Welcome and

thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

I hope you can just dive in and find something worthwhile. If you’d like

some guidance, here it is:

• Like most blogs, the most recent entry or post is at the top of the first page. As you read

  down any page, you are reading back towards the earlier entries written over 14 days.

  Sometimes this seems weird, especially

  when a recent entry refers to something older that you haven’t read yet.

  If you are returning, as you read down you will

  eventually run into something you’ve already read. No blog seems to have an effective way to “show me only things I haven’t

  seen”.

• My remarks usually appear like this text. Text from other sources usually appears in black on white.
• Entries are also categorized and can be read on category pages (see links to the side of the main column).
• You can

  search for entries. See the little search box at the top of each page.

• You can bookmark or send a link to a specific entry by

  browsing it first (click the heading over that entry). That takes you to a particular page for just that entry. Then bookmark that page

  or send that address to a friend (thanks). Blog-nerds call this the permalink for that post.

• I’m interested in any

  thoughtful response. You can use the comments link for an entry or write me directly

  anytime.

Sometimes, I just want to preserve something I’ve read and encourage you to read it, too. Other times, I

feel I have something to add, often brief, sometimes sarcastic or angry. Once in a while, I feel more creative or verbose. mjh

Merri and I had a couple of nights out on the town this week. Thursday night, we went to hear

Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff, performed in Popejoy Hall. From the mezzanine, crowded with friends and family of the performers, we looked

down on the densely packed stage, including bleachers spanning the entire stage and half its depth for about two hundred singers from the

UNM University Chorus and Concert Choir.

I’m not much of a concert-goer, but it is amazing to be in such a context, united with

many strangers by something beautiful and uplifting.

Even if you don’t recognize the names Carmina Burana or Orff, you know the

opening and closing of this piece. It may be the best or most rousing 5 minutes of music ever. Even if that is hyperbolic, it has to be

on the short list of greatest choral pieces of the 20th Century. Oddly, I first heard it in the stunning-at-the-time movie Excaliber.

Since then, we’ve heard it once before at UNM Popejoy and we have a couple of recordings of it.

To me, Carmina bridges pre-20th

Century and 20th Century music. It has long moments seeming plainly classical and then punctuates those with a more modern dissonance and

cacophony. Strings are plucked instead of stroked. There’s a xylophone, two gongs, bells, etc. The 5 percussionists work their asses

off.

My knowledge of music isn’t sufficient to be sure, but it seems full of humor — something Frank Zappa might have liked.

Surely Orff despised some tenor enough to require him to be on stage for over an hour and sing not 5 minutes, indeed, singing the part of

a roasted swan (O miserable me. Now I am roasted black!) Then there are the two grand pianos which don’t seem to play in more than two

of the 25 sections.

In the midst of this, I had an epiphany about what an extraordinary programming language musical notation is.

One can write a page of black dots and lines to control the simultaneous operation of hundreds of individuals. Though there must be

variations intentional and accidental, a music “program” runs the same anywhere, anytime — across centuries. The same cannot be said

about any other human-written programming language.

The story of the libretto seems fictional. A collection of poems and songs

written by defrocked priests between the 11th and 14th Centuries. Yeah, OK. The Latin lyrics are well-worth translating; much of the

non-musical humor is there.

And yet, again, that opening and closing (which was played a third time as an encore) is stunning

musically and lyrically:

O, Fortune!
Like the Moon
Everchanging
Rising first
Then declining;

Hateful life
Treats us badly
Then with kindness
Making sport with our desires,
Causing power
And poverty alike
To

melt like ice.

mjh
PS: Two little tangential items about me and music, one of which no

one else knows. First, I was the Data Processing Manager for the National Symphony Orchestra over 20 years ago. My office in the Kennedy

Center had been a broom closet which I shared with an IBM System 34. The other is that over 30 years ago I took a Music Theory class and

wrote a piece of music in a strictly mechanical manner — I don’t play any instrument. I called it “The Cacophonous Cavalier” (after the

University of Virginia’s namesake) and sub-titled it “Mund voll Kartofeln” (I was a German Major; that’s literally “mouth full of

potatoes” and an old-fashioned way to call someone dim. The TA wrote “quatscherei” (nonsense). I don’t recall the grade; I never heard

it played.

Thank you for

stopping by to read my blog.
peace,
mjh

Who Does This Guy Think He Is?

My name is Mark Justice Hinton. I am a life-long old school liberal who believes America has been

hijacked by the Radical Right, a consortium of corporate money-launderers, inflexible ideologues and evangelical fanatics, a group

trending towards fascism.

I regret that America is fracturing into warring camps while I recognize my role in that. I will not be

the first to turn the other check or to forgive them their trespasses. The party of Lush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson uses corporate money

to set the citizenry at each other’s throats while passing money under the table to buy what they want from those with power. We are at

the edge of dark times with the dawning of The Christian Nation of AmeriCo, the NADA (New American Dark Ages), where ignorance isn’t

just bliss, it’s good for business.

Still, I am a cynical optimist and a fool for our system of checks and balances. I have

little faith in the electorate but I believe the system tends towards self-correction. Duhbya and Company will go the way of

Nixon; we’ve seen it all before.

peace, mjh

write me

www.edgewiseblog.com
www.mjhinton.net/revolt/
www.bush2mars.com

Something happening here … – Los Angeles Times By Mark Rudd

Given that President Bush is now talking

about Iraq as only one skirmish in an unlimited struggle against a global Islamic enemy, a struggle comparable to

the titanic, 40-year Cold War against communism, shouldn’t a massive critique of the global war on terrorism already be underway?

Yet the [anti-war] movement has remained small and politically isolated since the original outpouring of opposition in the spring

of 2003, during the run-up to the war. In part, it was the victim of its own early success, the spontaneous demonstrations

involving millions of people in the streets here and around the world trying to stop the war before it began. When this initial outburst

failed, many became demoralized and hopeless. …

Let us remember that here, in our own

town, our fellow citizens gathered to protest the rush to war and were gassed and shot at. Bernalillo County Sherrif Darren White —

Bush’s local campaign manager — said, in effect, let me at them, I’ll show them justice, when he felt APD had been too lenient. Not to

mention the exhortations to (shut up and) “support the troops” and the slander of unpatriotism. The Radical Right did just what they

wanted: they shut us down harshly and quickly. Now Bush smears for not standing up to his strong-arm tactics, for going along at the

time. Like a bully who smacks you in the face with your own hand.

But building a movement can be done. To increase

our ranks, we’ll need to break through the too-common belief that change is impossible.

We’ll also need to take on the larger

war. As the next battle heats up, perhaps against Iran or Syria, the movement will have to ask the American people to look honestly at

who we are in the world. The antiwar movement will have to engage in the most difficult dialogue of our lives with our neighbors. …

[In the case of Vietnam,] we helped stop a war of aggression by our own country. This was American democracy at its best. I lived

through it, I saw it with my own eyes.

If all of us “gray-hairs” were to tell our stories, we might be able to make a

contribution. At least we could help people find hope in this dark time.

From “never trust anyone over

30” to ‘let the gray-hairs speak’ in just 40 years. That’s progress.

As for “American democracy at its best,” well, I saw it,

too. It seemed horribly inefficient and chaotic and unclear. I hope it wasn’t our best, though I do celebrate people demanding the

government follow us now and then.

I don’t begrudge Rudd the wisdom of his years, and I appreciate him speaking out and

encouraging others to do the same. Bush AND al Qaeda need to learn what Rudd knows: even when violence seems to get you what you want,

it’s never worth the price. mjh

PS: isn’t it interesting that the old radicals are middle class

grandparents preaching restraint while the new radicals are the evangelical Christians versus extreme Islamists.

Aside: we

graybeards do have our stories to tell. Years ago, I got a call from Columbia University. The caller asked if I would like to

participate in an oral history of radicals from the Sixties. “Sure,” I said, “I’d be honored.” I don’t know how long we went on before

we realized the miscommunication. They wanted a different Sixties radical. I get that a lot, as the husband of Merri Rudd (who jokes she

is Mark Rudd’s little sister). As if the wife of a Sixties radical would take his name.

Surely the police and military (any difference anymore?) need non-lethal means for subduing rioters.

But even in the category of non-lethal means, some are meaner than others. Which is worse: tear gas or feeling your skin is boiling? Do

you want your local police department to add a virtual flailer to their arsenal, next to the machine guns, tanks and helicopters? mjh

ABQjournal: N.M. Home to Nonlethal Weapon Work By Andrew Webb, Of the Journal

“There’s a lot of nonlethal research out

there,” Garcia said.

The Active Denial device has been scaled down to fit atop a military Humvee, and is expected to see early

field testing next year, said Garcia, who was one of its first test subjects in Albuquerque.

“It’s

incredibly painful,” he says. “I thought I could mentally override it, but it’s as if you’ve touched a hot iron.”

Why Vote on Tuesdays? By DAVID S. BRODER, Washington Post

If Andrew Young

has his way, never again will we have a Tuesday election. The former mayor of Atlanta and ambassador to the United Nations wants to

switch the nation’s voting to the weekend. …

All of these problems, Young says, contribute to the low turnouts in American

elections. According to Young, the United States ranks 139th of 172 nations in the percentage of eligible citizens voting. …

Only one voter in six said he or she had had difficulty finding time to vote because of other commitments. But three out of 10 said

they would be more likely to vote if Election Day were moved to the weekend.

That last measure was much higher for some groups who

generally lag in voter turnout. Among African-Americans, 52 percent said they would be more likely to vote on the weekend; among

Hispanics, 48 percent; and an identical 48 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds. Singles, working women and residents of Texas and California

were also notably high in saying that weekend voting would bring them to the polls.

All of which suggests that Young is right in

seeing this as an extension of the civil rights and voting rights efforts.