Korea's Sungha Jung and Hawaii's (?) Brittni Paiva, and Kalei Gamiao jam out Pachelbel's Canon in D in a ukelele shop in Hawaii.

---

posted by stedawa on 2012 May 09 (1:26 am) permalink       

Jimmy Cliff just posted his new song, The World Is Upside Down, on his Facebook page and at soundcloud.

It's a great song in that it summarizes the huge number of problems that confront humanity now; moreover, it asks us why there is not more love and justice in the world. Are we not each and everyone capable of greater demonstrations of our active caring for each other?



Igniting Change has a different phrase for the world: the world inside words. As we go within, so too it is within words. A priSONer is someone's SON. Richard Branson liked their work, and together they held a leadership conference.

The Washington Post had an article on education and income gap. It raises some good points. but I think the last sentence is out of touch with reality: each student to chase the American Dream? Big house, big car, big family, big income, big bank account?

I don't think that is the carrot to hang in front of teachers to hang in front of students. Such high levels of prosperity that well-off people enjoy is not feasible. Housing may have to go from single-family, detached house to multifamily residences or clusters; transportation will have to slow down and get itself going in a green way; schools cannot go on promoting the complete replacement of all aspects of human endeavor by some kind of machine interface; values and the questions about deeper meaning and purpose should be mapped out if the problems of delinquency and dropout and drugs are to be addressed.

The Merriam-Webster learner's dictionary defines prosperity as the state of being successful usually by making a lot of money. This stresses only material gain and totally neglects any spiritual or humanistic goals. Perhaps, rather than declaring that financial wealth is the main objective of life, we should admit that a certain level of comfort and convenience are desirable and worth achieving. For example, running clear water; water heater; overhead shower; internet connection; a netbook or tablet or wireless communication device; medical services; a shelter that offers protection from intruders including insect, larger animals, and human and from extreme elements; some form of transportation such as bicycle or scooter (hybrid or electric); electricity supply; a local learning center or school or resource and knowledge repository -- each item in this list is a worthy goal and offers some comfort and convenience.

And all these have to be done through cost measures that do not sink the national boat in accumulated debt.

---

Today, May 1st, the college I teach at got a new name and logo. It is now called Suseong College.

Here is their new logo:


I like the vibrant colors, and I like the symbolic merging of East and West. If you look at it carefully, it looks like an overlapping S and C. For Asians, it may remind them of the Japanese character hito or the Chinese character for ren , both of which mean person.

Suseong-gu is the name of the ward or city area where it is located. The previous name was Daegu Polytechnic College (in Korean it was 9 syllables), but now it is 5 syllables. It now highlights the local, and that's alright, too.

The new motto is "Human Care". It seems to go hand in hand with the new logo.

The shape also reminded me of a person walking determinedly towards the right. In fact, I thought of Mr. Natural, a character created in the 1970s by American cartoonist R.Crumb.


But in the logo, the top (head) part is tilted forward, almost as if the person is slouching or leaning forward. That made me think of Joan Didion's book of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and to the poem from which she derived her book title, The Second Coming (Slouching Towards Bethlehem) by William Butler Yeats.

The original poem can be found here.

But I conveniently include it here



Which in turn reminds me of a new book just out by an American friend, The Second Coming: A Biblical Approach to Understanding the Evidence that Christ has Returned. The writer's premise is that prophecy never led any of the disciples to believe in or accept Jesus; they recognized the greatness in Jesus and so who needs numerical proofs? In other words, prophecy makes sense only after someone has recognized and accepted the greatness of the Manifestation of God. Prophecy is validating and is an added bonus, a confirmation, but it should not be the primary tool by which one investigates and validates such a claim.

The true measure is the effect that the newly Revealed Word has on the heart. Is the language of such a caliber and richness, loftiness and imaginativeness, symbols and nuances, references and liquidity, transparency and insight that it stands out above anything that a mortal or group of mortals could produce: It speaks for and by Itself.

The other important thing is the nature by which the Revealed Word was transmitted. Was it a regular dictation, with pauses, that allowed time for each part to be recorded before proceeding to the next part, or was it a flood or torrent which required rapid transcription, almost as if the Revelation could not control itself or the rate of its outpouring? Or was it somewhere in between?

But as the poem suggests, Surely some revelation is at hand and that being so, it is incumbent on members of all Faiths, especially Christians, since their Bible is profuse with the prophecies of Jesus and of Jesus' Return in the Spirit of the Father [Matthew 10:20]and the Spirit of Truth [John 14:17] and all things made new. To deliberately avoid doing so is tantamount to doing exactly what the Jewish authorities did to Jesus, places a barrier between oneself and G-d, and deprives one of the blessings of recognizing and knowing the new Manifestation.

His book is available in several formats, including pdf and ebook.

Joni Mitchell put Yeats' poem to music.

link

Lyrics/words are here:


Red Horse does another take on the title.

For more videos on the keyword slouching, go to NMEand type in slouching.

The topic is not moot, but gets us to the root.

Happy investigating poem, book, videos — or all three.

---

posted by chairman dao on 2012 May 01 (2:24 pm) permalink       

True grit shows itself in many ways.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo — ostensibly (according to some) the world's poorest country — the grit shines forth in the story and members of its now award-winning Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra.

Started by Armand Diangienda, a trained pilot whose airlines went bankrupt and who then took on the challenge of realizing a dream of starting an orchestra, albeit with no instruments, with few instrumentalists, and with no one who could read music. Let's reflect on how totally zany such an idea would have seemed to those who knew him.

But he stuck with it, and there is now a 200+ member orchestra (whose members include daytime market vendors and omelette makers, and others).

And most of them are self-taught on their instruments and in reading music.



_____________

Another under-reported musical project is El Sistemo in Venezuela.

El Sistema is a publicly financed voluntary sector music education program in Venezuela, founded in 1975 by economist and musician José Antonio Abreu under the name of Social Action for Music. For many years its official name was Fundación del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, (FESNOJIV), which is sometimes translated into English as .

However, it "has recently changed to Fundación Musical Simón Bolívar " (FMSB) but it is still widely known by the FESNOJIV acronymn.[1]

El Sistema is a state foundation which watches over Venezuela's 125 youth orchestras and the instrumental training programmes which make them possible. While the organziation has 31 symphony orchestras, its greatest achievement is the 310,000 to 370,000 children [2] who attend its music schools around the country where "it is estimated that 70 to 90 percent"[2] of them come from poor socio-economic backgrounds.

from wikipedia

Read the rest of the story here.

Or watch the 60 Minutes video here.

---

posted by stedawa on 2012 Apr 20 (8:01 pm) permalink