In Tuesday's Republican primary election for local offices in Michigan, Tyler won a sufficient number of votes to proceed to the general election for Bath Township Trustee.
According to unofficial results posted by the Clinton County clerk, the four GOP nominees are: Clark E. Losey (381 votes), Terrie Wood (322 votes), Harold Buck Kuisel (312 votes), and Tyler Whitney (251 votes). Garrett Slater came in fifth (with 218 votes) in this vote-for-up-to-four race.
The four Republican nominees will face these Democratic counterparts on November 4: Paula L. Clark (432 votes), Rick Curtis (367 votes), Leon Puttler (343 votes), and Walter Pett (302 votes). Michael Creed, Joel Gutzki, Kathleen Topp Jubb, and Robert L. Leiby failed to make the cut.
I have been unable to locate an official campaign web site, but there is a Facebook group called "Tyler Whitney for Bath County Trustee" with some information about the campaign. Campaign contributions can be sent to:
Friends of Tyler Whitney 15375 Club Course Drive Bath, MI 48808
There will no doubt be more information about Tyler and the rest of the candidates on his slate available on the Clinton County Republican party's web site. Those who want to vote in the November election in Michigan but who are not yet registered can download a voter registration form here.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the towering literary figure who gave us the phrase "Gulag Archipelago" and whose life spanned from Lenin to Putin, died on Sunday at the age of 89.
Solzhenitsyn cut an imposing figure. With his curled beard and high forehead, he resembled a cross between a Biblical patriarch and a 19th-century Mormon pioneer.
While he led a brave life, unbowed by the pressures of totalitarianism, he was, apparently, meanspirited personally and loathe to keep friendships alive and active. If there is a photograph of him smiling, I have not seen it -- unless it was taken upon his return to Russia in 1994 after 20 years in exile in decadent Vermont.
In 1978, Solzhenitsyn delivered a commencement speech at Harvard University that was highly critical of Western culture. He condemned freedom and democracy and accused the West of soullessness.
His rare public appearances could turn into hectoring jeremiads. Delivering the commencement address at Harvard in 1978, he called the country of his sanctuary spiritually weak and mired in vulgar materialism. Americans, he said, speaking in Russian through a translator, were cowardly. Few were willing to die for their ideals, he said. He condemned both the United States government and American society for its “hasty” capitulation in Vietnam. And he criticized the country’s music as intolerable and attacked its unfettered press, accusing it of violations of privacy.
Living in this country confirmed Solzhenitsyn's worst fears about the West. He deplored the American way of life, and was not reluctant to say so. At Harvard in 1978, he gave a remarkable speech to the graduating seniors with a clear warning that Western civilization was in grave jeopardy. "The fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future," he said. "It has already started. . . . A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger." He criticized the reliance on law; he criticized the idea of freedom: "Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space" by Western civilization, he said.
In his tirade against Western culture, Solzhenitsyn lamented:
The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.
... the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.
The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.
Harvard graduates, then as now, no doubt listened to Solzhenitsyn's harsh judgment on American society and Western values and nodded their heads in silent agreement. In 1978, remember, Americans were in the midst of a "malaise" that many identified as having its roots in the hypermaterialism of the "Me Decade." (That, and the high inflation, high interest rates, high unemployment, and gasoline shortages exacerbated by misguided Carter administration policies.) Others, however, were not so sanguine and suggested that Solzhenitsyn, a virtual recluse, was personally clueless about America and the West.
Two years after the Harvard speech, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where I was working at the time as a Georgetown undergraduate, published a collection of essays called Solzhenitsyn at Harvard. It included some of the editorials and op-eds that had been published in reaction to Solzhenitsyn's address shortly after he delivered it, plus six specially-commissioned essays.
On September 16, 1980, the book was launched at a dinner in Washington with two speakers commenting on it: newspaper columnist George F. Will and social philosopher Michael Novak. Their speeches were later collected in a slim pamphlet called Solzhenitsyn and American Democracy. (The pamphlet seems to be no longer in print, while the larger volume is still, in theory, available through Amazon.com.)
In his remarks, Novak -- who contributed one of the original essays to the larger volume -- began by noting:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's commencement address at Harvard might be viewed as a contemporary updating of Pope Pius IX's famous critique of modernity, "The Syllabus of Errors." Solzhenitsyn, like Pius IX, is adept at pointing out the errors, onesidedness, and blind spots in many of the things that we, in a liberal, democratic society, hold most dear. Like Pius IX, he holds up in contrast some of the models of Christian civilization from the past -- their ideals rather than their practices.
Novak suggested that, for all his emphasis on religion and spirituality, Solzhenitsyn failed to see the link between those and liberal democratic values. He continued:
The great novelist, however, in concentrating so singlemindedly on soul, sometimes overlooks its necessary political, economic, and social artifacts. Human soul does not live alone. It is embodied. It is embodied in social, political, and economic systems as well as in its own human skin, tissues, sinews, and organs of feeling and sensibility.
Solzhenitsyn often seems to wish to reject modernity. "Western ideas" -- above all, democracy and all its works and pomps. He sometimes seems to desire a world of soul alone, leaders infused with virtue, peoples astonishingly and simply committed to the evangelical laws of peace, justice, order, and charity. If this were a world of angels, Solzhenitsyn's vision would create a City of Light. Its rulers would be saints, its people willing followers, its constitution the very laws of God. The civilization he envisages would be a heavenly city. The state would wither away. There would be a kind of benevolent dictatorship of, not the proletariat, but the gentle Christian community.
Upon reading that last paragraph, it should come as no surprise that Novak sees a paradox in Solzhenitsyn's thought:
It is stunning, after all, to see how closely the dream of Solzhenitsyn mirrors the dream of his archenemy, Karl Marx, how he has turned Communism inside out as a vision of effortless Christian civilization, populated not by sinners but by the virtuous, organized not by trial and error, checks and balances, separation of powers, and the differentiation of systems (political system, economic system, moral-cultural system, each relatively independent of the other), but by simple righteousness. He guides us to a heavenly city, before we have learned to live in the sinful climes of earth, protecting ourselves against its inevitable tyrannies.
(It may be worth noting that Novak's words in the preceding few sentences foreshadow the central theme of his then-yet-to-be-published book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.)
The utopian vision suggested by Novak's interpretation of Solzhenitsyn's thought has another unintended paradox, one often unrecognized by Rockford Institute-type social conservatives who are wary of individual liberty and free enterprise. Novak goes on to say:
Solzhenitsyn does us honor, though he may not think so, by being so affronted by the awful cheapness, vulgarity, and open sinfulness of our way of life. Any system open to human liberty as it actually is must necessarily abound in visible signs of sinfulness. Not even a coercive regime can repress the sinfulness of the human heart. No more can democracy be sinless than can Communism (committed, as Solzhenitsyn sees it, to systemic lies, immorality, and lust for power) drive out all virtue.
One sentence there bears repeating: "Any system open to human liberty as it actually is must necessarily abound in visible signs of sinfulness." That is a profound insight, related to the fundamental truth that virtue must be freely chosen, else it is not virtue.
As Novak approached his conclusion, he proved to be remarkably prescient. Remember, this speech was delivered in September 1980. Ronald Reagan had not yet been elected president, and there was no certainty that he would be. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other "students" still held American diplomats hostage in Iran. Leonid Brezhnev would be General Secretary of the CPSU for another two years, and the collapse of the Soviet Empire lay a decade in the future. The Cold War had every indication of being a perpetual condition. So what does Novak say?
Yet with Solzhenitsyn's basic message we stand in agreement. The world is, sadly, split apart. World War III did begin in 1945, and the "correlation of forces" is less in our favor now than then, less so than at any time in the history of this republic. We are at an hour of maximum peril.
Yet so, also, is our foe. A system based on lies cannot endure. The world cannot survive half slave and half free. The reckoning rumbles in Poland. Events are picking up speed. The great chapter of our age is drawing toward its climax.
Whether Novak was aiming for dramatic effect or was somehow clairvoyant is up to him to reveal; few commentators in 1980 would have suggested an "approaching climax" to the Cold War except in apocalyptic terms, predicting nuclear war rather than an outcome favorable to liberty and democracy. (To be sure, Novak's prediction is ambiguously shaded. Perhaps it can only be read as optimistic in retrospect.)
For his own part, George Will focused less on the spiritual notions than the practical political ones suggested by Solzhenitsyn's critique of the West. He drew on American history, with a focus on James Madison's theory of faction. Will spoke mostly without notes, except for a long excerpt from Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, and the published version of his speech is based on a transcript from the recording.
Will said:
It is essential to the understanding of America to realize that it was founded by men who sought explicitly to tame and submerge passion, to drain it into commercial undertakings and away from the ideological and religious and political divisions that had turned the Old World into a boiling pot and that could ruin a melting pot. James Madison's great breakthrough in the understanding of democracy was the realization that all previous political thinkers had been wrong in one critical particular. All previous political thinkers had said that if -- and it was an enormous hypothesis -- if democracy were possible at all, it would be possible only in a small, face-to-face society, something like Pericles' Athens or Rousseau's Geneva; in such a society, the people, knowing one another and enjoying a relationship of neighborliness, would not be riven by factions, which were assumed to be the enemy and ultimate destroyer of democracy.
Madison's breakthrough was to turn that idea on its head. He began with a progression like this: The problem of any political system is the prevention of tyranny; they tyranny to which democracy is prey is the tyranny of the majority; the way to prevent that is to avoid having a majority, to have only shifting coalitions of minorities that can never become a stable and oppressive majority. Therefore faction is to be celebrated, and the United States is to succeed through a saving multiplicity of factions, made possible by a complex economic system and a continental expanse.
Continuing, this widely-syndicated newspaper columnist went on to explain:
To find American political thought summarized in two short newspaper columns, read two of the Federalist papers: Number Ten, where Madison celebrates factions, and Number Fifty-one, where he says, "You will see throughout our system the process of supplying by opposite and rival interests the defect of better motives." Ours is the first nation founded on the premise that it could get along without anyone having good motives, without anyone being public-spirited; that out of the cheerful maelstrom of factions would emerge something that could be baptized, in a magnificent a priori swoop, "the public interest."
But what of Solzhenitsyn, the reason for this speech in the first place? Will argues that Solzhenitsyn
says that statecraft cannot just be a matter of social control; it must be, to some extent, soulcraft.
(I have to wonder if this was the first time that George Will used the formulation "statecraft as soulcraft," later the title of his 1983 collection of essays.)
Solzhenitsyn, Will says,
is understandably startled by the raucousness of American life. He's not the only one, and it's not just American life. George Orwell made the point, not long before he died, that "all popular entertainments have one thing in common: they seem to aim at the numbing of consciousness." (He said this before recreational drugs, and he never saw American television.)
Recreational drugs, I would note, have been with us since man was still a hunter-gatherer. But I might add that Orwell never saw Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft, either -- nor, I suppose, did Solzhenitsyn. Back to George Will:
Solzhenitsyn understands that there is something profoundly disturbing about the sensory blitzkrieg that is part of our social life. He understands the irony of an age in which self-expression is the ultimate -- and some would say the only -- value, yet all the themes of modern literature seem to converge on the fragility of a sense of self.
After quoting historian John Lukacs, who had suggested in his 1978 book 1945: Year Zero that Solzhenitsyn would turn out to be the pivotal figure in the conflict between East and West and (perhaps -- remember, this was 1980) in the collapse of the Communist East, Will concluded by saying:
For two centuries the human race has been assailed by the misconstructions first of physics, then biology, then psychology, more recently sociology, and today biochemistry, all telling us in different ways that man is not free, that he is a creature of vast impersonal forces, and that individuals do not make a difference. Solzhenitsyn's life says, "Not true."
With the perspective of nearly 30 years, we can add a few more individual lives that say "Not true": Lech Wałesa, Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Milton Friedman, and others. None of them singly but all of them interrelatedly through their individual efforts made the difference between liberty and serfdom for millions of human beings.
For all his faults, and for all his shortsightedness with regard to Western values and achievements, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was very much an individual who made a difference that mattered -- even to those he disdained.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are preparing for protesters at their respective political conventions this year. The Democrats meet first, from August 25 through August 28 in Denver, and they have made provisions for limited demonstrations outside the Pepsi Center, the main convention hall, and near Invesco Field, where Barack Obama will deliver his acceptance speech in the style of the Beatles at Shea Stadium.
Protesters will have ample opportunity to be heard during the Democratic National Convention, from a city-provided stage to a first-of-its-kind system to have information distributed inside the Pepsi Center, attorneys for Denver and the U.S. Secret Service said.
The city will provide two loudspeakers outside the protest zone near the Pepsi Center, according to court documents. Protesters inside the fenced zone may use the amplification system, or bring their own bullhorns.
The Democratic National Convention Committee also will set up a table of leaflets and other information from protest groups "along the main thoroughfare" used by delegates and the media, the documents state.
The DNCC believes this will mark the first time in the history of any political party's convention that such an arrangement will be in place.
The city of Denver on Monday said the public viewing and demonstration area on the last day of the Democratic National Convention will be next to Invesco Field at Mile High.
The city will make available 53,000 square feet in Lot J for a public viewing area, “within sight and sound” of the delegates arriving. Protesters will be allowed to use bullhorns, and a microphone will be set up with at least two speakers pointed toward the arriving delegates.
The city of St. Paul will provide a stage and amplified sound system for people to use near the Xcel Energy Center during the four days of the Republican National Convention.
The stage will be within the public viewing area, a triangle between Fifth St. and the Dorothy Day Center bounded by the westbound lanes of W. 7th St. That area is where people can gather to express their opinions within earshot and sight of the Xcel, news media outlets and delegates.
"It's in the Xcel's field of view," said police spokesman Tom Walsh.
The setting aside of a "free speech" area near a political convention site is not new. Twelve years ago, when I covered the Democratic National Convention in Chicago for the Metro Herald, the protesters outside the United Center provided just about the only colorful story to report, since inside the convention hall the re-nomination of Bill Clinton and Al Gore was never in question, and there were not even any disputes about the platform, credentials, or rules.
Here is the story I filed about the "dissenters" at the Democratic Convention, which appeared in the Metro Herald in September 1996. (This is another in the series of "history lessons" that I promised on May 23.)
Protest and Dissent: The People Speak Richard Sincere
"The American patriot wears many hats and changes clothes often. The extraordinary leaders and great thinkers who helped mold the Republic are not only the figures traditionally highlighted in history textbooks. Equally patriotic were those Americans who fought against the status quo, who agitated for economic and social reform, who championed the rights of those whose rights had not yet been acknowledged, and whose ideas were new and revolutionary in their own times."
Hunt himself chooses a wide variety of dissenters to display in his volume -- from the well-known revolutionary pamphleteers Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine to the quiet thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to the social activists Dorothea Dix and Jane Addams to African-American leaders W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. This wide variety provides a clue as to the sources and expansiveness of American dissent. It includes the college educated and the street smart, the socialites and the social outcasts, the religious believers and the agnostics. It is, in short, America.
So, too, at both the Republican and Democratic conventions this year, were dissenting voices represented. Alas, this dissent was seldom heard within the convention halls themselves, because party leaders carefully orchestrated their 4-day, made-for-TV rallies to project the illusion (if not the reality) of unity, solidarity, and strength. No, to find true dissent one had to go outside the convention halls -- but not far away at all. And what one found was at once instructive and amusing.
In both San Diego and Chicago, under pressure from political groups and court orders, the political parties set aside outdoor areas near their meeting space in which organized demonstrators, marching protestors, and lonely citizens with an axe to grind could have their say. Few convention delegates, public officials, or party operatives saw or heard what was going on, but the media gathered there every day to see what was going on -- largely because little of consequence was happening inside.
In Chicago, the "official protest area" was designated as Lot E of the United Center parking lot. It really was not far from the entrances to the United Center used by delegates, observers, and journalists, but to find it required some effort. Convention organizers kindly set up a platform for speakers at one end of the lot and another platform for TV cameras a few yards away. There wasn't much need for either one, as few of the demonstrations had as many as 50 participants, and even the large ones were covered (if at all) by only one or two roving TV cameras and a handful of news photographers.
On Monday, the first day of the convention, I arrived at the United Center by shuttle bus and walked directly to the protest area, simply to get my bearings and see what might be on the menu. To my surprise and delight, about two dozen protesters were gathered, carrying banners and placards objecting to the War on Drugs. Several of the protesters were wearing -- or so they said -- clothing made from hemp, and others made the perfectly logical point that ratcheting up the War on Drugs also ratchets up the price of drugs, making it more lucrative and more inviting for new entrants into the drug economy -- and more rewarding to engage in violent, even homicidal, activity to secure sales territory. Speakers compared the current prohibition of marijuana and other "illicit" drugs to the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and '30s -- the "noble experiment" that was also a dismal failure.
Each day I followed this ritual -- get off the bus, trek to the protest area, and see what's happening. Each day I saw something different, and something the same.
The "something the same" included David Benson, who led his one-man crusade to repeal women's suffrage. I asked Mr. Benson what motivated his campaign, which he began about a year ago: "After a marriage of thirty years which ended suddenly ... I became angry when my wife found a feminist girlfriend who said she could have a whole loaf instead of half a loaf," he explained circuitously in a thick Midwestern accent. I asked him directly: "Do you attribute your divorce to the right of women to vote?" After a pause, Mr. Benson answered, "A by-product, yes." Curious, I continued with my line of questions.
Metro Herald: "Do you also oppose the right of women to own property?" Benson: "I think women should own property, yes." Metro Herald: "Would you be in favor of repealing the amendment that allows for the direct election of U.S. Senators?" Benson:"[long pause] No." Metro Herald: "Do you think there should be a property qualification for people to vote?" Benson: "You're going back about 200 years or so. No, in America nowadays, no, you don't have to own property to vote." Metro Herald: "What about other groups? Are there any other groups that you think should be denied the right to vote?" Benson:"No, only American women." Metro Herald: "Foreign women should be allowed to vote?" Benson:"I just say all females in America should be denied the right to vote." Metro Herald: "Do you also think that women should not be allowed to hold public office?" Benson:"I believe they can, and a lot of them prove themselves to be able to do a good job at it." Metro Herald: "So you would approve of Elizabeth Dole, for instance, serving as a cabinet member, but not allowing her to vote for her husband for President." Benson: "Yes."
Such was the flavor of the many "eccentrics" who populated the protest area day by day. Others complained about lawyers, meat-eaters, homosexuals, and the media. Still others hawked their own books and newspapers -- such as the Socialist Workers' Party. Among the organized groups -- the "something different" -- were a multiracial collection of teenagers calling for more funding for education and a nurses' march demanding passage of several pieces of health-care legislation.
The most anticipated and best-organized protests were those in favor and against abortion.
The anti-abortion demonstrators came first, on Wednesday afternoon, just before sunset. This group attracted the largest crowd of the convention and was about evenly divided between men and women. There were clergymen, laborers, mothers and children, and representatives of many racial and ethnic groups. Altogether there were about 200 to 250 protesters.
The next day, about one-third as many pro-choice demonstrators gathered at approximately the same time. Largely a female crowd, their message was far more in tune with the Democratic platform and the delegates inside the United Center. Perhaps that is why they were unable to muster a crowd as large as their opponents. The comparisons are interesting, however -- both groups were well-behaved, civil, as quiet in their passionate intensity as one would expect them to be loud. Both groups were genuinely devoted to their cause, and there is little reason to believe that common ground can be found for them to stand upon. It is clear -- particularly in the divergent stances of the two major political parties -- that the abortion debate will be with us, unsettled, for many years to come.
It is too bad that those who made use of the protest area were viewed by reporters and TV crews more as curiosities and amusements than they were as activists dedicated to a substantial cause. Despite lapses in logic, tortured syntax, signs drawn in child-like scrawls, and sometimes vacant expressions on their faces, these people obviously felt that their message was as much worth hearing as it was worth giving. As the late Senator J. William Fulbright once said, "In a democracy dissent is an act of faith." It is clear that these protesters were faithful people treading on sacred soil -- as near to the center of the political process as they could bring themselves.
Morgan Freeman is in good spirits and is planning to have surgery after sustaining injuries in a car accident Sunday night, the actor's rep said in a statement Monday afternoon.
"He has a broken arm, broken elbow and minor shoulder damage but he is in good spirits," said Donna Lee. "He is going to have surgery this afternoon or tomorrow to correct the damage. He says he'll be okay and is looking forward to a full recovery."
Freeman seemed genuinely happy to be in Charlottesville. (It was a return visit for him, as he had spent some time in the area filming the sequel to the hit Bruce Almighty, the flop Evan Almighty.) He was engaged and engaging and enjoyed the give-and-take with the audience at the Paramount Theatre. (The photograph on the right shows Freeman during the panel discussion with 10 Items or Less director Brad Silberling; in the photo above and to the left, former WVIR-TV/Channel 29 correspondent David Douglas is interviewing the actor during his brief press availability.)
Prior to his formal appearance on stage at the Paramount, Freeman ran a press gauntlet, where he answered questions from local print and broadcast reporters and flirted with some of the prettier ones. (I think they were correspondents for the Cavalier Daily.)
I caught some of that encounter on video. Unfortunately there is no audio track -- I took this with my digital camera, which has no microphone -- but you can tell by the twinkle in his eye that the man-who-plays-God-in-the-movies has a real down-to-earth touch.
Recently, Charlottesville has been getting more calls of possible coyote sightings within the city limits. Bobby Durrer, the area’s animal control officer, said he’s received two calls in the last couple of weeks — one of which was from Derthick, the other from employees at Foods of All Nations on Ivy Road.
“The ones that called in, [at night] is when they’ve seen them,” Durrer said.
[Martha] Derthick said she thinks it’s possible to mistake a coyote for a fox. But Mike Fies, a wildlife research biologist for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said coyotes are much more substantial — possibly weighing up to 45 pounds, as opposed to 12 pounds for a red fox and 8 pounds for an eastern gray fox.
Fies said coyotes first arrived in the southwestern part of Virginia in the 1970s, but they started to migrate into Virginia’s northern valley the following decade.
“They’ve been around for quite a few years,” Fies said.
Now they can be found in every part of the state, and Fies said he estimates they number around 50,000, though populations are difficult to track. Coyotes are extremely adaptable animals, Fies said, adding that he was not surprised that they might have worked their way into Charlottesville’s city limits.
“If there’s a food source, they’ll move into just about anywhere,” he said.
There is a misconception that coyotes are an animal one would only encounter in the arid West, owing primarily (though not entirely) to those wonderful Warner Bros. "Road Runner" cartoons that many of us grew up with. (Western films made in Monument Valley and other stark landscapes probably account for the rest of the incorrect knowledge.)
With this news, however, at least we'll know what might account for any sudden shortage of anvils and rockets in Charlottesville markets. Time to invest in Acme!
About fourteen months ago, I posted video and photographs from my first experience in community theatre, a production of Meredith Willson's The Music Man at St. Bernard's Studio Theatre in my hometown of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.
After going off to Georgetown University, where I performed in my first college theatre show (Stephen Sondheim and Larry Gelbart's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and working backstage on several other productions, I returned to Milwaukee the following summer and had my first experience of performing in repertory.
In the summer of 1978, St. Bernard's Studio Theatre for the first time (but not the last) produced two shows and performed them on alternate nights. While my expectations at auditions were not particularly high -- I was just looking forward to joining my friends in the joy of putting on a show -- it turned out that I was cast in major roles in both plays. It was the first time in my (short) career on stage that I was able to play the romantic lead, the male ingenue and title role in Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, and also the first chance I had to play a character role, The Old Actor in Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's long-running off-Broadway gem, The Fantasticks. (Back at Georgetown in subsequent years, this would turn out to be a pattern: playing naive boys and eccentric characters in such shows as Lanford Wilson's The Hot l Baltimore and Neil Simon's The Good Doctor.)
Around the same time that I found and edited the Super-8mm film-to-video transfer of scenes from The Music Man, I also found archival film of The Boy Friend and The Fantasticks. I posted the scenes from The Fantasticksover a year ago on YouTube, where it has had a trickle of traffic, and I posted The Boy Friend footage a few weeks ago.
I recently discovered, however, that I also had a live audio recording of a performance of The Fantasticks. (I also found another audio recording of just Act II from a rehearsal some months later; read on for the explanation. The Act I tape must exist somewhere, but it was not kept with its counterpart.) So I decided to re-edit the old footage, add a few photos, and superimpose the live audio -- as best I could, given the non-professional editing software I use -- onto the video. Considering that I had to digitize excerpts from deteriorated 30-year-old audio cassette tapes without the benefit of high-end hardware, the result is pretty good. In fact, I was able to match the movements to the sound almost precisely in the "Episode" sequence that begins at marker 00:38 on the video playback. (The last few minutes of the audio track have some distortions, but those should not be too distracting -- I hope.)
I wonder if this effort indicates that I have an unseemly fetish for historical preservation of documents and artifacts? Or does it offer justification for my being a lifelong packrat, to the consternation -- and sometimes exasperation -- of my friends?
Here, then, is the newly re-edited video of The Fantasticks, as presented by St. Bernard's Studio Theatre in July 1978. (The audio was recorded at a special performance on Wednesday, July 19, in that year.)
The Boy Friend had more official performances in July 1978 than The Fantasticks (4 vs. 3) and it also had a considerably larger cast, which meant more friends and family enticed to see the show. (This was my sister's first performance on a public stage; those who know her will recognize her, at 7 years of age, in the "Sur la Plage" sequence.) Considering that both shows were performed in the gymnasium of a Catholic parish school, with much of the cast emerging from the same parish's members, drawing an audience from extended families was an easy expectation.
For those who don't know it, The Boy Friend is a pastiche of 1920s musicals. It uses every cliche from that era: an exotic setting (the French Riviera), aristocratic characters (including mine, who was pretending to be working-class to escape his overbearing parents), a lonely rich girl, a randy French maid, a flirtatious secondary female lead, and an older man with an eye for younger ladies. The music echoes Gershwin, Berlin, Rodgers, Porter, and other composers of the era. The lyrics work for what they're meant to do, but none of the songs are particularly memorable in their own right in the way the compositions of those giants being aped were. Wilson later went on to write something of a sequel, a pastiche of 1930s musicals called Divorce Me, Darling!, which did not have the same staying power or appeal that The Boy Friend has enjoyed. (There is, however, a recording that has developed a cult following.)
Perhaps it was unusually precocious discernment on the part of my 19-year-old theatre maven's brain, with the (correct) judgment that The Fantasticks is a superior musical play, or perhaps I was just neglectful, but I failed to make an audio recording of any performance or rehearsal of The Boy Friend that summer. Consequently, this video has as its soundtrack excerpts from the Broadway OCR, featuring Julie Andrews in her first New York role (preceding My Fair Lady by one season).
In any case, here is what may be the only archival video of the 1978 production of The Boy Friend at St. Bernard's Studio Theatre:
Both shows had something of an afterlife.
A couple of weeks after we closed, we had an opportunity to perform a handful of songs from The Boy Friend at an enclosed shopping mall in suburban Milwaukee. (To be truthful, I don't remember which mall it was; perhaps someone from the cast may remember and post the information in the comments section, below.)
What I do remember is how disorienting the experience was. (She wasn't around then, but I imagine it must be how Tiffany must have felt years later.) The acoustics were atrocious; we could barely hear the people singing five feet away from us, much less hear the piano next to the stage. While a few shoppers stopped to see what was happening, most went about their business, chattering more loudly than they usually would in order to be heard above our music.
Still, it was fun to get back together with fellow cast members in August, before people dispersed to go to school or on last-minute vacations. It might have been the last time I wore that red jacket and white Gatsbyish hat.
Months later, St. Bernard's Studio Theatre was given an opportunity to put on a benefit performance for the Wauwatosa Junior Women's Club. Rozeann Campbell, our director, choreographer, and producer, decided that revisiting The Fantasticks would be best.
Although the benefit, to be performed at Wauwatosa West High School, was scheduled for February 24, in the middle of the school year, I could not pass up the opportunity to do a "revival." So I flew home from Washington in time to do one rehearsal and the performance. We had to do some reblocking, because the Tosa West auditorium had a proscenium stage and our original production had been done on a thrust stage, but the adaptation was relatively seamless.
The rest is something of a blur. The auditorium was full, there were friends and family in the audience, and we had a terrific cast party afterwards. And I flew back to Georgetown feeling a bit puffed up and prematurely professional.
A bit of a backtrack here: Over Thanksgiving Weekend in 1978, I made my first-ever trip to New York City. At the top of my list of things to do was to see the original production of The Fantasticks at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. At that time, it had been playing continuously for more than 18 years; there were still more than 22 years left in its original run of 17,162 performances. It was a stirring event for me, as it would be for any musical theatre geek.
Ironically, the other show I saw during that trip was the musical version of the cult movie, King of Hearts, which only managed 48 performances, another flop by Joseph Stein.
Speaking of Joseph Stein, come back a year from now and I'll tell the story of St. Bernard's Fiddler on the Roof. If you can't wait, you can see the video on YouTube now. (It's more of a slide show with authentic performance audio, however.)
The Virginia blogosphere is atwitter over the news that the McCain campaign is vetting Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA7) as a potential vice-presidential running mate.
Consertiva photoshops McCain and Cantor together, saying "Please, oh please, let’s have a McCain-Cantor / Obama-Kaine fight in November." Shaun Kenney points out, quoting Fox News, that Cantor has already raised $10 million for the McCain campaign, adding:
Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less? All Eric Cantor folks. $10 million? That's more than either Virginia Senate candidate has been able to raise thus far (and Cantor does it in one shot).
The Washington Times has also picked up the story, though without a byline it is difficult to determine whether the paper did its own reporting or is just rehashing the AP's earlier report. The Times notes:
The youthful Virginia lawmaker has been a visible McCain surrogate for weeks, appearing frequently on cable news outlets chiefly to promote the Arizona Republican's positions on domestic and economic issues. He has been a forceful critic of Democrat Sen. Barack Obama's resistance to lifting the federal ban on oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
While the talk of "Cantor for Veep" is exciting to us Virginians -- a state that hasn't seen a vice-presidential candidate on a major-party ticket since John Tyler in 1840 -- I stand by my March 5 prediction that McCain's running mate will be former Ohio congressman Rob Portman.
(For those who want to hear Eric Cantor exhort Americans to "Drill here, drill now, pay less," check out this two-minute video summary of the Virginia Republican convention.)
Here's a tricky question: Is criticism of attempts by Islamic nations to limit free speech around the world itself a form of defamation against religion, and therefore subject to laws that limit speech?
The head spins.
Yet that could, in fact, be the case if current proposals before the United Nations gain a foothold and criticism of religion (any religion, not just Islam, but especially Islam) becomes a global no-no.
Our friends to the North have more experience of these sorts of laws than we do in the United States, so it's no surprise that the Canadian news and opinion magazine, Maclean's, should be interested in reporting on this issue.
Pakistan brought the first "defamation of religions" resolution to the UN Human Rights Council in 1999 — before the attacks of 9/11 and a resulting "backlash" against Muslims. That first resolution was entitled "Defamation of Islam." That title was later changed to include all religions, although the texts of all subsequent resolutions have continued to single out Islam. The resolutions have passed the UN Human Rights Council every year since the first was introduced. In 2005, the delegate from Yemen introduced a similar resolution to the UN General Assembly, and it passed, as it has every year since, with landslide votes. In March, the Islamic nations were successful in introducing a change to the mandate of the UN's special rapporteur on freedom of expression — an official who travels the world investigating and reporting on censorship and violations of free speech — to now "report on instances where the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination." The issue is expected to be a focal point of the UN World Conference Against Racism next year in Geneva (a gathering Canada plans to boycott after the 2001 meeting in Durban devolved into acrimonious exchanges over Israel).
The trend has rights advocates worried for numerous reasons, beginning with the language used. If the notion of "defaming" a religion sounds a little unfamiliar, that's because it is a major departure from the traditional understanding of what defamation means. Defamation laws traditionally protect individual people from being materially harmed by the dissemination of falsehoods. But "defamation of religions" is not about protecting individual believers from damage to their reputations caused by false statements — but rather about protecting a religion, or some interpretation of it, or the feelings of the followers. While a traditional defence in a defamation lawsuit is that the accused was merely telling the truth, religions by definition present competing claims on the truth, and one person's religious truth is easily another's apostasy. "Truth" is no defence in such cases. The subjective perception of insult is what matters, and what puts the whole approach on a collision course with the human rights regime — especially in countries with an official state religion.
Savage cites an issues brief written by Angela Wu of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, an American non-profit whose mission is explained by its name. (I can imagine a number of mullahs exclaiming the equivalent of "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" when confronted by expressions of religious freedom.)
The brief's "executive summary" explains:
The “defamation of religions” issue is fundamentally inconsistent with the principles outlined in the United Nations’ founding and legal documents, but more importantly, it violates the very foundations of the human rights tradition by protecting ideas rather than the individuals who hold ideas. Further, they force the state to determine which religious viewpoints may be expressed. The empowerment of the state (as opposed to protection of individuals against the state) through “defamation of religions” measures is thus unique in the human rights regime. “Defamation of religions” resolutions at the UN operate as international anti-blasphemy laws and provide international cover for domestic anti-blasphemy laws, which in practice empower ruling majorities against weak minorities and dissenters.
In its concluding "recommendations" section, the brief says:
Religious freedom is best preserved through protection of religious exercise of people of all faiths, not through restricting the speech of people of some faiths. “Defamation of religion” laws claim to protect vulnerable religious communities and the civil dialogue.31 However, there are already laws against assault, false imprisonment, fraud, and even defamation of persons. “Defamation of religion” laws in practice act as a form of thought control and work solely to the advantage of religious majorities that have the power to sanction which ideas should be permitted in the public square.
It is up to the Western liberal democracies to stand up to these attempts to constrain religious freedom and freedom of expression (freedom of speech and of the press). Nobody else will do it for us.
Congratulations are in order, after a fashion, to Virginia Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling. Bolling, who is also a candidate for re-election unless (through a cascade of unlikelihoods) current Governor Tim Kaine becomes Vice President of the United States, has been elected vice chairman of the National Lieutenant Governors Association.
According to a news release from the Bolling re-election campaign:
Virginia Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling has been elected Vice Chairman of the National Lieutenant Governors Association (NLGA). Bolling was elected Vice Chairman of the NLGA at the Association's annual meeting in Buffalo, New York on July 25, 2008. Bolling had previously served as Treasurer of the NLGA and he also serves on the Association's Executive Committee.
"I am honored that my colleagues from across the country have asked me to serve as Vice Chairman of the National Lieutenant Governors Association this year," Lieutenant Governor Bolling said. "I look forward to working with them to continue the good work NLGA has done in the past and help direct the Association's attention toward some of the most important issues currently facing Virginia and other states."
Who knew there was a "National Lieutenant Governors Association"? And why would anybody care?
The office is so infinitesimally important that seven states -- Arizona, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming -- do not even have the office of lieutenant governor. New Jersey belonged to this group until 2005, when voters approved a referendum creating the post. (Given New Jersey's experience with a revolving door on the governor's office [and bedroom], perhaps this was a prudent thing to do.) New Jersey's first lieutenant governor will be elected next year.
Question: If the office of the vice president isn't worth a bucket of warm spit, what is the lieutenant governor's office worth?
It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about Virginia's first sales-tax holiday for back-to-school items. Yet it turns out that was two years ago, in August 2006.
The third such tax-free weekend starts this Friday. Holly Prestidge reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Sunday:
Parents across the state will get some relief Friday, Saturday and next Sunday as the state waives the 5 percent sales tax on school supplies valued at $20 or less, and clothing and shoes $100 or less.
According to a recent survey by the National Retail Federation, consumers are expected to spend an average of $594.24 on back-to-school shopping this year, up from $563.49 last year, for electronics, clothing, shoes and school supplies.
The retail group and others believe sales-tax holiday weekends, such as the one in Virginia, will be more meaningful this year for consumers because of the slowing economy and higher gasoline prices.
"They're having to look for ways to save [because] it's almost weekly we're seeing changes" at the gas pump or in the grocery stores, said George Peyton, vice president of government relations for the Retail Merchants Association in Richmond.
Writing in today's Roanoke Times, David Harrison notes that the list of tax-free items is not as transparent as one would hope. In fact, it's downright confusing:
The Virginia Department of Taxation has adopted a relatively broad definition of school supplies. A partial list, available on the department's Web site, includes items such as binders, book bags, chalk, lunchboxes, rulers, scissors, sheet music and paper.
If you have no connection to schools but need these items anyway, you're in luck. The tax holiday still applies to you.
The picture gets a little more confusing when you start looking at clothing. Shirts, pants, dresses and sports jerseys are tax-free.
But how about purchases of suits and wedding veils? Also tax-free.
And cleats, mouth guards or shin pads for students' extracurricular athletics? Those are taxed.
The easiest, most logical, most consumer- and business-friendly thing to do for the tax holiday would simply have been to decree that on this particular three-day weekend, all items with a retail price of $100 or less would be tax-exempt. That would be simple to program into stores' computers, and it would be simple for the average customer -- that is, taxpayer -- to understand.
Well, nobody ever accused legislators of being consumer-friendly -- or logical.
If you don't have to buy a lot of school supplies but are looking for a chance to make a purchase without paying a tax on it -- short of driving to the outlet malls in Delaware -- you can look forward to another tax holiday later this year. Drew Houff reports in today's Winchester Star:
In October, shoppers will be able to purchase certain energy-efficient appliances priced at $2,500 or less without paying sales taxes. The items are limited to noncommercial home or personal use.
Houff also gathered these tidbits from the world's largest retailer:
E.R. Anderson, the Washington-based regional media director for Wal-Mart, said the sales tax holiday has become quite busy for the stores throughout Virginia.
She said Wal-Mart stores expect shoppers to save $800,000 on eligible items during the three-day event.
“We will be stocked up and staffed up for those days,” Anderson said. “We will have signage show what is a sales tax holiday item. We will list all of the products the commonwealth of Virginia has determined to be back-to-school.”
She said Wal-Mart also will allow consumers to purchase electronics tax-free, with the company paying the sales-tax costs. Those items include computers, computer accessories, television sets, and wireless communication devices.
“There is no dollar limit, and we will absorb all sales tax for them [on electronics],” Anderson said.
And, if this weekend's tax holiday and the appliance holiday in October are not enough, Sharon McLoone reminds us in her small business blog for the Washington Post:
The commonwealth also holds a recurring sales-tax holiday each May for hurricane and emergency preparedness equipment, and that includes a range of items like bottled water and battery-operated can openers.
How about this idea? A tax-free year. Is that too much to hope for?
If you have dreams of singing and dancing on the Broadway stage (or manipulating a puppet on the same stage), you may have a chance to make your dream come true.
Disney has announced that it will be holding auditions in the Washington area for the hit musicals The Lion King and Mary Poppins.
All the pertinent details are in a press release, below.
Disney Theatrical Productions HOLDS OPEN CASTING CALLS FOR THE LION KING AND MARY POPPINS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. IN MID-AUGUST
WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 29, 2008) Disney Theatrical Productions will be hosting open auditions, seeking possible future replacements for the Broadway and touring productions of THE LION KING and MARY POPPINS in Washington, D.C., August 15 - 18 at The Washington Ballet. These open calls are for anyone, regardless of experience, who would like the opportunity to audition and be part of these stage productions. Performers of all cultural backgrounds are encouraged to attend.
The casting search will be overseen by Jennifer Rudin (Director, Casting and Talent Development for Disney Theatrical Productions). Jennifer spent five years as head of casting for Walt Disney Animation Studios in Los Angeles and cast the following animated movies to name a few: Chicken Little, The Incredibles, Meet the Robinsons, The Wild and Brother Bear. Jennifer serves on the Board of Directors for the Casting Society of America.
* * *
These casting calls coincide with the premiere engagement of THE LION KING currently playing in Washington, D.C., at The Kennedy Center Opera House through August 24, 2008. The production includes four local performers: Andrew Frace (Ed) from Olney; Maia Moss (Ensemble) from Silver Spring; Marquis Moss (Ensemble) from Washington, D.C.; and Dion Wilson (Ensemble) from Baltimore. The run is sold out at this time, but patrons may check the Kennedy Center Box Office for last-minute availability, by calling Instant Charge at (202) 467-4600, or by visiting the Kennedy Center’s website at www.kennedy-center.org.
THE LION KING
Singers Seeking strong, dynamic singers for all roles including the African lions Simba and Nala.
WHEN: Friday, August 15 Sign in 9:30am Sign in no later than 11:00am
PREPARE: Please bring sheet music of a song that shows off your voice and range in 16 bars that you will sing with piano accompaniment (eg. R&B, gospel). Bring a recent picture and resume or list of performance experience.
Children We are seeking children ages 9-12, with a maximum height of 58”, who can sing, dance and act to play the African lion cubs Simba and Nala. No performance experience necessary
WHEN: Saturday, August 16 Sign in 9:30am Sign in no later than 11:00am
PREPARE: Be prepared to be taught the last verse of Just Can’t Wait to Be King. All children must be accompanied by parent/guardian, who must remain at audition site at all times.
Dancers Seeking strong male and female dancers with a classical and modern dance background. Some male dancers require strong acro skills. You must be warmed up and ready to dance in flat jazz shoes or bare feet.
WHEN: Monday, August 18 Female Dancers: Sign in 9:30am Male Dancers: Sign in 1:30pm
PREPARE: You may be asked to sing. Please prepare a song that shows off your voice and range (eg. R&B, gospel). Bring the sheet music. A pianist will be provided. Bring a recent picture and resume or list of performance experience.
MARY POPPINS
Children Disney Theatrical Productions is seeking children with a maximum height of 4’10”, who can sing, dance and act to play Jane and Michael Banks:
WHEN: Sunday, August 17 Sign in 9:30am Sign in no later than 11:00am
PREPARE: Please prepare a song of your choice that shows off your range. Please provide sheet music for the accompanist, and remember to bring a current picture and resume. All children must be accompanied by a parent/guardian who must remain at audition site at all times.
WHERE: The Washington Ballet @ THEARC 1901 Mississippi Avenue SE Washington, D.C. 20020 www.washingtonballet.org
If you are unable to attend these auditions, send a headshot and a resume ASAP to:
For THE LION KING Binder Casting, ATTN: The Lion King 321 W 44th Street, Suite 606, New York, NY 10036
For MARY POPPINS Tara Rubin Casting, ATTN: Mary Poppins 570 7th Avenue, Suite 401, New York, NY 10018
ABOUT THE LION KING Now in its second sold-out decade in New York, The Lion King is the winner of six Tony Awards® including Best Musical, eight Drama Desk Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, the New York Drama Critics award for Best Musical, the Evening Standard Award for the Theatrical Event of the Year, two Olivier Awards, a Theatre World Award, the Astaire Award for Outstanding Choreography, two Drama League Awards and a Grammy Award® for Best Musical Show Album.
ABOUT MARY POPPINS MARY POPPINS, a co-production by Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, opened at the New Amsterdam Theatre on November 16, 2006. The Tony Award® winning production quickly proved to be a hit with audience members and critics alike.
The MARY POPPINS North American Tour begins performances in Chicago at The Cadillac Palace Theatre on March 11, 2009. After Chicago, the tour is scheduled to play The State Theatre in Cleveland, The Fox Theatre in St. Louis, and The Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, with additional cities, venues and dates to be announced. For more information please visit www.MaryPoppinsTour.com.
The London production continues its record-setting run at London’s Prince Edward Theatre through January 2008.
Based on P.L. Travers’s cherished stories and the classic 1964 Walt Disney film, MARY POPPINS features the Academy Award-winning music and lyrics of Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. The stage production has been created, in collaboration with Cameron Mackintosh, by Academy Award®-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes, who has written the book, and the Olivier Award-winning team of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, who have composed new songs and additional music and lyrics.
# # # #
So grab your resume and photo, put on your dancing shoes and leotard, and head over to the auditions for The Lion King and Mary Poppins ... you never get cast if you don't audition.
"One of the smarter blogs is the libertarian-leaning collection of Charlottesville posts put up by Rick Sincere..." -- Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 8, 2005
. It included some of the editorials and op-eds that had been published in reaction to Solzhenitsyn's address shortly after he delivered it, plus six specially-commissioned essays.
