Confessions of a Recordplayer

Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools

Friday, December 23, 2005 Check out favorite radio station KCRW for 2005 Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools.  Ruth Seymour's 27th annual three-hour Chanukah salute to Yiddish. From Eastern Europe to the Second Avenue Hit Parade, music, stories and memories from a world now vanished.  I learned some Yiddish from my grandfather... The ones i remember are... Smata = rag, mensch = good jewish man, smuck = putz... the rest i cannot repeat on a public forum...

What are your favorite Yiddish words?

Quote of the week.

"Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all
require the maximum development of every young American's capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource."
-John F. Kennedy (U.S. president)

DO YOU CARE?

If so go out and do something about it.  Rise up and reclaim your streets, your airwaves or even your heart.  Use the force and turn off the TV and think beyond your paycheck for once.  Sing that song outside of the shower...  LOUD! 

This is a public service announcement not to become too much like this guy who saw one too many glamour shot ads. 

Spirtual Realignment for one Bay Area Doc

A women traveled to an ashram in India and has a spiritual moment and decides to leave her medical practice, her things - everythin and move to that ashram in India on the Ganges where she plans to spend the rest of her life there.  I hear her speak about her expirence, and wonder if even 1/2 of 1% of us will ever have that moment in our lives..  and why not...

Read an interview with her about her expirience and new journey here.

My first New Years Resolution..

I believe in this new year, I need to regulate the news i read.  There for I will not only be subscribing to the Weekly World News.  I will not worry because they tell me all I need to know.  Like I did not travel this season because I knew of threats like this one:

MIDGET SUICIDE BOMBERS!!
Recent intelligence obtained by the U.S. government has uncovered what is believed to be the most specific terrorist plot since Sept. 11 -- Al Qaeda is planning to stash midget suicide bombers in overhead compartments in the cabins of airplanes!

And of course, the page 5 girl...

And

Bat Boy!!

Holiday Wishes

I like everyone else wishes for world peace, even more so at a time when our world is edging farther and farther away from it.  Lately I've come to find that its not so much the wars as it is the inequity driving this.  Its no secret San Fran has an out of control homeless population of around 15,000 people.  These are people for one reason or another, do not have a home to go to at the end of the day, a place to brush their teeth...  As i walk around lately, and maybe because its colder and so see more people sleeping (IE lying) on the ground/street.  While the country is freaking out about Janet Jackson's tittie - where is the moral outrage, the humanity - the compassion for life..  for the downtrodden and out-of-luck country man who don't benefit from tax cuts..  My heart hangs low this holiday season at the short sightedness or the evil that has let this problem exacerbate this far.   Martin Luther King's last crusade, the one he was working on when he was shot, was a war on poverty..  He had a dream, and we still need to work to make it happen. 

For this holiday season I'm not going to wish for world peace, How about we start with a roof everyones head...

Art is half the conversation..

Art is one of the languages the brain, as important as mathematics or learning the written word..  without it our imaginations stagnant and cease to envision a better world.  It is for this reason among many the short sighted reduction of arts education will do nothing but damage our country..  But more then that, i've come to see it as half of the conversation.  It makes the message 3-D.  It adds color to the B&W world..

This is the realization I came to this weekend.  I have been volunteering with and will be working for Artists for Literacy in the month of December and hopefully beyond (anyone have an extra $1.2 million?).  The story of the growth of the organization is a wondrous journey guided by success inspiring interest in literature in low level adult readers..

So a world without arts, literature.. or especially music is one that is small and lack luster..  the world we leave to our youth, our children should not only be one that is clean, peaceful and sustainable - but that supports our personal growth - emotional and creatively as much as intellectually...  That's my 2cents.

What to use this space for..

In my second month of being a proud blogger, infecting the masses with my mindset I have taken the time to both chat about the serious and personal as well as link to every funny or random web thingy sent to me out of sheer desire to share..  I have come to the conclusion that this blog'o'mine will from now on be light on the random and heavy on what you all came to read about, me! 

I must say of late I have been spell bound by little children running around chasing pigeons or lights on the floor in the Metreon.  Either they get cuter as I get older or I just am trying to figure out what on gosh greens earth they are doing...