10 Ways To Improve The Quality Of Your Life (for non-materialists only)

1. Get a library card and use it
2. Find a place that has a pleasant ambience, outdoor tables in summer, good pastry, and good coffee. Go there, order said refreshments, find a comfortable table, pull out the book that you got at the library, and make yourself at home. If weather permits, find an outside table and sit there.  Do this as often as you can, particularly when there is much to do at home.
3. Listen to music that is sublime and well-respected, like John Coltrane, The Beatles, and Gustav Mahler symphonies recorded by Leonard Bernstein.
4. Listen to music that is corny and despised, like The Partridge Family’s Greatest Hits, John Denver, Donovan, and Gustav Mahler symphonies recorded by Leonard Bernstein.
5. Feel free to dance to said music, anytime and anywhere, with the possible exception of funerals and religious services, but especially in public places like bus shelters.
6. Live in a big city, and walk a lot.
7. Get into the reality of the weather; don’t keep wishing it were different.
8. Eat pecan buns.
9. Cook, especially vegetarian recipes, like lentil burgers, chick pea stew, and black eyed pea soup.
10. Drink soy milk
11. Create your own daily routine, and if people laugh at you because you have your coffee at 9:30 every day, screw ‘em.
12. Promise 10 things, and deliver 12. Accuracy is overrated

The Last Word On The Charter

My girls attend a school called Beth Jacob. It’s a private Jewish girls’ school. Every year they do a musical, and every year I am barred from attending the performance because I am male. This bothers me. I do not understand the “religious” reason they use to justify this and I don’t care what it is.

I’ve heard that Hatzalah, the Jewish paramedical organization, does not permit women to join as paramedics. This bothers me. I do not know whether they use a “religious” reason to justify this nor do I care.

I know for a fact that in certain Hassidic communities, women are not allowed to drive. I also know that in Haredi communities generally, women do not have the same career opportunities as men, though, to be honest, the opportunities for both men and women are limited, as secular college  / university is considered out of bounds. All of this bothers me.

I do not speak here of gender separation, nor of gender differences in the context of religious services. That’s a whole other discussion. We leave that for another day.

I now quote from the preamble of the English version (surprised that there is one? So am I) of the Parti Quebecois’ Charter of Values:

The purpose of this bill is to establish a Charter affirming the values of State secularism and religious neutrality and of equality between women and men…

Later on it says:

…obligations are set out for personnel members of public bodies in the exercise of their functions, including a duty to remain neutral and exercise reserve in religious matters by, among other things, complying with the restriction on wearing religious objects that overtly indicate a religious affiliation.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the charter, about its discriminatory attitude, and about its divisiveness. The response seems to be:

1.        Gender equality is already entrenched in Quebec law
2.        The “religious symbols” provision is an instance of unjustifiable discrimination, and contrary to Quebec’s values, and the values of western society as a whole.

But let’s do a little bit of thinking here and see if we can come up with a way to make sense of this. I mean, we know that discrimination is bad. Despite the untold numbers of people among us who continue to practice it, nobody seriously argues in its favour. And yet, religious groups (I cite Jews as an example because that’s the group I belong to and that’s what I know best, but other groups have their own issues) seem to do it with impunity.

So maybe, just maybe, the PQ has a problem with groups that practice gender discrimination, and maybe that’s why they don’t want people advertising their allegiance to such groups on their turf. And I’m not sure I totally blame them.

If that’s the case, then I’d say that Marois and her useless band of lowlifes actually have a case. And if so, then I wish they’d be honest, say what they mean, discuss the problem openly, and let’s find a solution we can all live with. Taking a heavy-handed approach to anyone who wears a kipa or a hijab or a crucifix or a shtreimel for that matter will make the situation worse, not better. Discrimination can’t be fought with more discrimination. But it ought to be fought. Marois knows this. But if she were smart, she’d find a better way to do it. I don’t think she’s very smart.

There is, of course, also the reality that not all religious groups are equal. And not all adherents to any one group agree with every value of the group. There’s much that needs to be discussed, but nobody is discussing it, because the (now defunct) government is hiding behind the façade of “neutrality” and “secularism,” neither of which is an accurate description of the real issue.

So let’s be honest...

And I think next year I’ll make an issue out of that musical. BJ, you’ve been warned... 

The Long And Winding Road To Nowhere,,,

So today is February 9, and it’s the 50^th anniversary of The Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan, and I may have watched it, and if not I saw the one the week after or two weeks after. I remember, seriously. I was 7. But all that talk has got me thinking not of the beginning of their career, but of the end. That’s the way I am.

The Beatles recorded most of what would become Let It Be in January of 1969. It was a fiasco, and in the end they were left with tapes featuring hundreds of hours of musical chaos that nobody wanted to touch.

A few months later they got back together and recorded what would become Abbey Road. This was released in the fall of 1969 and took its rightful place in the canon of Beatles masterworks.

In January of 1970, George Harrison went back to the studio to put some finishing touches on one of the songs recorded the previous year. Then the whole mess was given over to Phil Spector to sort out and render presentable. This is an over-simplification of a complicated history. There was a promo version of the soon-to-be-released album, called Get Back, which I heard on the radio as a “CFRW Exclusive,” and which had the pre-Spectorized versions of some of the songs, but what ultimately hit the stores was an album called Let It Be, named for the song that became the first (of two) hit singles from the LP, though the single version was somewhat different from the album version. (That’s important; if you don’t know why, you probably shouldn't be reading this.)

The album came packed in a box, with a big book, which accompanied the film, also called Let It Be, that was released to cinemas at the same time as the LP, but by the time I got around to buying the album, which was in August of 1970, not a single copy of the book version was to be had, and I had to settle for the LP, sans book, but with a red apple label. (The film didn't do very well, and it’s on YouTube if you’re curious. I was.)

It was the last Beatles album. I emphasize that because I've read so many latter day discographies that put Let It Be before Abbey Road. They do this, presumably, because the tracks for Let it Be were recorded earlier than the tracks for Abbey Road. This may be so, but that doesn't make Abbey Road the last Beatles album, the poetic correctness of ending that album with The End notwithstanding.

Abbey Road was well ingrained in our minds before Let It Be made its public appearance, the neural pathways of our brains permanently altered by the bang bang of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. This is important information for all the no-brains who insist that Let It Be came before Abbey Road.

But the most important part of this story is that I bought the album in Minneapolis. I was 13. My hair was short, much shorter than I wanted it to be. It did not feel right to be buying a Beatle album with such short hair, but there was nothing to be done about that. I had to buy it anyway, and I scoured the downtown area for a copy with the book, unsuccessfully. I bought the copy without the book, with the red Apple label. I was familiar with most of the songs from the CFRW exclusive, which I had surreptitiously taped on my Sanyo portable cassette recorder, but they had not played Dig It, Maggie Mae, One After 909, Across The Universe, or Two Of Us, though I had heard Two Of Us on the promo that the featured on Ed Sullivan earlier in the year, the last such appearance of the group on the show, on which Paul looked as if he hadn’t slept (or washed his hair) for a month.

I want to know who’s playing bass.

And The Long And Winding Road, which became The Beatles’ final hit single, sounded quite different from the version I’d heard, having all those strings and angelic voices added by Maestro Spector. Paul was, reportedly, incensed. Paul, though, not surprisingly, has had the last laugh. He has redone the song, changing the arrangement each time, and never quite scaling it back down to basics, on Wings Over America, Give My Regards To Broad Street, Tripping The Live Fantastic, Good Evening New York City, and Back In The USA, just in case we didn't get the point.

And then there was Let It Be Naked, consisting of remastered takes of the tracks from Let It Be, at the behest of Sir Paul, without M. Spector’s overdubs, released in 2003, and which seemed to take the world not exactly by storm.

If you want to hear The Long And Winding Road the way I heard it back in early 1970 coming from the promo copy of Get Back on the radio, listen to the version on Anthology 3; that’s it.  

So let’s hear it for Let It Be, the last Beatles album...