With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
November 19, 2009 - 10:22 a.m.
I had a very unhappy digestive system yesterday. I didn't have a Crohn's attack, well not the kind I usually write about. My intestines simply decided they didn't want anything inside of them and expelled what was there as quickly as possible. When I got home from school I raced to the bathroom and then felt weak and was in pain. I decided to cancel my plans to go out for the evening. Some Preparation H and megadoses of generic Immodium and enough water to rehydrate myself later I felt up to venturing out.
The sirens that were calling to me were Anthony da Costa and Abbie Gardner at The Living Room.
When I got there a jazz quintet that included a cello were on stage. Have you ever seen a jazz cello? I haven't. What I didn't see were Abbie and Anthony. A.J. came in and asked me if I'd seen them and I told him "no." He then looked for them and disappeared. When the quintet finished I grabbed a table up front and shortly thereafter was joined by Chris. The performers were still nowhere to be seen. When they came in after a quick hello to us they took the stage. Anthony explained that they were in the Green Room. Green Room? Since when does the Living Room have a Green Room? Anthony didn't know about it either to a week ago.
This was originally going to be a Red Molly gig but they had to cancel. The word did not get out about the show and it was lightly attended. People, you missed a great show. Anthony did new material. He was joined by not just Abbie but the amazing John Elliott. After the show I went over to talk to John. I haven't seen him since FRFF. He's going to be playing with Anthony on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If you've never seen John you have to check out at least one of those shows. I was going to do all three but decided to catch Amy Speace's "last full band show "for quite a while." Here's their schedule.
- Friday – Postcrypt Coffeehouse
- 9:30 John Elliott
- 10:30 Anthony da Costa
- 9:30 John Elliott
- Saturday – Common Ground Coffeehouse
- Sunday – Courthouse Concerts (aka Gene and Isabel's house)
If you live in the area make sure to catch one of those shows.
John thanked me for being so supportive. I'm just enthusiastic. You wouldn't know it from how much live music I hear but I'm hard to please. 95% of the performers don't impress me. The 5% that do earn my devotion.
I gave a test yesterday. It pains me watching the students struggle. One question was to write rows 0-6 of Pascal's triangle.
It's easy to make. The rule is that each row starts and ends with 1. Every other number is the sum of the two numbers above it. One student was exerting a major effort to figure out each number. He appeared to have trouble adding 4+6. Another student made the triangle quickly but added two extra rows. She then went and counted the rows to discover her error. She made so much extra work for herself. The first row is row 0. Every other row number corresponds to the second number in the row. Row 6 is the one that's second number is a 6. I told the class that repeatedly. It didn't sink in.
I made one mistake on the test and feel bad about it. I always like my problems to work out nicely. I screwed up the first problem and the answers were awkward fractions. Now we did problems like that in class but I rarely give them on tests.
I better finish writing this soon and start grading.
Before I leave I want to go back to the beginning of the entry. Most people on having a health episode like I did would never have gone out that night, especially to see artists he had just seen on Saturday. The difference is not how much I love the music but how I feel about my body. First I know it very well. I've had that problem many times. I know it isn't indicative of something that requires rest on my part. More importantly I disassociate my body from myself. That's what happens when your body has given you enough trouble. Well it's what happened to me. A 40cm of intestine were removed from my body, not from me. My body goes about its business and I go about mine. It doesn't listen to me, why should I listen to it?
Beyond Harry Potter - November 25, 2009
Big Fun on Long Island - November 24, 2009
Elliott and da Costa are Phrosty - November 22, 2009
I Gave Speace a Chance - November 21, 2009
Oliver Twisted - November 20, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile November 19, 2009
