Yma Sumac, Fuego del Ande

Another Yma Sumac record. Weird stuff.

 

I'd like to digitize samples of these and post them with the albums, but I don't have that technology yet.

Goodbye Moon

New editions of this 61 year old children's classic will have the cigarette photoshopped out of the illustrator's picture on the back cover. HarperCollins said it made the change to avoid the appearance of encouraging smoking.

Everyone can agree with that goal, but isn't this just a little bit too much? There's quite a difference between discouraging something and pretending it never existed in the first place.

After all, Bob 5chw4r7z has been known to enjoy a stogie on occasion, and that hasn't kept him from being a stand-up guy. And none other than Santa Claus himself puffs a pipe. The horrors!

"His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly."

This is just another example of political correctness run amok. Novelist and children's book author, Karen Karbo, carried it to its logical end in her NY Times Op Ed.

Others have added their two cents:

The spiked curtain rods are dangerous and could easily skewer Bunny. That clunky old telephone at Bunny's bedside is also a danger. Really, Bunny, if left unsupervised by the quiet old lady, could be brained by the heavy receiver or strangled by the cord. Replace it with a new lightweight cordless or, better yet, a wall-mounted monitoring unit that would also enable letting go the quiet old lady. Bunny's bed has no restraining rails. Bunny could roll out of bed and be seriously hurt. These should be installed at once.

Karen Karbo's suggestions, while excellent, do not consider Bunny's mental health. A close examination of the clock above the fireplace shows that the time is 7 p.m. at the start of the book. At the end of the book, the time is 8:10 p.m., indicating that it takes Bunny 70 minutes to fall asleep. It is concerning that the book implies that this length of time is acceptable. On the contrary, 70 minutes to fall asleep suggests that Bunny is suffering from undiagnosed and untreated insomnia. Suggested change: Digitally alter the clock so that the elapsed time is 20 minutes. Alternatively, add a footnote indicating that Bunny is seeing a sleep specialist or child psychotherapist to address the insomnia.

Obama Economy Speech

My thoughts exactly:

Part of the reason this crisis occurred is that everyone was living beyond their means – from Wall Street to Washington to even some on Main Street. CEOs got greedy. Politicians spent money they didn't have. Lenders tricked people into buying home they couldn't afford and some folks knew they couldn't afford them and bought them anyway.

We've lived through an era of easy money, in which we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits; to borrow instead of save.

Now, I know that in an age of declining wages and skyrocketing costs, for many folks this was not a choice but a necessity. People have been forced to turn to credit cards and home equity loans to keep up, just like our government has borrowed from China and other creditors to help pay its bills. But we now know how dangerous that can be. Once we get past the present emergency, which requires immediate new investments, we have to break that cycle of debt. Our long-term future requires that we do what's necessary to scale down our deficits, grow wages and encourage personal savings again.

-Yesterday's entire speech here.

Trombones in Gazebo

In Washington Park, as part of Saengerfest and the Rededication of Memorial Hall: