He Was One of the Good Ones

The title of this post is a quote from one of the comments in a blog post I was reading earlier this morning following the passing of Pete Seeger. That quote pretty much sums it up, I think. He cared about people, he cared about this planet we all share, and he tried to teach us, using the universal language of music, how to live together.

He established a real trend among many musicians with his activism, and I find it funny that there are people out there that like to berate musicians for taking a stand on things (actually, it seems that those who make the loudest noise about it are on the right, even though they have their poster children that speak out about certain causes - but, ironically, they are often causes that are not in the best interests of society as a whole). I can't say that my particular political views are linked directly to Pete - I knew some songs he had written, but they had been covered by other artists when I became aware of them. But from what I know of him, we think a lot alike in many respects.

Frankly, some of today's performers could probably take a lesson or two from Mr. Pete Seeger. I could be wrong, but I don't see the likes of Miley, Justin, or Kanye having the level of social consciousness I see in performers like CSNY, Jackson Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Bono, Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, and so many others from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And these artists that I "grew up" with continue doing these things to this day. I'm not saying that these younger performers aren't involved in social causes, but they do not seem to be as obvious from where I sit - and, in my opinion, that's a problem. 

"It troubled him, it troubled him deeply, that technology was so advanced, that our emotional state was so inadequate to cope that, with the push of a button, in a fit of rage, we could wipe ourselves off the face of the Earth. And he really wanted to fix that, and always felt like he failed." - Tao Rodríguez-Seeger (Pete's grandson)

Thank you, Mr. Seeger, for working to make the world a better place. We've got a long way to go, but we're a little closer to the goal because of you.

Way Back In Henry VIII's Time

I recently saw several episodes of the TV series "The Tudors" on BBC-America, a program in which the producers certainly took some liberties with the facts (it's labeled as "historical fiction"). But it prompted me to finally download an audiobook that had been on my wish list for quite some time, The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty (G.J.Meyer). As I was listening last night, I came upon a section that really caught my attention, mainly because I was so surprised to see that, even back in the 16th Century, theologians (and kings, obviously) were picking and choosing which sections of the Old Testament actually apply. Not unlike what they do today. I transcribed the relevant section from Chapter 2 where the author is discussing Henry's attempts in the 1520s to get his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled:

There were problems, moreover, with the biblical passage to which Henry attached so much importance: "If a man takes his brother's wife, they shall be childless." One of the mentors of Henry's youth, the learned and revered John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, pointed out that nothing in these words indicates that they refer to a dead brother's wife. On the contrary, a reader's natural inclination might be to assume the opposite. As for the warning about childlessness, nothing could be more obvious than that Henry and Catherine had a living child, Princess Mary. Henry, clutching at straws, suggested that a mistake had been made when Leviticus was translated from Greek into Latin, so that the word liberis ("children") had been incorrectly substituted for filius ("sons"). In an age when all educated people shared a knowledge of Latin, and no one could have claimed to be a theologian without mastering it, this argument got him nowhere, having no basis in fact. Leviticus was, in any case, a peculiar foundation upon which to construct arguments about how Englishmen were supposed to conduct themselves in the 16th century. It included many rules, some of them intended for Hebrew priests, to which no one paid the least attention. Instruction in the proper way of killing chickens, for example, along with prohibitions against eating of rabbits, and the incorrect trimming of hair and beards. The church had long taken it as settled that the relevance of Leviticus did not reach far beyond the time, place, and people for which it had been written. 

Even worse for Henry's case, Leviticus was directly contradicted by another Old Testament passage, one from a book written later and, therefore, arguably preemptive. Deuteronomy 25:5-7 declared it to not only be permissible, but obligatory, for a man to marry the childless widow of his dead brother: "He shall go in unto her and take her to him to wife." Failure to do this would mean that the dead brother was "put out of Israel," a deplorable fate, and therefore severe punishment was prescribed for those who did not comply. The straw that Henry clutched this time was the notion that the kind of marriage prescribed by Deuteronomy had been a mere ceremonial matter, and that in any case the Jews themselves had abandoned such practices many centuries before. About this, too, he was proved wrong.  

The point, I suppose, that I'm trying to make is there is so much worthy of our skepticism in the OT, this being but one example. Not eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:9-12, Deuteronomy 14:9-10) is another silly thing in there, along with the interpretations of Leviticus 18:22 today by those busy bodies who are trying to stop same-sex marriage (Yes, I know what it says, but I say if you want to follow a literal interpretation of Lev 18:22, you better stop eating shrimp, oysters, lobster, etc., because that prohibition is in there, too. You CANNOT pick and choose this stuff without me labeling you a hypocrite.)

I think the most important sentence in the paragraphs quoted above is this one: The church had long taken it as settled that the relevance of Leviticus did not reach far beyond the time, place, and people for which it had been written. If Pope Clement VII chose to ignore parts of Leviticus in the 16th Century, we should probably do likewise with ALL of it here in the 21st.

*(Truth be told, I had an Anglican vicar tell me over 30 years ago that most of the Old Testament was a collection of (allegorical) tribal stories. Some years later this idea was reinforced when I read The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (Neil Asher Silberman, Israel Finkelstein) - bottom line to be taken away from the book is that the archaeology in that region simply does not support most of the OT stories [and it doesn't take but a couple of minutes searching the internet to learn that, for example, the Noah's Ark story was a rewrite of a portion of the Mesopotamian poem Epic of Gilgamesh - can't believe they're making a new movie about Noah . . . why bother?).]

And, suddenly, the conversation turned . . . Crimson.

Went with a friend over to Cedar City for some shopping (and a trip to the vet for Ginger - nothing serious) today and one of the stops was at the health/nutrition store. While I was waiting for Charlene to complete her purchase, I was whistling along with Beethoven's 6th as it was playing on the store's sound system. The clerk made a comment about my familiarity with the piece (or something along those lines) and I made the off-the-cuff statement (have no idea where it came from or why) that "Beethoven is a good choice if you can't listen to King Crimson." The clerk, who was probably in her mid-30s, lights up and says "I saw King Crimson back in the 90s in Las Vegas."

Now how cool is that???!!! There's someone else in southern Utah that truly appreciates GREAT music!

(I would also learn that, while away at college, her mother put all of her vinyl in a non-air conditioned storage unit, ruining all of her records, including King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, and many others. :-( )

And now, for your listening pleasure, some live King Crimson from 1994 & 1995: Robert Fripp (guitar), Adrian Belew (vocals/guitar), Tony Levin (bass/Chapman Stick), Bill Bruford (drums/percussion), Pat Mastelotto (drums/percussion), Trey Gunn (background vocals/Stick).

Progressive Rock - for when you really want to listen to and appreciate the music!!!

Oh the Hypocrisy . . .

Everyone who knows me well, knows that I am politically liberal. That's not to say that aren't some conservative ideals I agree with, just that there is nothing in today's "conservative" platform I find agreeable. When I talk conservatism, I am talking about old school Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower or Theodore Roosevelt. Let's face it, most of the conservative politicians (I cannot call these modern pretenders Republicans - they do NOT represent historical Republican ideals in any way shape or form) in the U.S. are a bunch of nuts. And so are the conservative commentators. Right near the top of that list are nut jobs like Glenn Beck.

I refuse to link there, but Beck's The Blaze website has an article about how (ZOMG!) the President and his family did not attend any Christmas services while on vacation in Hawaii last week. Okay, so they only attend church occasionally, the family may have their reasons, and it really is not our place to judge them because of that.

Why "hypocrisy" in the title?

Let's look at the big picture: Bush II's church attendance was almost exclusively limited to private services in the chapel at Camp David. President Clinton's family, on the other hand, attended church publicly almost every Sunday during his two terms. Bush I, an Episcopalian, was not affiliated with any Washington, D.C. church according to several sources I found. How about Saint Ronnie Reagan*, worshiped by the new conservatives as maybe the best president ever? Well, he never attended church while he was in office. Meanwhile, his predecessor Jimmy Carter not only attended church in Virginia, he even taught Sunday school.

At the end of the day it appears that, even though our current president doesn't attend regularly (about 20 times over his first term+), the Democratic presidents seem to have a much better attendance record than their Republican counterparts. So maybe God's Own Party really isn't . . .

Dear Glenn Beck: Stuff a sock in your pie hole, you lying blowhard.

Oh, don't want to forget to mention that on Christmas Day 2013 the President spent part of his day visiting with U.S. military men and women in Hawaii. You know, those same members of the military modern conservatives seem to care about when they're serving, but love to take away their benefits once they become veterans.

*In 2012 there were many complaints from conservative commentators about the fact that O hadn't visited Israel yet (he did go in 2013). Guess how many times St. Ronnie visited that country during his two terms? That's right, a big fat goose egg.