In Memory: Tom Lantos

Today is Tuesday, 12 February 2008.

The Museum of the Bourgeois sadly notes the death, at age 80 of cancer, of The Hon. Tom Santos, D-CA, the only Holocaust survivor to have surved in Congress, and a tireless champion of human rights.

I cannot improve upon the obituary in today's The New York Times, so I will cite it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/washington/12lantos.html?ref=obituaries

The Museum of the Bourgeois extends its profound sympathy to the family and friends of this brave, gracious, extraordinary person.

On the good days, one recalls a reason to be proud to be human.

All honour.

SPECIAL: In Memory: Opio Toure

Today remains Tuesday, 5 February 2008.

The Museum of the Bourgeois is deeply saddened to receive today the news that the Honorable Opio Toure, Esq., distinguished former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, has died of a chronic lung condition at 53.

A tireless fighter against the death penalty/judicial murder, author of legislation against the execution of children and the developmentally disabled, Toure was an eloquent advocate for all poor and downtrodden.

We are all diminished by his passing.

The Envelope, Please

Today is Tuesday, 5 February 2008.

Here’s the music for today, and, if this doesn’t nourish your heart and tear it out, I don’t know what might:



Several months ago, a reader asked who HH was supporting for President.

I regret I can’t support, along with Senators Clinton and Edwards, Senator Obama.

However, Senator Obama refuses to support Universal Health Care, and has spoken kindly of the memory and policies of Ronald Reagan.

I can’t go there.

I believe everyone on this planet deserves adequate health care, and that Reaganomic trickle-down economics is not, as Senator Obama put it, “dynamic and entrepreneurial”, but merely a lie.

Another of the enduring lies of European white supremacists is that, in 1492, the Americas were a wilderness peopled by handfuls of animal-like savages. Cleansing the land of these racial inferiors were no more wicked than fumigating a house of rats.

Of course, the Americas were a quilt of many nations.

But wait, the white supremacists say: no nations, only “tribes”. After all, the Cherokees and the Lakota were only “savage tribes”, not “Great Nations” such as the Germans and the English.

Who latter had of course foresworn violence and oppression long before.

Thus, I was disgusted when Senator Barack Obama, in his “Yes, We Can” speech after New Hampshire, equated slaves, abolitionists, the Civil Rights Movement, and Dr. King with “…pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness”.

The Euro-supremacist “pioneers” were the storm troops of conquest and genocide, employing “superior” technology in an attempt to steal Native America and exterminate its people.

They succeeded in the former, while failing in the latter (the gas chamber not yet available).

I wish Senator Obama had chosen to wage a campaign of truth and change, and not a campaign which seems to merely parade the word “change”, while sidling up to the myths justifying European white supremacist greed and hate, in what seems a transparent effort to enlist “Reagan Democrats”.

Senator Clinton endorses Universal Health Care, and has been part of the progressive struggles since the days of Nixon.

There is never a perfect choice.

Therefore, HH, on behalf of the Museum of the Bourgeois, will tomorrow cast his vote for Senator Hillary Clinton.

In Memory: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Today is Monday, 4 February 2008.

On this day was born Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran theologian and member of the Resistance. He was murdered by the SS in a concentration camp on 9 April 1945.

Bonhoeffer was a key leader in the Confessing Church, the anti-Nazi Protestant movement. Tellingly, he was in New York City in 1939, where he could have remained at Union Seminary. He chose to return to Germany: “If I do not share the dangers and suffering of my country, I shall have no right to share in the reconstruction after the war”.

Bonhoeffer was perhaps the first German Protestant leader to make a radio broadcast denouncing fascism, after Hitler took power in 1933, and eventually was banned from all public speaking. Through family and church connections, he became early on part of a circle of civilian and military, who sought the overthrow of Nazism, finally becoming part of the group which attempted to assassinate Hitler, etc. on 20 July 1944.

While I have many problems with his (or any) theology, all honour to one who was willing to sacrifice his life in the attempt to create living peace and justice.
__________________________________________

Note: the Wikipedia article is good, for further information.

Across the Universe

Today is Saturday, 2 February 2008.

News U can use:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/01/nasa.beatles.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

And here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj-4t9drUlM

Special to a Dandy Friend in CA

Today remains Friday, 1 February 2008.

I sent the following by e-mail to my artist friend in Cal-I-for-knee-I-a, and she couldn't get it to download, so let's just put it up on MoB; it's choice:



Question, however: is he saying "alpha-bet", or "alpha-male"?

HMMMMMMM ... they both fit!

She also couldn't get this to play:



The latter appropos of nothing, just fine music.

In Memory: Mondrian

Today is Friday, 1 February 2008.

Piet Mondrian died on this day in 1944.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/mondrian/

All honour.