Thursday, December 28, 2017
Monday, December 25, 2017
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Judy Garland - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
This is the only good version of this song: the original lyrics, which capture the exquisite melancholy of being separated from someone you love at Christmas. Note the date: 1944. Bing Crosby's and Karen Carpenter's voices were fantastic, but they ruined it by trying to make it more "positive" and "upbeat". I don't know the story behind the changing of the lyrics, but I can just picture Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra saying "Say, how 'bout we make this a little more upbeat? This song is depressing!" Bah, same mentality that added that dumb final verse to "Gloomy Sunday" about waking up and finding it was all a dream when they translated it to English. But by taking away the melancholy of the song, they took away its deeper meaning; because it's also a song of courage, and of hope. Foolish hope, perhaps. Many, many people who were separated from their loved ones in 1944 were never going to spend another Christmas with them. But when you're living on hope, it's all you have, and you have to do just what the song says: make the best of here and now, and keep hoping that that thing, whatever it is, is going to get better. Otherwise, the only alternative is melancholy's hideous cousin, despair.
Monday, December 18, 2017
"Minuet no. 60" - Danish String Quartet
This is lovely. My daughter heard this quartet on NPR and told me about them.
I danced a minuet in my first acting job (outside school plays). It was Cinderella, and I was a courtier and the captain of the guard. Also, in my brief time taking piano, I complained about having to learn children's songs like "Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star", and my teacher in frustration said, "Well, how about some Bach, then?" To which I replied, "Yes, please!" So the only thing I ever really learned on piano was Bach's Minuet in G. I was kind of a pain in the ass when I was young. Ha ha, yes, I know what you're thinking, so let me say it for you: "You're still a pain in the ass, Mike!"
Your pardon, if the nudes offend anyone. I didn't make the video. Although I personally have no objection to the aesthetic admiration of the feminine form, as long as one can do so without inordinate lust (which I can). God made the universe beautiful, and the very last thing he created was the most beautiful thing of all: the woman. "Rejoice in the wife of your youth...let her breasts satisfy thee always." (Proverbs 5:18-19)
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Plutarch on Marital Relations
"Some men, either unable or unwilling to mount themselves into their saddles through infirmity or laziness, teach their horses to fall upon their knees, and in that posture to receive their riders. In like manner there are some persons who, having married young ladies not less considerable for the nobility of their birth than their wealthy dowries, take little care themselves to improve the advantages of such a splendid conjunction, but with a severe moroseness labor to depress and degrade their wives, proud of the mastery and vaunting in domestic tyranny. Whereas in this case it becomes a man to use the reins of government with as equal regard to the quality and dignity of the woman as to the stature of the horse." -- Plutarch, Conjugal Precepts
I came across this today, and it struck me as a fine example of the inaccuracy of the standard modern feminist narrative of the past. That is, that before feminism came and enlightened us and set women free from the shackles and dungeons of patriarchalism, all women were everywhere oppressed by cruel men who valued them not at all except for the pleasure and fruit their bodies afforded. Here is an example from the first century A.D. of a man--a Greco-Roman and a pagan, no less, teaching other men that they should be respectful and gentle to their wives.
I, on the other hand, maintain that, though it is true, has been true, and unfortunately, always will be true (until the restoration of Justice and all things upon the Earth), that there are bad men who treat women badly, that the patriarchal past is not nearly so monolithically oppressive and evil as they pretend. There were men who treated their wives badly. And there were men who treated their wives well. Just as there are now. Different ages and cultures contained varying mixes of the two: one could very easily say, for example that women were treated much better on the whole in Victorian England than they were in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. I would argue that women are treated much worse on average in relationships by men in our society today than they were a hundred, or even fifty years ago. But there have always been good men, who genuinely love women and desire and strive to treat them kindly and with respect and dignity.
But the feminist narrative is not about accuracy or truth. It is propaganda, pure and simple. In order to sell a radical ideology, one must create a dichotomy of oppressor class vs. victim class, and then re-write history and define the world according to that view. Communists use proletariat and bourgeoisie; Nazis used Jews and Arians; the French reign of terror used common and noble; and feminists use women and men.
As an example, feminists reading this passage will no doubt seize immediately upon the use of the horse as a metaphor, and claim that Plutarch is equating women to livestock. But in reality, it is just a metaphor: just as, when Jesus uses agricultural parables to demonstrate spiritual truths, he is not equating his disciples to plants in value or worth--it's just a metaphor. Focus instead, on his actual theme--that husbands should show "equal regard to the quality and dignity of the woman". And it's not equal regard to the quality and dignity of the horse--it's to the physical stature of the horse, in regard to mounting it. Again, metaphor. Meaning that the man must himself rise up to the challenge of being the husband of a woman of quality and dignity, as he must make the effort to mount a tall horse, rather than lowering the horse to his own level.
I came across this today, and it struck me as a fine example of the inaccuracy of the standard modern feminist narrative of the past. That is, that before feminism came and enlightened us and set women free from the shackles and dungeons of patriarchalism, all women were everywhere oppressed by cruel men who valued them not at all except for the pleasure and fruit their bodies afforded. Here is an example from the first century A.D. of a man--a Greco-Roman and a pagan, no less, teaching other men that they should be respectful and gentle to their wives.
I, on the other hand, maintain that, though it is true, has been true, and unfortunately, always will be true (until the restoration of Justice and all things upon the Earth), that there are bad men who treat women badly, that the patriarchal past is not nearly so monolithically oppressive and evil as they pretend. There were men who treated their wives badly. And there were men who treated their wives well. Just as there are now. Different ages and cultures contained varying mixes of the two: one could very easily say, for example that women were treated much better on the whole in Victorian England than they were in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. I would argue that women are treated much worse on average in relationships by men in our society today than they were a hundred, or even fifty years ago. But there have always been good men, who genuinely love women and desire and strive to treat them kindly and with respect and dignity.
But the feminist narrative is not about accuracy or truth. It is propaganda, pure and simple. In order to sell a radical ideology, one must create a dichotomy of oppressor class vs. victim class, and then re-write history and define the world according to that view. Communists use proletariat and bourgeoisie; Nazis used Jews and Arians; the French reign of terror used common and noble; and feminists use women and men.
As an example, feminists reading this passage will no doubt seize immediately upon the use of the horse as a metaphor, and claim that Plutarch is equating women to livestock. But in reality, it is just a metaphor: just as, when Jesus uses agricultural parables to demonstrate spiritual truths, he is not equating his disciples to plants in value or worth--it's just a metaphor. Focus instead, on his actual theme--that husbands should show "equal regard to the quality and dignity of the woman". And it's not equal regard to the quality and dignity of the horse--it's to the physical stature of the horse, in regard to mounting it. Again, metaphor. Meaning that the man must himself rise up to the challenge of being the husband of a woman of quality and dignity, as he must make the effort to mount a tall horse, rather than lowering the horse to his own level.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Monday, December 11, 2017
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