Family Reserach Council

I am sorry to add another post to the wealth of opinions about Religious Equality, Marriage Rights and Black Lives Matter. The last 6 months have been so saturated with such venom and outrage that I truly feel like we have migrated back 25 years in the cultural fabric of this country. I cannot explain why the lines are so firmly being drawn in the sand, tolerance is at a tipping point and we seem to be back to square one on issues like birth control that have been settled decades prior?

This latest post is another slam masquerading as Stand For Marriage Sunday and espousing freedom of religion - of course at the expense of others not as privileged. Our dear friend Tony Perkins who continues to ignite tempers - and I am not referring to the mama's boy from Psycho - although one could argue this label. Defining homosexuality as morally wrong and even siding with Death to Gays in Uganda - he will obviously never be an ally. The whole ploy is merely a marketing infomercial video alluding to the nebulous area of "convictions" and "free exercise." And while I get incensed at the minds behind this strategy, what baffles me more is the hordes of lemmings who choose to follow. Hopefully we can and should learn from our history. This video by Matt Baume explains the very definite difference between what you believe vs what you practice. And therein lies the freedom that needs to be given.

Religious Freedom

Between Marriage Equality and Black Lives Matter - there is big civil rights struggle dividing our modern cultural ideology. Although I remember very little of the 1960's environment, this must seem quite a bit reminiscent for those older that do recollect it. Opinions are quite divided and lines are drawn firmly in the sand.

I certainly have my camps. But I always try to reason as to how something so hurtful and prohibitive manages to escape in the worlds of Indiana & Arkansas among others. Call it what you will, it is hurtful no matter how you disguise it. This article in the Huffington Post gave me clarity in how we arrived where we are. It all hinges on the Supreme Court Decision a year ago with Hobby Lobby. The Religious Freedom adhered to is a vague concept which is meant to cover the MANY types of religious choices in our diverse country with both honor and respect - which sounds worthy in print. But where it gets complicated is at what cost of expression, and then how it imposes on others.  And this is the fatal flaw in the Hobby Lobby case where the courts made a costly judgment error. If the owner of the company has firm convictions, it then becomes your options as an employee also when it applies to women's reproductive choices of your health policy. At this point it is no longer Religious Freedom but Restriction of someone else being imposed onto you.

Thus we are now dealing with a whole Pandora's Box in defense of this ruling. The emphasis seems to be on gay wedding cakes, but it will just as easily apply to prayer sessions over lunch break or the burqa you choose to wear on your head. A business currently now has the right to make those choices for you. So who's freedom is really being advocated and embraced here? In our pluralistic American society of the 21st century it can no longer be assumed that our large population is content to base their lives on the traditional tenets of Protestant & Catholic faiths. Before you scream heresy... As much as we cling to these tenets, our actual founding fathers tried to make a very distinct line separating church and state for these very reasons. Many fled their homelands because of restictions that were placed on them there. They continue to arrive here for similar reasons 200 years later. Until we grasp that idea fairly for both sides, venom will spew and tempers will raise as they are in this day and time.

Huffington Post - Religious Freedom Restoration Act 

Boston Under Cover

Every once a while I am taken in by an architecture feature. I am always intrigued by landmarks and history from around the globe. They are sort of like hidden treasures. This post is exactly that - a hidden treasure.

Underneath Steinert & Sons piano store on Boylston St. in Boston, lies a forgotten 120 year old concert hall. Shuttered now for over 70 years, it was once known as "the headquarters for the musical and artistic world of cultured Boston." It seats 650 and was built underground to bypass the hustle and bustle of the noisy streets upstairs. World-renowned pianists and opera singers graced its stage on a lovely Italian Renaissance music box. It was locked and sealed after the infamous Cocoanut Grove fires of 1942 where almost 500 wealthy patrons died from a lack of fire escapes. Thus followed a new era of safety codes that made a subterranean mecca like this a guaranteed death zone with no possible alternative. 

Decades later after flooding and water leakage it now exists merely as urban legend and a dumping ground for salvage pianos and their parts. If these walls could only speak.

Animaniac Paradise

It has been several years since I have professed my love for these critters. They were a mainstay of my early DVD collection when I stumbled onto them late in their history in the 90's. To me they were the perfect science of old-school cartoons with the sharp edge of modern animation that later ruled with Family Guy and old South Park. Sure, they were modeled with Saturday morning matinee kids in mind, but nearly half of the content went WAY over their heads. Even though the were huge, they only ruled for a short time because both designers and audiences were never quite sure what to make of them.

Wakko, Yakko & Dot defied description even as to what they were - mice, monkey...? Originally described as "Cartoonus Characterus." They had a whole brood of misfits from Mindy & Buttons to Rita & Runt. Great art design in terms of the personalities - Slappy the Squirrel! Voices were masterful! Songs that perplexed, amused and astounded on a weekly basis with Bernadette Peters on board among others. As the brain child of Steven Spielberg, one would expect nothing less. Early episodes explain their pedigree going back to actual toons from the Warner Bros era of the 1930s. From there it veers off to a tangent where the three delinquent mongrels were locked in a vacant water tower on the Warner Bros lot. Celebrity guests were common with every one from Joan Rivers to Arnold Schwarzenegger and even Spielberg himself parodied. Huge 15 minute musical parodies of Les Miz, Gilbert & Sullivan and the Sound of Music were common - almost to the point of plagiarizing. Vixens such as Hello Nurse and Minerva Mink pushed the limits of censorship among children. Maybe that is why I loved them so much. Here is everything you wanted to know about the Animaniacs and MORE.

 

 

Mental Floss Animaniacs