"It seems to me that to organize on the basis of feeding people or righting social injustice and all that is very valuable. But to rally people around the idea of modernism, modernity, or something is simply silly. I mean, I don't know what kind of a cause that is, to be up to date. I think it ultimately leads to fashion and snobbery and I'm against it."
Jack Levine: January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010
LEVEL BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EXISTENCE
Marion O’Dwyer stars as Maeve, a woman defiantly at peace in her new oasis – A ghost estate - in Dropping Slow by Belinda McKeon.
Marion O'Dwyer was Maeve
Featuring Michael Harding
Natalie Radmall Quirk - back announcements.
Featured sound recordings by Chris Watson
Tthe recordings from the Arigna Mine were by Peter Woods.
Producer Kevin Brew
It's a one-act length or shorter play, didn't have time to listen to a longer one but I'd like to get back into posting one every week, preferably a new one that isn't the same old thing.
GETTING BACK INTO teaching full time has been more challenging than I had expected it would be, which accounts for the large gaps in writing for this site. Part of that has been incorporating some of the newer software and other digital resources into my teaching, which means I've got to learn that better, myself. I've also been changing some of my long-established practices in teaching beginners - up to the 3rd grade as that's generally defined. I've always encouraged experimentation in composing and improvising as well as ear-training but I think it's a good idea, now, to emphasize that even more than learning pieces. Getting used to changing how I teach has been a real challenge, since I won't teach anything I haven't done for myself, first.
Every time you touch the instrument or sing you're a beginner if you're still doing it and not just going through the motions. Betty Carter, not long before she died said that the music has to be new, every day because we were new every day. That's as good a philosophy of making music as I've ever read or heard or thought of.
At five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my dream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the world. It is like the One Christ awakening in all the separate selves that ever were separate and isolated and alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds coming back together into awareness from all distractions, cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love. It is like the first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.
Such is the awakening of one man, one morning, at the voice of a nurse in the hospital. Awakening out of languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of sleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be gentleness.
It's pretty clear that Levy almost immediately broke the agreed to rules and took the low ground so I think it was entirely justified for Hasan to respond in kind.
I'm not a huge fan of formal debating because it's almost never really going to be held to and I think reality can't be effectively dealt with in a fixed format with a fixed time limit, even when you limit the topic. I've never heard one where everyone followed the rules since I was in high school, and that one devolved into pat generalities that solved nothing, it was an exercise in following a format.
I think it's pretty obvious that Levy was the less honest of the two which is why I think Israel has lost so much support over its conduct of not only this war but all of the various wars it has conducted since 2000. I was so shocked and disgusted with its conduct in Lebanon during the Bush II regime that this one doesn't surprise me one bit. I think the U.S. should seriously restrict any aid it gives to Israel, including an understanding that no more will be given to the present regime or one like it in the future. Considering Israel's attack using pagers this past week, it could certainly have done something against Hamas than its genocidal war in Gaza. I like Mehdi Hasan, support all of those prosecutions for war crimes he challenged Levy to support and which Levy refused to.
You don't have to love the Israeli government to oppose Hamas or any other criminal regime, setting it up so that you're demanded to support one or the other is sort of the ultimate loaded question, which is hardly ever put as a question. As The Reverend William Sloane Coffin pointed out during the so-called struggle for hearts and minds in a response to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, they didn't have to choose either the Soviets or the United States, that they could hate both of us. I have the same opinion of the Hamas regime and the Netanyhu regime. though I think it's a serious question to bring up. I'd never accuse the Hamas regime of democratic legitimacy but I can't absolve the voters of Israel for keeping a criminal as the head of its government longer than David Ben Gurion held that position.
If Kamala Harris become president, I hope she will drastically change U.S. policy towards Israel, it is my most serious criticism of President Biden, who I think is the best President we've had since Lyndon Johnson left office, that he has given the support to the Israeli government that he has, though even he has gone beyond what Johnson did in public in criticizing the conduct of Israel's war and occupation in Gaza.
