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.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
October 30, 2007 - 12:11 p.m.
So last you heard from your intrepid diarist I was at the World Financial Center with The Kennedys and Cadence Carroll. If you missed that and you know you did read my last entry.
I just heard that the CEO of Merrill Lynch is resigning because of the huge losses he incurred on the company from the home mortgage debacle. He is going to get over $100,000,000 in his severance package; So much for taking responsibility. How about giving the money to people that lost their homes? They say that can't afford to do that, it isn't fair to their stockholders but it is just doing business to give it to the person responsible for the losses.
OK enough of that rant. I resisted making another one about Bush. What did he do? He opened his mouth. Does it really take more? He is the champion for not taking responsibility for his actions.
OK now back to our regularly scheduled programming, my exciting life.
The second Snacks show went even better than the first. There was a larger crowd. Too bad they weren't a CD buying one. I sold one CD all day. We all had fun and that is what mattered. Pete and Maura had to run after the show because they had a gig in Philly that night. I'll be seeing them again on Thursday but more on that later.
When I got home I crashed for a bit then talked to Lena on the phone. Isn't it weird that the only person I regularly talk to on the phone is in Israel?
Saturday night I went to see Red Molly at the Last Licks Café in Huntington. The last time I did merch for Red Molly on the Island, Barry, who shared merch duties with me, left his jacket at the gig. I took it home with me. The plan was for me to give it back to him at that show. I didn't forget all about it. I remembered it every day. I remembered it on Saturday. I remembered it late Saturday afternoon. I next remembered it when I was five minutes from the venue. I spoke to Lena a bit longer than I wanted to and raced out of the house. In my rush I forgot the jacket. That is so me.
You know something? I don't have much to say about the show. I had lots of fun. I hung out with Abbie, Laurie, and Carolann. Oh yes, Carolann, unlike me, remembered to bring the Leadbelly LP I lent her this summer. I had just received my WFUV messenger bag in the mail that day and realized it was exactly the same size as an LP and brought it with me to. See I can remember something. That was easy as I always bring a bag with me. The jacket took a special effort.
We sold a lot of CDs that night. Huntington has the best folk audience of anyplace that I know.
While I knew quite a few people at the show there was nobody that I really hang out with. That surprised me. Out there I usually do more socializing.
I of course have pictures but I have of course not finished editing them. There are gong to be some major photo entries coming up. Not that I'll post that many from the show. I already have posted plenty of Red Molly.
After the show I counted out the money and merchandise and helped them load their cars. I then bid them adieu until Thursday.
Didn't I say that I'm seeing Pete and Maura on Thursday? Yes I did. The Kennedys and Red Molly are doing a show together on November 30th. I am of course going. As soon as it was announced Chris said, "You do merch for the Kennedys and I'll do it for Red Molly." So that is what we are doing.
John Platt is going to have them both as guests the Sunday before the show. They aren't going to just perform separately. They are preparing songs to perform together as a supergroup. This is going to be a special show. John's show is being recorded this Thursday and me being me, asked if I could be there and everybody involved said I could. One of the great lessons I've learned is how much you can get by just asking.
OK now we are up to Sunday and as I have time I'm going to actually try to catch up to the present in this entry.
I didn't do much Sunday during the day. I read the Sunday papers. That's always good. Then Sunday night I went to see yet another concert, Anaïs Mitchell at Joe's Pub. I had almost forgotten that I had a ticket for that show. It was a co-bill with Jeffery Foucault. I'm not a big fan of Jeffery but Anaïs is one of my favorites. I didn't go crazy trying to get their early but was still the third one on the line. The two groups in front of me both had dinner reservation so I had no trouble getting my usual seat on the couch with the Ottoman. We had our first real Autumn weather in a while and that actually made my life easier. I didn't have to bring my pillow with me. I just rolled up my jacket and put that behind my head. The one thing wrong with couch there is that there is no head support.
Unusually for me at a show there I hardly spoke to the people sitting next to me. Usually the couch is so conducive to socializing. The pub is not a good place to wait for shows. It is far too dark to comfortably read. If you are buy yourself you just have to amuse yourself with your own mind. Luckily I'm pretty good at that. I enjoy my own company.
Anaïs did a suite from her opera Hadestown. It is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and is set in a depression era post-apocalyptic America. Yes you read that right. I really want to see it but it is only being shown in Vermont with one show in the Boston Area. I have to see if there is some way I can make it to one of the shows. I talked to Anaïs about it after the show. It struck me that it had to be very hard to write for Orpheus as the defining attribute of his characters is that he is the greatest singer and songwriter ever. Talk about pressure. Anaïs is a kindred spirit, I love that kind of conversation.
I also talked to her about doing merch for her next time she's in town. She was sitting there doing it herself so I figured I might as well offer.
I didn't bring my camera because Joe's pub isn't conducive to non-flash photography because it is so dark. I should have because for the first time since I met her Anaïs let her hair go brown. This is a new look for her. The first time I showed her picture to Lena who went to school with Anaïs, Lena's response was, "When did she become so blonde?"
Wow I'm up to writing about yesterday now. I'm no longer behind.
Not much happened yesterday. I went to school. I taught. I had some really good lessons planned. We are still working on solving systems of three equations with three unknowns. I prepared the problems when I was at LORi's and did a really good job of it. I have tried very hard to work out a mechanical system for solving the problems. It is all bookkeeping so the way you arrange what you are writing is important. I just have to get the students to see it. They tend to just find it all so intimidating that they just freeze. When I do a problem it is totally organized. My theory is that if they write things organized their minds will be organized. What too often happens is that their disorganized minds don't allow them to write things organized. We'll see how they do on the homework.
I gave a quiz in the beginning of the class on Cramer's Rule. That is the method of solving systems of simultaneous equations with determinants. They just had to memorize two fairly simple formulae. I gave them an easy system for remembering them. If they did the homework it should have been a snap as they'd have had a lot of practice using them.
As they took the quiz I saw they were struggling. They labored to remember them. That clued me in that they hadn't done the homework. I asked the class who had done all the problems and only a third of them raised their hands. This is after the majority of the class failed the first test and we discussed that the only way to improve was to do all the homework. It isn't as if this was a long assignment. There were only about a dozen questions for them to answer in three days. It should have taken less than half an hour. So after they put their hands down I asked. "Who wants to fail the class." Nobody raised his or her hand. I then said, "Everybody that didn't have their hands raised when I asked who had done all the homework should have their hands up now." Yes I got tough with them. They need it. I then pointed out that I won't raise anybody's grade just so they can keep their scholarships. I'd rather the money went to somebody who deserved it not people that don't make an effort. Some semesters I can get the class to change. Maybe I'll succeed with this one.
OK so that's it. I'm all caught up with my life. All I have to do now is get all my photos ready for posting. Look for that soon.
Tonight I'm seeing Deni Bonet for the first time in ages.
Oh yes. Baseball. The BoSox won the series. I predicted they'd win in five games; it only took them four.
Joe Giradi was hired as the next Yankee manager. I of course wanted the job. Yes I'm a Met fan but how could I turn down a chance to manage any team where I don't have to relocate. Now I am really better suited to be the GM than the field manager so maybe they are waiting for that job to open up to hire me. But still I should have managed till then. Not that Joe won't do a good job but we all know I'd do better.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile October 30, 2007
