Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Scorsese Rules/Ezra Pound/Logs

New Feature: Political Trivia Answer this question- put your answer here- then look in the next posting for the answer, a detailed explanation, and a new Political Trivia question. Here goes: Who said: I wonder if it isn't possible "to get some of the people in these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us"? Hint: A US president during a National Security Council meeting on Iran.

(P1) Philosophical

Scorsese Rules!

I need to say something to Martin Scorsese:

"Marty, you are my choice for both Best Picture and Best Director for your vastly entertaining The Departed. But then, with the possible exception of Gangs of New York, you're always my choice. Interesting that you and Clint Eastwood were born and grew around the same time. I loved The Unforgiven and would probably choose it every time you're not up against it. What is it about Hollywood that eschews your non-gratuitous violence? Let's review: Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Aviator, and Taxi Driver- You, sir are a generous genius full of everything good about the cinema and of history, music, celebration, and the brightness of the dark side.

"So, my strongest advice to you is that, if small minds select anything or anyone at all over you or over your film, this time, you get up in front of the press and declare in the loudest possible voice you can muster, 'I'm pissed off, and I'm not going to take it anymore. I will have nothing further to do with the Academy, and if you ever attempt to offer me a Lifetime Achievement Award, I will tell you precisely where you can stick it! Amen.'

"But I believe in justice and in art, and I'm convinced that this will be your rightful turn."

PS - Let me also pay due respect to your lighter sided efforts including The Last Waltz, Kundun, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Casino (OK, pretty wonderfully dark), The Last Temptation of Christ, T he King of Comedy (yes, I know), and New York, New York.

Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in as "Other" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

(P2) Poetical
And the Days Are Not Full Enough

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass

- Ezra Pound-

Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in as "Other" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

(P3) Political (and Ecological)

U.S. Forest Service May Not Be the Big Warm Fuzzy You Thought
I've recently come to enjoy the humorous travel and ecologically friendly books of Bill Bryson.
Here are some eye-opening comments about the Forest Service that
Americans might want to know:

"The Forest Service is truly an extraordinary institution. a lot of people, seeing that word forest in the title, assume it has something to do with looking after trees. In fact, no--though that was the original plan...In fact, mostly what the Forest Service does is build roads. I am not kidding...378,000 miles of roads in America's national forests...it is eight times the total mileage of America's interstate highway system. It is the largest road system in the world in the control of a single body...It is the avowed aim of the U.S. Forest Service to construct 580,000 miles of additional forest road by the middle of the next century.

"The reason the Forest Service builds these roads, quite apart from the deep pleasure of doing noisy things in the woods with big yellow machines, is to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. Of the Forest Service's 150 million acres of loggable land, about two-thirds is held in store for the future. The remaining one-third--49 million acres, or an area roughly twice the size of Ohio--is available for logging. It allows huge swathes of land to be clear-cut...

"...By the late 1980's--this is so extraordinary I can hardly stand it--it was the only significant player in the American timber industry that was cutting down trees faster than it replaced them. Morevover, it was doing this with the most sumptuous inefficiency. 80% of its leasing arrangements lost money, often vast amounts. In one typical deal, the Forest Service sold hundred-year-old lodgepole pines in the Targhee National Forest in Idaho for about $2 each after spending $4 per tree surveying the land, drawing up contracts, and, of course, building roads. Between 1989 and 1997, it lost an average of $242 million a year--almost $2 billion all told...This is all so discouraging..."

Bill Bryson A Walk In the Woods (Anchor Books, January 2007)

Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in as "Other" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.





Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Kennedy/Lense Cap/Mary Oliver


Bulletin: I'm 63-years-old today! 1-24-07. Ed Coletti




(P1) Philosophical


Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
01.16.2007
For the Last, Stubborn Holdouts on Global Warming
READ MORE: Robert F. Kennedy, New York

Last week I saw robins and bluebirds in upstate New York where they don't usually arrive before April. Crocuses and daffodils were in bloom everywhere. A friend ate asparagus he harvested in the normally frozen Catskills in the first week of January. Turtles in downstate New York, like bears in Scandinavia, forgot to hibernate for the first time in human history.

For those last stubborn holdouts still skeptical about the existence of global warming--e.g., CNN's chief corporate fascism advocate Glenn Beck, who broadcast another of his denial tirades last week--and to those who exalt the warmer weather as preferable to a snowy winter, consider the impacts on our fellow creatures. Last April an early spring in Wyoming's Teton Range caused horseflies to arrive early. The young Redtail hawks, who were still unfeathered, were devoured in their nests by the voracious bloodsuckers. Not a single baby Redtail survived to fledge in the Jackson Hole valley.

The macro impacts of global warming--catastrophic storms, flooded coastlines, melted icecaps, shrinking glaciers, dwindling water supplies and agricultural disruptions are finally getting some attention by America's lethargic press. But the seismic shifts in global weather patterns are already dramatically altering the local ecosystems that for eons have defined America's landscape. Nature has achieved a balance that has been relatively stable for 20,000 years. The reliable milestones of its annual rhythms--like flowers blooming and robins returning in the spring, and animals hibernating in winter--form the pulse and fabric of the passing years. They connect us to our history, give context to our communities and form the foundation of American culture, our art, literature, poetry and architecture.

The recent disruptions to animal and plant behavior are evident to anyone except for ideologically blinded right-wing flat-earthers and Exxon/Mobil's political and media toadies like Michael Crichton, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

stopglobalwarming.org

Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in as "Other" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

(P2) Poetical

Please Protect This

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver

Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in as "Other" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.


(P3) Political


Lens Cap?

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Lucia Brawley/On Exec. Mistakes/Slavery


(P1) Philosophical (sort of)

My Niece Lucia

I thought my readers might be interested in this Elle Magazine Hungarian edition
cover of my niece actress Lucia Brawley, who, after her stint in Oliver Stone's film World Trade Center, has gone on to star in the Hungarian film Lora.


Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in as "Other" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.


(P2) Political


So Perfect It's Ridiculous

Excerpted From Arianna Huffington's Blog:
bushdb.jpg

CNN


...But the president has already admitted mistakes in Iraq. His mistake now is in not changing course (except rhetorically) after the earlier admissions of mistakes. The reason why admitting mistakes is considered a good thing to do is the assumption that you'll stop making them -- or at least stop making the same ones. But Bush is even incompetent at admitting his own incompetence. It's like an alcoholic admitting he's started drinking again, then announcing he plans to get back on the wagon by drinking even more. You should not get credit for admitting mistakes unless the admission is accompanied by an effort to stop making them...


Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in as "Other" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

(P3) Poetical

This Barrel of Oil Addresses
An American Slave

(ed coletti -december 2006)

They call me black gold
but like a dollar bill
I ain’t worth a spatter
'cept they use me for something
believe me they do
but I don’t need to tell you
the way they used you
some of them knowing better
were the worst for the knowing
not doing anything about it.

They pretend I’m not even there
while I’m all that’s there and you
your existence made their heaven
planted on the bottom line
with no price-of-labor line
anywhere above,
the difference between us being
you had children
that alone made it so you couldn’t hide
their misery or your wife’s
or that man place inside you
where you knew hot rage
with nowhere to go.

So me I’m just a metaphor,
something they use and use and take
away from under what was never theirs.
The people who try to live nearest me
who don’t own a dram of me,
they get used the same as you and everyone else
gets used a bit like you, and only you
really know just how very used
the people of the earth are
used and used
and used to being used.


Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in as "Other" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.