Reality Check

TOWARD A NEW EDEN

3/14/2013

101American/Reality Check publishes guest
          bloggers. The following is by Nay Darn
Toward a New Eden
   For 500,000 years, Homo sapiens has been shaped by the “Law of the Jungle,” and “Survival of the Fittest.” But now, fools are striving to undo this process.
   Humanity will end when either a Mt. Everest-sized meteor strikes from space, or by over population. The asteroid strike is a clean once-in-100,000-years event. Over population with global poisoning is underway, slow, and agonizing. The crisis was predicted by Thomas Malthus in 1798.
    "The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."
   “The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation.”
   Murder and war hold back overpopulation. Ur-war, of which every war and warlike act is a part, is a means to save, or at least delay the end of humanity on Earth.
    Its heroes unclude: Ghengis Khan, Mao Dze Dong, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Slobodan Milosevic, Al Capone, and organizations like the Mafia, Russian Mafia, Yakuza, Al Queda, and all who contribute to a depopulated planet Earth. The National Rifle Association is a ministry, Wayne LaPierre, its prophet. Suicide enshrined, as is Seppuku, from Japan’s Bushido tradition, is self-sacrifice. Jim Jones, of the Peoples Temple, is Saint Jim.
   The Ebola virus, and bacterias anti-biotics cannot kill, are Evolutionary attempts to end the population explosion. Mass immunizations, Doctors Without Borders, and the Hippocratic Oath, mindlessly defy the need for planet-saving depopulation. Western Medicine, which seeks to prolong life, is a purveyor of mass starvation.
   Children with Kalashnikovs, atom bombs in North Korea and Iran. Big Oil, Agri Business, Koch Industries and its Tea Party cohort, the end of Social Security and Medicare are among wise efforts to end the Earthly plague of over-population..
   When the human death rate exceeds its birthrate, humankind will at last be safe in an Eden without evil, immune, at last, to temptations of the Tree of Knowledge.
                                                   Nay Darn

THE NEXT BIG THING IN DANCE

3/11/2013

OAKLAND, CA, STREET DANCERS

      The Next Shape-Shifting Big Thing in Dance
   Twyla Tharp, a MacArthur choreography "genius grant” recipient, speaking on the Dick Cavett Show, said, “Which technique you use isn’t important. We use ballet.”
   Tharp, a choreographic genius, was shooting from the hip—and she missed. Dance techniques rise from human experience, reflect it, and are not really interchangeable. Classical ballet, from kingly courts, strove to assure lords and ladies that they were more than mere mortals. Baratya Natyam and other Indian forms reflect a rich mythology. Spanish Dance projects a conqueror’s steely machismo. The Royal Watutsi danced in sensuous synchrony with the Earth. Jazz is a flashy hybrid of Irish step dancing and African rhythms.
   Martha Graham’s technique projects her struggles with the soul. Merce Cunningham ventures into implacable serenity. Erick Hawkins blends with creation. Alwin Nikolais peers through an infinite kaleidoscope. Jack Cole captures the impersonal power of the machine age. Doris Humphrey, Jose Limon and Alvin Ailey evoke aspects of Everyman.
   Dance pundits dubbed the last Big Thing, “Modern Dance,” embraced by fiercely creative second and third generations: Merce Cunningham, Jose Limon, Hanya Holm, Alvin Ailey, Anna Sokolow, Pearl Primus, Erick Hawkins. Some wobbly experiments encouraged them to pontificate about “Post-Modern,” but the real practitioners soon saw beyond it and went on to produce forceful dances not post anything.
   Today’s next Big Thing is out there already seen by millions, the street form called “breaking.” From its reputed origins on the streets of Harlem and Spanish Harlem it spread into the world. Some fragments can be detected in the pop TV show, So You Think You Can Dance, but are swallowed up by banal shake-your-ass kick-over-your-head trash.
    Dance as a theater art needs what break-people are inventing—a new vocabulary that looks like no other and glistens with theater potential. (Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey would have grabbed it.) Dancers on the streets and in studios are learning the moves even while they create new ones, and a few institutions, the American Dance Festival for one, hires them to teach it.
   Will it attract masters like Bill T. Jones and Robert Battle, or will it take some young genius to recognize and capture these eerie, other worldly, de-constructed, re-constructed moves with their creaturely physicality, black hole intensity, elusive grace-under-pressure mystery that bursts out of their bodies and strains through confining skin? Can it be tamed, codified, taught in dance classes, given to the world, made into stage or TV or Internet choreography, the next shape-shifting Big Thing? Will it generate dances inspired by dark energy, string theory, solar flares, global warming, rising oceans, life on Mars, asteroids on collision orbits with Earth? It’s already worldwide. Click the link for a short clip taken on the streets of Oakland, CA. Street Dancers of Oakland, CA

ANYONE WANT A FOUR-FOOT STACK OF CLASSICAL LPs?

3/8/2013

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Anyone Want A Four-Foot Stack of Classical LPs?
   As a 12 year old, I liked Glenn Miller’s ,In the Mood, Benny Goodman’s, Sing Sing Sing, and hit songs like Marie Elena, Cool Water, and Goody Goody. Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, and Mendelssohn entered my life when I started taking violin lessons, and when I began collecting records, they were classical 78s. When LPs came in, I threw away a ten-foot shelf. Today my four-foot stack of LPs includes show albums, artists like Nina Simone, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Ramsey Lewis, and Leadbelly, but most are classical. When CDs took over, I asked a friend who sells LPs to collectors about mine.
   “Throw away your classical.”
   “I’d rather give them away.”
   “Nobody wants them.”
   Can it be true? There’s good pop music, but most of what I hear on radio and TV is junk. Pop critics are paid to natter about this or that new album but the tracks they play are garbage.
   I used to haunt record stores buying, and Donnell Branch of the NY Public Library borrowing and reel-to-reel taping to build my collection. Now all it takes is an iPhone and 99¢, so millions are into music. Is the decline in quality the flip side of rising quantity, the result of “massification,” a word I first heard from Prof. Loren Raiken at NYU?
   An early example of massification were the sea-going sailing ships of the Mediterranean, hand made by slaves, keels, ribs, and planks skillfully joined with wooden pegs. A few centuries later, ship builders were paid and time was money so hulls were nailed together. Quantity up, quality down.
   Music once belonged to lords and ladies. The masses had folk music, which can charm, but professional musicians needed wealthy patrons, played in mansions, courts, and churches with organs and choirs. When recordings made music available to the masses, new listeners poured in and big money could be made. Quantity up. Quality, down.
   Will a day come when the masses too love Mozart? I hope so, although by then my four-foot stack of LPs will be land fill.

WHY DOES THE WORLD EXIST?

3/5/2013

Why Does the World Exist?
   If you tend to wake up in the wee hours, a great way to get sleepy again is Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt. With the curious capacity to both dazzle and daze, after a chapter or two, you’re ready to go back to sleep.
   Holt went round the world consulting physicists and philosophers and in the last chapter, tells of a French TV show in which a priest, a scientist, and a Buddist monk are asked why the world exists.
   Priest: because God made it.
   Physicist: it sprang into existence out of a quantum fluctuation in the void.
   Buddist monk: it’s all illusion.
   Which pretty much leaves the reader unscathed. For me, one look at the sky on a clear night, or through a microscope at a water drop is enough .
   Holt considers consciousness, mind, self, and infinity, which comes in different sizes. We human beings, fleeting organic bubbles in the ocean of reality, are so habituated to beginnings and endings, we have trouble imagining infinity. As a 12-year-old, my neighbor, Georgie Legnos, who went to Greek School every day after PS 98, said, “If you get in a space ship (we all read Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) and reach the end of space, what’s on the other side of that end?” After that, infinity was easier to imagine than finity.
   So what does the Creator do? Create, naturally. Physicists are uncovering evidence—the “many worlds theory” for one—of new universes bursting into existence, and new souls, as Spinoza put it, “tiny regions in an infinite mind.” And each soul can grow before rejoining the Creator, or shrink and wink out, sloughed off like dead cells in a human body. “The wages of sin is death.” Nothing in Jim Holt’s mind-stretching book makes a case against anyone’s personal beliefs. Great book!

A SALUTE TO MATT MADDOX

3/1/2013

A Salute to Matt Maddox
         Obit, NY Times, Feb 25, 2013.
       Matt Mattox, 91, Dancer for the Movies
   He was a dancer’s dancer. Watching him was like watching a force of nature. When he left Once Upon A Mattress, his understudy took over. I replaced the understudy and went on for two weeks. The big number was a soft shoe, which Matt tossed off with relaxed efficiency. But he was a jazz dancer, and if he didn’t invent the style—Jack Cole pretty much did—he defined it. No one danced jazz better than Matt.
   In 1956, he was the lead dancer in Ziegfeld Follies the only edition to close out of town. Dance captain, George Martin, told me to “watch Matt Mattox," There never was an official understudy, but it was great to try to fit myself into his dynamic moves. When he showed up in NYC, he made a splash among dancers; Gwen Verdon, on Mike Wallace’s show gushed, “A great new teacher has come to town!”
   I saw the first New York performance of his concert troupe, Jazz Art. One number was duets with three women, each of whom leaves him flat, a dance from Matt’s heart because he never did figure out women. The Times obit says “Mr. Mattox was married several times.” (Rumor had it to more than one wife at one time.) The dance ended with Matt alone on stage, and as the curtain closed, a female voice shrieked, “Male chauvinist pig!” The women’s movement was surging but it struck me as sadly misplaced. Not long after, a ravishing 18-year old showed up in his class, and soon she and he were off to Paris. Her father brought her back, but Matt stayed.
   I saw him once more in the 1980s, when he came to teach at Jacob’s Pillow, sitting with a bright young thing at a table in their outdoor café. He had a goatee, but was as lean, hard-edged, and innocently intense as ever.
   One item in his obit floored me; he’d been a WW-II fighter pilot. If I’d known, I’d have asked which fighter he flew, and where he flew it, maybe a bit of pilot talk. As a bomber pilot I did not rank with fighter jocks, who tended to consider bomber pilots “airplane drivers,” but not Matt, as generous in spirit as he was commanding on stage.
   After seeing his air flips while standing on planks tossed across saw horses, in the movie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I asked how they’d made it look so real.
   “Because it was real. I said they’d better get it in one take because there wouldn’t be a second.”
   There won’t be a second Matt Mattox either. One of a kind.

GUN-HAPPY IN SOUTH AFRICA

2/27/2013

                 Gun-Happy in South Africa
   The United States and South Africa have curiously congruent histories. The U.S., poisoned by slavery, went to war to preserve national unity, yet emerged divided by racism and segregation. South Africa, poisoned by apartheid, avoided war by letting its deposed masters keep their loot, but they quickly rebuilt an aparthied of gated communities. Today, both have fear-driven populations isolated behind self-imposed walls who turn to guns for an illusion of safety.
   Yet how comprehend Olympic sprinter, Oscar Pistorius, pouring rifle fire through his own closed bathroom door, and although the only other resident of his apartment was his girlfriend, later claiming to have no idea who was behind that door. His plunge from national hero to accused murderer is eerily echoed by the arrest of his brother, Carl, also for murder of a woman. American journalist, Charlene Hunter-Gault, who now lives in South Africa, recently described the country as so rife with violence against women, that thousands of similar crimes, lacking celebrity appeal, do not even merit police investigations.
   Every day since the Newtown massacre, Americans have been murdered with guns, now in the thousands, a slaughter that goes as unremarked here as the murder of women in South Africa. This consequence of gun-obsession has nothing to do with deranged loners running amok. Even if every last American mental case were tagged and disarmed, there would remain those, deemed legally sane, who isolate themselves, build personal arsenals, demand the right to carry guns into malls, movie theaters, stores and bars, pretending to be loyal Americans while threatening armed insurrection if thwarted.
   Both South Africa and the U.S.A. made remarkable social progress in the 20th century, which only reveals how much more is urgently needed in the 21st.

LOCK THE TAIL WHEEL!

2/23/2013

Lock the Tail Wheel!
   (Photo left: B-17 taking off,
                    tail wheel locked.)
    With WW II engulfing the U.S., we needed tens of thousands of airplane pilots—fast. The result was a high speed training program, aviation cadets warned that two of every three would be “washed out,” not because they couldn’t learn to fly, but because they couldn’t learn fast enough. Tens of thousands of pilots won their wings and got the job done, which doesn’t mean they were well-trained. Many planes crashed because of “pilot error,” the awful number buried in statistics.
   I made such an error, but luckily it didn’t kill me. Before take-off, one check-list item was, “Tail wheel locked.” On landing it stayed locked until the plane slowed to taxiing speed when it was unlocked so you could steer off the runway and to a parking space. One day in the last run-up before take-off, we (me and my co-pilot) forgot to lock the tail wheel. The co-pilot hit the turbo boost, I advanced the throttles, released the brakes, we moved forward, high revs, engines roaring, and immediately the plane drifted right. I tried to correct but the rudder is useless below 40 MPH, and by then we could be off the runway. It hit me: the tail wheel was unlocked!
   Hands on the stick, full left rudder, I screamed “LOCK THE TAIL WHEEL!” but in the din my co-pilot gave me a “HUH?” look so I let go of the stick leaned over, head well below the windshield (or to use an army expression, head well up my ass), reached a hand to the floor, found the lever, slammed it home, popped up, grabbed the stick and got us airborne.
   Now that same thing is happening to the whole U.S. as the economy is gathering speed and becoming airborne after a Republican-caused economic crash, only to have these same head-up-their-ass Republicans insist on letting the tail wheel flip and flop in the the so-called Sequester.
   It’s worse than pilot error, which, Heaven knows, was never deliberate, just the result of young pilots not fully trained before going off to fight a war. What’s happening now, is deliberate, not only by the likes of theory-dazed fanatics like Rand Paul, but many who realize full well it will cause havoc but are nevertheless willing to let the country crash and burn (again!) to keep their super rich string pullers happy.

LIFE IS A RIVER

2/20/2013

JOHNNY APPLESEED

                               Life Is A River
    At the first Appleseed rehearsal, Joshua Clarke showed up carrying a Bible. He’d never worked for Agnes deMille before but had skated in Sonja Henie’s Hollywood Ice Show. At the audition she’d liked his barrel turns, boyish face, mussed black hair, and body more like a hockey player than a figure skater.
   By the end of the first week the cast had begun to know each other, but not Clarke. He read his Bible in breaks and took off by himself for lunch. One day he was reading, Science and Health, Key to the Scriptures. The women couldn’t decide if he was straight or gay.
   In the opening number, I was paired with Merry Christy. “What’s with Clarke and those books?” she said.
   “Shtick. Plain old shtick. Everybody has shtick.”
   “Oh yeah? What’s mine?”
   “Hard-bitten show gypsy who’s seen and done it all.” Merry had two ex-husbands and at 31 was pushing the limits of the dancing chorus.
   “How about yours?”she asked.
   “My shtick is not to have shtick.”
   When not needed, Clarke would arrange himself and his tome on the first steps of the stairs to the toilets so people had to step over him. In one number he was paired with Ingeborg Svensen, so fair she looked bleached. with a face like a Hallmark cherub. The second week she and Clarke left for lunch together. After lunch, deMille worked on the Hoedown in which Ingeborg and I were partners. “Joshua says life is a river,” she whispered.
   “Could be,” I said.
   “No, really. He makes it so clear.”
   I passed this to Merry and on the next break she grabbed me and approached Joshua on the stairwell. “Hey, Joshua!” He looked up. “Is life a river?”
   He peered at Merry, at me, at Merry. “Are you really interested?”
   “I’ve got to know,” said Merry.
   He closed his book, which turned out to be the Bhagavad Gita. “Buddha taught that all of God is in a single atom. and also that God is more than everything else put together.” He paused.
   “Where does the river come in?” asked Merry.
   “God is mind is life, which flows like a river and sometimes separates into tiny drops, like water over a waterfall. The drops are you and me.”
   “Aha,” said Merry. “So what happens when we hit bottom?”
   “We return to the river.”
   “Until the next waterfall?”
   “Unless you’re evil. The wages of sin is death.”
   The break ended. “Mad as a March hare,” Merry muttered.
   Next day Ingeborg said, “Joshua knows you and Merry thinks he’s crazy, but it’s okay.”
   “Do you think he’s crazy, Ingeborg?”
   She looked at me steadily. “No, I don’t.”
   “I don’t either.” She rewarded me with a cherub smile.
   One day I noticed Clarke had a new tome. Dianetics, but a couple of days later it was the Bible again. I asked about Dianetics. “Junk,” he said.
   In Philadelphia, Merry said Ingeborg was slipping into Clarke’s hotel room every night.
   “They’re discussing the Bhagavad Gita.” She snorted.
   Monday of the third week in Philly, they showed up wearing wedding rings. “We got married yesterday,” said Ingeborg. The cast crowded around.
   “Still think he’s gay?” I whispered to Merry.
   “Marrying proves nothing! Gay or straight they’re both queer as pink jock straps.”
   The women dancers came back from lunch with a cake. DeMille produced a bottle of champagne and Dixie cups. She proposed a toast.
   “May Johnny Appleseed run as long as these two in their brave new partnership!”
   Everyone raised a Dixie cup, Merry’s arm straight as a Nazi salute.
                                                                                 ***
© Stuart Hodes, 2013

THE WORLD JUST ENDED, OR DID WE TRANSFER OUT?

2/17/2013

   The World Just ended! Or Did We Transfer Out?
   In 1967, physicist, Hugh Everett, presented his Theory of the Universal Wave Function, a scientifically valid description of the Universe that includes an infinite number of parallel worlds. Today it is known as the Many Worlds Theory. Serious physicists believe it is closer to reality than any other explanation.
   The idea that the Multiverse is continually forking into infinite new Universes is really no harder to comprehend than the sheer wonder of the night sky. Sci-fi writers love parallel universes because the concept opens mind-bending possibilities. Among others, it can explain the power of prayer; when a prayer is answered, you’ve taken a fork into a world where what you prayed for is reality. That being so, it can improve things for you in this world. Here’s how.
   First: predict the end of the world. Someone is always predicting the end of the world, and there are always people eager to believe. The most recent prediction was from the ancient Mayans, December 21, 2012.
   Second: offer a way to survive. Many end-of-the-world forecasters promise their followers ascent to nirvana, others left behind. Then, when the world doesn’t end, they look silly. Some avoid this by committing mass suicide, like People’s Temple and Heaven’s Gate. Entirely unnecessary. Even if they do make it into some ginger peachy Eden, in this world they’re dead and buried.
   Third: base your prediction on ancient wisdom. The December 21st prediction came from the ancient Mayans, but the world is littered with more ancient wisdom than used plastic grocery bags: ancient Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, Zoroastrians, Persians, Pre-Columbians, Native Americans, Indians, alchemists, astrologists, occultists, Rossetta Stone, Machu Picchu, Adjanta, Ramayana, even the cave drawings at Lascaux.
   Ancient wisdom isn’t always logical. In fact, logic is best avoided. If something seems hard to comprehend, interpret it, being careful to avoid prior interpretations. You don’t want your followers drifting into some doomsday cult. If you prefer, go into a trance, evoke a spirit, and get your ancient wisdom from the source.
   Fourth: make up a catchy name. A few suggestions: Communosophy, Emigration Salvation,, Heaven's Heart, Horizonites, Ineffable Assembly, Infinitography, Lifeline Congregation, Noah’s Archangels, Psycholism, Quantum Ascenders, Soul Cadets, Sublime Voyagers, Trajectorians, Transcendental Cohort, Translationistas.
    Get the idea?
   Fifth: Proclaim a date. At exactly midnight on—your date—gather your followers. You know that the world is about to end, hear the clock strike, and lo! you are still alive! This is proof positive that you were right because it proves you are in an alternate reality! Go forth, watch the sun rise, and explore your brave new world.

OUT OF THE PARK!

2/13/2013

                              Out of the Park!
   It’s always a thrill to watch a heavy hitter knock the ball out of the park, as Obama did in his State of the Union speech last night. To me it was pure “Wow!” but pundits ordinarily ready to heap praise, Rachal Maddow, Chris Matthews, Reverend Al, seemed in shock. Their comments amounted to little more than, “Aw shucks!”
   I found myself thinking of the first Obama vs. Romney debate, the one Romney “won,” wondering if despite winning the next two, Obama was once again showing us that that first had been a fluke.
   Marco Rubio, putative rising young Republican star, offered a rebuttal like an infield pop-up fly out that ends the inning. He looked rumpled, a bit plump, and without his erstwhile mannikin gloss. His words came out in dry gulps, like he was comprehending them for the first time knowing that millions were listening, making his throat go dry. All he could do was snatch desperately across the screen for a plastic bottle of water. Didn’t help.
   His so-called rebuttal ignored the state of the union to mix cranky complaints about Obama with don’t-tax-the-rich mumbo-jumbo that was hopeless even before it went stale. If it was Rubio’s chance to shine, he blew it.
   Some Republicans certainly know by now that what caused their defeat at the polls was not some tactical oversight, or bad PR, or a demographic shift, but rotten policy. They’ve been wrong about everything and the public has gotten wise. I’d not be surprised to hear that Republican string-pullers had deliberately thrown Rubio to the wolves. Teach the young pup that he’s not ready for prime time.
   There’s another young pup in the news too, King Kim, III, better known as Kim Jong Un, overfed face grimly fixed following news that North Korea has set off another atom bomb. Can anyone look at North Korea and not wonder when the whole starving decaying country will collapse?
   Republicans too, live in a decaying house of cards built of false, fraudulent, self-serving ideas, sheltering a weird mix of so-called Libertarians, Tea Party malcontents, women-bashers, assault-rifle toters, holy rollers, blue collar lotto-playing wannabe millionaires, with a few out of sight money-mad billionaires to yank their wires.
   Strange that a brilliant State of the Union address with a travesty rebuttal, and an atom bomb explosion with a travesty justification happened to happen at the very same time.

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Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

Being 90 years in this world, with great kids, great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
Stuart Hodes

       With my friend, Nero.
             April, 2012.
    Photo by Ray Madrigal

Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

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