It is said that the New Deal kept America from moving radically to the left after Hoover. I don't see what could keep that from happening today when the bottom 99% of the people begin to realize that there is plenty of money and they don't have it. It is amazing how predictable that today's capitalists are. You would think that they would avoid looking like a Marx primer on the results of capitalism.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Darryl or Natalia Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 7:33 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] America should have supported the Monroe Doctrine in the Falklands Saturday's recital sounds exciting; have a great show! (Can't find anything on Wioste Olawan.) Nothing like a live performance. Just saw several, decades old. Swept away by some You Tube clips of the two Oistrakhs performing Bach's Double Violin Concerto. Then I went on to David Oistrakh doing Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Saw him with Yehudi Menuhin, then more of Menuhin, then Heifetz, then back to Igor Oistrakh. then a '66 recording of Vivaldi done by the Oistrakhs and the Kogans. I guess I really needed that. Regarding honesty in America: I suspect they'll have to be defeated to make a few realizations, much like we all grow up a little upon the death of a loved one. Likely environment is going to break them before the truth about economic failures stemming from corruption and elitist greed. The silence of joblessness, of factories, schools and hospitals closing, intermittent energy, trucks and cars permanently parked, and trees and nature once again spreading out will make space for the elusive silence needed to contemplate. Fires alone should pave way for a lot of silence. At such a point, there will be no money left to finance oil wars, and probably not even urban wars. People will be forced to use their minds towards values that generate sustainability, creativity and peace as the only conditions of life. Developing nations in the process of losing that distinction due to their rising middle classes will go through the same. Environmental degradation will unfortunately wipe out huge numbers, and few nations will be in a position to take rank with then former US pinnacle of reach and influence. China barely spends a tenth that of the US on defense, and even with their increasing wealth, environment will hit them hard, forcing expenditures on disaster relief. Though the US has successfully ignored their own disasters, there'll come a point of demand as stressors increase. Politicians who propose war with Iran or Korea will get fewer votes, and funding for national and local concerns will start to carry the budget. A new New Deal is coming, I believe, but while the toys are still too distracting, Mother Nature has more lessons pending. Natalia P.S. About Boleyn?? Ray Harrell wrote: Hi Natalia, Sorry to be so late in answering you. I'm getting a student ready with a wonderful recital that happens on Saturday. She doing six languages including an encore in Lakota. It's time consuming but a wonderful thing to do. Old Italian, Schubert, Puccini, Faure, Rodrigo, Rachmaninoff and Wioste Olawan. She's just 18 and has hungrily devoured this music like a man drinking water in death valley. She and another 13 year old mezzo gives me hope for the future. They won't all turn out like the last generation now in the job market who can think of nothing but desperation and money. Yes of course I know the "Winter's Tale". I read it in the Catskill Mountains years ago. It was a "trip" to think of the Hudson river in that way. We may have that frozen horror soon if the weather shifts from hot to cold as some think it might. I always enjoy your mind. Let me finish with a little story about something that happened last week. I met a former student on the street. He's an old man now who is spending his later years working in plays. He retired as an MD and so has the money to work where he wants. His son was playing a concert in Berlin with a major orchestra there. The theme of the work that he was playing is Jewish music. They are both Jewish. We were talking about what that is like. I mentioned that the Germans had not had the problems that the rest of Europe and England is now having with the economy. He said that he appreciated them because they were blunt about where they were and what they had done. They didn't refer to Jews who didn't survive the camps as deaths but as murders. Now this man was a part of the group that was later called Neo-conservatives here as they made music together and I taught some of them and studied with their Patron who was a concert pianist-critic. I never believed their politics but music making is good. So he told me how he appreciated the Germans being honest about the reality of the Holocaust. Both of us then agreed that America has completely failed as she lies about the massacres, calling them "battles" and speaks of the death marches in these words: "Alas for them their day is o'er." With music by capitalist composer Charles Ives. Everyone hears about the Spanish boot on the backs of the Quechua at Potosi but it took an Irish professor at Yale to write the true history of the world genocides. He pointed out that the English Empire and their Immigrants actually murdered more people here and elsewhere than the Spanish and of course deliberately kept less good records of such. For them the "problem" is always "out there." However value is intrinsic and the solving of solutions begins with confession and speaking the truth then proceeds to competence and the design of a well ordered action plan for solving the problem. But for that to happen you have to speak the truth and have an ideal in the imagination. If the ideal is flawed then the product will be as well. That in a sentence is my judgment of most of the solutions offered on this list to the current "Winter's Tale." REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Darryl or Natalia Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 4:46 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] America should have supported the Monroe Doctrine in the Falklands That was uplifting! What did you learn from Ann Boleyn? Thought I'd ask if you've ever read a book titled, 'Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin. Out of print, by A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Brace & Company, but the library, at the very least, should have it. I recently re-read it after about twenty years, having gratefully come across it in a Sally Ann. It's centered in New York, starting at the beginning of the belle epoch, and is so rich with beauty that one reviewer from the New York Times Book Review remarked "...I find myself nervous, to a degree I don't recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance." Of all the reviews I could have picked, this one resonated most. Why I think it will appeal to you is that Helprin incorporates all senses to reflect what draws people to such a place, and unveils a core of genius, if only his own, in every fiber. It's educational, it's familiar, and it's adventurous. I remembered from before how amazed I was to be so taken with detailed descriptions of even mechanical things. This guy turns this mundane exercise into poetry. Light and music, which he brings about with imaginative virtuosity of language, course through his veins, as do humour and compassion. Fantasy is masterfully integrated, though I wonder just how much may once have been a part of New York's history. This author can reveal things about life and New York that you have never seen, and will make you even more proud and determined to be a part of it. Are you sold, yet? Let me know if you can't find it. Natalia Ray Harrell wrote: An antidote to Bill Gates? I taught an Argentinean during the Falklands. He was a very cultivated fellow who left his Red Poncho with black trim with me as a parting gift. I have it next to my Sandinista Mask from the brother of another student who ran the National Library in Nicaragua. Both brothers are children of culture and affluence who tried to rebuild what Samoza had destroyed. Well, here's the answer to Milton Friedman and the current English ax on the only English identity that seems worthwhile. Constant chatter is no substitute for poetry of music. Ann Boleyn was one of the favorites on my reservation when it came to poems about life and love. It seems that the spirit of poor Ann has revived and the English culture is now her surrogate. Better we should listen to the Argentineans, the Venezuelans and the Costa Ricans. Or maybe the great Scandinavian cultural programs. Their orchestras regularly come to New York and blow the critics away. And then there is Anna Netrebko and the Russians. Damn! REH Books venerated in a land where culture is everything Argentines have a different understanding of government's obligations By Andrew Cohen, FreelanceAugust 12, 2010 To call El Ateneo Grand Splendid a bookstore is to call St. Peter's Basilica a church; it does not begin to describe its breathtaking, celestial beauty. This emporium of books began life in 1919 as a theatre, with a deep stage, a brocaded curtain and a painted dome (with its allegory of peace) designed by an Italian artist, Italians having built much of this elegant capital. For decades the Grand Splendid featured silent film, orchestral music, ballet and of course, the tango, the soul of Argentina. Since 2000, it has been a bookstore, the largest in Latin America. This is a temple of books, a literary shrine, a cathedral of curiosity. Some 3,000 people come here every day to browse, read and buy. You find them reading in every corner of the place, curled up under the cornices, sipping an espresso in the cafe (which was once the stage) or lounging in the blood-red velvet boxes where patrons once watched performances. The performance today is books, and books alone, playing every day and night to a loyal, rapturous audience. Forget the Internet and online book sales. Forget Amazon and Indigo. Forget e-books. They are here, but they have not yet breached the citadel of Buenos Aires, what may be the world's last refuge of books, the kind made of paper and ink. This is a city in love with books. There are said to be more bookstores in Buenos Aires than in Brazil, a country of 190 million (compared with 42 million in Argentina). In some neighbourhoods, there are more bookshops than in all of Santiago in neighbouring Chile. Booksellers claim there is one bookstore for every 6,000 residents of Buenos Aires. Books matter here, which is why there are so many of such variety. Bookselling is "a true profession," they argue, which isn't to say that it is a hugely profitable one, or a safe one. Help comes from the state. By law, books are sold at the same price everywhere in the country -- Germany follows a similar practice -- which means that independent bookstores are not undercut by the big-box retailers. Booksellers also benefit from tax breaks. Why is this so? Books have been part of life here since Argentina became independent in 1810. Two of the founding fathers -- Jose de San Martin and Manuel Belgrano -- donated books from their own collections to found the national library, just as Thomas Jefferson donated much of his collection to the Library of Congress after it had been burned by the British in the War of 1812. Both Belgrano and San Martin thought books, and the ideas they germinated, were central to the survival and success of the new republic. In the 20th century, the generals would think the opposite: among their assaults on democracy, they would ban and burn books, arrest authors and close presses. Books, though, are just one example of the extraordinary commitment to culture in Buenos Aires. It holds a literary festival here every year, one of many festivals celebrating theatre, dance, music and film. Its annual international book fair draws a million visitors. In a city of 13 million struggling to get by, it spends three per cent of its budget on culture. The sidewalks are heaving and the subway stations are crumbling, but there is money, by God, for free tickets to the Tango! It is about civic priority. Argentina has not recovered from its economic collapse of 10 years ago, when it defaulted on its debt and deflated its currency, but the show must go on. "If you don't invest in culture, you go home," Hernan Lombardi, the minister of culture, says of governments that ignore this deeply human need. "In a crisis, we worry about losing identity. That's when we need to support culture." So the city finds the money to run 10 museums, while the national government maintains even more, with minimal admission. Some are minimal, some are often closed, some are under renovation. There is money to restore the spectacular Colon Theatre and support for sophisticated free guidebooks to the city's pizzerias, ice-cream parlours as well as bookstores. And subsidies to keep tickets to the performing arts affordable, especially for young people, whom Lombardi says will walk rather than take the bus to afford a play. Cut culture? Not here. The reverence for culture represents a different way of looking at life, a different understanding (like public transit) of the obligations of governments to citizens. It is a common attitude in Europe but largely foreign in North America. Lombardi -- a man of humour and warmth who sweetens his conversation with classical references -- will take that message, and more broadly, one celebrating the charms of Buenos Aires, when he visits Canada this autumn. We should listen. Andrew Cohen is president of the Historica-Dominion Institute. These views are his own. C Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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