Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Meltdown


As the glaciers melt, making Greenland green, as scientists make pigs produce Salmon fat, our leaders continue to show the spine of jellyfish.

Beach Jelly: St. Simon. photo by Jameson


As CEOs, those not in court or jail, jetison ethics, their corporations accelerate Global Ruin. "Nothing in Moderation" is the cry of the Oil execs, the Car manufacturers, and most damning of all, the U.S. Consumer and the envious politicos of the developing nations.


Conservation is in eclipse. The socialist ideal of comfort and care for all is in eclipse. Peace has been eclipsed by the Bush war, by the 21st Century Crusade and the clash of the titan fundamentalisms. Sanity is in eclipse: and the Zone of Totality is a place of fearsome darkness...












The Zone of Totality
Crosses Turkey
March 29, 2006
(news photos)



Like Epicurus, I hide out in whatever garden I can find, knowing that it is deteriorating faster than the fading azaleas. But for now, we head to New Orleans, hanging garden on the edge of the Abyss..









Mother of Jameson:
"Stop Bitching"
photo: Jameson






Happy Trails...

Jameson








Posted by at No comments:

Monday, March 13, 2006

Cumberland



As we passed over the hills of the Cumberland Plateau, I thought of Ireland.
Sinead O'Connor's voice and the green of approaching spring enhanced the picture. The lake of Fall Creek lay before us like Innisfree. Cumberland: Hadrian's Wall, Castlerigg, the Lake District we explored exactly a decade ago come to mind.

We had returned from New York City. From Spamalot. From the demon mind of Joe Orton-- Alec Baldwin entertaining Sloane right before our eyes. Evil Priss!

Fall Creek Falls: photo by Jameson

Therapy-- the upper westside gay bar-- left us sick on cosmos after Brokeback crashed. Riding over Cumberland, we could not recall how we made it back to the hotel, ten blocks of midnight Manhattan unaccounted for-- nor how my glasses wound up in the hall.

Better to recall Sartre's mistress Simone de Beauvoir's affair with Nelson Algren. A Transatlantic Liason of fifteen years, including trips to Chicago, Mexico, Paris, New York. Better to recall their climb to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, my climb there in Teotihuacan three decades ago. How relationships are enhanced by other relationships-- De Beauvoir's insight.


We are soaring over the Cumberland plateau as the countryside gives more healing than antibiotics. The ducks' quacking eclipses Jack's hacking. Our neices pucker their gift of red wax lips. We hike along the gorge, glimpsing a waterfall as high as the Empire State Building.

See it. (click)

Empire State Bldg from our window
Photo: Jameson

Romanticism wins over cynicism, for now. The way up and the way down are the same, Heraclitus claims. The Tao crosses Cumberland.

...and leads to St. Patrick's Day in Savannah; then to the Ocean, to Saint Simon's Island, South of Cumberland Isle.


Happy Trails,

Jameson
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Amadeus Mozart


STEPHEN KOVACEVICH's


 performance tonight transported me to the 18th Century and the universe of Amadeus Mozart. For a moment I sat again in The Theatre of the Estates in Prague where Darryl and I heard Don Giovanni from our private box.

Prague: photo by Jameson



The Atlanta Symphony's celebration of Mozart's 250th birthday was a success: The soon-to-be-abandoned hall filled to capacity. I was fortunate to have front row center seat in the balcony, nothing between me and the music.

It is wonderful that in our world of non-stop noise, terrorism, violence, and nervous energy, there is a person who can play the music of Mozart with such brilliance and perfection. Koveacevich was born in 1940, and yet he can still command every note of two different piano concertos, the 24th and the 25th. It was sublime to experience such harmony.


--Jameson
Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

True Love in Brokeback Mountain

Why is Jack Twist beaten to death in Brokeback Mountain? The answer that it's because he's gay is inadequate. Plenty of gay men, even in Texas, got by on the sly or by secret relationship, without getting killed. By the time of his death, it is the '80s. Gay rights were on the upswing, even in Texas.



(The original cowboy lovers, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, tame the Bull of Heaven, 7th Century, B.C.)




This story conveys something else. It is Ennis' refusal to accept Jack's love, the most passionate love he knows, that ultimately kills Jack. In a way, it kills Ennis as well. He is left alone, bereft, holding his true love only in memory. His grief and Jack's death are heartbreaking.

The number of reviews of this film is staggering. Most of them have nothing but praise for the film, for Ang Lee, and for the actors, all of them. The most repeated point is that this is a universal love story rather than a gay cowboy film.

The film is also about the kind of deep abiding bond between men that writers have praised since the time of Gilgamesh, or of Plato and Aristotle. The death of Gerald in D.H. Lawrence's Women In Love is a similar tragedy. Birkin, despite his happy marriage, is left weeping, "He should have loved me. I offered him." Sexual or not, explicit or implicit, love between men is also a universal need.

The truth of this film challenges the prudish view that homosexuality is a sin. Here it is the denial of genuine love that is the sin that brings on the tragic end. "Love is a force of Nature," the ads for the film claim. Such love as this film portrays is as sacred as anything we know. To deny it is morally wrong. Trying to deny it only brings misery and loss to everyone involved.

A number of commentators have pointed out how American this film is. It is the culmination of feelings and revelations that go back to Melville, Whitman, and Mark Twain. It reveals the kind of love Abraham Lincoln felt for Joshua Speed (again, whether sexual or not). Our culture, obsessed with material possession, superficial success, and a narrow understanding of family, has lost touch with our rich heritage. How fascinating it is that this "Western" set in Wyoming, should so hearken back to the heart of Western Culture, from the literature of Homer to the history of Alexander to the Calamus poems of Walt Whitman.

More than all of this, the film is such a fine work of art that it touches us in ways we shall continue to discover. It is ineffable, beyond mere description. Like the blinding of Oedipus, it lets us see into recesses of the psyche we could not see otherwise. It will provoke thought and feelings for many years to come.

--Jameson
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, January 03, 2006














Afloat on the peaceful Pacific
Photo by Jameson


Aloha,
and Happy, Enlightened 2006 from Hawaii.

Some photos. (click)
Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, January 01, 2006

BFA Position

Writing








Faculty

Jack Miller, Ben Franklin AcademyJack Miller

B.A., M.A., M.S., Ph.D.

DEPARTMENT / POSITION

Director of Media Services
Computer Science
Philosophy

CONTACT INFORMATION

Phone Number
Business Phone: 404-633-7404

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Biography
Dr. Miller holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Tulane University and a Masters Degree in Library and Information Management from Emory University. He has served as Director of the Library and teacher of Philosophy and Computer Science since joining the BFA Faculty in 1992. Dr. Miller also serves on the Board of Directors of the Clifton Corridor Transportation Management Association (CCTMA) of which BFA is a founding member. Miller has worked in numerous libraries in Atlanta and Savannah, including Director of the High Museum Library and Supervisor of the Ola Wyeth Library branch in Savannah. He has served on the faculty of Tulane University, Armstrong Atlantic University,The Savannah College of Art and Design, and the Atlanta College of Art. He has published numerous articles and reviews and served as an editor for the national publication of The Art Library Society of North America.

Science

Mathematics

English

Art

Music

Drama

Social Studies

Foreign Language

Associate Dean

Assistant Deans

College Counselors

Director of Media Services

Information Technology Associate

School Counselors

Business Manager & Registrar

Internal Development Assistant

Director of Student Records

Headmaster

B.A. in Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
M.A.T. in Elementary Education, Emory University
Ed.D. in Reading & Curriculum, Harvard University
Doc Smethurst Headmaster Ben Franklin Academy

Dean of Studies

B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Martha Burdette, Ben Franklin Academy

Athletic Director

Music Director

Athletics

Director of Accounting

Assistant Business Manager




Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)