Posted: December 31st, 2009
Happy New Year everyone!
Posted: December 12th, 2009
The yellow post-it notes were never the best idea. I can’t remember if they were intended to be permanent at the time, or just a quick way of demarcating the division between “Chorale”, “Instrumental & Solo” and “Organ and Chimes” as well as the sixteen other arbitrary categories I created for my recently sorted collection.
I had covered the floor of the den with LPs – each pile representing a vain attempt at organization. The room, and the rest of the house, smelled of thrift-shop dust, old cardboard and vinyl. This was when I first learned that I had accumulated over three hundred Christmas albums.
It’s unlike me not to finish a job properly, but trying to bring order to the chaos of the collection must have left me just enough energy to quickly print, in red pen, the sometimes inscrutable descriptions (”Cool Comp”, “Program” and “?”) that remain today – poking out at random intervals along the eight foot shelf they fill.
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Posted: November 12th, 2009
My Dad, a brilliant sculptor, used to tell people that he simply carved away everything that didn’t look like what he’d set out to create. Watching him work, you’d swear he did just that – uncovering animals and people that had been waiting in the wood for his chisel to free them.
I joked with Monty on Saturday night that I was hoping to use Dad’s approach to finish my submission for this year’s Three-Minute Film Festival. My rough cut had timed in at over an hour. I simply needed to carve away all but three minutes of that.
Monty laughed, but I could see the look of concern in his eyes.
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Posted: June 4th, 2009
I watched Obama’s Cairo speech this morning. It was a hope-inspiring way to start my day. As many of them did, this passage moved me deeply:
“Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.”
Posted: October 22nd, 2008
“That thankfully our founders were wise enough to say we have this position and it’s constitutional — vice president will be able to be not only the position flexible.”
~ Sarah Palin
Posted: October 1st, 2008
Got a few minutes? This is Barack Obama speaking in Reno Nevada the day after the ‘Wall Street’ bailout was rejected and the stock market plummeted.
UPDATE: And This is New Yorker Magazine’s endorsement – an extremely comprehensive overview.
Posted: September 26th, 2008
Just in case there’s a google-bot sweeping the internets for references to Barack Obama and the presidential debate, I believe that Barack Obama clearly won tonight. I wish I could vote for him.
Posted: September 26th, 2008
I am honored to watch two very intelligent and wise people face off against each other in public. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I am extremely proud of the candidate that I support.
ra mcguire dot com is mostly about music, culture, and minor celebrity in 21st century Canada. For more about me, this site, and my career in music and media, click here.
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