Of all of Paul Simon's wonderful songs, Kodachrome has never really meant that much to me because I didn't really understand the song.  Like all of his lyrics it contains some catchy turns and, of course the melodic line is very strong.  "When I think back on all the CRAP I learned in high school..." Very catchy.

Still, it made me sad to read today that Kodak is doing away with their Kodachrome®©™ film after 74 years.  There have been some wonderful images captured on that fine product, but I suppose it was inevitable.  Plus which none of the Kodak big wigs was Paul Simon's mother (I don't think), so they didn't mind taking it away...

I guess when the Kodaccountants looked on their ledgers at the cost of production verses the declining sales, they realized that everything looks worse in black and white   AU mourns a little.

AU~out

nunc et in hóra mórtis nóstrae

Tother day was odd.  I had Gounod’s Ave Maria stuck in my head, so I started listening to it again and again.  Andre Voccelli’s version is amazing.  As I listened, my eyes would tear up when he sang “ora pro nobis peccatoribus”.  I found this odd because I didn’t understand what he was saying.  Has that ever happened to you?

I wanted to know what he was singing so poignantly, therefore turned I to the Interwebs and started reading all about it.  I did not know that Gounod wrote only the melody for the song.  He was listening to Bach’s first prelude and wrote this melody to go on top of it.  Good idear and beautiful outcome, 137 years after Bach wrote the prelude.

I had sung many portions of a Catholic Mass in various choirs throughout high school and college, but never an Ave Maria.  My Church of Christ directors would teach us to sing an Agnus Dei or a Kyrie Eleison but I guess they couldn’t bring themselves to lead an Ave Maria seeing as how it is a prayer to Mary.  I knew in my head that Ave Maria meant “Hail Mary”, but I did not know that the song Ave Maria (Gounod’s version anyway), was just the Hail Mary prayer in Latin (or I guess really, the Hail Mary is the Ave Maria in English )

So anyway, turns out Andre is asking Mary to “pray for us sinners” at the climax of the tune. Something about the sound of the syllables and the passion in his voice goes straight to my heart. I can’t s-plain it.

It was odd to me that the day I spent listening to Ave Maria and familiarizing myself with the words to the Hail Mary prayer, on that day, The Sniper decides we should watch The Godfather II. If you recall, towards the end of the movie, Michael performs his most evil act in the entire saga when he orders the murder of his own brother, Fredo.

Fredo is a testament to John Cazale’s tremendous acting prowess.Cazale created such a pathetic, ineffectual loser.  Very brave performance.  No one admires Fredo.  No one wants to emulate him.  He is liked and pitied, but not scorned or despised (except by his wife, of courseL).  I wouldn’t object to the postulate that Fredo’s murder is the only truly evil thing Michael orchestrates in the whole saga.

But it struck me as I was watching the movie, that although there is not much admirable at all about Fredo, he dies extremely well. As a matter of fact, I may need to revise my lists of best and worst ways to die after certain events this week.Reading about David Carradine’s untimely demise might just top the Top 5 Worst Ways To Die.  And, after re-visiting TG Part II, I think Fredo’s death has to be on the Top 5 Best Ways To Die.

Really? Yeah, really.

Consider this, Fredo had recently (so it seemed) reconciled with his brother so he has his family back, then he goes fishing (fishing is just about the only thing Fredo has ever had any success at, so there he is doing something he loves). In an earlier scene Fredo is shown revealing his “secret to catching fish” to his nephew. The secret is (shhhhh) – you say a Hail Mary before you cast your line.  So Al Neri motors fisherman Fredo out to the middle of beautiful Lake Tahoe, and there Fredo is baiting his hook and saying his Hail Mary, and the camera backs away as he’s reciting and you see the peaceful beauty of the setting, and then right after he says “pray for us sinners”, Al Neri shoots him in the back of the head. Ironically, had he been allowed to continue, Fredo’s next words would have been “now and at the hour of our death.”

Heretofore, I have lived my life in such a way that no one has shot me in the back of the head or attempted assassinating me in any manner to my knowledge.  My continued hope is that my life will be a blessed one and lived in such a way that no one longs for my violent death. Sewphar seauxgud.  However, if I can’t die like Boromir or William Travis (i.e. defending the innocent atop a mound of my slain enemies ), then I think I would choose to go like Fredo.  In a beautiful place, doing something I love, right in the middle of my prayers.  Fredo’s life was pretty failed, but it sure ended well.

How bout you?  How do you wanna go when you go?

AU~out

I know you get it right more than I do.  And I really admire how you don’t snub your nose at me because of it.  You’re awesome that way. But don’t all them other folk that always get it wrong just wear you down?  Yeah.  Me too!

I don’t know if Sonia Sotomayor is the very best choice for Supreme Court or not.  I love her story.  I understand that just because someone came from the hood and got her underprivileged Latina self an Ivy League education and had a brilliant career, she don’t get no free pass to the Supreme Court. But. Listening to fear-mongering Right Wingers try to throw the country into a panic because Obama chose her is so ridiculous.  You know?   You don't get Bernie Madoff to lead your Prison Reform campaign.  You might want to choose a voice that is less guilty.

If the Republicans don’t put a virtual muzzle on The Cheney, they will continue to have zero credibility.  When you support and encourage torture (by any other name) and when your policies result in disaster, then it follows that the path of wisdom includes shuttin your stinkin pie hole.

I’m more a Republican than I am anything else, but they continue to amaze me in their inability to get it.  They just don’t get it.  How can a party be so close to pragmatism and reason yet continually be so very continually wrong about everything continually?

I know (like I know the back of my hand) that if any of Sotomayor’s naysayers had grown up in the same conditions she grew up, that we would not be listening to them say her nay.  They would not have succeeded in their fields like she has in her’s.  That doesn’t mean she should be a Supreme Court Justice, but it does make their frantic, fear mongering naysaying hard to stomach.  You don’t have to be a Supreme Court Justice to question someone else’s ability to serve on that lauded court, but in order for your questions to be taken seriously, you have to have an established credibility.  Stop lying, GOP.  You’ve got so many more and greater problems than this.  Re-establish your credibility first, then we might listen to you.

I was justifiably angry, like everybody else, after 9-11-01 and for a long time after.  2003. 2004. If there was any talk about torture at Gitmo, I turned a deaf ear to it. I say this to my shame. 

I wanted (and still want) Osama bin Laden to either get blowed up real good in some stinking cave somewhere, or captured and extradited to the United eStates and tried for murder in the 1^st degree of ~3,000 human souls.  After his conviction, I want him sentenced to be locked up for the rest of his life, and more importantly, absolutely ignored.  No interviews.  No reporting.  No biographies.  No media whatsoever.  Just fed and otherwise ignored for the rest of his miserable stinking filthy small tiny poor life.

In a related matter, I’ve always liked the movie Dirty Harry.  Recently, I saw Taken with Liam Neeson and enjoyed that.  In both of these movies (and there are many other examples), the hero tortures a ne’er-do-well to get valuable information in his pursuit of justice.  Watching those movies, I feel the hero’s sense of urgency and sympathize with his decision to use torture to extract the needed information.  The Clock Is Ticking!! If I Don’t Find Her Now, She’ll Die!!  The Ends Justify The Means.  In Taken, Neeson even shoots the innocent wife of a ne’er-do-well (in the shoulder) in order to get someone talking.  We excuse this because He Must Save His Daughter!!  I give him even more leeway than I would Harry Callahan because, come on, that’s his daughter!

Of course, while I pray that I am never placed in a position to make such cruel choices, I can certainly understand the temptation to use any means necessary to protect the innocent.  But that’s what it is.  A temptation.  Because we’re talking about sin.  What makes us “civilized” is the idea that we all agree to be guided by Law. Not all law-breaking is sin and not all sin is law-breaking, but torture?  There’s no question.  There’s no gray area. It. Is.Wrong.

And those that are actually discussing whether or not we get useful information out of torture are the most outrageous.  I mean, drinking a baby’s blood may grow hair back on my head, but I’m never going to find out - I’m just going to keep learning to live bald and debonair.  You can’t stand for good and then do evil.  Once you start doing evil, uh, you don’t stand for good anymore.

I’m ashamed of myself for not being outraged sooner than I was, but hearing these sleazy dirt bags talking about “enhanced interrogation techniques” has sickened me.  You can rename it “Enhanced Interrogation” if you want I suppose – *plays Nazi card* – but calling it the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” did not legitimize the Holocaust.

Enough rhetoric, let’s turn to mathematics for the solutions to these conundrums.  Here’s a useful sum:

Military Intelligence using Enhanced Interrogation Techniques against Terrorists

–

Spanish Inquisition using The Rack to Extract 'confessions' from Jews

=

0.000003

GOP.  Stop fooling yourselves.

AU~out

I’m not given to worry.  I don’t see myself staying home from work for fear of catching the swine flu.  But I am washing my hands diligently and…uh…I dunno… I’m just washing my hands diligently.  It’s the best (only?) weapon in my arsenal.  I’m still working and I’m not losing any sleep over it.  But I’m glad so many schools are closing.  I’m not taking it lightly – I keep remembering Granny Gip and Evelyn.

Evelyn Louise Gipson was born in 1915 and she was buried December 9, 1918 – a tragic victim of the 1918 flu pandemic.  She was buried along with 7 others in the tiny town of Estelline, Texas that sad day.  All dead from the flu.  Her 16 year old brother was the only one who could attend her sad funeral because he was the only one healthy enough to leave the house!  Evelyn’s poor mother was bed-ridden with the flu and missed her precious daughter’s funeral.  What an awful time that must have been.

One of her other brothers (my grandfather) was born only a few months before she died, so of course, he never knew her.  Understandably, his mother (we called her Granny Gip) never recovered from the loss of her daughter.  E’en tho she survived many a year and took able care of all her children, a day didn’t go by when she did not mourn her passing.  She was never really happy after that I don’t think.  If she saw someone’s new baby, she would always think and sometimes speak out loud, “That’s a beautiful baby, but not as pretty as Evelyn was.”  Blessed are they that mourn.

Truthfully, when I see this picture, I don’t see that Evelyn was more beautiful than all other babies, but you can see that, standing against her humble clapboard house, she is dressed to the 9s and on her hair were many loving hours spent.  She was cherished.

Granny Gip died when I was young but I believe I knew how she was raised well enough to know that Granny had no doubts that young Evelyn was Heaven bound when she was taken.  But I also imagine that Granny never quite believed for sure that she herself was going to be there.  She may have sang about ‘a foretaste of glory divine’ but I doubt she had a truly Blessed Assurance.  I mourn a little thinking that Granny lived her long life only hoping that she would see Evelyn again.  But I know she is comforted and I look forward to hearing about it.  I’ll bet theirs was a sweet reunion.

Still though,  y’all make sure you wash your hands frequently.

AU~out