WHOP THAT STEEL ON DOWN, ON DOWN

Now for the 'rest' of the day---Shabbat month comin' soon--

Thanks for the reminder, Joyce, in regards to metaphysical and metaphorical Hammers. I was going to use John Henry too but I ran out of time! The metaphor I had in mind is Hammer and Nails and Boreds as to the limitations of materialism. But if space, time, and matter(=energy) is in fact all there is, from whence arises information? That includes everything from life itself to language, meaning, and of course music.

No one has proved what Pasteur disproved, i.e. spontaneous generation; which turns out to be a bit of a myth, doesn't it? Pasteur himself was assailed in a railroad coach by a young man who reproached him for praying the Rosary. "Surely you don't believe such things in this day and age! Come and see me in Paris and I will teach you much about science!"

It's also true that since the Urey-Miller experiments produced just what you get from smoking--tar--no one is even attempting to find out how life arose from a theoretical primordial soup. The kind of naked triumphalism of lesser scientists and those who purport to speak for science recurs over and over, proclaiming "The End of Faith"--an odd claim indeed considering that faith in something is common to all men, with the possible exception of the suicidally inclined--and yet even they have some faith--that they can do the job, for instance.

Anybody remember the pre-9/11 book, "The End of History"? These pronouncements may sell books--but are in the same category as "88 reasons why Jesus will come in '88." If that were not enough, by the next year this pastor had found an extra reason which made 89 reasons why He will come in....you guessed it...'89! Thankfully that was the end of it; instead we have nearly 300 Chicken Soup books.......Andy Warhol, come 'n get it!

Well nothing stops us second-rate writers.

Bach to music, if I may: After I mentioned Mavis Staples I went back and listened to "Freedom Highway" (in my car, of course) and if I may say so, everything I've been trying to say, and a whole lot more, is compressed into that little strand of tape..but it made me wonder again about a certain double standard; that if I talk about Jesus in public, I'm offensive; but no one goes out of their way to attack a black man's faith or proclamation..maybe it's because I haven't suffered enough but been a child ruler of enmassed privileges. And there's no way to argue that that is not the case. Any exceptions among us, "as it is to this day" ???

However, sympathy for the Jews about the Ha-Shoah seems to have run out quite some time ago. But they are a special, unsubsumable case and in many ways guaranteed to offend in the same way Joseph offended his brother hoods. And if the Jews automatically have offended, how much the more offensive to our egos is the most famous Jew of all? This is why it remains such a powerful curse word--nobody says, "O Moses!" when they hit their thumb with the proverbial ( and non-metaphysical) hammer.

(A good place for a break--hammering out blues for the common man, breaking dishes, and so on)