Marine Band Plays Patriotic Pieces in Porterville
Crowd Whipped Into A Frenzy.
On Wednesday night, the President’s Own United States Marine Band produced a colorful and patriotic performance underscored by brass notes punctuating rapidly paced reeds and roaring percussion to pieces arranged by some of the nation’s most well known composers. The audience, housed in the Frank “Buck” Shaffer Theatre was pleased, evidenced by their hearty applause and standing ovations throughout.
via Marine Band plays patriotic pieces | plays, band, president – Local News – Recorderonline.com.
OK, the crowd was not really whipped into a frenzy.They were generally mystified that outsiders had stumbled into Porterville to entertain them, but politely pleased that they did.
The performance was enjoyable, akin to a Pops Concert almost. In Porterville, any outside performance is a big deal, and this one was well done.
We were a little nervous arriving – the tickets made plain that everyone needed to be seated by 7:15 even though the show was not until 7:30. Thoughts of the fate of a certain Georgian theater crowd at the hand of the Russians crept through my mind. And, well, we saw “Inglorious Basterds” too ….
In the end there was no violence or no explanation for why the public had to follow marching orders from the Marines. At least there was no speechifying either, all joking aside, that is what I thought those 15 minutes would be used for. At least 3 City Council members were present, but they simply enjoyed the show as everyone else did.
Overall, I’d say the age of the attendees was skewed towards the Korean War and Vietnam War veteran era.
I was really only joking to myself when I thought, during the opening rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner”, that some of the attendees may very well have been fighting in the War of 1812. They were old, but not that old.
And, since our National Anthem was written in my home town of Baltimore, I feel a special pride when I hear it. I also, having attended hundreds and hundreds of baseball games, found it extremely difficult to repress the Pavlovian need to shout “O” during the final verse of “Oh say can you see”. I stifled it OK, but I lost sleep as a result of the internal effort.
That was interesting because it has been decades since those days. And it was almost as interesting that I similarly expected the band to break out of its formal posturing during the intermission and break out into a rousing “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”. Ironically, of the hundreds of times I have heard that song sung along to by a crowd, it has never been a crowd of “Country Boys” as it was last night.
One of the most enthusiastic standing ovations mentioned in the article above (they weren’t really “throughout” but at scripted predictable places) occurred as Bennear emotive sang the lines “Let Freedom Ring” from “My Country Tis of Thee”.
My thought at the time was how ironic that probably 80% of the standing audience voted less than one year ago to remove *existing rights* from a minority of people under the schoolyard guise of “majority rules!!! nyah nyah nyah!!!”.
Most of the other 20% was the high school students that reporter Chandler mentioned above by the way, too young to have voted lat year, but who will be the votes that restore the rights to their, well, rightful place soon enough.
Also curious: The program, provided by the Band, says that they perform 500 times a year outside of Washington on tour of the US. That struck me at odds with Bennear’s well rehearsed comments that we all learned the patriotic tunes in the ending medley during grade school.
I did learn them, at a time in the late 60s when I have since learned there were riots in the city across the river that was at the bottom of our hilly block.
But I am out in the real world and I know that the demographics of America are such that in our lifetime we have had a huge influx of immigration from around the world, and not all citizens or even visitors who might attend a performance of this historic band somewhere in America learned patriotic songs as a kid.
I found that comment rude and insensitive and so did my girlfriend who is not originally an American Citizen and so did not receive her earliest schoolgirl indoctrination in American schools.
I was personally disappointed that the last piece was “God Bless America” for two reasons. One, of course is that there was the triple-whammy of both Federal and Local governments stretching the First Amendment’s Establishment clause.: A Federal Band singing about God and America? In a public school funded by the state and local citizens?
No public event in Porterville is complete without the First Amendment Establishment Clause being stretched to its limits of course, but I am sure the crowd would have been just as thrilled and roused by a tune written by Woody Guthrie, musical hero of the Dust Bowl Refugees (hello all you 70+ year olds-in the audience, might that be you or your family?).
“This Land is Your Land”, which I have written about before, is the tune he wrote in response to “God Bless America”’s religious pleas and jingoistic overtones. The lyrics, are more inclusive and equally grand and well known “This Land is Your Land”. That song would have been a far better choice to send the crowd out with. It is a truly beautiful song, maybe the most beautiful of all patriotic tunes.
And I am not saying the Band itself was lily-white – I recall noticing an Asian guy on a woodwind instrument, but other than that, it sure didn’t look like the face of any part of America I have ever seen. This band has been playing since 1798 – yes that is not a typo – and this is the best they can do equality wise?
Don Curlee: Blind leadership frustrates farmers, red-baiting 1950s style the answer
Visalia Times-Delta columnist joins in the Red Bating fad as though that will solve anything
Farmers have no monopoly on honesty, because that character trait is rooted in the country’s founding principles. But those roots have grown strong and deep in agriculture. Farmers are wondering why honesty doesn’t have a higher priority among political representatives.
If Marxism is a politician’s ultimate destination, he or she ought to be forthright enough to say so. Don’t count on it; saying and doing what is expedient instead makes them more electable.
Many politicians are taking large numbers of people with them to their secret collectivist destinations. Very few farmers want to go there.
Geez “marxism”, “communism”, “socialism” – is red-baiting in the red states and counties going to be the rule of the day for a while? I am sure that is a great tactic to get your own people elected and listened to.
If farmers are such great capitalists and free marketeers, how about they look at the industry structure that they have wrought over the last 100 or so years since this land was settled? If they are so transparent, how about they share what they have learned?
The problem is that farmers have dug themselves a hole at the bottom of a heap of a distribution channel, and a complex supply chain, and as such they have no (or limited) economic leverage.
Take a look at the recent raisin price it was announced that farmers will get for their crop this year – divide the dollars by ton to get a price per ounce, then go to your favorite retailer to see what the retail price per ounce is. The difference is what the market perceives as the value added in all of the steps of the supply chain beyond the farmer. It is a lot – what is the farmer doing to capture that value for himself or herself?
The same is true of any crop.
Similarly, take a look at the risk of the capital the farmer invests in his or her crop. Are the returns earned a fair return for the risk? Has the risk changed? Most likely they have.
But the same local red-baiters are also the anti-scientists who refuse to acknowledge climactic shifts. Now are upset at political shifts too, they are not likely to find a solution in economics, science, or business and finance. They are quick to see and seek the hand of God in all their local political endeavors, when there is an opportunity to restrict someone else’s rights. It is more than a little bit surprising that they don’t see the Hand of Providence in their own fate.
However despite the prevalent “know-nothing” political approach prevailing in the Valley, there are in fact various techniques available to them to restructure the capitalization of their industry, so that the farmers receive what they perceive as the true value they provide from the end user (if in fact they don’t already get it).
These techniques DO NOT include calling people Marxists or Communists when they are representing their own interests in a free market. Quite the opposite – doing so merely tags those who those claims as fools not capable of understanding their own situation, let alone innovating their way out of it.
They DO involve a careful and honest assessment of the situation and how it came to be. In the past, the Valley has been represented successfully from a farmer’s point of view with regards to water – they were given everything they asked for: Witness former Senator Sheridan Downey’s book of character assassination documenting his plan for the water projects that now run low and dry called “They Would Rule The Valley”.
Yes, this is the most productive farming area in the country, perhaps even the world. But it does not live in economic isolation – there are limits to the resources available to make things grow, and increased efficiency can’t go on forever , in this or any other field of human endeavor.
It may very well be that without innovation in industry structure and capitalization, that growth and efficiency have peaked, and that water is not really the limiting issue at all.
So when I see folks calling “commie” or “marxist” as is increasingly frequent locally and in the media, I expect a recognition that these are economic terms being tossed around. If the speaker does not want to be ridiculed for using words as epithets without even knowing what they mean, then I would expect a serious analysis of the industry structure to follow.
Yet somehow it never does.
But why would that be a surprise from anyone in a region that, according to a recent Congressional Report, compares unfavorably in just about every regard with our other poorest region of the country, Appalachia?
Rodger Doxsey, one of space telescope team’s first leaders, dies at 62 — baltimoresun.com
Roger Doxsey, one of the earliest employees of the Hubble Space Telescope, passed away yesterday.
Roger was responsible for the science operations of the Telescope both prior to and during its entire productive lifetime. As a young pup, I was involved in creating the earliest software in support of many aspects of the plan he developed.
Along with Barry Lasker, who was my direct supervisor for most of that period, Roger is now another star to be cataloged and studied and memorialized in NASA history.
The Hubble Space Telescope’s science team in Baltimore has lost one of its original leaders, a physicist whose comprehensive knowledge of the complex observatory helped keep its science operations running smoothly, and astronomers’ discoveries rolling in.
Rodger Doxsey, head of the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Hubble Mission Office, died of cancer Tuesday after entering an area hospice over the weekend. The Towson resident was 62.
“Rodger was the heart and soul of Hubble here at the Institute,” said STScI’s director, Matt Mountain. “He … knew everything about the space telescope, from the smallest anomaly to the breadth of the extraordinary science delivered by the telescope he had worked with for over 28 years.”
via Rodger Doxsey, one of space telescope team’s first leaders, dies at 62 — baltimoresun.com.
Judge refuses to dismiss gay marriage ban lawsuit
What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?
This is a remarkable article containing what is tantamount to an admission in open court that Prop 8 supporters do not believe their own rhetoric, in fact do not even understand it well enough to be able to analyze it and anticipate challenges.
You know, the sort of thing they teach the first day in debate class or rhetoric class in high school.
Either that, or no savvy lawyers are willing and available to represent their case.
The quotes from Any Pugno at the end, a Prop 8 supporter are pugnacious an repugnant. As you read them, substitute “slavery” for “same sex marriage” and see if his thoughts make any sense at all.
October 14, 2009
By LISA LEFF
Associated Press Writer
A federal judge challenged the backers of California’s voter-enacted ban on same-sex marriage Wednesday to explain how allowing gay couples to wed threatens conventional unions, a demand that prompted their lawyer to acknowledge he did not know.
The unusual exchange between U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker and Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the group that sponsored Proposition 8, came during a hearing on a lawsuit challenging the measure as discriminatory under the U.S. Constitution.
Cooper had asked Walker to throw out the suit or make it more difficult for those civil rights claims to prevail.
The judge not only refused but signaled that when the case goes to trial in January, he expects Cooper and his legal team to present evidence showing that male-female marriages would be undermined if same-sex marriages were legal.
The question is relevant to the assertion by gay marriage opponents that Proposition 8 is constitutionally valid because it furthers the state’s goal of fostering “naturally procreative relationships,” Walker explained.
“What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?” Walker asked.
“My answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Cooper answered.
More, much more after the jump..
Captain Lou Albano Dies at 76
Captain Lou, Captain Lou …
Early Professional Wrestling Icon Captain Lou Albano
Captain Lou Albano, a former professional wrestler and actor (though never a sea captain), recently passed away at the age of 76 of natural causes. In the wake of his death, searches surged on the man and his unique body of work.
Still, despite his accomplishments in the wrestling world and his portrayal of video games’ biggest stars, the masses are likely to remember Albano for his work with Cyndi Lauper.
via The Buzz Log – Captain Lou Albano Dies at 76 – Yahoo! Buzz.
Captain Lou Albano!
The Man, the Song – Lyrics by NRBQ:
Captain Lou
Well, some say the man’s not wrapped too tight
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou, Captain Lou)
But when he’s on the scene, everything’s all right
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)
With the man of a thousand faces
I know we’d be goin’ places (hey!)
I’m gonna stick with the guiding light
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)
Lou don’t worry ‘cause it’s figured in
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou, Captain Lou)
And he’s got sharp teeth like Rin Tin Tin
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)
With the man of a thousand faces
I know we’d be goin’ places (hey!)
We’ll stick with the light through thick and thin
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)
Captain Lou:
Captain Lou, Captain Lou, Captain Lou
Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano
hey!
Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano
With the man of a thousand faces
I know we’d be goin’ places (hey!)
I’m gonna stick with the guiding light
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)
Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano {repeat}
Prescribed Burning Begins in the Giant Sequoia National Monument
For Immediate Release
Prescribed Burning Begins in the Giant Sequoia National Monument
SPRINGVILLE, CA – Sequoia National Forest personnel are starting their fall prescribed burning in the Western Divide Ranger District, Giant Sequoia National Monument
this week. With the recent storm in the area, weather and smoke conditions are predicted to be favorable for burning and fire crews are available to conduct the burns. As weather conditions and smoke dispersal allows, burning will continue through April of 2010.
Four areas are targeted to burn near the White River Summer Home Tract, and the communities of Camp Nelson, Ponderosa, and Sugarloaf. There are several hundred acres of piles of small trees, brush, and limbs that were created from community wildfire protection projects. The projects will result in reduced risk of
wildfire, helping protect the adjacent communities.
When the burning is completed, the piles themselves may not be entirely consumed in the fire. Read the rest of this entry »
Schwarzenegger signs gay rights bill SB 54 now law
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed two gay rights bills, one honoring late activist Harvey Milk and another recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states.
In the last of hundreds of bill actions taken before midnight Sunday, Schwarzenegger approved the two bills by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.
The governor last year vetoed the measure declaring May 22 a state day of recognition for Milk, suggesting that the former San Francisco supervisor be honored locally. But he subsequently named him to the California Hall of Fame.
Leno’s SB 54, meanwhile, requires California to recognize marriages performed in other states where same sex marriage is legal.
In a signing message, Schwarzenegger said California will not recognize the couples as married but will “provide the same legal protections that would otherwise be available to couples that enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships out-of-state. In short, this measure honors the will of the People in enacting Proposition 8 while providing important protections to those unions legally entered into in other states.”
via Schwarzenegger signs gay rights bills – Latest News – sacbee.com.
Gay rights advocates march on DC, divided on Obama
WASHINGTON – Thousands of gay rights supporters marched Sunday from the White House to the Capitol, demanding that President Barack Obama keep his promises to allow gays to serve openly in the military and work to end discrimination against gays.
via Gay rights advocates march on DC, divided on Obama – Yahoo! News.
Quotes from the National Equality March
Nature vs. Nurture:
The origin of bigotry should be the focus of a nature vs. nurture debate.
- Kim Coco Iwamoto, Hawaii State Board of Education
On the Nature of Justice:
No one should be patient when it comes to their Human Rights. Justice delayed is Justice denied. Justice is Indivisible – you can not be for Justice for some and not for all. Today we call on all people to look into their heart and tell us why we should not be equal.
Stewart Applebaum – gay leader of Retail, Wholesale Workers Union, President of Jewish Labor Committee
On the nature of equality:
Equality is about having all our basic needs met.
Penelope Williams – bisexual activist
On the nature of oppression:
When you feel oppressed and beat down, you don’t feel nothing, you don’t give a damn.
Much more after the jump…
