Mars Hill Audio points out an article by Camille Paglia in which she says the arts can be saved if they return to religion. Liberals, she says, need to let go of their harsh secularism and Marxist outlook while conservatives “need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture. Every vibrant civilization welcomes and nurtures the arts.”
Stream of consciousness, in search of a wetland
Oh man, I’m useless tonight. I’m kind of worried, because I didn’t see my renter at all yesterday, and today there’s a message on the answering machine, asking why he didn’t show up for work.
You might pray that he’s OK. His name is John.
Talking of early television, that’s a subject I can discuss with some authority, being one of the first kids to grow up with the thing. And I’m not going to tell you how it blighted my mind. Television and my grandmother were about the only good things in my life when I was a kid. TV was the only friend I had that didn’t beat me up. Television got me interested in history and in Shakespeare.
For those of you old enough to appreciate it, or just curious, here’s a YouTube clip of the opening of the old Howdy Doody Show, one of the delights of my early life. Buffalo Bob Smith (the guy, unaccountably, in a pith helmet in this clip) was one of the great pitch men of the medium. He pushed Hostess Cakes and Wonder Bread and Tootsy Rolls, and a whole mess of other products, to gullible kids like me, and our parents hated it, but on the other hand the show kept us quiet for a while.
All those great kids shows died when the government “for the sake of the children” passed legislation forbidding characters on children’s programs from endorsing products. Almost immediately there were no more national or local children’s shows, and the programming space was filled with loud, violent, badly animated cartoons.
Thanks a lot.
Buffalo Bob’s real name was Schmidt, by the way, and most of his life he was a Lutheran, though he seems to have ended up a Presbyterian, for some unaccountable reason.
Note to anyone from WWTC Radio in the Twin Cities who happens to be reading this: The background jingle on that carpet commercial you’re running just now is a vile earworm, and probably toxic and dangerous to the general public. If it runs much longer I may have to take unilateral action. And nobody wants that, do they?
On the Early Days of Television
Delanceyplace has an excerpt on television today. College professors in the 1950s didn’t buy TVs, thinking they were a waste of time. James L. Baughman writes:
Columbia University historian Allan Nevins was surprised to learn that his colleague Richard Morris had purchased a television in 1951, ‘one of the first I have seen in the home of a real intellectual,’ Nevins wrote. ‘Most reading and reflective people abominate them.’ The ‘television snobbism’ at Princeton University was so great, history professor Eric Goldman remarked seven years later, that a distinguished colleague had to sneak into Goldman’s house to watch TV.
Getting Shakespeare Wrong
In an Aspen, Colorado, performance of “Scenes From Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,” Brutus stabbed himself.
Brutus: “Stoop, Romans, stoop, and let us bathe our hands in Cæsar’s blood up to the elbows . . . Oh my. I seem to have stabbed myself.”
Trying to Ruin the Land of Oz
A while back, a guy came out a line of figurines called “The Twisted Wizard of Oz.” Variety called it “a dark, edgy and muscular PG-13, without a singing Munchkin in sight.” Now, another guy is writing a screenplay for this alternate Oz, and apparently Warner Brothers is going to run with it. From Variety:
“I saw those toys, and Dorothy as some bondage queen isn’t something I want to do,” Olson told Daily Variety. “The appealing thing about the Baum books to me is how wildly imaginative they are. There are crazy characters from amazing places. I want this to be ‘Harry Potter’ dark, not ‘Seven’ dark.”
Help us. I guess reworking something established and popular has better chances of getting off the ground than creating something similar but new. That’s how I explain the Camelot and Robin Hood rewrites.
Last Things, by Ralph McInerny
Here I am, a bona fide professional writer, and I’m stuck for words to describe the loveliness of today’s weather. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art less humid and more temperate….” I should have taken the day off and gone to the state fair and fired questions about Bohemian Grove at Michael Medved. But, as Yogi Berra once sagely remarked, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
If you think you know about the Father Dowling mystery books because you used to watch Tom Bosley in the ridiculous TV version some years back, be assured that you don’t. Father Dowling is a priest named Father Dowling, and he does live in the Midwest and he does have a nosey housekeeper, but that’s about the extent of the similarity.
The original, authorized Father Dowling is a sort of clerical Sherlock Holmes (he’s tall and thin and smokes a pipe), but kinder and more inclined to suffer fools (and sinners). He was once a rising young star in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but job pressures led to alcoholism, and the church sent him to Fox River, Illinois, a transitional suburb of Chicago, as a sort of second chance-cum-penance. But he discovered that parish ministry is his real calling, and he loves taking care of his little flock. Except for the remarkable number of unsolved murders that seem to crop up. (Also it should be noted that there are no roller-skating nuns to be seen anywhere.)
The drama in Last Things centers on the conflicts and dysfunctions of the Bernardo family, whose patriarch is Fulvio Bernardo, owner of a string of local greenhouses. Fulvio has only been moderately honest in his business dealings, and has been serially unfaithful to his pious wife, Margaret. But now his health is failing, and his children are gathering for the end.
The children include Raymond, who was once a promising young priest, but he ran away with a nun, with whom he now lives out of wedlock in California. Andrew is the underachieving middle brother who teaches English at a local college and has a live-in as well. Jessica is a successful novelist, much envied by Andrew, and remains a believer. She’s planning to write a novel based on her family’s story, and there’s an aunt who is much alarmed at that prospect, going so far as to ask Father Dowling to persuade Jessica to drop the project.
But it’s Andrew who gets into big trouble, when an insufferable colleague blames him for holding back his career, and starts a campaign of harassment against not only Andrew but his whole family. And when the colleague is found murdered in the street, well, who do you think comes under suspicion?
Father Dowling works it all out, of course, relying on his profound understanding of human motivations and sins. Along the way he also helps Raymond come to terms with the guilt he’s been carrying (and denying) ever since his defection.
All things taken together, I think I prefer Father Dowling stories to Father Brown stories. That’s heresy, I know, but although I’m crazy about G.K. Chesterton about 80% of the time, I always found the FB mysteries a little facile, a little too neat. They seem to me analogous to an archer shooting his arrows first and then painting targets around them. The Father Dowling stories are richer and more humane, less didactic (which isn’t to say there aren’t moral and theological lessons).
As a Protestant, of course, I find points in the stories where I disagree with some of the detective’s basic assumptions about Christianity. But it doesn’t interfere much for me, and the quiet, peaceful presence that Father Dowling imparts to these stories make reading them a comfort and a delight.
The “Crisis” crisis
Roy over at Writing, Clear and Simple identifies a word commonly misused, especially by journalists, in our day.
It seemed to me a matter of some importance.
A crisis, as a matter of fact.
Scientists Find Universe Origin
“It is 1 billion light years across of nothing,” they say. A Hawaiian astronomer notes, “It looks like something to be taken seriously.”
Anne Rice Endorses Clinton, Takes Flak
Author Anne Rice apparently has stirred up her readers by posting a letter of endorsement for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign on her website. I heard her talk about it with Alan Colmes, giving her reasons for making this political statement when she had sworn off those statements before. You can hear that conversation on her site. She also talks about her books, how she wouldn’t have used the word vampire had she to write them over again, and her Christian faith.
On the political matter, Rice said many people were telling her they would not vote for a president this time around. I hope that isn’t you. I understand being disappointed in our choices and in the sorry discourse we call debate, but we are a government of the people who are responsible for our own representation. We need to access the men and women who have stepped forward to serve or abuse political office and vote for the best one. The government will not respect your freedoms if you ignore it. So stop whining that Reagan or George Washington isn’t running and plan to vote in your primary and general elections.
Lawn blogging… the absolute bottom
What do I have to write about tonight? Can’t think of much. Did the usual thing at work. Came home and mowed the lawn.
The weeks of rainy weather we’ve had have turned my lawn around in a way that amazes me. Very few bald spots now, and the grass is thick—thick, I say! Like hair on an Airedale. OK, granted it’s not all the kind of grass you want, in an ideal world. When I reseeded some bare spots last year, it appears I’d bought an entirely different species of grass, one which now sits ghettoed in minority patches, agitating for equal rights and reparations. And I’ve got some crab grass, and some Creeping Charlie (I actually kind of like Creeping Charlie. And since concrete walls separate my yard from both my neighbors’, so I can’t infect their lawns, I see no reason not to indulge it).
But it’s thick! It covers the ground. Back when I lived in Florida, I used to think back on a lawn almost precisely like this (my aunt’s in St. Paul, which I’d often mowed). For all its departures from canonical orthodox lawndom, folks in Florida would have paid big money to have this kind of thick, green grass. And often did.
What I wrote above is deeply disturbing to me. All my life I’ve been a guy who’s “not into lawns.” I used to say, “Show me a guy who keeps a perfect lawn, and I’ll show you a guy with a lousy marriage.” My dislike for golf springs mostly from my distaste for broad expanses of mown grass. My original intention in buying a house was to get a townhouse, so somebody else would do the lawn.
And here I am now, taking an interest in my lawn.
I must be evolving into a better, finer soul.
I hate it when that happens.
If I ever start talking about aerating and water features, somebody do an intervention.