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Caught My Eye

Caught My Eye

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What caught my eye this morning, in no particular order…

And (even) weird(er) news…

A drunken German man climbed into an emergency postbox for unwanted babies, slid down the chute and landed in an incubator. Medical staff found him there, smoking a cigarette.

Ummm…there are postboxes for unwanted babies?

Hundreds of babies have been deposited in the boxes set up across Germany and Austria since the scheme started five years ago. It came into effect after more and more young mums unable to cope with their newborns had been abandoning them on the street. The baby boxes offered a safe ‘no questions asked’ alternative.

I’m assuming it’s not like a roadside postal box. It’s got to be more like an ATM, right? On the outside of a hospital? I’m trying to imagine a newborn sliding down a “chute” into an incubator. How does that work? I want to see a photo.

Birds Love the Voice of Charlotte Church

Birds Love the Voice of Charlotte Church

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I am too disheartened by recent events to be able to respond to the news in any kind of responsible way today. I’m taking a break.

And I have been rewarded. I have just witnessed the Snow White/Sleeping Beauty effect. Keep reading.

One of the nicer aspects about not having found a full-time job yet is that I have a couple of days off during the week. I was feeling rather down and, having completed most of my mundane chores, I threw on Charlotte Church’s Enchantment CD and went out on the deck to have a cup of coffee outside on this gloriously beautiful day.

Even knowing that hearing some of the songs would make me cry, I knew it would (paradoxically) cheer me up to hear some of this music. Yes, I have a very corny, sentimental side. Songs from West Side Story will still get me every time. On top of that, the contrast between my own performance of “If I Loved You” and hers (I played the part of Julie Jordan in a high school production of Carousel ; ) is really quite enough to drive me to tears all by itself. Of course, her orchestra doesn’t drag everything out like a dirge, but still… I couldn’t even match the performance of the Shirley Jones version.

Charlotte Church has such a beautiful voice. How I wish that I could sing like that. I used to practice singing along with the tracks of “ghost” Marni Nixon, but I never produced the sound I wanted with the songs I most enjoy. I sing a lot less now. I don’t have as much time alone as I used to, and it’s really not fair to torture my family with my version of “Glitter and Be Gay” – no matter how cathartic it may be.

So, anyway, the Disneyesque bird phenomenon began about halfway through “Habanera.” At that point, I noticed that there were a couple of little chickadees or something flitting around the back yard. During “Bali Ha’i“ these were joined by a stunning cardinal pair, and by the time it got to “The Little Horses,” there were about a dozen birds flying all around. They hopped around and tipped their little heads, and started singing with her!

A gigantic white cumulus cloud, swirling with fractal curls around its edges, drifted over the house. The new leaves whispered gently. I smelled a whiff of lavender.

And for a moment, everything was magical. Truly enchanting. I was transported.

Lovely, my dear Charlotte. Thank you.

But the moment moves on, and then I’m thinking of the genre: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Lily Tomlin in Nine to Five, and the ethereal voice of Charlotte Church. There is something almost uncanny about birds and women’s voices and love and spirit and… somehow …wait a minute…housecleaning? Sigh… I always though the villains were more interesting anyway. To paraphrase Margaret Atwood, they’re the plot, baby.

The first time I heard La Habanera, it was sung by an orange in an animation on Sesame Street. Heh-heh.

Nobody does this one better than Maria Callas, though, not even Charlotte Church. For this aria, you need the voice of experience. Look at her face. Stunning.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BysvxpzzxtM[/youtube]

L’amour est un oiseau rebelle
que nul ne peut apprivoiser,
et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle,
s’il lui convient de refuser.
Rien n’y fait, menace ou prière,
l’un parle bien, l’autre se tait:
Et c’est l’autre que je préfère,
Il n’a rien dit mais il me plaît.
L’amour! L’amour! L’amour! L’amour!

L’amour est enfant de Bohême,
il n’a jamais, jamais connu de loi;
si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime:
si je t’aime, prends garde à toi! etc.

L’oiseau que tu croyais surprendre
battit de l’aile et s’envola …
l’amour est loin, tu peux l’attendre;
tu ne l’attends plus, il est là!
Tout autour de toi, vite, vite,
il vient, s’en va, puis il revient …
tu crois le tenir, il t’évite,
tu crois l’éviter, il te tient.
L’amour! L’amour! L’amour! L’amour!

In My Wee Blogosphere

In My Wee Blogosphere

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I haven’t done this in a while, but here are some things that caught my eye today while I was updating my blogroll. Loosely grouped by topic, here ya go…

Half Full or Half Empty

Half Full or Half Empty

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The trouble with philosophical abstraction is that it tries to create a space separated from the world.

The metaphor of the slippery slope, for example, has become almost literal. That’s why it is often effective. Who wants to slide down a slippery slope? What is unstated but operative is that this metaphor encourages the reader/hearer to assume – without question – that there exists a place that is not slippery, where one cannot slide or fall.

In our complex world (and especially with regard to ethical and legal questions that affect people’s lives), we seem to have a craving to be able to state our understandings in a universally-applicable and absolute way, even about topics that are not absolute and cannot be absolute. That’s why “top-down” understandings must play against “bottom-up” ones, where a multitude of examples and perspectives of experience can realistically inform both theory and practice.

Why am I having these thoughts today? It’s all about the old question of whether the glass is half empty or half full.

I’ve heard a lot of answers to that question. Some will say it is both half empty and half full, or even that it is neither half full nor half empty. Your personal preference of interpretation can be used as a measure of optimism or pessimism. There are hundreds of jokes.

Last night I read the hands-down best answer to the question of whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. That answer illustrates a kind of blind spot for absolute abstraction and universalizing. It illustrates the importance of perspective and context in a completely different way. Just by the wayside, it made me laugh so hard that I felt compelled to share the joy. I think that only a woman could have come up with this answer. In this case, a grandmother.

I didn’t find it in a philosophy book, but in a chapter on grandparents in Cosbyology: Essays and Observations From the Doctor of Comedy, a short book by Bill Cosby. At Temple University, he had been assigned to debate one side or another. The question seemed unanswerable to him.

So I went home that night — and my grandmother was there — and she saw me concentrating and so she asked me what was the matter.

“I’m supposed to figure out if the glass is half full or half empty,” I told her.

Without a moment’s hesitation, in a split second, my grandmother shrugged and said:

“It depends on if you’re drinking or pouring.”