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I was listening the other day to Hillary Hahn's recording of Bach Violin Concertos from way back in '03. It's a decent record, except that all the fast movements are just too damn fast. I was particularly disappointed by the D minor concerto for two violins. I have a special fondness for that piece. J.S. arranged it for two harpsichords, and that version appeared on a Nonesuch recording from the seventies. It was one of the very first records I bought with my own money, and I played that thing to death. I loved every piece on it, and the D minor double kicked the whole thing off. I can't now recall who played on it, but I'm pretty sure I still have the vinyl somewhere. I should dig it up.
There are times when the sheer rhythmic relentlessness of up-tempo Bach lights me up. That's my head-banging jam. I get a pleasure from that steady chugga-chugga barrage of notes not too dissimilar from that which I get from a good crunchy electric guitar. Taken too fast, however, it sounds frantic, it's just not sexy anymore. It doesn't rock. I can't help feeling that Jeffrey Kahane was setting it up so Hahn and company could show off, but if you want to demonstrate how fast you can play, there's plenty of music out there that suits that purpose much better. At any rate he and I disagree on the tempo for those pieces.
There are times when the sheer rhythmic relentlessness of up-tempo Bach lights me up. That's my head-banging jam. I get a pleasure from that steady chugga-chugga barrage of notes not too dissimilar from that which I get from a good crunchy electric guitar. Taken too fast, however, it sounds frantic, it's just not sexy anymore. It doesn't rock. I can't help feeling that Jeffrey Kahane was setting it up so Hahn and company could show off, but if you want to demonstrate how fast you can play, there's plenty of music out there that suits that purpose much better. At any rate he and I disagree on the tempo for those pieces.
Remember when I wrote about pentatonic scales way back when? I said I'd continue that thread. Here's a little study using only a C pentatonic scale. It's definitely not a polished realization; just a raw Finale file, but it shows that one can do a lot with just five pitches.
I figured that by now no degree of lameness from our Congress could surprise me, but Thursday's Senate vote on the the FISA Amendment bill - yes, I know it was expected, but still... - left me sad and very angry. I read through most of the bill last night. The bulk of the text has to do with procedures the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is supposed to follow when certifying surveillance authorizations, and fol-de-rol the Justice Department's goes through when submitting authorizations for review. That's all a lot of hot air, because the court is quite impotent. There are plenty of provisions in the bill that allow the Intelligence people or the Attorney General to get around the FISC, and the bill doesn't give the court any teeth.
The real nastiness, as we all know, lies in the grant of retroactive immunity to all the telecommunications companies for the Bush administration's spying when it was illegal - not merely illegal, but unconstitutional. As Senator Russ Feingold and others have noted, we don't even know the extent of the telecoms' activities in this mess. We don't know the extent of the crimes that were committed. Now, without a radical overhaul of the legislation, we'll never know.
But this needs to be repeated often as bluntly and as publicly as possible. George W. Bush is a felon, many times over: a felon, a crook, a criminal. His violations of the fourth amendment have been public knowledge for several years now.
But Congress has voted to cover up a whole bunch of his crimes.
The passage of this bill is a profound betrayal of Americans - and the very idea of America. The irony is that the original FISA of 1978 was enacted in the aftermath of the Nixon administration's intelligence-gathering abuses (Nixon was of course facing the distinct possibility of criminal prosecution when Gerald Ford pardoned him), in order to regulate such activities. So the laws conceived in the aftermath of Presidential criminality has been tinkered with to cover up more Presidential criminality, and every legislator who voted for it is an accomplice. We voted in all those Democrats in '06, and they just cave in every time it counts. Is there a bottom to all this? When will Democrats at last grow so sick of not getting anything done that they get something done. Are they so cozy inside that beltway that they've not only lost touch with the American people, and the most basic principles of democracy, but lost any desire to be in touch? Wait, maybe I just answered my own question.
Obama's 'yes' vote was the most serious betrayal of all. Here he had a chance to walk his talk, and he sided with behemoth corporations. I suppose I'll still vote for him, but I had concerns about his progressive credibility from the beginning. Now he's starting to look like little more than the lesser of the evils. I'm lowering my expectations of any genuinely progressive action coming out of an Obama administration. Making history by being the first African American President is just not enough. If he's elected, we need to keep the pressure on him constant.
What the hell are the Democrats afraid of? I think the American people would love to see something real happen: to get at the truth and see some justice done, even if - especially if - it shakes up our politics in a serious way. All these Democrats seem to think that they have something to loose if they so much as mention the elephant in the room. I think the public's opinion of the Dems would skyrocket if they showed some guts. This unending capitulation is painfully tedious. They could do the right thing, bring some genuine excitement to the theater of politics, and get folks interested.
On to the next battle, i guess. There are plenty. Let us slog on, and create some theater of our own in the process.
The real nastiness, as we all know, lies in the grant of retroactive immunity to all the telecommunications companies for the Bush administration's spying when it was illegal - not merely illegal, but unconstitutional. As Senator Russ Feingold and others have noted, we don't even know the extent of the telecoms' activities in this mess. We don't know the extent of the crimes that were committed. Now, without a radical overhaul of the legislation, we'll never know.
But this needs to be repeated often as bluntly and as publicly as possible. George W. Bush is a felon, many times over: a felon, a crook, a criminal. His violations of the fourth amendment have been public knowledge for several years now.
But Congress has voted to cover up a whole bunch of his crimes.
The passage of this bill is a profound betrayal of Americans - and the very idea of America. The irony is that the original FISA of 1978 was enacted in the aftermath of the Nixon administration's intelligence-gathering abuses (Nixon was of course facing the distinct possibility of criminal prosecution when Gerald Ford pardoned him), in order to regulate such activities. So the laws conceived in the aftermath of Presidential criminality has been tinkered with to cover up more Presidential criminality, and every legislator who voted for it is an accomplice. We voted in all those Democrats in '06, and they just cave in every time it counts. Is there a bottom to all this? When will Democrats at last grow so sick of not getting anything done that they get something done. Are they so cozy inside that beltway that they've not only lost touch with the American people, and the most basic principles of democracy, but lost any desire to be in touch? Wait, maybe I just answered my own question.
Obama's 'yes' vote was the most serious betrayal of all. Here he had a chance to walk his talk, and he sided with behemoth corporations. I suppose I'll still vote for him, but I had concerns about his progressive credibility from the beginning. Now he's starting to look like little more than the lesser of the evils. I'm lowering my expectations of any genuinely progressive action coming out of an Obama administration. Making history by being the first African American President is just not enough. If he's elected, we need to keep the pressure on him constant.
What the hell are the Democrats afraid of? I think the American people would love to see something real happen: to get at the truth and see some justice done, even if - especially if - it shakes up our politics in a serious way. All these Democrats seem to think that they have something to loose if they so much as mention the elephant in the room. I think the public's opinion of the Dems would skyrocket if they showed some guts. This unending capitulation is painfully tedious. They could do the right thing, bring some genuine excitement to the theater of politics, and get folks interested.
On to the next battle, i guess. There are plenty. Let us slog on, and create some theater of our own in the process.
Last week I started drafting a post about how the Hillary Clinton's campaign was profoundly historic whether or not she won the nomination and the great good it did for womankind in general and how I hoped her die-hard supporters didn't give up on the Democrats because an Obama presidency can also be a vehicle for moving the feminist agenda forward and because a McCain presidency would just be no damn good, but one of my favorite Nation columnists, Katha Pollitt, wrote a piece that I think just nails it. So just go to the link and read it please.
There is a refreshingly level-headed piece in the N.Y. Times today about kids and technology. The question of when it is appropriate to introduce certain gizmos to your child is now a basic parenting issue that simply did not exist twenty years ago. Author Warren Buckleitner did his homework and consults the literature on child development. While he focuses exclusively on the concepts of Piaget, he successfully conveys the notion that cognitive development proceeds in stages which must be allowed to play out if an individual is to achieve anything like her or his full potential. Infants and toddlers, for instance, do just about all their learning through their senses and their bodies. They need to push, pull, grasp and poke. They need to put things in their mouths (that's the most sensitive place; you get more information that way. It's not all about whether something's edible.). Most electronic or digital gadgetry is pretty useless at this juncture. Three and four-year-olds love to pretend to talk on telephones, just as they pretend to use other tools grownups use, but they're not likely to do much more with a functioning telephone than pretend just the way they do with their toys. Many technologies will be useless to children before they're ready for them.
There are of course electronic and computer-based devices designed and marketed for children in different age ranges. Toys with buttons to push and wheels to turn that also make recorded sounds have their place, and I know my nephew has has done some solid early reading work by playing games on his Leapster. But such things are no substitute for tapping a bell and hearing it ring, or spinning a top with one's own fingers, or finding out how high a structure one can build with simple blocks. A child's play constitutes a vital set of physics/social science/biology experiments, and they need to experience the mechanical and living world directly. We live with all manner of technology around us, and children should certainly be exposed to those realities, but it's more important for them to know about earth, sky, water, sun, leaves, bugs, and friends.
As with most of these ideas, this applies to adults every bit as much as to children.
So turn the damn thing off, whatever it is. It'll be there when you come back.
There are of course electronic and computer-based devices designed and marketed for children in different age ranges. Toys with buttons to push and wheels to turn that also make recorded sounds have their place, and I know my nephew has has done some solid early reading work by playing games on his Leapster. But such things are no substitute for tapping a bell and hearing it ring, or spinning a top with one's own fingers, or finding out how high a structure one can build with simple blocks. A child's play constitutes a vital set of physics/social science/biology experiments, and they need to experience the mechanical and living world directly. We live with all manner of technology around us, and children should certainly be exposed to those realities, but it's more important for them to know about earth, sky, water, sun, leaves, bugs, and friends.
As with most of these ideas, this applies to adults every bit as much as to children.
So turn the damn thing off, whatever it is. It'll be there when you come back.