* Strong Work Ethic
* Attention to Detail
* Team Player
* Self Motivated
* Attention to Detail"
-- Amy Joyce
But the strangest thing happened to me the other night, as I was making my way down North Baldwin Street, on the isthmus. I passed house after house bedecked with lights, and at first I thought my usual grumbling, sour thoughts about the holidays. Then unfamiliar feelings began to wash over me.
It's rare these days to see readers, save the most devoted medievalists, hunched over microfilm machines. Students who rely on Google as a turbo-charged Library of Alexandria feel no more eager to use microfilm than they do to pick up a protractor and a needle-nosed compass.That may be true, but I for one love microfilm, and have been known to spend weekends at libraries perusing it recreationally. Had I space enough in my home I might install my own private microfilm reader, though Ereck would probably kill me. But suffice it to say, I dig magazine archives, whatever the format. So this product is right up my alley.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, said employees have established a branch of the Communist Party at its headquarters in China.Perhaps this points to what the Cultural Revolution was missing: Greeters.
Bloggers really are kind of parasitic on the actual reporting that many mainstream media outlets do. Let's face it, reporting is very expensive, it's very time consuming. It's not something that has immediate rewards. And blogging for all the good things that it can do, the kind of collective intelligence can bring to analysis, isn't -- isn't the kind of medium that really sustains any kind of thoughtful investigation.Bloggers indeed are not known for doing original reporting, and instead commonly link to mainstream news outlets as their sources -- and, as commonly, to other bloggers.
Dealing with Foley was complicated because he was a known, though never a self-proclaimed, homosexual. A desire not to be accused of gay-bashing may have influenced party leaders to set aside the e-mail that the former page described as "sick, sick, sick."Since when are Republican leaders squeamish about gay-bashing?
The modern appreciation of Cynewulf's four signed hagiographical poems--Fates of the Apostles, Juliana, Elene, and Christ II--benefits considerably from an awareness of medieval historiographical ideas (classical and Christian) in addition to a familiarity with the unique characteristics of hagiography. Unlike the modern view that hagiography is to be rigorously differentiated from historiography, the medieval conception of both treats hagiography as a species of historiography. The historiographical ideas expressed in the signed poems derive from the classical tradition which begins with Herodotus and ends with Tacitus, and which provides literary forms, emphasizes style and moral purpose in historiography, and supplants entirely the undeveloped Anglo-Saxon conception of history (as exemplified in Beowulf). The Christian tradition then subsumes these classical concepts, and the apparent incongruity of historical 'fact' on the one hand and hagiographical marvel on the other is eliminated in the four levels of medieval exegesis. In most respects, Cynewulf's signed poems are clearly the work of a traditional Anglo-Saxon poet. Cynewulf departs significantly from tradition, however, when he manipulates the hagiographical forms within which he is writing in accordance with Christian historiographical theories. Consequently, one finds that the Fates is so intensely anagogical in its orientation that it steps beyond the temporal confines of the historical Martyrology: this preoccupation with the Hereafter thus explains Cynewulf's supposed 'double ending' to the poem. In Juliana an Augustinian view of history prevails, and the schematized events depicted illustrate the conflict between the City of God and the City of Man. Elene, on the other hand, exhibits the Eusebian/Orosian view that God's governance of history is manifest in the rise of Rome and in the conversion of Constantine: the poem illustrates God's direct intrusions into history--in this case, through human agents (Constantine, Helena, and Judas Cyriacus) in search of the True Cross. And finally, Christ II reveals the tight knitting of the Christian historiographical scheme whose principal events are the Creation, the Incarnation, and the Day of Judgment: in describing the Ascension Cynewulf is thus led to consider the other parts of the structure as well (which results in a non-linear presentation of events in the poem).
As a friend of mine advised me a long time ago: "Play pretty." That's what i wanna do these days. It seems the result of "playing pretty," however, is not only becoming a seamless part of the music, but also of becoming a seamless part of whatever is behind you--like a wall. You don't get noticed.For me, part of being a working musician is accepting that I must on occasion blend into the walls. The consolation, in my recent experience at least, is that the more in the background I am, the better the gig pays. I've played a lot of weddings, for example, and weddings guests generally don't care who I am or how seriously I take the music. They just want to dance to "Mustang Sally" -- or, more likely, to talk while over yonder someone is singing "Mustang Sally." If they pay any attention to me, it often is in the form of a mocking request for "Free Bird," which is worse than no attention, period, but never mind.
And that's been okay. I've adjusted accordingly and started enjoing being in the background. Like i said, I really hadn't thought all that much about it...until the other night...
I had finished a gig with a friend of mine (who actually is entertaining and interesting and stuff) and we were loading the gear out. As i was carrying my guitar case toward the door , this rather attractive and charmingly intoxicated chick put her arm out on the wall and cut me off. She looked at me as she swayed every so slightly and cooed:
"sooooo....i was wondering what musicians like to do after they finish playing at night..."
By the fifth day in Madison, I was beginning to think, Hmmm ... maybe if I'm stuck here for the rest of my life I could make a go of it. It's a pretty little town -- like TV's "Happy Days" -- nice houses and Mrs. Cunninghams all over the place making endless batches of cookies and cooling them on the ledges of Dutch doors.His impressions of our fair city seem accurate, up to a point. What he probably didn't realize is that there was pot in those cookies.
Then as now, my appreciation for "Party of Five" is part camp, part not. The dramatic lighting and folky incidental music are self-parodic, but the characters -- flawed, desperate, grieving -- are memorable. So is the writing: in the episode we watched last night, a minor character had a line that was perfectly lovely, something like, "You make love with your fingers crossed behind your back." That's an image that is absurd and crazy and informed by the kind of bitterness that, indeed, finds its purest expression in the evening soap operas. Lines like that make "Party of Five" a treat.
