When they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings
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.
July 22, 2008 - 12:52 a.m.
It is getting so hard for me to get things done. This is not good. I still have to make up the spread sheet with the The Budgiedome schedule. It doesn't help that I haven't heard back from a few of the musicians.
I'll talk about something easier. I went to see The Kennedys yesterday. They did a show at the Ringwood NJ library. My friend Jill, is one of the people in charge of the series and invited me. I got to be comped and I didn't have to work the merch table. For the sake of honesty I actually prefer working it. I hung out there for a while and answered questions. The people selling it didn't know the basics like which was their newest album and which is the covers album. I can quote chapter and verse of the Kennedys oeuvre. So is that the most pretentious thing I ever said? See I can get away with saying stuff like that as long as I go out of my way to point it out. That changes it from pretentious to ironic. I Am Ironic Man. Duh duh, duh duh duh. Duh da di da duh, dum dum dum.
They shouldn't really let me have my own blog.
Jill saved me a spot in the front row. So I didn't try to be one of the first ones in. So it was pure coincidence that my friends Jeff and Karen sat right next to me. I'm glad they did. They are definitely kindred spirits.
One nice thing about shows at the library is that there is huge floor to ceiling window behind the stage that looks into a garden. Wildlife often makes an appearance. This time it was a ground hog aka a woodchuck. I have never seen one before but I knew what it was. Pete and Maura saw everyone looking out the window and looked for themselves. Maura then informed us that someone recently told her it was also known as a whistlepig. Later became unsure that the person who told her that wasn't pulling her leg. I just checked on wikipedia. She was right. It is called a whistlepig. I checked a second source and it hyphenated the word, whistle-pig. Apparently they make a whistling sound.
I don't follow any religion and think that tradition is a poor reason to do something. That doesn’t stop me from having my personal traditions. One of them is to stand during the chorus of the Kennedys' song Stand:
Come on and stand/
Come on now, stand
Come on and stand
Plant your sword in the sand
In this age of unreason
There's a time and a season for love
Stand.
I sometimes do it the first chorus, sometimes the second. I used to feel really self-conscious about it. At first I did it spontaneously but now it has become a tradition so I think about it. Part of the tradition is that I close my eyes during the song. I know at first I am the only one standing. I just keep my eyes closed, listen, sing along, and sway to the music. At some point I open my eyes and see if anyone else is standing; they usually are. Yesterday everybody had joined me. That always feels good. It becomes one of those communal bonding things. I decided that I have to learn to not feel awkward if I am the only one standing and just accept that I'm marching to the beat of a different drummer; probably Mike Nesmith. Raise your hand if you get that joke.
OK now i have to finish getting ready for FRFF. I leave Wednesday morning and I am going to a Met game tomorrow night. How did it get here so fast? I am not going on my usual shopping spree. I don't need any new camping equipment. I have enough. I also have enough clothes. All I need is some food.
I am also bringing up the chocolate treats for the musicians playing the dome. I picked them up at the post office today. The box is really big. I have to see if they will fit in my cooler once I take them out of the box. I'd hate to have to bring a second cooler just for the chocolate.
Three of my favorite acts have cancelled on us, The Strangelings, Red Molly, and Deni Bonet. It is ironic that they are all good friends of mine. Despite that our schedule is still overfilled.
I'll try and update once more before I leave for FRFF. After that you won't hear from me again till Sunday night or more likely Monday morning. For those of you my gentle readers that are not going to FRFF and don't want to miss your daily installment of my, my, um, whatever it is that I provide for you why don't you go back and read some older entries. I've been doing this for almost eight years so there are a lot of them. Just pick one at random. Here's a good place to start. It just reread it because Sitemeter told me that it was the entry page for someone that found Wise Madness in a search; Great day for a ballgame. Lets play two. I quote a lot of Thoreau in it so you can read things by someone that can actually write.
The Adventures with Pete and Pete - September 18, 2008
Catch the Reference - September 17, 2008
I have a date to get waterco-op boarded. - September 15, 2008
A Festival of Festivals - September 14, 2008
The Kennedy Residence (Not Hyaniss Port) - September 12, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile July 22, 2008
