Dixie Chicks

The Dixie Chicks were in Oakland last week and Karen and I had the opportunity to see them in concert. I was not really that aware of their music all that much, but was aware of the controversy that surrounded them in 2003, when Natalie Maines, their lead singer, made a remark that was widely reviled in the country music business. (She basically said that she was ashamed that the President was from Texas). This was on the eve of the war and "patriotism" was running high as were the President's approval ratings.

So, being fervently anti-war myself, I was interested in seeing them, even though I didn't know much of their music. I had bought their current album just a few days before so that I had some background to go on and liked some of the songs.

Well, the concert exceeded my expectations, both for the music, which I find infectious and really engaging, and the girls are all great musicians - but for the reception the crowd gave them and the support for their position.

Then, yesterday I saw the documentary "Shut Up and Sing", which is about the Dixie Chicks and their story since that fateful day in 2003 when Natalie said what she said. I would encourage everyone who believes in free speech and is concerned about what is happening with the whole idea of free thought and real debate about issues to see the movie.

I'm very enamored of the Dixie Chicks right now and have now become a fan for life. One can only hope that they never shut up and by all means do keep singing.

Post Holiday Cranky Thanks Days

The Friday after Thanksgiving Day continues to be one of the best do-nothing days of the year, and so my best intentions for writing this posting yesterday have fallen into Saturday instead.

Not a complete waste of a day, however, as I spent the day contemplating the meaning or meaninglessness of life by thinking about whether there is anything to be thankful for, and if so how to gauge it against all the meaningless violence and retribution that seems to be engulfing life in lots of other places on this shiny blue ball of a planet - not to mention the riots in our very own shopping malls as we continue getting up before dawn in our pursuit of the almighty saving of the dollar and the yearly sport of pushing and elbowing our way past our fellow man to the last item left on sale at our local retailer.

Scary stuff indeed. Made me quite happy to be slouching on my couch, curled up in a ball and just gazing out into the yard watching the maples and the birch and the apricot tree losing their leaves on a crisp fall day.

Then I remembered a brief conversation from dinner on Thursday night, initiated by Justin Hersh, a good friend of the family and superb chef who contributes mightily to the Thanksgiving feast experience, about an article on the new atheism in Wired magazine.

Being a man of the natural world versus the supernatural world, I decided to check it out and it quickly became a day of deep thought about where I stand on the atheism, agnostic, belief in faith scale and I spent the better part of the afternoon both reading the article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/atheism.html and then doing further research on one of the proponents listed in the article, Richard Dawkins.

Well, this totally made the day for me and for those of you so inclined, there's more on Richard Dawkins at this site http://richarddawkins.net/home. I especially liked the YouTube video of his reading from his recent book, "The God Delusion" to a group of students and others in Lynchburg, Va., of all places, followed up by a video of the Q & A from the same evening. Definitely worth watching.

This all led to a great conversation with Karen (Zukor) and we followed it up by going to see "Little Children", Todd Field's current film about suburban angst and emotional dysfunction, not exactly holiday uplift, but well worth seeing, though we left emotionally drained and had to immediately satiate our emptiness with some excellent Indian food at Khana Peena in Berkeley.

So, in the spirit of the season, my cranky thanks list, in no particular order:

• Thank (no god) that there are people of rational thought left in the world that continue to challenge conventional wisdom and belief and challenge us to think period.
• Thanks to moderate and independent swing voters for giving the President a rebuff and giving the Democrats a chance to screw it all up.
• Thanks to Tom Stoppard for taking on the writing of a three part trilogy play about Russian thinkers in the 19th century - how esoteric can you get.
• Thanks to all of my grandparents for emigrating to the US so that I could be born here and spend my life pursuing all kinds of things not available to a good chunk of the rest of the world, like therapy, for instance.
• Thanks to my corporate employers over the years that have given me the means, and mostly paid for, my being able to travel and see the rest of that world I'm glad I wasn't born into, but still really like learning about anyway.
• And, thanks to family. Gotta love them all. And without them, what would we have to complain about anyway.

Reflecting Mirrors

If you've never seen the Japanese form of dance called Butoh, or seen its main proponent, Sankai Juku, then you've missed one of the most beautiful pieces of art that exists.

I've seen Sankai Juku a number of times over the years, both at their home base in Paris, and locally, and have to say that they are the one dance troupe I would go out of my way to see and would always stay over in any city that they were in that I was visiting.

Last night we saw a piece that was created in 2000, but which I had never seen - Kagemi, Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors. It was stunning, as usual, and different, as usual, from every other piece I've seen of theirs.

You can check out a review from the SF Chronicle - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/16/DDGBHMCVDM1.DTL.

I mostly agree with the review, though I also think it's understated in the way that Amagatsu (the founder and choreographer of Sankai Juku) uses sparity and minimal movement combined with white to create both a gentle elegance and stunning, restful beauty with the tension and possibility of violence and dissonance always lingering at the edges. As in one of the segment titles, it is an infinite dialogue that the human race struggles with and one of the mirrors we need to hold up to ourselves and constantly examine.

Meanwhile, Back at the Farm...

The Domergue side of the family continues to thrive. Just got back from a nice week in France where my sister Karen, my parents and I went to the family farm for a few days to help celebrate my mother's cousin Gaston and his wife Nadine's 40th wedding anniversary, and then Karen and I went to Paris for 3 wonderful days.

It was the week before the election, and I would have to say that the feeling amongst all the friends and family that I talked to was universal disdain for the Bush presidency and so I'm sure they're joining all of us in celebrating the results of last week's elections and subsequent events.

But, back to the farm, and France. It continues to be one of my favorite places in the world. The countryside is just so lush and beautiful and (perhaps because of the family connection), I always just feel so grounded there.

The family now has three houses - the original farmhouse, which is where Francoise and his family are now living, a somewhar smaller house just down the hill where Gaston and Nadine are now living (Francoise and family were there until this year), and Christian's house which is just a short walk away. The business seems to be doing well with both the dairy and the veal production, and they've even added solar panels to the original farmhouse.

The 40th anniversary celebration was food, food and more food. After a morning mass in the local (Flagnac) church, it was on to a 7 course, 5 hour lunch for 100 people, followed by a 3 hour break and then dinner for 60 people. Dinner, thankfully, was much simpler, but did feature our second major dessert of the day. A truly fantastic celebration. Congratulations to Gaston and Nadine.

More on the rest of the trip later.

Are We Happy Now?

Greetings all. Long time between postings, I know.

Well, I couldn't let pass the opportunity to comment on last week's events, because, we should be happy right?

I think we should, but I also think there are some interesting times and dialogues ahead. Clearly there is a mood for some change in the country. Unclear exactly whether that change is one of the radical kind or whether people are just so fed up with politics as a whole (because even with all of this, we still have a minority of the eligible electorate even bothering to vote).

I think it has to be a positive that we weren't subjected to this notion of pandering to a small base of highly energized voters being the only basis for victory and that we didn't have to hear about "values" as the driving force behind voting patterns. Yes, same sex marriage continues to be voted down, except in Arizona of all places - but people of common sense seem to still exist in places like South Dakota, where they had the good sense to vote down a complete ban on abortion that was highly misogynistic in nature and did pander to that "values" idea that I continue to think has no particular place in the discussion of what we actually want government to do.

So, with Rumsfeld now gone, Bolton likely to go, Santorum gone, Dems in control of House and Senate (and all that implies), Bush in full contrition mode, perhaps we can have some realistic political debates about war and peace, The proper role of the US in the world, deficits and the selling of the country to foreign interests, health care, etc.

The next two years do seem crucial to any hope or idea of a government, divided or not, working to take the best ideas from either side of the political spectrum and trying to raise the level of hope and expectations for all citizens as we head into what should be a very interesting presidential election cycle.

Stay tuned.