Behind Blue Eyes

In Memoriam

Paul Leonard Newman 1/26/1925 - 9/26/2008

It seems I had just lamented the loss of a gifted musician only to follow it up with the loss of one of the finest actors of our time. Paul Newman was not only an Oscar winning and seven time Oscar nominated actor; he was also a great humanitarian, entrepreneur, director, and racing enthusiast.

I've enjoyed his films ever since his debut in 1954's "The Silver Chalice". It seemed that, no matter what character he portrayed, I believed him.

There are thousands of tributes to him on the Internet and I've poured through a few hundred of them. Of those, I've selected three. The first is a scene from "Hud" - An Unprincipled Man

The second, a photographic tribute set to a remake of one of my favorite songs.



And finally, I couldn't resist this tribute to Paul that includes two more of my favorite screen legends -- Marlon Brando and James Dean.



Thanks for the memories, Paul. You are sorely missed.

Quotable

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."

Herbert Hoover

31st President of the United States (1929 - 1933)

Declination Zero

Well, it's here. Fall has arrived as of 11:44:18 EDT this morning. At that moment, the sun was directly over the equator -- crossing into the Southern hemisphere -- at the equinoctial point on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator and the ecliptic intersect.

Suffice to say that if I were a Druid, I'd be planning a party -- just not the no-holds-barred debauchery that goes on for the Solstice.

The Great Gig In The Sky

In Memoriam

Richard William Wright 7/28/1943 - 9/15/2008

Today we bid a sad farewell to one of Pink Floyd's founding members, Rick Wright. Not only did Rick's musicianship contribute enormously to Pink Floyd's sound, he also wrote, among other things, two commercially popular tracks from Dark Side Of The Moon; Us And Them and The Great Gig In The Sky (his current gig, presumably).

So in his honor I post this, his greatest gig, for your listening pleasure.

When Falls The Coliseum

Rome shall fall.

My wife was reading aloud to me snippets from a disturbing article she came across online. It was reporting on ten large US corporations (huge might be a better word) that are in trouble and will be laying off staff to stay competitive, cut costs, regain profitability, and basically hold on to their reason for existence.

The corporations in focus are set to lay off tens of thousands of employees -- some numbers nearing hundreds of thousands. I don't remember all of them, but I remember a few; RiteAid, Blockbuster, Merck, IBM, Ford Motor Company.... The list goes on.

IBM? Ford Motor Company? These long-standing pillars of American business are institutions in their own right. And they're crumbling. Case in point: Ford sold only 155,000 units last year. Back in the day, 155,000 units was what they might sell of only one particular model -- out of many. Now it's their total sales.

And what's happening to the combined several hundred thousand jobs that Americans are losing? Well, some are being eliminated completely. Others -- and you knew this was coming -- are being out-sourced to India and Asia.

I have no qualms with anyone, no matter who and where they are, earning a living. But I take the greatest possible exception to big corporations putting countless Americans out of work just so the bean counters can avoid any red ink on the bottom line.

At the risk of sounding nationalistic, I'm a firm believer that American corporations, based in the US, employ Americans. Cheaper labor overseas? Maybe so, but I happen to believe that many Americans would spend a little more for a high quality product made in the USA - and if everyone's working, instead of looking for work, they would be able to afford it.

This is one of the political issues I'm keeping an eye on. At the moment, I'm officially a Swing Voter, but the candidate that can really bring jobs back to this country may just win my vote -- one way is to remove the tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas.

There is no Coliseum in the United States, but some of its metaphorical pillars that have stood for a hundred years are toppling and all we seem to be able to do is cover our ears so we don't hear the crash. It's as if the warning flags have been waving for so long that they've become tattered and unrecognizable.

It's time to reclaim our standing in the world before it really is too late. We've been resting on our laurels and now we can no longer see past them. Will we literally out-source ourselves into destitution to the point that we no longer produce anything in this country except overpaid executives? And what about the farther reaching effects of our imploding economy? It's time to take our fingers out of our ears.

And when Rome falls -- the World.