Peace

powering down for earth hour

3.28.2009 8:30 - 9:30 PM

What the Hell...?

though the dancing may be bad,

this is pretty awesome ...

Matt Harding believes interacting with so many different people challenges him to understand what unites humanity.

Ludwig Van R.I.P.

Return to Vienna
by Rita Dove
Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me.... Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace. The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape by a girl's careless hand. Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover. The hills were gold with late summer; my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse. From my window I could see onto the courtyard where a linden tree twined skyward — leafy umbilicus canted toward light, warped in the very act of yearning — and I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle the silence around me. At first I raged.Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling. I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I'd missed — larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd's home-toward-evening song rushed in, and I would rage again. I am by nature a conflagration; I would rather leap than sit and be looked at. So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered, burning towards her greater, constant light. Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it...It is impossible to care enough. I have returned with a second Symphony and 15 Piano Variations which I've named Prometheus, after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god who knew the worst sin is to take what cannot be given back. I smile and bow, and the world is loud. And though I dare not lean in to shout Can't you see that I'm deaf? — I also cannot stop listening. Ludwig Van Beethoven 12.16.1770 - 3.26.1827

Nano a Nano

Tata Nano

Apple Nano

I think they are about the same size...

Tata Motors' 'People's Car'

the 4-door Nano, which will be the world's cheapest car with a dealer price of 100,000 rupees ($2,500).

Magical Thinking

Life changes fast.






Life changes in the instant.



I had the good fortune to see Vanessa Redgrave in
"The Year Of Magical Thinking"
in 2007.

As they dim the lights on Broadway tonight

my heart aches again in much the same way.

The play is based on Joan Didion's memoir about the loss of both her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and then her daughter, Quintana.

Ironically Quintana was hospitalized after a collapse and bleeding in her brain.

"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it."

"I can think of no more cruel example of life imitating art. As Vanessa Redgrave so convincingly inhabited Didion's pain she cannot have known she was rehearsing for her own strikingly similar tragedy.

On stage, Redgrave skilfully morphed into the grief-stricken writer, playing Didion with muscular conviction.

To prepare for the part, Redgrave will have pictured the life-support machine, relived the sadness of her own ex-husband dying, tried to imagine the horror of losing a daughter. In this light, the death of Natasha Richardson seems linked to Joan Didion's own loss; an aftershock rippling out from the tragedy that exploded her life and spawned the memoir.

The arc of Natasha Richardson's life mirrors that of Quintana, too: both born to well-known artistic parents, both blonde, talented, their deaths shocking and inexplicable. The dreadful irony cannot have escaped either mother this week.

In this work Joan Didion has given us all a blueprint for grief."

added quotes from Charlotte Ross - Evening Standard UK

--Joan Didion - The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). Joan Didion lost her husband five days after her only child lapsed into a coma (her daughter died, two years later).
Natasha Jane Richardson 5. 11. 1963-3.18.2009

Canada shoes up? Na

Nobody has big enough "shoes" to stand up to the Bush dynasty.

About 1,500 Canadian business and oil executives paid $400 per plate during the luncheon speech of Bush while some 200 protesters gathered outside the convention center calling the former U.S. leader a war criminal and blowing whistles. Polcie arrested four demonstrators, including a man who tried to enter the venue without a ticket.

Thanks for the Beatles, Bozo and Bonanza

Alan Livingston

Capitol Records President

Dead at 91

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

Daniel Kreps - Rolling Stone

Music industry icon Alan Livingston, the man credited with signing the Beatles during his time as president of Capitol Records, passed away on March 13th due to age-related causes. He was 91. Livingston was at the helm during a tenure that saw Capitol also sign acts like the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, the Steve Miller Band and the Band. Livingston is also noted for creating the Bozo the Clown character.

According to Billboard.biz, it was Livingston who decided that the label should release the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” as a single. The record company rejected earlier singles by the Fab Four, deeming them unsuitable for America. After releasing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in 1963, Livingston brought the group over in 1964 and Beatlemania began. Livingston is also credited with reviving the career of Frank Sinatra after the Chairman of the Board saw his popularity lull in the early 1950s. Livingston recommended Sinatra work with composer Nelson Riddle, resulting in songs like “I’ve Got the World on a String” and “Young-at-Heart.”

Livingston is also responsible for inspiring the famed Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles, LA Weekly reports, making that landmark the first circular office building ever constructed. Livingston received the Lifetime of Laughter Achievement Award from the Clown Hall of Fame in Milwaukee in 1998 for Bozo. Livingston is survived by his wife, actress Nancy Olsen, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1950 for her role in Sunset Boulevard, a son, daughter and two stepdaughters. (Another son, Peter, the one who showed some of his father’s shrink-wrapped “Butcher” cover albums to disbelieving dealers at a Beatles Convention in 1986, pre-deceased him.)

Livingston hired his brother, composer Jay Livingston, to write the theme song for a new TV western he was developing as vice president of programming at NBC in 1959. It was called “Bonanza” and ran for 14 years and 431 episodes.

Alan Livingston 10. 15. 1917-3.13.2009