To thine own self be true

Grocer in India beheads a couple who owed 29 cents and asked for more time to pay up.

Craziness and obsession with money = extreme violence and cold-blooded murder.
Money and the making of it is often more important than the law or lives of people.

Life can be very cheap sometimes. 29 cents for two lives, or two heads if you prefer. That’s 14 1/2 cents a head or life. The limits and limitations of some people measured in pennies. Equivalent to about what it costs for 6 plastic bags at some stores in Canada. Truly sick.

turns out to be connection and connectedness, those moments when one is aware of being engaged and immersed in someone or something else, that raises one to heightened feelings and states beyond customary separateness and isolation.

The connection might be a special person–his or her live in-person presence, or a sacred place, or a beautiful piece of music, or a poem, painting, or film that resonates deeply, stirring mind, emotions, and perhaps soul.

The higher plane of regard is a conscious heartfelt state in which contraries and conflicts are banished or automatically resolved all moves, instinctively, toward peace, love, and the harmony of olde we used to speak of and believe in the 1960s.

(my first favorite twentieth-century poet)

There are no more courses to roll the universe into a neat Eliot ball to say ‘This one thing is It’, will work forever infallibly and permanently for one and all.
There is only now a rumor of some prospectus in light, a seminar somewhere that reconnects the missing and broken parts into one great whole.
Meantime, there is an ocean with night falling and dark tides of certainty a-comin’ in.

For a second time, some male dope has decided to swim in the off-limits Sulphur Mt. hot pool for a world-rare snail population, partially destroying their habitat. The first guy who did it was found smoking a cigar in the pool and said God made him do it. Just another asshole.
Yes, Nature is up against it largely because of egotistical fools and vandals like these guys, to say nothing of all the useless politicians and governments who could care less about the environment on a large scale.

Edmonton forecast Wednesday was for thawing this weekend starting Saturday.
Yesterday morning forecast suddenly changes to 1-2 cms snow possible in afternoon.
Changes instead to 10-20 cms. of snow in a flash, causing numerous accidents this morning.
No, weather forecasting ain’t what it used to be in these here parts.
Bad enough with the extreme cold lasting all Feb. into March.
Man proposes, Nature disposes.

Slinks out of Ottawa and heads north to Iqaluit of all places to apologize for historical mistreatment of Aboriginal tuberculosis. He has to go cry cue and give away millions more to make up for and cover up for his corruption in the SNC affair and his attempt to hassle and dismiss the Aboriginal female cabinet minister. Cowardly and utterly shameless timing and action. A blatant desperate act to what end?

noquitinme.ca

A fellow ’60s Wallasey St. and SHCI guy who has successfully, and quite remarkably, beat off tongue cancer. John Kuby is a great-spirited survivor and thriver. Look for info on his tell-all book there, too. (Review to follow here.) Two thumbs up for a heartfelt, inspiring personal journey story.

(as close to the original recordings reproduced live on DVD)

A unique 1960s UK band who was also The Lead Guitar Band of my high-school days. I first tripped over them in 1964 and their first hit “For Your Love” which cleverly used harpsichord and bongos. They featured young Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Led Zeppelin founder Jimmy Page, consecutively on lead guitar in a 6-year span. In fact, their guitar sounds and solos drove The Yardbirds from a blues-based path to a pop path to an experimental hard rock path. And, at one glorious moment in 1966, both Page and Beck were co-featured on “Stroll On”/aka “The Train Kept A-Rolling” in Michelangelo’s jazzy visual poem to Carnaby London in Blow-Up, still a 1960s classic which embodied and enshrined that time, place, and its attitudes and values forever on celluloid.

The band had a fab string of hits including “I’m Not Talking”, “For Your Love”, “Heartful of Soul”, “Shapes of Things”, “Over, Under, Sideways Down”, “I’m a Man”, “Mr. You’re a Better Man Than I”, and “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” (the latter futuristically timeless in its audacity). You can capture a lot of all this musical excitement on various CD collections and retro-ly on Making Tracks, shown above, a wonderful live DVD artifact released in 2012 with two of the original members on drums and rhythm guitar intact.

(It should be noted that Eric Burdon and The Animals came a close second to this UK band in edgy achievement, while none the other British bands of the day could play wildly like this including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, et al.)

It was inevitable that The Yardbirds would never become mainstream or sustain their lucky streak. In 1967, they crash-landed after bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and Beck departed, leaving just the lead singer-harmonicaist Keith Relf (who tragically electrocuted himself on his sound equipment at home) and rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja who moved over to play bass, leaving steady drummer and background vocalist Jim McCarty on drums and Jimmy Page to bow his guitar and play such acoustic chestnuts as “White Summer” and a heavy first version of “Dazed and Confused”, later inherited and popularized by his subsequent group Zeppelin.

I caught up with Jim and Chris when the early 2010s when the revised Yardbirds rolled through Century Casino here twice, and got their signatures and chatted briefly before the first show. Those shows are well-captured on the above DVD. As a long-time fan, it was very interesting to see how they did one of the difficult, ‘impossible’ favs, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”, which remains sublimely satisfying and a close facsimile of my worn-out 45 RPM.

A lot of favorite groups of our youth are, of course, a wonderful example of timing and being in the right place at the right time. All that and a deep feeling, too, of musical possibilities boldly realized; in this case, by an eclectic, unique band before its time and the time they came to the fore in. In that, permanence of special subjective sort still memorably accessible 40 years on today.

(this was/is still a personal formative social conscience movie)

much inspired by great men and artists of the past from whom I have long drawn inspiration, I am also pro-civilization and pro-democracy which continues to be tested today by the crooked, morally-bankrupt likes of Trudeau, Trump, Kim, and Putin.

I have long had a social conscience, having grown up in relative poverty, then chosen higher education as a means to social action through 30 years of teaching and some 30 years of high-school English student textbook writing and 30 years of doing conferences in the same vein to assist teachers and other educators.

When I was in university, I worked as a nursing orderly and a letter carrier to help others beyond just making money to fund my university education. Charity has long been a regular feature of how I spend my money, even in retirement now. And I never fail to donate at the corner store or at the door and drop off material goods no longer needed to Good Will or Eco Depot. I long took seriously the ’60s notion of “making a contribution”.

Certainly, too, there have also been many books which contributed to my social conscience and sense of moral justice, right and wrong, such as Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Zola’s Germinal, Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, Charles Dickens’ novels, Shakespeare’s tragedies, Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Ibsen’s plays, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Eliot’s Middlemarch, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Conrad’s novels, Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Huxley’s Brave New World, Camus’ L’Etranger, and Kafka’s The Trial.

This social conscience was, likewise, reinforced by the early songs of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Phil Ochs’ social commentary songs, Bruce Cockburn’s and Johnny Clegg’s work. And by many movies including Anatomy of a Murder, All the President’s Men, Billy Budd, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Caine Mutiny, Casablanca, The Conversation, The Crucible, Cry, the Beloved Country, Gentleman’s Agreement, Fahrenheit 451, Gandhi, Hamlet, High Noon, Howards End, In the Heat of the Night, JFK, Key Largo, King Lear, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, The Merchant of Venice, The Miracle Worker, Murder on the Orient Express, 1984, O Lucky Man!, Of Mice and Men, Paris Texas, The Pawnbroker, A Raisin in the Sun, The Razor’s Edge, Short Cuts, Shine, Sounder, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Touch of Evil, Twelve Angry Men, Ulee’s Gold, The Verdict, Wall Street, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, and Zorba the Greek.

And as well, there are many famous people who have impressed and inspired me with their own social consciences including Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Thomas Edison, Rachel Carson, Leonardo da Vinci, Terry Fox, to name several.

Today, I often write of social concerns on my personal blog. I am part of the local writing community, giving up time and efforts to help the Stroll of Poets. As a grandfather, I have been educating my grandsons and still ‘teach’ after all this time. Generally, I still look out for friends and family regardless of my core individualistic leanings and personal freedom these days.

No, social conscience is pretty basic for me, though most of my activism happened in the past in my teaching years. Having said all the above, I still have no regrets though, of being my own person and having my own integrity through my working years and retirement. These were two key foundations underlying my own sense of others and society all the way up to this point in time. These and empathy and sympathy–two key gifts by my parents.

Not too many Agatha Christie-based movies have been duds; certainly not this one with its trailer and end-credits warnings not to tell your friends how this one ends. The film was directed by the great Billy Wilder who stayed with an English cast except for Tyrone Power in his last film. (He then died of a heart attack at 42.) The work started as a strong short story, then was dramatized by Christie before being adapted as a popular, well-done movie.

Charles Laughton is very funny as the veteran barrister who is recovering from a heart attack, hainge been told by his doctors and nurse to “take it easy”. But nothing turns him on more than trying a hopeless case. Enter Leonard Vole (a passionate, likable Tyrone Power) who has been accused of killing an old wealthy woman in order to get an inheritance. His mysterious German wife (Marlene Dietrich, who is very strong here) tries to alternately save and convict him as the plot unpredictably unfolds. I should mention, in passing, there is another mysterious woman who shows up late in the trial who changes the course of the trial and Vole’s fate.

The atmosphere of the British court is effectively portrayed by the set and the supporting performances by Else Manchester (Laughton’s real-life wife, as the comic nurse), John Williams (the co-barrister), Torin Thatcher (as the solicitor) combine to give a satisfactory facsimile of legal proceedings and British justice atmosphere. And there are many comic touches with forbidden cigars and smuggled alcohol to keep the audience enjoying Laughton’s wily, rebellious character.

Shot in classic black and white, A Witness for the Prosecution looks authentic and we are lucky to be able to watch it in widescreen on this MGM DVD. Christie fans will not be disappointed and, if you’re a fan of Power, Dietrich, and Laughton, this one is a thoroughly satisfying must-see.