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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 6, 2024 11:34:49 GMT -8
Had seen neither hide nor hair of Pat Boone for some years, until a couple of days back. He was promoting something on a TV ad. He looks very good for a man who is ninety years old.
He had an absolutely beautiful voice. He was very popular when I was a child. I would play and replay his records all the time. Below are just three of them.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 6, 2024 18:54:23 GMT -8
I'll have to see if I can find some Pat Boone on vinyl.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 6, 2024 19:16:34 GMT -8
This is what the records we had looked like, except they were 45s. I played the 45s, stacked on top of each other.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 7, 2024 8:14:15 GMT -8
Let's not forget his daughter. Debbie is still belting them out in 2013 and sounding and looking pretty good.
Assuming that's live and no pitch correction, that's better than 99% of "stars" can do in their 20's, let alone being about 65. Hell, Sinatra's voice was becoming a bit of a shambles by then.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 7, 2024 10:30:26 GMT -8
She looks and sounds good. Notice however that she has dropped the song by a couple of keys and sings more slowly than the original. The drop in key I understand, one's voice generally gets lower as one ages and one loses or strains at the high notes which used to be easy. The tempo is something else. It is often easier to sing something fast than slow. The slower tempo generally requires one to hold notes longer and vocal failings can become more apparent. When one sings at a quick tempo, one can jump from one note to the other with less worry.
I know the above from personal experience. Mdm. Flu has suggested that I get out and make some money singing, but I cannot do it. I am something of a perfectionist and know what I used to sound like and I cannot bring myself to get out and perform at a level of 60-70% of what I used to perform at. I hear and feel every slightly off note, etc. I can't bear them so I let sleeping dogs lie. Of course there is also the other thing of who would pay to see a fat, seventy-one-year-old with grey hair sing?  |
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 22, 2024 13:57:47 GMT -8
I was going to write a summation of my thoughts on the Old Testament after expounding somewhat further on individual books or figures. But your post has inspired me to first post my observations/conclusions regarding the overall message of the Hebrew Bible know as the Tanakh. The standard text, and the one The Revised English Bible translated is the Masoretic Text, which was compiled during the 7th to 10th centuries A.D. To try to encapsulate the meaning/main theme and message of a book of more than 800 pages in one brief post is, perhaps, not wise. While one might be able to give a reasonable synopsis of the work, there will be many gaps which can only be filled with more lengthy commentary, if then. While I do not claim to know the meaning of everything I read, I can honestly state that my observations are based on the text of the Book. A Book which I read carefully over a period of about five weeks starting in August. I grew up learning various stories of the Old Testament in Church and elsewhere. The Creation, Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Exodus, conquest of the Promised land, Sodom and Gomarrah as well as David and Goliath were common stories which virtually all Christian children heard. A number of Psalms, Proverbs, tales of Job and Ruth and Daniel in the Lion’s Den would fill out the basic canon. After reading the complete Tanakh, it is very clear that the above material covers only part of the message. In fact, it represents only about a third to two fifths of the text. Studying the Old Testament, I was surprised to find that the bulk of it is an unremitting, furious indictment, condemnation and judgment against the Israelites, followed by the infliction of horrible punishment on them by the Lord God. Verse after verse across the Book confirm this. Psalms 78 is, perhaps, the best summation of this. This verse reminds the Israelites what the Lord God did for them, how he shielded them from harm, how he proved his majesty, how he showered them with his grace and bounty, how he struck down their enemies. All they had to do was follow his commandments and such blessings would continue. Yet from the moment Moses led them out of Egypt, and time, after time, after time, after time, and many more times afterward, the Israelites disobeyed the Lord, mocked his commandments, lived vile lives full of perversion, and corruption, and worshipped false gods, even sacrificing their children to these gods. One cannot help but wonder at the stupid obstinacy and depravity of such a people. All these records and condemnations of this decadence is not the propaganda of some outside tribe/group. It is a self-admitted and self-imposed, righteous Bill of Attainder against all of them. What is one to make of such things? What is a religious Israelite/Jew to make of this? |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 22, 2024 15:12:23 GMT -8
I'm going to read and analyze what you wrote. But let me see if I anticipate anything.
I don't think in the least that it is foolish to try to encapsulate a long book. Moby Dick: Obsess over catching a big whale at your own peril.
Human nature is very very tricky. It shouldn’t take a long book to say, "Don't be a rat bastard." But people deceive themselves about right and wrong. They tend to look no further than self-interest and judge things accordingly. As Prager says, one of the dumbest modern sayings is "follow your heart" because your heart (your emotions) is a pretty bad guide to right-and-wrong.
So people have to be inundated by stories and examples. Over and over. They also need just a lot of good, old-fashioned threatening, as you summarize as well...
Fascinating. That's one reason Dennis Prager thinks the bible is true. What other people would tell such stories about themselves?
This is why I think perhaps the greatest piece of Christian art is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, that of Adam reaching toward God, receiving the spark of life and of the divine.
Our tendency is to piss it away and not recognize it. What we see in the Democrat Party is the complete and total dismissal of the divine and the giving over to the base. Without the intervention of wise and decent men, our proclivity is to roll in the mud with the pigs.
One never knows the veracity of the stories, especially ones that contain visitations from God or miracles. But the behavior of the Israelites is even more egregious because very often they had witnessed and been direct beneficiaries of the miracles of God.
Humans will automatically veer towards depravity, toward the animal sides of their nature, unless the divine is acknowledged and acted upon. And anyone who has ever interacted with a morally dicey (or just plain bad) person will probably understand that they are not easily talked out of their evil. There can be no short version of the Bible, I suppose.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 22, 2024 16:55:48 GMT -8
For the purpose of my study and in order to put myself into the mindset of a believer, I read the Old Testament from the perspective that it is absolutely true. This was the way that it has/had been read for at least two thousand years. Thus the question of its veracity did not come up. My observations need to be understood in that context.
From that point of view, the Israelites must be seen as perhaps the most sinful people in history. God "chose" them. God made himself visible to them during the Exodus and later. He performed miracles for them throughout their history. He protected them and made them prosper. He gave them very specific instructions on how they were to worship him and how they were to act in their relations with mankind and warned them of their peril if they did not follow these. Yet they, figuratively, gave him the finger throughout their history. With that being the case, why would any religious Israelite/Jew wonder at the persecution which followed them for so long? According to the Tanakh, they deserved it.
The Lord God did promise he would ease up on them and bring them back to him in the future, but that was not because they were any good or earned his protection. Rather he said he would do it for his name's sake. Read Ezekiel 36.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 22, 2024 17:24:11 GMT -8
I didn't doubt that for a second.
As outsiders-looking-in (to some extent, anyway), we've noticed that those Westerners who have read the Koran note that it is barely discernible as any kind of coherent text. Yet millions revere it. Hinduism is full of a bizarre set of gods. Yet millions live by it.
Obviously there are elements in the Bible that are important to Jews, for their identity, their history, and their relationship with God. But, yes, if someone (as you did) sits down and reads it objectively, it sounds as if it causes more than a few gasps.
Too bad Dennis Prager is not your next-door neighbor. I do think a very interesting conversation would erupt. But I can't really offer that because I don't differ much from your perspective.
I think God is true. And it is plausible that he would insert himself in human affairs for the betterment of those humans. But the details. Oy veh. I can't possible judge effectively or fairly people and events from thousands of years ago or how people find guidance and meaning from the scriptures then or now. Unlike the Koran, I do not think the Bible is evil. That's major.
So what is a Jew to make of all this? Well, it seems that the overwhelming majority of them have rejected it. If not outright secular or atheist, many have (as Prager notes) simply substituted Progressivism/Leftism for authentic Judaism and then believe they are "religious" Jews. Yes, but not to the religion they may think.
Maybe an equally important question is what do we think about this. Reality itself is stupendous but full of fuzzy problems. But regarding Christianity and Judaism, at least, whatever one thinks of the veracity of the faiths, one can judge much by their enemies. And their enemies have tended to be the purest forms of evil. Thus we might not BE-LIEVE! as some do. But we know what side of our Matzah is buttered.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 24, 2024 12:35:24 GMT -8
Of all the characters in the Old Testament, I figure David was the Lord's favorite. Yes, there were others to whom Jehovah showed favor, but none were cast in as good a light as the beloved one. Abraham and Isaac were shown to be pimps, and Jacob a scoundrel. Other than David, Moses would probably be the closest to God. The Lord definitely had a soft spot for David. Bathsheba was his only big mistake according to the Book.
He made David King of Judah, then King of a united Israel. David is mentioned very often (I believe more than any other person) in the text and constantly praised. God very often prefaces a bestowal of some favor on this or that person by saying something like, "Because of my servant David, or your ancestor David," I will do this or that for you.
About half the Psalms are attributed to David. In these he begs and praises. "Lord my God, in you I find refuge; rescue me from all my pursuers and save me" and "Lord our sovereign, how glorious is your name throughout the world." (Psalms 7:1 & Psalms 8:9)
Perhaps most importantly, it is through David's line that a messiah was to rise and save Israel.
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