Inside Higher Ed published a brief item today on the findings just released in the Humanities Indicators Prototype, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In it, among many others, was this nugget:
In 1993, 38 percent of Americans agreed with the statement “High schools and colleges make students spend too much time reading ‘classics’ that have little relevance in today’s world.”
I don't even want to think of what the percentage is today.
Above 90% maybe? Sigh.
I'll come back to this topic soon, I promise.
The original story can be viewed online at
http://insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/07/humanities.
07 January 2009
Buddy Greco's "Lady is a Tramp"
In my last post, I mentioned Sammy Cahn's special lyrics for Frank Sinatra to sing while campaigning for Spiro T. Agnew.
On my radio show yesterday I also rediscovered Buddy Greco's swingin' version of the song with such lyrics as:
...She don't know the reason for cocktails at five
She don't like flying, but I'm glad I'm alive
I crave affection, baby, but not when I drive
That's why the lady is a tramp
She flew down to London and left me behind
I missed the crowning, but I didn't mind
She won't play Scarlett in Gone with the Whynd (It's gotta rhyme)
That's why the lady is a tramp...
It's fun. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2j_XEki3dQ
On my radio show yesterday I also rediscovered Buddy Greco's swingin' version of the song with such lyrics as:
...She don't know the reason for cocktails at five
She don't like flying, but I'm glad I'm alive
I crave affection, baby, but not when I drive
That's why the lady is a tramp
She flew down to London and left me behind
I missed the crowning, but I didn't mind
She won't play Scarlett in Gone with the Whynd (It's gotta rhyme)
That's why the lady is a tramp...
It's fun. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2j_XEki3dQ
Loyalty and Innocence
Yesterday, at the Hartford Armory, I gave a talk to a local "Red Hat" ladies club on Frank Sinatra by focusing on songs he recorded and things he did in January. (I always try to have a different selection of songs when I speak -- even if I'm going over the same territory again and again -- and, with Sinatra's long career, it's quite easy to do.)
One song was the Sammy Cahn special lyric for the first Reagan Inaugural Gala (1/19/81), "Nancy (with the Reagan Face)," based upon the Phil ("Sgt. Bilko") Silvers lyric in honor of the birth of Frank's eldest child in the early 40s, "Nancy (with the Laughing Face)."
Sammy was a life-long Democrat (unlike Sinatra who became a Republican in the early '70s during his brief retirement and stayed). Indeed, in 1972, Frank campaigned with the Vice President and actually sang "THAT'S why Spiro is a...CHAMP."
Oops.
Anyway, Democrats were quite angry at Sammy Cahn for his willingness to aid the opposition by writing this special material for Frank, but he always placed his loyalty to his dear friend Francis Albert over that to a political party. I applaud that sense of priorities...besides if anyone voted for Nixon/Agnew in 1972 because of the really awful Cahn rewrite of "The Lady is a Tramp," then the McGovern campaign must have had real problems!
I also played a brief snippet from the Kennedy Inaugural Gala that Frank produced twenty years earlier (1/19/61) and was struck by the very partisan nature of all the talk by Kennedy and Sinatra alike. Clearly meant as a true victory party in a way that would seem quite unseemly and not terribly presidential now, there was no "now's the time to come together." It was, rather, "We beat 'em!"
Ah, the glories of a time BEFORE 24/7 news coverage -- when not every event had to be played before a world-wide audience, when every emotion had to be played close to the vest.
As I was driving to the talk, I was listening to Sinatra's recording of "(You and Me) We Wanted it All" which contains a wonderful lyric as he recalls the time when he and his lost love were still together and happy. He longs for the days of innocence (and ignorant bliss):
...Back when we were dumb.
How did we become so smart
and learn to break each other's heart?
One song was the Sammy Cahn special lyric for the first Reagan Inaugural Gala (1/19/81), "Nancy (with the Reagan Face)," based upon the Phil ("Sgt. Bilko") Silvers lyric in honor of the birth of Frank's eldest child in the early 40s, "Nancy (with the Laughing Face)."
Sammy was a life-long Democrat (unlike Sinatra who became a Republican in the early '70s during his brief retirement and stayed). Indeed, in 1972, Frank campaigned with the Vice President and actually sang "THAT'S why Spiro is a...CHAMP."
Oops.
Anyway, Democrats were quite angry at Sammy Cahn for his willingness to aid the opposition by writing this special material for Frank, but he always placed his loyalty to his dear friend Francis Albert over that to a political party. I applaud that sense of priorities...besides if anyone voted for Nixon/Agnew in 1972 because of the really awful Cahn rewrite of "The Lady is a Tramp," then the McGovern campaign must have had real problems!
I also played a brief snippet from the Kennedy Inaugural Gala that Frank produced twenty years earlier (1/19/61) and was struck by the very partisan nature of all the talk by Kennedy and Sinatra alike. Clearly meant as a true victory party in a way that would seem quite unseemly and not terribly presidential now, there was no "now's the time to come together." It was, rather, "We beat 'em!"
Ah, the glories of a time BEFORE 24/7 news coverage -- when not every event had to be played before a world-wide audience, when every emotion had to be played close to the vest.
As I was driving to the talk, I was listening to Sinatra's recording of "(You and Me) We Wanted it All" which contains a wonderful lyric as he recalls the time when he and his lost love were still together and happy. He longs for the days of innocence (and ignorant bliss):
...Back when we were dumb.
How did we become so smart
and learn to break each other's heart?
05 January 2009
"Jobs Loss" Equals Stock Drop (and, no, we don't mean unemployment)
From the NY Times:
The good news:
Steve Jobs isn't dying; he just has a hormone imbalance. (Whew.)
The bad news: "People are spooked by these health reports because he is so important to Apple and is viewed as synonymous with the company by so many people,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/technology/companies/06apple.html?_r=1&hp
The scary news: I'm reading about Steve Jobs' weight loss in the NY Times. Who do we think he is, Oprah?
The money, the weight loss, my disinterest all recall perhaps my favorite cruel, but decidedly smart, one-liner by the once-actually-funny Joan Rivers. In the wake of singer Karen Carpenter's death from anorexia, she cracked:
I'm sorry, I can't feel sorry for anyone who's thin enough to be buried in pleats.
In any case, I guess we can lay to rest (as it were) the old adage, "An Apple a day keeps the doctor..."
The good news:
Steve Jobs isn't dying; he just has a hormone imbalance. (Whew.)
The bad news: "People are spooked by these health reports because he is so important to Apple and is viewed as synonymous with the company by so many people,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/technology/companies/06apple.html?_r=1&hp
The scary news: I'm reading about Steve Jobs' weight loss in the NY Times. Who do we think he is, Oprah?
The money, the weight loss, my disinterest all recall perhaps my favorite cruel, but decidedly smart, one-liner by the once-actually-funny Joan Rivers. In the wake of singer Karen Carpenter's death from anorexia, she cracked:
I'm sorry, I can't feel sorry for anyone who's thin enough to be buried in pleats.
In any case, I guess we can lay to rest (as it were) the old adage, "An Apple a day keeps the doctor..."
THIRD Hand Smoke?!!
Even after my 12/16 post about my envy of smokers, in light of the story about the dangers of "Third Hand Smoke," I can't but recall the Lennon/McCartney lyric from the White Album's "I'm so Tired":
I'm so tired
I'm feeling so upset
Although I'm so tired, I'll have another cigarette
and curse Sir Walter Ralegh
He was such a stupid git!
I'm so tired
I'm feeling so upset
Although I'm so tired, I'll have another cigarette
and curse Sir Walter Ralegh
He was such a stupid git!
04 January 2009
After watching two NFL playoff games...
...I have only this to say to the Commissioner:
Bring back the old intentional grounding penalty, PLEASE!
02 January 2009
How DO you hire a hit man?
In bed this morning, I heard the news today (oh, boy) about a woman arrested in Washington state for trying to hire a hit man to kill her ex-husband and his family (bulk rate?). The man she was trying to hire, however, was an undercover police officer. Oops.
Now, call me naive, but how on Earth does one find a killer-for-hire?
I assume Google and the Yellow Pages don't help. Nor would I think that this is the kind of service about which one might pick up a tip at parties, in the way one might learn about an exceptionally good plumber, podiatrist, or landscaper...
"Have you heard about the untimely death of my ex? Tell me if you're interested, I KNOW someone."
May I assume this isn't the way it is?
Readers of this blog, even for as brief a time as I've been writing it, can tell, I'm sure, that I'm no man of the world. I don't have a clue about where to go to buy illegal weapons, or drugs, or stolen property, or even a "good neighborhood" for prostitution or bookmaking (the gambling, not the publishing, kind).
And thus it always has been for me.
When I lived in Washington, DC, while pursuing my doctorate in the mid-to-late 1980s, back when DC was first among US cities in murders committed (mostly due to drugs and gangs), I remember the police regularly raiding "known crack houses," some quite close to the boarding house in which I was living.
"Known to whom exactly?," I would ask myself. "I didn't know it was a crack house. And, if the police knew, why didn't they bust it before everyone else (well, everyone else except me) found out too?"
Since I still don't know what's out there to know, I've clearly got to get out more.
Now, THERE'S a New Year's resolution.
Now, call me naive, but how on Earth does one find a killer-for-hire?
I assume Google and the Yellow Pages don't help. Nor would I think that this is the kind of service about which one might pick up a tip at parties, in the way one might learn about an exceptionally good plumber, podiatrist, or landscaper...
"Have you heard about the untimely death of my ex? Tell me if you're interested, I KNOW someone."
May I assume this isn't the way it is?
Readers of this blog, even for as brief a time as I've been writing it, can tell, I'm sure, that I'm no man of the world. I don't have a clue about where to go to buy illegal weapons, or drugs, or stolen property, or even a "good neighborhood" for prostitution or bookmaking (the gambling, not the publishing, kind).
And thus it always has been for me.
When I lived in Washington, DC, while pursuing my doctorate in the mid-to-late 1980s, back when DC was first among US cities in murders committed (mostly due to drugs and gangs), I remember the police regularly raiding "known crack houses," some quite close to the boarding house in which I was living.
"Known to whom exactly?," I would ask myself. "I didn't know it was a crack house. And, if the police knew, why didn't they bust it before everyone else (well, everyone else except me) found out too?"
Since I still don't know what's out there to know, I've clearly got to get out more.
Now, THERE'S a New Year's resolution.
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