Godspell "Beautiful City"

 

I was struck in Sutter Street Theatre's production of the 2012 revival of "Godspell" with how humanistic (rather than entirely religious) the lyrics of "Beautiful City" are. It's all the more remarkable considering that the song comes around the Last Supper. I'd like to be able to sing this song, in a humanistic way. Lyrics:

We can build

A beautiful city

Yes we can

Oh yes we can

We can build

A beautiful city

Call it out

And call it the city of man 

Curiosity Avoids a Field of Knives

Mars is a dangerous place for machines:

 

These rocks, known as ventifacts, are wind-sharpened rocks, and Curiosity has had a previous run-in with ventifacts before.

Early in the missions, Curiosity's wheels suffered some wear and tear after rolling over them. But there are more of these ventifacts in the field Curiosity came across on March 18 than the rover has ever encountered. They're made from sandstone, the hardest rock found by the rover on Mars to date. 

"It was obvious from Curiosity's photos that this would not be good for our wheels," said Megan Lin, Curiosity Project Manager at JPL, in a statement. "It would be slow going, and we wouldn't have been able to implement rover-driving best practices."

Vladimir Putin's "Blueberry Hill"

Vladimir Putin sings Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill" to various Hollywood celebrities in St. Petersburg in 2018:

 

Speaking To Graves

The coverage of the war in Ukraine has been excellent on Daily Kos, capturing not only the military news, but what it likely portends. 

There was a strange incident in Russia recently, where a large number of people driving earthmovers labeled "Z" gathered outside the graveyard to World War II's Katyn Massacre. In a speech directed to the graves on loudspeaker, the organizers announced they could easily erase the graves, but wouldn't do so because they were "good people." 

Creepy??? What on Earth does it mean? 

The Katyn Massacre was where the Soviets executed 20,000 Polish soldiers and officials. Stalin blamed the Nazis for the massacre. The truth was an open secret. The Russian government only reluctantly acknowledged responsibility for their actions in 1990. 

My guess is that even the Russians acknowledge limits on their ability to alter reality through official pronouncement. By erasing the graves the Russians could restore their innocence. Massacre? What massacre? They weren't going to do that - at least for now. But it's hard to miss the menace and threat. Today's Russians could get worse - much worse - but for the moment, they remain their amiable selves. Just don't defy them.

First, threatening to destroy graves makes you good? Second, who the hell are they talking to over that loud speaker? Ghosts?

Salad Bags

I talked to a dietitian about ways to improve my diet. I'm not big on fruit, but eating more salads seemed like an option. 

I confessed to her that I hate to eat salads that I make myself. My salads never seem to taste good. I much prefer to eat salads made by other people - people who have the imagination and experience to assemble the good-tasting ingredients that excite both rabbits and people. 

The dietitian suggested using those prepackaged salad bags that you find in supermarkets. A good idea!  So, I started chewing my way through salad bags. Life was good. 

I'm not sure what I'll do now that the place where the salad bags come from burned to the ground yesterday. I hope the salad bag industry is strategically-hardened, with more salad bag places scattered elsewhere. If worse comes to worse, I might have to make my own salads again:

Experts were waiting to see what kind of impact the fire will have to stores like Safeway and Walmart, which sell Taylor Farms packaged salads.

"To have something like this happen in a transition period is just tragic," said Steve Del Masso, owner of Bay Cities Produce Co. Inc. in San Leandro. "This is such an important time in California. All your major processors like Taylors are moving from Arizona, where they’ve been for 6 months to California."

Officials with Taylor farms said in a statement Thursday that they will shift production their 20 other locations around the country, including thief facility in Yuma, Ariz. '

"Our total production locations and geographic diversity is our best defense to this scenario," the statement says. "We will work to reassign and support our Salinas Foodservice production team this season as we rebuild the facility."

Alpha and Beta

Stressful among the birds today at the feeding spot. They are SO hungry! I shovel out the seed. I watched two pigeons bully a sparrow. A sparrow! No dignity left, it seems, among the rock doves. 

Here is a picture of two pigeons, Alpha and Beta, fighting over seeds. Alpha was very aggressive, and pushed out Beta. As I approached, I could see him sizing me up for battle. You don’t want that, tweety! I’m a hundred times bigger than you are. I can sit on you! Go away!

Genocidal Rage

We are living in dangerous times. It's pretty clear that the Russian failure to subjugate Ukraine has led to a rage that can be satisfied only by annihilating everyone. Stepping back from that brink will be hard. Even military necessity might not be enough:

Written by journalist and Kremlin-aligned political operative Timofey Sergeytsev and published in RIA-Novosti, the article answers the question posed by its headline: “What should Russia do with Ukraine?”

The answer, Sergeytsev writes, is total annihilation. He writes that “all who have associated themselves with Nazism should be liquidated and banned.”

Sergeytsev urges Russian soldiers to be merciless and force Ukraine to its knees and calls for more of the same inhumane tactics that took place in Bucha and the towns of Mariupul and Berdyansk.

...Sergeytsev’s piece merits close attention because RIA-Novosti is one of the three largest news agencies in Russia and has a mass circulation. It functions as a loyal mouthpiece of the Russian government and has an inordinate impact on what Russians see and hear about the war in Ukraine.

...Sergeytsev is an experienced Russian political operative who worked on behalf of the Russian government to prop up pro-Russian Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma in 1991. He also supported Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, whose questionable election victory, promoted by Putin, resulted in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004.

Sergeytsev is also a member of the Russian far right Zinoviev Club, named after Alexander Zinoviev. Zinoviev was a champion of Josef Stalin as a model leader, the murderous dictator who ruled the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953.

...In the invented world he describes in his article, Sergeytsev accuses both Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko and current President, Volodymyr Zelensky, of using “total terror” against the Russian “anti-fascists in Odesa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol and other Russia cities.”

As for the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lukhansk in Ukraine’s east, where pro-Russian separatists have fought Ukraine over the past eight years, Sergeytsev says they have been bravely rebelling “against Ukrainian Nazism.”

Sergeytsev calls for the destruction of all “Nazis that have taken up arms” and that they “should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield.”

He includes the Ukrainian armed forces, the national battalions, the territorial defense forces and “a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis” and “are also guilty.”

All “are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, and do not comply with laws and customs of war,” Sergeytsev writes.

...In order to achieve the ultimate goal of “de-Ukrainization,” Sergeytsev calls for a rejection of Ukrainian ethnicity and the peoples’ right to self-determination.

Echoing Putin, Sergeytsev writes that Ukraine has never been a nation state, adding that its attempts at becoming independent have led to “Nazism.”

Sergeytsev calls on all of Ukraine’s elite to be “liquidated” and “the social swamp which actively and passively supports it should undergo the hardship of war and digest the experience as a historical lesson and atonement.”

A Vote of Confidence

Mama Scrub Jay is back in this cypress tree for another year! I can hear her nestlings. Her choice is a vote of confidence. This is the closest safe location a bird can build a nest from my feeding spot - 25 feet, or so. With seeds covered, Mama Bird can focus on getting what baby birds really like - worms, spiders, and such.

A Different Kind of Campaign

Woke up from a strange dream. For a variety of technical reasons, Donald Trump wouldn’t be able to be a candidate on the 2024 Republican primary ballot. Instead, I would run in his place. I promise a “different” kind of campaign.