"O Judgement, thou hast fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason..."

More on Shakespeare. The Guardian has done a series of actors reading lines from Shakespeare called Shakespeare Solos.

Zawe Ashton's presentation is brilliant.

And this famous monologue from Shakespeare is performed really beautifully by Damian Lewis. It's short. "Lend" him less than 3 minutes, will you?

Damian Lewis as Antony

From Blueprint to Building

One way of understanding/processing the flow of the Bible from Old to New Testaments. Author is mein bruder, Scott Redd:

The Building Paradigm

"For they looked for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is the Lord."

There is nothing at all surprising about the world being drawn to baseness and power.

That is what people are drawn to, in their nature. And people are easily deceived. The sheep look for a shepherd, but often they pick a king -- or a wolf -- instead. We look for Cincinnatus, but we follow a Caesar.

It is wrong to assert that political concerns and exertions are meaningless or worthless for the believer -- political ambivalence smacks of a gnostic approach to loving one's neighbors. As if it isn't my concern if my neighbor lives under the oppressor's thumb or has his day in court. We can lament cultural injustice and decline. We can discuss when began the grounding of "the ship that sailed the moon" (1973?)

"For they looked for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is the Lord."

But as we rightly labor and exert ourselves in this country (our national neighborhood) to love our neighbor by advocating and appealing for truth, protection for the innocent, just laws, and freedom and mercy, which acknowledge the divinely-decreed, deep and intrinsic value of each and every image-bearer -- we do so at rest in our souls, as citizens of the better country.

For no matter what, with respect to our Job Description: Nothing has changed from yesterday to today and nothing will change in November 2016 or November 2020 or November 2200.

Love God.
Love your family ("little platoons").
Love your church.
Love your neighbors.

These are subversive acts.

Do the things God has given your hands to do with vigor and pleasure.

Fill the earth and subdue it with your work, knowing the good work of your hands done by the grace of God will never perish or tarnish and not be lost.

-- Anne

Happy Birthday, Will (Shakespeare)!

"All the perfumes in Arabia cannot sweeten this little hand....what's done cannot be undone." Dame Judi Dench as Lady MacBeth

Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet

‘To Be Or Not To Be’: Words Spoken by Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

Manufacturing Job Growth in America

Good news for those who worry that manufacturing in America is dwindling -- though number 20 is sobering.

Top 20 Facts about Manufacturing in America

The Body Electric

How the body fights against you, to regain weight you have lost.

The New York Times discusses the science behind it all

And they walked off to look for America

I grew up in a military family which meant, for me, cumulative days and weeks driving between duty stations with my two little brothers, our dog, and whichever cat was lowering himself to abide with us for the time being. We were all in the backseat, filed together side by side but not very neatly. A row of elbows and knobby knees, one of us on the hump of a white Pinto wagon or, later, a red Volvo station wagon.

Entertainment was limited in the 1970s and early 80s, driving from Virginia to California to Maine to South Carolina and points south. So this was our catalog:

1. We had two Superscope story tapes. Superscope Storyteller presents: Moses in Egypt and The Adventures of Spiderman,

2. We also liked to sing The Gambler by Kenny Rogers with lyrics we made up each time (and laughed uproarously over),

3. We liked to sing Don't Go Breakin' My Heart with Elton John and Kiki Dee,

But mostly we listened to:

4. The Mamas and the Papas Greatest Hits,

5. Simon and Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park, and 

6. Zero Mostel, in a production of Fiddler on the Roof.

Tevye: Rabbi, is there a blessing for the Czar? 

Rabbi (singing): May God bless and keep the Czar...FAR AWAY FROM US! 

Not a bad catalog. Though I do remember one of us asking my dad, "Who is Ed Koch and who are 'the guys sellin' loose joints?'"

Rolling along, I read all of the Little House books and Narnia books a hundred times each, or a thousand, when I wasn't snoozing from Dramamine. I was a bookish, very shy, easily-carsick girl born into a traveling family. (By the time I graduated from high school I had attended ten schools.)

There is a special mental state you reach when you are bored of being bored. A Boredom Rubicon is crossed. Born of resignation, resolution, but call it magic, for I would lean my cheek on the vinyl window bumper and stare out at the sky -- a clear blue endless day, a rainy roof of grey, a whiteout blizzard in Iowa, a midnight sky full of a spray of stars big and bright. California dreamin'

I saw Half Pint trundling across a prairie in her wagon in a calico dress, and Pa shouldering his way through a blizzard to feed the horses. I saw the Children of Israel pulling carts across the yellow sand and water spilling from the rock. I saw Lucy in the snowy woods, and Caspian turning his ship away from the long blue wave on the Silver Sea to go back and marry the star's daughter. Kindred spirits, I imagined, all of us -- Moses, and me, and Caspian the Seafarer.

Sunrise, Sunset.

So we all rolled along to the tune of the traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway or my brothers' action figures shooting each other. In between the battles and songs and stories, I told my little brothers my own invented, wandering story that re-commenced with each new road trip. It was a story about some kids who found an ancient, secret door in a gnarly tree, which led to a secret tunnel under the road, which led to a secret room, which led to adventures.

In some of the adventures, there was a Gila Monster. ("...and that's when they turned the corner and came upon THE HEELAH MONSTER!")

My dad had introduced us to The Gila Monster into his own "Billy Boy" story series -- concoctions initially developed to keep us amused on the exceedingly bleak and ominous day two of the five day trip to Arlington, Virginia from Monterey, California. My brothers and I imagined him as some kind of bloody-mawed, man-eating Godzilla. (So imagine our surprise and amusement when, much later, we learned that gila monsters are small, harmless lizards in the American southwest. Not even Japanese!)

On the road, my brothers asked occasionally If There Are Sharks In That Big River (fresh water disqualification was not really absorbed, for perhaps hope sprang eternal) and How Deep Is That Bay and How Long Until We Get to the Motel. My brothers were always asking about sharks, alligators, snakes, and bears which, they sincerely hoped, lived in the woods by the highways were were driving down.

They also were keenly interested in the depths of the bodies of water over which we passed on bridges. Dad obliged by thoughtfully and confidently making up the answer right out of thin air. "Oh hmmm, let's see. I believe that river is about 50, maybe closer to 55 feet deep at this point."

I eventually fell asleep to my parents comforting, murmuring grown-up conversation, waking up crick-necked and drooling in the McDonalds parking lot or the rest area off of some turnpike.

It makes sense that at some point in middle school I decided the following: The theme song for my life shall be "America," by Simon and Garfunkel.

"America" is a somehow both soaring and pensive traveling song about people and places. It builds a big picture from small things. (I have only reluctantly forgiven Bernie Sanders for co-opting it for his campaign.) It also seemed slightly and deliciously rebellious for me to choose it, because it mentions cigarettes.

It also has the gait, somehow, of a highway song. Do you know what I mean? Some songs have this, not in exactly the same way as each other, but they do. "Driver 8" is a highway song, "Africa" is, too -- not just because of the words, because of the indefinable traveling song-ness of the sound and rhythm. Like wheels thrumming steadily on pavement. Things by Gordon Lightfoot are sometimes traveling songs. "Rocky Mountain High," by John Denver, is a traveling song, and "Country Roads." "Walk on the Ocean" by Tode the Wet Sprocket. There are others.

Anyway, my middle school real estate was in my bag. My bag was a purple Le Sac with a novel, some Trident gum, some Bonne Bell gloss or Cover Girl Frosted Peach lipstick, a retainer, my allowance, a notebook with my friends' addresses from the last place we lived.

That was then. This is now.

In three weeks I move again, this time to Pittsburgh. I have never lived there.

I am 45 and married to a civilian, but he has been a traveling man, as well. If you count the three month stints in apartments waiting for homes, this will be my 30th move. If you don't, it will be my 25th.

It just so happens that the traveler in the song boards a Greyhound bus in Pittsburgh. For some, maybe this means nothing. But, for me, it means that, at age 45, I'm not quite done looking for America.

America

Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies
And we walked off to look for America

Cathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, be careful, his bowtie is really a camera

Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery
She read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

Cathy, I'm lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping
And I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America

All come to look for America
All come to look for America

Read more: Simon And Garfunkel - America Lyrics | MetroLyrics