PART SIX

Previously-posted without photos.

Rock Operaepic: Helicopters, Gunships and Tanks

A Rock Operaepic ... [using the Yiddish Dictionary Online]
PART SIX
[We do not know how to write a Fugue, so here follows a treatment of suppositions for four timbres for the 4 parts of the work... when someone writes it.]

Fugue-cophany --
Part One: Hamas Israeli battle for Gaza
While ground forces battle Hamas fighters in the streets, Israeli warplanes have pummeled targets in Gaza near Rafah, the town that straddles the Gaza-Egypt border. Israel's demand to block arms shipments through the so-called Philadelphi corridor, the strip of land separating Gaza and Egypt, is a central point in cease-fire talks. [SOURCE]

Part Two: Goat Heads in the Mists
The goats being raised on a farm in central Massachusetts are genetically engineered to make a human protein in their milk that prevents dangerous blood clots from forming. The company extracts the protein and turns it into a medicine that fights strokes, pulmonary embolisms and other life-threatening conditions.

GTC has asked the Food and Drug Administration to OK the drug, called ATryn. An expert panel voted overwhelmingly Friday that it is safe and effective, putting it on the verge of becoming the first drug from a genetically engineered animal to be approved in the U.S. The agency is expected to make a final decision in early February. [SOURCE]

Part Three: Who will be National Champion?
Florida's win over Oklahoma makes it the undisputed national champion, except for those arguments from USC, Utah and Texas.
Chris Dufresne 5:55 PM PST, January 9, 2009
Was it really that bad?
Didn't it all, in the end, after five months, a thousand howls and 34 bowls, work out for the conspiracy theorists, playoff advocates and, most of all, Florida? [SOURCE]

Part Four: Can we get real? Burkhas gotta' go.
More women are giving up pricey treatments and putting off hair and nail touch-ups in favor of cheaper at-home maintenance.
By Monica Corcoran | January 11, 2009
"The weave is gone. Forget about it," says Rebecca Opong, as she leans on the counter of African Image Beauty Supply & Salon on Western Avenue. She sighs. "The economy is bad. Now, they all want half-wigs."

On this recent Saturday afternoon, the chairs in the corner hair salon of Opong's shop are empty, but a steady flow of customers slip in and head for a wall of Black Pearl and Magic Touch synthetic wigs and ponytails that run from $9.99 to $23.99. (A weave -- a process in which human or synthetic tresses are woven into natural hair -- usually costs upward of $200 and lasts about three months.) A teenage girl wearing a Fendi scarf on her head browses wigs with her mom. Both closely compare price tags. "See?" Opong says. "She's not getting a weave anymore." [SOURCE]

PART SEVEN -- FINALE

Posters, Pimps and Planets of undeterred Bloodshed

PART SEVEN
by Samantha Darnell
and Sylvia Darnell-Boykin

Blog Chatter January 29, 2009 | for Opera Epic
1. Afghanistan 2. Blagojevich 3. Business Leaders 4. Climate Change 5. Economy 6. Emissions 7. Home Prices 8. SEC 9. Stimulus Plan 10. Updike

HISTORY.com -- What if life on Earth began in outer space? Millions of people accept the theory that intelligent life forms visited Earth thousands of years ago and were worshiped as gods by primitive man. Are monuments like Stonehenge and Easter Island the last remains of an ancient alien visitation? From unexplainable super structures, to knowledge of the solar system, mathematics, and even the ability to make electricity, this special explores evidence of super-human influences on ancient man and embarks on an around-the-world search for answers. It's an investigation into a theory some believe cannot be true, but many agree cannot be ignored. (New--2009 special.)

PART SEVEN Act Three -- I am a Planet

[Finale]

Rock Operaepic: Helicopters, Gunships and Tanks

A Rock Operaepic ... [using the Yiddish Dictionary Online]

I Am a Planet
[Two Planets, that love each other, have been drifting apart since the mass was cloved. It is a bastard child they share, who floats between their two gravities in a love relationship of immense material proportions]

I am a planet
One of texias kichas zillions smillions planets
in a solar system
in a galaxy
in a universe
in a super universe
I have height and depth
I have width and breadth

And space... lots of space
Life lies asleep
Slepus Nimbus billion zillion years
then when conditions are just right
life happens very fast
life multiples
making a soup of
a Planet like me

I am alive in the universe...
(Samantha Darnell)
____________________
War Crimes

What would we do
if we were there
entombed in pits
of warish despair
in life withstanding
depths of death
depicting forms of breath and dread

Forestalling gnaws' en grinding pangs
of hunger's claws en caving frames
where human screams
of loss and stench
are heaped on mounds
of sorrows pains

Of burning rotting
flesh of men
twisted forms of
carcass's maimed
unspoken horrors
claim control
as infestation carves
the soul
When eyes vacate
the pitted holes
where once Hope of God
took hold

Hopelessness of time and space
when love forgets the human race
where cries of children
have no place
but to reveal
the power of hate.

what would

we do if
we were there
devoid of care, defense or help
what could we do if we were there
shackled in War's tomb
of Hell.
(Sylvia Darnell-Boykin)
___________________
Rock Fiction

Out there over the rainbow
rocks lie dead
there men's day dream
of passions never tread

The way to wish
upon a star
is with a gooey
large Mars Bar
and when we gaze
upon the Moon
recall advising
of the Spoon:

'Success... is not a whim
nor a wish
but elopement
with the Dish'

Carpe diem
squeals the squirrel
fuzzy furry
tail unfurled
seizing ripest
fruit of day
for life he knows'
might soon decay

If you wish
upon a star
though still
you wonder where
you are
fret no further
search not far
you're at your rainbow

There you are,
there you are,
there you are.
(Sylvia Darnell-Boykin)
_________________________
Finale: To All -- To One

Check the stakes
learn the moves
test the tone
determine the mood

give or take
remain unmoved
shoulders straight
slump not
nor brood...

All things
all men
try politics
bless us all
heretics

scratch this way
scrape that way
look way past,
past your way

trim the fat
connect waves
grasp at drifts
contiguous chords
rest at rift

famine beast
sword or lie
eagles's feast
forget to fly

Hover fast
count a third
flitting hummingbird
suckling living words

not too full
thence lift away

above ground
mount clouds
new forms
true, not proud

to all -- to one --
scratch this way
scrape that way
look way past,
past your way

(Sylvia Darnell-Boykin)
GAZA --

The END

Excerpt: Review of Yiddish Writers...

Songs For the Butcher's Daughter
By Peter Manseau | April 2009

[...] (Retrieved by PD HERE) "In the midst of Malpesh’s highly articulate narrative, what is the effect of the hackneyed rhymes and inept scansion of his verses? How does this presentation of his poems reflect on his self-image and reputation as a poet?"

...All these threads weave together into a tightly structured, ingenious, and moving plot that crosses geographical, literary, and emotional boundaries in unexpected ways. Manseau is himself a lapsed Catholic who has been at the heart of Yiddish literature without ulterior motives, for the sheer love of it; Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter is his shir-hashirim (Song of Songs) to Yiddish culture.

Excerpts

[I]f Yiddish writers had one thing in common, I discovered, it was the kind of passionate irreligiosity that can only be found among those who’d been born, raised, and sickened by spiritual tradition. In a poem by Malpesh’s contemporary Jacob Glatshteyn, a line struck me as few ever have: The God of my unbelief is magnificent.
Like so much of what I would find in the warehouse’s holdings, these words spoke to me as if they’d come from a catechism for those whom faith had failed. (pages 6–7)

The shop’s tables, I now saw, were covered with wooden blocks of varying sizes, each one carved with a single letter; they were literally the building blocks of words. There were also blocks carved with every imaginable mark of punctuation. [The editor] lifted one displaying a cartoonish “!” and put it in my hand.
“Have you ever held a shout before?” he asked. (page 70)

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, Isaac, if it is bashert that we be together, what that truly means?…
I ask you, Do you believe that God watches over us as your father once watched over his goose-plucking machine? Do you believe that we are moved through life as though on wheels and belts to be plucked and killed for purposes beyond our understanding?
That is what bashert entails, and I do not accept a universe that functions with such appalling precision.
I will not send you this letter because I know if I do, you will find me. And when you do, I would fall into your arms as autumn leaves fall from the trees, naturally, inevitably, with no choice but to do what they were made to do. But in finding me, we would once again say yes to bashert. We would once again be strapped to God’s awful machine. (pages 355–356)

Questions for Discussion

1. The young narrator (and his author) have absorbed Yiddish and its world not through indelible cultural memory transmitted by parents and grandparents, but by an act of deep cultural sympathy and compulsive reading. How do you respond to the inquisitive and loving, rather than hostile, gaze of a non-Jewish writer who has learned some of the family secrets?

2. For immigrants in the early 20th century, being Jewish was often a source of shame. To the lapsed-Catholic narrator and his bal-tshuve (“born-again”) girlfriend, being Jewish is interesting and even somewhat glamorous. What generational differences in attitudes toward Jewishness have you observed among your own family and friends?

3. Clara’s “pretty little prayer book” is based on a real 20th-century publication. Similar publications go back almost all the way to Gutenberg, and in fact represent some of the earliest printed Yiddish books. What are your reactions to this history?

4. The young narrator apologizes for his inadequate translations of Malpesh’s poems (and Manseau as author takes a sly dig at bad translations of Yiddish poems generally). In the midst of Malpesh’s highly articulate narrative, what is the effect of the hackneyed rhymes and inept scansion of his verses? How does this presentation of his poems reflect on his self-image and reputation as a poet?

The Jewish Reader is a publication of the National Yiddish Book Center | Amherst, MA | editor: Nancy Sherman | www.jewishreader.org

Music of the PLO -- to shoot missiles by

GAZA -- With that Hit Single "Why do Frauds"

Sung to this Tune:




Why do frauds never admit they are frauds?
Why do the flawed never admit their flaws
Don't they know
It's the end of the world
It ended when you crossed the walls

Why do our Hamas keep on spinning
Why is this Fatah man grinning --
All that we did was lob missiles
on gardens and fruit trees
couldn't you work around them
while we live out our denial...
over here?

Don't you know
we're a seven headed beast
of fourteen ears, and seventy claws;
on fourteen feet
and a most frightening call:
-- Hee Haw!

RAW Footage of GAZA

You Gotta Keep 'em Separated