BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Monday, September 28, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
On Lovers:
I have thought about this problem for many years. I see that many people are committed to the "ideal" of lifetime commitment, but as a man who has known a few women, I feel differently about marriage, I just couldn't bring myself to join those who want to live with one person for forty or fifty years without involving themselves with any other member of the opposite sex.
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People are too interesting. Confining one's self to one person within a box barely justifies living the one life we are given to live.
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This is not to say that marriage cannot be fulfilling. I would want to be married to a lifelong partner (as I am, although in a continuation of what I now call my second marriage) but, although I love her more deeply than ever, I would not want to have known only her.
Friendships and relationships deeper than friendship are necessary.
On Lovers:
I have thought about this problem for many years. I see that many people are committed to the "ideal" of lifetime commitment, but as a man who has known a few women, I feel differently about marriage, I just couldn't bring myself to join those who want to live with one person for forty or fifty years without involving themselves with any other member of the opposite sex.
-
People are too interesting. Confining one's self to one person within a box barely justifies living the one life we are given to live.
-
This is not to say that marriage cannot be fulfilling. I would want to be married to a lifelong partner (as I am, although in a continuation of what I now call my second marriage) but, although I love her more deeply than ever, I would not want to have known only her.
Friendships and relationships deeper than friendship are necessary.
Monday, September 14, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
It is so obvious to anyone who knows the numbers that single payer would be cheaper and a more efficient health care delivery system. Corporate America has us chained to its misled minions. Because they can shout louder than us they control. It's like dealing with a madman. You have to patronize him to keep him quiet.
We saw a Glenn Beck inspired demonstration on the corner of Broward Blvd and Andrews Avenue yesterday. the people looked like homeless people. They waved hand made signs (suppossedly proving that it was not an organized demonstration.) A scruffier bunch could not have been found on the Bowery of the 1940's.
Maria wanted to get out of the car and ask them what Medical Plan they had. My guess was Medicare and Medicaid.
Over and over again I think of Ortega y Gasset: "the masses are asses."
It is so obvious to anyone who knows the numbers that single payer would be cheaper and a more efficient health care delivery system. Corporate America has us chained to its misled minions. Because they can shout louder than us they control. It's like dealing with a madman. You have to patronize him to keep him quiet.
We saw a Glenn Beck inspired demonstration on the corner of Broward Blvd and Andrews Avenue yesterday. the people looked like homeless people. They waved hand made signs (suppossedly proving that it was not an organized demonstration.) A scruffier bunch could not have been found on the Bowery of the 1940's.
Maria wanted to get out of the car and ask them what Medical Plan they had. My guess was Medicare and Medicaid.
Over and over again I think of Ortega y Gasset: "the masses are asses."
Friday, September 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
LibraryThing recommendations
1. A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Wassilij Grossman
2. The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
3. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
4. Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
5. Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte
6. Oblomov by Ivan A. Goncharov
7. The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes
8. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
9. To the Finland Station (New York Review Books Classics) by Edmund Wilson
10. The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
see more recommendations for this work
Member recommendations
1. christiguc recommends The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
2. chrisharpe recommends Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
3. chrisharpe recommends Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
4. chrisharpe recommends One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
5. chrisharpe recommends War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
LibraryThing recommendations
1. A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Wassilij Grossman
2. The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
3. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
4. Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
5. Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte
6. Oblomov by Ivan A. Goncharov
7. The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes
8. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
9. To the Finland Station (New York Review Books Classics) by Edmund Wilson
10. The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
see more recommendations for this work
Member recommendations
1. christiguc recommends The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
2. chrisharpe recommends Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
3. chrisharpe recommends Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
4. chrisharpe recommends One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
5. chrisharpe recommends War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Saturday, September 05, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Do Americans Know what Socialism is?
A Christain has complained that Obama is a socialist:
I see, so "man has a strong tendency to want to prosper at the expense of others," and this is his "God given right." So that's what God wants.
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"When property is taken from its owner without his consent, and transferred to another solely for the benefit the recipient, then property rights have been violated and an act of plunder has been committed." In this case I suppose you are referring to the money that taxes take from citizens. --Strange, I thought we had elections and that the people choose the representatives that establish these taxes.
-
When you refer to "recipients" above are you referring to old ladies in nursing homes who turn their social security checks over to the Fortune 500 corporations that are taking care of them? Are you referring to school lunch programs that are responsible for keeping millions of children from hunger? Or are you referring to the reverse taxes (also known as tax breaks) given to major corporations like Exxon?
-
As to: "The total inertness of mankind. Man needs the state to order his social life and is incapable of organizing his own life without the overreaching hand of government elitists."
This is not even near the case in Sweden or Norway, and there are no "overreaching hands of government elitists." Instead there are well housed, well educated, citizens with adequate health insurance.
But, speaking of "overreaching hands" what do you call the bureaucrat-administrators of private health plans in the US who decide which prescriptions to fill and which operations to perform on the 80% of the population who actually have any insurance? Last year United Health Care rejected (denied) 30% of medical claims submitted to them.
And then, "The infallibility of the state and its legislators. Under socialism, the state is by definition always right and can never be wrong. This means that when something goes wrong, a scapegoat must be created."
-
The kind of socialism referred to here is the kind that Hitler created under National Socialism. No one in the US is talking about any kind of socialism, no less Nazism.
Or, "A popular fallacy of our times is that it is not considered sufficient that the law should be just -- it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education and morality throughout the nation."
-
Let's take welfare to start. It's a pretty good idea not to allow people to starve or sleep in the streets. Is that welfare? Before, you brought God into the argument--does God prefer that people sleep in the streets?
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Education: Do you actually believe that education of the entire population regardless of ability to pay, destroys the state? I'm shaking my head in disbelief. --We need more free education in order to further strengthen our country. Without it we're headed for the dump. China & India are already nipping at our heels. They're not afraid of education.
"...and morality throughout the nation."
-
This country has always legislated morality and there are people who wish to legislate more morality. They don't live in the left.
-
Who has kept marijuana away from freedom loving citizens--no less hospitals and hospices? Leftists?
Who is agitating for anti-abortion laws. What about selling liquor on Sundays? The left? Why are doctors afraid to prescribe heavy does of narcotics to cancer patients in pain? A socialist government already in Washington?
-
I am running out of steam--but I can say this at last: If Jesus were here he would be a true socialist and would be caring for every child and ever oldster in the nation. He would be working toward a single-payer universal health plan. He would demand that every person have the food he needs to live a healthy strong life. He would fight for a progressive tax system (render under Caesar)that would ensure that the poor would be able to live full lives.
-
With Jesus as our guide greed and rapaciousness would wither and disappear--and would not be considered virtues.
Do Americans Know what Socialism is?
A Christain has complained that Obama is a socialist:
I see, so "man has a strong tendency to want to prosper at the expense of others," and this is his "God given right." So that's what God wants.
-
"When property is taken from its owner without his consent, and transferred to another solely for the benefit the recipient, then property rights have been violated and an act of plunder has been committed." In this case I suppose you are referring to the money that taxes take from citizens. --Strange, I thought we had elections and that the people choose the representatives that establish these taxes.
-
When you refer to "recipients" above are you referring to old ladies in nursing homes who turn their social security checks over to the Fortune 500 corporations that are taking care of them? Are you referring to school lunch programs that are responsible for keeping millions of children from hunger? Or are you referring to the reverse taxes (also known as tax breaks) given to major corporations like Exxon?
-
As to: "The total inertness of mankind. Man needs the state to order his social life and is incapable of organizing his own life without the overreaching hand of government elitists."
This is not even near the case in Sweden or Norway, and there are no "overreaching hands of government elitists." Instead there are well housed, well educated, citizens with adequate health insurance.
But, speaking of "overreaching hands" what do you call the bureaucrat-administrators of private health plans in the US who decide which prescriptions to fill and which operations to perform on the 80% of the population who actually have any insurance? Last year United Health Care rejected (denied) 30% of medical claims submitted to them.
And then, "The infallibility of the state and its legislators. Under socialism, the state is by definition always right and can never be wrong. This means that when something goes wrong, a scapegoat must be created."
-
The kind of socialism referred to here is the kind that Hitler created under National Socialism. No one in the US is talking about any kind of socialism, no less Nazism.
Or, "A popular fallacy of our times is that it is not considered sufficient that the law should be just -- it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education and morality throughout the nation."
-
Let's take welfare to start. It's a pretty good idea not to allow people to starve or sleep in the streets. Is that welfare? Before, you brought God into the argument--does God prefer that people sleep in the streets?
-
Education: Do you actually believe that education of the entire population regardless of ability to pay, destroys the state? I'm shaking my head in disbelief. --We need more free education in order to further strengthen our country. Without it we're headed for the dump. China & India are already nipping at our heels. They're not afraid of education.
"...and morality throughout the nation."
-
This country has always legislated morality and there are people who wish to legislate more morality. They don't live in the left.
-
Who has kept marijuana away from freedom loving citizens--no less hospitals and hospices? Leftists?
Who is agitating for anti-abortion laws. What about selling liquor on Sundays? The left? Why are doctors afraid to prescribe heavy does of narcotics to cancer patients in pain? A socialist government already in Washington?
-
I am running out of steam--but I can say this at last: If Jesus were here he would be a true socialist and would be caring for every child and ever oldster in the nation. He would be working toward a single-payer universal health plan. He would demand that every person have the food he needs to live a healthy strong life. He would fight for a progressive tax system (render under Caesar)that would ensure that the poor would be able to live full lives.
-
With Jesus as our guide greed and rapaciousness would wither and disappear--and would not be considered virtues.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
wisdom from Arnold Rothsteinand my father:
During the late fifties and sixties, one of the best tout sheets at Belmont Park in NY was Dr. Marlin's Picks. Dr. Marlin was a pretty good handicapper and earned the appellation "Dr." when he picked the winners of seventeen straight races in 1963. To my knowledge his longest streak after that time was six straight winners, a feat that is not unheard of, though rare, among racing cognoscenti. However, like all gamblers who live long enough, he died broke, as eventually, as Arnold Rothstein (and my father) said, "the odds will always get you."
wisdom from Arnold Rothsteinand my father:
During the late fifties and sixties, one of the best tout sheets at Belmont Park in NY was Dr. Marlin's Picks. Dr. Marlin was a pretty good handicapper and earned the appellation "Dr." when he picked the winners of seventeen straight races in 1963. To my knowledge his longest streak after that time was six straight winners, a feat that is not unheard of, though rare, among racing cognoscenti. However, like all gamblers who live long enough, he died broke, as eventually, as Arnold Rothstein (and my father) said, "the odds will always get you."
Sunday, August 16, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
MAGNOLIA --Paul Thomas Anderson*, writer, director.
I saw this 3 hour film tonight at home. One of the best. Enters my top fifty if I ever make a list. It's complex and original. And never fails to be interesting. Several intertwined stories dealing with forgiveness, happiness, attempting to erase the indelible past, confession, coincidence, deus ex machina, the weakness of the strong, the strength of the weak, choices made in the past, choices to be made in the future, and choices of the present. Creating false personas, and promising to be true.
And, two men dying asking for forgiveness from those they hurt, and from those who don't now that they have been hurt.
Is this enough to keep your interest?
*Note: Two actors have 3 part names like the writer, Paul Thomas Anderson: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Phillip Baker Hall, if that doesn't confuse you then the movie won't either.
Comment from a friend:
Magnolia. You asked me to tell you what I understood from the rain of frogs. All of the characters in Magnolia, like all of us, are enslaved by our thoughts. We make ourselves, then we get stuck in our own viewpoint. We behave in accordance with what we think. Each of us must liberate ourselves from the incarceration of our ideas. That is the most difficult task we will ever face. It takes great courage to insist on an honest appraisal of what we are and demand of ourselves that we become what we know we must be. The rain of frogs alerts us to the urgency of this task. There is no more time. We must face up to ourselves now, or we shall never escape. The frogs are a warning that everything depends on our acting to liberate ourselves now, or it will be to late, and will languish in the prison of our childish notions until we die. Michael
MAGNOLIA --Paul Thomas Anderson*, writer, director.
I saw this 3 hour film tonight at home. One of the best. Enters my top fifty if I ever make a list. It's complex and original. And never fails to be interesting. Several intertwined stories dealing with forgiveness, happiness, attempting to erase the indelible past, confession, coincidence, deus ex machina, the weakness of the strong, the strength of the weak, choices made in the past, choices to be made in the future, and choices of the present. Creating false personas, and promising to be true.
And, two men dying asking for forgiveness from those they hurt, and from those who don't now that they have been hurt.
Is this enough to keep your interest?
*Note: Two actors have 3 part names like the writer, Paul Thomas Anderson: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Phillip Baker Hall, if that doesn't confuse you then the movie won't either.
Comment from a friend:
Magnolia. You asked me to tell you what I understood from the rain of frogs. All of the characters in Magnolia, like all of us, are enslaved by our thoughts. We make ourselves, then we get stuck in our own viewpoint. We behave in accordance with what we think. Each of us must liberate ourselves from the incarceration of our ideas. That is the most difficult task we will ever face. It takes great courage to insist on an honest appraisal of what we are and demand of ourselves that we become what we know we must be. The rain of frogs alerts us to the urgency of this task. There is no more time. We must face up to ourselves now, or we shall never escape. The frogs are a warning that everything depends on our acting to liberate ourselves now, or it will be to late, and will languish in the prison of our childish notions until we die. Michael
Thursday, August 13, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Here's something from the Paris Review, Summer 2009. #107:
Gay Talese on infidelity.
"Here's what people don't get. Sex is not that important. It isn't the most important thing in any relationship. Marriage is never about sex, and yet in American fiction so many stories and novels present a sexual dalliance ans an unpardonable sin. (In real life) I never thought that should be true. Marriage is the main event. These other relationships bring me into worlds I would otherwise not know. These relationships have helped our marriage. ..I think of all these people who get divorced over minor matters...I don't see how people can live in conventional marriages. "
Gay Talese has a fifty year marriage with a very accomplished,independent and fiscally successful wife.
Here's something from the Paris Review, Summer 2009. #107:
Gay Talese on infidelity.
"Here's what people don't get. Sex is not that important. It isn't the most important thing in any relationship. Marriage is never about sex, and yet in American fiction so many stories and novels present a sexual dalliance ans an unpardonable sin. (In real life) I never thought that should be true. Marriage is the main event. These other relationships bring me into worlds I would otherwise not know. These relationships have helped our marriage. ..I think of all these people who get divorced over minor matters...I don't see how people can live in conventional marriages. "
Gay Talese has a fifty year marriage with a very accomplished,independent and fiscally successful wife.
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley to be published in September
"And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own."
This novel is unlike anything Doctorow has written before, it uses to the Collyer brothers to draw us through the twentieth century in America as seen by a blind man and his eccentric pack rat brother whose bodies were found in a Fifth Avenue mansion after their deaths.
"Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding.
The brothers are often cited as an example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as disposophobia or 'Collyer brothers syndrome', a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.
Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over 100 tons of rubbish that they had amassed over several decades." Wikipedia
E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley to be published in September
"And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own."
This novel is unlike anything Doctorow has written before, it uses to the Collyer brothers to draw us through the twentieth century in America as seen by a blind man and his eccentric pack rat brother whose bodies were found in a Fifth Avenue mansion after their deaths.
"Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding.
The brothers are often cited as an example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as disposophobia or 'Collyer brothers syndrome', a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.
Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over 100 tons of rubbish that they had amassed over several decades." Wikipedia
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Saturday, August 08, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
William Vollmann
But meaning can be found in the most desolate zones, for survivors if not for victims, and in Rising Up and Rising Down Vollmann relates the following story from the San Francisco morgue as what he calls a "Solomonic parable":
Three different mothers were led into the viewing room one by one to identify a dead girl, and each mother claimed the girl as hers, with a desperate relief, as I would suppose.... Those three mothers must all have given up hoping that their daughters would ever speak to them or smile at them again. They wanted to stop dreading and start grieving. They didn't want to go into viewing rooms any more. And maybe the glass window was dirty, and maybe their eyes were old or full of tears. It was a natural mistake. But one mother was lucky. The dead girl was really her daughter.
William Vollmann
But meaning can be found in the most desolate zones, for survivors if not for victims, and in Rising Up and Rising Down Vollmann relates the following story from the San Francisco morgue as what he calls a "Solomonic parable":
Three different mothers were led into the viewing room one by one to identify a dead girl, and each mother claimed the girl as hers, with a desperate relief, as I would suppose.... Those three mothers must all have given up hoping that their daughters would ever speak to them or smile at them again. They wanted to stop dreading and start grieving. They didn't want to go into viewing rooms any more. And maybe the glass window was dirty, and maybe their eyes were old or full of tears. It was a natural mistake. But one mother was lucky. The dead girl was really her daughter.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
"A Man Escaped" Director: Robert Bresson--1956
The most tantalizing, enthralling movie I have ever seen. The true story of a French prisoner of the Nazis, who meticulously plans an escape. The detailed planning takes 1 hour and 30 minutes of the 1 hour and 40 minutes of the entire film. Breathless, riveting, alarming, complete non-stop tension.
Rating:
Run Time: 102 min
MPAA Rating:
Released: 1956
Directors: Robert Bresson
Genre/Type: Drama
Prison Film
Docudrama
Escape Film
Producers: Alain Poiré
Jean Thuillier
Plot Synopsis by Tom Wiener
In a genre crowded with quality films, director Robert Bresson's POW drama has become legendary, in part because it strips down the experience of a man desperate to escape to the essentials. That's in keeping with the approach Bresson took with all of his films. The filmmaker, who spent a year in a German prison camp during World War II, based this story on the experiences of Andre Devigny, a French Resistance fighter sent in 1943 to the infamous prison in Lyons, where 7,000 of the 10,000 prisoners housed there died either by natural means or by execution. Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) is certain that execution awaits him, and he almost immediately begins planning his escape, using homemade tools and an ingenuity for detecting the few weaknesses in the prison's structure and routine. For a time, he goes it alone, then takes on a partner, but only reluctantly. Fontaine does get some help from a couple of prisoners allowed to stroll in the exercise yard, but for the most part he is a figure in isolation. For Bresson, the process of escape is all, and in simplifying his narrative he ratchets up the tension, creating a film story of survival that many feel is without peer.
"A Man Escaped" Director: Robert Bresson--1956
The most tantalizing, enthralling movie I have ever seen. The true story of a French prisoner of the Nazis, who meticulously plans an escape. The detailed planning takes 1 hour and 30 minutes of the 1 hour and 40 minutes of the entire film. Breathless, riveting, alarming, complete non-stop tension.
Rating:
Run Time: 102 min
MPAA Rating:
Released: 1956
Directors: Robert Bresson
Genre/Type: Drama
Prison Film
Docudrama
Escape Film
Producers: Alain Poiré
Jean Thuillier
Plot Synopsis by Tom Wiener
In a genre crowded with quality films, director Robert Bresson's POW drama has become legendary, in part because it strips down the experience of a man desperate to escape to the essentials. That's in keeping with the approach Bresson took with all of his films. The filmmaker, who spent a year in a German prison camp during World War II, based this story on the experiences of Andre Devigny, a French Resistance fighter sent in 1943 to the infamous prison in Lyons, where 7,000 of the 10,000 prisoners housed there died either by natural means or by execution. Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) is certain that execution awaits him, and he almost immediately begins planning his escape, using homemade tools and an ingenuity for detecting the few weaknesses in the prison's structure and routine. For a time, he goes it alone, then takes on a partner, but only reluctantly. Fontaine does get some help from a couple of prisoners allowed to stroll in the exercise yard, but for the most part he is a figure in isolation. For Bresson, the process of escape is all, and in simplifying his narrative he ratchets up the tension, creating a film story of survival that many feel is without peer.
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