It’s Not Just Here…

As they bail out the bankers and billionaires at the expense of the unemployed and ordinary workers, governments across the eurozone turn on their own people who are demanding democracy and an end to corruption.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbeKExcOMzo&feature=related

Iceland Tries Something Novel in Today's World—Democracy

The Constitutional Commission has set up a Facebook page where Iceland's citizens can give their direct input on the nation's constitutional reform.  Their meetings are also open to the public.

http://www.facebook.com/Stjornlagarad

A Modest Proposal

The best way that we as a planet can address the growing scarcity of fossil fuels (and progressively more environmentally destructive methods used to extract them) is conservation.  A modest proposal: take the approximately $4 billion a year that the government gives to oil companies in subsidies and tax breaks (NYT Jan. 31, 2011) and use those funds to create a weatherization program.  Make the funds available as grants (not loans, not subsidies) to people making under, let’s say, $50,000 per year, for weatherization of their primary homes or apartments; first come, first served.  This will create jobs, encourage people to invest in their homes and neighborhoods, and lower our national energy consumption.  Or, we can continue to pad the profits of oil companies.  

Arleen Augér

I know that you are singing with the angels, that you are with Mozart and Bach and Bernstein and all of the other immortals, but your voice still shows us radiance and splendor.  Thank you for your inspiration.

September 13, 1939 – June 10, 1993

                                                                               

Fulget amica dies,

jam fugere et nubile et procellæ:

exorta est justis inexspectata quies.

            --W. A. Mozart Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165 (158a)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_1_feNFX0Q&feature=related   

Journal d’un curé de campagne

Whenever I return to Georges Bernano’s Journal d’un curé de campagne, I again realize why a novel might actually matter.  Bernanos integrity as a writer is almost blinding.  This is nowhere more evident than in the Journal d’un curé de campagne, although Les grands cimetieres sous la lune is also a great work not only of integrity but of unsurpassed moral courage.  To return to the lowly cure’s diary, however, I recall that first time I read it I was completely captivated for an entire summer.  The more I live, the more I see the truth on which it is founded.  It is a book which reminds us that always, even in our darkest moments, “Tout est grâce.”   Bernanos doesn’t spare us from the darkness that ravages the hearts of so many in an ordinary village, a place like any other in this world—hearts devastated by bitterness, tragedy, wrongdoing, and disappointment—but he helps us to see that holiness is found precisely in the ability of one to bring healing and love to those like Mme la comtesse, Mlle Chantal, little Séraphita, and the soldier of fortune, M. Olivier, people who seem beyond “saving”; beyond, or perhaps not even deserving of, redemption.  In the end, grace triumphs despite our limitations, it even triumphs over the fear of death and the even greater fear of life—the fear of trusting in life, come what may.  Grace can overcome anything, even an obstacle like that.  This book is not widely read in English, I presume, but it is a book that people of all faiths and even of no faith would find deeply moving.