tiptoe-ing on the porch

 

----------------------- [excerpt from The Great Gatsby] ------------------ "She'll be all right to-morrow," he said presently.  "I'm just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness this afternoon.  She's locked herself into her room, and if he tries any brutality she's going to turn the light out and on again."

"He won't touch her," I said.  "He's not thinking about her."

"I don't trust him, old sport."

"How long are you going to wait?"

"All night, if necessary.  Anyhow, till they all go to bed."

A new point of view occurred to me.  Suppose Tom found out that Daisy had been driving.  He might think he saw a connection in it - he might think anything.  I looked at the house; there were two or three bright windows down-stairs and the pink glow from Daisy's room on the second floor.

"You wait here," I said.  "I'll see if there's any sign of a commotion."

I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel softly, and tiptoed up the veranda steps.  The drawing room curtains were open, and I saw that the room was empty.  Crossing the porch where we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window.  The blind was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill.

Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of ale.  He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own.  Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.

They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale - and yet they weren't unhappy either.  There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.

As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the dark road toward the house.  Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in the drive.

"Is it all quiet up there?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes, it's all quiet."  I hesitated.  "You'd better come home and get some sleep."

He shook his head.

"I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed.  Good night, old sport."

He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil.  So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing.

--------------------------------------------

{The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Charles Scribner's Sons - 1925}

-30-

hot day in East Egg

 

---------------- [excerpt from The Great Gatsby] ------------------- We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened too against the heat, and drank down nervous gayety with the cold ale.

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said.  "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

"But it's so hot," insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, "and everything's so confused.  Let's all go to town!"  Her voice struggled on through the heat, beating against it, molding its senselessness into forms.

"I've heard of making a garage out of a stable," Tom was saying to Gatsby, "but I'm the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage."

"Who wants to go to town?" demanded Daisy insistently.  Gatsby's eyes floated toward her.  "Ah," she cried, "you look so cool."

        Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space.  With an effort she glanced down at the table.  "You always look so cool," she repeated.  

She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.  

He was astounded.  

His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and then back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as some one he knew a long time ago.

        "You resemble the advertisement of the man," she went on innocently.  "You know the advertisement of the man --"

"All right," broke in Tom quickly, "I'm perfectly willing to go to town.  Come on - we're all going to town."

He got up, his eyes still flashing between Gatsby and his wife.  No one moved.

        "Come on!"  His temper cracked a little.  "What's the matter, anyhow?  If we're going to town, let's start."  His hand, trembling with his effort at self-control, bore to his lips the last of his glass of ale.  Daisy's voice got us to our feet and out on to the blazing gravel drive.

"Are we just going to go?" she objected.  "Like this?  Aren't we going to let any one smoke a cigarette first?"

"Everybody smoked all through lunch."

"Oh, let's have fun," she begged him.  "It's too hot to fuss."

He didn't answer.

"Have it your own way," she said.  "Come on, Jordan."

        They went up-stairs to get ready while we three men stood there shuffling the hot pebbles with our feet.  A silver curve of the moon hovered already in the western sky.  Gatsby started to speak, changed his mind, but not before Tom wheeled and faced him expectantly.

"Have you got your stables here?" asked Gatsby with an effort.

"About a quarter of a mile down the road."

"Oh."

A pause.

"I don't see the idea of going to town," broke out Tom savagely.  "Women get these notions in their heads --"

"Shall we take anything to drink?" called Daisy from an upper window.

"I'll get some whiskey," answered Tom.  He went inside.

Gatsby turned to me rigidly:  "I can't say anything in his house, old sport."

"She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked.  "It's full of --"  I hesitated.

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.  That was it.  I'd never understood before.  It was full of money - that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it.... high in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl....

_____________________

{The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Charles Scribner's Sons - 1925.}

-30-

enchanted objects

 

--------- [excerpt from The Great Gatsby] -------------- While the rain continued it had seemed like the murmur of their voices, rising and swelling a little now and then with gusts of emotion.  But in the new silence I felt that silence had fallen within the house too.  I went in - after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove - but I don't believe they heard a sound.  They were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone.

        Daisy's face was smeared with tears, and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror.  But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding.  He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.

"Oh, hello, old sport," he said, as if he hadn't seen me for years.  I thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.  "It's stopped raining."

"Has it?"

When he realized what I was talking about, that there were twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man, like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to Daisy.  "What do you think of that?  It's stopped raining."

"I'm glad, Jay."

Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.

"I want you and Daisy to come over to my house," he said, "I'd like to show her around."

"You're sure you want me to come?"

"Absolutely, old sport."

Daisy went up-stairs to wash her face - too late I thought with humiliation of my towels - while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.

        "My house looks well, doesn't it?" he demanded.  "See how the whole front of it catches the light."

I agreed that it was splendid.  "Yes."

His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower.

"It took me just three years to earn the money that bought it."

"I thought you inherited your money."

"I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in the big panic - the panic of the war."

        I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered, "That's my affair," before he realized that it wasn't the appropriate reply.

        "Oh, I've been in several things," he corrected himself.  "I was in the drug business and then I was in the oil business.  But I'm not in either one now."  He looked at me with more attention.  "Do you mean you've been thinking over what I proposed the other night?"

Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.

"That huge place there?" she cried pointing.

"Do you like it?"

"I love it, but I don't see how you live there all alone."

"I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day.  People who do interesting things.  Celebrated people."

Instead of taking the short cut along the Sound we went down the road and entered by the big postern.  With enchanting murmurs Daisy admired this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky, admired the gardens, the sparkling odor of jonquils and the frothy odor of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate.  It was strange to reach the marble steps and find no stir of bright dresses in and out the door, and hear no sound but bird voices in the trees. ...

After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming-pool, and the hydroplane and the mid-summer flowers - but outside Gatsby's window it began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated surface of the Sound.

"If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby.  "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock."

Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said.  Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever.  Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her.  It had seemed as close as a star to the moon.  Now it was again a green light on a dock.  His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

___________________________

{The Great Gatsby.  written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Charles Scribner's Sons - 1925.}

-30-

a few words in the right key

 

---------------- [excerpt from The Great Gatsby] -------------------- I had been actually invited.  A chauffeur in a uniform of robin's-egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer:  the honor would be entirely Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his "little party" that night.  He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it - signed Jay Gatsby, in a majestic hand.

Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven, and wandered around rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn't know - though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting train.  

I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans.  I was sure that they were selling something:  bonds or insurance or automobiles.  They were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.

As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table - the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.

I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.

-------------------------------------------

{The Great Gatsby.  F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Scribner's - 1925}

-30-

already

 

--------------------- [excerpt from The Great Gatsby] ------------------- Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard.  

The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life.  The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone - fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars.  

Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

        I decided to call to him.  Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction.  But I didn't call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone - he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.  

Involuntarily I glanced seaward - and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.  When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness. ----------------------------- [end / excerpt]

___________________________

{The Great Gatsby.  written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  publisher:  Charles Scribner's Sons.  Copyright 1925.}

-30-

a midnight clear

 

I was thinking, it would be nice if, while we are young, before we really start out in life, if Christmas gifts we receive might include wisom and knowledge.

Then we could just start out knowing things.

We couldn't be harmed, because we would know what to watch out for.

Picture a cold night without snow, flocks of geese flying by overhead, with only occasional pairs of headlights cutting through the blackness, because most people aren't out on their usual traffic paths - they're home, or out of town doing out-of-the-ordinary, holiday things.

Suspension of the routine

is part of people's tradition of holidays.

        'We usually are doing this.  Today is a holiday - we are doing this other thing, instead!'

We couldn't have the Unusual, without the consistent background of The Usual.  One allows the other.

-30-

can't repeat the past? - of course you can!

 

Someone commented,

"I actually find the whole thing kind of pathetic.  Kind of like a 'Great Gatsby reliving the past' thing. 

        Only this time JLO is Great Gatsby and Ben is Daisy, lol."

___________________________

These kids get The Great Gatsby in school.

I like how this person made the comparison.

-----------------------------------------

-30-

a melody played

 

Harold Arlen

♫♫ ♪

You say it's only a paper moon

Sailing over a cardboard sea

But it wouldn't be make believe

If you believed in me

Yes, it's only a canvas sky

Hanging over a muslin tree

But it wouldn't be make believe

If you believed in me

Without your love

It's a honky-tonk parade

Without your love

It's a melody played in a penny arcade...

___________________________

"It's Only a Paper Moon" - song published in 1933.  Music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Yip Harburg and Billy Rose

-30-

"Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me"

 

The passing of American actor Ryan O'Neal brought my attention to the 1970 movie Love Story, and I thought I might like to watch it now, since I did not see it at the time.

It's fifteen dollars to stream on Amazon, if you buy it, 4 dollars to rent it.

The problem with renting is, after I see a movie I may want to buy it so I can watch it anytime and then that makes it nineteen dollars - 4 for one-time rental, plus 15 to own.

I can skip the rental and just pay 15.

But - considering budget etc., and two other O'Neal pictures (Paper Moon and What's Up, Doc? are available to stream for free, right now, with Amazon Prime, I decided to be happy with that.

Apparently, from what I have read, there's a scene where O'Neal's character, Oliver, plays hockey with Harvard's team and he gets in trouble for fighting.  (This would kind of mirror some of Ryan O'Neal's real-life exploits....)

It made me remember something I don't think about that often - during my freshman year at Boston University, the guy I was dating took me to see a hockey game between B.U. and Harvard. - At the Boston Garden - where, a year later, I would see Bob Dylan perform onstage for the first time.

        I remember being really shocked, and taken aback when a fight broke out.  (At the hockey game, not the Dylan concert...)  I just wasn't expecting that at all.  

I thought our B.U. players were above brawling - you're supposed to "be a good sport," was what our generation was taught, growing up.  

        And I thought it was even more shocking that Harvard students would engage in the "socking" of players on the opposing team.  I didn't think there was any hitting in hockey.  And I imagined that students at Harvard would be sophisticated and elegant.

The battering did not seem elegant.

_________________________________

-30-

♫♪ it's only a canvas sky...

 

Peter Bogdanovich

Two of the movies Ryan O'Neal starred in,

Paper Moon

and

What's Up, Doc?

are both available to watch, free with Amazon Prime.

Peter Bogdanovich directed both of these movies.  Madeline Kahn appears in both, as does John Hillerman, whom some people may remember from "Magnum, P.I."

-30-

where clocks are big and weekends are lost

 

Ray Milland

Anolther interesting component to the 1970 film, Love Story, is that Oliver's father is portrayed by classic-Hollywood-era actor Ray Milland (1907 - 1986).

        Highlights of Mr. Milland's body of work:

The Lost Weekend    (1945, directed by Billy Wilder)

Dial M for Murder    (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)

The Big Clock    (1948, a famous noir film)

Ministry of Fear    (1944, based on a Graham Greene novel)

...and a 1971 episode of Columbo, titled "Death Lends a Hand."

_______________________________

_____________________________

On You Tube you can hear the main piece from Love Story's musical score.

title of the video:

Theme From Love Story

uploader / channel:  Francis Lai Love Story Official

---------------------- When you hear this music, you might realize you have heard it somewhere before....

two of the Comments under the video:

~  Why do I suddenly feel like grabbing a cigarette and contemplate my sad existence in black and white, while talking to myself in French which I don't speak?

~  I remember when the movie ended.  Everyone stayed in their seats.  As though we could change the ending.

____________________________

-30-

"romance fiction"

 

Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal, in Love Story

Still thinking about Love Story - both the novel, and the movie.  Having been reminded of the subject by the passing of Ryan O'Neal.

I wanted to find the book online and put an excerpt here, but can't find it online.

NPR had an article about it - the 50th anniversary, which would have been in 2020.

--------------------- [excerpt from the article] -------------------- Romance fiction writer Susan Elizabeth Phillips says critics back in 1970 had an aversion to just about anything that was embraced by the masses.  "The fact that a work of art, which that book is, evokes this strong emotion was something that the literati at the time looked down on," says Phillips.  "The experience was supposed to be cerebral.  It wasn't supposed to be emotional."

        If nothing else, Love Story is definitely emotional.  Reviewing the film, Roger Ebert called it "a three-, four-or five-handkerchief movie."  Le Monde wrote it was the novel that "no one dared to write, but everyone was waiting to read."

_____________________________

Last Friday when I read O'Neal had died, I put a photograph of him with Farrah Fawcett at the top of my blog post here.  Then, I thought later that people in my (older) age group will know, the photo of him with Farrah is because they were a couple from 1979 to 1997 (and got back together later on, after the split).

But, I realized, readers in younger age groups might see the photo and think, 'Oh, Farrah and Ryan in Love Story' - or whatever.

        So - sorry if I caused any confusion, didn't mean to.

When they got together and started to show up in photographs during the '80s - each of them was so good-looking and had such charisma and photogenic quality - a picture of one of them was overwhelming.  Both together, it was like - the beauty was so bright, ♪ ♪♫ ya had to wear shades....

-30-

frustración

 

The bank where I have my checking account now prevents me from seeing my account on the computer anymore.  They changed their online thing - love their blanket excuse, "It's foorrr seh - CUURR - i - teeee!"

        (It's like a little chorus.  I am awaiting the hip-hop Extended Version.)

Apparently I don't own a sufficient number of smart phones to satisfy their new system with texting and codes, plus passwords.  So a "service" (LOL) representative informed me today on the phone, "There isn't any way for you to see your account online."

        Ah - thank you so much.

I have been their customer since 2007.

        You're welcome.

----------------------- I was right away thinking of changing to a different bank.  But - isn't that like a divorce? - just a new set of bullshit to replace the former set of bullshit?

I remember having a conflict like this in the past - I had someone to fix something at my house and it wasn't fixed right, so I asked a friend who I should call, to get it fixed right.  And she said, Call back the original one and make him come back and fix it right.

        This seemed to be a sort of philosophical belief for her, but to me it didn't make sense.  That person screwed it up, why would I call him to come back?  I guess I felt like I should keep jumping from repair service to repair service until it gets fixed right.

My initial bank-fix, today, was - I'm going to switch banks!  But then I thought back to the repair thing, and "make him come back and fix it right" - maybe I should call back my bank and keep asking to be able to see my account online until they fix it so I can see my account online, just like all the other customers.  (Maybe this is Discrimination - ?)

I began to think, if I switch to a different bank, what if there's bad service there, too?  Or even if everything works as it should, I began to contemplate the nightmare of

Switching

Everything

Over.

(Ugghh.)

What?  Throw out stack of checks I just bought a few months ago, order new checks, new card, streaming services, the New York Times, Amazon, Everything In The World having to be somehow Switched Over. ...

God.  Am looking for a cliff.

I remember thinking, when I was younger, that people who have more wealth and power than I do never have these problems, everyone just bows down to them and tries hard to do everything right for them.  

        But then I recalled someone I knew who was in that position, and a scenario in, I think, the early 2000s, where he was taking a pickup truck back to a car-wash for them to wash it right, because they had washed it wrong the first time.

        And there again, he was following that practice of returning to the same service and asking for the job to be done right. ...

-30-

the mercy of fate

 

Ryan O'Neal's passing, coming through in news last Friday evening:

one of the movies he was in that commenters are mentioning a lot is

Paper Moon

-------------------------------- it's currently available to watch free on Amazon Prime.

Love Story was a cultural phenomenon when I was in sixth grade.  I didn't see it, but you didn't have to see it to know all about it!  The music in it was played - I don't know, on the radio?  Or in clips on TV?

Even if you didn't see it, you knew that Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw were the stars of it, that they fall in love even though they are from different backgrounds, and that the girl dies of an incurable disease.

In Season 4 of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973 - 1974) Mary describes to her friend Rhoda how she met this nice guy in the grocery store and they went outside and made angels in the snow - "You know, they did it in Love Story!" Mary says.

And the famous quote - Jenny says it to Oliver, and later on in the film, Oliver uses the line on his dad:  "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Reader Comments under the New York Times O'Neal obit.

_________________________

Andrew

Netherlands

Two of my most favorite movies ever starred Ryan O'Neal:  Paper Moon and What's Up Doc.

John Ehmann

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

What's up Doc is a Cary Grant-like Comedy.  Tough to play that role and O'Neal did a great job.  Paper Moon was awesome, just the fact that Bogdanovich shot it in Black and White and had a real life Father and Daughter play the roles only made it better.  Love Story and Ali comes off like a TV Movie today, but Ali made it worth watching.  All in All he had a Good Life, RIP!!

JR

Providence, Rhode Island

Mr. O'Neal's somewhat limited dramatic range served him well in "Barry Lyndon," in which he played a hapless man at the mercy of fate.  

The film's stature with critics and audiences has grown over the years, thanks in part to recognition of its brilliant production design and direction but also owing in no small part to Mr. O'Neal's note-perfect performance as a lost soul who can't find his place in the world.  

Time for another re-watch, I think, in his honor.

Martin Amada

Jalisco, Mexico

Fully agree.  Arguably Stanley Kubrick's finest film, inarguably Ryan O'Neal's best.

Paro

Brooklyn

Living in a country where there is no snow, after seeing "Love Story", I couldn't wait to come to the US to frolic in the snow!!

Maureen

Vancouver, Canada

Godspeed to him.  Despite some of his personal demons, I really enjoyed him onscreen - "Love Story", "What's up Doc", "Paper Moon".  He was a gifted actor who I don't think received the accolades he deserved.  R.I.P.

mikekev56

Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania

Paper Moon was a terrific movie.  I also enjoyed him as Temperance Brennan's father on Bones.  R.I.P.

-------------------------------------------

Tatum O'Neal, Ryan O'Neal in Paper Moon    1973

-30-

love means never having to say you're sorry

 

Ryan O'Neal

1941 - 2023

Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw in Love Story, 1970

-30-

I can sleep later on, but I'm tired now

 

Last week, typing out some of Pat Moynihan's letters here, it made me think about how learning about history is different if someone tells it to you and organizes it, from how you learn it by reading someone's letters.

The letters are a "granular" experience - it's what someone is writing about one thing, that one day.  In a way, it's extra interesting because you think, "This is someone's true, in-the-moment reaction."  

        But in another way, it's drudgery because it is just the snapshot in the moment, which may become kind of meaningless later when things change, or evolve in a different direction.

It's funny.

Some of it - "somebody said bad stuff about me, and you should be on my side."  Or, "I didn't mean it like they took it, they shouldn't have got mad - but I'm sorry."

Haha - after reading a little, you start to think, "Maybe people should just stop saying things."

Just like now - with twitter and facebook....

And then the two August 1967 references to President Kennedy -

"...that if President Kennedy were alive we would not be in our present difficulty"

"The response from the White House?  That it was a tasteless thing to suggest that if President Kennedy were alive we would have no problems."

[I couldn't tell if this was the same article reprinted, or two different articles.]

At any rate, it appears that President Lyndon Johnson was extra-sensitive to anyone having the idea that things would be better if JFK were still president -

~  because people might think Kennedy did a better job than Johnson?

or

~ because people might think Johnson colluded in the assassination of Kennedy?

or

both?

It reminds me of the Edgar Allan Poe short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart" - where the guy feels so guilty he believes he hears this heart beating....

____________________________

-30-

put your hand in the hand

 

In Jerry Hall's book, she mentions how her friend Antonio Lopez, a fashion illustrator, taught her "how to pose, what to do with my hands...".

What to do with one's hands sounds like a small thing, but if you are a model posing for a still shot, or a politician making a speech, you do kind of need a plan for your hands.

When Trump speaks, he often looks like he is playing an invisible accordion.  Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be playing "air" drums.

Maybe they could start a band.

_________________________

Trying to look at the Middle East situation, I listened to a You Tube video titled, How Britain Started the Arab-Israeli Conflict | Free Documentary History.

2 of the comments under the video:

~  It actually started long ago when humanity turned to sociopaths for leadership.  Since then we have had continuous conflicts between one another, especially when there are rival sociopaths seeking total control.

Conflicts...are all products of this ongoing inability of normal people to rise up and seize control for themselves.  Until that happens, more violence will occur even if Palestine is no more or if Israel is no more.  

Until humans notice the true threat, they will always be victims to the manipulations of those they falsely identify as leaders.

~  I agree.  You can detect a psychopath in a simple FMRI test.  My view is that before you are allowed to become part of any government,  you have to undergo this test....

        I think if the test was applied to our current "leaders" in all countries, there would be very few politicians left.

---------------------------------------

"I'm not a politician."

~  Princess Diana, 1997

-30-

what I want, you've got

 

Riverside Drive paintings

Today's Hall & Oates song is

"You Make My Dreams"

play and enjoy from You Tube

(first anchor yourself firmly with strong cord, so that you don't float up into space on the crazy energy of this song - a Safety Measure)

        The punchy opening riff on keyboards is iconic...

♫♫♪

______________________________

[excerpt / Moynihan letters]

Moynihan charged that many critics of the Moynihan Report, including Kenneth G. Neigh of the United Presbyterian Church, had never read it.

OCTOBER 3, 1967

MR. KENNETH G. NEIGH

BOARD OF NATIONAL MISSIONS OF THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

475 RIVERSIDE DRIVE

NEW YORK, NEW YORK  10027

Dear Ken,

        I suppose I was a bit harsh in Washington last August, but I was going through a moment of rather intense annoyance with the world, which you somewhat triggered.  The point being that you said you were thinking to write me a letter about my work in Rochester.  

The point is that I would never have been involved in Rochester at all if someone at the National Council of Churches had not gleefully reported to Saul Alinsky that Kodak had now gone and hired that racist bastard Moynihan as the latest of their atrocities.

        The point is a very simple one, Ken.  There are certain public controversies in which reputations are attacked, during which it becomes extremely important for the civilized community to maintain a solid front in the face of character assassinations.  All liberals found it easy enough to see this point when Senator McCarthy was abroad.  

Very few until very recently have recognized that the Paytons are cut of the same cloth and do the same damage.  You say had you read my report and Payton's beforehand you might have averted the controversy.  

My question is why were you silent afterwards?  The only man in your group who resisted the latter day McCarthyism is Reinhold Neibuhr, a fact not surprising to you or me.  It is just not enough to feel good; the question is what you do.

        An exactly similar case is taking place now with Professor James Coleman, whose report on the "Equality of Educational Opportunity" is being labeled as racism by civil servants in Washington, while the pious stand by clucking and saying nothing.  

        If he were labeled a communist, they would come screaming to the fore.  I would urge anyone concerned with the moral niceties of the subject to read Stephen Spender's essay in R.H.S. Crossman's study, The God That Failed.

___________________________

{Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  A Portrait In Letters Of An American Visionary.  Edited by Steven R. Weisman.  PUBLIC AFFAIRS.  New York.  2010.}

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Army-McCarthy Hearings, 1950s

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