THE public outcry, Ms. Naumann later told me, was “getting more hostile as the day went on.” It became hard to ignore. At one point that Friday afternoon, she found herself on the phone with a woman who simply couldn’t accept the agency’s refusal to help Snap. “She was crying and crying and could not be consoled,” Ms. Naumann said.Meanwhile, Ms. Naumann was periodically checking in on the eagles, via the EagleCam, and noticed that one of the adult birds had brought a dead female pigeon into the nest to feed its chicks. Ms. Naumann knows the pigeon was female because, once the eagles ripped it open, they discovered an egg inside. And so they ripped the pigeon’s egg open too and ate its contents. It must have made for great television, frankly. And yet, Ms. Naumann told me, none of the people criticizing the government for its willingness to let Snap die seemed to mind watching their birds tear apart a mother pigeon and her unborn chick. “So,” she ventured, “there was something contradictory about that.”
[gallery] David JP Hooker
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heiiATCrwVQ?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=250&h=141] Speaking of Vaughan Williams, I don’t know that he ever composed anything more beautiful than this tiny motet, written for and first sung during the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. “O taste and see how gracious the Lord is”: an ideal text for music to be sung during the reception of the Eucharist.
(I only learned of this motet a few years ago from my friend Grant Pair, who has forgotten more about choral music than I’lll ever know.)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PTZG2cHM5g?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=250&h=187]
“Loch Lomond” is a nineteenth-century imitation of Scottish folk-song and therefore about as inauthentic as a pice of music can be, if you care about authenticity, which I most assuredly do not. Yes, it walks right up to the edge of schlock; yes, it has a thousand luridly sentimental associations, even for those of us who aren’t Scots.
It is also one of the loveliest melodies I’ve ever heard, something that Ralph Vaughan Williams discerned when he gave it this magnificent arrangement — indeed, just this one song constitutes a kind of master-class in vocal arrangement, for those who are willing to hear it. Consider the keening of the tenors, the tragic fundament of the basses, the lovely exchange of responsibilities in the last verse as the lead singer gets the chorus.
Call it inauthentic, call it sentimental, whatever. It’s magnificent and you know it.
As Doris and I made our way to the school I couldn’t shake the fear that we were, indeed, tricksters. Well meaning tricksters, but still tricksters. Everywhere in Ghana you see charismatic evangelical churches. A result of obroni, once, long ago, lathering Christianity across the country. Doing so despite the tribes of Ghana having had their own religions, their own spiritual ethos. Yet, those missionaries thought they were saving these folk from themselves, were so sure of their intentions.
[gallery] Why use wallpaper when you can do this? From a cool story about record collectors.
Luddites revisited
Our current historical moment is one wherein a space is opening wider and wider in which a movement critical of technology (which is not the same as being anti-technology [as such]) can grow. From the threats of automation looming over once “safe” career fields, to the recognition that our digital devices are empowering a massive surveillance operation, to new devices that strike people as transparent examples of tech designer’s lack of interest in what people think, to a world threatened by ecological destruction (much of which is the result of thoughtless use of technology) – this is a moment at which people are primed to hear a critique of technology. Especially as tech firms drown in money whilst venture capitalists and Wall Street froth at the mouth – people can see that behind the shiny ideology of modern technology sit the descendents (at least in spirit) of the machine owners who have been enriching themselves by “disrupting” the lives of the less powerful for hundreds of years. At a time when a dense economic tome about inequality can become a surprise best seller even as tech firms merrily purchase competitors for billions the old Luddite saying “no general but Ludd means the poor any good” returns with a certain unnerving truth. After all, the tech firms might happily bring out all manner of new “goods” but their “disruptive” mantra makes it clear that they have no interest in “the good.”