19990816 Monday 16 August 1999
Let me expand a bit on the elements of the Favourite People & Things listing on my home page. The first category is Symphonic Music. I have preferred classical music ever since I was introduced to the genre in the late 1960s by Wendy Carlos' synthesized renditions of the music of J.S. Bach. Hearing the unique sounds created by Ms Carlos led me to seek out more conventional versions of the pieces which she performed, and I was introduced to an entire new world of music and of art. The symphonic music of Anton Bruckner required some exposure on my part before I was able to appreciate it. Jean Sibelius' symphonies are more readily accessible. I first encountered both composers in my university days. The first recordings of Bruckner that I heard belonged to my roommate; it was his third symphony, IIRC George Szell conducted the Cleveland Orchestra. The 6th and 8th symphonies are favourites. Jean Sibelius' 4th Symphony sounds wonderfully mysterious to me, dark and powerful. At any rate, I have noted these two composers primarily to point out something a bit unusual. I spend much of my time listening to Mozart and Beethoven.
19990817 Tuesday 17 August 1999
As far as standard popular music is concerned, I would cite particular songs as noteworthy, rather than performers or composers. I Remember Sunday Morning by Spanky & Our Gang is special to me for many reasons, for a certain time and place. ( I am now elsewhere, and times have changed, but the song remains the same.) Ditto A Summer Song by Chad and Jeremy. Romantic, but songs about loss rather than love. On the other hand, I have liked everything that Anne Murray has produced. And then there is Enya. I first encountered Enya's music in the Steve Martin film L.A. Story. I was not immediately attracted by the voice, but my attention was drawn to it by a friend. I acquired for her a recording of one of the film's songs (On Your Shore from the Watermark CD), and I also found another CD, Shepherd Moons, at the Chesterfield (Virginia USA) Public Library. The latter CD contains Caribbean Blue; the former has River, a personal favourite which appears in the soundtrack of the film Green Card. This is all very special music in a distinctly, beautifully artificial style
19990818 Wednesday 18 August 1999
My introduction to painting was through the mention of several artists in Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto. One of them was Jan Vermeer. His luminous realism was striking. At that time I was attending Boston College, and I had access to excellent collections in the museums in Boston and Cambridge. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Boston's Fenway had one of the few paintings by Vermeer outside New York City. (Later, this painting was unfortunately the centrepiece of a spectacular robbery, and it has not yet been recovered.) Both the Gardner Museum and the neighbouring Bostom Museum of Fine Arts had outstanding examples of works by John Singer Sargent. There is in particular one work by Sargent which I wish to note. That is the portrait of Mr. Phelps-Stokes and his wife. I saw this painting first at The Metropolitan in New York City in the early 1970s, and then again 20 years later at the the Virginia Museum in Richmond. The viewer is challenged by the emergence of the brightly-coloured female figure that seems to step forward from the picture frame, while the male figure remains standing fixed, his head shadowed, in the background. Very mysterious. Among Vermeer's paintings, I especially like The Geographer, which I see as an icon of a hero from one of Ayn Rand's novels - the far-seeing visionary with a firm grasp upon reality, surrounded by tools and light.
I tried a bit of drawing and painting myself, soon finding that while I could have developed some technique, I just had no real imagination. However, the practical experience was very valuable. It has definitely enabled me better to appreciate the qualities of a painting.
19990819 Thursday 19 August 1999
As for writers, I had already mentioned several others in different contexts, notably Arthur Conan Doyle and Ayn Rand. There are others who are noteworthy because of works that I particularly enjoyed or found especially meaningful.
H.H. Munro is better known by his pen-name Saki. The trick endings in some of this Edwardian British writer's short stories are sometimes given as examples in U.S. high-school English literary anthologies, where one can often find his The Open Window. Droll humour and irony characterise his bright and lucent style. He wrote primarily short fiction, sometmes with a tinge of fantasy. His novel When William Came is his closest approach to science fiction. It is an alternate history which has Germany defeating England militarily and occupying the country.
George R.R. Martin's A Song for Lya and With Morning Comes Mistfall are two stories which I have read many times. The former has a resonance for me that continually echoes with a slightly different sound as the time and place changes for me with new people in a new environment. Both stories have elements of science fiction, but like the best SF, their themes are universal. Lya is about love, acceptance and personal isolation; Mistfall pits mystery against science.
Patricia Cornwell writes in the mystery genre, primarily in the police procedural category. She has two lines of novels, the better-known (and best-selling) based on the exploits of Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta. It's an entertaing series, frequently based in my former hometown Richmond, Virginia. I used to read more mysteries than I do now, but I have become addicted to Cornwell.
19990820 Friday 20 August 1999
Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. He turned the United States economy around. For an American politician, in my opinion, that's good enough. It is impossible for me to imagine that Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale would have done any better. If Reagan had not been in charge, there would still be a Soviet Union led by the Communist Party. Inflation would continue to be a problem. Organised labour would plague American society as badly as it does in present-day Canada. William Clinton's limited successes have been a consequence of the economic recovery begun by Reagan.
I don't know very much about Margaret Thatcher, but she is mentioned because I definitely dislike her critics. Her ascension to power in England was the start of a great turn-around in the West in the 1980s. Regrettably, it now seems to be turning back.
I used to live in Jack Kemp's Congressional district when I lived in Western New York in the 1970s. He is a great guy, an activist, enthusiastic conservative.
Survivor of vicious attacks by a left-wing lynch mob, Clarence Thomas has continually displayed a calm and intelligent dignity despite the insufferable persecution to which he has been subjected.
Jude Wanniski always presents challenging ideas about politics and economics. His daily Memo on the Margin and the weekly lectures that comprise lessons at his Supply Side University are always insightful and informative. I sometimes don't agree with him, but what he brings to the discussion is ever worth consideration.
I have been listening to Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show for several years. He is a master of his craft. Most of his critics try to distort what he is saying, portraying him as a racist, a bigot or a fascist. Certainly none of those are accurate descriptions. Limbaugh is hated because he is effective. His use of humour and hyperbole is infuriating to the liberals whom he so pointedy caricatures. And his legions of fans are delighted, for his popularity is due to the fact that he is reflecting the views which they already hold, but which they can see nowhere expressed in an elitist media culture.
19990830 Monday 30 August 1999
The subject of Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir by Bryan Burrough is the series of missions conducted in the later 1990s by American astronauts aboard the Russian space station Mir. The purpose of these flights was from the first primarily political. It gave Russian leader Boris Yeltsin and US President George Bush an agreement of some significance that they could announce as an outcome of their summit conference. Scientific experiments were contrived to provide a rationale for the programme, which neither NASA nor the Russian space agency appeared to consider desirable. Eventually the cooperation between the two space-faring nations would develop even greater importance when they were later bound by the administration of William Clinton into agreements for joint development of components and crews for the International Space Station.
Bryan Burrough is a former journalist and co-author of the best-seller Barbarians at the Gate. His writing background is primarily in the fields of business and finance; there is little technical detail to be found in the book (which IMHO is a significant omission, though admittedly it is not a part of the book's major theme). Most of the story is based on extensive interviews which he conducted with NASA and Russian personnel, astronauts, cosmonauts and administrative officials. He concentrates in particular on the January 1997 mission of Jerry Linenger (during which there was a fire which resulted in his encouraging that NASA participation in the Mir programme be terminated) and Mike Foale (who was on the station in June 1997 when it experienced decompression after collision with an unmanned Progress resupply vehicle during a docking test).
Burrough's account is very strictly objective. Unfortunately , it left this reader apprehensive about the progress of the International Space Station. Russian participation in the ISS presents problems in terms of management of the crews and the hardware. The attitudes of the several nations involved in the project are significantly different, and diplomacy is a factor which complicates the already difficult technical challenges which must be confronted. The Russians have long and valuable experience in long-tern spaceflight. But there are differences between the ISS and Mir (and the earlier Salyut) which may render moot much of the Russian experience. What will be the same is the way people react to the inevitable complications (and disasters - and fatalities) Despite the effete cynicism of the elitist media, the West (America in particular) would sooner rally to overcome adversity rather than accept defeat. We affirm that human beings belong in space, it is human destiny ever to explore and expand our boundaries. We can go into space, or we can go to war. We can conquer space, or we can conquer other men. Unfortunately, the alternatives do appear to be mutually exclusive.
The book points out several difficiencies in NASA's manned space programme with respect to the type of relatively long-term missions which are to be conducted aboard the International Space Station. At this point, there is apparently insufficient attention paid to psychology. American crews, now recruited from scientists rather than test pilots, are becoming less used to military discipline and command structures. However, these organisational factors may prove to be beneficial for spaceflight, which requires initiative but is not really a democratic or deliberative operation. NASA would also do well to consider the experiences of personnel at South Pole stations, which are likely to have undergone interpersonal conflicts quite similar to what may be inevitably expected during the lengthy isolation involved in ISS missions. (Burroughs refers to several Russian flights which were curtailed for reasons of interperonal conflicts; I hope that NASA has been fully informed about the facts surronding these events.)
19990907 Tuesday 7 September 1999
Eighty people died in the incident known as “Waco.” All the deaths, including children and law enforcement officers, were certainly unnecessary and avoidable. Direct responsibility is difficult to assess; poor judgment contributed to a series of fatal errors. But I cannot avoid thinking that offensive behaviour was shown more by the invading government officials than by the besieged Davidians. I do not mean to exculpate David Koresh or justify his actions. But he was never even accused of assaulting anyone - I will deal later with the deaths of four ATF agents in the original raid - or of unlawful restraint, indeed of involuntary confinement of any sort.
The original raid on the Branch Davidian ranch was intended to serve an arrest and search warrant on religious leader David Koresh. A military-style assault was organized for the event. While avoiding the destruction of evidence (specifically, the fully-automatic weapons which the Davidians were alleged illegally to possess) was the pretext for the mass assault, there was probably another reason. The budget of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) was under consideration by Congress, and the show-piece assault would be, effectively, a publicity stunt. The Davidian sect was known to be paranoid and defensive, and they resisted in kind the ATF show of force. Four ATF agents were killed, as well as several Davidians. David Koresh was wounded.
Koresh could have been arrested during one of his occasional trips outside the ranch. Except for the publicity value of the raid. the large force used has no other justification. The advance notice which the news media was given about the raid may also have tipped off the Davidians.
Two highly emotional issues confuse the picture. One is the matter of child abuse; another is the illegal possession of weapons and explosives. Davidians were alleged to have fully-automatic weapons. (This was a target of the search warrant on which the initial raid was based.) While possession of fully-automatic guns is not illegal as such, a permit is required, and it is not permissible to convert a semi-automatic device to fully automatic capability. (A fully-automatic gun fires as long as the trigger is depressed, while a semi-automatic gun fires only one round for each depression of the trigger.) The gun control nuts in the elite media portrayed the Davidians as a terrorist military unit under the complete control of guru Koresh. They were presented as a danger to the surrounding community. However, there was no evidence of any hostile acts, and the number of guns actually at the ranch was, per capita, no greater than an average amount for rural Texas. The only automatic weapons at Waco were those brought and used by the ATF.
David Koresh was a messianic lunatic, to be sure. There may have been cases where he was involved sexually with the children of his followers. But this was a matter for social services agencies and local law enforcement personnel. Apparently investigations of child abuse by Texas family services did not lead to any charges against Koresh. He did not indiscriminately direct small-arms fire at the children. He did not fire tear-gas grenades at them, nor did he pump tear-gas into their residence. That was done by agents of the United States federal government.
Were the Branch Davidians more dangerous than the Puerto Rican FALN terrorists recently offered release from prison by President William Clinton? Were they a danger to anyone except themselves?
19991008 Friday 8 October 1999
In response to the controversy that has arisen over Edmund Morris' recent biography of Ronald Reagan, Dinesh D'Souza (himself the author of a Reagan biography), had this to say:
5. Why was Reagan a great president?I have read neither Morriss' nor D'Souza's book, and while I might be tempted to read the latter, what I have heard about Morriss does not inspire. The stylistic quirkishness of his inventing characters who actually participate in the action is not, in my opinion, appropriate for an historical biography.
Reagan was a great president because he almost single-handedly brought about a political, economic and moral transformation in America and the world. Under Reagan this country went from economic doldrums to an era of unparalleled prosperity. Under Reagan the Soviet Union went from apparent invincibility to an empire in the process of dissolving itself. Also, Reagan articulated an heroic moral vision of what it means to be an American. Today we are enjoying peace and prosperity, but we miss that articulation of American grandeur that is rooted in the original conception of the American founders.
6. How will he be remembered?
Margaret Thatcher said a few years ago that Reagan will be remembered as the man who won the Cold War without firing a shot. I think he will be recalled by history for more than this. His policies were instrumental in defeating the evil empire, and he helped revive the American economy and the American spirit after a long period of malaise. I am confident that history will give Reagan his due, but it would be nice to see the man receive some of this credit during his lifetime.
I have no doubt, however, that commentators by and large are looking at Morriss' book through their own ideological filters. Given that these commentators are generally from the elitist liberal media, they will tend to emphasize elements that reflect negatively upon Reagan's policies, and to the extent that his personality appeared in those policies, to himself personally. In the end, one apparently can view the book as being primarily about Edmund Morriss; Reagan is just a character in Morriss' story.
(Note: The quotes above from Dinesh D'Souza originally appeared on National Review magazine's website www.nationalreview.com)
If you have comments or suggestions,
or would like further information,
please email [email protected]
This is
a Hansom Production
This site was last updated on
Return to Home