the period speaks of it. Josephus, the best known scholar/historian of the time, and himself a Jew, never mentions such an event.... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

"Yeah, it's been amazing... phones ringing off the hooks...

... Made $5000 in the hour after the shootings, $10,000 more in the next few hours after that." This, we overheard at the local coffee house on Tuesday morning. Not everyone feels grief, apparently, over the killings in Connecticut. Theory: a lot of people see gun control and more stringent gun sales controls coming, in the wake of this outrage, and want to make sure they get theirs, before that happens. Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, December 14, 2012

How bad does it have to get

before common sense outweighs outdated entitlements, before real life, and real death becomes more significant than paranoid ideas of what might happen if... How many tragic days would have not happened, if guns were even just a little harder to get...? When I think of the families who right now have no idea what to do with the Christmas gifts they've lovingly, happily wrapped, for those 20 children... it makes me sick in my gut, with the sadness and futility of it all. Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Naut's got me going again

with his recent series on booze. Lonely Planet chat-rooms, where I hung out a few years ago, were mostly inhabited by the older adolescent, aka, 'young adult' crowd, and I was saddened to see the pervasive drunk-culture there, where drinking, is about getting drunk and nothing else. Just like sex is about pleasure, with no joy or true intimacy being any part of it. I guess that was when I began to mourn for the next generations. This culture of over-indulgence, arises from a society that... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Don't blame it on the fog.

I'm sure someone will, but it is not the fog's fault. It is the driver who refuses to drive a safe distance behind the car ahead, who does not drive with respect for weather and road conditions. Three seconds. Even two. That's a safe distance, a reasonable stopping distance in normal driving. Go slower when there is fog, or wet pavement, or downpour or snow or the possibility of ice. Be attentive, always, under any conditions. It is not just the laws of the road, it's the laws of physics: tons... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

About those service dogs...

In the past couple of years, this has come up several times. A woman in the next seat, in the front row of the plane, had a service dog, a labrador, I think. He was a sweet, well-trained dog, a better seat-neighbor than some humans I've flown beside. She had several ailments, one of which included seizures, and her dog could warn her when they were coming. Good dog! Another woman I know has a 'service dog' who goes with her everywhere. What is the service? It makes her happy to have her dog... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

It's a weight off my heart...

I am more than happy, I'm delighted that American leaned just far enought my way, that I am celebrating this morning, instead of angry, resentful, disheartened, dismayed... I'm sorry that so many others are feeling that way today. Smart or right or helpful, or not, we have become so tightly polarized to Parties and particular ideas and people, that the day after Election Day is not just an 'oh well' day for those whose causes and candidates lost. I don't think it is helpful. On the contrary, we... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, November 2, 2012

If campaigns could only tell the uncorrupted truth,

If all, or at least the vasty most of us, could see through the blandishments and manipulations, the contrivances and devices made to persuade, to trigger alarm and get us acting from fear... If only we all knew how easily our feelings and minds are managed, because of the many things we don't know, but think we do... If we could see our own susceptibilities and guard against their exploitation... But, no. I am sure it was the same in Pericles' Athens, and in the Roman Republic: that votes are... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

The Constitution of the United States of America, like any great document,

is subject to interpretation, and is not always interpreted the same way by everyone; and though it was constructed with considerable flexibility, times and technologies and social realities change and grow. That's why it allows for amendment, and brings in minds who were not the original framers. And amendments, in keeping with the social realities and pressures of their times, are sometimes mistakes. (Thinking, Prohibition was not such a great notion, though it was intended as highly ethical... Sign in to see full entry.

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