If it’s good enough for Congress and the President, then it should be good enough for us!
kenne
Archive for August 2009
Ken Burns At His Best 1 comment
If It’s Good Enough. . . Leave a comment
“The Dream Shall Never Die.” 4 comments
“Senator Kennedy and I both witnessed too many wars in our lives, and believed too strongly in the Constitution of the United States to allow us to go blindly into war. That is why we stood side by side in the Senate against the war in Iraq.” – Senator Robert Byrd
“He and I both came to the Senate the same year as part of the class of ’62. And I sat side-by-side with him for several years in the Senate and we remained close friends over the years,” McGovern recalled. “He was probably as hard a working person as I knew at the Senate. He got to the office early and worked late. He definitely was a senator’s senator. I never thought that either John or Robert Kennedy’s first love was the Senate. They were thinking first about the executive branch. But Ted, throughout his long career, was wedded to the Senate. And I think, over time, he became the greatest Senator of the 20th Century.” – George McGovern
“He is admired around the world as the senator of senators.” – Gordon Brown
“Most Americans will never know how many things Ted Kennedy did to make their lives better, how many things he prevented that would have hurt them, and how tenaciously he fought on their behalf. In 1969, for example, he introduced a bill in the Senate calling for universal health insurance, and then, for the next forty years, pushed and prodded colleagues and presidents to get on with it. If and when we ever achieve that goal it will be in no small measure due to the dedication and perseverance of this one remarkable man. We owe it to him and his memory to do it soon and do it well.” – Robert Reich
“The outpouring of love, gratitude and fond memories which we have all witnessed is a testimony to the way this singular figure in American history touched so many lives.” – Barack Obama
“His first commitment was always to the people in need.” – Jimmy Carter
kenne
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“O captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done” Leave a comment
Ted Kennedy 1932 – 2009 — Source: Google Images
“Freedom is the essence of America,
the opportunity for every American
to live the American Dream.”
— Edward M. Kennedy
Greatest born in the shadow of destinies brothers.
kenne
Blog title from “O captain! my Captain!” by Walt Whitman
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Where Has Traditional American Conservatism Gone? 1 comment
Too bad conservative America doesn’t have minds like that of William F. Buckley. Buckley was creative and presented ideas in debating issues, rather than just disagreeing. Buckley was first an intellectual and second a conservative. Although I disagreed with most of his positions (agreement was more alone liberterian lines) he was always ready to debate the issues, rather that concluding “I’m right and you are wrong,” end of discussion!
kenne
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Wedding, Patio Table and Basketball Backboard 2 comments
Micheal & Lisa
As we prepare to attend Lisa and Michael’s wedding on Lummi Island this Saturday. Lummi Island is part of the San Juan archipelago, twenty minutes from Bellingham, WA., and ten minutes by the Whatcom Chief ferry. Lisa is my brother Tom’s youngest daughter and her wedding will probably generate several blog entries over the next week.
Tom has written on himself, usually in the third person, as someone who felt and thought like a certain kind of person that Samuel Beckett was interested in; “… someone having nothing to express, nothing with which to express, but a desperate need to express.”
There was a time when Tom would write rambling stories on James Talbott, his pseudonym. In June of 1988 we received thirteen typed pages on his annual struggles with the patio picnic table. With Tom and Lisa on my mind, I thought I would share a little segment of Talbott’s thoughts.
“It was one of those late June days when the clarity of light and the greens of the foliage in the yard combined with the azure blue of the Pacific Northwest sky to mesmerize, if not invite a momentary reverie. Talbott sit down at the table. Light has a way of swaying our imaginations, our emotions. He had always known the effect of the absence, the dulling or the clarity of light on his sensibilities. On cloudy dull summer days, he never gave a thought to that table, but now in this mesmerizing light of a beautiful late June day.
“Dad,” the voice of his oldest daughter, Vanessa, rang out from the house. A few years ago, he couldn’t distinguish his two daughters apart from the sound of their voices on the telephone. But, she was now seventeen and her voice carried her unique identity.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
He was about to respond, but another quick question displace it; “Where’s Lisa?” she was his youngest daughter. “I thought she was going to have dinner with you tonight.”
Lisa had just recently left the house and home she had lived in since before first grade to live with her mom. She was now entering her sophomore year in high school. Talbott had taken on the duties of caring for her cat and goldfish, which she did not take with her. He felt ambiguously sadden and confused that she had not taken them.
“Oh, she is,” he said. “She is across the street at Jenny’s.”
How many times had he said that Lisa was over at Jenny’s? The echo of his words reverberated through his mind.
Events and circumstances, which appeared to be so simple were so damn ineffable. He thought of the laughs and good natured sneers of derision that he and his daughters would delight in the years from now as they looked at all the old photographs from those years when the picnic table was holding forth its position on the patio. But he knew that neither of the girls ever consciously connected any significance to that table, he realized that as we experience our lives we are often unable to distinguish what should be cherished and what should not.
“Dad, what are we having for dinner?” Immediately he was back from an emotional time warp to the quotidian and the necessary.
“Oh, let me see,” he said. As he was leaving the table to return to the kitchen, which faced the patio, he heard Lisa’s voice as she entered the house through the front door. In some inexplicable way, he associated Lisa with the patio picnic table. This association was not made on a conscious level. No. The table had often been a pain; Lisa had always been a joy.
“Can you guys remember any occasion that took place around this picnic table that stands out in your memory?”
His contrived, rather forced question was a bit like a researcher groping for necessary impersonal background, and he felt it was asked with an intonation that was definitely phony. But nevertheless, there it was. Then he really began rambling:
“Years ago, when I was in college, I wrote a paper on backyard basketball backboards. They always reminded me of a special barometer that measured the life of a family. The care and repair and use of the backboard would suggest the age of the family or history of that family. Do you guys think that a picnic table can be seen as the kind of same barometer of age or change?”
He suddenly, humiliatingly, realized in the hesitation before their response how pretentious the question sounded. He knew that his longing for passionate Shakespearian speech had launched this dud. This had to be resisted. He wanted to cry aloud for an intimate familial communion that he so needed. He wanted to be eloquent and moving. But what if he were to burst out like Lear to his daughters? It would get him nowhere to utter burning words. His daughter’s wouldn’t understand. Suppose he were to exclaim about morality, about flesh and blood and justice and evil and what it felt like to be him, James Talbott, facing the transitions and rites of passage that were exploding before him? Hadn’t he tried in his own confused way to bring some good for them into the world? Having pursued a “higher” purpose, although without getting close, he was now ageing, weakening, and doubting his own endurance and even his ability to cope. Where the hell was equity and conscience?
“Dad, are you alright?” His oldest, Vanessa, asked.
He realized the frustration and impatience he was experiencing and he backed off.
“Yeah, I’ve just been reading a lot of nostalgic, haunting vignettes today. You know I’m such a sentimentalist.”
He fumbled for whatever he was looking for and realized that he had lost it. The table and its symbolic significance were truly personal. Its importance lay in the need for continuity and connections in his life. That was easy. But there was an importance that seemed to transcend the personal. At least he thought that. He began thinking that the philosophical idea of Solipsism was not just a romantic concept for anti-utopians.”
— Thomas R. Turner, June, 1998
kenne
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Kiko and Pogo 4 comments
One of my Facebook friends (Bill W.) make an entry today with the classic Pogo cartoon — we have met the enemy, and he is us — “. . . in the words of the immortal Pogo. I know, the original cartoon concerning pollution, but the author (Walt Kelly) even agreed that it is much broader.” I commented on his entry since this is one of my favorite cartoons and one I have referenced many times over the years. As I have said so often, life is all about relationships and creating a matrix of connections, this being one, which crossed the path of a blog titled, “Kiko’s House.” As most of you know, our cat of eighteen years was Kiko, who passed away last December — we still miss him much. Kiko’s House is the blog site of Shaun Mullen, and he made this entry July 13, 2009 — “We have met the enemy, and he is us” How cool! Just another dimension of Kiko. Not surprisingly, Kiko’s House is a great blog, which I have now placed as a link on this site. Yes, life is all about “matrixing.”
Keep on bending the lines of life’s matrix!
— kenne
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Career Development for Children Project – A Flashback 1 comment
Larry Bailey, Bill Van Rooy, Marybee Anthose, Kenne Turner – 1971
This project, in the early seventies, was all about developing a career development model for use in elementary education. We developed an instructional component and curriculum materials designed enable students, as they proceed through school, to learn about “self” and the world of work at higher levels of specificity. As is often the case in good educational research and development, it was ahead of its time.
kenne
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Recent Facebook Entries Leave a comment
Because of my own Facebook activity, some of the things I might normally post on this blog have been on Facebook. Knowing that all who may visit this site, I provide the following links:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111971414&sc=nl&cc=mn-20090822
. . for my stock market friends. –
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/08/rally-time-items-to-watch/
. . . take plenty of tissues if you’re going to see “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu8lYr0kf7g
. . . we all have those light-bulb moments, as well as having observed the behavior of others when the light comes on. Now there is evidence that our brain has decided (solves the problem) before we experience the moment — Eureka! So, you may say, &…quot;So what?! We tend to think it is our conscious state that processes and solves a problem, when in fact, it may actually take place in the unconscious.
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13489722
. . . Health-care reform — another source.
. . . no more lies!
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/settingtherecord/
. . . brewing the American dream. A businessman with an attitude of of adding value by giving.
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ellen-mcgirt/strike-indicator/my-life-beer-day-sam-adams-came-call
. . . cellphone service and health-care service in America have a lot in common — costs more and less service than other western nations . Is anyone surprised?
http://consumerist.com/5335809/congratulations-americans-we-pay-the-most-for-cellphone-service
. . . everybody is for health care reform, right?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/32469091#32469091
. . . Woodstock — 40 years Out
http://30daysout.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/woodstock-40-years-out-and-still-tie-dyed/
. . . we finally have the time to watch this award winning movie of a happening stopped in time for ever.
http://www.film.com/features/story/dvd-blu-ray-woodstock-directors/28599888
“. . . it’s not how many notes you play, it’s playing the right note.”
http://www.nj.com/morristown/index.ssf/2009/08/remembering_les_paul_the_wizar.html
. . . another example why Whole Foods has a lot going and why I have stock in it.
. . . several friends have already conveyed this sad news. Here’s information from NPR. A lot of us grew up listening to the music of Les Paul & Mary Ford. Yes, the world is waiting for the sunrise!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111845182
In the November 15, 1993 U.S. News & World Report cover story contained — “When the full judgment of the Kennedy legacy is made — including J.F.K.’s Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert Kennedy’s passion for civil rights and Ted Kenned…y’s efforts on health care, workplace reform and refugees — the changes wrought by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential.” No doubt about it!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12shriver.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
. . . the geek in me says, “check out the new Science Channel show, Future of…” A real cool show!
http://science.discovery.com/tv/pop-sci/pop-sci.html
kenne
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The Genious of Making Good Seem Bad and Bad Seem Good Leave a comment
(Photo source – PopMatters)
Quentin Tarantino writing and directing style is very distinctive and like most very creative artist, his work is either loved or hated – for me it’s the former. I love his writing and his ability to make good seem bad, and bad seem good, which makes effective use of how one cannot exist without the other. With the release of his latest film, “Inglourious Basterds,” he is currently getting a lot of media coverage. As part of an article titled, “Quentin Tarantino in His Own Words,” there’s a great video of clips from some of his movies. Check it out. http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/quentin-tarantino-in-his-own-words/Content?oid=1243135
Getting home a little late Friday night, as I often do, set down in front of the TV to unwind before going to bed. The timing was perfect to catch Charlie Rose interviewing Quentin. The interview, as of this posting, is not yet on posted on his site, but probably will be tomorrow. As always, Charlie Rose, the best in the business, brings out the best in his guests. http://www.charlierose.com/
kenne
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Are There Ten Dimensions? 1 comment
What we may see as real comes from the pseudo-real, kind of a cosmological explanation for our not knowing what is operating, but something is operating there in another dimension. Regardless, it is important to always seek answers to how things happen.
(For a larger view, click on widescreen.)
kenne
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Outside the Window of Now Leave a comment
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Rummaging Through the Garage Leave a comment
Katheryn D., Kenne G. & Kenne D. – 1980
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Katelyn and Granddad 1 comment
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Nicholas & Katelyn Leave a comment
“When they write the history of the U.S Senate, it will be him (Ted Kennedy) and Daniel Webster and Webster will be honored to be in his company.” — Ken Burns
“. . . a burden on which a hero would beg to be speared.” Jacqulene Kennedy
kenne
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