I’m going to clean out my links and random thoughts here. First, what’s happening:
I’m working. It’s kind of bad news when you start to work on something and it goes really well, comes quickly, you do the math and you see that even though you thought you were behind, you’re actually right on schedule and so….well, that’s a recipe for potential hubris-fueled disaster down the road, but who cares. It’s almost Christmas!
College guy has been home for a week now. I have released High School Guy from his burdens, but his organist responsibilities remain. We will be taking a short jaunt out of state, and then, when we return, others will be jaunting to visit us. Then there will be another jaunt, but not by me. I don’t see any jaunts on my end for a good while. It’s fine. This is what we do!
They’re at Spider Man right now with their friends. Good for them! Good for me that I don’t have to go anymore! Parents often speak of the aspects of childhood they don’t miss – diapers, potty-training, sports practices – for me, Not Having to Go To Movies That Bore The Hell Out of Me is definitely in the Top Five.
And now for the links. This is absolutely random, guys. For good or for ill, random. Perhaps you’ll find something of interest. Welcome to my brain.
Daniel Greenburg died, This article calls him “The man who trusted children” – an educator who made the very good point that saying our educational system prepares children to be citizens in a democracy when the educational system is an autocratic mess makes no sense.
Here’s an entire website dedicated to the Stabat Mater.
Hans van der Velden started collecting Stabat Maters in 1992. After five years, when he owned about 40 Stabat Mater CDs, his partner Hannie van Osnabrugge created the Ultimate Stabat Mater Website with FrontPage.
The site contained all his notes on the composer, the composition, the original Latin text, and the translations. Hans continued his search for Stabat Maters, and regularly updated the site with new composers and translations.
Via the website Hans came into contact with music lovers, musicians, and composers from all over the world who provided him with new information about compositions and translations. The Stabat Mater collection became one of his passions.
This might merit an entire post but I’ll probably forget, so let’s put it here.
The Buried History of Missions in St. Augustine
Before the 1500s, Native peoples exclusively populated the land now known as the United States. Comprised of numerous tribes and chiefdoms with varied belief systems and cultures, their worlds were disrupted with the exploration and invasion of Europeans into their homelands. Colonial powers used many approaches to engage with—and sometimes control—Native populations through trading, enslaving, and forging political and military alliances. The Spanish created the mission system to achieve these goals while spreading the Christian faith, collecting food resources, and expanding access to human labor.
This map illustrates the vast network of missions that stretched north from St. Augustine to present-day Georgia and west across the Florida panhandle.
This is a marvelous site, utilizing tech that integrates text and visuals in an engaging, helpful way.
Why? Because, after 225 long and fruitful years of this terminology, “right” and “left” are now empty categories, meaning little more than “the blue team” and “the green team” in your summer camp’s color war. You don’t get to be “against the rich” if the richest people in the country fund your party in order to preserve their government-sponsored monopolies. You are not “a supporter of free speech” if you oppose free speech for people who disagree with you. You are not “for the people” if you pit most of them against each other based on the color of their skin, or force them out of their jobs because of personal choices related to their bodies. You are not “serious about economic inequality” when you happily order from Amazon without caring much for the devastating impact your purchases have on the small businesses that increasingly are either subjugated by Jeff Bezos’ behemoth or crushed by it altogether. You are not “for science” if you refuse to consider hypotheses that don’t conform to your political convictions and then try to ban critical thought and inquiry from the internet. You are not an “anti-racist” if you label—and sort!—people by race. You are not “against conformism” when you scare people out of voicing dissenting opinions.
When “the left” becomes the party of wealthy elites and state security agencies who preach racial division, state censorship, contempt for ordinary citizens and for the U.S. Constitution, and telling people what to do and think at every turn, then that’s the side you are on, if you are “on the left”—those are the policies and beliefs you stand for and have to defend. It doesn’t matter what good people “on the left” believed and did 60 or 70 years ago. Those people are dead now, mostly. They don’t define “the left” anymore than Abraham Lincoln defines the modern-day Republican Party or Jimi Hendrix defines Nickelback.
Charlotte was Both 