https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B4syY62hxJM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sV49H8biAlg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn81dvE4Fr8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fxyNpkK6L1c
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OCNLtLTVZu8
Showing posts with label Buckley Jr.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buckley Jr.. Show all posts
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
The 1950's, from the Internet and in Memory
I was not alive in the 1950's and my parents married just before they closed. I played dress-up in clothes from the 50's.
My parents built a house in the early 60's and found an unexploded bomb during excavation. The towers of the Aschaffenburg castle were still blown off, and I could still see and remember that. When a plane flew overhead my little brother would scare our littler sister saying that it was a war plane. I also thought that the Main merged into the Rhine at Aschaffenburg, but such were early confusions.
Later, we had some people with long hair sitting in the pedestrian zone and we called them Beatles. All John Lennon look-alike were "Beatles". There also were communists distributing leaflets in the pedestrian zone. One Saturday, I distributed Christian leaflets opposite them. I don't recall coming into discussion with them. We practiced English and learned to play guitar singing Beatles songs and Gospel songs.
This is the extent of my brush with rebels and rebellion. I have not taken drugs. I have not smoked... nor have my friends. My village and town life still resembled the pastoral, though murderous, scenes of the Father Brown murder mystery series we have just launched into on Netflix, recent BBC production. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Brown_(2013_TV_series). I am new to Father Brown, as well--but I recognize the clothes, the village, the church, the pastor.
I am surprised to find all the refugees from the world wars in both the Father Brown series and in the Hercule Poirot series. I recognize them, too. Our parents were refugees.
Strange then to come across American life during the time. The post-war 50's giving birth to strange flowers, to drugs, mysticism, sexual deviance (if one is at all allowed to use the term). Last night I came across Allen Ginsberg on Buckley's show: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eKBAJYceQ54
He reads a poem on air for William Buckley. I recommend watching the first and the last minute. We laughed and I am still laughing. There is a collision of worlds.
But we have reaped a harvest of this--inanity, self-importance, drugs, weird sex. It has Not improved things.
My parents built a house in the early 60's and found an unexploded bomb during excavation. The towers of the Aschaffenburg castle were still blown off, and I could still see and remember that. When a plane flew overhead my little brother would scare our littler sister saying that it was a war plane. I also thought that the Main merged into the Rhine at Aschaffenburg, but such were early confusions.
Later, we had some people with long hair sitting in the pedestrian zone and we called them Beatles. All John Lennon look-alike were "Beatles". There also were communists distributing leaflets in the pedestrian zone. One Saturday, I distributed Christian leaflets opposite them. I don't recall coming into discussion with them. We practiced English and learned to play guitar singing Beatles songs and Gospel songs.
This is the extent of my brush with rebels and rebellion. I have not taken drugs. I have not smoked... nor have my friends. My village and town life still resembled the pastoral, though murderous, scenes of the Father Brown murder mystery series we have just launched into on Netflix, recent BBC production. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Brown_(2013_TV_series). I am new to Father Brown, as well--but I recognize the clothes, the village, the church, the pastor.
I am surprised to find all the refugees from the world wars in both the Father Brown series and in the Hercule Poirot series. I recognize them, too. Our parents were refugees.
Strange then to come across American life during the time. The post-war 50's giving birth to strange flowers, to drugs, mysticism, sexual deviance (if one is at all allowed to use the term). Last night I came across Allen Ginsberg on Buckley's show: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eKBAJYceQ54
He reads a poem on air for William Buckley. I recommend watching the first and the last minute. We laughed and I am still laughing. There is a collision of worlds.
But we have reaped a harvest of this--inanity, self-importance, drugs, weird sex. It has Not improved things.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Friday, October 23, 2015
Monday, October 12, 2015
Thanksgiving 15
For the occasion of Thanksgiving 2015, I had the chance, while cooking and baking, to listen to some lengthy talks on YouTube, mostly by William Buckley, with whose work I am just occupying myself. One long one was about all his books. I was hoping to come to a decision about which one of the 41 I might like to read sometime.
I am leaning towards the "Miles Gone By".
And as Christians, we are awaiting the new dawn.
I am leaning towards the "Miles Gone By".
The Thanksgiving holiday, and the thinking about my Grandma K., caused me to remember the pictures which hang in my house, in the staircase.
The Thanksgiving display is lovely and so is the idea of photographing it in order to hang the image up in your house. Isn't it a wonderful thing?
My family never ate the great big green cabbages, like the one in the front. There were all sorts of vegetables we did not eat, including tomatoes. We had lots of cakes (and pudding) but few vegetables. It was a regrettable thing, really. We did eat fruit and canned fruit. -- As we see, we ate everything sweet--no wonder the sweet tooth.
My family never ate the great big green cabbages, like the one in the front. There were all sorts of vegetables we did not eat, including tomatoes. We had lots of cakes (and pudding) but few vegetables. It was a regrettable thing, really. We did eat fruit and canned fruit. -- As we see, we ate everything sweet--no wonder the sweet tooth.
The sunflowers summarize to me, somehow, the fleetingness of everything that is summer and luscious life. We are to God, like one of his sunflowers. Here today, grown tall and full of splendor possibly, and gone tomorrow. How many songwriters have picked up this theme. The old people I sing with love this theme the most: "Where are the beautiful days? Where are the sleigh-rides till dawn... Where have they gone?" Or else "Yesterday. All my troubles seemed so far away."
Nevertheless, we have been provided for--and gratitude is the sweetest fruit of all, as well as the beginning of virtue (as a Roman orator said). Thankfulness changes everything.
Even Buckley wrote a book on "Gratitude." He made of point of thanking people.
And probably God, too.
And probably God, too.
And as Christians, we are awaiting the new dawn.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Douthat and W.F.Buckley
One day, I saw a man, Ross Douthat, make excellent comments on a show on Youtube. Then I bought his book "Bad Religion. How we became a Nation of Heretics." A very good, quick, sensible read, it turned out to be. Then I bought his book about Harvard University and the Privilege of the Ruling Class. This also was a fantastic read.
In the end of the book on his Harvard education, Douthat describes his internship at the National Review Magazine, where he rubbed shoulders with William Buckley Junior, (of whom I had never heard.) He even spent a weekend with Buckley at his house and sailing a large boat, together with another young intern.
Someone I know called Buckley a "formidable" debater and sent me to watch the video of the debate with Mr. Baldwin on whether the American dream was built on the back of the Negro. I watched it twice. Since then, I have also watched the discussions with several other notable men on Buckley's TV show, and have started into the apparently famous series of debates with Gore Vidal, (of whom I had never heard, either.)
This debate watching is seemingly becoming an obsession with me. But! We discover that there is a movie "The Best of Enemies" made about these last debates, and was released only this summer. I would like to find a place to view this movie without purchasing a DVD.
Rotten Tomatoes gives "The Best of Enemies" 4.5 stars out of 5. The critics' consensus is:
Smart, fascinating, and funny, Best of Enemies takes a penetrating
-- and wildly entertaining -- look back at the dawn of pundit politics.
I feel like I could watch these debates over and over. There seems to be so much more verbal skill than we see displayed nowadays. Not only are we lacking in arguments and verbal skills, many seem to feel fully justified to employ plain insults, arrogance, jihads and violence. In all sorts of places, the "rational" people demean average citizens who don't share their point of view. As some other people have put it, only "intellectuals" could be so out of touch, harsh, immoral and out in left field. It is tiresome and I hope we are soon done with this imbecility.
Ross Douthat has another book on American Politics. -- And then there are all sorts of books by William Buckley. I think I will put Buckley's "God and Man at Yale" on my list to purchase. My husband would enjoy it, too. Gene Veith has written much about the influence of the "elites", but Buckley and Douthat seem to be closer to the scene.
I have not been particularly fond of American punditry, news, wars, movies, finding much so very brash and violent, as well as domineering, thinking the world revolves around them, but I have enjoyed the books and the videos mentioned here.
Buckley's "enemies" are also very interesting people. One can learn much about recent history and how it affects current times by seeing their points of view explored in depth.
In the end of the book on his Harvard education, Douthat describes his internship at the National Review Magazine, where he rubbed shoulders with William Buckley Junior, (of whom I had never heard.) He even spent a weekend with Buckley at his house and sailing a large boat, together with another young intern.
Someone I know called Buckley a "formidable" debater and sent me to watch the video of the debate with Mr. Baldwin on whether the American dream was built on the back of the Negro. I watched it twice. Since then, I have also watched the discussions with several other notable men on Buckley's TV show, and have started into the apparently famous series of debates with Gore Vidal, (of whom I had never heard, either.)
This debate watching is seemingly becoming an obsession with me. But! We discover that there is a movie "The Best of Enemies" made about these last debates, and was released only this summer. I would like to find a place to view this movie without purchasing a DVD.
Rotten Tomatoes gives "The Best of Enemies" 4.5 stars out of 5. The critics' consensus is:
Smart, fascinating, and funny, Best of Enemies takes a penetrating
-- and wildly entertaining -- look back at the dawn of pundit politics.
I feel like I could watch these debates over and over. There seems to be so much more verbal skill than we see displayed nowadays. Not only are we lacking in arguments and verbal skills, many seem to feel fully justified to employ plain insults, arrogance, jihads and violence. In all sorts of places, the "rational" people demean average citizens who don't share their point of view. As some other people have put it, only "intellectuals" could be so out of touch, harsh, immoral and out in left field. It is tiresome and I hope we are soon done with this imbecility.
Ross Douthat has another book on American Politics. -- And then there are all sorts of books by William Buckley. I think I will put Buckley's "God and Man at Yale" on my list to purchase. My husband would enjoy it, too. Gene Veith has written much about the influence of the "elites", but Buckley and Douthat seem to be closer to the scene.
I have not been particularly fond of American punditry, news, wars, movies, finding much so very brash and violent, as well as domineering, thinking the world revolves around them, but I have enjoyed the books and the videos mentioned here.
Buckley's "enemies" are also very interesting people. One can learn much about recent history and how it affects current times by seeing their points of view explored in depth.
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