The following are both in the Saipan Tribune.  London Olympics hacked in haste to beat deadline.  Sharing it with the listserv.  (I thank George H. for the JWM quote in the second article.)  

If curious, you are welcome; not, see you at the bend.

j'aime la vie


Memorable Music and Metaphors of Madness at Marshgate
 
The evening was billed as a Symphony of British Music, bringing together the best musical stars of the last 50 years, characterizing the tenor of the closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.  The Olympic stadium is on Marshgate Lane in Stratford, London, and madness was a theme early on in the varied performances.  We could not resist the alliteration in the title.
 
Britain of Winston Churchill, complete with a speechifying PM, along with images of tabloid journalism, the Cardiff cliffs, street sweepers, the London Eye of the famed Millennium Park Ferris wheel, and cars, cars, cars, set the tone for the evening, beginning at mid-evening summertime in London.  Simulcast in the web but delayed on CCTV by a couple of hours for the morning audience, we missed much with the anchor's Zhongwen bantering and the sporadic English subtitles, especially of the performers.
 
The Empire that first employed oil to power its naval fleet, and became preeminent world power in the 19th century, was authentic in displaying what the world have wanted from its factory lines ever since.  Who hasn't drooled over the majesty of the Rolls Royce, the chic leopardine sleekness of the Austin Martin, and the durability of the workhorse Land Rover?
 
Yup, the oil guzzlers were up on stage without apology.  Very elegantly and arrogantly British!
 
Impressive was the parade of the international colors, followed by the march of medalists, and joined by the assembly of athletes to the side of the mid-field ramps that served as routes to the stage, and later, the Olympic flames, seen from above to be shaped like the Union Jack.  Fitting for the occasion was the medal award ceremony for the marathon, with first finisher from Uganda, the sole medalist from the land of the much-maligned Idi Amin.
 
Recognition of the without-which-there-would-not-be-a-smooth-Olympics, the Volunteers, was poignant to us as we remember our Olympic hosting adviser from Sydney of Pinoy descent and pediatric training, who made the trip to London earlier to share her wisdom, undertaking such challenges while living with the scourge of cancer.
 
Volunteers were much heralded in the running of the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo that their tribe henceforth shall be a mainstay in every international sport gathering.
 
Employed on stage were former British Empire Commonwealths such as Indian drums and colorful Sikhs, along with memorable performances of the band Queen, joined by Jessie J in the vocals for We will, we will Rock You!  A noticeable style of singing in the field started with monotone chanting, reaching a screeching height of screaming.  I suppose, we are showing our age re electric metal rock!
 
Comedian Eric Idle of the Monty Python fame tore the stadium down when he emerged from the bowels of the earth after a feigned failed cannonball shot into the rafters, pranced, and sang on stage ("always look at the bright side of life") with the Spice Girls, nuns and the dancing Sihks, et al.
 
The Who took a big chunk of the blood pudding, with hit songs like "Baba O'Riley," "My Generation", and their signature song from their musical Tommy, "See me, feel me/Listening to you."  Earlier, Kaiser Chiefs rendered their classic "Pinball Wizard".
The night extravaganza went beyond its three hour schedule, but we stood when the Greek colors went up with the anthem to honor the Games' country of origin, and to remember how the euro that affects as all is critical in the economy of that land.
 
The singing of the Olympic anthem is lofty and dignified if one is a church-going person, but perhaps, for the seculars of our likeness, it is time to jazz it up.
 
Passing of the Olympic interlocking Penta Rings from London back to IOC President and on to the Mayor of Rio de Janiero stood us up for the perky national anthem of Brazil.  Aerial view of the stadium with the Union Jack in the middle surrounded by lit Brazilian colors in circles was phenomenol visual assault. 
 
A street sweeper-attired performer (looks like one of the athletes but I could not decipher the Zhongwen commentary) left on stage with an English security officer trying to point out that the performances was over, was a foil to get the next site Rio in Brazil, its Carnival dancers, a float, lively EuroAfrican beats and samba steps, Amazon motiffs, native costumes, and Pele!, on stage.
 
London Olympics coordinator Stephen Coe said in his farewell address: "we lit up the flame, and we light up the world."  He added, "we saw what tenacity, ambition, and imagination can do."  Wondered what that would do were we to refocus efforts on such daily human issues as poverty and war.  Haunting in this regard were the children's voices that sang John Lennon song Imagine during the ceremony, followed by a projected image of the Beatle member himself singing his song in a somber moment.
 
Snuffing of the Olympic flame surrounded by a lit up stadium, and a last burst of fireworks, the fires were passed on to the emerging Brazilian bird in the background.
 
"In our time Britain got it right", said Coe.  British version of madness is usually mayhem.  This one went just fine.  "You and me, we can light up the sky," went an ending song.  And in a characteristic British fashion, "We can rule the world!"  Nah.
 
Jacques Rogge, IOC President, bid his grateful adieu.  The Who's "See me, feel me, touch me" from Tommy anticipated Copacobana of Rio.  So, all right, Rio, top this one.  Here we come, Copa!  Got your thongs ready?
 Jaime R Vergara

All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!



America’s got talent
 
We have two singing presidentiables competing for our attention.  Obama did Al Green's Let Us Stay Together, while Romney belted out the beloved hymn of America the Beautiful.  That each camp found cause to point out deficiencies in the renditions is simply an unavoidable political hazard.
 
Singing, of course, is the language of the heart.  The phrase 'Singing Revolution' refers to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania’s response to the Nazis in WWII, and the Russians during the Cold War.  They were forbidden to sing in public any of their rousing national songs.  The Baltic folks just kept singing, and a recent PBS docu has the Lithuanian defying their Soviet lords until the Berlin Wall came down, and the flowering of their voices bloomed and is now digitized for the world.
 
The first act of a baby when transitioning from water-based existence to air-based breathing is to sing.  Well, not exactly to the tune of Beethoven’s Fifth but the waaah wailed when heard has been known to keep a father’s heart to skip a beat, and a mothers throat to utter a deep sigh of relief.
 
We taught Peace Corps Volunteers in the early 80s employing the immersion method.  One went to class with nothing but the language being learned.  This has pedagogical merit.  A baby's way of learning a first tongue is to hear it spoken, and then to mimic what one hears.  Thus, we learn language by first hearing, then repeating, before we are confident enough to speak on our own.
 
Schooling adds reading and writing.  We learn to read, utilizing sounds symbolized by the alphabet.  After third grade in the PSS curriculum, a student reads to learn.  We get familiar with syntax (grammar) and expand word meaning (vocabulary).  We are taught to recognize ratio and afix them with numbers.  We objectify patterns that evolve into what is logical and/or reasonable.  Cognition is birthed.
 
Intelligence is measured in terms of its facility with words and numbers, and it expresses sense experience, emotional state, mental discipline, and willed decision.  Hearing words delivered through familiar music is one of the natural methods of getting fluent in a language.
 
Singing has become a lost art in our schools since we treated music as an academic course.  Somehow, we managed to kill the spirit of singing with either irrelevance (too much reliance on classical forms), or justifiable boredom (the inanity of the mathematical scale).  We let pros sing our national anthems at public events, promoting their trademark vocal styles rather than lead a crowd in communal singing.
 
One of the remarkable features of the Olympics is the playing of one's national anthem when receiving the gold.  Almost invariably, a member of Team China in the medal platform visibly sings Qilai, Qilai (Arise, arise!), when the national anthem is played. 
 
Team America was once a meaningful term.  Our 1992 Basketball Team was dubbed the Dream Team.  The Dallas Cowboys called themselves America's Team.  Somewhere along the line, tearmwork got sidelined as stardom shined in the skies.  We hope the current team of superstars retrieves the reputation.
 
Christianity evolved first as Team Ecclesia (the Household of God) in the manner of the expected one, Messiah in Hebrew, and Κριστοσ in Greek, before it became idolatrous and began singing the glories of Jesus Christ Superstar!  So this dichotomy is not new.
 
China's French Open champion Li Na bolted out of the Team and went solo on claims that economic gains favored the team's interest too much.  She is not very popular, and her lackluster performance in London, losing her first game, did not receive much sympathy.
 
Liu Xiang of the 110m-hurdle capped the gold in the 2004 Athens Olympics, was hounded by all kinds of ailments, got healed and was poised to reclaim a medal in London.  He walked around tagged by a lion's share of favorable media.  He stumbled on the first hurdle of his heat, and went through tendon surgery.  The papparazzi are still on his tail.
 
His expressed sentiment is: "winning a medal is not what matters; participation does," according to his coach.  He shares his means liberally (e.g., Sichuan earthquake) and remains one of Team China's staunch members.
 
Talent in current American parlance is a stardom category, with competition understood as one besting another.  America's Got Talent on TV mirrors our politics.  Wisconsin's Paul Ryan notwithstanding, Republican conservatives still shun Romney, and Obama tries to prove he is mainstream and centrist to the Democrats.  I would rather that he be liberal and progressive.
 
Obama leads the polls and has an edge on 9 of the 10 swing States in the coming election.  The contest, however, is doomed to be another lose-lose affair, as once more, governance get stuck in grid lock, and the American people will wail their whine unto the heavens!  Team "Yes, we can" got sidelined by BHO the reluctant superstar!
 
An old guru once wrote: Hope appeareth, but it is not your Hope—you do not have anything to do with it.  It just appeareth.  It comes as a stranger, as an alien—it just appeareth!  You do not even know why you hope.  How in the world could you hope when there is absolutely nothing to justify any hope?
 
The presidentiables are singing.  That's hopeful!
 

 Jaime R Vergara

All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!