Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt

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A Pete Morton song for our times: Two Brothers

Pete Morton is absolutely one of my favorite folk singers of all time.  While I love his voice and his simple guitar playing, the real beauty of his music is in his message and the way he crafts the words and images.

He is English, lives in London, and performs mostly in England, Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany.  Occasionally, he will drift over to the States and play at The Focal Point here is St. Louis. If there were any sanity in the music business he would be better known that he is. Of course, folk music is a style that drifts in and out of popularity… but not with me.

Given that the situation in this world and this country seems to be degenerating more and more quickly,  I think what the world needs is Pete’s message in his song, Two Brothers, to be taken to heart.

Sometimes the greed, the lust for power, the lust for money, the absolute self-centeredness of so many folks, the need to impose your beliefs, your religion, your values on others, even against their will, just overwhelms me.  It is more than I can bear at times, and there really is no place to run. There is no alien inter-galactic ark coming to carry us safely to the proverbial mountain top.

Below is Pete Morton’s song Two Brothers. Enjoy, maybe even meditate on the message.

And so I wish it would go.

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Un Chicago or Una Chicago

Porous Frontiers

You do not really need to know another language to know that linguistic frontiers are very porous, resulting in words from one language being incorporated into another.

English is a wonderful example of this, beginning life as a Germanic language that imposed itself on the native tongues of what was to become Scotland, England and some extent, Ireland.  That mash-up, in its turn, having Nordic languages stamped on top of it.  The Normans were so kind as to invade, Continue reading “Un Chicago or Una Chicago”

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Eurasian Tree Sparrow

I would not really call myself a birder, but birds have always fascinated me.  We keep a 4 station feeder outside our kitchen window and hummingbird feeders on the porch during the warmer season.  A time or two Señora has complained that the birds were eating us out of house and home, but she keeps buying seed. They are definitely fun to watch and we get more than a few species taking advantage of our generosity.

I have a Biology degree that specialized on the zoological side of the science.  One of my regrets is Continue reading “Eurasian Tree Sparrow”

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #5,488

yeah I know you did not ask!

You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.

To state the obvious, crazy people are hard to deal with.  That is one of the many reasons we call them crazy. Frequently, one of the most difficult things to tolerate is that they suck all the oxygen from a room, they hog all the bandwidth, leaving room for only their drama. Even when they are not there physically.

Just saying.

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Señora in St. Charles

I had forgotten I had taken this picture of Señora in St. Charles a few years ago.  Obviously it was Christmas time. We were with a group of folks in the historic downtown district of this city sitting on the Missouri River, visiting the various quaint shops that are nestled in among restaurants, bars and monuments and references to Lewis and Clark.

Ain’t she purrrr-ttteeee?

Y’all come back now… hear!

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Hispanic Christmas Tradition – Caganers

I was working online with one of my Spanish teachers, a Venezuelan woman who has fled her country with her husband to Buenos Aires.  We were reviewing and discussing an article that listed various Christmas traditions from around the Hispanic world.

There is a tradition from the Catalonia region of Spain that we glossed over as neither of us really wanted to discuss it.  The tradition struck both of us as a little gross.  The traditional there is to place a defecating – pooping if you will – figurine discreetly?? in one corner of the Christmas Nativity scene that folks commonly put out this time of year.  Typically, this figurine has always been of a peasant in the traditional dress of the region.  And like most of these things it is supposed to bring good luck.

It has since morphed so frequently the figurines are of famous people from around the globe.  This has grown into a big international souvenir business, with the majority of the online sales going to the United States.

Fast Forward

Talking about synchronicity… Looking at the news online this morning there was an article from The Guardian: Christmas caganer figurines of Catalonia Just a warning if your are sensitive to such things, there is a bit of a yuk factor associated with the pictures in the article, but on the whole it was an interesting read, at least for me as I had touched on the subject just a couple days before. It was also amusing to see which public figures they chose to depict.

If you are curious, look up the Spanish verb cagar (the noun caganer is derived from the verb) in an online translator.  When I was young it was a word that was not used in polite company.

Oh we humans… I wonder how far we really are from the bonobos.

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My Turn Signal Conundrum       

I am a big fan of myself and others using turn indicators, turn signals if you will.  At the minimum it is just common courtesy.  It is also, many times, a manner of safety. Using and acknowledging turn signals keeps traffic flowing in a safe and sane manner.

However, I am utterly convinced that this device, usually a lever that controls the signalling lights, is missing or broken in many vehicles.  I even wonder sometimes if they are still installing them in new vehicles.  Perhaps no one has bothered to educate the drivers of these vehicles on how they function. I remember the salesman taking 20 minutes to explain how the touch screen worked on the last new car we bought. For my money they could be throwing in the turn indicator functionality as a public service.

To give you an idea of how old I am, I actually Continue reading “My Turn Signal Conundrum       “

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Bill Maher On Current Middle East Crisis

I used to be a bit of a Bill Maher fan, but not so for the last several years.  I now find him to be a self-righteous pendejo, and thus hard to watch.  However, the video below was embedded in an article  that appeared in the online version of the St. Louis Jewish Light: ‘Where do you think Israel is going?’ Bill Maher quips in viral eight-minute clip.

Maher makes a lot a sense to me in his segment.  At some point you just have to move on.  Of course, it took me a few years to stop lamenting about some of the fallout from my divorce, but you just do it. Sometimes you just need to let go.

Given that this is Bill Maher, the language is reasonably clean.

If you want a good quick review of the current history of Israel and The Occupied Territories, I discussed a recently published book by Daniel Skotach at this link: Can We Talk About Israel?

And is almost always the case, there are two sides to the story, if not more.  I discussed a 2005 Arabic language movie about the recruitment of two young West Bankers to be suicide bombers here: Paradise Now | Revisited

While not Jewish myself, my wife is, so much of this strikes close to home. Especially so as our October trip to Israel – a lifetime dream of my spouse – was cancelled abruptly.

And so it goes in this absurdity we call life.