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St Pat`s Edition |
Rockaway Park NY, March 17 2010 in the 39th year of the Society |
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At St Pat`s Day, the Rockaway Park Philosophical Society celebrates the
beginning of its philosophical year, its 39th. On this day we lay aside the concerns of the
self-proclaimed world empires, real and pretended, to celebrate the world of the imagination.
Keltic thought greatly differs from Anglo progressivism regaled in the US as the gospel of progress.
Keltic thought is cyclical rather than linear or progressive; dualistic rather than one-dimensional; anecdotal rather than psuedo-scientific.
Micheál (Pronounced for the day mee-hawl) Levy: Quote of The Day "If you are going though hell right now don`t stop, keep moving though and soon you will see the light of love & joy on the other side." "Wishful thinking can produce amazing results via:-The Joys of Live Alchemy." "You are an eternal moment in the illusion of time...In-Joy!." ~ Micheál (Pronounced for the day mee-hawl) Levy Point of Life Geoff Jackson: (Siothran Coinneach) The News that is Non-News: The Reform of the House of Lords The House of Lords goes back to the witans or councils in Anglo-Saxon days and the Great Council of the Norman kings. In the nineteenth century, it lost ground to the Commons , who claimed legitimacy and the right to represent the country due to the franchise being extended from the 1832 Reform Act onwards. In the twentieth century, a showdown between the Lords and the Commons in 1911 led to the then-time Prime Minister asking the King to create however many new Lords it might take to get the legislation through. The Lords would never again claim equality with the Commons. Nowadays, the Lords are accepted as gentile fuddy-duddies, grandpops of the Constitution, lost under big –wigs and heavy robes and really good for nothing. British citizens are frustrated with them. Who do they represent and who do they think they are? From 1997 onwards, the Labour Party has been promising to reform the House of Lords. In 1999, hereditary peers were excluded from attending debates. Tony Blair set up the Dept. of Constitutional Affairs in 2003 under Lord Falconer to reform them. In the general election of 2005, all parties put proposals to renew the Lords in their Party Political Manifesto or party program for change. Finally, in 2007, Jack Straw, then-time Leader of the House of Commons, put forward a White Paper (government commissioned analysis) with proposals to reform the Lords. It was a document negotiated between all three major parties so its recommendations seem likely to be implemented. The government of Gordon Brown, however, has not enacted these proposals but intends instead to go to the country (May 6th? Hush-hush) to get them endorsed (i.e. have them in its political platform) in this upcoming next election. The proposals for a Bill of Reform include having elected (either 100% or with 20% appointed by an Appointments Commission), a regional list system, a period of office of around 12 – 15 years (non-renewable) and the retention of the term `life-peer` as an honor as before but not an honor that conferred any rights. On the 19th. July, Jack Straw, now Lord Chancellor in the Cabinet of Gordon Brown, put forward his proposals in a new bill. The new House – to be called `Senate` or `Upper House` and not `Lords` any more – would have a number of advantages. It would first and foremost have the legitimacy accruing to an elected body and therefore appeal to the ordinary people, who would elect it. The status of the members would be different because they would see their function as a job within the political system. It would represent all parts of the country including minorities such as immigrants, Welsh and Scottish people etc. An elected House would be younger. Finally, it would represent a commitment to bicameralism. Disadvantages, there are, too. An elected House, particularly one elected differently to the House of Commons, might come into conflict with that House. The independence of the House of Lords members would be lost (presently they come from all walks of life and are not party-committed). There would be transitional difficulties of changing from one form to the next. Finally, there would be higher costs due to the need for salaries, money for elections etc. there is also disagreement about whether to go for a form of Proportional Representation or stick with the First Past the Post principle. In all this debate as to how the new `Senate` would be elected, it has always been assumed that the powers of the House of Lords would stay the same. They would of course be more assertive. However, the whupping they had had in 1911 would still be remembered and indeed subsequent curtailment of their powers to debate money bills, stop so-called manifesto bills (main government proposals) or in any way show their teeth at the Commons would not be tolerated. No one, however, has really faced up to the fact that de facto changes in the Constitution can come about, as it were, of their own accord. When Henry Vlll declared the Anglican Church independent of the Church of Rome, he conceived it as a catholic church and not the Protestant Church it became. So, we consider the Senate will be the House of Lords under a different name but forget that its new politicians will want to make a name for themselves and have power and influence. One of the functions of the House of Lords is to act as the Court of Final Appeal just as the Supreme Court in the US. It was so that the nine law lords met in the House of Lords to discuss cases put before them (both from Britain and many Commonwealth countries). This will now stop. They are to become an extended body of twelve (including the original nine), who will meet in Middlesex Guildhall as from October 1st. just across Parliament Square or 300 yards from where they now meet. It is the end of an era but really without a break in continuity. In fact, they will be more easily identified than they are today. Otherwise the House of Lords has been the butt of jokes throughout the Twentieth Century. Reforming it is popular with the people. What is not popular is the Economy, the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, Europe etc. better then to go into an Alice-in-Wonderland world of Constitutional choices and make believe that by changing the House of Lords, you are changing the course of history. Britain became in effect unicameral in the course of the twentieth century. Either the Commons will find itself at loggerheads with the new body or, most likely, Britain will stay effectively unicameral. But you can fool some of the people some of the time. By holding elections to the new Senate simultaneously with general elections for the Commons, you can encourage a higher electoral turn-out. And so that is the news that is non-news from what has become the tiny monarchy on the fringe of Europe and the wrong side of the Atlantic to really matter. Geoff Jackson |
`Awesome` David Lawrence: (`Go Hiontach` Daibhidh Lorcán) KENNEDY`S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Why would I want to read about Ted Kennedy? Why bring him back to life? He was a cheat, a murderer, a liar and worse than that, a limousine-Lear jet liberal. I am sick of all these millionaires pretending that they are one of the people. Kennedy was not people. He was royalty. Wasn`t it enough that he dominated the upper classes? Why did he have to sink down into the mud with me and other middle class people and ride a white steed through our lives, in our fields? Why did he want our applause? Why did he have to draw and quarter us with imitated concern for our wounds?
He didn`t belong with the middle class. He was one of the gracious who got away with drowning women and cheating on exams. He coaxed our votes not because he loved us but because there were more middle class people than upper class people and that way he could get the most votes. Why didn`t he look for votes in the drawing rooms of his friends` mansions? Why didn`t he burn his next embarrassing mistress in one of their gilded fireplaces? Why didn`t he stop taxing the pockets of the middle class to feed his beloved poor? He couldn`t stop sympathizing with them and patronizing them because they were so remote from him that he had no idea who he was sponsoring. Welfare made him feel good about himself. He secretly said to himself, "Boy, am I better than them."
He not only luxuriated in the advantages of being rich he pretended he was one of us and stole our votes. As long as we vote for rich Democrats we will remain fools in the pig pen of naive politics. Wake up, brothers, we do not need national healthcare from a man who would abort us to keep the population of the unwashed down.
I do not mean to disrespect the dead. I only disrespected him when he was living. At least now we won`t have him shuffling around in our playground of interests and misleading us for his own benefit.
A plump nugget near the face
Ships
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Bob Djurdjevic: (Roibeard Mac Seoras) "beannachtai na feile Padraig!" (`blessings of day of Patrick`) St. Patrick`s Day: 40th Irish-American Birthday Shamrocks at the Rainbow Shower - Pachamama`s (Mother Earth`s) birthday gifts... HAIKU, Maui, Mar 17 - Happy St. Patrick`s Day everybody! Or "beannachtai na feile Padraig!" (`blessings of day of Patrick` - as my Chicago-based Irish-American friend Peter taught me to say). Over here, in Maui, it is a beautiful sunny day, promoting a sunny disposition in people. Here are some pictures from our Rainbow Shower home taken this morning... Post Phoebus, Nubilla: Mothers Earth & Ocean; Goddesses Pele & Namaka - All Show Up ["Post Phoebus, Nubilla" = After Sunshine, Clouds] (Latin) HAIKU, Maui, Mar 18 - This year, St. Patrick showed us two faces. They were as different as day and night or fire and water or Pele and Namaka. The Kona winds made the morning and afternoon of March 17 feel as warm as any summer day around here. By the afternoon, they also brought it the VOG (volcanic smoke) from the Big Island. In the evening, the winds had shifted to the west. Soon, strong gusts started blowing in the spray from the deluge outside through the open windows. By the time the guest got up to leave, we had to give them umbrella. The ground around the house was drenched. Nothing unusual around here in Haiku, on the rainy side of Maui. But I was not prepared for what came next... It was just before midnight. During a break in the showers, I walked out to the lanai facing the west and the gulch. I listened to the sound of wind. Or so I thought. But when I looked around, I noticed that it was a still night. No tree branches or shrubs were moving. "Strange," I thought, "that the wind would blow across the gulch but here." Then it hit me. "What if it`s not the wind? What if this is the sound of rushing water down in the gulch?" At first, that seemed far-fetched. For, today was the first anniversary of my move to Maui. Never in the last 12 months has there been any rushing water down there. The stream bed would occasionally fill up with puddles of water, maybe even a trickle or two, but nothing like this. This sounded like an angry Urubamba river roaring past the Ollantaytambo railroad station enroute to Machu Picchu (see Ollantaytambo: "Driving on Water" to Safety, Jan 26, 2010). But the longer I listened, the more it did sound just like that... rushing water. I called on Elizabeth to come out and witness it with me. "Come and hear something interesting," I said like someone who has just seen an alien spaceship in the gulch. But Elizabeth was too tired to care. "That`s interesting," she said, and went back to the bedroom. I stayed out for a while, enjoying the spa even in driving rain. The roar from down below seemed to be getting stronger, overpowering the sound of the rain on the rooftop and the lanai. I went back into the house, even dried my hair before going to bed. But something gnawed at me inside. "What if the rain stopped and the rushing water stops by the morning?" I thought. I`d never forgive myself for missing the "spectacle" of seeing a running creek on our property for the first time, even if it were past midnight. After all, ever since I was 33, I have tried to live my life without regrets. And the thought that had gnawed at me sure sounded like a regret. So I just dropped everything, grabbed two flashlights, slipped on my flip-flops, and butt-naked headed down into the gulch, piercing the pitch black night with two "torches" held high up. The closer I got to the bottom of the Lower Rainbow Shower, my excitement grew in proportion to the ever louder the sounds of rushing water. "Wow!" I yelled out loud, when I reached the point from which I could see the streambed, illuminated by two streams of light. Water was gushing and foaming down the gulch. I walked up and down the entire area for about 5-10 minutes, before deciding to come back up to the house, put some clothes on, get a camera and take some pictures. When I returned, I discovered to my horror that the camera was malfunctioning. "Out of memory," read the error message. "Oh, shuck!" I thought. "What a time for it to fail!" But then I remembered. I had taken out the memory card earlier in the evening in order to transfer the daytime images to my computer. "Bet the card is still in the computer." I scampered back up the hill. Indeed, the camera was still in the computer. By the time I returned to the gulch for the third time, light rain had started to fall. It was increasing in intensity as I started to shoot this video... (A fair warning first: the flashlight I was using to illuminate the rushing stream was so weak that what you`re about to get is basically a radio report about the happening with occasional streams of like across the screen. But don`t despair; better things beckon later in the story). Dr. Charles Frederickson: dochtúir teàrlach mac feardorcha IRISH COFFEE B.C. – Blissfully Caffeinated Nirvana instant Karma Bever-Age of brood brewed awakening Starbucks Milky Way morning metamorphosis Mug shot rejolting overtime perks 9–to–5 ruttine filtered drip grind Gimmea loving cuppa break fluid Never too dark noir choco-latte Mrs. Sippy River sedimental journey C – U latte mud junkie fix Qahwa spoken here Pony Espresso Mocha Cabana Rio de Joeiro Café Ole la Vida Mocha Kenya cappuccino? Yes, I Kona. I scream 4Frappucino ice cream All That Java lotsa potluck Human beans Sanka berry mocha ~ No Holds Bard (ni h-ann greimeanna bàrd) Dr. Charles Frederickson Geoff Jackson: (Siothran Coinneach) Potato Soup Oh, Mother Back bent, legs splayed Catching potatoes in her apron Splash, another potato in the bucket Irish Air Company Ryan Air Cheap tickets for Flights to all European capitals Who would have thought Irelad goes hi-tec Proddy and Catholic The lion will not lie down with the lamb Nor work in shipyards and steel plants The guys won`t have it |
James Davies, Lord Woodberry, (Seamus Daibhidh Morair preas-dhearc) St Pat`s Mentorial (léighean na feile Padraig!) Greetings Dean (slàinte deaghan): Ah yes Dean, Top of the Society to you, as the Society once again celebrates St. Patrick`s day, the only holiday on the civic calendar that the Society still recognizes, it having despite the Mentor`s occasional urging or needling abandoned Christmas, Easter, Labor Day, even Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July and god knows that else. The Dean has said that the Society might restore Independence Day of the US began to act like an independent country. The Lord Dean has taught that Celtic thought is differentiated from mainline thinking in three important respects: (a) it is cyclical rather than progressive; (b) it is dualistic where seeming by opposite forces can stand for each other; and (c) it is mytho-poetic or anecdotal rather than pseudo-scientific I do believe the Dean quotes Gibbons for the proposition that the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, but the Italian peasant still went out into the fields with his scythe, the horn of Saturn. The problem is, Dean, that most people don`t know how to do that or very much for that matter. I had long scoffed at the Dean`s views on this as on other matters speaking of the contemporary US where he spoke of Kamikaze capitalism, denationalization, two tiered society, fewer people making more, perverse rewards, and cultural fragmentation. I did scoff at them until I saw the decline in my own industry and my own union. And while I may have said we are only here to chronicle the decline, not to stem the tide, I resisted the Dean`s view that there is a certain determinism in the lives of men and nations such that the forces which made them strong ultimately cause their collapse. Instead I held hope, hope that there was some magic or invincible arrow that would save the day and maintain the US and Britain as the moral force in the world, the shimmering example. And what was the Dean`s sarcastic reply: all the moral force of Abu Grave, Gitmo and Walter Reade. I did think the Dean obsessed with his writings studying the personalities of the silk suited Justice Department lawyers furiously penning mist scholarly memoranda suggesting tortures and even requesting to be present for their administration. And what form did the retort take: that the Mentor suckered himself into the two great US myths and combined them into one: The Good Guy myth and the Agrarian myth, the latter one Rebels clung to as an article of fourth right up to the day the US Army band entered Richmond playing Dixie and unhooking the shackles of the slaves. I suppose that the Dean might see in that parable opposites standing for each other. Ah, but in my union, once proud and defiant, it is not all for one and one for all. The rats are deserting the sinking ship grabbing whatever stale morsels they can find. And what does the Dean say to this? I am lost in someone else`s dream Ah yes Dean we return to St. Patrick`s Day which begins the society`s philosophical year and we find ourselves, a year older and not an hour wiser. A Most Cheery Cherio (beannachd) James Davies, Lord Woodberry, (Seamus Daibhidh Morair preas-dhearc) Vandye Forrester: An Illusion An illusion Before you all was darkness; loneliness by constant companion All that had been my life was broken and gone Someone changed the rules of life and I did not know Then, one night I saw an illusion I saw your deliciously red hair, your lovely form a delightful surprise for my hungry eyes, your soft facial features and beauty made me hope again You seemed so happy and alive and I had wanted to die for so long; it seemed a certainty, only a matter of time You didn`t know but I watched you for a long time, afraid to speak since all else that I had touched had turned to dust and blown away It was through your courage that we met, and our first steps together made me feel alive once more The first evening I held you in my arms I loved you You were soft and warm and I loved again We agreed to walk a little way on life`s paths, to see where they would lead us. For me they lead to true happiness You awakened parts of me that I never knew existed For the first time I wanted only to give. If affection and caring were returned I would be enriched For me, it was enough only to be with you, walking or simply in the same room with you as you slept to listen to the soft whisper of your breathing and smell you fragrance Our love deepened. I gave and you too; in the mutual caring and giving we received the blessings of deep love between a man and woman For the first time I accepted a woman asking no change, knowing from bitter experience that to change was to destroy the object of one`s love Those days and weeks and months that we shared a home were the happiest of my life. Would that they had gone on for a lifetime, but it would not be At long, long last i had what I had for most of my life only held in my dreams - a home in which I was loved by my woman We made a valiant try, you and I. We both did the very best we could to make our love and life together last Your demons returned as did your illusion And, so I am left with the memory of your lips, of long walks and private talks; of our wonderful quiet Sundays over breakfast and kisses and soft music You gave me love, you gave me hope and in the process you gave me new life Your memory, my illusion, walks with me every step of my days I love you so dearly, so deeply and in my own way tenderly Because you were such a woman you made me more of a man Thank you for the loving home that for so long in my adult life had existed only in . . An illusion |
John Davis Collins Sean Daibhidh Coileán REVIVAL OF EMPEROR JONES The Irish Repertory Theatre, off Broadway on West 22nd Street in Manhattan staged a revival of the brooding Irish American playwright's Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece The Emperor Jones. First staged by the Provincetown Players in 1920, The Emperor Jones launched O'Neill out of obscurity. The 2009 revival at the Irish Repertory Theatre opened on an apologetic note. Though founded in 1988, with a purpose to bring works by Irish and Irish American masters and contemporary playwrights to American audiences, to provide a context for understanding the contemporary Irish American experience, and to encourage the development of new works focusing on the Irish and Irish American experience, The Theater had to downplay O'Neill's ingrained pessimism in the age of the obama-nation. The Emperor Jones is a one-act play about an American absconder who sets himself up as dictator of a Caribbean Island by bewitching the natives with their own superstitions. Yet he has a certain cool fatalism. He knows the over-lordship won't last forever. In a few moments of the short play, O'Neill, captivated by a Faustian theme of vaulting ambition, treats with material which is hard for liberals to face: Social Darwinianism, cultural regression, the failure of Christianity and the endurance of paganism. An admirer of the turn of the century master playwrights in tragedy, Russian Anton Chekhov and Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, O'Neill brought to the American stage a realism never seen before: characters on the fringes of society, speaking in the American vernacular and engaging in depravity. Yet they hold to their hopes and aspirations until overcome by disillusion and despair. The play was extremely popular in its time, staged frequently even once by WPA in the depression with marionettes. The revival starring John Douglas Thompson took a cue from that production using marionettes in the roles of Southern Belles attending a slave auction. John Douglas Thompson rendered a bravura performance capturing the essence of the upstart fatally doomed to wander in the wilderness of madness. It was a difficult role to assume having once been played on stage and in the motion pictures by the gifted actor Paul Robeson. The difficult themes managed to escape the attention of the New York critics who gave the revival exceptional reviews. After several weeks at the Irish Repertory Theatre the play migrated to the Soho Playhouse on Vandam Street. Andrew H. Oerke: WESTERN HIGH CULTURE For eliminating heretics of any kind we have no equal to the Twentieth Century`s High Western Civilization at its best. It seems that the lower a culture is, the better it is at thinking it`s higher. Yes, they killed their thousands, but we slaughter millions for goodness` sake and say the world`s better for it. During the interregnum of Huns and Magyars, Vikings and Celts, etc., Europe was in turmoil. Conquests tamped down the ruckus for a while but engineered an even greater ruckus with bigger and better tools to do it with. Then the only way to tamp down the spiraling violence was to dampen it down with force engendering more force as in Pax Romana. Alas that it has come to this now the core of the culture has shrunk, the axle`s pitted, wheels shaking the whole damn chassis apart. The next interregnum will bring the dagger to the throat of all throats, for, alas, the tail of the West wags all. Good thing we`re leaving earth for a new challenge before us globelings gobble ourselves up in a chain reaction gulp of thunder leaving a ring of atoms to wrap around the sun in orbits that won`t record memories and that other galaxies won`t even notice until the record of the light reaches them. Once the wince-out is in, the screen blinks dark and the computer goes: "#$@()+$%&&##"? & *@ fssst." ~ Andrew H. Oerke Herbert Woodward Martin: Old World Mosaic The picture of a red bird bound in an old world mosaic with its tail suggesting winter`s end or Karl Syzmanowski`s radically different kind of classical music, breaking all the harmonic forms which harkens back to Bach`s breath, back even, to the story of the evolutionary fish, or was it whale, which in itself is a tall beginning that touts our human heritage beginning with days that never seemed to end prophetically. ~ Herbert Woodward Martin Tom Feeny: February 2 This day's birth comes bristling with hoar frost. From her window, Anna peers through panes crystaled in white, out onto a grid of stiff clothesline asleep in a shell of ice. The morning glows stainless, wrapt in its purity. Beyond the low stone wall, sunlight snarled in its branches, an orchard sculptured by silverdust holds knives to the sky. The drama! The air delectable as fresh ice cream! ...and still...and still, despite all such seasonal enchantments, despite old houses and women at empty windows, this moment of bleak New England promise piddles out --hope overshadowed. Six more weeks at least. Je`free: Leaflets And I thought that branch is long dead Now there is a sign of life to my surprise Watch the tininess of leaflets hang on it Withstanding the blowing of the wind From the young foliage, freshness of green Now there is a budding hope, a promise We have something new to nurture Something new to watch and see flourish End of a tide is the beginning of another And every season is an endless opportunity Let the leaflets mature into books and paper For the students, the children, the future |
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