Return My Love

Today we celebrate Richard Wagner's 200th birthday with his greatest work:




Ah, such genius.

While posting this I am, of course, wearing my most magical of helmets.

Happy International Dance Day

It just doesn't get any better than this.

The Code of the Cowboy

Here's to singing cowboy superstar Gene Autry, who was born 105 years ago today.  Back in his day he was as big a star as ever shown in the west.  Today he's just the kind of hero that we wish we could root for. Gene was always the good guy, and he wrote this, the Code of the Cowboy.  Learn it.  Live it.

1. The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.
2. He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.
3. He must always tell the truth.
4. He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.
5. He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.
6. He must help people in distress.
7. He must be a good worker.
8. He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits.
9. He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws.
10. The Cowboy is a patriot.

And to top it off, he stared in my all time favorite serial, The Phantom Empire.  Here's part one:

For the Children

You've probably heard that phrase before. We have to do this, “for the children.” We must ban that, “for the children.” Those who would censor, restrict, or regulate always say it is “for the children.” When my state attorney general, Martha Coakley, helped draft a law to regulate naughtiness on the internet, it was “for the children.” Never mind that it was an unconstitutional infringement of the
First Amendment (a federal judge recently said so when she struck it down). When Tipper Gore got warning labels on CDs, it was “for the children.” When Joe Leiberman tried to regulate computer games, it was “for the children.” Smashing rock 'n roll records, banning pinball, burning Harry Potter books, it's all “for the children.” As Robert Heinlein wrote in “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “The whole principle is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.”

One of the earliest moral panic episodes of the past century was the “great comic-book scare.” In his excellent book on the subject, The Ten-Cent Plague, David Hajdu gives us a history of comics in the 1950s, the men and women who made them, and the panicked, duped, self-serving, or just downright venal people who destroyed the industry.

Mr. Hajdu writes a good history of comics, delving into the lives and personalities of their creators as well as their social milieu. At first I thought this might be off of the main point of the book, the censorship of comics. Often in pop-culture histories the writer will take extended sidetracks into parts of the story that are fun to read and write about. While I enjoyed these section of the book I had, in my mind, judged them to be a minor flaw in the narrative structure. But I was wrong. By laying down a solid (and very interesting, especially for a comic book fan like me) foundation describing the writers, artists, publishers, and their work, it put many of the arguments of the anti-comics forces into a context that demonstrated the wrongness of their position.

Some may be surprised to read about what a big issue this was at the time. Public comic book burnings were held all over the country. Local censorship boards sprung up across the map. Congressional hearings on the subject were broadcast on live television. Major newspapers like the Hartford Courant wrote editorials calling for an end to the comics menace. Fredric Wertham's infamous comic-bashing book The Seduction of the Innocent was a bestseller. Publishers and newsstand owners were threatened with prosecution, years before the CBLDF was even imagined. It is a remarkable story.

I'd call this a must-read for any real comics fan and a good read for anyone interested in American history, pop-culture, art, or witch trials.

John

As just about everyone has pointed out by now, John should have been 70 today.

As the Blogoshere Turns

Another light week of monitoring the great blogophere brings us the Picture(s) O' the Week.  Love these takes on Starry Night from Popped Culture.  Go forth and be enlightened.

Glenn's Book of Quotes, Number Sixteen

"My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish." -- Joyce Carol Oates

Tales From the Crypt

We spent part of an afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts this week, mostly looking at the new exhibit, “The Secrets of Tomb 10A.” I've always been a sucker for ancient Egypt, so I had a wonderful time. 10A was the tomb of a governor and his wife who were mummified 4000 years ago. Sometime in the distant past Governor Djehutynakht's tomb was tumbled by grave robbers who made a hash of the place, ripping everything, including the chamber's mummified inhabitants, to bits. In 1915 archaeologists working for the MFA found the place, and the museum has spent decades putting things together. It's really quite fascinating. There were dozens of model boats, some symbolizing the boat that the dead would take on their journey in the afterlife, some representing boats used in funerals, and others of a more pedestrian nature, like kitchen barges (upon which little figures can be seen making beer) and fowling boats, used for hunting. Bits of the canopic jars where there, which surprisingly had feet instead of flat bottoms. Models of people about their work, making bricks or farming, were found near tiny representations of jars, bread, tools, weapons, and walking sticks, symbolically giving the deceased the things he would need in the afterlife.

I found the coffins themselves to be the most interesting. Little things, like the liveliness of the painted birds or the details on the doors painted on the inside were strangely moving and beautiful. Little painterly touches give one a sense of connection to a tomb artist of the Middle Kingdom period. I was reminded of Shelly's "Ozymandias." “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains.” Nothing of the power of kings and governors lasts, but art, the work of unknown carvers and tomb painters, that lasts and is still charged with power, millennia later.

The richness and complexity of their religion is daunting. It seemed as if every surface of the coffins were decorated or written on. The robbers had broken the governor's coffin apart, affording us a view of the parts that were never meant to be seen, including the places where one panel was attached to another, forming a join. I was struck by the hieroglyphs scratched into the joins of the coffin's panels. They weren't decorated, as they would be unseen, but it was still deemed necessary to write spells here. The inside of the boxes were virtual spell books, giving the dead all the words he would need to proceed safely through the complicated, hazardous, and wonderful life that awaited Egyptians on the other side.

The complexity and diversity with which human culture makes it's efforts to come to grips with the eternal never ceases to fascinate. The ancient Egyptian effort was, perhaps, the richest and most difficult of all. Intertwining mythologies that changed based on what part of the Nile Valley you came from and what century you where there, with century after century layered on top of that, created one of the greatest wonders of mankind – Egyptian religion, and all that it inspired. Remember, when Djehutynakht died the great pyramids had been standing for about five hundred years. In all that time the culture and religion didn't stand still. It kept evolving, changing, and growing. It's only natural that he needed a guidebook.

I wonder, is religion, and all its expressions, the great collaborative art project of every civilization? In attempting to grasp truths beyond our ability to comprehend, are we in fact creating truths and beauty beyond what would otherwise be our ability to create? Looking at the care and skill that those ancient artists lavished on things both simple and beautiful, reading the the prayers and incantations written for the governor, I am moved by the power of belief.