Why Photography Is Important

Looking at this photo, would you guess this was taken in Afghanistan?

This photo is from a photo essay of Afghanistan in the 1950s and 60s from Foreign Policy magazine. It has haunted me since I looked at it. There was industry, higher education, a transportation system and infrastructure. People, including women, went to movie theaters, record stores, and parks. There were radio stations and a national defense force. In short, there was a civil society.

This essay loudly begs the question, "What the hell happened to this country?" That history is worth knowing. Super-power influence (American and Soviet) is worth understanding. And the question, "how does American presence there now affect what the photos look like 50 years from now?"

Just Because They Are Your Favorite Band Does Not Mean You can Steal Their Music

Rush (the band not the Limbaugh) sues Rand Paul.

"...libertarians love them, especially after the revelation that the seminal album 2112 was based on Ayn Rand's novella Anthem."

"Rush's lawyer, Roger Farmer, wrote in the filing that "The public performance of Rush's music is not licensed for political purposes: any public venue which allows such use is in breach of its public performance license and also liable for copyright infringement." Mr. Farmer attempted to distance the political element in the filing later on, saying that "This is not a political issue — this is a copyright issue," and that "We would do this no matter who it is."

There are a slew of cases of Republicans using songs without paying for them as Alan Colmes surveys on his blog. He ends with this:

In 1997, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders got Rush Limbaugh to stop using her song, “My City Was Gone” because she didn’t like that he had appropriated it. They eventually came to an agreement that Limbaugh would pay for use of the song with the proceeds going to the animal rights group PETA, reportedly for $500,000 a year.

Turning Limbaugh into a PETA donor. Nice work, Ms. Hynde.

Of Aristotle, Flutes, Golf Carts and Same-Sex Marriage

Mamet, Ever the Gadfly

An LA Times piece covering a recent reading of Mamet - part reading, part "literary vaudeville".

As Mamet writes in "Theatre," one of two new books published by the prolific playwright-screenwriter-essayist, "When we leave the play saying how spectacular the sets or costumes were, or how interesting the ideas, it means we had a bad time."

Art in a Nazi Camp

This story has been told before, but as the article points out - time is ticking to actually speak to the survivors and there is a London concert coming up that commemorates their work.

The Terezín ghetto near Prague was home to a remarkable array of renowned Czech musicians, composers and theatrical artists, writing and performing as they and their fellow Jewish inmates awaited an unknown fate in Auschwitz.

The Guardian talks to some survivors.

All Nazi camps were diabolical, but Terezín was singular in ways both redemptive, at first, and later grotesque. It was the place in which Jews of Czechoslovakia were concentrated, especially the intelligentsia and prominent artistic figures, and, in time, members of the Jewish cultural elites from across Europe, prior to transportation to the gas chambers.

And as a result – despite the everyday regime, rampant fatal disease, malnutrition, paltry rations, cramped conditions and the death of 32,000 people even before the "transports" to Auschwitz – Terezín was hallmarked also by a thriving cultural life: painting and drawing, theatre and cabarets, lectures and schooling, and, above all, great music.

Same-Sex Marriage and Glee!

From Frank Rich in the New York Times:

"...the most significant marital event of June 2010 is the one taking place in San Francisco this Wednesday, when a Federal District Court judge is scheduled to hear the closing arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the landmark case challenging Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban."

And --

Dramatically enough, “Glee” generated an unexpected real-life story last weekend to match its fictional plots. The Times’s Sunday wedding pages chronicled the Massachusetts same-sex marriage of Jane Lynch, the actress who steals the show as Sue Sylvester, the cheerleading coach who is the students’ comic nemesis. It’s a sunny article until you read that Lynch’s spouse, a clinical psychologist named Lara Embry, had to fight a legal battle to gain visitation rights with her 10-year-old adoptive daughter from a previous relationship.