Good News for Chris. Even Better News is That Christ is Risen.

Happy Easter, everyone.

NBC's Star Reporter Thinks Good Friday is When Christians Strive to Be Good

NBC's star reporter is a bit of a nit, isn't he?

Do you want to serve Christ?  Help our media members learn about basic Christian thought.

The Morning Watch

There will not be a Friday biography this week as we are spending the period from Maundy Thursday's stripping of the altar to the tolling of the final bell at 3pm today, Good Friday, in meditation with the sacrament.

That also means we are surrendering electronic devices and social media.  That alone is a form of spiritual liberation, isn't it?

Wow, It Really is a Special Week: Baseball Starts!

The Magic and Mystery of Baseball

Anatomy of a Grass Roots Campaign

March for Our Lives is funded by Hollywood celebs, it’s led by a Hollywood producer and its finances are routed through an obscure tax firm in the Valley. Its treasurer and secretary are Washington D.C. pros....

None of this has much to do with Parkland. The mass shooting by a mentally ill man who should have been committed and arrested long before he carried out his massacre was a political opportunity.

Now that opportunity is being exploited to the hilt by a professional class of political activists.

I'm deeply troubled that emotionally traumatized young people are being used by this political system to front a well-constructed "mass movement".  Although, I brought that up to a gun control supporter the other day and the response was, "Well, now maybe people will pay attention."

Yes, by all means exploit fragile kids to further slake your anger at a president for whom you didn't vote and those whom you see as a bunch of low-class clowns who don't live in Connecticut who cling to their guns because the world is changing.

Is the world changing that much?  Young people are easy to manipulate and have been used throughout history to carry the desires of cynical and manipulative adults.  Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot knew that and used it to their advantage.  Medieval Christian and  Muslim despots knew that, too.  Heck, I was easy to manipulate when I was younger by everyone from the U.S. military to the Democratic Socialist Party.  I learned my lesson the hard way and it pains me to see that practice continue.

The Review is Far Better Written and More Sensitive Than the Piece of Offal That is Reviewed

What is Sean Penn thinking? His debut novel is a mess, again. 

Rather like its author.

About Time, Frankly

Deep in the crater of a volcano sits a new memorial to Pacific Theater chaplains

Science is Never Settled. Well, Except for Environmental Science; That's Always Settled Because Shut Up, Denier

Scientists say they’ve discovered a new organ — possibly the human body’s largest — and it was hiding in plain sight, according to a new study.

This Would Help His Worries: Cut Taxes, Cut Small Business Regulation

Connecticut Governor's New Worry: State Workers Hurt Feelings

He still has time for his favorite Manhattan tanning clinic, so it's not all bad news.  The tanning clinic is supposed to be a secret, so keep it to yourselves.

Responsible Frankensteins? The trouble with the idea that we can play God, but ethically

There are few novels that have been more interpreted and re-­imagined than Frankenstein, and it has become something of a cliché in ­bioethics — especially in debates about embryo research and reproductive ­technologies — to invoke Victor Frankenstein’s hubris in “playing God” by creating a person out of inanimate matter. And yet, reading the story again two hundred years after its publication, we find that its moral teachings have been stubbornly ignored, or even inverted, by the scientists and ethicists who have the most to learn from it.

I'd Like to Think This is Because Millennials are Taking My Advice to, for God's Sake, READ ANOTHER BOOK!

I doubt it, though.  Maybe old Harry has just shot his bolt.

JK Rowling's Pottermore Has Just Sacked Loads Of Its Editorial Staff

Yeah, nah.  It's still all they read.

Seriously, think about that.  Whatta prat.

A Pungent Observation

One of the problems that occurs when The Episcopal Church over-identifies with a secular political ideology is that you wind up getting associated with a capricious perspective on morality.

What do I mean?  Well, this morning the party of Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and Harvey Weinstein is getting all scoldy about...sexual morality.

God is Dead, the Devil Not So Much

“Mass movements can spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. The strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.” - Eric Hoffer.

You mean like, say, the NRA, rather than inept educational and law enforcement systems?

I Guess Just Declaring It a Gun Free Zone Didn't Work

Historic Trinity Episcopal Church installs metal detectors

Goodness, These Marching Children Sure Enjoy Their Vulgarities

Their parents should correct this.  When we debated in philosophy courses, the first person to swear was disqualified.  Relying on coarse language is the sign of a weak argument.  It's also the sign of fake passion.

There seems to be a lot of ageism, too.  Ironic, since most of the children who are victims of gun violence are shot by peers.

Also, someone should have taught them to clean up after themselves.

The End of Poetry

With Stories Like These, Who Needs Talent? Part II: English as a Dead Language

This series is from a relatively new e-zine entitled Quillette.  It examines art, culture, and politics from the synoptic of free speech.

Alfred Bester, Terry Southern, and George Clayton Johnson

As those who have read the Friday profiles have noticed, there is often some stray connection that I share [or imagine to share] with the subjects.  Whether it's taking refuge in a the corner of a penthouse with America's prima ballerina, experiencing extreme g-forces with a seminal racing driver, attending an inspiring tale by a loopy sailor at a Boy Scout meeting, or simply sharing a neighborhood with a complete character, I feel as if I've spent time with people who have discovered some portion of happiness and that it's dependent on being unconcerned with common limits.

In literature, which certainly has its share of free spirits, it seems that the most free are those who write speculative fiction or otherwise trim the boundaries of reality in their prose.  Whether it's through written stories, screenplays, teleplays, or even comic books, the free spirits of inventive fiction display their impatience with, or practiced ignorance of, the constraints by which the rest of us live.

Of that group, three come to mind in those moments when my day-dreaming conscience drifts in that direction.  One I never knew, one composed a minor bit of lyrical prose that got me through Little League, and the third I tripped over in a dark movie theater in the Berkshires.

In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might Beware my power--Green Lantern's light!

Alfred Bester was born in Manhattan in 1913 in the middle of the Russian/Ukrainian Jewish ghetto of the East Village.  Embracing the freedom of the new country, Bester's parents ran a liberal, free-thinking household.  This enabled his curiosity and subsequent education sufficiently to be accepted by the University of Pennsylvania and, later, Columbia Law School.

However, the law does not lend itself to free-thinkers and Bester quit Columbia and joined a public relations firm, through which he met his wife, Rolly Goulko, a Broadway and radio actress.  They married in the mid-1930's and when Rolly created the role of "Lois Lane" on the radio version of The Adventures of Superman, Bester was introduced to a whole new arena for his talents.  Namely, comic books.

Bester had been scribbling away on science fiction stories in his spare time, revealing his peculiar perspective on what is arguably the most creative form of prose.  As science fiction stories may create whole universes that are built solely to satisfy the demands of the writer, with even the laws of physics regarded as mutable, Bester came to know the ultimate artistic freedom.

Bester wrote stories that were accepted for publication in the burgeoning pulp magazine market, appearing in titles such as Astounding Science Fiction and Thrilling Wonder Stories and impressing some established writers with his talent.  Soon, the pulps would publish anything he choose to submit.  When Rolly mentioned to him that Mutual was having trouble coming up with enough scripts for Superman, he began to write for her show, deftly adapting comic book stories for radio drama.  So successful was he that DC Comics, the home not only of Superman, but of Batman, Wonder Woman, and many others, hired him to write comic books, eventually permitting him to re-work Green Lantern, one of their premier titles.  It was here that he composed one of the best known, and most lasting, oaths in comics history.

For those who are unfamiliar of Green Lantern, he is a superhero who uses a "power ring" that is charged from a lantern [it's green, of course].  Bester felt that the act of charging the ring needed some sort of liturgical overtone, so he wrote an oath to be spoken during the charging.  It appears above.  The comic book character of Green Lantern has been in near-constant existence since 1940 and although he [or sometimes she] has gone through several incarnations, the oath composed by Bester that has been spoken by them all.

An aside:  Our Little League team was sponsored by an industrial lighting company whose logo was based on a lantern.  Since our uniforms were green, we wanted to be called the Green Lanterns, but instead were simply called the Tribesman Products team.  How absurdly dull.  So, in a moment of defiance, at the start of the games we would huddle about and recite the Green Lantern oath, much to the confusion of the coach and umpire.

Bester would continue to stretch his art, eventually writing two novels that still make the "Best of" lists, even into this century.  The first, The Demolished Man, imagines a future in which all people are telepathic, yet carry different levels of telepathic ability and are, thus, segmented into a caste system based on those abilities.  It was imaginative and, like the best of science fiction, used a fantastic world to evoke contemporary social issues.  It would win the very first Hugo Award ever presented for the best science fiction novel of 1953, a milestone as the Hugo is a now-venerable and coveted honorarium.

A 1956 novel, The Stars My Destination, re-works the familiar plot of The Count of Monte Cristo with a structure built upon the quatrains of William Blake's poem "The Tiger".  A tale of revenge and redemption, the novel made use of different types of font and spacing to capture the hallucinogenic world of the 25th century and introduced many story features and characters that proved to be influential in late-20th and early 21st century science fiction.  It is admired by a surprising number of contemporary authors and considered by many to be the best science fiction novel ever.

It would be Bester's last novel for almost twenty years, as he would find steady work as a travel writer and editor for Holiday! magazine.  After Holiday! ceased operations in the early 1970's, Bester returned to writing science fiction stories, again being nominated for prestigious awards.

In the late 1970's, Hollywood would approach him to write the screenplay for the Superman movie.  As Bester always understood that Superman was not the tale of the red-caped fellow, but of Clark Kent managing life with Earthlings while attempting to improve their condition, they gave the assignment to a more conventional writer.  That's a pity, as I would have liked to have seen his version.

Bester would die in 1987, celebrated within his field as an innovator and artist, knowing that he had made a lasting contribution to his literary niche.

There is no power on earth that can loosen a man's grip on his own throat.

Terry Southern was sitting somewhere in the dark of the Mahaiwe Theater in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  Michael McCurdy and I were looking for him during the intermission of a benefit viewing of Citizen Kane, as Michael had mentioned that he was working on some illustrations for a new edition of some of Southern's older stories and wondered if I wanted to meet him.  When I said "Yes", which came out somewhat strangled as I was trying to sound blasé and not like some immature fanboy, Michael waved his hand over the first dozen or so rows on stage right and said, "He's over there...somewhere.  Let's go exploring."  [Those of you who read our profile of Michael from a few years back may recall that exploration was his primary metaphor.]

As I had only ever seen one photograph of Southern, and that had been twenty years before, I wasn't exactly sure what he would look like.  The standard of personal appearance had changed considerably between 1973 and 1993, plus he was twenty years older.  Looking for a writer/artist type in the Berkshires didn't exactly narrow down the field as that was the look preferred by most of the residents.  Heck, even the guy who repaired my boiler looked more like a Russian poet than an HVAC specialist.  I mean, he wore a tweed suit to inspect the heating system.

It turns out that Southern helped me find him, mainly as his foot was in the aisle and I tripped over it.  Having been raised in the UK, and despite the fact that leaving one's foot protruding into a dark theater aisle is ill-advised, I wound up being the one to apologize to the hefty, hairy, pale gray man who had just tripped me.  In the middle of my apology, Michael came forward and said, "Hi, Terry."

Yeah, that figures.

Terry Southern, born in 1924 in Alvarado, Texas [whose tourist website lists only a two-time competitive barbecue champion as a "famous native son"], Southern would be one of those artists who floats through history, interacting in significant ways with a variety of people, from Existentialists in France to the Beats in Greenwich Village to the hippies in California.  As the tastes of each decade changed, one could still find Southern creating stories in print and film, proving that the absurdist's world-view is timeless and universal.

After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, Southern used his G.I. Bill to study at the Sorbonne, but mostly to louche away his time in Paris' creative community.  He met the familiar characters of the Left Bank such as Sartre, Camus, and Cocteau, and some of the better known members of the expatriate community, too, such as James Baldwin and almost every significant jazz musician of the bebop era, including Charlie Parker, Theolonius Monk, and Miles Davis.

During this period, Southern began to craft short stories that were well-received and published in George Plimpton's Paris Review, a literary magazine that eventually hired Southern to write profiles of trending members of the artistic community.  This eventually necessitated a move to New York City, where Southern would louche his way through the well-known jazz clubs of Greenwich Village, becoming a recognized "regular".

While he did not receive the same immediate response to his short stories as he did while an expatriate, he continued to write and gained the support of William Faulkner and Nelson Algren, whose gritty novel The Man With The Golden Arm was a best-seller at the time.  Harper's Bazaar, a late, lamented literary magazine, would publish a number of Southern's short stories and bring him to the attention of another generation, this time made up of independent film artists.

After knocking around Europe some more, now with a second wife, Southern began to write novels that were of limited interest to the reading public but of greater interest to so-called "new Hollywood".  During the 1960's, the movies Dr. Strangelove, Candy, The Magic Christian, and Easy Rider could all boast of scripts by Terry Southern.  In fact, although Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson would all claim that Rider was almost entirely improvised, that was mere ballyhoo in the style of old Hollywood as it now appears that they were following rather closely Southern's dialogue and plot.

In a further homage to old Hollywood, Southern was cheated out of any profits by Fonda and Hopper.  Ah, the peace and love era.

By the 1970's, suffering from various illnesses brought on by the excesses of his life, Southern's output dwindled.  His last moment of cultural relevance was when he was hired for a year or so as a writer on Saturday Night Live.  As he was older than the other writers, and represented a style that was far too bawdy and not too cool for the youngsters, almost all of Southern's ideas were rejected.  He stayed on the payroll, though, as he was personal friends with Miles Davis and William Burroughs and managed to talk both of them into performing for the show.

All of this was enough to get Southern featured in the most exclusive club of the 1960's: The cover of The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper" album.

By the time I met him, in what would prove to be the final year of his life, he was spending the time on his farm just across the Connecticut border with occasional trips to New York.  He did not look well and was distracted by the people around him.  He did have one moment of animation, though.  I mentioned to him that I had found a copy of his collected early short stories at a nearby used bookstore and had enjoyed them immensely.  He smiled and said, "That was the best work that I ever did."  He then turned to Michael and said, "Let's illustrate that one, too", to Michael's delight.

Unfortunately, and like so many of the projects in his last decade or so, nothing ever came of it.

An aside: I kept glancing at Southern's female companion that evening as I thought I recognized her from somewhere.  After his death, as I read his obituary, I came to realize that she had been an actress in some of the beach and surfing movies of the early 1960's that are among my guilty pleasures.

On his way to teach a script writing class at Columbia in the fall of 1995, Southern would collapse and eventually succumb to a life that was extremely full, if not extremely cautious.

I'm a free man. I don't wear anybody's collar. I'm not obliged to smile if I don't want to. That gives me a lot of perverse pride -- I really am a person who could stop doing what I'm doing right now, go off to Ceylon tomorrow and live among the fishermen. I make a living without having a job; I don't cater to anybody. I believe that's the hardest thing to achieve in this world -- any kind of autonomy, any kind of independence, any kind of freedom. So, I'm very, very proud of the fact that I'm an independent.

George Clayton Johnson is not as influential as Bester nor as well-known as Southern, but for a brief period in the mid-century television, he determined just how far our imaginations could be stretched by the developing medium.

Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1929 and dropping out of 8th grade, I'm not sure anyone thought that Johnson would amount to much.  Indifferent about a career, after Army service Johnson traveled about working at odd jobs until he began to write stories for early television.  After one of his scripts was produced on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Johnson began to receive more and more work until he, despite complete disinterest in such, found himself safely embedded in the middle class.

Since most of his stories could be classified as science fiction, Johnson became a member of the Southern California Writers' School, through which he met television pioneer Rod Serling.  Impressed with Johnson's askew narrative vision, in fact inspired by it, Serling hired Johnson to write scripts for his new show, The Twilight Zone.  Other shows would hire him as well, as he wrote for Route 66, Honey West, and Star Trek, his script for which would be featured in the first televised episode of what's now a popular culture mainstay.

An aside:  He would play bit parts on my favorite childhood TV show, Sea Hunt, from time to time as he was buddies with Lloyd Bridges.  How cool is that?

Johnson on the right hanging out with some actor whose name I've forgotten.  Bob...something?

Johnson would also write the novels that were adapted into the movies Oceans 11 and Logan's Run.  With these stories and others giving him a financial foundation that required little work to maintain, Johnson spent the remaining years of his life with an enviable ease and slowness, mostly spending his energies on working towards the legalization of marijuana in California.  While not of a broad influence, he quietly supported up and coming screenwriters, briefly ran a counter-culture coffee house, and exemplified the L.A. brand of literary art for his generation.

That's not enough to get someone a write-up in a glossy magazine, but it is enough to be revered in the quiet world of writers, as is the case with all three of these artists, who through fantasy and imagination transcended common expectations and moved our cultural needle in the direction that has brought us all subsequent prose.

Lenten Wave #37

"If you believe what you like in the Gospel and reject what you do not like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself." —St. Augustine

A Series Worth Reading

With Stories Like These, Who Needs Talent? Part I: A Cautionary Tale for Writers

It's about the decline in literature, in both its composition and its teaching, and the reasons for it. 

I recall, way back when I was a graduate student in English [that was in the late 1970's], that neo-Marxist ideology was beginning to take over humanities departments at universities and the quality of the scholarship and its product were beginning to suffer.  That's when I made the shift to theology, as I rightly surmised that, as religion tends to run about ten years behind society, I had some time before neo-Marxism would infect Protestant theology.

The result of neo-Marxist humanities?  This:

University of Wisconsin campus pushes plan to drop 13 majors — including English, history and philosophy 

The result of neo-Marxist Protestantism?  This:

The Percentage of Protestant Americans is declining

Well, That Was Fast

How Facebook Went From ‘Ideal Way’ to Reach Voters to Being ‘Weaponized’

As we pungently noted the other day, four years ago Facebook was being hailed and the new way to effectively reach voters.  Now, without doing anything differently, it is a threat to our very way of life.  Huh?

Am I being cynical when I note the only difference seems to be that a Republican, rather than a Democrat, used Facebook to get elected?

Something's Happening Here

For those who don't follow Middle Eastern politics, or only get the narrow-focused news presented by the network and cable media, there is a tremendous change occurring in Saudi Arabia that is and will continue to effect the region for the next decade.

As the last nearly forty years of geo-politics has been determined by the events in the Middle East, one may imagine how important for world stability these changes may be.

The Saudis Take On Radical Islam

If I may make one of my pungent observations, all of this started soon after the presidential visit to Saudi Arabia several months ago.  I recall it because all the U.S. media, and the cocktail party wits of Connecticut, could talk about was some illuminated orb or something.  Turns out that something else may have been happening.

Lenten Wave #36

The Windhover
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! and the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Another Pungent Observation

Besides promoting starvation, the absence of medical treatment, and widespread social malaise, it looks like socialism, the young person's favorite government system, also displays a talent for resurrecting formerly conquered diseases.

Tuberculosis batters a Venezuela in Crisis

Lenten Wave #35

"Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime." - Martin Luther

A Book to Download Before the Power Goes Out

P.D.James ' The Children Of Men

Why?  Because of this here:

The Real Reason Toys R Us Is Closing That No One Wants to Talk About: Birthrates

A Pungent Observation

In the 2012 election year, we were treated to a variety of media articles and stories about the winning party's innovative use of social media data mining.  Now that the opposing party is in office, we're being told that data mining is bad and possibly illegal.

There's a Lot of This Going Around These Days

Local Church Declares Every Possible Activity A Ministry

Recently, a nearby parish held a "eucharist" at a local bar.  It was a variation of the Church of England's failed "pub eucharist ministry" of a few years back, which was essentially playing church in a public house.  Beer instead of wine, homemade chewy-like-gumbo bread instead of hosts.  It was hip, it was groovy, and it didn't welcome everyone, like we're supposed to when we celebrate the sacrament.  You see, if you're an alcoholic, the last place you want to worship is in a bar.

It would be like holding a "eucharist" in a place that is absolutely impossible to access if you're not 100% able bodied.  But, what the heck?  Ministry!

Needlehooks

Spiritual But Not Religious, Just Inane

So now we know what “spiritual” means. It means:

(1) Alone.
(2) Me.
(3) Making myself feel good.
(4) Not bothering with the messy business of screwed-up disagreeable people who show up at church and make you listen to their problems and ignore your own.
(5) Sociology class.

There’s a word for this. It’s a perfectly good word, tested by centuries of use. The word is “atheist.” Please use it. Then we won’t think you’re so weird. We’ll even trade a few cowrie shells with you on our way to your puppet show.

Lenten Wave #34

"Not only in faith, but also in works, God has given man freedom of the will." —St. Irenaeus

No, Our Life Choices Must Now Satisfy the Ideology of Others

Shouldn’t Women Be Free to Not Choose STEM Careers?

Requiring equal gender representation in any field necessarily means removing some level of personal choice.

"Some level"?  Please, it's far better if the ultimate goal is every level. 

We Really are Living in 4th Century Rome

Apparently, celebrities are getting facials made from cloned baby foreskin cells

These are the people who want to tell me how to think and what words I may use.  Yeesh.

Lenten Wave #33

"Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded forever."  -Herman Melville

Arcata, California: The Champagne of Crime Science

12:35 p.m. A bald man with a gray beard managed to stir up conflict with officials at a Valley West laundromat. He threatened to “come back with some friends,” the only one in evidence being the shopping cart he was chugging around the parking lot with.

College Librarians Think Muslims are Offended by God

Simmons College: ‘God Bless You’ Listed among Anti-Muslim ‘Microaggressions’

Lenten Wave #32

"See how the Father attracts. He delights in teaching, and not in imposing necessity on men." —St. Augustine

An Obituary of Note

Makeshift memorials grow for surfing pastor Sumo Sato, as formal gatherings are being announced

Lenten Wave #31

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me. 
                                                                                                     - from The Lorica of St. Padraic

Fan Mail from a Philosopher

Debate is now largely impossible.

Most do not listen to arguments.

They listen for signals of shared affiliation.

If they get the right signals, they listen.

If they get the wrong signals, they object.

Argument without signaling is something they can't interpret at all.

I Mentioned It Was Barbaric

When entire countries lose an hour of sleep simultaneously, bad things happen.

Lenten Wave #30

...The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.  - from Ulysses, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Maria Tallchief

"If anything at all, perfection is not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

I had never been in a penthouse before, let alone one on the upper east side of Manhattan.  I was a little in awe and remarkably aware of what a hillbilly I am, which made me a bit shy when speaking with the people gathered.  Also, as a large number of us were pressed into a concentrated space, I was trying not to tip over any of the japanned furnishings, crush my hand down on the whalebone carvings on the end tables, or lean against the antique harpsichord, which looked like a sneeze would reduce it to kindling.

This was complicated by my physical size as I'm 6'1" and 200 pounds, with an abnormal breadth of shoulder courtesy of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and the Scottish Coastal Rowing Club.  I found it best to be discreet and find a corner where I could stand, sip gently from the champagne I held in crystal stemware [that I was  afraid I'd crush if not careful] and observe my surroundings.

The occasion was a fund-raiser for a ballet society.  That meant the company was made up of squat men in expensive suits and tall women who were poised in casual elegance while wearing spectacular jewelry .  The men looked as clumsy as I felt, the women seemed to glide about the room without walking.  I reckoned, correctly it seems, that the men were mostly about money and the women mostly former ballerinas.  The one exception among the women was Margot Fonteyn who, despite being well into her sixties at this time, was dancing with Nureyev in some production of a fairy tale.  She was, of course, the guest of honor.

With me in the corner was another tall, graceful woman of about 60 years.  She, too, was observing the room and, although much more graceful than I, also seemed to be checking her motions.  I said something remarkably prosaic like, "It's close in here, isn't it?" and she responded, "I'm from the Midwest.  We have more room there, especially for parties."  Sensing a Midwestern compatriot, I was about to continue the conversation when a flamboyant munchkin, dressed all in black and sporting an overlong red scarf that imperiled the antiques even more than my shoulders, approached my corner-mate and, with an assault of air kisses, took her away from me.

It was a pity, although I didn't know it at the time, as I had been briefly in the company of America's greatest ballerina.

Elizabeth Maria Tall Chief, the name she was given at her birth in Oklahoma in 1925, was a member of the Osage Tribe.  Before anyone makes assumptions about limited educational opportunities, perpetual inebriation, and chronic poverty, the Osage of Oklahoma [rather like my own tribe, the Shawnee of Ohio] had assimilated into the majority culture so successfully that, after the discovery of oil in the Okie/Texas panhandle, they found themselves strongly embedded in the middle-class, with some tribe members even considered wealthy.  This meant that the common vexations of reservation life were avoided, mainly as they didn't live on a reservation.

Maria and her sister, Elizabeth, both showed a talent for dance at an early age, with Maria beginning to train by the age of three.  Recognizing that there were better dance instructors on the West Coast, not to mention the absence of a dust bowl, like a lot of Sooners of her generation, Tall Chief and her family moved to Los Angeles.  Once there, she happened, through a series of coincidences, to find herself in training with Ernest Belcher, one of Hollywood's great choreographers and the father of Marge Champion.  Although a London-trained ballet dancer, Belcher created the school that produced Shirley Temple, Cyd Charisse, and Fred Astaire.  With Tall Chief, he saw an opportunity to train someone for proper dance on a proper stage.

While she was taught a variety of dance forms at Belcher's, including tap, it was in the classical arts that she excelled.  Somewhat ostracized by her classmates due to her native background and appearance, when the family's oil money permitted them a move to Beverly Hills, Maria altered her last name to the less tribal "Tallchief"; it would be under this spelling that she would become famous.

An aside: During this era in Hollywood it was customary for those with strong ethnic names to Anglicize them.  For example, Bernie Schwartz became "Tony Curtis".  In ballet, it was often the practice for dancers to "Russo-ize" their names.  At one point, it was suggested that Tallchief change her name to Maria Tallchevsky.  She declined.

Tallchief would dance and dance, with Belcher eventually suggesting her to the pre-eminent West Coast ballet instructor, Bronislava Nijinska, for whom she was prepared to audition for the famous Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.  While she made some appearances in performances in California, and even danced in a movie or two, it was obvious that, for anyone serious about dance, she would have to move to New York City.  Shortly afterwards, in 1947, she was named the first prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet, a position she would hold for the next dozen years.

She was considerably aided in her art when she when George Balanchine, the artistic director of the NYCB and regarded as the "father of American ballet" saw her dance and realized that he had found his muse.  As his style required a broad sense of dance matched with a robust athleticism, Tallchief was the perfect medium for his artistic vision, often due to her eclectic training in Los Angeles.  While Tallchief and Balanchine would marry briefly, their artistic union would be of greater duration and effect, as Tallchief would dance as lead not only for the NYCB, but would tour Europe to popular acclaim, displaying to the world that America could also produce high art, albeit matched with the energy and enthusiasm of a young country in the American Century.  The high point of this stage of her career came when she danced the lead for the Paris Opera Ballet.

Of course, part of her appeal was that she was considered "exotic", and not just in New York.  The French press lauded her with headlines such as, "Peau Rouge danse a l'Opera" ["Redskin dances at the Opera"] and "La Fille du grand chef Indien danse a l'Opera" ["The daughter of the great Indian chief dances at the Opera"].  Something tells me that last one would have amused her father, the Beverly Hills-based oil company executive.  While a 21st century artist would have collapsed into a safe space after feeling micro-aggressed by such regard [think of what the Cleveland Indians' logo does to people who aren't from Cleveland and aren't, like my family, even Indian], Tallchief seems to have taken it in stride, appreciative of the recognition that she and her ballet company were receiving on the world stage.

In 1954, Balanchine re-worked an obscure, relatively un-popular ballet based on a children's tale and, with Tallchief dancing in the lead, transformed it into a classic that is still strongly associated with its particular season of the year.  Tallchief's performance as the "Sugar Plum Fairy" helped make The Nutcracker into the NYCB's most popular production, an annual treat for anyone visiting the city around Christmas, and the company's biggest money-maker by far.

After leaving the NYCB as prima in 1960, Tallchief would dance for a variety of ballet companies throughout the world in a remarkable breadth of performances.  She would become the world's highest paid dancer by the mid-1960's and, when Rudolph Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union and was to make his free world debut on television, he requested that his partner be Tallchief.  Such was her fame and her reputation.

Like any wise athlete who knows that the time to withdraw is before one's body begins its inevitable surrender of physicality, Tallchief retired from dancing in 1965, at the age of forty.  However, as those of us who are old enough know, when physicality surrenders, sagacity comes to the fore.  Using her reputation and considerable experience, Tallchief would serve as the soul of the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet and as the founder of the Chicago City Ballet, passing on her knowledge to subsequent generations of eager dancers for the remaining 40+ years of her life.

There is no history of American dance, either in print or on film, that does not feature Tallchief, and there are few awards that she had not been presented.  Among the most prominent would be the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement award.

At the age of 88, surrounded by family, Maria Tallchief surrendered her mortality.  As she once wrote in a reminiscence about her career, "Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina."  Nevertheless, she was and is the pride of the Osage and all assimilated Indians in the United States who know that, once we have touched a nation's common culture and brought to it our own style, we become an indelible part of it.

I'm Not Sure This is News

Today’s men are not nearly as strong as their dads were, researchers say

I mean, have you seen some of them?

Lenten Wave #29

“Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air” – George Chapman

From Plato to Today, Little has Changed

The Ignoble Lie: How the new aristocracy masks its privilege

We are in uncharted territory. Liberalism coexisted with Christianity for its entire history, with Christianity moderating the harder edges of the regnant political philosophy, supporting forms and practices that demanded from elites the recognition of their elevated status, and hence, corresponding responsibilities and duties to those less fortunate. The thoroughgoing disdain and dismissiveness of today’s elites toward the working class is a reflection of our newfound “enlightenment,” just as is the belief among the lower class that only a strong and equally disdainful leader can constrain the elites. Liberalism has achieved its goal of emptying the public square of the old gods, leaving it a harsh space of contestation among unequals who no longer see any commonality. Whether that square can be filled again with newly rendered stories of old telling us of a common origin and destination, or whether it must simply be dominated by whoever proves the strongest, is the test of our age.

Okay, Okay. Back to Work.

The act of editing is so dull and uninspiring that I'm renaming it "Stephen Hawking's Spirituality".  Too many syllables?

As with Most Academics, The Genius Had a Less Developed Understanding of God Than Does a 7-Year-Old

Stephen Hawking explored the universe: Were the mysteries of his heart newsworthy?

A Small Burst Bubble

Not to wreck any journalist's day, especially as they're hyperventilating about the "children's march on Washington", but it's not particularly tricky to convince high school students to skip school.

After the day is over, along with their usefulness to cynical adults, they will be re-deposited in a system that provides little to nothing in the way of true education.  Does the name Cindy Sheehan ring a bell?

Lenten Wave #28

“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Almost Not a Parody

Harvard Now Offering Four-Year Degree In Feeling Oppressed

This Fellow has Been Reading The Coracle

I wonder where he got this idea?

He Stands Apart: Ross MacDonald

Maybe from here?  Nah.  I'm glad to see Modern Library is getting on board, too.

Lenten Wave #27

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." - Edmund Burke

Lenten Wave #26

"A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live." - Thomas Merton

A Professional Interruption

With regrets, but I have a deadline to satisfy with a publisher, the big meany, so postings may be reduced to the daily Lenten Wave and the Friday profile for a fortnight or less.  It's fewer than 20,000 words that I have to edit, Protestant educational tracts are rather lightweight, so we may be back before we're even missed.

Our Dangerous Tendency to Dismiss Ideas Other Than Our Own

The Psychology of Progressive Hostility

Needlehooks

So why are there not “enough” women in STEM fields? Because we have other priorities? Because the computer culture in Silicon Valley is becoming more and more anti-feminine?* Because in aggregate women are better in fields that demand more verbal skills, while in aggregate men tend to be better in math and logic-heavy fields? Because few people in general want to spend eight hours in class, then ten hours in the lab, in grad school or in industry? Because if you plan on having kids, climbing up smoke-stacks to take samples because everything downwind is dying sounds less-than-appealing? 

Because well-meaning do-gooders water down science and math for girls, so more girls will get high grades, and then we hit a brick wall in Intro to Electrical Engineering and Calculus 1?

There does seem to be a self-defeating quality to academic feminism.  [Is there another kind of feminism?  Perhaps ecclesial feminism.]  My beloved niece is talented in mathematics.  When she became a student at Hobart/William Smith Colleges, her assigned academic advisor spent her first year convincing my niece that math was for creepy, unusual men and that her mind would be better developed as a "Women's Studies" major.  Dear God.

While I pointed out to her that there were far more and better jobs for mathematicians, especially women mathematicians, than for "Women's Studies" majors, she succumbed to the remarkable pressure exerted by the female faculty of William Smith College for her to join the sisterhood and pursue this absurd, quasi-academic field.

The result?  A six figure student loan repayment and the brutal realization that no one wants to hire a "Women's Studies" major as the degree is a joke outside of the Gender Studies universe.  Fortunately, she resurrected her math skills and found gainful employment.

However, my memory still stretches back to a visit I paid to her when she was in her senior year and was part of a group protesting, of all things, the absence of women in the STEM fields.  Yes, one can blame the patriarchy, but the women of "Women's Studies" sure seemed to have an awful lot to do with the inequity, at least in this case.

It's Barbaric, I Tell You

One Hundred Years Later, the Madness of Daylight Saving Time Endures

Lenten Wave #24

"This repentance, this faith, this peace, joy, love; this change from glory to glory is what the wisdom of the world has voted to be madness, mere enthusiasm, utter distraction.” - John Wesley

Publicly Ridicule Christian Prayer, Then Offer a Private Apology [Maybe]

Joy Behar apologizes to Mike Pence for anti-Christian remarks

This is not uncommon, of course.  If she apologizes on the air, which was the medium she used to mischaracterize, then mock, Christian prayer, that would be equitable.

Secret Ceremony? Since When?

Meghan Markle baptized and confirmed in secret ceremony

Maybe secret from the secular and, when it come to religious issues, grossly ignorant media, but it relies on the acclamation of the community of faith, so there are going to be some people present.

Also, how secret is a ceremony that's printed in a book with a circulation of 85 million?

And, if her dad's an Episcopalian, why is she just getting baptized now, at the age of 36?  C'mon, dad.

Madeleine L'Engle

As today marks the release of the film version of L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, we offer this re-run of a profile from five years ago .

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."

There is a scene in Woody Allen's Annie Hall when, while standing in a theater queue arguing with another film-goer about Marshall McLuhan, Allen is able to pull McLuhan himself from off-camera to support his argument.  I recall Allen observing that he wished life, instead of just fantasy, could sometimes be like that.  While I don't have a story that strictly corresponds to that scene, I do have an experience that left me just as satisfied.

In the 6th Grade I was scolded by my teacher for being disharmonious during a classroom discussion.  I remind the reader that when I was in 6th Grade the elementary school world was somewhat different than it is today.  There were no such things as "participation trophies", what is now called "bullying" was, in those days, called "school"; corporal punishment was common, and classroom deportment was held to a rigid standard. According to a poll conducted by a teachers' organization in 1967, the most troubling school offense was chewing gum in class.  To be labeled as "disharmonious" by the teacher meant that I had committed a transgression that was mighty in both intention and deed.

What had happened is that I had noted a religious element in a book that our class had just read and had mentioned my observation in our discussion.  The teacher, whom I seem to recall was a "free-thinker", did not believe that Christianity should be mentioned in the classroom.  This was at a time when such "mentions" were becoming controversial and our teacher, highly anxious to be promoted to a comfy sinecure in an administrative office somewhere, wanted nothing controversial to thwart that ambition. So, I was roundly eliminated from any further class discussion and had to have a note about my transgression taken home to be signed by my parents.  This was a pity as we were reading A Wrinkle in Time and it was the first book assigned in a classroom that I actually enjoyed reading.  That wouldn't happen again until I was a sophomore in college.

For those unfamiliar with this Newbery Award-winning classic in children's literature, Wrinkle is about girl who, along with her athletic twin brothers and their genius youngest brother, attempts to find her father, a brilliant scientist who has gone missing while working on a mysterious device known as the "tesseract".  Need I say more?  You should really read it, as should your children or grandchildren.  Trust me, when you're eleven-years-old and a big fan of Jonny Quest [maybe I'll need to write about him one day], this kind of science-fiction adventure was a welcome respite from stories about an island of blue dolphins and crickets in Times Square.

As in C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, the Christian themes are unmistakable, albeit presented through fantasy characters designed to appeal to a child's imagination.  This is no surprise since the author, Madeleine L'Engle, was a devout Episcopalian who would one day be the writer-in-residence at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine and a familiar speaker and lay preacher throughout the Episcopal Church.

I'm appreciative of the author for two reasons.  The first is that she showed me, at that impressionable age, how Christian theology could be presented even through a science fiction-styled children's story, leading me as I matured to an appreciation of the uses of archetype in literature and art.  I remember first reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and noting the repeated, and often unsuspected, references to Gospel tropes in the story of "bull goose loony" McMurphy and his twelve fellow lunatics.  [That was the novel that I read as a sophomore in college that I enjoyed as much as I had L'Engle's novel in 6th Grade].  This was the first awareness of the depth that marks art from...well, the rest.

The second reason is even better.  Nearly 35 years after being not-so-gently steered away from any discussion of Christian archetype by my 6th Grade teacher, I was seated next to Madeleine L'Engle herself at my dining room table.  Over the course of the years, I would wind up having as a seminary professor her son-in-law and coming to know her daughter and grand-children, living as they did in the same town.  One evening, with the pleasant chaos of young people running about the house, and her daughter with my wife intensely involved in the kitchen with the preparation of an elaborate dessert, with the just the two of us left in the dining room I told Madeleine of that day from long ago.

"She should have let you speak.  You were right.  Clearly, she was an idiot."

Aces to Madeleine; snubs to you, Mrs. Suschecksky.

Madeleine died in 2007, leaving a formidable body of work.  She wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction books, including two sequels to Wrinkle [one of which won a National Book Award]; most of her works are still in print. A complete bibliography may be found at this link.

As she once wrote, "With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me."  Certainly, as with our spiritual being, her books continue to live.

Lenten Wave #23

“You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn

This is Actually Rather Big International News

So, naturally, you won't see it in the U.S. media.

Saudi crown prince visits Egypt’s Coptic Cathedral in Cairo

Yes, and One of Them Was a Beloved Relation of Mine

Medicaid Scandal: 21,904 Truly Needy People Died While Waiting Behind 13 Million Able-Bodied Adults

Which is why I have no patience with posturing politicians, even if they belong to The Episcopal Church's preferred political party, especially when they mess with issues of life and death.

Lenten Wave #22

“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.” - Rachel Carson

Even the New York Times is Starting to Notice

When Everyone Is A Fascist, No One Is A Fascist

To Understand This is To Understand Our Entire Contemporary Reality

Dunning–Kruger effect

Lenten Wave #21

"Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” - Desmond Tutu

Yep

When the guy who hosted the breast-obsessed “Man Show” appears onstage with an NBA player once accused of rape to give awards to people who spent decades doing business with Harvey Weinstein — you know Hollywood has gotten serious about sexual harassment.

Yes, I Still Miss Australia

Snake caught hiding in wall at Toowoomba shopping centre

No Surprise Here, Either

Metaphor Alert: ‘Young Karl Marx’ Loses Tons Of Money

Well, Here's a Surprise

The Episcopal Church's House of Deputies Special Committee on Sexual Harassment and Exploitation Appointed

As predicted in The Coracle only last month:

The Only Change Will Be That I, and My Secular Compatriots, Will Have to Attend More "Workshops" on Misconduct

You know, those of us who are not mashers, molesters, and rapists.  For the Hollywood/Washington/Wall Street men who behave in this abysmal manner, and the women who enable them, nothing will change.  It will simply become less visible.

Yeah, That's Hardly a "Shocking" Truth to Any Teacher

By the time they reach high school, nearly 20 percent of all American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD. Millions of those boys will be prescribed a powerful stimulant to "normalize" them. A great many of those boys will suffer serious side effects from those drugs. The shocking truth is that many of those diagnoses are wrong, and that most of those boys are being drugged for no good reason—simply for being boys. It's time we recognize this as a crisis.

Lenten Wave #20

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” - C.S. Lewis

An Obituary of Note

How did I miss this from two days ago?  He was our idol when I did track and field back before electricity.  I'm proud to say I once broke the eight minute mile.

Sir Roger Bannister: First person to run a mile in under four minutes dies at 88

A Pungent Observation

If one wishes to join the military, the age of adulthood is 18.
If one wishes to buy alcohol, the age of adulthood is 21.
If one wishes a driver's license, the age of adulthood is 16.
If one wishes to buy a rifle or shotgun at a sports store, the age of adulthood is 21.
If one wishes an abortion, the age of adulthood is 16.
If one wishes to vote, the age of adulthood is 18 [although there is a recent push to lower the age to 16].
In the Affordable Care Act, the age of adulthood is 26.

Is it maybe a good idea to have a settled age of adulthood in the United States?

Maybe Rethink a Lot of Things

To Stop Mass School Shootings, Rethink Antidepressants

But if you want to get at the real cause of these horrific events, don't ignore the potential impact of a type of antidepressant medication that should probably not be given to teenagers at all, and has been associated with an increase in the type of violence seen at Columbine, Newtown, Aurora and — perhaps — at Parkland, Florida.

These and similar attacks have a common pair of elements: The assailants were all late adolescents or young adults, and they were all taking a particular type of antidepressant called an SSRI.

Noticed That, Too, Have You?

In the aftermath of the tragic Parkland shooting, moral norms that have guided our American society through evil and tragedy — even through past mass shootings — seem to have been turned upside down.

Qualities traditionally considered “good” — bravery, sacrifice, even just fulfillment of basic job duties — are apparently no longer necessary in the face of evil. Instead, some thought leaders tell us that we’re not to go too hard on those who display cowardice and fear. They justify this moral relativism by arguing that “guns are too scary” to confront in traditional ways....  The overwhelming narrative has been to assign moral agency to inanimate objects: the guns. Everybody else, and the morality of their action or inaction, is somehow irrelevant.

They Won't, Though. They've Too Many Advertisers to Appease.

School Shootings Spread Like a Virus. The Media Can Help Stop Them.

Overheard on this morning's news, a local anchor admitting that she's lost count of how many school threats there have been in Connecticut over the last two weeks.

It's Time for Millionaires to Give One Another Awards and Self-Congratulate

Having been caught maintaining one of the most perverse and abusive industries in American culture, Hollywood's Guardians of Woke are over-reacting, deflecting, and hyper-moralizing so that we proles will be encouraged to permit the social conversation to migrate elsewhere.  Once that's accomplished, they can go back to "business as usual"; and they will, as it's a long-standing system that is inculcated in their industry.

[Please, please America, forget about Harvey Weinstein and how all those "nice" movie stars knew what was happening and said and did nothing while they worked on their careers and bank balances.  Look, that NRA is bad!  Also, Trump is bad, too!  Everything that's not us is bad!  Really!!]  

I have this creepy feeling that a collection of the creative class, along with oleaginous politicians and puzzle-witted, enabling media, were eagerly awaiting the slaughter of school kids so that the national conversation could be changed.  They seemed to have a lot of organized responses ready to engage within mere hours of the atrocity.  These coordinated efforts to control how we perceive the world are a tad alarming.

However, I see the remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon won something.  Man, that movie was one of my favs when I was a child.

Lenten Wave #19

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation. - 1 Corinthians 1:20-21