Jing-reed's Musings from Thailand

The Center of All Things

.

 

 

 

. . .  and a more lyrical view of the same concept by that poet/astronomer Carl Sagan:

.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau 1925 – 2012

"Few artists archieve the level of recognition, admiration and influence of Fischer-Dieskau, and even fewer live to see, that influence realised during their own lifetime. Ushering in the modern recording era, he challenged our percepton and processes of how recordings could be made, explored the possibilities of modern recording and exploited the potential for popularity of classical music; and all this while setting standarts of artistic archievment, integrity, risk-talking, and the aestetic ideal that became our new norm. Whetever we bask in the beauty of his tone, revere the probing, questioning power of his intellect, of simply wonder at the astonishing physical abilities throught all that he has archieved in his long recording career, we must also pause and say THANK YOU to this great artist, whose legacy, like a great and bright star lighting the way for those who follow in his passion for singing, is exemplary in every way."
—Thomas Hampson, May 2012, Hall of Fame, Gramophone Magazine.


I had the honor of attending one of Mr. Fischer-Dieskau's recitals many years ago.  Still recall the majesty of that experince.

x

Maurice Sendak 1928 - 2012

I admit to being a long time afficionado of the books and words of Maurice Sendak. An affair which began as I was finishing my undergrad work at L.A. State in 1963, and when his 'Where The Wild Things Are' was published, and my closest friend J. was pumping out yet another child.  [Although she had never found a husband, she seemed to become impregnated with increassing regularity.]

Maurice Sendak was doing the same, but with phenomenal books for children.


Where the Wild Things Are (as read by Christopher Walken)

.

 

Maurice Sendak and Stephen Colbert   Part I

.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

 

Maurice Sendak and Stephen Colbert   Part II

.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Bubbles of Delusion

Accidental Gods

"As the motorcade crept up Broadway, the shower of tickertape and confetti was so thick that one might have failed to notice Emperor Haile Selassie I, serene as a saint, buried in the pomp and protocol of his own welcoming. In 1954, the small yet dignified despot arrived in New York to partake in a liturgy of champagne toasts. Accompanied by the exotic Princess Semble and the thunder of a twenty-one-gun salute, the Ethiopian monarch impressed himself upon the Eisenhower White House, the deans of Harvard, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Redwoods of California. On this, his first state visit to America, Haile Selassie swapped Coptic crosses for autographed baseball bats, elephant tusks for honorary degrees, and confessed a taste for milkshakes. Wearing his field marshal uniform, as always, crested with ten rows of medallions, the Emperor flew to Hollywood, where he met Marlon Brando on set as Napoleon. Somewhat perplexingly, Brando exclaimed, “You’ve won more battles than I have.” (By most lights, Selassie’s signal military distinction was surrendering his country to Mussolini in 1936.)"


Thus begins a literary romp of a select few of the accidental gods and divinities of human history.  Interesting reading, and almost too bizarre for comprehension. As humans we seem to want to believe in just about anyone [or anything]. 

But of course those mentioned are no more strange than the belief in the 'real divinities'. 

'The Royal Plowing Ceremony' — การพืชมงคล

The contemporary science of agronomics and meterology seem to get lost in the swirling mists of time as Thailand continues to celebrate a ceremony that the oxen that do the ploughing for the rice production have all the answers.  It isn't even a Buddhist belief, but rather borrowed from the Hindu religion.

"In the ceremony, two sacred oxen are hitched to a wooden plough and they plough a furrow in some ceremonial ground, while rice seed is sown by court Brahmins. After the ploughing, the oxen are offered plates of food, including rice, corn, green beans, sesame, fresh-cut grass, water and rice whisky.

Depending on what the oxen eat, court soothsayers make a prediction on whether the coming growing season will be bountiful or not. The ceremony is rooted in Brahman belief, and is held to ensure a good harvest."

This is a Thai news report of the ceremony from 2010.  There is a fascinating homage to HM the King which begins at 04:11 and has subtitles in English.

.

Yet Another Apocalypse . . . . . [yawn]

This time the date is May 27, 2012.  And Ronald Weinland is the most recent of god's 'end time prophets'. 

"As readers of this site know, May 27, 2012, is the time that I have stated as being the date Jesus Christ will return as King of kings over all government on this earth. For such an event to come to pass, the Trumpets of Revelation must all sound, the United States and dollar collapse, the ten nations of Europe arise to fulfill the final revival of the Holy Roman Empire, and Russia with China must unite against Europe in WWIII."

As can be seen in the following video, at least evangelical christians are consistent - they are certainly comitted to doom and destruction.  Sounds to me llike yet another 'great disappointment' for the christians. Tsk, tsk.

[FYI, did I neglect to mention that the good Rev. Weinland is also facing a criminal trial for federal tax evasion this month?]

.

The Silence Wins

Dawkins vs. Sri Lanka, and silence wins

"They call it the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, this island of Sri Lanka. But you could just as well call it Religion Island. There are no less than four major religions practiced here, and that doesn’t count the people in villages that make offerings to the local tree gods. Buddhists dominate the religious landscape, but there are Hindus and Muslims and Christians in abundance. I’ve heard that over 98 percent of this island’s population consists of active worshippers of one religion or another. . . . .

It was with some anticipation, then, that those of us inhabiting Religion Island awaited the coming of Richard Dawkins. His book The God Delusion is, after all, meant to be the definitive scientific debunking of religion for our time. Dawkins came to attend the Sixth Annual Galle Literary Festival, which was started by an English ex-pat named Geoffrey Dobbs and has become a major stopping point for international literary types. These days, the festival attracts big names from all over the world. Galle is a beautiful little city at the southern end of Sri Lanka possessing a Portuguese-Dutch colonial fort jutting out from a rocky promontory into the tropical splendor of the Indian Ocean. It is a damn nice place for a literary festival. . . . .


. . . . It seems Richard Dawkins has no place for the statues of Polonnaruwa in his understanding of the world. And so the great confrontation on Religion Island took place mostly as a battle between competing silences. Richard Dawkins touched down upon the soil of Sri Lanka for a few days and then flew off again to his next destination. He preferred not to know much about the religious practices of the people who live here. He preferred to pass over the recumbent Buddhas of Sri Lanka in silence. And they prefer their silence too. Those stone faces have endured every human folly for a thousand years, and will do so, presumably, for a thousand more."

 

x

Disclosure

The Disclosure Project

"Top-secret military, government, intelligence and corporate witnesses to secret projects tell their true stories which disclose the greatest covert program in world history. This explosive testimony by actual government insiders proves that UFOs are real . . . . . "

Having worked for a top secret agency of the U.S. government during my military service many years ago, I am well aware of the bizarre lengths the government will go to in an effort to preserve their grip on what they consider their personal domain, and the public be damned.  Secret government agencies, including their special projects, and democracy are not compatable.  They now have near complete control over the most important information available during the entrie course of human history — the fact that we are not alone in the Universe.

Disclosure Witness Video  - Part 1 of 2

Disclosure Witness Video  - Part 2 of 2

The Black Cat — Le Chat Noir

Nearly 60 years have passed since I was first introduced to the poster art of Théophile Steinlen and 'Le Chat Noir' [The Black Cat], an event which I had fogotten until today when I received an email from a friend in California with a link to a video on Youtube.

The year was 1953 and I was stationed at an Army Intelligence school about 40 miles from Boston, Mass.  Upon arriving at Fort Devins and being assigned to a two man room for my six months of schooling there, I soon realized that I had fallen in love with my roommate.  Fortunately it was mutual.

I was only 19 years old and had never been in a gay relationship before.  Completely new territory.  As a part of my introduction to the world of gay men, one night Gregg took me to a gay bar in Boston, 'The Black Cat'.  Over the large bar was an enormous poster of 'Le Chat Noir' by Steinlen. 

Memory and recall is such an odd quality of human beings. Although I haven't thought about this incident of the past for nearly 60 years, it was suddenly as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.  . . . . .

.

New Photo of Stars in Milky Way

New Milky Way Photo Captures 1 Billion Stars

"More than a billion stars blaze bright in a new photo of our Milky Way galaxy snapped by an international team of astronomers.

The new picture, which was released today (March 28), combines infrared images of the Milky Way taken during sky surveys by two different instruments, the UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii and the VISTA telescope in Chile. The photo is part of a 10-year project that is gathering mountains of data to help guide future research, scientists said.

"This incredible image gives us a new perspective of our galaxy, and illustrates the far-reaching discoveries we can make from large sky surveys," Nick Cross, of the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. "Having data processed, archived and published by dedicated teams leaves other scientists free to concentrate on using the data, and is a very cost-effective way to do astronomy."



Related video on the Gaia global space astrometry mission.

.