I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
A little afternoon pick-me-up. (Taken with instagram)
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Michele Bachmann’s first answer was, I wish the federal government had defaulted. Had defaulted! A week after Americans lost—some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions. Lost half of their 401ks. When trillions of dollars went down the drain with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause, and if anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way…they are out of their mind and they are too stupid not only to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run Slurpee machines in Des Moines…Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke…Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.
People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
Hey rest of the United States, gay marriage is like color TV — eventually everybody was gonna get it.
Ah, marriage. I recently celebrated my 29th year of it with my first and only wife. I like it and I believe in it.
Now, gay marriage. I realize that this is a hot-button topic. It offends many people and I do not wish to aggravate them. I will however, challenge them.
Marriage has two components in this country - one legal, one spiritual.
The spiritual is regulated by religious organizations - churches, temples, mosques, etc. In every religion, tolerance for homosexuals and their rights varies. It even varies simply from congregation to congregation. There is debate over whether or not the holy communion of matrimony should be endorsed for homosexual couples by religious authorities and believers. I respect their ongoing debate. I also respect every religions innate right to NOT endorse or sanction such unions. Religious freedom is guaranteed by our constitution. Therefore, no religious institution should be dictated to by government when it comes to coercion to follow a code of ethics.
However, there is still the legal aspect of marriage. Marriage is a legal contract that notes the dedicated partnership of two adults and confers on them certain rights and obligations. As adult, consenting citizens who have not forfeited their rights by criminal act - this contract should and must apply to everyone. To do anything less is to defy our constitution and to profane our belief in human rights. The rights, privileges and responsibilities of marriage are equal to all Americans or our constitution was constructed to create underclasses and sub-humans.
There will be those who argue that opening marriage to this definition will invite all kinds of aberrant and unnatural couplings to be included - human/animal, adult and minor, etc. That argument is specious. The rights are bestowed on 2 and only 2, ADULT AND CONSENTING, citizens. Period. No abstractions.
While there can be no law forcing a religious institution to recognize a gay marriage, spiritually - there can likewise be no law denying homosexuals equal rights for religious reasons.
It seems a very ordinary and obvious argument to me.
My life is filled with wonderful, vital, extraordinary people who happen to be gay. I love them dearly. I want only happiness for them. They make our world a better and beautiful place, as do their straight counterparts. I wish them the same joy I have known for 29 years. I wish them my rights. And I will do all I can to help them attain them.
Based on how you eat pizza Donald, I want to see your long-form birth certificate. I don’t think you were really born in New York.
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together.
Funding The Arts & A Historical Perspective
On Tuesday evening two-time Academy Award® winner Kevin Spacey appeared on “Hardball with Chris Matthews” to discus the House Republicans push for deep spending cuts and the attempt of right-wing Republicans to cut federal funding for the arts entirely.
Chris Matthews opened the segment with some startling figures stating that the GOP would pull “$167 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and $450 million from PBS.” Matthews continues, “that would translate into no funding for such programs as “American Masters” on PBS, the Sundance Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.”
Spacey’s argument was so clear and logical that it seems difficult to refute (or defund). Near the end of the interview (you can view the entire 7 minute segment below) he challenges the Republicans on economics and their patriotism. Spacey states that “[t]his is a fundamental issue of ideology.” He continues, “I say look back at the history of mankind. Look at the fact that on the continent of Europe, they have been supporting arts for a very, very long time.”
So that’s what I did… and here is what I found. Reflecting on a few highlights of the last 2,000 years, our society today still reaps the benefits of those choices and actions of generations past.
Gaius Julius Caesar (b.100 B.C.–d.44 B.C) and his predecessor and grand-nephew Gaius Octavius (Octavian) a.k.a. Augustus Caesar (b.63 B.C.–d.14 A.D), Louis XIV of France (b.1638–d.1715), Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor (b.1741–d.1790), and Edward VII of the United Kingdom (b.1841–d.1910) were all great rulers. Yet, this unique group of world leaders each shared something else; each was a patron of the arts.
The Theater of Marcellus, seating over 12,000 spectators, was the largest ever built in the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar began the project in response to his political rival, Pompey (b.106 B.C.–d.48 B.C.), constructing the Theater of Pompey the Great, Rome’s first permanent theater in 55 B.C. Shortly before his assassination in 44 B.C. Julius Caesar seized land for the construction of the theatre. However, after his death the project lay dormant until Augustus Caesar resumed the build in 22 B.C. The theatre was formally dedicated in 13 B.C. in memory of Marcellus, the son of Augustus’ sister Octavia.
Like all of the arts of the Renaissance, dancing expressed its political messages through allegories drawn from the ancient gods and goddesses of Greek and Roman mythology. Although the French Renaissance is thought to have ended with the death of Henry IV of France in 1610, it still had a profound influence on the arts through much of the 17th century. In fact, the most ardent of all royal dancers, Louis XIV of France, could trace his nickname of the Sun King to a performance where he played Apollo, the god of the sun. It was Catherine de Medici (b.1519–d.1589), queen consort of King Henry II of France from 1547 to 1559, who had brought the Italian ballet with her from Florence to France. Her grandson Louis XIII (b.1601–d.1643) was another enthusiast who knew the power of these court spectacles to impress foreign ambassadors, visiting monarchs and even his own mother. However, Louis XIV took the momentous step of establishing the Académie Royale de Danse. The Académie would become The Academy’s founding letters patent the first professional training school and lead in an unbroken lineage to today’s Paris Opéra Ballet. Most significant was the appointment of Italian-born, French composer Jean-Baptiste de Lully (b.1632–d.1687), that would help shape the performing arts in the French court. With Lully now officially in command, and French actor and playwright Moliére (b.1622–d.1673) working in collaboration with him, the ballet began to take on a more cohesive shape. All of these performances, both at the court and in public, involved much more than dancing. They were a mix of poetry, music, dialogue, and sumptuous design.
Austrian-born Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor, an enlightened despot, who in September 1767 invited Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (b.1756–d.1791) to Vienna to perform and compose an opera buffa [Italian comic opera], La Finta semplice, which was later acknowledged by the company for which it was written to be “an incomparable work.” Emperor Joseph II, the “music king,” was a lover and patron of the arts and steered Austrian high culture towards a more Germanic orientation. In 1778, at the instigation of the Emperor Joseph II, an opera company, the Nationalsingspiel (“national Singspiel”), was established. The company was intended to promote German culture in a city where the pervading atmosphere was French, a common phenomenon in German courts of the time, but emphasized in Vienna by the influential presence of Maria Theresia’s consort, the Emperor Francis of Lorraine. Mozart’s opera, commissioned by Joseph, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, emerged as its outstanding original success. Additionally, the former court librettist for Joseph II, Lorenzo Da Ponte, who had worked with Mozart on three operas (Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte), was the first Professor of Italian Literature at Columbia College in 1825, at the age of 76.
King Edward VII of the United Kingdom (b.1841–d.1910) was also a patron of the arts and sciences. During his rule he refurbished the royal palaces, reintroduced the traditional ceremonies, such as the State Opening of Parliament, that his mother, Queen Victoria (b.1819–d.1901), had foregone, and founded new orders of decorations, such as the Order of Merit, to recognize contributions to the arts and sciences. Edward helped found the Royal College of Music and when it opened in 1883 the King proclaimed, “Class can no longer stand apart from class… I claim for music that it produces that union of feeling which I much desire to promote.”
“The College’s influence on the development of music in the last 125 years is incalculable. Through its doors have passed some of the most distinguished and influential figures in British music history.” Former students include composers Sir Arthur Bliss, Gustav Holst, Benjamin Britten, William Lloyd-Webber, and his son Andrew Lloyd-Webber; conductors Leopold Stokowski; and instrumentalists James Galway, John Williams, and Barry Douglas.
And as promised the full interview — be sure to watch the entire thing as there’s a Winston S. Churchill quote at the very end.
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