Month: June 2012

A reader provides it:

Thank you for drawing some attention to the film Longtime Companion and its incredible final scene, which brings to mind this 1841 poem by John Gibson Lockhart:

There is an old belief,
That on some solemn shore,
Beyond the sphere of grief
Dear friends shall meet once more.

Beyond the sphere of Time
And Sin and Fate's control,
Serene in changeless prime
Of body and of soul.

That creed I fain would keep
That hope I'll ne'er forgo,
Eternal be the sleep,
If not to waken so.

It brings tears every time I think of it.

A reader writes:

You know what I can't wait for this summer?  The Rick Warren Faith Forum with Obama and Romney.  You remember the one with Obama and McCain?  Surely we will have another one of those this election?

A man shouts directions at Nepalese Hindus and Buddhist devotees pulling a wooden chariot during the Rato (Red) Machindranath Chariot Festival in Kathmandu on June 21, 2012. The event, celebrated every year to herald good monsoon rains for increased rice harvest, prosperity and good luck, is one of the main festivals observed by both the Buddhist and Hindu communities of Kathmandu. By Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images.

Rhodes Cook suspects voter turnout will decline in 2012:

The negative campaigning is not likely to fuel a huge outpouring of voters in November. Yet high turnouts are not necessary to produce a consequential, even historic election. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was first elected in 1932 — a Depression-era contest that set the stage for the New Deal and a Democratic era in American politics — turnout was less than 60% of the electorate. When Harry Truman scored his fabled come from behind victory in 1948, the turnout rate was a bare majority. And when Reagan was initially elected in 1980, producing a turn to the right in American politics, the rate of voter participation was less than 55%.

McDonalds explains why the burgers in ads never look like the real ones:

Jess Zimmerman comments:

In the company’s defense, they do offer a pretty convincing explanation of why they can’t just shoot a regular real-life burger for their ads: They have to bring all the ingredients to the front, so you know exactly what you’re getting! Hidden pickles might be a good name for a raunchy Tumblr, but they don’t help sell burgers. At least, that explanation SOUNDS convincing, until you think hard about the fact that they ALSO couldn’t just shoot regular real-life burgers because then you would know that they look gross.

Yglesias contends that "essentially any able-bodied, hard-working migrant is good for the American economy":

This can be most clearly seen in agriculture. Some land in America is farmed, most is not. Much of the land is only profitable to cultivate at a wage level that few American workers find appealing. When we cut off the flow of migrant farm workers, that doesn’t magically create high-paying jobs for Americans; it leads in the short term to crops rotting in the fields and in the long term to less land being cultivated.

The land and the unskilled labor, in other words, are complements. More unskilled labor would mean more cultivated land. That would mean more agricultural output and more jobs for people who manufacture farm equipment, build food-processing facilities, or provide accounting or legal services to agricultural firms. 

A reader writes:

I was raised Mormon and completed a two-year mission for the church in the eighties. I no longer consider myself Mormon in any sense of the word besides culturally. Despite my grievances, which I will get to shortly, I can unequivocally say that many of the kindest, altruistic and (at the risk of sounding corny) saint-like people I have ever met have been Mormons.

My first realization that Mormonism was not going to be my path came from the territory that you are now exploring.

As an LDS child, one is taught endlessly that the temple ceremony is the pinnacle of spiritual enlightenment, a sacred place where one receives the sacred, not secret, teachings of God. When it was my turn to enter the temple and receive the endowment I became anxious due to its secret nature, but I was calmed by the fact that I would be with the kindest man I knew, my father. In the weeks leading up to my endowment I peppered my Dad with all sorts of questions about the temple, but he remained tight-lipped, giving only the canned answers that are given to non-members. Must be pretty peaceful I thought.

The temple ceremony that I completed can be found numerous places online. When I went through it in the '80s there were a series of gestures where one covenanted, and then demonstrated the penalties for breaking the covenant, one of these gestures mimicked the slitting of the throat, another slashing of the abdomen – disembowelment. While experiencing these for the first time I remember looking quizzically at my father, and he would not return my gaze.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared me for the arcane weirdness of the temple ceremony. My father never would speak about the ceremony afterwards, as members are instructed not too. I went home that night and was in shock, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably, I felt I had just entered a world from which I could not escape. Later, when I left the Church, my mother refused to speak to me for months.

I can forgive people for having all sorts of seemingly nonsensical or magical beliefs – God knows I have some of my own – but I cannot forgive a theology that will destroy the relationship of trust, and love between a parent and child.

The Supreme Court punted today on the question of whether FCC cursing regulations violated the First Amendment. An amusing bit from the write-up:

In the case before the court, three broadcasts were targeted by the FCC: an NYBD Blue episode on ABC showing a shot of a bare female buttocks, and two Billboard Awards shows on Fox Television that broadcast fleeting expletives. Kennedy wrote that singer Cher and "a person named Nicole Richie" had both used the F-word on the awards shows. Richie had used the S-word as well in her remarks: "Have you ever tried to get cow s*** out of a Prada purse? It’s not so f***ing simple."

David Orentlicher scratches his head:

The Court’s discomfort with indecency is not surprising. The justices’ discomfort reflects that of much of society. Indeed, they could not bring themselves to actually say the F-word at oral argument. But once again, it leaves us to wonder why our society seems to worry more about exposing children to even brief uses of profanity or depictions of nudity than it does about exposing kids to prolonged violence. … Recall, for example, that last year, the Court invoked the first amendment to override California’s ban on the sale of violent video games to minors, and two years ago, the Court rejected on first amendment grounds a federal statute that outlawed "crush" videos depicting the torture and killing of animals.

I feel terrible that I did not credit the photo of the patient with AIDS in a hospital smock with KS lesions on his face. I looked for one, couldn't find it, and assumed it was an amateur shot. Far from it. It won the World Press Photo Of The Year. Here's an appreciation of the photo, which is, indeed, remarkable:

The work of Alon Reininger had a significant impact humanizing AIDS with the first images published of American patients in Life magazine in 1986. You can see here several videos with an interview of Alon Reininger describing the documentation of people suffering AIDS. This image (winner of the Word Press Photo award in 1986) was selected by Photo District News magazine as one of the most important images of photojournalism in the period 1980-2000. American Photo magazine selected Alon Reininger as one of the underrated masters of photography.

By the way, the man, Ken Meeks, died three days after the photo was taken. My personal apologies – and gratitude for the work – to Mr Reininger. More of Reininger's work at Contact Press here.