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Doings and Mini-rants
Dec. 11th, 2017 05:03 pmCelebrity Death Watch: Norman Baker was a navigator on three of Thor Heyerdahl’s expeditions. Neil Gillman was a major philosopher of Conservative Judaism. Rance Howard was an actor, though is probably better known as the father of Ron Howard. Lowell Hawthorne was the founder of Golden Crust, a Jamaican restaurant and frozen food chain. Ali Abdullah Selah united Yemen. Shashi Kapoor was a Bollywood actor. Christine Keeler was the model at the heart of the Profumo affair, a famous British government sex scandal. Johnny Hallyday was a French rock star. King Michael was the king of Romania and staffed a coup against the fascists in 1944. Conrad Brooks acted in a number of atrocious movies, primarily those made by Ed Wood. Tracy Stallard played baseball for the Mets and for the Red Sox. He is most famous for giving up the 61st home run hit by Roger Maris in 1961 Simeon Booker was a significant African-American reporter.
Jim Nabors was an actor and singer, best known for playing Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show.
John Anderson ran for President in 1980. He generated a lot of enthusiasm among people like myself, who are socially liberal and economically conservative. Frankly, I haven’t been anywhere near as enthusiastic about any candidate since.
Joan Hess was a mystery writer. Both the Claire Malloy series and the Maggody series are popular humorous cozies, which I highly recommend. She also wrote a series of botanically themed mysteries under the name Joan Hadley.
JGSGW: There was a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting the first Sunday of December. The speaker was from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and mostly served to convince me that I need to go down to the museum and spend some time with the databases they have which are not on the internet. And it apparently takes some particular expertise to deal with the records they have from the International Tracing Service. It’s handy to live nearby, but it isn’t as if I have any actual free time.
Radio Show: Speaking of lack of free time, I had to leave the JGSGW meeting a little early to go home to tape a story for a radio show. The Story Hour with Wendy Mann will air on Wednesday December 20th and repeat on the 29th at 10:30 a.m. on WERA 96.7 FM in Arlington. It’s also on mixcloud.com. The show is a full hour of holiday stories. My Chanukah in Chelm story is just a small piece of it, but I am sure the rest of the stories are well worth listening to, also.
Ah-choo: Then there was work to cope with. Except I got a cold, so was out for a couple of days. Sigh. Because it isn’t like I wasn’t busy enough and stressed enough to start with.
Holiday Party: The annual condo complex holiday party was last night. The food was good and the conversation was lively, though rather a bit much on the adult side, e.g. a lively discussion of water heaters and dryer hoses. I also discovered that a colleague lives in the complex. (She is newish to our office, though has been with the company for a while, at a different facility.) Also, for those who have followed these parties in the past, no man in kilt, alas.
Brief Political Rant – Jerusalem: The kerfuffle over Trump saying the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is really much ado about nothing. It is not, despite what a few people have posted on facebook, him telling another country what their capital is. Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since independence and the government offices are there. There have been repeated bipartisan resolutions in the U.S. Congress to relocate the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. In practical terms, it makes sense to have embassies near the seat of government of the country they’re in. And, realistically, the embassy would end up being in West Jerusalem, which is not really in dispute. (There is little to no Palestinian interest in West Jerusalem, just as there is little Israeli interest in most of East Jerusalem. The disputed part of Jerusalem is a small area, pretty much confined to the Temple Mount.)
Brief Political Rant – Sexual Misconduct: There are degrees of misconduct and I am concerned that the current rush to be rid of anybody who has done anything questionable misses that. No, I don’t want to have to deal with off-color comments or unwanted pats on any part of my anatomy, but those are not equivalent to raping a child.
More broadly, how should we deal with bad behavior of people who have accomplished good things? An example which comes to mind is a current debate within the Jewish community regarding the music of Shlomo Carlebach. For those unfamiliar with the name, he was a rabbi who wrote a lot of songs that are widely used liturgically in Jewish Renewal (and some modern Orthodox and some Conservative) circles. He was also apparently abusive towards some women. So, should his music continue to be used in services, knowing that his can feel hurtful to women he molested? It’s not a simple question. I tend to believe that art itself can overcome any evils of the artist. If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t gawk at Caravaggio’s paintings, for example. But there is the passage of time there, while Carlebach’s actions are much more recent history. Then, how much time has to pass? And how much remorse must a malefactor show? None of this is easy. I do know that treating it as if every case is the same and metaphorically hanging them all can’t be the right answer.
Jim Nabors was an actor and singer, best known for playing Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show.
John Anderson ran for President in 1980. He generated a lot of enthusiasm among people like myself, who are socially liberal and economically conservative. Frankly, I haven’t been anywhere near as enthusiastic about any candidate since.
Joan Hess was a mystery writer. Both the Claire Malloy series and the Maggody series are popular humorous cozies, which I highly recommend. She also wrote a series of botanically themed mysteries under the name Joan Hadley.
JGSGW: There was a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting the first Sunday of December. The speaker was from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and mostly served to convince me that I need to go down to the museum and spend some time with the databases they have which are not on the internet. And it apparently takes some particular expertise to deal with the records they have from the International Tracing Service. It’s handy to live nearby, but it isn’t as if I have any actual free time.
Radio Show: Speaking of lack of free time, I had to leave the JGSGW meeting a little early to go home to tape a story for a radio show. The Story Hour with Wendy Mann will air on Wednesday December 20th and repeat on the 29th at 10:30 a.m. on WERA 96.7 FM in Arlington. It’s also on mixcloud.com. The show is a full hour of holiday stories. My Chanukah in Chelm story is just a small piece of it, but I am sure the rest of the stories are well worth listening to, also.
Ah-choo: Then there was work to cope with. Except I got a cold, so was out for a couple of days. Sigh. Because it isn’t like I wasn’t busy enough and stressed enough to start with.
Holiday Party: The annual condo complex holiday party was last night. The food was good and the conversation was lively, though rather a bit much on the adult side, e.g. a lively discussion of water heaters and dryer hoses. I also discovered that a colleague lives in the complex. (She is newish to our office, though has been with the company for a while, at a different facility.) Also, for those who have followed these parties in the past, no man in kilt, alas.
Brief Political Rant – Jerusalem: The kerfuffle over Trump saying the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is really much ado about nothing. It is not, despite what a few people have posted on facebook, him telling another country what their capital is. Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since independence and the government offices are there. There have been repeated bipartisan resolutions in the U.S. Congress to relocate the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. In practical terms, it makes sense to have embassies near the seat of government of the country they’re in. And, realistically, the embassy would end up being in West Jerusalem, which is not really in dispute. (There is little to no Palestinian interest in West Jerusalem, just as there is little Israeli interest in most of East Jerusalem. The disputed part of Jerusalem is a small area, pretty much confined to the Temple Mount.)
Brief Political Rant – Sexual Misconduct: There are degrees of misconduct and I am concerned that the current rush to be rid of anybody who has done anything questionable misses that. No, I don’t want to have to deal with off-color comments or unwanted pats on any part of my anatomy, but those are not equivalent to raping a child.
More broadly, how should we deal with bad behavior of people who have accomplished good things? An example which comes to mind is a current debate within the Jewish community regarding the music of Shlomo Carlebach. For those unfamiliar with the name, he was a rabbi who wrote a lot of songs that are widely used liturgically in Jewish Renewal (and some modern Orthodox and some Conservative) circles. He was also apparently abusive towards some women. So, should his music continue to be used in services, knowing that his can feel hurtful to women he molested? It’s not a simple question. I tend to believe that art itself can overcome any evils of the artist. If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t gawk at Caravaggio’s paintings, for example. But there is the passage of time there, while Carlebach’s actions are much more recent history. Then, how much time has to pass? And how much remorse must a malefactor show? None of this is easy. I do know that treating it as if every case is the same and metaphorically hanging them all can’t be the right answer.
