The fears over what the administration may or may not be doing to the country is nowhere near as frightening as the actual hate and violence that American Conservative culture is manufacturing these days.
Within weeks of a controversial DHS report which warned of “rightwing extremism” being on the rise, two of its key findings were played out in chilling detail, as two separate shootings - both perpetrated by paranoid, unstable individuals - led to the deaths of innocent civilians. Both incidents occurred in public, and in broad daylight.
Although you can’t shift the blame for someone’s actions onto those who planted the seeds, the influence is hard to ignore. I would argue that neither of these men were born to commit murder, rather that there was a point where they decided to turn their figurative “culture war” into an “actual war”. I’m just wondering where that point was? Which nugget of hateful rhetoric made those susceptible and deluded minds arrive at such horrible conclusions?
The first native americans that the English settlers in the Plymouth colony encountered were of a loosely knit nation collectively referred to as the Wampanoag. And from those fledgeling days, the Wampanoag have become a crucial part of American history and culture. From their assorted tribes came such influential characters as Squanto, arguably the sole reason for the settlers’ gaining a foothold on the continent, or Massasoit, a regional leader who befriended the English, and worked to secure the colony’s future within the wilderness that was to become southern new england.
Like many other areas of this great country, the influence of its native nations - many long extinct - remains vividly present in the placenames, if nowhere else. Following are a few examples that come to the top of my mind…
Up around what is now greater Boston there lived a Wampanoag tribe called the Massachusett. This name roughly translates to “the people who live near the great hill”, which is a reference to the blue hill area around present-day Quincy and Milton. The significance here is obvious, being the Mass namesake, but this is of particular interest to me, as those blue hills are a familiar landmark as I’m travelling up and down I-95 between Boston and my home in Rhode Island. A pretty neat thing to think about as I sit still in traffic!
The area that is now Rhode Island was mostly inhabited by a tribe called the Narraganset. The influence of this namesake is huge around here, ranging from the beer to the town to the bay that makes up the southeastern chunk of the parcel-sized state.
Eastern Connecticut was inhabited by a tribe called the Pequot, which is another name seen just about everywhere around here. The first street we lived on here in Providence on Federal Hill was Pequot street.
Another tribe in eastern Connecticut was the Mohegan, and anyone who has been within 500 miles knows what Mohegan Sun is!
The Wampanoag nation stretched even across Long Island Sound. On the tip of Long Island lived a tribe called Montaukett. Not much guesswork to figure out how they decided to name Montauk!
… Unfortunately, the English managed to kill off most of the Wampanoag tribes between the various diseases they brought over from Europe, and King Philip’s War. It was certainly a sign of things to come, but it doesn’t make it any easier to understand …
Examples are always boring, but this one is quick, and illustrates my key frustration with Drupal-
You need to provide a client the ability to pick from “header A” or “header B” on new pages as they’re created, through the admin.
Guess what? You have to roll up your sleeves and hard code it in, because who the heck makes sites with different-looking pages? And of course, it’s not a matter of just hard-coding a couple basic fields into a template, you have to re-engineer a templating engine, and a million hooks and other dependencies that tie everything together.
I’m sorry, but I have yet to succumb to the Drupal kool-aid. Without a ton of customization through building your own modules or making others’ usable (along with the learning curve of figuring it all out), it is crap, crap, crap. I mean, the point of an open source CMS and content delivery platform is to allow a developer to cut corners by providing a solid enough of a platform to provide most basic functionality without having to go under the hood. In this sense even Joomla does a better job - in spite of its barfy interface and horrible architecure, I can at least do this without writing a line of code, or installing some buggy 3rd party module.
It’s deceptive at least. Imagine someone offering a “free car”, so you grab one for yourself only to find out that while it does indeed go when you turn the key and hit the gas, you’re on your own as to how it’s going to get a steering wheel, gear shifter, turn signals, headlights, air conditioning and a radio. Free of cost, yes, but expensive on time!
I believe Drupal only makes sense for sites with little variability and few performance requirements. When I think of the amount of time I’d waste trying to shoehorn the requirements of most larger-scale web efforts into this platform it makes my head hurt.
For the most part I am a down-to-earth type, but as I’ve been told, there are times where I tend to lose my bearings and turn into kind of a loopy, hippy type. The 1982 film ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ is a good example of such a weak spot of mine.
Maybe it’s because I first saw it at a pretty young age, and was probably my first exposure to arty farty film. It made a big impression on me, I remember hunting down and acquiring the Philip Glass soundtrack, and listening to it a lot.
Just today I noticed an “official” release of this on Youtube:
For whatever reason, it still completely mesmerizes me. Its use of random symmetry, that sort of order out of chaos that gives a detached, “10,000-foot” view on life is really a big part of how I define beauty in the everyday and reconcile it with the natural order of things.
OK, enough with all that. I was just excited to see an old favorite up in its full glory. Check it out if you’re bored.
I don’t dread the passage of time, but every time a year winds down I think “wow, already…”
It’s been a really laid back Thanksgiving. Me and the cat and all kinds of football games. The old lady is back home, but I stayed put. Nothing even resembling a feast, but I did just crack the first beersky just now, at 4.
We just got a pile of free tortillas, so I’ll probably do up something with those - fajitas or the like. Turkey will come tomorrow, when I crash a belated Turkey day at a friend’s house.
I don’t get a lot of days like this - an empty house and nothing to do - so whenever I drift toward lonely or bored I’ll dust off one of the many things I don’t normally have time for (like this blog).
The only other thing is to remember to feed the cat!
This movement from Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite, The Planets, is among the more covered classical pieces in rock music (namely metal). When you listen to it, there’s not much doubt as to why — its pulsating, hard-edged drone just begs for distortion pedals and wicked dual-guitar solos.
I had a “duh” moment when I realized that King Crimson’s The Devil’s Triangle is one such cover. It’s on In the wake of Poseidon, which I do like, but it honestly pales in comparison to the Holst version.
To me, it’s one of those boring, meandering King Crimson Tracks. You know, one of those you don’t include when queueing up some Crimson in your playlist.
And not that it’s at all relevant, but my favorite movement of the suite is Neptune, the Mystic. Rich with the off-keel, “dissonant” elements that came to define 20th century classical music, it’s at once etheral, lush, textured and eerie (read: boring … but hey, what can you expect from a Brian Eno fan?).
And for all the money I spend on the cable baseball package, I DID NOT GET THIS ONCE-IN-36-YEARS GAME. Screw you, Extra Innings!
2. Cubs are back in the groove
I know, two consecutive mentions of the Cubs, but after a dodgy stretch they’re back to amazing. 8-up on Milwaukee means it’s all but certain - magic number 4 on 9/16. Lily’s game yesterday was another gem - two in a row. Good hitting, everyone contributing. No better time to be clicking like this.
3. Phillies and Rays still have a chance
Phils playing better at the same time time Mets are playing worse. Rays toppled the Sox, handing Beckett a no-decosion with a walk-off win. Lets hope they both keep it up.
4. Ryan Howard is home run king
There’s nobody more deserving. 44 hits is an awesome number for someone not taking performance enhancing substances. On a side note, I’ve noticed that 7 of the top 10 are National League players. Not that home runs mean much, but I think it says something about the AL this year - weak!
5. Ned Yost got fired
Not to focus on the negative, but the guy is a jerk. Reminds me of Tony Larussa, only he isn’t any good. Though I question the effectiveness of firing the skipper and disjointing a team with no more than 2 weeks left to pull off an impossible run. What harm in letting him finish out the season?
Note: I won’t really consider Jeter’s breaking Gherig’s “Yankee Stadium” hit record as comparable to the original record for the same reason as I reject Ripken’s “iron man” moniker. Though Jeter wasn’t an ass about it like Ripken was, I still don’t think there’s it’s much similarity between the accomplishments of a healthy, wealthy, young athlete and those of someone accomplishing the same thing while dying of an awful, painful affliction.
