Month: March 2006

That coupling is mine, but it pretty much matches the sentiment of one of the speakers I saw Tuesday at the Albany Public Library talking about Joan of Arc. She was a religious zealot, “called by God” to challenge the dominant authority militantly. She would probably now be diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

With all the current, Oscar-driven movie talk, if you get a chance, go see the silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc”, the 1928 silent film by Carl Dreyer starring Maria Falconetti, if not in conjunction with the Albany Pro Musica performance tonight of “Voices of Light”, then some other time. The faces Dreyer chose are AMAZINGLY evocative.

There is a 1995 recording of the “Voices of Light” by composer Richard Einhorn featuring the vocal group Anonymous 4 and the Radio Netherlands Philharmonic on SONY Classical.

Einhorn writes of the film that inspired his music that it “makes virtually every movie critic and scholar’s short list of masterpieces. It clearly influenced such filmmakers as Bergman, Fellini, Hitchcock, and…Scorcese.” A few months after the premiere of the film, most prints were destroyed in a fire, until a few canisters were found in a mental institution in Oslo in 1981. Note the parallels of the film to Joan’s life, such as the fire and the supposed mental instability.

My friend is having a birthday today. I’d wish her a happy birthday, but she doesn’t believe in this blog thing. Heck, happy birthday anyway, SL!

I missed the fact that March 1st was International Death Penalty Abolition Day.
Read the story of the wrongful execution that led to Abolition Day.

Censorship Exhibit at Albany Public Library. The exhibit will be in the display cases on the first and second floor of the main library during the month of March. Even if you live outside the area, you may be interested in information from the sponsoring group, the Long Island Coalition Against Censorship.

After seeing my piece on Old Black Joe, a story from the early 1960s, friend Mark sends me a far more recent example: Racist song in my kid’s music class

Friend Sarah writes: “This is worth the time to read. It is absolutely the best, most comprehensive, yet easy-to- understand article on the extremely important issue regarding voting systems.”

An interesting sermon about sex

Friend Sarah, who, not so incidentally, has started her own blog also writes: “We have created a page called Voices of Remembering to allow people to “hear” about The Remembering Site. We would love to have your voice recorded and then placed at therememberingsite.org/voices.htm for the world to hear in your words what you think of The Remembering Site or what you think about capturing life memories.
“I would be so appreciative if you could take some time from your busy day to record up to a minute (or longer, if needed) audio clip of your voice or perhaps you and your S.O.’s voice and then send it to me in an MP3 file. Anything goes – humor, seriousness, what it means to you, what the experience was like for you, how you plan to do it someday, the importance of sharing family memories, an encouraging word, etc.”
Here’s the thing: I’d love to do it, but I DON’T KNOW HOW. Any of my more adept chums have a way to explain this to me so even I will understand it?

Uncharacteristically, Fred Hembeck takes on the media (March 2)

Five of the Most Unpopular Jobs – and one of them is mine

The Andy Griffith Show as a source of inspirational study.

Another unnecessary assault on our beleaguered Vice-President.

Math as a tool for terrorism

Are Your Cats Old Enough To Learn About Jesus?

Unshelved, a comic strip about libraries and librarians by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum. The strips for March 6-9 are about blogging.

O.K. I’m against it.

No, I’m not that glib about it. I do recognize that there are lots of parallels between racism and sexism, such as people who are not experiencing it telling you: it’s all in your head, you’re exaggerating, you’re whining, you want special privileges.

I did not know until today that there is The National Organization for Men Against Sexism. There’s always more we can learn about each other, so I’m interested in learning more about them.

It wasn’t just that Gordon Parks, who died yesterday, did any of the things that he did, even if he was “The pre-eminent American photojournalist of sub-Saharan descent.”

It was that he did SO many things and did them well.