Mazurland Blog

Some Real, Meaningful Art

What is this piece of Sculpture?  Where is it located?  Who made it? 

These are questions, when asked of an art history major or liberal arts grad, they can usually tell you.

And of course there are many works of art that the average person in the street can identify at a glance.

So look at this one, and then I'll tell you about it after the jump

 

This statue currently resides in a former Iraqi Palace, which is now headquarters of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division. It depicts an Iraqi girl conforting an American Soldier as he mourns at a memorial for his fallen comrades in arms.  The Boots, upturned rifle with helmet placed atop with dog tags has been used as a grave marker by US troops since World War 1.

Evenually, when US combat troops leave Iraq, this statue will go with them, and be placed in the Memorial Museum in Fort Hood, Texas.

This sculpture was created by an Iraqi sculptor named Kalat.  His former occupation was forced labor by Saddam Hussein.  Kalat's job was to create the thousands of bronze busts and statues of Saddam which were placed throughout the country.

Kalat was so grateful to the United States Armed Forces for liberating his country, that he melted down 3 of the fallen head busts of Saddam he had made and recast them into this piece of art, Honoring the American Soldiers and Marines, and their fallen comrades.

Several months of 18 hour workdays were spent creating this memorial.

Why haven't you heard about this in the news? 

1. It has no "Shock Value"

2. It is heart-warming and inspiring

3. It shows the people of Iraq are happy to be free, and thankful to America for that freedom, and the price that America paid for them.

OF COURSE the MSM would avoid this like the plague.

ht military.com news

A Call from the RNC

For about the last week, I've been getting calls from the Republican National Committee.  I figured they want money, but I didn't get to the phone in time to talk with them until last night. 

They didn't like what I had to say, especially since they thought I should give the RNC 200.00

This was my reply--

      In 2001 the Party had the majority--and fiscal conservatism went right out the window. For 5 years the GOP took a page from the Liberal playbook and went SPEND SPEND SPEND, while the GOP president lost his veto pen, and didn't find it for 5 YEARS. 

    OUR PARTY kicked open the door for the disaster that is the Obama Administration, and a Democrat Congress gone buck wild, spending trillions of dollars that we don't have, and the GOP lost so many seats that we can't do anything about it.   I cannot in good faith donate money to the RNC for the piss poor performance in Fiscal Conservatism that may be the first step in the downfall of our republic.

RNC telemarketer: BUT WE DID STAND UP TO THEM ON THE STIMULUS BILL

To which I replied: Your genesis of fiscal conservatism comes 8 YEARS TOO LATE, and without the majority we HAD, it's worthless and a moot point.

I'll continue to support the party with MY VOTE, but I need to keep my money TO PAY THE TAXES THAT OBAMA IS ALREADY LAYING ON US.   CLICK.

I'm sure he probably hears variations of the same spiel on every call he makes a connection on.

Why So Low?

Instapundit posts that Obama's numbers are slipping -- in the Nielsen category.  Apparently, Clinton's SOTU attracted 67 million viewers, Bush's, 66 million, and Barack Obama of the Hussein-Obamas -- a whopping 52 million. 

There are, I believe, a number of rational explanations (as opposed to "spin") for this.  Disaffection with the political process, concern over the economy causing people to want to avoid bad news, increasing polarization of our political landscape driving Republicans and conservatives away (this is my excuse -- Obama's voice makes me uncomfortable with its stilted, halting, and somewhat monotone nature), etc.  But Obama is supposed to be one of the most incredibly popular presidents in living memory -- so why aren't people tuning in for Hope and Change? 

My theory:  particularly given the last month or so, many, many people, deep down inside, instinctively know they've been swindled.  They really love the Hopey Changemas that Obama brought, and want to keep that feeling, and want to be inspired by the man.  But again, something inside them is very, very quietly telling them that maybe he's not "The One", maybe he won't make things all better, and maybe they picked the wrong horse.  And the only way to avoid confirming those suspicions?  By not watching him!  By avoiding all direct exposure to him!  That way, the man of their dreams and the man in the Oval Office can stay one in the same, and the cognitive dissonance that makes everyone fell all wonky on the inside will just... go away... 

It sort of reminds me of a Lifetime Channel movie.  You know, the one where the wife dotes over her husband, but the husband is a no-good philanderer who doesn't even really try to hide it.  So he keeps all his "mementos" of his various exploits in his closet, which the wife dutifully avoids entering or examining, because she knows that if she does, her worst suspicions will be confirmed, which she simply can't have.  So she goes about her day, willfully ignoring what's plainly in front of her face, so as to maintain the facade that her husband is still the man she married.  Democrats (and a few pathetic Republicans):  you are officially the victimized woman of a Lifetime movie!  Suckers!

Attende Domine

I wrote here a couple of years ago that I prefer Advent liturgical music to the never-ending stream of insipid Christmas carols one hears for months before Christmas. Christmas music is inappropriate before Christmas, and the secular carols, in particular, are grating. Advent is about preparation and watchfulness. The music is very beautiful, and appropriate.

Thankfully, there's something about Easter, the most important Christian Holy Day, that makes it a bit more immune to being overrun by worldly culture. Easter is not about babies and presents. It's about life, death, and ultimate meaning, things that are harder for the secular world to co-opt. Easter music is joyful, but I'm sure the joy would be less if we had to listen to it for weeks before-hand, everywhere we went.

But there is a preparation time for Easter, and it's much longer than Advent. That time is Lent, which begins today, Ash Wednesday. And Lent also has some beautiful music. Because the theme of Lent is repentance, there is no secular Lenten music. And much of the modern liturgical Lenten music is not to my liking. But here is one of the most beautiful of all Lenten songs, Attende Domine (Hearken, O Lord), which is known as the Lent Prose. It's a Gregorian chant, written in the 10th century. One of the beautiful things about it is that it is a song of penitence written in a major key (for you music theory buffs, it's Church mode V, or Lydian mode, which has a sharpened fourth). There's a great deal of trust, hope, and joy in the sounds of this song of submission, sorrow, and contrition.

Here is the English translation of the Latin words.

[HT - Anchoress]

Hollywood Re-Makes Another

I've come to the conclusion that Hollywood hasn't had an original thought since the mid-70's.  Look at the crap they release and have the guts to ask you to pay to see at the Movies.  Mostly these days re-makes of 50's 60's and 70's TV shows, comic books and movies too.

I think the image below would be the 2nd re-make of a popular series of Movie Shorts from the 40's.

And the soundtrack begins with a parody of a hit by Little Anthony and the Imperials

"OH, I THINK I'M IN WAY OVER MY HEAD, YES I KNOW I'M IN WAY OVER MY HEAD.......

OH, IT'S TRUE......

Live It Up!

You should be preparing yourself for Lent, which starts tomorrow. But have a great Mardi Gras. Sinner.

A Real Card

Even before he became a Mazurland author, people suspected that Hank wasn't playing with a full deck of cards. His writings here have tended to confirm that suspicion. But Hank has always dealt from the top of the deck, and plays it straight: no wild cards, no four-flushing. And despite the seriousness of his bio photo, Hank's no poker face. He lets his emotion shine through everything he writes. But, maybe you think that makes Hank an easy read? Well then, what's his tell? Just when you think you've got the guy figured out, he puts out a new post on some off the wall topic. We've enjoyed having Hank in the game the last year-and-a-half. And now he's got his full deck. Hank, the oldest Mazurland Brother by a few weeks, turns 52 today. Wish him a Happy Mazurland Birthday!

Waiting On The World To Change

Mazurland frequently links to the usually hysterically funny work of "Iowahawk" Dave Burge. But when I visited Burge's site yesterday, there was a serious post and I was saddened. Burge reports the death of his sponsored African child, Bakouma Kpatekatola, to malaria. Kpatekatola was 14. The post touched home with me, in part because my wife and I also sponsor a child in an impoverished part of the world subject to diseases that we in the developed world rarely think about. Our child, Roduelo, is 8 and lives in Honduras. We correspond with him indirectly through translators at his sponsoring organization, the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging. As had Burge, I have often wondered about the life our sponsored child Roduelo leads, and have had occasion to be concerned about his welfare. The sponsoring agency says that malnutrition is a continual problem in the region where Roduelo lives. I've gotten reports that he has been fighting some illness, which has not been revealed to us by the sponsoring agency. The illness has kept him out of school.

At times I also wonder whether the small good that agencies like CFCA do has any measurable, long-term impact on the general problems children in the Third World face. Though CFCA and such agencies do measurable (and immeasurable) good to the lives they touch, the total number of sponsored children must be absolutely dwarfed by the number of children these agencies just do not have the resources to reach. But then I think that there are other agencies out there devoted to helping to solve the larger, systemic problems in those parts of the world. And we can contribute to those groups, and still help one or two individuals along the way.

But there are also well-funded groups out there, groups that think of themselves as well-intentioned, with the larger good in mind, but whose idea of the larger good guarantees the continued misery and death of many thousands in the developing world. Kpatekatola was one of tens of thousands of people who died last year of malaria. The impact of that disease could be greatly abated by indoor residential spraying of DDT, a practice that worldwide environmental groups have for years succeeded in stymieing. The radical environmentalists would ignore the deaths of many thousands to make sure that even restricted use of DDT is banned. Luckily, there seems to be some progress in turning the tide on this issue.

Next month, my daughter Christina will be spending her Spring Break in Honduras with a group called Global Medical Brigades. For a week, she'll be honing her already admirable Spanish skills and helping doctors at a clinic in a small village. She has had her shots and has started her course of antimalarial drugs, which she'll have to continue for weeks after her return Stateside. She'll return with a new perspective on the life that most of the world lives. I'll share with you what she brings back.

You Know You're A Mazur If...

Ben, Paul, and I have written recently about our experiences with the web networking site Facebook. All three of us have grown to be, to some degree, hooked. Facebook has yet to get its hooks into Chris, who seems both unimpressed and perplexed by the phenomenon. And none of us can imagine Hank on Facebook. But there may be one way to get the latter two involved, at least indirectly. My young cousin Malina Mazur and her fiancé Eric Montz have put up a Facebook group called "You Know You're A Mazur If..." The header description for the group has the list of things that help you know if you're a Mazur that have been contributed so far. Some of the list is very specific to the parochial precincts of the Cheektowaga Mazurs, a liberal outpost of the Mazur Clan headed by Malina's dad, my uncle Tom. But a few of the charter invitees, Paul in particular, have "universalized" the group a bit, adding the perspectives of different politics, upbringing, and life experience, and showing the youngsters that despite all the differences, there really is a lot of common Mazur ground.

Over the last couple of years, Mazurland Blog has added Brothers Hank and Ben to its masthead, though they were not of Mazur blood. (Ben's not even Polish!). But we knew all along that they would merit inclusion in our little extended family here at Mazurland Blog. Now they can see how they do relative to the checklist on the Facebook group.

It's a global open group, so anyone can view it. And you don't have to join Facebook to see the group's page, but you do if you want to contribute. Or you can add your own contributions here in the comments and we'll forward them along.

Why I'm So Quiet

So I took it upon myself to teach a class at the university where I work this semester.  Being a research engineer at an on-campus laboratory, teaching is more-or-less a thankless task -- my overlords, of course, still expect no diminution of my research output, and generally no particular recompense is made for those who go over to an academic unit to teach.  That being the case, I "played the system" and arranged to be paid supplementally for my efforts.  The requirement of such an arrangement, of course, is that I do all the work for the course on my own time.  Since the course itself is approximately over my lunch break, I was able to finagle such consideration.  And this being a senior-level engineering course that I have never taught before, the work load is extraordinary.  Typically, I am up until midnight or 1:00 a.m. each night preparing lecture slides.  Thus, with all my free time taken up by the course, my blogging efforts are somewhat diminished.  The good news is that I have a whole host of observations that will make excellent future posts, particularly about the sad state of modern collegiate education (and the apparent precipitous decline it took even in the mere decade or so since I was in its thrall!), even in the hard sciences.  The bad news is that I won't get around to making those observations in this medium until after the class is over -- both due to time constraints and out of a sense of propriety -- I'd hate to make a potentially negative comment and have it read by a current student (not that they would have any reason to know about my link to this site, but you never know -- I always cyber-stalked my professors, after all!). 

So in the meantime, I leave you with one of my favorite new websites:  This Is Why You're Fat.