Cool Summer Encores: Live in HD

Watch this!

Enjoy select summer encore performances from the award-winning Live in HD series of shopping mall movie theater presentations from the Met. All encore performances will be shown at 7 pm local time. Summer HD Encore dates vary by location near you, so please check with your local movie theater. 

·                                 Carmen

US: June 19, 2013, 7 pm (local time)

Richard Eyre’s hit production stars Elīna Garanča as the seductive gypsy of the title, opposite Roberto Alagna as the obsessed Don José. Carmen "is about sex, violence, and racism—and its corollary: freedom," the director says about Bizet’s drama. "It is one of the inalienably great works of art. It's sexy, in every sense. And I think it should be shocking."

Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin; Production: Richard Eyre; Barbara Frittoli, Elīna Garanča, Roberto Alagna, Teddy Tahu Rhodes

Approximate Running Time 2:58

Original transmission: Saturday, January 16, 2010

watch video    synopsis

·                                 Il Trovatore

US: June 26, 2013, 7 pm (local time)

David McVicar’s stirring production of Verdi’s intense drama premiered at the Met in the 2008–09 season. This revival stars four extraordinary singers—Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky—in what might be the composer’s most melodically rich score.

Marco Armiliato; Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Approximate Running Time: 2:40

Original transmission: April 30, 2011

watch video    synopsis

·                                 Armida

US: July 10, 2013, 7 pm (local time)    

This mythical story of a sorceress who enthralls men in her island prison has inspired operatic settings by a multitude of composers, including Gluck, Haydn, and Dvořák. Renée Fleming stars in the title role of Rossini’s version, opposite no fewer than five tenors. Director Mary Zimmerman describes the work as “a buried treasure, a box of jewels.” Armida is a fanciful and magical tale with “an epic, enchanted quality and a tremendous visual element.”

Conductor: Riccardo Frizza; Production: Mary Zimmerman; Renée Fleming, Lawrence Brownlee, John Osborn, Barry Banks, Kobie van Rensburg

Approximate Running Time 3:05

Original transmission: Saturday, May 1, 2010

watch video    synopsis

·                                 La Traviata

US: July 17, 2013, 7 pm (local time)

Natalie Dessay stars as Verdi’s most beloved heroine in Willy Decker's stunning production, first seen at the Met in 2010. Matthew Polenzani is her lover, Alfredo, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings his stern father, Germont. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi is on the podium.

Conductor: Fabio Luisi; Production: Willy Decker; Natalie Dessay, Matthew Polenzani, Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Approximate Running Time 2:28

Original transmission: April 14, 2012

watch video    synopsis

·                                

Additional Broadcasts

Please check local theater listings for availability

·                                 Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Check Local Listings

One of the most beloved operatic comedies of all time, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is presented in a production by director Bartlett Sher. Superstar tenor Juan Diego Flórez as Count Almaviva is joined by American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato as Rosina and Peter Mattei in the title role of the swaggering barber.

Conductor: Benini; Production: Bartlett Sher; Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez, Peter Mattei, John Del Carlo, John Relyea

Approximate Running Time: 2:57

Original transmission: March 24, 2007

watch video    synopsis

·                                 Turandot

Check Local Listings

Director Franco Zeffirelli’s breathtaking production of Puccini’s last opera is a favorite of the Met repertoire. Maria Guleghina plays the ruthless Chinese princess of the title, whose hatred of men is so strong that she has all suitors who can’t solve her riddles beheaded. Marcello Giordani sings Calàf, the unknown prince who eventually wins her love and whose solos include the famous “Nessun dorma.”

Conductor: Andris Nelsons; Production: Franco Zeffirelli; Maria Guleghina, Marina Poplavskaya, Marcello Giordani, Samuel Ramey

Approximate Running Time 2:20

Original transmission: November 7, 2009

Taps

Long, three-day holiday weekends lose some of their appeal when you are retired, or as I call myself, semi-retired, which I have learned means not getting paid much, if any, for work.  Still, here it is Memorial Day Weekend.

When I worked at 2201 C Street, NW, in Washington, D.C., parking was available for the midnight shift in the basement. However, daytime parking was reserved for the Secretary of State, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, and deputy assistant secretaries and their highest level staffs. Clerical and technical employees like me were on our own. Parking on the street near the State Department guaranteed tickets, booting, and/or towing, an experience you did not want to have a second time. I often parked along the Tidal Basin and walked past the hallowed Lincoln Memorial and between there and the Einstein bronze at the National Academy of Sciences. Eventually, these grounds would be selected for the Vietnam Memorial. Even before the first shovel of dirt was moved or the first wall panel set in place and the first of 58,209 names inscribed, there was a hush that made you pause.

Memorial Day is about young men and women who are sent off to war and never come back. It is not about veterans. It does not celebrate the birth of the country. It is not just an occasion for picnics, stock car races, and double-header baseball games. Originally called Decoration Day, because southern ladies and schoolchildren decorated the graves of fallen Confederate solders, it was later adopted nationwide to remember all Americans who died in all wars.

Here are some examples of total United States war dead  from 1775 to the present, according to Wikipedia:

Revolutionar War--25,000 dead
War of 1812--19,260 dead
Mexican-American War--13,283 dead
Civil War--624,511 dead
Spanish-American War--2,446 dead
Philippine-American War--4,196 dead
World War I--116,516 dead
World War II--405,399 dead
Korean War--36,516 dead
Vietnam War--58,209 dead
Afghanistan--2,031 dead
Iraq War--4,487 dead.

Special note: the high number for the U.S. Civil War is because we count both sides, which were ourselves.

Memorial Day 2013, Monday, there will be ceremonies at the final resting places of those who gave what Lincoln called, the "last full measure." Drop by one near you. They may play "Taps." Take a handkerchief, just in case.

No Crying in Baseball

My grandson registered for the 9-year-old baseball league. I vowed not to project my experiences or expectations.  I could be forgiven if I allowed myself to take him shopping for a baseball glove and bat, since I knew something about proper fit and sizes. 

When I was his age, and for a few years after, I could not get enough baseball.  I played on different teams in different leagues simultaneously.  Every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon, my daddy and I went to Atlanta Cracker baseball games at Ponce de Leon Ballpark across the street from Sears.  I read everything I could get my hands on about baseball: newspaper sports pages, magazines, library books, biographies, fiction by Jackson Scholz (a series of youth books with similar heroic plots, not much different from that used by Bernard Malamud for his literary classic The Natural, also a successful movie, neither for the young).   Baseball made me a reader. 

My grandson Chance was the first batter up at the first batting practice for his baseball team.  The pitcher, at age 9, was prematurely practicing a Hall of Fame flaming fastball but not necessarily getting it close enough to the strike zone to require interpretation by an umpire.  Pitches sailed off in all directions.  Chance hit none of them, but two hit him, one on the wrist and another on his hip.  I took him to the Grand Slam Batting Cages on North Druid Hills Rd.  The pitching machine, labeled "Little League," could not be set below 45 mph, according to the attendant.  Even so, the machine was faster than 9-year-old  pitchers throwing as hard as they could and/or harder than they should.  My grandson backed away from almost every pitch for fear of being hit.  

In the fifth week of a six week spring season for my grandson’s team, the games still consist mostly of walks, wild pitches and passed balls, while the fielders stand by to no useful purpose, enduring the tedium of run after run scored without any ball being hit, definitely not gaining any experience at catching and throwing baseballs.  A pitcher has been identified who occasionally gets the ball near home plate.  Each inning is halted when the team batting scores five runs.  The coach walks out to the mound to talk to the pitcher.  The pitcher holds the baseball in his glove, which he uses like a handkerchief under his nose.  The heel of his free hand wipes each cheek in turn, then again.

Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, and Madonna lead off the line-up of director Penny Marshall’s engaging 1992 movie A League of Their Own, about an all-girl professional baseball team, coached by has-been Hanks. 

In a famous scene, Coach Hanks criticizes one of the players, who begins to weep.  Hanks utters with patented Tom Hanks dismay, “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Maybe.  Maybe not.

Immigrants, Bombings, and Murder in Massachusetts

I have heard the two words enemy combatant uttered in conjunction with recent events in Massachusetts but not the two words Sacco and Vanzetti.  Maybe I have not been listening to the right people.

  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti

  

Ferdinando Nicola Sacco (April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were suspected anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery of a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. After a controversial trial and a series of appeals, the two Italian immigrants were executed on August 23, 1927.

Since their deaths, critical opinion has overwhelmingly felt that the two men were convicted largely on their anarchist political beliefs and unjustly executed.  In 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names." The case is still officially open.--wikipedia

....more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti

Bier Beer

I have always instinctively subscribed to the doctrine by Marx (Groucho, I believe) that I would never join any group or club that would have me.  Nonetheless, I once applied to, matriculated at, and graduated from Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio.   I even made friends there, had joint suppers, spaghetti, cheese fondu, loaves of crusty French bread, bottles of beer.  Over the years, I lost touch with everyone I knew at Antioch.

 Then about a year ago, just weeks prior to my having quadruple bypass cardiac surgery, I received an unexpected note.

Hi Bill.  Thanks for providing me with a wonderful Sunday afternoon’s entertainment.  I came across your blog – not entirely by chance – and enjoyed reading what you had written.  I wish I’d discovered your blog earlier.  Until about four years ago, when my dad passed away, I was in your neck of the woods about once a year for a visit.  My folks lived in Lawrenceville for some years…which my father and I affectionately dubbed Larryville....  I wasn’t able to discover whether your trip to France still is in the future.  On a continental scale, France is kind of in my neck of the woods.

By Carl Press on Click on Comments to Subscribe on 2/14/12

- On Fri, 4/6/12, william cotter  wrote: To: carl_press@ What a wonderful surprise.  Don't know where to start.  I never check the subscription requests for my blog, because nobody ever requests.  Nonetheless you are not the first person from the distant past to locate me through the internet directing them to the blog.  Anyway, the trip to France had to be postponed until my wife and I are younger and richer.  I also regret missing you in Larryville.

Carl and I began to exchange e-mails, Facebook chats, photos, live Skype.  We learned by trial and error along the way how to set up and use these technological media marvels, challenging to a couple of old geezers.  We filled in the blanks with information about our families, our health, projects in denial of the aging process.  We discussed art, literature, technology, power tools, building construction and remodeling.   To bridge the six time zones between us whenever one of us logged on-line to chat, we experimented with using other media for notification, including cell phone texts.   I suggested telepathy.  Carl quoted his favorite writer Kurt Vonnegut: “Anyone who believes in telekinesis, please raise my right hand.” 

So I said, “I do not see any reason why my homebrew metaphysics should be any more disreputable than anybody else's or even the store-bought brands like Scientology, L.D.S., or for that matter what my redneck kinfolk used to call, "the Pope in Rome." Moreover, it will not make you blind or damage your liver. I do not offer it for sale and rarely even offer a sip to guests and old friends. While I do not ponder the nature and origin of life, except possibly by implication, I have long been interested in the communication of ideas, especially in the arts and especially the origins of ideas, what is often called inspiration. I do not believe God or a Muse plants ideas in the heads of artists. I believe ideas are a form of electromagnetic energy bouncing around the universe like the undying transmissions of radio signals from old Fibber McGee and Molly broadcasts. Who picks up these signals and how depends on the receiving equipment of one's brain and practice at tuning in. It is not a matter of the telekinesis quote from Vonnegut. The waves of energy are there, transmitted without intent or direction. Reception is entirely up to the downlink.”

Carl had been a theatre student at Antioch and had involved me in trying to convert some stories of mine into scripts for movies and plays, and he had recruited me as a tag-along for a documentary film for which he was the producer.  We had a birthday in common, June 6.  On our 1968 birthday, we downed a six pack of Lowenbrau dark, he reminded me.  I had provided the over-21 drivers license.  Carl went to Copenhagen in 1969 on a year-long program called Antioch Education Abroad.  He stayed the rest of his life. 

In Denmark, Carl worked as an actor, director, and creator of puppets.  With a little help from his friends, he raised as a single dad a son, Niklas, a successful bilingual journalist, Danish mother-tongue, English father-tongue.

Invitation:

carl press
06.06.1948 - 07.04.2013
Kære
Du indbydes til at tage afsked med Carl.
Afskedshøjtideligheden finder sted i kapellet
på Holmens Kirkegård på Østerbro.
Lørdag den 13. april kl. 14.00
Holmens Kirkegård
Øster Farimagsgade 46
2100 København Ø
Efter bisættelsen vil der være gravøl, hvor vi sammen kan
mindes Carl. Arrangementet er uformelt, men slutter kl. 17.30.
Vi håber du har mulighed for at være med.
Kærlig hilsen
Eva og Niklas

I always have trouble with the English funereal word “bier,” because it always makes me think of the French word biere and Kronenbourg, Jupiler, Stella Artois, et al.  The Danish language seems to have allowed for this with the term gravøl, which translates, literally, as "grave beer," according to Niklas.   I think that is much better than the inexplicable word “wake.” 

Even though my cardiac diet has no provision for beer, I am drinking a Loenbrau dark this afternoon for Carl’s gravol and telepathically joining in.

Sweet Potato Baby

Anytime one of my favorite writers writes something new, I notice.  Here is a new poem from my wife Annette.  I am pleased to bring this to the notice of those who may not know or have forgotten that she is the writer in the family.

            SWEET POTATO BABY

It resembled a baked sweet potato

this premature infant girl

born to an Alabama debutante

who fell hard for crack cocaine.

The father a black man

no one even knows who.

The child with a multitude of special needs

will be raised by her maternal grandmother.

The maternal grandfather lies buried

in the South Alabama black-belt dirt

on the miles of acreage he owned

and owned also the money

and the government

and the people

for many years paying black workers

with tokens to his general store.

When the sweet potato baby’s mother was a child

this man, the landowner-baron,

hired black children to play with her

and pull her around in a bright red wagon.

And whenever a truly outlandish thing happened

this man would slap his thighs and exclaim:

“Well I’ll be a nigger baby!”

In the dark arts, words are known to have power.

An incantation, rightly spoken,

can Poof! call into being the very thing it names.

Will the sweet potato baby resemble the grandfather?

Have his narrow eyes?  His hard jaw?

This old fool, inheritor of a decayed plantation,

might have been more cautious in his pronouncement.

might have thought

how words conjure.

            --Annette Cotter

Keepers of the Flame

Don’t stop me, if you’ve heard this one, particularly if you heard it from me.  Maybe one day you will be my age, and you may feel different about old geezer jokes, anecdotes, and twice-told experiences. 

I have cited previously more than once, and probably will again, that the Monroe Doctrine was the brainchild not of President James Monroe, by whose name this cornerstone of U.S. international policy is known, but rather his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.  Of the long list of special and interesting things I know about John Quincy Adams, this was the first, and I learned it in the American History class of Robert Hawkins at Grady High School in Atlanta.

Equally unforgettable to me from the American History class lecture notes of Robert Hawkins was the anecdote about Calvin Coolidge, sometimes known as “silent Cal.”  A woman allegedly said to him, “I have a bet with someone that I can get you to say more than three words to me.”

President Coolidge is quoted as having said, “Madam, you lose.”

General William T. Sherman, after marching through Georgia, was urged to run for President of the United States.  His response: “If nominated, I will not run.  If elected, I will not serve.”  

These are not necessarily the most important things I learned from Robert Hawkins.  What I really learned was a love of American history.  Teachers like Robert Hawkins are the keepers of the flame.

The following can be found on the website of Flanigan Funeral Home, Buford, Ga.

Mr. Robert Austin Hawkins, age 81, of Auburn, GA passed away on Tuesday, February 19, 2013. He is survived by his wife of twenty-nine years, Jean Sims Hawkins, Auburn, GA; son and daughter-in-law, Randall and Cara Hawkins, Woodstock, GA; daughter and son-in-law, Suzanne and Paul Fogleman, Hickory, NC; step son, Jason Harris, Chicago, IL; grandchildren, Eric Hawkins, Nick Hawkins, Austin Fogleman and Paul Fogleman; two great grandchildren, Lily Anne Hawkins and Bo Hawkins; brother and sister-in-law, Jerald and Patt Hawkins, Ft. Myers, FL; and sisters, Francis Farr, Rocksprings, GA and Carol Davis, Marietta, GA.; numerous nieces and nephews.  A Memorial Service will be held on Friday, March 15, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. in the Chapel of Flanigan Funeral Home. Interment will follow at 2:30 p.m. at Georgia National Cemetery Columbarium in Canton, GA with Navy Military Honors. The family will receive friends at the funeral home on Friday morning March 15, 2013 from 10:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m.

You Never Even Call Me By My Name

David Allen Coe,  Steve Goodman, and John Prine came up with the perfect country and western song, partly because they mentioned mama, trains, trucks, prison, and getting drunk.

I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison.

I went down to the station in the rain.

Before I could get there in my pickup truck,

She got run over by a damned old train.

A great recording artist, country music outlaws' outlaw, David Allen Coe was never better.  His vocals sometimes sweeter, his manner more controversial, but never better.

You don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’.

You never even call me by my name.

The poster for David Allen Coe’s appearance in the University of Georgia college town of Athens calls the name of the band opening the show: Cotter Pen.  It ain’t me, babe. 

However, three-quarters of the band Cotter Pen lives in three-quarters of the four rental units I own in Athens.  As to how they decided upon the name for their band and what it means, I will leave to them to explain.

Here is their website, including photos andvideos.  

Daniel, Craig, Sean.  Very cool.  Best of luck.  

All My Fathers

If you do not know or remember who Eugene Patterson was, treat yourself to a reminder of what a hero looks like.  Eugene Patterson died a couple of weeks ago.  I am just now learning about it, because I no longer read a daily newspaper, even the one I worked for and Eugene Patterson edited 50 years ago.  I have changed with the times, which are the age of electronics.

Strictly speaking, I worked for The Atlanta Journal 50 years ago.  Eugene Patterson was editor of The Atlanta Constitution.  In those days, The Journal  was an afternoon, The Constitution a morning newspaper, combined only for Sundays and holidays.   I was still an impressionable teenager, and it was my privilege to breathe the same air with intelligent, honorable, and courageous people like Eugene Patterson at 10 Forsyth St., where those newspapers were written, edited, and printed.  During the height of the Civil Rights struggle, half a million Georgians read the Atlanta newspapers daily, some for leadership, others for target practice.

Eugene Patterson, Ralph McGill, and Jack Nelson, Pulitzer Prize winners all at The Atlanta Constitution in the 1960's--AJC Photo.

Eugene Patterson was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for writing these words in response to the murders in Birmingham, Ala., of four Sunday school girls by dynamite in 1963:

A Flower for the Graves.

By Eugene Patterson

A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham. In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her.

Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand.

It is too late to blame the sick criminals who handled the dynamite. The FBI and the police can deal with that kind. The charge against them is simple. They killed four children.

Only we can trace the truth, Southerner — you and I. We broke those children's bodies.

We watched the stage set without staying it. We listened to the prologue unbestirred. We saw the curtain opening with disinterest. We have heard the play.

We — who go on electing politicians who heat the kettles of hate.

We — who raise no hand to silence the mean and little men who have their nigger jokes.

We — who stand aside in imagined rectitude and let the mad dogs that run in every society slide their leashes from our hand, and spring.

We — the heirs of a proud South, who protest its worth and demand it recognition — we are the ones who have ducked the difficult, skirted the uncomfortable, caviled at the challenge, resented the necessary, rationalized the unacceptable, and created the day surely when these children would die.

This is no time to load our anguish onto the murderous scapegoat who set the cap in dynamite of our own manufacture.

He didn't know any better.

Somewhere in the dim and fevered recess of an evil mind he feels right now that he has been a hero. He is only guilty of murder. He thinks he has pleased us.

We of the white South who know better are the ones who must take a harsher judgment.

We, who know better, created a climate for child-killing by those who don't.

We hold that shoe in our hand, Southerner. Let us see it straight, and look at the blood on it. Let us compare it with the unworthy speeches of Southern public men who have traduced the Negro; match it with the spectacle of shrilling children whose parents and teachers turned them free to spit epithets at small huddles of Negro school children for a week before this Sunday in Birmingham; hold up the shoe and look beyond it to the state house in Montgomery where the official attitudes of Alabama have been spoken in heat and anger.

Let us not lay the blame on some brutal fool who didn't know any better.

We know better. We created the day. We bear the judgment. May God have mercy on the poor South that has so been led. May what has happened hasten the day when the good South, which does live and has great being, will rise to this challenge of racial understanding and common humanity, and in the full power of its unasserted courage, assert itself.

The Sunday school play at Birmingham is ended. With a weeping Negro mother, we stand in the bitter smoke and hold a shoe. If our South is ever to be what we wish it to be, we will plant a flower of nobler resolve for the South now upon these four small graves that we dug.

Can You Spell CIA?

If you can spell CIA, you already know too much.  Where it is, who they are, what they do, and even how much it costs are stamped CLASSIFIED.  If you get close to the Central Intelligence Agency, you will be drowned in a Tsunami of secrecy, misdirection, and deniability.

The first, last, and only time I ever heard anybody acknowledge working for the CIA was at my U.S. Department of State orientation for new employees.  Two well dressed and articulate speakers from the Central Intelligence Agency lectured a full room about world politics, geography, and photosynthesis.  They concentrated on the dense jungle forestation of Indonesia and the Amazon River, the sources of most of the photosynthesis in the world.   I was puzzled but assumed they were looking ahead to the time when the planet earth’s oxygen would come to such short supply that political conflict, even wars, might be waged over its control.

At the American Embassy in Cairo, I played on the softball team, which competed against oil-field workers and school teachers.  The majority of the Embassy team consisted of young U.S. Marine Guards.  Our first baseman, a middle-aged slugger, was generally known to be in the employ of the CIA, although I have no idea what his duties included.  One day he rang the bell of the door to the office where I worked, and he told me his boss wanted to see me.  My softball team-mate ushered me into the office of the CIA Station Chief.  I thought of all the ways I could politely decline any offer to become a character in a John le Carre novel.  The interview with the Station Chief went like this:

“You know who I am?” he asked.

“More or less,” I said.

He talked about a lot of things that did not make much sense to me.  Eventually, he produced a file folder.  “I will give you a chance to read these over,” he said and left me alone in his office.  I read the documents, which warned me that if I ever told anybody anything I ever knew, the most serious consequences would result, including substantial money fines and prison.  No problem.  I did not know anything. 

“What is this about?” I asked the Station Chief upon his return.

“Just in case,” he said.

In her last days as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, murder in Benghazi, Libya, of the American Ambassador and three others.  The capital of Libya is Tripoli.  Ambassadors do not visit consulates much.  Benghazi was not even a Consulate.  The building behind the not-consulate was where the Ambassador and his party sought sanctuary.  Only scant press reports have identified that building as a CIA beehive.   If you want to talk about Benghazi, if you want to know the truth about what happened in Benghazi, don’t look for it to come from anybody who knows it.  Worse yet, anytime it sounds like anybody is lying about anything remotely connected to the CIA, they probably are.

Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, referred to the Benghazi “Annex” as a “special mission” and criticized the lack of clarity about its status. Secretary Clinton distanced herself from and pointed to “interagency” authorship of “misleading” talking points U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used on Sunday tv shows about the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi.  Secretary of State Clinton’s impatient response: “There were four dead Americans.  With all due respect, Senator, what difference does it make?” 

Sen. Rand Paul fantasized about being President of the United States. “I would have relieved you of your duties,” he expressed his delusions of grandeur to the Secretary of State.  He asked about ships from Libya transporting weapons to Turkey.  “You will have to address that question to the agency that ran the Annex,” Secretary Clinton replied.

Let’s say, for example, a high ranking intelligence official screwed up badly.  Let’s say yet a different intelligence agency had recordings of sexually suggestive conversations.  Let’s say the sex scandal was used as an excuse to get rid of him.  I’m just making this up, but let’s say something of this sort were possible.  How far short would the bellicose advocates for the intelligence community go to get to the bottom of things and air them in public?  I’m just asking.

I Am Jack Pinto

Remember in Spartacus?  “I am Spartacus.”

“I am Spartacus.”

“I am Spartacus.”

And then everyone on the hillside was standing and proclaiming, “I am Spartacus.”

My wife has been posting on her Facebook page the photos of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newton, Ct.  In honor of their precious lives, lest we forget.

I have swapped my Facebook profile photo of myself and my grandson.  In its place, I have substituted a photo of Jack Pinto, one of the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. 

What if a whole hillside full of people posted photos of the children lost to us at Sandy Hook Elementary?  Post them everywhere, anywhere.  On Facebook, on your drivers license, on utility poles.  Add them to your e-mails. 

“I am Jack Pinto.”

“I am Jack Pinto.”

“I am Jack Pinto.”

As are my children and grandchildren.  And even those of people elected to Congress with the financial support of narrow manufacturing interests and their hired lobbyists. 

The 28th Amendment

The 2^nd Amendment is hereby repealed and replaced as follows: the right of the people to keep and bear flintlock muzzleloading firearms for the purpose of hunting wildlife shall not be infringed.

The United States Constitution has been amended 27 times since its signing on September 17, 1787, the first ten almost immediately to correct oversight.

The original Constitution enshrined slavery, numerically limited human equality to three-fifths for some persons, and denied women the right to vote.  More enlightened thought corrected these errors by amendment.  The 18^th Amendment prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.”  The 21^st Amendment repealed the 18^th.   The 27^th Amendment was proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992.

I am posting the photos below for two thirds of both Houses of Congress and the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States.  God forgive them, if they are unmoved.

Digital Magic Lantern--With Captions

I miss gainful employment, music, and going to the movies.  I got hooked on movies in the 7^th grade at Clark Howell Elementary School, formerly on 10^th St between Juniper and Piedmont, now the site of a City of Atlanta fire station.  Clark Howell Elementary housed the Atlanta Public Schools film library.  An audio-visual license available to 7^th grade boys entitled the holder to operate the 16mm Bell and Howell projector, a certified accomplishment, status of seniority and acquired skill.  I showed individual classrooms as well as assemblies of the entire school films like The Last of the Mohicans starring Randolph Scott as Hawkeye, John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln with Henry Fonda, and Les Miserables with Frederic March as Jean Valjean and Charles Laughton, unforgetable as Inspector Javert.

For the next 50 years after the 7th grade, I took the enjoyment of movies for granted, like breathing in and out or the beating of my heart.  Then I lost my hearing, 100% in both ears, due to meningitis in 2006.  I have had to make do with foreign language films, captioned in English, and the slim pickings from chain theaters of Hollywood releases with captions for the hearing impaired.  Yes, I saw the 2012 Oscar winner “The Artist,” the most successful silent movie since The Jazz Singer made Al Jolson a star in 1927.

Movie captioning at a theater near you has lagged behind television and DVD rentals.  Captions for the hearing impaired have been in three varieties.  Closed captions—white letters on a black rectangle, covering part of the movie screen.  Open captions—letters superimposed directly across the movie scene, unreadable without proper contrast.  Rear Window—a clumsy  contraption like a goose-neck lamp that sits in the cup holder of the theater seat and is like watching the movie in the rear view mirror of your car parked backwards at the drive-in.

Recently Regal Cinemas of Knoxville, Tn., and Sony electronics of California and other Pacific Ocean locations have introduced a new technology that makes movies accessible again for me and others who are hearing impaired, statistically 10 percent of the population.  The new Sony technology transmits the captions wirelessly for holographic display right on the lenses of special glasses, not on the movie screen.  The  Sony Entertainment Access Glasses may be worn over any eyewear already used by the moviegoer.  Since the captions do not appear on the screen, other movie customers do not experience any distraction of captions.  Descriptive audio is also provided through the wieless receiver and can be accessed by connection of an assistive neck-loop,  compatible with some hearing aids, or headphones, for movie patrons who have low vision or are blind.

Here's a youtube video demonstration.  With Captions.

Until now, the number of movies at the multi-plex shown with any form of captions has been limited to just enough to side-step Americans With Disabilities Act litigation, no more than three or four films, even in large metropolitan areas like Atlanta, and showings were often scheduled for some off-peak time, mid-week, mid-day, like Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.  As I write this, the weekly listing by the captioned movies search engine Captionfish found the following captioned features scheduled multiple times daily, including weekends, at 10 theaters within 60 miles of my home in DeKalb County, Georgia:

Alex Cross, Argo, Cloud Atlas, Flight, Fun Size, Here Comes the Boom, Hotel Transylvania, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Looper, Paranormal Activity 4, ParaNorman, Pitch Perfect, Red Dawn, Rise of the Guardians, Sinister, Skyfall, Taken 2, The Man with the Iron Fists, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Silver Linings, Playbook. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2, Wreck-It Ralph.

A significant increase over the past.  Pardon my understatement.  Regal Cinemas currently offers the largest share of these captioned showings.  Within a month, I have seen The Master in Snellville and Lincoln at Atlantic Station, doubling my movie attendance for the year to date.

Currently 200 Regal theatres nationwide offer the Sony Entertainment Access System, which is expected to be in all of Regal’s digital cinemas by April.  Regal  Entertainment Group operates 6,597 screens at 522 locations in 37 states and the District of Columbia.   “We are encouraged by the positive feedback already received regarding the new technology,”  Regal said.

Modern multi-plex movie theater projection booths no longer resemble your father's Last Picture Show, no metal reels of sprocket-fed celluloid.  Each digital movie is contained on a hard-disk, ready to be connected to a digital projector, which is controlled by a central computer.  Maybe another name will evolve for these electronic optical illusions rather than film or movies.  It is still hard to beat the oldest: magic lanterns.  Also connected to the digital projector is a transmitter that produces the wireless signal for the Sony Assistive glasses.

Introducing new technology may be a bumpy road.  Suggestion: Give yourself some extra time when you arrive at the theater.  Let the customer service manager demonstrate  the glasses.  Read the instructions before you take your seat and the movie begins.  For a preview of the illustrated instructions provided by Regal, click here.  I intend to print them out and bring them with me from now on every time I go to the movies.

A Regal spokesman acknowledges “the many years of aid, insight and support provided by advocates within the deaf, hard of hearing, blind and low vision communities," including Riverside, CA’s Model Deaf Community, American Council of the Blind, City of La Verne Inclusion Advisory Committee, Hearing Loss Association of America, Metropolitan Nashville Mayor’s Advisory Committee, California School for the Deaf, Mid Tennessee Council of the Blind, multiple local disability resource centers, and Captionfish.

Fellow clients of the Georgia Council for the Hearing Impaired, which provides my Captel caption telephone, share stories of their experiences  at restaurants (don't even try the drive-thru), banks (use the debit card machine), and retailers that all too often register on a scale between insensitive and insulting.  The manager of a major home improvement store in Atlanta said to me, “Sir, don’t raise your voice.  I’m not deaf.”

I removed the external device of my cochlear implant from behind my ear and held it out to him in the open palm of my hand.  “I am,” I said.

(Reprinted from Like the Dew, a journal of southern culture and politics)