David Yuhas
07-25-2009, 04:08 PM
Inland Empire, Part LXXI...Andante, Andante
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1080511000&ref=profile
(check "Profile" for Railroad Maps.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_locomotive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail
Proposed Western State Cavalry Railway & Plantation Consortium
Great Western Railway & Great Plains Express Engineering Consortium
$800 million for Land Acquisition & Lay-out
Dwight Beranek, Railroad Designer, Army Corps of Engineers,
William Herzog, Herzog Railroad Construction
Paul Copeland, Beatty-Balfour Rail Inc.
William M. Stout, Atlas Railroad Construction
Jeffrey M. Levy, Railworks Inc
Lorenzo Simonelli, GE Transportation
John Cavanaugh, Electro-Motive Diesel Inc.
Jens Soeby, Vestas Wind Systems
John Krenicki, Jr., GE Energy,
WSC Headquarters & 21 Plantations Consortium
$200 million for Land Acquisition & Lay-out
Michael Graves, Michael Graves Associates, Architect for Cheyenne, WSC
Headquarters, Great Hall Design for 21 Plantations, 31 Passenger &
Freight Train Stations
Wes Jackson, The Land Institute, Plantation Perennials
Prof. Joseph Thomasson, Ft. Hays State University, Greenhouses & Great
Plains Horticulture
Ernie Els, 18-Fairway Plantation Design
Retief Goosen, 18-Fairway Plantation Design
Proposed Honorary, Project Consultants
Mayor of Pueblo, Dave Galli
Mayor of Colorado Springs, Lionel Rivera
Mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper
City Manager of Greeley, Roy H. Otto
City Manager of Ft. Collins, Darin Atteberry
Governor, C.L. Otter
Mayor of Idaho Falls, Jared Fuhriman
Chairman of Ft. Hall/Pocatello, Alonzo A. Coby
Mayor of Wichita, Carl Brewer
Governor, Brian Schweitzer,
Mayor of Billings, Ron Tussing
City Manager of Bozeman, Chris Kukulski
Mayor of Butte, Paul Babb
Governor, Dave Heineman,
Mayor of Lincoln, Chris Beutler
Governor, John Hoeven,
Mayor of Fargo, Dennis Walaker
Governor, Brad Henry
Mayor of Oklahoma City, Mick Cornett
Governor, Mike Rounds,
Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin
Mayor of Sioux Falls, Dave Munson
Governor, Rick Perry,
Congressman, Ron Paul
Mayor of McAllen, Richard F. Cortez
Mayor of Laredo, Raul G. Salinas
Mayor of Del Rio, Efrain V. Valdez
Mayor of Midland, Wes Perry
Mayor of Lubbock, Tom Martin
Mayor of Amarillo, Debra McCartt
Mayor of Logan, Randy Watts
Mayor of Ogden, Matthew R. Godfrey
Mayor of Salt Lake City, Ralph Becker
Mayor of Provo, Lewis K. Billings
Governor, Dave Freudenthal,
Mayor of Cheyenne, Jack Spiker
Mayor of Laramie, Klaus Hanson
Mayor of Casper, Paul Bertoglio
Mayor of Sheridan, Dave Kinskey
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/food/2009/06/19/2009-06-19_first_lady_michelle_obamas_garden_growing_well_ white_house_harvesting_plenty_of_.html
Distinguished Friends,
As things are shaping up, the only accomplishment of the Obama White House may well be the 1100-square foot, organic vegetable garden that the First Lady has established on the South Lawn.
Projects undertaken by her husband, by contrast, all seem to get bogged down.
The closing of Guantanamo could have been accomplished by a simple call to a General.
The 200 remaining detainees could be assigned to do yardwork for absentee legislators. With John McCain owning seven homes & with Jon Tester, whose hacienda in Montana must have work piling up on it every week, the detainees, rather than costing the taxpayer a quarter of a million dollars per year, might pay for their own upkeep.
Fair enough, with Khalid Shaikh Muhammed & Abu Zubeida cleaning Senator McCain's swimming pool, you wouldn't want to go into the house to make a sandwich...
The Stimulus Package was also not done right.
Rather than "$787 Billion"...you say "$1 Trillion" to be divided amongst the Fifty States according to population.
The Governors of each State, then, would be called to Washington, with their budgets, to present them on live TV, to their own Senators & Reps.
The result should not be an unreadable 1075-page document, but one of 50 pages...with copies available at your local Post Office. High Schoolers should be tested on this Bill.
Then you have a weekly TV show to follow the progress of the States in implementing this Stimulus Plan. Given the unemployment rate, this would be "Must See TV".
The other night on "Bill Moyers" one Dr. Marcia Angell said the same thing I have been thinking about the Health Care Reform Initiative...namely...that this year it should be restricted to lowering the Medicare age to 55...& then in a couple of years, to look at the possibility of lowering it to 45.
What is the Congress going to say about that? That they don't like Medicare? Then take them off it.
Dealing with the epidemic of early-onset Type II diabetes, for which there is not enough money in the world, through the President's "Public Option" (rather than through the "Community Plantation Inititiative", that I am proposing) is one more reason that "Health Care Reform 2009" should be limited to reducing the Medicare age to 55.
Our Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, that rare combination of Robert McNamara & Elmer Fudd, is now calling for another 22,000 troops for the Armed Forces, even though Gen. Ray Odierno looking to break the record for wandering in the desert set by Moses in the 12th Century BC, is not doing anything with 130,000 of his troops in Iraq..
Freeing up these 130,000 is not rocket science.
The western half of the country...everything west of a line formed by the River Tigris & the 44th Meridian faces Damascus, not Baghdad, as it has for the past 1000 years...& still appears on the map as the "Syrian Desert".
The Baath Party, the party of Saddam Hussein, still in rebellion against the al-Maliki government & US occupation, is an ethnic Syrian Party formed in Damascus.
The former "Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti" changed his name to "Saddam Hussein al-Majid" because east to the Tigris-44, "al-Tikriti" identified the Dictator as an ethnic Syrian.
What today is called "Anbar" Province..."Anbar" meaning "Granary", an improbable name for a desert landscape, got its name when the previous name "Dulaimi", like "Tikriti", was considered far too Syrian.
In contrast to Damascus-facing Syriana, the western slope of the Golan Heights, even in the days of Syrian rule, has never faced any direction but West.
Back in the 13th Century the Golan was divided very nicely east & west between the Caliphates of Damascus & Cairo.
Given a simple land swap involving Syria, Israel & Iraq...whereby Syria would receive both Syriana & the eastern slope of the Golan while waiving its claim the the western slope, al-Qaeda, between the Mediterranean & Afghanistan could be expected to disappear within a couple of months.
Rather than being down 22,000 troops & maybe $20 billion a year, our Armed Forces would suddenly be up 130,000 & $100 billion a year.
There, then, is the money to be found for the President's Health Care Reform...plus a few bucks for Community Plantations associated with every Municipality with unemployment above 10%.
###############
Egyptology Wants You!
Egyptology, like Chess, Theoretical Physics, Medical Research or a few other things one might mention...(White-water Rafting, for another), is an interest that can exert a very powerful attraction.
How can it be, one may ask, that some thousands of years ago, human beings like ourselves...& almost certainly the ancestors of today's Egyptians, can have performed such wonders of engineering that we today cannot even imagine how these things were done.
While many of the top Egyptologists today are Seismographers, Robotics Engineers, Carbon Daters & Chemists, the Major Players in the field have always been keen amateurs with an eye for "The Anomaly".
Possibly the most important observation in Egyptology in the past hundred years was one made back in 1927 by one Schwaller de Lubicz...one, if I had had my thinking cap on at the time, I might have made myself.
"You see, but you do not observe" Sherlock Holmes tells Watson.
What the professor noted on the walls of the Sphinx enclosure is that the foot-wide, ten foot long vertical fissures in the limestone could not have been made by wind-blown sand...but had to have been made by torrential downpours falling over thousands of years.
As the Sphinx is officially only 4,500 years old during which time the Nile Valley has been bone dry, this was an Anomaly that had to be looked at.
Pursuing my own interest in the subjst, I would like to take the opportunity here to open a couple of lines of inquiry...the same lines, modesty aside, that have made me the premier student of Shakespeare (without any background in theatre) & Cervantes (though my Spanish is nothing to speak of)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Shakespeare-Cervantes-Code/David-Yuhas/e/9780615126074
The first thing I would like to see is the University of Chicago or Cambridge University putting together "a Primer in The Ancient Egyptian Language for Actors"...no hieroglyphics, Coptic script or diacritical dots...only Latin script with macrons over stressed vowels.
This would be the book used by perhaps a troupe of perhaps a dozen "Pharonic Players" who would specialize in historic re-enactments in the old language, which would go striaight to DVD with subtitles.
This troupe might be formed at Northwestern University...(or Cambridge)
The first efforts, I suspect, are going to look like "Walter & Connie on the Farm"...but this is nothing to worry about.
I would ask the aspiring actors to load up on books of Egyptian, Greek & Roman art...& look for things you find in one culture...but not in another. This is the key. What you are seeing & what you are not seeing.
Little by little the keen observer will find himself or herself entering the esoteric world of the Ancient Egyptian.
Best regards,
Boulder, Neo Confederate
David Yuhas
p.s.
A Country Tribute to ABBA?
More operatic lullaby than characteristic pop, the song is written for four voices... female, first & second leads & two male back-ups.
By ABBA standards, "Andante, Andante" is practically unknown. In my book, however, it is the group's All-time Best.
Melodically it is their only number that could pass for one of Mozart's "Short German Dances".
(Just how "Short" were these Germans, anyway?)
My interest in this tune results from my running out of good, new music videos with which to round off this weekly newsletter.
If things don't pick up soon, in the coming Fall Season we could be looking at far too much Weird Al Yankovic.
My plan then, is to persuade four of my favorite Country artists to make a performance video of "Andante, Andante"...namely, Jennifer Nettles, Gretchen Wilson, Kenny Chesney & Kristian Bush.
(No laughing now. I'm not asking them to do "Mamma Mia")
If any legal niceties are involved in doing an ABBA cover, they should not hesitate to let me know...for while I can't say I am an Old Friend of the group...in my days in Stockholm, I did move their pianos around...notably Benny's Brobdingnagian, 8-octave Bosendorfer & Agneta's little white Yamaha.
p.p.s.
YouTube - ABBA: Andante, Andante (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU_2nspV4V8)
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1080511000&ref=profile
(check "Profile" for Railroad Maps.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_locomotive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail
Proposed Western State Cavalry Railway & Plantation Consortium
Great Western Railway & Great Plains Express Engineering Consortium
$800 million for Land Acquisition & Lay-out
Dwight Beranek, Railroad Designer, Army Corps of Engineers,
William Herzog, Herzog Railroad Construction
Paul Copeland, Beatty-Balfour Rail Inc.
William M. Stout, Atlas Railroad Construction
Jeffrey M. Levy, Railworks Inc
Lorenzo Simonelli, GE Transportation
John Cavanaugh, Electro-Motive Diesel Inc.
Jens Soeby, Vestas Wind Systems
John Krenicki, Jr., GE Energy,
WSC Headquarters & 21 Plantations Consortium
$200 million for Land Acquisition & Lay-out
Michael Graves, Michael Graves Associates, Architect for Cheyenne, WSC
Headquarters, Great Hall Design for 21 Plantations, 31 Passenger &
Freight Train Stations
Wes Jackson, The Land Institute, Plantation Perennials
Prof. Joseph Thomasson, Ft. Hays State University, Greenhouses & Great
Plains Horticulture
Ernie Els, 18-Fairway Plantation Design
Retief Goosen, 18-Fairway Plantation Design
Proposed Honorary, Project Consultants
Mayor of Pueblo, Dave Galli
Mayor of Colorado Springs, Lionel Rivera
Mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper
City Manager of Greeley, Roy H. Otto
City Manager of Ft. Collins, Darin Atteberry
Governor, C.L. Otter
Mayor of Idaho Falls, Jared Fuhriman
Chairman of Ft. Hall/Pocatello, Alonzo A. Coby
Mayor of Wichita, Carl Brewer
Governor, Brian Schweitzer,
Mayor of Billings, Ron Tussing
City Manager of Bozeman, Chris Kukulski
Mayor of Butte, Paul Babb
Governor, Dave Heineman,
Mayor of Lincoln, Chris Beutler
Governor, John Hoeven,
Mayor of Fargo, Dennis Walaker
Governor, Brad Henry
Mayor of Oklahoma City, Mick Cornett
Governor, Mike Rounds,
Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin
Mayor of Sioux Falls, Dave Munson
Governor, Rick Perry,
Congressman, Ron Paul
Mayor of McAllen, Richard F. Cortez
Mayor of Laredo, Raul G. Salinas
Mayor of Del Rio, Efrain V. Valdez
Mayor of Midland, Wes Perry
Mayor of Lubbock, Tom Martin
Mayor of Amarillo, Debra McCartt
Mayor of Logan, Randy Watts
Mayor of Ogden, Matthew R. Godfrey
Mayor of Salt Lake City, Ralph Becker
Mayor of Provo, Lewis K. Billings
Governor, Dave Freudenthal,
Mayor of Cheyenne, Jack Spiker
Mayor of Laramie, Klaus Hanson
Mayor of Casper, Paul Bertoglio
Mayor of Sheridan, Dave Kinskey
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/food/2009/06/19/2009-06-19_first_lady_michelle_obamas_garden_growing_well_ white_house_harvesting_plenty_of_.html
Distinguished Friends,
As things are shaping up, the only accomplishment of the Obama White House may well be the 1100-square foot, organic vegetable garden that the First Lady has established on the South Lawn.
Projects undertaken by her husband, by contrast, all seem to get bogged down.
The closing of Guantanamo could have been accomplished by a simple call to a General.
The 200 remaining detainees could be assigned to do yardwork for absentee legislators. With John McCain owning seven homes & with Jon Tester, whose hacienda in Montana must have work piling up on it every week, the detainees, rather than costing the taxpayer a quarter of a million dollars per year, might pay for their own upkeep.
Fair enough, with Khalid Shaikh Muhammed & Abu Zubeida cleaning Senator McCain's swimming pool, you wouldn't want to go into the house to make a sandwich...
The Stimulus Package was also not done right.
Rather than "$787 Billion"...you say "$1 Trillion" to be divided amongst the Fifty States according to population.
The Governors of each State, then, would be called to Washington, with their budgets, to present them on live TV, to their own Senators & Reps.
The result should not be an unreadable 1075-page document, but one of 50 pages...with copies available at your local Post Office. High Schoolers should be tested on this Bill.
Then you have a weekly TV show to follow the progress of the States in implementing this Stimulus Plan. Given the unemployment rate, this would be "Must See TV".
The other night on "Bill Moyers" one Dr. Marcia Angell said the same thing I have been thinking about the Health Care Reform Initiative...namely...that this year it should be restricted to lowering the Medicare age to 55...& then in a couple of years, to look at the possibility of lowering it to 45.
What is the Congress going to say about that? That they don't like Medicare? Then take them off it.
Dealing with the epidemic of early-onset Type II diabetes, for which there is not enough money in the world, through the President's "Public Option" (rather than through the "Community Plantation Inititiative", that I am proposing) is one more reason that "Health Care Reform 2009" should be limited to reducing the Medicare age to 55.
Our Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, that rare combination of Robert McNamara & Elmer Fudd, is now calling for another 22,000 troops for the Armed Forces, even though Gen. Ray Odierno looking to break the record for wandering in the desert set by Moses in the 12th Century BC, is not doing anything with 130,000 of his troops in Iraq..
Freeing up these 130,000 is not rocket science.
The western half of the country...everything west of a line formed by the River Tigris & the 44th Meridian faces Damascus, not Baghdad, as it has for the past 1000 years...& still appears on the map as the "Syrian Desert".
The Baath Party, the party of Saddam Hussein, still in rebellion against the al-Maliki government & US occupation, is an ethnic Syrian Party formed in Damascus.
The former "Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti" changed his name to "Saddam Hussein al-Majid" because east to the Tigris-44, "al-Tikriti" identified the Dictator as an ethnic Syrian.
What today is called "Anbar" Province..."Anbar" meaning "Granary", an improbable name for a desert landscape, got its name when the previous name "Dulaimi", like "Tikriti", was considered far too Syrian.
In contrast to Damascus-facing Syriana, the western slope of the Golan Heights, even in the days of Syrian rule, has never faced any direction but West.
Back in the 13th Century the Golan was divided very nicely east & west between the Caliphates of Damascus & Cairo.
Given a simple land swap involving Syria, Israel & Iraq...whereby Syria would receive both Syriana & the eastern slope of the Golan while waiving its claim the the western slope, al-Qaeda, between the Mediterranean & Afghanistan could be expected to disappear within a couple of months.
Rather than being down 22,000 troops & maybe $20 billion a year, our Armed Forces would suddenly be up 130,000 & $100 billion a year.
There, then, is the money to be found for the President's Health Care Reform...plus a few bucks for Community Plantations associated with every Municipality with unemployment above 10%.
###############
Egyptology Wants You!
Egyptology, like Chess, Theoretical Physics, Medical Research or a few other things one might mention...(White-water Rafting, for another), is an interest that can exert a very powerful attraction.
How can it be, one may ask, that some thousands of years ago, human beings like ourselves...& almost certainly the ancestors of today's Egyptians, can have performed such wonders of engineering that we today cannot even imagine how these things were done.
While many of the top Egyptologists today are Seismographers, Robotics Engineers, Carbon Daters & Chemists, the Major Players in the field have always been keen amateurs with an eye for "The Anomaly".
Possibly the most important observation in Egyptology in the past hundred years was one made back in 1927 by one Schwaller de Lubicz...one, if I had had my thinking cap on at the time, I might have made myself.
"You see, but you do not observe" Sherlock Holmes tells Watson.
What the professor noted on the walls of the Sphinx enclosure is that the foot-wide, ten foot long vertical fissures in the limestone could not have been made by wind-blown sand...but had to have been made by torrential downpours falling over thousands of years.
As the Sphinx is officially only 4,500 years old during which time the Nile Valley has been bone dry, this was an Anomaly that had to be looked at.
Pursuing my own interest in the subjst, I would like to take the opportunity here to open a couple of lines of inquiry...the same lines, modesty aside, that have made me the premier student of Shakespeare (without any background in theatre) & Cervantes (though my Spanish is nothing to speak of)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Shakespeare-Cervantes-Code/David-Yuhas/e/9780615126074
The first thing I would like to see is the University of Chicago or Cambridge University putting together "a Primer in The Ancient Egyptian Language for Actors"...no hieroglyphics, Coptic script or diacritical dots...only Latin script with macrons over stressed vowels.
This would be the book used by perhaps a troupe of perhaps a dozen "Pharonic Players" who would specialize in historic re-enactments in the old language, which would go striaight to DVD with subtitles.
This troupe might be formed at Northwestern University...(or Cambridge)
The first efforts, I suspect, are going to look like "Walter & Connie on the Farm"...but this is nothing to worry about.
I would ask the aspiring actors to load up on books of Egyptian, Greek & Roman art...& look for things you find in one culture...but not in another. This is the key. What you are seeing & what you are not seeing.
Little by little the keen observer will find himself or herself entering the esoteric world of the Ancient Egyptian.
Best regards,
Boulder, Neo Confederate
David Yuhas
p.s.
A Country Tribute to ABBA?
More operatic lullaby than characteristic pop, the song is written for four voices... female, first & second leads & two male back-ups.
By ABBA standards, "Andante, Andante" is practically unknown. In my book, however, it is the group's All-time Best.
Melodically it is their only number that could pass for one of Mozart's "Short German Dances".
(Just how "Short" were these Germans, anyway?)
My interest in this tune results from my running out of good, new music videos with which to round off this weekly newsletter.
If things don't pick up soon, in the coming Fall Season we could be looking at far too much Weird Al Yankovic.
My plan then, is to persuade four of my favorite Country artists to make a performance video of "Andante, Andante"...namely, Jennifer Nettles, Gretchen Wilson, Kenny Chesney & Kristian Bush.
(No laughing now. I'm not asking them to do "Mamma Mia")
If any legal niceties are involved in doing an ABBA cover, they should not hesitate to let me know...for while I can't say I am an Old Friend of the group...in my days in Stockholm, I did move their pianos around...notably Benny's Brobdingnagian, 8-octave Bosendorfer & Agneta's little white Yamaha.
p.p.s.
YouTube - ABBA: Andante, Andante (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU_2nspV4V8)