Hattie's Web

Michelle Bachman said she would shut down the U.S. Embassy in Iraq if she were president. Discuss.

Great piano concert in Hilo

How wonderful to hear a pianist who has kept his love of music over all the years he has been playing. Christopher O'Reilly gave a concert here of unusual and yes, passionate music by Ravel and Liszt that really swept me away, along with the rest of the audience. We are lucky in having a good small auditorium with excellent acoustics at UH Hilo, and a  Steinway piano, perfectly tuned for the occasion. O'Reilly was lost in the music, and so were we.  What an evening.

Most of you probably know Christopher O'Reilly because of his program, From the Top. That a musician of  genius like him should  be  so willing to mentor young musicians is remarkable. He lives music, you can see that, and is an original person in every way

Too many young people don't care for classical music, finding it dry and basically an interest of old people. I wish they could have heard O'Reilly  last night.

It's lovely this morning.

Here is my motto for the day: Never volunteer unless there is a GOOD chance of getting a real job for your troubles. I'm parting ways with the mentoring program. They need to vet people properly, train them right, and PAY them. Most of the others in the program need the money, but it's just going out to a few people who are supposedly running things. Sure they are. They are running things into the ground.

Occupy goes on. Action at Washington State Capital. Keep up with Nation blog.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164809/occupyusa-blog-monday-nov-28-frequent-updates

Tide is turning, I'd say.

TPM Talking Points Memo
Wis Dems claim 300,000 signatures for Walker recall, more than halfway there. http://tpm.ly/uINwn7 ^@erickleefeld

Google Translate and other miracles

15 years ago or so a scientist friend of mine said that the day would come when computers would do our translating for us. Well, that day has come. Take a look at this.

Ho appena eseguito attraverso il vostro giornale on-line e sono state sfogliando in Pensavo di poter lasciare la mia prima osservazione. Io non riconoscere ciò che a dichiarare senza contare che io ho voluto sfogliando. Grande web giornale, io continuerò visitando questo eJournal particolarmente frequente.

I just ran through your online journal and have been browsing through I thought I could leave my first comment. I do not recognize what to declare not to mention that I wanted to browsing. Great web journal, I will keep visiting this eJournal particularly frequent.

This translation  from  a comment by Casino en linge  sounds idiomatic and needs only light editing to make it 100% correct English. However, I could not get a translation of Casino en linge, but I'm guessing it's online casino.

It's the hive mind at work, as more and more knowledge gets poured into the cloud, the huge database that is summing up all of human knowledge.  It used to be difficult to find things out; these days it's difficult to figure out how to process all the information available. At the same time, we have these new tools to make it possible for us to think faster and better. Slow thinkers find themselves at a disadvantage these days as they ponder over great thoughts while the world goes winging past them at top speed.   I think for us older people it's important at least to try to keep up.

And did I mention how much I like my Kindle Fire? I'm in a whole new realm of entire seasons of kids' programs, sit-coms, mini-series, and so on,  commercial free entertainment. After all, it's the commercials that make television so intolerable, and I have nothing against being entertained.  With the turn in the weather toward cool and rainy, this is a pleasant way to spend my time.

Yesterday we did our annual walkaround at the Volcano Artists' Open House. And I opened my pocketbook and bought a number of lovely things: jewelry, pottery, a painting, a photo, a calendar of prints that are so nice that I am going to frame them. Here are some of my finds:

 I know the little painting is upside down, but I like it better that way.

Nation Magazine/ Democracy Now panel discussion on OWS. Michael Moore gets revved up toward the end of the hour and is very funny on the subject of how he would like to haunt the Connecticut bedrooms of Wall Streeters. Importantly, he points out that OWS now frames the discourse. New to me is  Rinku Sen,  who contradicts the notion that OWS is just about white people. William Greider sees OWS as connected to populism. Populists in their time knew that Capitalists were not friends of the masses, nor were  governments.  Today we face a similar situation. We have to take our power back and rediscover the American value of self reliance.  Naomi Klein says the Keystone victory is very big.

This panel discussion reminds me of the kind of talks we heard on The Nation Cruise. It's the best way for me to learn about politics, because I respond most strongly to personalities who embody my ideals:  People like moderator Richard Kim, young activist organizer  Patrick Bruner, Moore, Klein, Goodman, etc. and so many others. What a contrast they are to the self serving big money people and politicians who have damaged our country so badly.

 

 

Since everyone is putting up Thanksgiving photos, I guess I have to also. Pretty inspiring, eh?
Actually we had a great time. Just the photos did not come out too good. Most of us have passed beyond the photogenic age, getting up into the late 60's and the 70's, but the turkey looked great.

More: For interested parties, here is how my cousin achieved the perfectly browned turkey. She brined it and covered it with cheesecloth soaked in butter and white wine and basted it frequently as it cooked. We agreed that it was excellent except that the breast meat was a little overdone.

Thanks to Brandon and one of the guests at my cousin's Thanksgiving dinner, I'm getting educated on the no-bid contracts and misallocations of building funds that our government officials and their cronies are wasting our money on. This little mentoring scam I'm involved with is small change compared to what the contractors are getting away with. A giant gym and shelter in Ka'u? Just what they need down there. My friend, who works on art projects in the area, says that the place is filling up with near-destitute Marshallese. No one has work, and the boys run in packs. She went to a meeting about this gym, one of 35 people who showed up, and the builders said it would cost $16,000,000+ to build, and that it would have state of the art exercise equipment. It would also be an emergency shelter and a vog shelter. (Vog is volcanic smog.) I would think that such sums of money could be put to better use for these near destitute people. The locals aren't in too good shape either. She says some of them have never been off the Island. Hell, she says, some of them have never been to Hilo!

So here is how it works. You have a viable but flawed system. You emphasize the flaws and attack authorities and bureaucracies to the point where the system breaks down so you can take over. You get a big to gigantic sum of money from the government or some other source. Then you hire the most mediocre, servile, and nonthreatening people you can find to run your program. For a while everyone is happy who gets jobs and grants. The living is easy, and no one's asking for results as yet. After a while, huge problems emerge that you can't solve, because no smart or knowledgeable people want anything to do with your enterprise. People start to notice that you are making a big mess and are failing.
Examples:
charter schools
parolee mentoring program
Iraq.

Welcome to Stupidville.