Tag: TMC Meta

Over the last week or so a trend has emerged to rewrite, or radically edit, parts of historical documents because some would like to revise history, pretend it never happened, because it is uncomfortable or embarrassing. Two cases stand out more than any others. First, there was the “rewriting” of Mark Twain‘s classic novel of childhood in the South, Huckleberry Finn which was edited to remove the “N” word. The other was the new Republican controlled House of Representatives reading their version of the US Constitution. I didn’t know there was another one, silly me.

I’ll start with the Washington Post’s columnist, Dana Milbank. Yes, Dana, who rarely says anything I can agree with but he managed to surprise me with this from his Op-Ed, A Sanitized Constitution

Reading the document aloud failed to re-affirm lawmakers’ fealty to the framers.

It was a straightforward proposition: The new House Republican majority would lead the chamber in reading the Constitution. But nothing in Congress is straightforward, and the moment the lawmakers began the exercise Thursday morning, they bogged down in a dispute.

They couldn’t agree on which version to read.

Now most Americans are of the impression that there isn’t, say, a King James version of the Constitution and a New International version of the Constitution. There is only one version. But our leaders had other views. . . . .

In fact, there is only one version of the Constitution – and it wasn’t what the lawmakers read aloud. What the Republican majority decided to read was a sanitized Constitution – an excerpted version of the founding document conjuring a fanciful land that never counted a black person as three-fifths of a white person, never denied women the right to vote, never allowed slavery and never banned liquor.

The idea of reading the Constitution aloud was generated by the Tea Party as a way to re-affirm lawmakers’ fealty to the framers, but in practice it did the opposite. In deciding to omit objectionable passages that were later altered by amendment, the new majority jettisoned “originalist” and “constructionist” beliefs and created – dare it be said? – a “living Constitution” pruned of the founders’ missteps. Nobody’s proud of the three-fifths compromise, but how can we learn from our founding if we aren’t honest about it?

What can I say? But that the revisionist Republicans would like you to believe that the US is a “perfect” union. Well, not quite yet but despite them, some of us are still striving.

Now there is the sanitizing of “Huckleberry Finn” by Alan Gribben, a professor of English,  because the use of the “N” word  throughout the book that may have

resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and that he thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors who wanted to spare “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.” Never mind that today nigger is used by many rappers, who have reclaimed the word from its ugly past. Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim – who has run away in a bid for freedom – effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t encouraging students to think and exposing them to facts part of teaching? Since when does taking offense words out of books, or for that matter entire books out of a curriculum, foster understanding? It is and it doesn’t. We need to know history to understand it. We need to read the facts and words that make us uncomfortable in our own “skin”.

New York Times book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, writes:

Controversies over “Huckleberry Finn” occur with predictable regularity. In 2009, just before Barack Obama’s inauguration, a high school teacher named John Foley wrote a guest column in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which he asserted that “Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men,” don’t belong on the curriculum anymore. “The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms,” he wrote. “Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the ‘N-word’ repeatedly need to go.”

Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context – of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities – whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist.

(emphasis mine)

As Adam Sewer observed comparing the Republican “edition” of the Constitution and the edited version of Twain’s classic, “This kind of political correctness offers no justice to the descendants of slaves — it merely papers over a terrible ugliness that is an essential part of American history.”

I’ll leave the final thought to Jamelle Bouie, who said it best:

But erasing “nigger” from Huckleberry Finn-or ignoring our failures-doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t provide racial enlightenment, or justice, and it won’t shield anyone from the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. All it does is feed the American aversion to history and reflection. Which is a shame. If there’s anything great about this country, it’s in our ability to account for and overcome our mistakes. Peddling whitewashed ignorance diminishes America as much as it does our intellect.

(emphasis mine)

Every New Year’s Day, the Vienna Philharmonic ushers in the New Year with a concert at the Musikverein in Vienna. The tradition began during the darkest days of WWII. They present the compositions by the Strauss family as well as Joseph Lanner, Joseph Hellmesberger and Franz Liszt. The concert is televised in over 70 countries. Here in the US it is shown on most PBS channels. This year is no different. The program (pdf) was on earlier this afternoon and is repeated this evening at 8 PM. It is a most enjoyable way to spend the evening with after dinner drinks, coffee and desert. Here is last year’s performance of An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314or as it is better known in English, The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II conducted by Georges Prêtre.

From all of us at The Stars Hollow Gazette, to you and yours.

Open Thread

With the repeal of DADT, wingers really start to come out of the closet.

“We don’t get ourselves dry-cleaned. We tend to take showers. …” And “Do you think that gyms should have separate showers for gay and straight people?”

I met this man two years ago at the NYS Renaissance Festival in Tuxedo. He plays on a four ton Medieval Carillon. When he preforms the bells echo throughout the valley. Awesome.

The Winter Solstice arrives December 21 at 1838 hours, The Moon will be bright and full having passed though a full eclipse in the waning hours of Autumn here on the East Coast of North America. An event that last occurred in 1638, 372 years ago.

The Winter Solstice is a special night for those who practice the craft. In old Europe, it was known as Yule, from the Norse, Jul, meaning wheel. It is one of the eight holidays, or Sabbats, that are held sacred by Wiccans and Pagans around the world. It the longest night of the year, mid-winter. We decorate our homes with red, green and white, holly, ivy, evergreen and pine cones. We honor the solar year with light. There is food roasts and stews and winter vegetables and sweets, chocolate and peppermint candy, apples and oranges and sweet breads. Of course there will be wine and beers, some made by friends who will join the festivities.

This year we will have two nights of celebration, the night of the eclipse, we’ll gather around the fire in the early morning hours and marvel at the orange glowing moon, drinking hot cocoa and hot buttered rum. We’ll sing and dance and laugh away the darkness and cold. Tomorrow we’ll finish cooking the food for the feast to celebrate the passing of another years and the coming of Spring and rebirth. The fire started the night before will have been kept burning and again we will join together with family and friends, remembering the old year and planning for the new one coming as the day begin to lengthen.

Merry Yule, everyone.

I was on my way to class at my high school, shortly after 10 AM. It was a cold, nasty NYC day and was snowing lightly.

I was at Clawson St. and New Dorp Lane waiting to cross and looking up at the gray sky. I saw a bright flash and a few minutes later the sky was raining debris and bodies. There was a loud screeching noise and a thunderous explosion. A lady from one of the houses saw me frozen by the tree on her front lawn and pulled me into her house. She was frantically calling for help. There were sirens everywhere.

For a about an hour I sat in this lady’s kitchen, drinking hot cocoa she had made me, listening to the radio and the sirens that went on forever. The debris had stopped falling and we went outside and there was an icy light rain. There was stuff everywhere, plane parts, clothing. I didn’t look too close.

The lady asked if she could call my parents to come and get me but I knew no one was home. I was going to go to class but since my teachers were already used to my absences, I decided to walk towards all the sirens. I headed towards Miller Field, which was a tiny air field then part of the active Army base at Ft. Wadsworth and were all the crash activity was. It was amazingly easy to get near. I suppose the police were really stretched thin. The Intersection of New Dorp Lane and Hylan Bl. was blocked off but it wasn’t hard to cut through side streets and yards to get close.

What I saw will stick in my mind forever, as it did last night, on the 50th anniversary of the terrible plane collision over Staten Island that took the lives of 134 people. The second plane crashed in a densely populated section of Park Slope, Brooklyn at 7th Ave, and Sterling St that killed 6 people on the ground, destroyed a church and 10 other buildings, heavily damaging several others. The church was the Pillar of Fire. The fires burned for three days.

There was one survivor at the Brooklyn site, an 11 year old boy, Stephen Lambert Baltz. He was coming from Chicago to visit his mother and sister for the holidays. He died the next day. He would be 60 now.

There are no markers or memorials at either crash site. The Park Slope neighborhood has been rebuilt. There is an apartment building where the church was. At Miller Field, which is now part of the Gateway National Recreation Park, most of thee original buildings and hangers, where the bodies and some of the plane parts were taken, are gone. There is a new high school at the end of the field that replaced the school where I was headed that day but no markers or reminders of that horrendous scene.

As I walked away and back towards home, I started noticing the debris, something I hadn’t done in my curiosity to get to the site. There were packages and boxes mixed in with unidentifiable plane parts. I don’t remember seeing any bodies other than the ones I had seen at Miller Field. It was dark when I got home and I remember how warm the house felt and how cold and hungry I was. My grandmother had dinner started but I grabbed a cookie and some milk anyway because my stomach was in a knot. It was easy to do because my grand mother was very hard of hearing and most of the time didn’t care much for what I did. Usually, no one ever asked me about my day, except that night my Aunt, who  worked in downtown Brooklyn, mentioned the chaos and how it made her miss her usual ferry. I said that I knew about it and that was when my Dad asked if I was OK. Not if I had seen anything, but just if I was OK. I said I was but that I was tired because I walked home, there was no bus and it was faster. Dad looked at me and said, “three miles”. I’m not sure if it was a statement or just rhetorical question, that was Dad’s way. I went up to my room and did some reading, listening to the radio, WABC, for awhile. I can’t remember if I slept. I know I was warm but still felt the cold.

On my way to school the next day, I passed a Catholic Church, Our Lady Queen of Peace. I was raised Jewish and by 13 I was pretty much agnostic, but my grandmother was Catholic. There were lots of people inside praying. I lit a candle, dropped a dime in the collection box and said the Sh’ma.  

It’s 50 years and I have seen far worse since then in my line of work but that day, today, was yesterday, forever. Blessed Be.

All of my life, I’ve loved these animals. There’s something both awful and lovely about them. Or lovely about how they inspire awe, or awe-ful about how much I love them, or lovely about how they fill me with awe, or awe-inspiring about how lovely they are or . . . .

Well, foxes and ravens . . . . .

But I certainly did not miss this