I
had it in me to solve the bird mystery I’d raised yesterday. On the way to the gym in the early
morning I took to whistling the call I’d heard and I fancied I had it down
pretty well. “Doot, doot. Doot, doot.” He didn’t show this morning, though I was listening for
him. But I imagined that later,
I’d call my step dad, an ornithologist and I’d whistle my whistle and he’d
say: “oh . . . Doot, doot. Doot doot? Sure. That’s a
warbler.” I determined to make
that call before I sat down this morning to write this.
Well, we just spoke and my tweeting didn’t ring a
bell. He suggested that if it were
an Asian bird he might not recognize it, as his specialty are birds of the
Americas. “But I know I’ve heard
this back home!” I insisted. I
tried my call again a few times hoping it would suddenly burst Madeline-like
into his consciousness. (mind you,
this is a man who can normally name just about whatever comes his way). But I whistled in vane. My mom suggested I record it with
my iPhone, which is probably the sensible thing to do, if our lonely, nameless
four-noted friend returns.
Have a look at this article, which I thought raised an
interesting point: Fu Mengzi, Vice President, China Institutes of Contemporary
International Relations, writing in the on line publication: “Chinafocus.com”
critiqued the recent visit by Obama to our region. Mr. Fu points out that for what was (I believe) the first
time, the U.S. stated overtly that the Diaoyu/Senakaku islands were not only
Japanese territory, but, importantly, they were overtly included in the U.S.
mutual defense pact. Long
intimated, this is only so surprising.
Mr. Fu though, then pointed out something interesting. The Takeshima/Dokdo islands are
currently administered by South Korea and are claimed by Japan, but Obama
refused to state that they were part of the U.S., South Korea defense
pact. If the status quo were
truly challenged in the one instance and not the other, it will invariably push
South Korea further away, towards China.
America has to be willing to challenge and support Japan, in a balanced
fashion.
Driving home today in my Honda Odyssey, after dropping my
kids off at school, I thought about the instances of angry Chinese damaging
Japanese cars and indeed the drivers of Japanese cars. And of course the Japanese consulate
complained and China as a nation looked course, and chaotic, rather than the
stately home of parent civilization dignity, it might wish to project. This, then mirrored down in Vietnam,
where the local government has to effectively apologized for the rampant destruction
of Chinese and other property, as chaotic and beneath Vietnamese
civilization. Does China see
itself, do the people who flipped Japanese cars see themselves, when they see
Vietnamese raging against all things Chinese? This is the third instance where it would appear that Xi
Jinping has personally authorized disruptive assertions of Chinese power
projection. It will be interesting
to see what else he has planned for this year.
The other night a friend was over who referenced an argument
with his wife that challenged his own sense of civility. Alas a bit of 夫妻反目[1] that this friend was working through. I
reminded him that no matter how bad it got at least they’d navigated things
better than Lee Morgan.
I searched my DustyBrine and confirmed that I have yet to profile
the great bop trumpet player in a posting to-date, though he has been referred
to before. My favorite Lee Morgan
album is a wonderful, rather obscure disc he did on the Jazzland Record label
in 1962 entitled “Take Twelve.”
There are many other more notable sessions of his from his time on the
Blue Note label, later in the decade, but something magical happened on “Take Twelve.”
And so I had a look today and found the session by this man
from Philly from right before “Take Twelve” entitled “Lee Way.” An all-star cast with Art Blakey, Paul
Chambers, Bobby Timmons and Jackie McLean the session is predictably solid. The four tunes are lovely and Morgan
himself sounds typically confident, whimsical on this tune just now, Midtown
Blues. Twelve years later Lee
Morgan would suffer some irreparable Lower East Side Blues when his wife shot
him between sets down on Avenue C. As the gun was taken from her hand, she is supposed to have screamed "Baby, what have I done?" Ambulances were loath to go to the neighborhood that is now apparently antiseptic
and Lee Morgan bled to death there in the club.
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