Farewell and good riddance to “the lamest duck”

In his essay "Bush's Last Days: The Lamest Duck," Time's Joe Klein bids farewell and good riddance to the current occupant of the White House, the end of whose term can't come soon enough.

(Emphasis added.)

In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy. He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one.

An expression I first learned from sports bloggers, one they use when a much disliked player walks away from their team, seems appropriate here: So long, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

And now for something completely different 9

After a long pause, here's another installment in this series.

To play a jazz solo on a horn, who says you actually need to know how to play one? Here's turntablist (yes, that's a word these days) Kid Koala and his awesome "drunken trumpet":
 


Hat tip to Alex Belth of my favorite baseball blog, Bronx Banter.

Tried and tested tandem for a comeback

Comedy is natural to both award-winning composer, arranger and musical director Vincent De Jesus and theater director / professor and Manila Times critic Joey Ting. This is the fourth time they will be doing a theater project together since their first Dulaang Talyer project under the artistic directorship of film and theater director Paul Morales in 1997.

De Jesus wrote an original script Quinn, a one-act comedy that tells a story of a closet gay and reveals it to his mother. Ting successfully staged Quinn in a ‘chamber theatre’ approach. The hilarious production is starred by GMA producer Lloyd Navera who played as Quinn with today’s theater comedy actresses Geraldine Malacaman-Villamil, Stella Cañete and Thess Antonio. This was held at the Ora Café owned by indie filmmaker Khavn Dela Cruz in one of the plays presented as part of the Dulaang Talyer Fringe Festival, a month-long of short original works staged in an intimate café set-up.

Nicolas Pichay’s ‘Uyayi ng Ulan’ became a comedy children’s musical staged at the Abelardo auditorium College of Music in UP Diliman, a 1999 Talyer production which made it to the nomination as Aliw’s Best Musical and Ting as Best Director in a Musical in 2000. De Jesus created the original music and arrangement while Pichay added the libretto of the children’s play about preserving the environment and how we should protect endangered species like the ‘agila.’ The musical was in collaboration with the Anino Shadow Play Collective headed by Don Salubayba together with theater performers Bor Ocampo as Ambong Tahimik as the lead character, Andrew Cruz, Ruth Alferez, Joann Co, Anthony Cruz and ABS-CBN Director Neil Tolentino.

In 2001, the Saint Peter The Apostle School in Paco, Manila became another opportunity for Ting and De Jesus to work again with another grand musical ‘Alibaba and the Forty Thieves’ held at the PhilAm Life auditorium. Dulaang UP’s Dexter Santos did the choreography with ace lights designer Voltaire De Jesus. De Jesus worked as musical arranger and director while Joey Ting directed it as his contribution to his alma mater.

The UP Theater Council’s ‘Comeback!’ is the latest theater project of De Jesus and Ting and a renuion of sorts. De Jesus as an actor and Ting as his director.


Fifteen years after, the UP Theater Council (UPTC), a recognized student theater organization in UP Diliman is back with COMEBACK! - a twinbill theater production featuring potential TC playwrights Krystel Dionisio's '3D: Usapang Dyuts Doobidoobidoo Delusyon' and Carlo Cannu's 'Couture.'

UPTC was initially conceived during the year 1993 in Diliman. Since then, the organization became a home to many of our established and respected artists today in the field of theater, film, television, education, journalism and advertising. Notable artists include Mario Magallona, Eugene Domingo, Frances Makil-Ignacio, Candy Pangilinan, Dolly De Leon, Mailes Kanapi, Harlene Bautista-Sarmenta, Dante Nico Garcia, Issa Lopez, Ricky Ibe, Edwin Serrano, Dave Tolentino, Armie Arnaldo, Rudolph Baldonado, Christian Lopez, Elmir Castillo, Dexter Santos, Tuxqs Rutaquio, Joey Ting, John Neil Ilao Batalla, Voltaire de Jesus, Ohm David, Jobin Ballesteros, Jethro Joaquin, Gemma Geslani, Lloyd Navera, Chyna Roxas, Rico Gutierrez, Mimi Yapchiongco, Patricia Valenzuela, Geraldine Malacaman-Villamil, Chris Martinez, John Lapus, Justeen Niebres, Andoy Ranay, Roy San Luis, Jojet Gorrez and Tonsi Ignacio.

Lito Casaje's 'Separasyon', directed by theater stalwart Anton Juan Jr., was the first production of UPTC. Other memorable productions include Allan Palileo's 'Kapatiran: The Musical' and 'Hilakbot', Chris Martinez's 'Sa Sabado Sa Sam's' and 'Last Order Sa Penguin' and the famous social-satire variety show 'Break-a-Leg' series shown every after two years.

This 2008-2009 UPTC season, television / theater director-critic Joey Ting returns home directing the twinbill production with Greek-based theater set designer Ohm David, lights designer Paolo Paulino, video designer Winter David, graphics designer Dickens Polidario and costume designer Marnelli Puyot, currently the president of UP Quill.

'3D' cast are Arnold Cao, Mark Jacob, Cara Mesina, Mercedes Cabral, Carlo Garcia, Ram Tolentino, Kimmy Maclang, Via Antonio, Abbu Reynoso, Jonjie Rivera, Ria Paz, Lehner Mendoza, Mike Magallona, Dave Tolentino and Ian De Ausen.

'Couture' cast are Vincent de Jesus, Ariel Diccion, Delphine Buencamino, Jacqui Amper and Cai Cortez.

Performances begin this December 6, 2008 until December 8, 2008 with 3pm and 7pm shows to be held at the Tanghalang Hermogenes Ylagan, Kolehiyo ng Arte at Literatura, UP Diliman, Quezon City. UPTC is in collaboration with UP Quill and Eurotile. For ticket inquiries, contact production manager Trixie Dauz at 0915-5362213 or visit http://uptheatercouncil.multiply.com for details.

Poetry, the education of the imagination, and the American South

The second semester has just begun, which means my firstyear literature classes are starting their foray into the world of poetry. And when I teach poetry, I usually begin by assigning a short essay by Billy Collins, "The Companionship of a Poem," copies of which I give out on the very first day of class. Collins, a former poet laureate of the United States, is also a teacher, and in his essay he tries to connect the teaching of poetry to the larger goals of a liberal education. In the third paragraph of his essay he writes,

I came to realize [after teaching poetry for years] that to study poetry was to replicate the way we learn and think. When we read a poem, we enter the consciousness of another. It requires that we loosen some of our fixed notions in order to accommodate another point of view — which is a model of the kind of intellectual openness and conceptual sympathy that a liberal education seeks to encourage.

To accommodate another point of view; intellectual openness and conceptual sympathy. This passage (and the rest of the piece) strikes me as a brief and excellent justification for the study of poetry, and literature in general, in school. To study literature is to learn to imagine the life of the other. When discussing the essay in my classes two days ago, I made the connection between the study of poetry and the study of fiction, something we did in the first semester. When we read a story written by someone different from us — someone from another time, place, or culture — we learn to accommodate that person's humanity in our own. We broaden our hearts to allow that person, no matter how different in outlook of perspective, a place in them. This, I think, is what Collins refers to as "intellectual openness" and "conceptual sympathy," and fostering these values and habits of mind and heart in students is an essential part of a liberal education. We're not in the business merely of preparing kids for jobs.

This particular passage came to me again as I read this disturbing news article in the New York Times. A reporter, Adam Nossiter, takes a look at the poor showing of Barack Obama in the American South and draws the conclusion that the region may have lost its centrality to American politics. He also asks why it swung so heavily in McCain's favor. In his fifth paragraph Nossiter writes,

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

Obama won in only 1 of 10 of these counties, and the ones that voted more heavily Republican this time around than four years ago "tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter." These places are on the whole "less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas." We might say that, in the words of Billy Collins, the people in these places are lacking in "intellectual openness" and "intellectual sympathy." In simpler terms, these folks had a hard time accepting the idea that a black man would make a good president.

The article continues:

In Arkansas, which had among the nation’s largest concentration of counties increasing their support for the Republican candidate over the 2004 vote, “there’s a clear indication that racial conservatism was a component of that shift away from the Democrat,” said Jay Barth, a political scientist in the state.

Race was a strong subtext in post-election conversations across the socioeconomic spectrum here in Vernon, the small, struggling seat of Lamar County on the Mississippi border.

One white woman said she feared that blacks would now become more “aggressive,” while another volunteered that she was bothered by the idea of a black man “over me” in the White House.

Mr. McCain won 76 percent of the county’s vote, about five percentage points more than Mr. Bush did, because “a lot more people came out, hoping to keep Obama out,” Joey Franks, a construction worker, said in the parking lot of the Shop and Save. . . .

Don Dollar, the administrative assistant at City Hall, said bitterly that anyone not upset with Mr. Obama’s victory should seek religious forgiveness.

“This is a community that’s supposed to be filled with a bunch of Christian folks,” he said. “If they’re not disappointed, they need to be at the altar.”

No surprise that racism goes hand in hand with religious bigotry, the arrogance that comes with the certainty that one is on God's side. It is the illusion of a startling clarity spawned by moral blindness.

Such blindness is what an education of the imagination seeks to combat. The report above reminds us how important the struggle is, and what hangs in the balance.

Long live nobility!

Alex Ross posts a short quote from Wallace Stevens about nobility in his blog, The Rest Is Noise. The entire quote is worth reading, but here's a trenchant snippet:

[Nobility] is not an artifice that the mind has added to human nature. It is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without.

Beautifully phrased. And tellingly, Ross titles the post "For Barack Obama." Amen.

Do the right thing, America. The whole world is watching.

Worrying over the decline of English

Butch Dalisay's latest column has an interesting snippet about language. As an English teacher, I often hear complaints, most of them well-meaning, about the decline of English among our younger folk. I used to agree, then I became skeptical. This quote, mostly from Philip Howard's State of the Language: English Observed (1985), helps to put into words my own thoughts and feelings about the so-called deterioration of English.

Butch is in the US right now, and in his column he quotes passages from books he's just bought. Howard's should be an interesting read. Here is Butch introducing the book (with boldface added for emphasis):

From the same shelf at Wahrenbrock’s came Philip Howard’s The State of the Language: English Observed (NY: Oxford University Press, 1985). The book takes us through the nuances of register, jargon, dialect, euphemism, cliché, spelling, and punctuation, but it was the stance of its premise that earned my dollars. Noting how it had become fashionable for people — chiefly old fogeys and politicians — to bemoan the decline of civilization and the loss of a golden age, Howard writes:

“Quite recently the Cassandras and associated worriers have found something new to worry about. They suggest that it is not just the world, and civilization as we know it, that are going to the dogs; but specifically that the English language is falling to bits. This is not an original worry. It comes in waves. Swift reckoned that English was going to the dogs. So did Dr. Johnson, who started his Dictionary to stop the rot in the English language, ‘which, while it was employed in the cultivation of every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected, suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance, resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion, and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation’….

“Worriers never stop to ask when English was in its golden age, from which it has declined so disastrously. If you ask them, they tend to reply that it was when they were at school, and were taught old-fashioned English grammar and spelling, and whacked when they got things wrong. The taboo that one must never split an infinitive, and the belief that it is terribly important to know how to spell eschscholtzia, are imprinted indelibly in their memories — or some other part of their bodies.”

Howard — who had the thankless task of answering complaints about language for the venerable Times — sensibly invokes the aid of Walt Whitman, from whose 1885 Slang in America he pinches this epigraph: “Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.