I Believe In You (2008)

This is a cover of a Bob Dylan song from his 1979 album "Slow Train Coming"

Her cover version retains the same words and lyrics of Dylan's orginal but taken out of context of Dylan's album, she could be singing about faith in another person.

I saw Cat Power perform this song at San Diego's "Street Scenes" music festival a few years ago. Here are links to that which I want to watch later on. link  Her guitar player was a guy named Judah Bauer who played in the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Dank U Sinterklaasje!

The mean old network Grinches have blocked high quality YouTube versions of "The Miracle On 34th Street," an old TV staple around this time of year. I did find my favorite scene of the movie--it's the scene when a young Susie (Natalie Wood) overhears Kris Kringle (Edmund Gween) speaking Dutch to a young orphaned girl from Rotterdam. Susie had been skeptical up to that point, but this scene convinced her of his authenticity.  Gween won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor that year (1947).

The scene is rarely translated (at least when I've seen it, but I haven't seen it lately).

Kris: Hello! I'm glad you came.
Dutch Girl: Oh, you are Santa Claus!
Kris: But of course!
Dutch Girl: I knew, I knew for sure that you would understand!
Kris: Of course, just tell me what you would like to have from Sinterklaus.
Dutch Girl: Nothing, I already have a lot--I only want to be with this nice lady.
Kris: Will you sing a song for me? 

The video rudely cuts off here, but here's the rest, and a translation of the lyrics:

Sinterklaas kapoentje, 

Gooi wat in mijn schoentje, 

Gooi wat in mijn laarsje, 

Dank u, Sinterklaasje. 

Christmas capon,*

Throw something in my shoe,

Throw something in my boot,

Thank you, Sinterklaas.

link

_______________
*The use of capon is interesting:  According to the Wiki:

In one way or another is the name of Klaas Capon transferred to Christmas capon. That a bishop celibate and no sexual life is like a capon, will have contributed to the association, but more important is probably that "shoe" rhymes with capon.

Fathoming Good and Evil

Photo negative of a pool taken underwater by my father ca. 1975

We humans look bilaterally symmetric, but inside we are not. Our hearts and stomachs are not symmetrically balanced, nor is our digestive tract. Bilateral (and higher) symmetry is common in nature and also appears unseen in right and left-handed versions of the same molecules.* We even speak of left and right in politics.

Then there is the symmetry of matter and anti-matter. And the symmetry of good and bad. This is something different altogether. Though the symmetry of matter and anti-matter is as symmetric as a number line, with plus and minus arrayed symmetrically about zero, only one side prevails in the world we know.  I asked a while back:

Who broke the mirror so long ago?

Who can fathom why matter prevails while the equal and opposite realm of anti-matter remains all but unrealized? 

__________________
*Right and left handed versions of the same molecules are chiral, a word which stems from a Greek word meaning handedness.

Compare & Contrast

Here's another old song by Led Zeppelin, from their 4th (1971) LP called "The Battle of Evermore":

The Queen of Light took her Bow and then she turned to go
The Prince of Peace embraced the Gloom and walked the Night alone
Oh, dance in the dark of Night, sing to the morning Light
The Dark Lord rides in force tonight, and Time will tell us all
Oh, throw down your Plow and Hoe, rest not to lock your Home
Side by side we await the Might, of the darkest of them All 

I hear the horses' Thunder down in the Valley below
I'm waiting for the Angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern Glow
The Apples of the Valley hold the Seeds of Happiness
The Ground is rich from tender Care, repay do not forget, no, no
Dance in the dark of Night, sing to the morning Light
The Apples turn to brown and black, the Tyrant's Face is red
Oh, War is the common Cry, pick up your Swords and fly
The Sky is filled with good and bad, Mortals never know 

Oh well, the Night is long, the Beads of Time pass slow
Tired Eyes on the Sunrise, waiting for the eastern Glow
The Pain of War cannot exceed the Woe of Aftermath
The Drums will shake the castle Wall, the Ring Wraiths ride in black (ride on)
Sing as you raise your Bow, (ride on) shoot straighter than before
No Comfort has the Fire at Night that lights the Face so cold
Oh, dance in the dark of Night, sing to the morning Light
The magic Runes are writ in Gold to bring the Balance back, bring it back...

At last the Sun is shining, the Clouds of blue roll by
With Flames from the Dragon of Darkness, the Sunlight blinds his Eyes

Oh, bring it back, bring it back, bring it back, bring it back, bring it back...

The story reminds me of the older (1940) animation sequence created by Walt Disney and set to music in his masterpiece, Fantasia:


Of course the original story is much older than either work of art.

I Need A Little Christmas

Resolved and Absolved

Action: I never thought of walking on the grass until I saw a sign saying 'Keep off the grass.' Then I would stomp all over it.
~Saul Alinsky

Reaction: Get off my lawn!

Resolution: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Are The "Last Letters From Stalingrad" Forgeries?

At Christmastime I like to revisit the Last Letters From Stalingrad. I did this last year. In a sense, I'm carrying on a Madison radio tradition begun in the late 1960s by George Vukelich.  I wrote about that here and even put an audio recording on YouTube beginning here.  You can read some of the letters I did last year here: link

Doubts about the authenticity of the letters are scattered around the Internet. Amazon reviews of the book here touch on the controversy (note also how pricey the out-of-print book is too). The German language link at Wikipedia link has much more on the topic than the English one. I've translated the relevant portion concerning authenticity:

Historians and media professionals first began doubting the authenticity of the Last Letters from Stalingrad in the 1960s. They claimed that they were either manipulated by a sole agent or were even outright faked. Initially, the evidence for this was a certain uniformity of style. Later, more and more comparisons were made to other letters found in Volgograd, in the Army Post Archives at the Museum for Communication in Berlin, or those collected from opened Russian archives and indexed as War Letters from Stalingrad.

Further:

The legal philosopher, jurist and Hegel-scholar Wilhelm Raimund Beyer, who himself participated in the Battle of Stalingrad, vehemently questioned the authenticity of the Last Letters from Stalingrad in one of his last publications. He spoke of 'great concerns...against the volume.' In this book, many things are true but probably not all. In addition to a 'uniform style,' Beyers also considered topics dealt with in the letters to be more than questionable. He considered the whole project an imitation of the book War Letters of German Students (1915). Also, the facts and figures and certain confessional outpourings of the letters did not coincide with his own experiences.

Despite all the doubts about their authenticity, Last Letters From Stalingrad ultimately remains controversial, especially whether and to what extent the letters, first published in 1950, are edited, manipulated or falsified.

I'm not very good at spotting "uniformity of style" (If I were I'd be dead sure about sock puppet identities amongst Althouse comments). I've read the letters several times and I don't really see that. However, having read and transcribed my own father's wartime letters home, I am struck by the near perfect grammar and similar punctuation of these letters -- all from different authors! I ascribe some of that to there having been a sole translator. Anyone who's ever done any serious German to English translation knows that a fair amount of syntactical rearrangement is involved. A sole translator might have recurring idiosyncratic tics. Perhaps the similarities are more evident in the German language edition (which I don't have but would like to own).

In my opinion, the best reason to doubt the authenticity of the letters is the lack of supporting original letters or transcripts. Allegedly, the original seven sacks of mail were ordered destroyed by the Nazis. But something survived the war to be transcribed and published in 1950. Where is this now? If the letters themselves did not survive the war then where are the original transcripts used to compile the collection? There is a chain of custody problem here regarding the extant evidence. Still, no one yet has proven that they are fake.

For me, the best reason to believe that the letters are real is just their extreme poignancy and their universal appeal: i.e., their effect--a few of them can still move me to tears, and this is certainly enhanced by authenticity. They just make life make more sense. Much like faith. 

If You're Going To San Francesco...

St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), founder of the Fransiscan order, is considered the first Italian poet by literary critics, antedating Dante by a generation. Francis of Assisi, along with Catherine of Siena, are patron saints of Italy. St. Francis is also the the patron saint of animals as well as of the environment.

The following selection was written about Francis of Assisi rather than by him. I Fioretti di San Francesco (The Little Flowers of St. Francis) was originally recorded in Latin by friar Ugolino da Montegrigio a few years after the death of St. Francis.  An Italian version first appeared in the second half of the 14th Century. The exact version here is from my trusty reader Beginning Readings in Italian and though highly abridged, the simple beauty of the language still comes through after nearly eight centuries.

I Fioretti di San Francesco was made into a film by Roberto Rossellini.  I haven't seen it yet but have it queued on Netflix. Portions of it are posted on YouTube here. That particular clip contains the Lord's Prayer in Italian which made we want to go find the written version. My first impression of the film is sort of like seeing a black and white movie version of Robin Hood. Sometimes the 13th century is best left to the writers and artists of that time:

Giotto (1266-1336) St Francis Preaching To The Birds

La Predica Agli Ucclelli

Allora San Francesco si leva con grandissimo fervore e dice: «Andiamo, al nome di Dio»: e prende per compagni frate Masseo e frate Agnolo, uomini santi. E andano con fervore di spirito arrivano a un castello che si chiama Carmano e San Francesco comincia a predicare. Predica con tanto fervore che tutti gli uomini e le donne di quell castello per devozione gli vogliono andar dietro e abbandonare il castello. E passando oltre Carmano e Bevagno, alza gli occhi e vede degli alberi, sui quali è quasi infinita moltitudine di uccelli; di che San Francesco si meraviglia e dice ai compagni: «Voi mi aspettate qui nella via e io vado a predicare alle mie sirocchie uccelli. »  E entra nel campo e comincia a predicare agli uccelli che sono in terra; e subito quelli che sono sugli alberi vengono a lui, e tutti insieme stanno ferme, mentre San Francesco finisce di predicare.

La sostanza della predica di San Francesco è questa: «Sirocchie mie uccelli, voi siete molto tenute a Dio vostro creatore poichè vi ha dato libertà di volare e vi ha dato il vestimento duplicato e triplicato; egli ha anche serbato il vostro seme nell’Arca di Noè. Voi non seminate e non mietete, e Dio vi nutre e vi  dà i fiumi e le fonti per vostro bene, e vi dà monti e le valli per vostro rifugio, e gli alberi alti per fare il vostro nido; e poichè voi non sapete filare nè cucire, Dio vi veste, voi e i vostri figlioli. Il vostro Creatore vi ama molto poichè egli vi dà tante benefici, e però guardatevi, sirocchie mie, dal peccato della ingratitudine, ma sempre lodate Dio.» Dicendo San Francesco queste parole, tutti quegli uccelli cominciano ad aprire i becchi, distendere i colli, aprire le ali e riverentemente inchinare i capi fino a terra, e con atti e con canti dimostrare che le parole del padre santo danno loro grandissimo diletto. E San Francesco insieme con loro si rallegra e si diletta, e si meraviglia molto di tanta moltitudine di uccelli e della loro bellissima varietà e della loro attenzione e familiarità. Finita la predica. San Francesco fa loro il segno della Croce a dà loro licenza di partire e allora tutti quegli uccelli si levano in aria con meravigliosi canti; e poi, secondo la Croce che aveva fatta loro San Francesco, si dividono in quattro parti: e l’una parte vola verso l’oriente, e l’altra verso l’occidente, e l’altra verso il mezzogiorno, la quarta verso il steetrione, e ciascuna schiera va cantando meravigliosi canti.
A laude di Cristo. Amen.

The Sermon To The Birds

St. Francis arises with great fervor, saying, "Let us go in the name of God"; and taking with him Brother Masseo and Brother Angelo, both holy men, they go forth guided by the Spirit of God. They come to a village called Carmiano and St. Francis begins to preach. He preaches so fervently that all the men and women of the village want to leave and follow after him out of devotion. Passing a place between Carmiano and Bevagna, St. Francis looks up and sees on the trees an almost infinite variety of birds, and being much surprised he says to his companions: "You wait for me here by the way, while I go and preach to my sisters the birds." And entering the field, he begins to preach to the birds that are on the ground, and suddenly those on the trees also come to him, and all are still until St. Francis finishes preaching. The substance of the sermon of St. Francis is this:

"My sister birds, you owe much to God, and you must always and in everyplace give praise to Him; for He has given you freedom to wing through the sky and He has clothed you two-fold and three-fold and He has preserved your species in Noah's Ark. Though you neither sow nor reap, God feeds you and gives you rivers and fountains for your thirst, and mountains and valleys for shelter, and tall trees for your nests. And although you neither know how to spin or weave, God dresses you and your children, for the Creator loves you greatly and He blesses you abundantly. Therefore, beware my sister birds of the sin of ingratitude, but always seek to praise God."

As St. Francis says these words, all the birds begin to open their beaks, to stretch their necks, open their wings and reverently bow heads to the ground, and act with songs that prove that the words of the Holy Father gives them great pleasure. And St. Francis is pleased with them and is delighted, and amazed at such a multitude of beautiful birds and their variety and their attention and familiarity. After the sermon, St. Francis makes the sign of the cross to give them permission to leave and then all the birds rise into the air with wonderful songs and then, making the sign of the cross that St. Francis had made, the flock divides into four parts: one part flies to the east, the other towards the west, and the other south, the fourth to the north, and each flock singing wonderful songs.

To the praise of Christ. Amen.

Last Letters From Stalingrad: #16

...On the evening before the Holy Day, in a hut which was still fairly intact, eleven soldiers celebrated in quiet worship...It was not easy to find them in the herd of the doubting, hopeless, and disappointed.  But those I found came happily and with a glad and open heart.  It was a strange congregation which assembled to celebrate the birthday of the Christchild. There are many altars in the wide world, but surely none poorer than ours here. Yesterday the box still held anti-aircraft shells; today my hand spread over it the field-grey tunic of a comrade whose eyes I closed last Friday in this very room.  I wrote his wife a letter of consolation.  May God protect her. 

I read my boys the Christmas story according to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 1-17; gave them hard black bread as the holy sacrifice and sacrament of the altar, the true body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and entreated the Lord to have pity on them and to give them grace.  I did not say anything about the fifth commandment.  The men sat on footstools and looked up at me from large eyes in their starved faces.  They were all young, except one, who was 51.  I am very happy that I was permitted to console their hearts and give them courage.  When it was over, we shook each other's hands, took down addresses, and promised to look up relatives and tell them about our Christmas Eve celebration in 1942, in case one of us should return home alive.

May God hold his hands over you, dear parents, for now the evening is at hand, and we will do well to set our house in order.  We will go into the evening and night calmly, if it is the will of the Lord of the world.  But we do not look into a night without end.  We give our life back into the hands of God; may He be merciful when the hour has come. 

This letter is read aloud here