"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Now I don't know what you're stance on publicly regulated health care is but did you see this video shot by the Columbus Dispatch? I did but I don't get it.

It came out on Tuesday I think and I missed it, but thanks to YouTube I've been ablt to catch up to everyone else. Although, I don't really think that it's unique. It's probably the same type of thing that's going on all over America. It is the same kind of action or reaction that you saw when congressmen and women had their town meetings in order to explain their position of health care reform. It is the same kind of angst that you saw and felt when people compared President Obama to Hitler or Josef Stalin or some sort of "Manchurian Candidate" last year.



Very few things shock me anymore, but to see a man throw dollar bills at another man suffering from Parkinson's Disease as if he was a cheap stripper on a pole where you could see the marks left by the heroin needle in her arm and the sordid and loose looking pussy lips that had seen tighter and better days, makes me kind of pause. Not that anyone has a right to treat strippers that way, but where do people like this protester in his awfully clean white shirt come from? Are they the same ones that sent millions of dollars to Haiti and other areas in need of relief or are they ones that burn crosses in the middle of the woods or the lawns of other people? Why is there such a dichotomy in being an American.

I Remember

I am so old, that I remember when an Apatosaurus used to be called a brontosaurus on the Flintstones and when Pluto used to be a god, a Disney dog and a planet, but I don’t remember when I started to like classical music.

It could have been when I used to take music classes and the teacher would play “The Planets” by Holst and I recognized part of it as the theme music of some TV show or other but I don’t think so. It might also have started when I would watch Bugs Bunny do “The Barber of Seville” or his version of Wagner’s “The Ring” in “What’s Opera Doc?” both shows being classics in their own right. But again, I don’t think so.

It was probably when my father would play his disco album versions of Bach or Beethoven back in the day when we had records. Or when he would play A Whiter Shade of Pale, not the original Procol Harum version, but one done with a reggae beat by but someone I have long ago forgotten. And then it took me years to realize that was just a rip off of Bach’s Air on G. Since then, I have learned to appreciate classical music in the way that it can be used to feed or purvey emotions, especially when it is combined with visuals like video and film. Like the scene in the movie “Se7en” where Morgan Freeman is walking in a library looking for clues and absolutely nothing happens. But as soon as Bach is played in the background, what was going to be just another piece of celluloid lying on the cutting room floor turns into something erudite and wonderful.

Last weekend I had intended to buy Philadelphia’s own Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” Ever since I saw or heard it being used in the Oliver Stone’s “Platoon”, I have always loved it and thought that I would use it somewhere at sometime for something. So since I hate going to record stores without knowing exactly what I want, I went on YouTube to see which orchestra or version would the best one for me. When I saw the BBC Orchestra from the Royal Albert Hall I wasn’t that impressed except for the fact that they were playing it in memoriam for September 11th, just a few days after the event and I remembered.

I remembered every minute of that Tuesday from when my sister called me at work from Florida to say that the World Trade Center had been struck. And then she called again to say that it had been struck again and then again to say that one of the buildings had collapsed and so I called her nuts because everybody knew those buildings were built to withstand airplane crashes. I remember how my Ex called and left me several messages each time I was away from my phone. He would tell me that his bus had been diverted away from the New York because no one knew what was going on and that he had arrived at the Lincoln Tunnel just minutes after the second plane had struck and that he needed help. I remember trying to get back to him to find where he was and what he wanted me to do, but the all the New York lines, cell phones and land lines were busy. I remember thinking that logically, everyone I knew would be safe, but I felt frustrated and to be honest a little scared, not for me but for everyone else.

Now it’s been almost ten years since those days and I wonder if I’ll remember as much ten years from now? I wonder if this is what it’s like when people say they remember when Kennedy was shot or the few who are left who remember when FDR died. So much has happened since then but probably not as much as has stayed the same, but I remember.

A Whiter Shade Of Pale - Procol Harum

It's not really that important but I think that I am going to mention this song in a future post so I just need to give a few of the young folks something to refer to.