Happy New Year, my old and new friends. I wish you all well. May 2014 be one of the best years of our lives.
Write me and tell me more about yourselves.
Happy New Year
May 2014 be one of the best years of our lives.
Category: THE VIETNAM WAR
2013 in review
The WordPress.com stats prepared a 2013 annual report for Stillness of Heart.
The WordPress.com stats prepared a 2013 annual report for Stillness of Heart.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Tell your friends!
Recommended reading / viewing / listening
The consequences of LiLo / Celebrating Richard Ben Cramer / Lima’s ugly side / Unborn babies can learn language / Public sees harm from U.S. politics
Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.
1. Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie
By Stephen Rodrick | The New York Times Magazine | Jan. 10
“[Director Paul] Schrader thinks she’s perfect for the role. Not everyone agrees. Schrader wrote ‘Raging Bull’ and ‘Taxi Driver’ and has directed 17 films. Still, some fear Lohan will end him.”
2. Hagel pick: Final snub of George W. Bush
By Alexandra Burns | Politico | Jan. 9
“[T]he most vehement objections have come from the conservative, interventionist foreign policy community — the so-called neoconservatives who created the ideological architecture for the wars Bush launched in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
3. What do think of Richard Ben Cramer now?
By Tom Junod | Esquire | Jan. 8
“Richard Ben Cramer is the only one I still read for that holy, misguided, and somewhat dangerous purpose — the only one whose blood I still welcome for the purposes of transfusion. The others carry the risk of infection, which is to say the risk of mannerism.”
4. Hiding From People-Search Sites
By J.D. Biersdorfer | Gadgetwise :: The New York Times | Aug. 29
“I recently found my name, address and other personal information listed on this Web site called Spokeo.com. How do they get this information and can I delete it?”
5. Wodehouse and Fitzgerald — emblems of a lost age
By Robert McCrum | The Guardian | Jan. 7
“The two authors incarnated very different visions of England and the US between the wars”
6. From the Slums of Lima to the Peaks of the Andes
By Alastair Bland | Off the Road :: Smithsonian | Jan. 7
“That there could be anything in the world but dust, rubble, traffic, burning trash heaps, mangy dogs and slums seemed impossible as we rolled northward through Lima.”
7. Babies Seem to Pick Up Language in Utero
By Nicholas Bakalar | Well :: The New York Times | Jan. 7
“A baby develops the ability to hear by about 30 weeks’ gestation, so he can make out his mother’s voice for the last two months of pregnancy.”
8. Rebooting Republican Foreign Policy
By Daniel W. Drezner | Foreign Affairs | January/February 2013
“Needed: Less Fox, More Foxes”
9. Most in U.S. Say Politics in Washington Cause Serious Harm
By Frank Newport | Gallup | Jan. 7
“More than three-quarters of Americans (77%) say the way politics works in Washington these days is causing serious harm to the United States, providing still another indicator of the low esteem in which Americans hold their elected officials. …”
10. Creative Aging: The Emergence of Artistic Talents
By Richard Senelick | The Atlantic | Jan. 4
“Depending which part of the brain is affected, different skills will be preserved or impaired in various types of cognitive decline and dementia. This gradual reformation is what may allow the emergence of new artistic abilities.”
*****************
TUNES
Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.
1. J.J. Grey & Mofro — Country Ghetto
2. Dr. Wu — I Don’t Need No Woman Like You
3. Delta Moon — Ghost In My Guitar
4. ZZ Top — Nasty Dogs And Funky Kings
5. Stoney Curtis Band — That’s Right
6. Kelleys Lot — Drive
7. The Fabulous Thunderbirds — Stand Back
8. Jeff Powers & Dead Guys Blues Band — Bad Luck Boogie
9. Ian Moore — Pay No Mind
10. Ray Wylie Hubbard — Down Home Country Blues
11. The Stone Coyotes — Trouble Down In Texas
12. Lost Immigrants — Dixie Queen
13. Band Of Heathens — Hallelujah
Tell your friends!
2012 in review
It’s been my best year ever. Thank you all for your interest.
WordPress.com prepared a 2012 annual report for Stillness of Heart.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 13 years to get that many views.
It’s been my best year ever. Thank you all for your interest. Click here to see the complete report.
Tell your friends!
Recommended reading / viewing / listening
Hayes v. Tilden: Real dirty politics / E.O. Wilson on life / The best documentary on the Vietnam War / A review of the Democratic convention
Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.
1. Why do we procrastinate so much?
By Rowan Pelling | BBC News Magazine | Aug. 27
“As autumn approaches people finish off vital DIY, get ready to start a new job or prepare for school. At least, they would do if they weren’t in the grip of procrastination. …”
2. Is it a bird, a plane? No, it’s Putin, human crane
By Gabriela Baczynska | Reuters | Sept. 5
“Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has tracked a Siberian tiger and posed with a polar bear, on Wednesday took his love of wildlife to new heights by flying with cranes — to lead them on a migration route.”
3. Have Americans turned inward?
By Bruce Stokes | Global Public Square :: CNN | Sept. 7
“Foreign policy is the forgotten stepchild of the 2012 U.S. presidential election.”
4. Reviewing the political theater of the party’s convention
By Peter Marks | The Washington Post | Sept. 6
“Despite its agonizing interminability and waning relevance, a national convention still can be a star-maker. …”
5. Living in the Era of Megaterror
By Graham Allison | The New York Times | Sept. 7
“Today, how many people can a small group of terrorists kill in a single blow?”
6. Vietnam: A Television History
American Experience :: PBS
“From the first hour through the last, the series provides a detailed visual and oral account of the war that changed a generation and continues to color American thinking on many military and foreign policy issues.”
7. E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth
TED | April 2007
“As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of all creatures that we learn more about our biosphere — and build a networked encyclopedia of all the world’s knowledge about life.”
8. Hayes vs. Tilden: The Ugliest, Most Contentious Presidential Election Ever
Past Imperfect :: Smithsonian.com | Sept. 7
“For Rutherford B. Hayes, election evening of November 7, 1876, was shaping up to be any presidential candidate’s nightmare. Even though the first returns were just coming in by telegraph, newspapers were announcing that his opponent, the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, had won.”
9. General Hancock’s Hour
By Glenn David Brasher | Disunion :: The New York Times | May 8
“Thanks to the information gleaned from runaway slaves, Winfield Scott Hancock’s chance to prove his merit came on May 5, with the Battle of Williamsburg.”
10. Trouble on the Triple Frontier
By Christine Folch | Foreign Affairs | Sept. 6
“The Lawless Border Where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay Meet”
Tell your friends!
Recommended reading / viewing / listening
Social media law enforcement / Tricking Hitler / Delving into the debates / The empty Social Security promise / The chaotic ’68 Dem convention
Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.
1. Police embrace emerging social media tool
By Terry Collins | Associated Press | Aug. 11
“Almost 6,000 law enforcement agencies are now deploying the public notification service Nixle to provide residents with real-time alerts on crimes in progress, traffic messes and missing children.”
2. How fiction fooled Hitler
By Jina Moore | Salon | Aug. 12
“Before there was James Bond, there was Gregory Sallust. Unlike Bond, who is just sexy fun, Sallust was out to trick the Nazis, defeat Hitler and save the world.”
3. Elite colleges transform online higher education
Terence Chea | Associated Press | Aug. 5
“The proliferation of so-called massive open online courses, or MOOCs, has the potential to transform higher education at a time when colleges and universities are grappling with shrinking budgets, rising costs and protests over soaring tuition and student debt.”
4. Debating Our Destiny
PBS NewsHour | 2012
“Throughout the last 20 years, Jim Lehrer has sat down with the presidential and vice presidential candidates to discuss one thing — the debates.”
5. Siri, Take This Down: Will Voice Control Shape Our Writing?
By Robert Rosenberger | The Atlantic | Aug. 1
“Do our writing means change our written ends?”
6. Social Security not deal it once was for workers
Associated Press | Aug. 6
“People retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers than they will receive in benefits after they retire. It’s a historic shift that will only get worse for future retirees, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.”
Also see: How much I pay, how much I get | Who gets it? | You can’t get these returns today
7. Will Wright makes toys that make worlds
TED | July 2007
“In a friendly, high-speed presentation, Will Wright demos his newest game, Spore, which promises to dazzle users even more than his previous masterpieces.”
8. Mary Beard: the classicist with the common touch
By Vanessa Thorpe | The Observer :: The Guardian | April 29
“Her current TV series on the Romans has occasioned unkind remarks about her appearance, when, in fact, we should be celebrating her eruditon and ability to animate her subject”
9. White House on the Pamunkey
By Jonathan Horn | Disunion :: The New York Times | June 29
“The irony of the Union destroying a home so closely associated with its founding president was hardly lost on Southern commanders.”
10. Recalling the Mayhem of ’68 Convention
By Walter Cronkite | NPR | July 2004
“Tensions over Vietnam Upset Chicago Political Scene”
******************
TUNES
Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the wonderful Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.
1. Lance Lopez — So Alone
2. Bernard Allison — Slide Master
3. Betty LaVette — I Still Want To Be Your Baby
4. Joe Bonamassa — Blues Delux
5. John Hiatt — My Baby
6. Cross Canadian Ragweed — Wanna Rock n’ Roll
7. Tina Turner & Eric Clapton — Tearing Us Apart
8. Robin Trower — Feel So Bad
9. Guitar Shorty — Old School
10. Lost Imigrants — Never Been To Spain
11. Los Lonely Boys — Oye Mamacita
12. Watermealon Slim — Newspaper Reporter
13. Otis Taylor — Rain So Hard
Tell your friends!
Recommended reading / viewing / listening
The ‘napalm girl’ photo / Exercise and get smarter / A looming galactic collision / Texas traffic / Living to 100
Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.
1. Cheever’s Art of the Devastating Phrase
By Brad Leithauser | Page-Turner :: The New Yorker | May 31
“The more you read Cheever, the more you feel his best work is often less about plot than about language — about poetry in the broadest sense.”
2. AP ‘napalm girl’ photo from Vietnam War turns 40
By Margie Mason | Associated Press | May 31
“‘I really wanted to escape from that little girl,’ says Kim Phuc, now 49. ‘But it seems to me that the picture didn’t let me go.’ ”
3. Exercise Makes You Smarter, Thanks To A Common Gene
The Huffington Post | May 31
“It turns out that exercise does a lot more than get the blood pumping: in about 60 percent of the population, it may be responsible for the expression of a gene that floods your cells with … a protein that is thought to help with mental acuity, learning and memory.”
4. Mexico’s Drug Corruption Arrests: Why Soldiers Make Bad Narco Agents
By Tim Padgett | Global Spin :: Time | May 31
“While putting soldiers on the streets might have provided some short-term relief, the fact remains that in the long run soldiers make lousy anti-drug agents … and the longer they’re kept in that role, the more problems you’re going to have.”
5. NASA Predicts Our Galaxy Will Collide With Another In 4 Billion Years
By Carl Franzen | Talking Points Memo | May 31
“Andromeda, which is located 2.5 million light-years away, is moving rapidly towards the Milky Way at a rate of 250,000 milers-per-hour, a clip that will only increase as the galaxies approach.”
6. Are you feeling sleepy? Here’s why …
By William Leith | The Daily Telegraph | May 31
“The pace of modern life forces us to ignore one of the most powerful parts of our brain — the body clock. But at what cost?”
7. Yes, Texas Traffic Really is That Bad
By Jason Cohen | Texas Monthly | May 31
“INRIX, which released its numbers last week, also found that Austin was the eighth most congested city in America.”
8. Is the vice presidency worth having?
By Chris Cillizza | The Fix :: The Washington Post | May 31
“[Here] are our most up-to-date rankings of the vice presidential field … . This month we decided to cut to the chase and give a single line about the good and the bad of each potential pick.”
9. The secret to living over 100 is optimism, genetic background
GlobalPost | May 30
“A new study on aging studied participants over 95 of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.”
10. The 1 Percent’s Problem
By Joseph E. Stiglitz | Vanity Fair | May 31
“Why won’t America’s 1 percent — such as the six Walmart heirs, whose wealth equals that of the entire bottom 30 percent — be a bit more … selfish? As the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even those at the top will pay a steep price.”
******************
TUNES
Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.
1. Blake Havard — Love
2. Mark Guitar Miller — Tired
3. Rob Mcmahan — Trouble
4. Summer and the Sinners — Breakin’ Up
5. Kid Rock — Country Boy Can Survive
6. The Midnight Flyers — Down Low
7. Tommy Z — Can’t Hide My Feelings
8. Los Lonely Boys — Man to Beat
9. Bleu Edmondson — Dallas
10. Dana Fuchs — Lonely for a Life Time
11. Chris Aaron Band — Grain Of Salt
12. Voodoo Blu — Blues is my Business
Tell your friends!
Homo universalis
One of my guiding principles is that we’re all capable of self-improvement at any age, particularly intellectual self-improvement. Sometimes that faith is the only thing that enables me to sleep through the night and get out of bed in the morning.
That’s Latin for “universal man” or “man of the world,” if Wikipedia can be relied on for a proper translation.
I glide through a small, comfortable life — trying not to bother anyone, trying to be pleasant and polite, non-judgmental and sympathetic, charming and humble, trying to be intellectually honest and self-aware of my limits and flaws, every day edging closer to fulfilling all my ambitions.
One of my guiding principles is that we’re all capable of self-improvement at any age, particularly intellectual self-improvement. Sometimes that faith is the only thing that enables me to sleep through the night and get out of bed in the morning. I’ve always been blessed with a hunger for knowledge, a curiosity that often flares into full-blown passion for new arenas of experience, a curiosity perhaps sparked by a bittersweet frustration that I don’t know as much about literature, science, mathematics, history and culture as I think I should.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve always embraced wholeheartedly people like Theodore Roosevelt and Michelangelo, those who lived their lives desperately hungry for more of the world to absorb into their hearts and minds, constantly reaching out to make more of it their own.
A friend once called me a polymath. Other friends have called me a Renaissance man. I politely laughed off both compliments. I’m certainly no genius. I’d hardly consider myself intelligent, compared to the accomplishments and capabilities of the other men and women in my life.
As I understand it, polymaths and Renaissance men and women possess an immensity of talent to complement that fiery passion to achieve great things in multiple fields, professions, etc. As my quiet life sadly illustrates — in which I’ve been not much more than a minor writer, historian, editor, painter and arts critic — I have very much of the latter and very little of the former.
Perhaps later life will prove otherwise, as I’m slowly exploring how to become a proper pianist, an amateur boxer, an effective apiarist and gardener, an expert numismatist and philatelist, a stellar professor of American Civil War and Roman and Spanish imperial history, a sympathetic and effective psychologist, an historical novelist, a decent speaker, writer and translator of Spanish and Latin, and a less-than-atrocious golfer, photographer, and salsa dancer. My mandate is to be more than a simple-minded, well-meaning hobbyist.
But if none of that works out, perhaps this particular man of the world will be content being someone who’s fun to spend time with, whose passion for history is inspiring, whose writing makes the heart soar, who’s always interesting, always relaxing, always enriching. Always happy.
I’d settle for that last one, above and beyond all the rest.
Stillness of Heart 
You must be logged in to post a comment.