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March 30, 2007
Stick a feather in your cap and call it macaroni
Might as well stick a feather in your cap and call it macaroni.
Never understood that as a kid, but I accepted it. Yankee Doodle was silly, so he thought his feather was cheese-drenched pasta. Of course, it meant something different; the Macaronis were fashionable young men who’d been to Italy and picked up Continental Affectations; famous dandies given to peering with exaggerated longeur through glasses mounted on a stick, they were regarded as amusing fops by real men. So when Mr. Doodle thought a feather made him a member of the Macaroni Society, it just showed what a provincial hick he was. I loved learning that. It made the past seem so much more real in a brief and vivid way -- until then, perhaps, I didn’t think they had slang.
"Ah, let’s see," by James Lileks, The Bleat, March 30, 2007
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March 27, 2007
"Dangerous Demagoguery"
If the war in Iraq is such an unnecessary and futile expenditure of blood and treasure as Pelosi et al. have been saying, why not put an end to it?
But to do that would mean taking responsibility for the consequences — and those consequences would be disastrous and lasting. They would probably still be lasting when the 2008 elections come around.
The Democrats cannot risk that. They have taken over Congress by a very clever and very disciplined strategy of constantly criticizing the Republicans, without taking the risk of presenting an alternative for whose results they can be held responsible.
"Dangerous Demagoguery: Everyone sees through it," by Thomas Sowell, NRO, March 27, 2007
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March 26, 2007
The nice warm glow of Concern for The Right Things TM
If a newspaper had done a story on the House of 2007 based on what they knew and feared then, they would have shown small huts with solar panels and composting heaps and tiny garages and a nice warm glow of Concern for The Right Things shining from the entire project.
James Lileks, The Bleat, March 26, 2007
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March 25, 2007
"Narcissism posing as humility"
"there's nothing worse than narcissism posing as humility."
"The Hostile New Age Takeover of Yoga," by Ron Rosenbaum, Slate, March 21, 2007
... unless it's "Depravity dressed up as empowerment"
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March 23, 2007
Depravity dressed up as empowerment
Depravity dressed up as empowerment is fast becoming the cultural trope of our times.
"Triumph of the Fembots: Beauty queens are out. The Pussycat Dolls are in," by Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2007
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March 22, 2007
Barack Obama is not Tiger Woods
Although the biracial [Barack] Obama is frequently lumped with the multiracial golfer Tiger Woods as evidence of the socially healing power of interracial marriage, their attitudes are quite different. Woods turned down Nike’s suggestion that because African-American celebrities are so popular today, he should identify himself solely as black. He didn’t want to disown his mother. Woods instead calls himself black and Thai, or, at times, “Caublinasian,” in tribute to his Caucasian, black, American Indian, and Asian ancestors.
. . .
[Obama] cherishes every cause for complaint he can discern against white folks. He is constantly distressed at being half-white. Obama says he “ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites,” even though he surely realizes that his media-sensation status stems from how much white people love highly accomplished blacks who speak with white accents. He wouldn’t be a serious candidate for president at age 45 if he weren’t part black.
. . .
The message much of white America hopes to send to black America by electing Obama is: Don’t Be So Black. Act More Barack. Perhaps this explains why blacks haven’t been all that enthusiastic.
. . .
Obama was accepted into posh Occidental College in Los Angeles, which then had a black mayor, Tom Bradley. But Oxy wasn’t black enough, so in search of a community to belong to, he transferred to Harlem … well, to be precise, to that prestigious university on the edge of Harlem, Columbia. (A recurrent theme in Obama’s career is Power to the People gestures and Ivy League results.)
. . .
Most authors who write about African-Americans’ social problems appear to know nothing--and don’t seem to want to learn anything--about Africans. Our pundits and academics assume that the social history of black Americans traces to that day in 1619 when the first slaves were herded on to that dock in Virginia, but no farther back. We could call it the Black Blank Slate theory.
In refreshing contrast, in Obama’s account of race and inheritance, the continuities between Africa and African-America are clear. Kenya seems like an incipient Chicago housing project, preserved only by its inability to afford the welfare state that has ruined the inner city. His aunt’s Nairobi home is “just like the apartments in Altgeld, I realized. The same chain of mothers and daughters and children. … The same absence of men.”
"Obama’s Identity Crisis: Although he presents himself as a healer of differences, the presidential candidate’s own racial struggle paints a conflicted portrait," by Steve Sailer, The American Conservative, March 26, 2007
Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all Mr Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth.
We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses.
And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Mr Obama's own relatives and family friends.
. . .
A family friend said: "He is haunted by his father's failures. He grew up thinking of his father as a brilliant intellectual and pioneer of African independence only to learn that in Western terms he was basically a drunken lecher."
"A drunk and a bigot - what the US Presidental hopeful HASN'T said about his father...," by Sharon Churcher, The Daily Mail, January 27, 2007
Rev. Jeremiah Wright - Techonrati
"Obama Disses His Pastor," Get Rid of the DLC blog, March 7, 2007
The Obama Messiah Watch - Timothy Noah, Slate
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March 21, 2007
Muggers
Most of my friends in L.A. don't understand that London really is more dangerous than the U.S., because in the U.S. the mugger never can be sure the victim doesn't have a gun, while in the U.K. they know the victim does not. It goes against gun control received wisdom, I know, and so I guess shouldn't be true, but apparently is.
"Not falling down," Cathy Seipp, March 2, 2007
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March 19, 2007
Freedom and security
Point is, the Spartans were asked to kneel, and chose not to. Every culture has a myth like this. If they don’t, they will be vassals to culture that do.
"Coffe shop, post-protest," by James Lileks, The Bleat, Marrch 19, 2007
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.Dwight Eisenhower
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March 17, 2007
Barack Obama = Charles de Gaulle?
When Charles de Gaulle paid his first visit to embattled French Algeria after taking power in 1958, he stepped up to the microphone in front of a vast throng of Europeans and Arabs torn by murderous hostilities, stared out at them, and simply announced, “I have understood you.” The crowd exulted. Christians and Muslims alike broke into grateful tears. De Gaulle understands us! What more do we need?
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has yet to attain that level of oracular ambiguity, but his bestseller The Audacity of Hope shows this wordsmith’s facility at eloquently restating the views of both his liberal supporters and his conservative opponents, leaving implicit the suggestion that all we require to resolve these wearying Washington disputes is to find a man who understands us--a reasonable man, a man very much like, say, Obama--and turn power over to him. The politician has elicited such fervor among many white voters that Slate.com’s Timothy Noah runs a regular feature entitled “The Obama Messiah Watch” quoting “gratuitously adoring” articles. (Blacks have tended to be relatively more level-headed about him.)
. . .
Beneath this bland Good Obama lies a more interesting character, one that I like far better--the Bad Obama, a close student of other people’s weaknesses, a literary artist of considerable power in plumbing his deep reservoirs of self-pity and resentment, an unfunny Evelyn Waugh consumed by indignation toward his own mother’s people. He has been hiding out on the bestseller lists for the last two years in his enormously revealing, but little understood, 1995 “autobiography”--a more accurate term might be “autobiographical novel”--Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.
When Obama briefly surfaced in the media in 1990 as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, Random House handed him a book contract. Originally, he intended to write a disquisition on race relations, but the puerility of his theorizing discouraged him. He turned instead to writing about what he finds truly fascinating: his relatives and himself.
Obama’s gift for restructuring the past into emotionally and aesthetically satisfying patterns made for an uneasy hybrid of fact and fiction, with composite characters, clearly made-up dialogue, and even preposterous dream sequences. Recently, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the tale of his one triumph during his four years as a young ethnic activist in Chicago--getting asbestos removed from a public housing project--excluded all mention of the veteran local agitator, Hazel Johnson, who might deserve more of the credit.
. . .
Obama has led a fairly pleasant existence, with most of its suffering and conflict taking place within his own head as he tries to turn himself into an authentic angry black man.
. . .
In reality, Obama provides a disturbing test of the best-case scenario of whether America can indeed move beyond race. He inherited his father’s penetrating intelligence; was raised mostly by his loving liberal white grandparents in multiracial, laid-back Hawaii, where America’s normal race rules never applied; and received a superb private school education. And yet, at least through age 33 when he wrote Dreams from My Father, he found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against his mother’s race.
. . .
Instead, Obama falls under the spell of a leftist black nationalist preacher, Jeremiah A. Wright, who preaches African-American unity through antipathy toward whites. Reverend Wright remains a major influence on the presidential candidate. (The title of Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope, is borrowed from one of Wright’s sermons.) Ben Wallace-Wells notes in Rolling Stone: “This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr.”
"Obama’s Identity Crisis: Although he presents himself as a healer of differences, the presidential candidate’s own racial struggle paints a conflicted portrait," by Steve Sailer, The American Conservative, March 26, 2007
Rev. Jeremiah Wright - Techonrati
"Obama Disses His Pastor," Get Rid of the DLC blog, March 7, 2007
The Obama Messiah Watch - Timothy Noah, Slate
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March 16, 2007
Self esteem and delusion
We might think that Americans are eager to celebrate talented young people who can thumb their noses at the older generation and thus exorcise the lingering resentment so many harbor from being graded and evaluated in the classroom. But what American Idol reveals instead is a veritable hunger for realistic evaluation. Time and time again, contestants in the early episodes of this year's season whine obviously off key and then insist they are highly talented -- in spite of the judges' protestations. Most of those kids have not learned how to sing, but they have mastered the self-esteem and "attitude" so valued in our culture. The persistent dynamic of these episodes is expertise putting down untalented braggadocio.
"Schooled by 'American Idol'," by Christopher Ames, The Chronicle Review, March 16, 2007
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March 15, 2007
Another Irish-American President?
As I mentioned earlier there are those who insist that as Barack Obama is, while of African descent, not of African American descent, he is not black given the meaning of the word "black" in American politics. Indeed, the day after I mentioned this someone claimed exactly that.
Interesting news has reached me though that as well as his Kenyan ancestry, Obama is also, from his mother's side, descended from an Irish immigrant, one who came over to flee the potato famine. There is of course only the most coincidental connection between this news arriving now and the upcoming St. Patrick's Day drinking and vomitfest on the 17th of this month.
Which leads me, at least in the argot of this particular Anglo-Irish family, to be able to prove that Barack Obama is indeed black. For, you see, he is a Protestant, and that makes him Black Irish.
"Proof That Barack Obama is Black," Crooked Timber, March 14, 2007
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March 14, 2007
For parents with teenagers ... how to handle road rage
Trunk Monkey #6 - Chaperone Version
How the Trunk Monkey handles road rage
More Trunk Monkey videos
Sample Teenager Driving Contract is here.
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March 13, 2007
Wales - sign and CD
The sign was in Wales, the CD in an Edinburgh airport shop
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March 11, 2007
"The mantra of diversity" is "nostalgia for battles already won"
Walter Benn Michaels, an English professor at the University of Illinois, is also angry, but he has a different view of where the problem begins. He directs his anger not so much at the admissions or development office as at the entire culture of academia, which, in his view, has settled somewhere between insouciance and hypocrisy with regard to the widening class divide. "Poor people," he writes in The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality,are an endangered species in elite universities not because the universities put quotas on them...and not even because they can't afford to go to them (Harvard will lend you or even give you the money you need to go there) but because they can't get into them.This is basically true, as Bowen and his colleagues demonstrate. What Michaels adds to the discussion is the idea that many academic liberals have been deceiving themselves about this uncomfortable truth while--unwittingly, perhaps--abetting it.
What he means is that the academic left (which he tartly calls the "supposed left") expends its energy rallying against such phantom enemies as racism and sexism--erstwhile evils that he believes barely exist today, at least not in the narrow social stratum from which college students come. As a result, "progressive politics" too often "consists of disapproving of bad things that happened a long time ago." But Michaels does not stop at chiding the "supposed left" for indulging in nostalgia for battles already won. He thinks that by obscuring the real issue--the class divide--that persists behind all the smoke and noise over "diversity," the academic left has become complicit with the broader political right in rewarding the rich and penalizing the poor.
Michaels is fed up with the mantra of diversity, and it is hard to blame him. In the past, one obstacle that kept minority students out of college was patent racism--the asserted association between external physical characteristics (skin color, facial features, body type) and inherent mental capacities or tendencies.[12] Today, however, this kind of pseudoscience has been discredited, and the word "race" tends to be employed as a synonym for culture--an equivalence based on the dubious, or at least imperfect, premise that a person's ancestry tells us something important about how that person experiences the world. The problem with "this way of thinking about culture instead of race," Michaels says, "is that it just takes the old practice of racial stereotyping and renovates it in the form of cultural stereotyping."[13] People of African ancestry are expected to prefer blues to Brahms. People of Asian ancestry are lumped together in the category "Asian-American" even though they might identify themselves primarily as Laotians or Christians. In any event, they are supposed to prefer engineering to poetry.
Michaels argues that nothing much has changed by substituting the idea of particular cultures for the discredited idea of race. For pragmatic as well as analytical reasons, he wants the left to forget about this kind of diversity, whether we call it racial or cultural ("diversity, like gout, is a rich people's problem"), and focus instead on poverty. A satirical verse (quoted in another recent book by another English professor, Michael Berubé of Pennsylvania State University) nicely captures Michaels's point. It might be called the Song of the Abject Affluent, and a lot of people at elite colleges are singing it:I'm sorry for what my people did to your peopleQuite apart from the question of who "my people" and "your people" are at a time when more and more Americans claim multiple racial descent, this mixture of guilt and pride is mostly for show, just like the car.
It was a nasty job
Please note the change of attitude
On the bumper of my Saab.[14]
"Scandals of Higher Education," by Andrew Delbanco, The New York Review of Books, March 29, 2007
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March 10, 2007
Peter Getto
Peter Getto (12/31/1841-3/10/1902) married Theresa Zimmerman (12/16/1846 - 4/26/1924). One of their daughters, Sophia Adele Getto (Me Ma) , married T.J. (Thaddeus John) McDonald (9/8/1866 - 7/xx/1937) on January 10, 1900. One of Sophia and T.J.'s daughters was Josephine McDonald (aka JoJo) (1/21/1901 - 12/18/1994) who married Dr. Louis S. Roberts (PaPa). JoJo and PaPa's son, Robert Thaddeus Roberts (1/28/1928), married Patrica Ann Morley (12/6/1928 - 10/31/1971) on 7/14/1951.
JoJo's brother was William Getto McDonald, born January 25, 1902 or 1903. He had 4 children: Alice, Karen (Karin) (Maloney?), Ted, and William (Will).
PETER GETTO, manufacturer of mineral and soda water. He was born in Germany, 1841, son of Michael Getto and Sophia Eckert Getto. He married in 1872 Miss Theressia Zimmerman, and has three children - Sophia, Josephine and Theressia. He came to Kansas in 1871 and located at Wichita. He engaged in the grocery business in the firm of Hess & Getto and continued in that business for six years, then engaged in the business of manufacturing mineral and soda water. His factory is located on the corner of Main and Second streets. He owns the building and also residence on Second street and a farm in Section 10. Is a member of the K. of H., Wichita Lodge, No. 528, and of the K. of P., Warwick Lodge, No. 54, and of the Turn Verein of Wichita. Is a member of the Wichita City Council, and has served in that capacity for four years.
"History of the State of Kansas," by William G. Cutler, "SEDGWICK COUNTY, Part 9, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES (FABRIQUE - GUTHRIE).," 1888
Josephine Getto, (2/2/1877-3/7/1957), Aunt DoDo, JoJo's aunt, her mother's sister. Dodo never married.
Mema was Sophia Adele Getto McDonald.
Ordie was Rose (Rosalie) Getto, who never married, was born in 1887 and died in December 1959.
Theresa Getto
Highland Cemetery records, Wichita, KS, by Bill Pennington, 1999
(Marion Morley Nist, Patricia Ann Morley Roberts mom, wanted to be called Mimi.)
Bango was Clera Bell Tarynor
The Wichita Soda Factory was opened in 1878, by Peter Getto, the present proprietor, in a frame building, 18x40, on the corner of Second and Water streets. Capacity, first year, twenty-eight dozens daily. In December, 1882, a brick, 25x80 feet, was erected and the corner of Second and Main streets, and occupied for the purpose of manufacturing and bottling all kinds of soda and mineral waters. In 1881 a $33,300 business was transacted.
"History of the State of Kansas," by William G. Cutler, "SEDGWICK COUNTY, Part 6, WICHITA, PART 3," 1888
Also see "Residences, businesses, real estate maps, Garden City, Newton and Wichita. L.H. Everts & Co. 1887" and Getto's additon in Wichita, KS
JONES, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace K. 1308 North Topeka Avenue. Mrs. Jones, who was before her marriage Miss Teresa Getto, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Getto, attended Mt. Carmel Academy. She belongs to the Pioneer Society. Mr. Jones was graduated from Illinois University. He is a charter member of the Country Club and of the Knights of Columbus, and belongs to the Wichita Club.
. . .
MCDONALD, Mr. and Mrs. T. J. 3557 East Douglas Avenue. Until her marriage Mrs. McDonald was Miss Sophia Getto. She attended Lewis Academy and Mt. Carmel Academy. She is President of the Monican Circle, a member of the Queen's Daughters, Twentieth Century Club, and is Secretary of the Pioneer Society. Mr. McDonald attended St. Benedict's College at Atchison. He is a member of the Press Club, and the Pioneer Society. Miss Josephine McDonald has attended Mt. Carmel Academy, and has studied at the College of Music in Cincinnati. She is a member of Sigma Alpha Iota. Getto McDonald, son of Mr. and Mrs. McDonald has attended the Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
1921 Social Register, Wichita, Kansas, on rootsweb
The Wichita Beacon, Friday, March 14, 1902, page 6. Detailed report of Peter Getto’s funeral yesterday at Pro-Cathedral, conducted by Father Tihen. Burial at Highland cemetery. Article gives Father Tihen’s complete eulogy (“Peter Getto’s Funeral”).
“Tihen Notes,” notes from Wichita newspapers, by Edward Tihen (11-page pdf)
For that matter, there was a Catholic family named Getto, the descendants of old Peter Getto, who came to Wichita when it was an Indian trading post, with a pack on his back. It never occurred to me, despite the obvious surname, that the family might be part Jewish, gradually being absorbed into Kansas Christianity, until I cane to New York, where Getto and Ghetto are prominent names in the garment district. [Driscoll, 158]
Since my office had told me to get an interview from the bishop, I hunted out that dignitary, and started to walk up and ask questions, as I would of any other person, royal or lay. My arm was gently caught by Ted McDonald, who was acting as a sort of equerry to His Lordship.
Now Ted, a bald, fat, mustached, smiling traveling salesman, had married into the wholesale liquor business and family of Getto, and therefore, under rules then and there existing, was not eligible to join the Knights of Columbus. This bar to temporal and spiritual glory was irksome to Ted, who loved nothing so much as to be portly and portentous in public places. In fact, so much was he annoyed by this discrimination against booze merchants that he regularly refused to give up his rented pew, near the front of the church, to the Knights when they received Communion in a body, one Sunday morning each month.
But Ted had announced that he was going to make a magnificent gift to the new Cathedral, a marble altar, thirty feet high, and today he was harvesting the first fruits of the glory that was to be his as a result of his sharing his liquor profits with the Lord, even though times had been bad with him since Carry Nation and Henry J. Allen had aroused the Baptists to a foaming fury against King Alcohol. It was against the law to sell liquor, end one had to take certain chances in a wholesale business of this kind. Yet Ted was going to do something handsome for the great new temple of worship.
So one might not walk right up and shake the pudgy ecclesiastic by the hand as a preliminary to an interview. One had to be formally presented by Ted.
As this was not a ceremonial occasion, so far as I could observe, I did not kneel or kiss the episcopal ring, but immediately stated that I was a reporter for the Eagle, and wished to ask a few questions concerning progress of the work, probable cost of the project, and so forth. [Driscoll, 186-187]
"EAST AND WEST OF WICHITA," byCharles B. Driscoll, undated and unpublished manuscript available in electronic form from Western Institute of Irish Studies
William Getto McDonald died at his home in Naples, FL, September 2, 2006. He was born September 21, 1939 in Wichita, KS and was the son of Getto and Florence T. McDonald who preceded him in death. He was the great grandson of Peter Getto, a Wichita pioneer. Mr. McDonald graduated from Loyola University in New Orleans with a business degree and was an officer in the U. S. Army Signal Corps. He was a resident of Denver, CO and later, New Orleans, before moving to Naples. Will spent most of his working career as an accountant and sales manager and, most recently, worked as a sales manager for Lifestyle Choice Realty. He was a member of the North Naples Chapter of Rotary International and the Gulf Coast Runners Club. Will is survived by his sons, William and Thomas, both of Denver, CO and Robert of San Francisco, CA; grandchildren Ian, Alec, and Devyn McDonald; sisters Alice McDonald and Karin Maloney, both of Wichita, KS; and his brother, Ted of St. Louis, MO. A memorial service celebrating Will's life will be held at a later date and will be announced. Contributions in his memory may be made to the Gulf Coast Runners Youth Development Fund, P.O. Box 8636, Naples, FL 34102. Fuller Funeral Home Pine Ridge Road 592-1611
From a posting at Gulf Coast Runners Forum
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March 09, 2007
What to do, What to do
A friend, Jim Rogers, sent this:
Life decisions that people have to make are never simple. The importance of the initial decision should always be examined over the long run. Memories made and cherished are sure to be tempered along the way.Consider the following two choices....
Should I get a Dog .. ?????
...or have children?
Click "Continue reading" to see photos for your consideration.
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March 08, 2007
How do you order a burger, fries, and a milkshake in a library?
How do you order a burger, fries, and a milkshake in a library?
Quietly......
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March 07, 2007
Counsels of St. Francis de Sales
Live + Jesus!
"Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself."
"We must be prepared to see weeds growing in our garden and also have the courage to pull them out."
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Wales - Cardiff Castle
Cardiff Castle, Cardiff, Wales
Cardiff Castle - Wikipedia
Cardiff Castle - Castles of Wales
Cardiff Castle - Great Castles of Wales
Aerial image - Wikimapia
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March 06, 2007
Wales - uh, interesting food
As seen at Tesco
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March 05, 2007
Bank Account
This was forwarded to me by Iris, Fern's mom.
A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with his hair fashionably coifed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.
"I love it," he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.
"Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room; just wait."
"That doesn't have anything to do with it," he replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged, it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it.
"It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.
Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away. Just for this time in my life.
Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in.
So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories! Thank you for your part in filling my Memory bank. I am still depositing."
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.
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March 04, 2007
Don't Drop Me!
Because last year's was dropped....
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March 03, 2007
"He was not of an age, but for all time."
In June 2006, I was scheduled to fly back from a trip to Sicily via Frankfurt am Main. Having seen the airport many times but not the city itself, I decided to spend a few days there. But as I discovered when I went to book a hotel, there was a little problem. Germany was hosting the World Cup that month, and the city was swarming with soccer fans come from all over the globe to watch the nail-biting zero-zero ties on jumbo TVs strategically placed around the city--one even floating on a barge in the middle of the Main.
. . .
Foreign producers of Shakespeare like Groß and Wilms evidently don't find his work alien to their own experience, and, given the popularity of the plays around the world, the same may be said of theater audiences everywhere. As far as I can tell, the only people intent on questioning the timelessness of Shakespeare's plays today are literature professors in the English-speaking world. In recent decades it has become increasingly fashionable among Shakespeare scholars to deny that there is anything intrinsically great or universal in his plays. They view Shakespeare as a product of the narrow horizons of his own day, and label him a distinctly English phenomenon. Indeed his greatness is often treated as a cultural construct, something invented or even manufactured in England. His plays are said to be the product of a culture industry, which first imposed his works on England, then on the English-speaking world, and finally on the whole globe, as if he were a skillfully marketed commodity, the Guinness Stout of the Renaissance.
In this view, Shakespeare is the ultimate Dead White European Male. He was canonized by the cultural establishment of England and then used to impose English values around the world (especially throughout the British Empire). In their efforts to cut Shakespeare down to size, and find something contingent, even arbitrary, in his reputation, Shakespeare scholars sometimes speak as if the cultural establishment could have taken any one of his contemporaries--say, Ben Jonson or Thomas Middleton--and through clever packaging and marketing built him into the world's most famous poet. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! The only reason the general public pays attention to Shakespeare scholars is for their help in understanding his greatness, and yet some of them are now actively engaged in debunking that greatness as a cultural myth.
. . .
Shakespeare most often crosses the border as a liberator, not a conqueror. Indeed, cultural exchange is generally more like free trade than imperialism.
"Playwright of the Globe," by Paul A. Cantor, Claremont Review of Books, January 8, 2007
hat tip ALD
If you want to see Shakespeare presented with a focus on the language and not the sets, we give our highest recommendation to Shenandoah Shakespeare at Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia. The drive from Washington is beautiful and well worth it.
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March 02, 2007
Cailtin piano recital Jan. 28, 2007
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