Peripatetic Praxis blog is moving to a free wordpress site (got to pinch those pennies, you know…).  You can find the whole thing moving forward here:  http://peripateticpraxis.wordpress.com/

It will (for the time being, anyway) look about the same.  I have to give up a little functionality, but that won’t harm things too much.  Note that some posts from years ago were corrupted by a wordpress update or virus or whatever, and I have not had time to fix them all.  They are more or less readable, but include some gibberish characters (as distinct from your author’s normally expected gibberish).

See you over there…

Democracy protests bring down Egypt’s Mubarak – Yahoo! News:

Sure hope so…Is the military the people?  We’ll stay tuned….

It’s been awhile.  The holidays were good.  The startup of classes for the spring semester was good.  My last checkup at the doctor’s was good.  Life is good (if I don’t consider anything whatsoever outside of my home, my neighborhood, or my classrooms).

So why blog???

Peggy Orenstein’s reflections on ripping herself away from the internet are well-worth considering.  Except that I found them on the internet while endlessly surfing the sea of information.  If I had been busy with all the things I am supposed to be doing, I’d have missed them altogether.

She sees the “cloud” as seductive as Homer’s Sirens, who tempted not with beauty but with “the promise of unending knowledge.”  Like Ulysses, Orenstein needs (at times) to lash herself to the mast to avoid being sucked in along with the rest of us into the “inevitable mass erosion of our self-control.”  (This insight is from Fred Stutzman, developer of Freedom, an electronic “mast” developed for the Mac that cuts off your internet access for a period of time and requires a reboot to override.)

Some gems her piece:

It is heartening that the yearning for learning is the most powerful of all human cravings (though it applies equally to obtaining the wisdom of Zeus or the YouTube video on how to peel a banana like a monkey). Yet the sea surrounding the Sirens was littered with corpses. Can increased knowledge really destroy us?

and

the trap is more of a bait and switch: the promise is of infinite knowledge, but what’s delivered is infinite information, and the two are hardly the same

and

It could be that sometimes our greatest freedom may be to choose freedom from freedom.

Oh, look!  Where did the time go???  Anyway, no matter how hard you try to resist, you WILL read the rest here.

Thirty-five years of Bruce shows.  I am missing a couple, I think.  I didn’t have the chance to see him and the band a lot of times, but each one was very special to me.  One of the reasons is that some of you were with me! Note the pic of Bruce on stage at West Chester State College in 1974 (as it was known then)—you may be able be able to make out that’s me and my sister Harriet near the stage (along with a bunch of other people, of course). 

There are several sources for concert info and set lists, but by far the most amazing is www.brucebase.org.uk, which is the source of the pic from the WCSC Quad, for which I used to write when I eventually attended there.  I am amazed to find this photograph.  I have my original from the paper to this day!

If you check out brucebase, make sure to click the “storyteller” button.  You will find transcripts of Bruce’s stage banter.  Lots of fun to read through, especially from the old days when the Boss was even more talkative than now.

[updated]

05/10/74 – ALBRIGHT COLLEGE, READING, PA

INCIDENT ON 57TH STREET / SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT / TWISTIN’ THE NIGHT AWAY / FOR YOU / KITTY’S BACK / ROSALITA

ONE show, held in the sold-out 2,000-seat Bollman Center. Springsteen & The E Street Band headline. Folk stylist JAE MASON (and his band) opened with 45-minute set. Although violinist Suki Lahav had made her debut the previous night, she is NOT present at this show or the following night at Clark University. The six above-mentioned songs (sequential as they were played) represent a partial setlist from the show and are mentioned in an extensive review that appeared in the school newspaper. THERE IS NO KNOWN AUDIO FROM THIS SHOW. Springsteen’s set lasted for 2½ hrs (no intermission) and Bruce actually comments to the student reporter after the show that this was one of his longest shows to date. During "Kitty’s Back" Bruce broke his guitar string and repaired it onstage, facilitating an exceptionally long rendition of the song. At one point Bruce was even running around in the audience. Of major historical interest is Bruce’s rendition of San Cooke’s "Twistin’ The Night Away" – the only verified performance by The E Street Band.

"Bruce alight at Albright – Oct 5, 1974. Courtesy of Albright College Special Collections"

http://www.brucebase.org.uk/gig1974.htm

22/11/74 – WEST CHESTER COLLEGE, WEST CHESTER, PA

No set details known. ONE show, double bill, with Springsteen headlining and folk stylist JAE MASON opening. A BRUCEBASE reader who attended comments: "a truly amazing show. I took a friend who only listened to classical music and couldn’t stand rock – even she was blown away! Jae Mason opened up and the crowd booed him. So Bruce came out and asked the crowd to give the guy a break because it wasn’t too long ago that he (Bruce) was an opening act. Suki Lahav was playing. The rendition of "Jungleland" was one of the greatest moments in rock and roll history!"

“Various promotional material presented by kind permission of West Chester University. Thanks to the Special Collections Department for their efforts”

http://www.brucebase.org.uk/gig1974.htm

25/10/76 – THE SPECTRUM ARENA, PHILADELPHIA, PA

NIGHT (2.54) / RENDEZVOUS (2.56) / SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT (5.38) / IT’S MY LIFE (11.36) / THUNDER ROAD (5.18) / SHES THE ONE (8.13) / SOMETHING IN THE NIGHT (4.35) / BACKSTREETS (9.12) / GROWIN’ UP (8.01) / TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT (4.05) / JUNGLELAND (8.45) / ROSALITA (9.57) / SANDY (6.22) / A FINE, FINE GIRL (2.43) / RAISE YOUR HAND (3.45) / THE PROMISE (5.05) / BORN TO RUN (4.35)

Audience tape and soundboard. Show features Bruce’s earliest known cover of the Darlene Love-Phil Spector classic “A Fine, Fine Girl”. This gig has traditionally been noted in books as Springsteen’s first-ever large indoor Arena concert as a headliner – however in reality the Springsteen show at Vets Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on Sep 26, 1976 probably deserves that title. This show’s encores were released on the CD boot ‘ARENA ROCK’ (Palace) which is otherwise primarily the soundboard tape from 22/08/76 show. Nearly 14 minutes of semi-pro color film footage of excerpts of ‘Jungleland” and “Born To Run” from this show are in circulation and can be found (with audio) on the DVD ‘BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: 8MM’ (Brucevideos Productions).

http://www.brucebase.org.uk/gig1976.htm

27/05/78 – THE SPECTRUM, PHILADELPHIA, PA

S/C: JUNGLELAND / LUCILLE / FIRE / LUCILLE / BADLANDS

BADLANDS / NIGHT / SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT / SOMETHING IN THE NIGHT / FOR YOU / THE PROMISED LAND / PROVE IT ALL NIGHT / RACING IN THE STREET / THUNDER ROAD / JUNGLELAND / PARADISE BY THE C / FIRE / ADAM RAISED A CAIN / GROWIN’ UP / IT’S HARD TO BE A SAINT IN THE CITY / MONA – SHE’S THE ONE / BACKSTREETS / ROSALITA / THE PROMISE / BORN TO RUN / TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT / YOU CAN’T SIT DOWN

Audience tape – First Jungleland of the ’78 tour. Available on CDR "Philadelphia 78"

Photo’s courtesy – Peter Howes/AsburyBrucePhotos – upper left – intro to "Prove It"

http://www.brucebase.org.uk/gig1978.htm 

07/02/81 – UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHAMPAIGN, ILL

PROVE IT ALL NIGHT / TWO HEARTS / 10TH AVENUE FREEZE OUT / DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN / INDEPENDENCE DAY / WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN / THE PROMISED LAND / OUT IN THE STREET / THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND / THE RIVER / BADLANDS / THUNDER ROAD / CADILLAC RANCH / SHERRY DARLING / HUNGRY HEART / FIRE / YOU CAN LOOK / I WANNA MARRY YOU / FOR YOU / WRECK ON THE HIGHWAY / STOLEN CAR / POINT BLANK / CANDYS ROOM / RAMROD / ROSALITA / I’M A ROCKER / JUNGLELAND / BORN TO RUN / DETROIT MEDLEY / TWIST AND SHOUT

Audience tape – includes a rare outing for the Here She Comes/I Wanna Marry You medley. Some tapes miss the final encore.

http://www.brucebase.org.uk/gig1981.htm

17/09/84 – THE SPECTRUM, PHILADELPHIA, PA

S/C: BENEATH THE FLOODLINE / BORN IN THE USA / INDEPENDENCE DAY / MANSION ON THE HILL / OUT IN THE STREET / INSTRUMENTAL

BORN IN THE USA / OUT IN THE STREET / 10TH AVENUE FREEZE OUT / ATLANTIC CITY / JOHNNY 99 / INDEPENDENCE DAY / PROVE IT ALL NIGHT / DARLINGTON COUNTY / GLORY DAYS / THE PROMISED LAND / MY HOMETOWN / TRAPPED / BADLANDS / THUNDER ROAD / HUNGRY HEART / DANCING IN THE DARK / CADILLAC RANCH / CANDYS ROOM / DOWNBOUND TRAIN / COVER ME / PINK CADILLAC / BOBBY JEAN / JERSEY GIRL / ROSALITA / I’M A ROCKER / JUNGLELAND / BORN TO RUN / DETROIT MEDLEY / TWIST AND SHOUT – DO YOU LOVE ME

Audience tape. A rare full band take of “Independence Day”. Thanks to Skeet for the setlist correction and Per for info. Recently available from Mark Persic’s master recording – all Philly ’84 shows were special and Bruce & the band put out their best. Amazing sound quality. Some show details: ‘The Promised Land’ gets dedicated to Bruce’s friends from Ireland that are in the audience. Cover Me has a bit longer keyboard intro than usual. Nils does the trampoline jump twice during ‘Rosie’ after failing the first try. ("Perfection At Last!", Ev2).

http://www.brucebase.org.uk/gig1984.htm

November 14, 1999 / Gund Arena, Cleveland, OH
Notes: "Spirit in the Night" leads off the first encore, for Night One of two in Cleveland. Patti Scialfa is still absent, recovering from her perforated eardrum, and the set again inlcudes "My Hometown" in what had been the Patti/Bruce duet (Mansion/Factory) slot. "Ramrod" closes for the fourth show in a row.
Setlist: The Ties That Bind/Prove It All Night/Two Hearts/Darkness on the Edge of Town/The Promised Land/My Hometown/The River/Youngstown/Murder Inc./Badlands Out in the Street/Tenth Avenue Freeze-out/Working on the Highway/The Ghost of Tom Joad/Born in the U.S.A.
Jungleland/Light of Day
First Encore: Spirit in the Night/Bobby Jean/Born to Run
Second Encore: Thunder Road/If I Should Fall Behind/Land of Hope and Dreams/Ramrod

http://www.backstreets.com/setlists99.html

August 9, 2003
Philadelphia, PA
Lincoln Financial Field

1. Adam Raised a Cain
2. The Rising
3. Lonesome Day
4. The Ties That Bind
5. Trapped
6. For You
7. Empty Sky
8. Waitin’ on a Sunny Day
9. Spirit in the Night
10. Worlds Apart
11. Badlands
12. She’s the One
13. Mary’s Place
14. Tougher Than the Rest
15. Into the Fire
16. Thunder Road
    (encore)
17. Where the Bands Are
18. I’m a Rocker
19. Hungry Heart
20. Glory Days
21. Born to Run
22. My City of Ruins
23. Land of Hope and Dreams
24. Rosalita
25. Dancing in the Dark

http://www.brucespringsteen.net/live/risingtoursetlists.html#20030809

November 8, 2005
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Wachovia Spectrum

1. Born In The Usa
2. Devils And Dust
3. The Ties That Bind
4. Long Time Comin’
5. Highway 29
6. Fade Away
7. Incident On 57th Street
8. Johnny 99
9. Ain’t Got You
10. Atlantic City
11. Highway Patrolman
12. Reno
13. Be True
14. Drive All Night
15. The Rising
16. Further On (Up The Road)
17. Jesus Was An Only Son
18. This Hard Land
19. The Hitter
20. Matamoros Banks
    (encore)
21. I Wanna Marry You
22. Open All Night
23. The Promised Land
24. Dream Baby Dream

http://www.brucespringsteen.net/live/2005setlists.html#20051108

October 19, 2009
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Spectrum
Night 3
When You Walk In The Room (first since 1976!)
Two Hearts
My Love Will Not Let You Down
Hungry Heart
Working On A Dream
Thunder Road
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Night
Backstreets
Born To Run
She’s The One
Meeting Across The River
Jungleland
Waiting On A Sunny Day
Raise Your Hand
It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City
I Wanna Marry You (first w/ E Street since 1981)
All Shook Up (wow)
Radio Nowhere
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Badlands
No Surrender
Land Of Hope & Dreams
American Land
Bobby Jean
Dancin’ In The Dark
Rosalita

http://www.brucespringsteen.net/live/2009setlists.html#20091019

The following was not written by me.  Instead, it has been:

Shamelessly reproduced, for reasons of LOVE:

October 14, 2007

The joint suicide of André Gorz, the French philosopher and founder of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, and his British-born wife Dorine, who was suffering from a fatal disease, has turned the love letter that he wrote to her into a surprise bestseller.

Gorz, 84, a friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, and Dorine, 83, committed suicide by lethal injection at their home in the village of Vosnon, east of Paris, on September 22. Two days later a friend found them lying side-by-side in their bedroom.

Gorz’s 75-page Lettre à D. Histoire d’un Amour (Letter to D. Story of a Love), published a year earlier, was a tribute to his wife. One French critic described the work, which won him a wider audience than his essays on ecology and anti-capitalism, as his “intellectual and emotional testament”.

The couple met by chance at a card game in 1947 and married in 1949. “You will soon be 82. You have shrunk six centimetres and you weigh just 45 kilos and you are still beautiful, gracious and desirable,” the book starts. “It is now 58 years that we have lived together and I love you more than ever.”

Gorz goes on to describe finding out in 1973 that Dorine, who managed foreign rights for the publisher Galilée, suffered from an incurable condition caused by the contrast agent lipiodol that was used for x-rays before a back operation that she underwent in 1965. Traces of the agent reached her skull and led to cysts in her cervix, painfully pressuring her nerves.

Two years later the couple learnt that she also suffered from another illness. [Andre’s words]:

I took a photo of you, from behind: you are walking with your feet in the water on the beach of La Jolla. You are 52. You are amazing. It’s one of the images of you that I like best.

I looked at that photo for a long while after we got back home, when you told me you wondered if you didn’t have some sort of cancer. You’d already wondered that before we left for the United States but hadn’t wanted to say anything to me. Why not? ‘If I have to die, I wanted to see California beforehand,’ you told me calmly.

Your endometrial cancer hadn’t been picked up in your annual checkup. Once the diagnosis was made and the date of the operation set, we went to spend a week in the house you’d designed. I carved your name in the stone with a chisel. That house was magic. All the spaces had a trapezoidal shape. The bedroom windows looked out over the treetops.

The first night, we didn’t sleep. We were both listening to each other breathing. Then a nightingale started singing and a second one, further away, started answering. We said very little to each other. I spent the day digging and looked up from time to time at the bedroom window. You were standing there, motionless, staring into the distance. I am sure you were practising taming death in order to fight it without fear. You were so beautiful and so determined in your silence that I couldn’t imagine you giving up living.

I took time off from Le Nouvel Observateur and shared your room at the clinic. The first night, through the open window, I heard all of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony. It is etched in me, every note. I remember every moment spent at the clinic. Pierre, our doctor friend from the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), who came to hear your latest news every morning, said to me: ‘You are going through moments of exceptional intensity. You’ll remember this always.’ I wanted to know what chances the oncologist gave you of surviving five years. Pierre brought me the answer: ‘50-50.’

When you came out of the clinic we went back to our house. Your spirit thrilled me and reassured me. You’d escaped death and life took on a new meaning and a new value. A friend immediately understood this when you saw him at a party. He stared into your eyes for a long time and he said to you: ‘You’ve seen the other side.’ I don’t know how you responded or what else you said. But these are the words he said to me, straight afterwards: ‘Those eyes! Now I understand what she means to you.’

You had seen ‘the other side’; you’d come back from the land no one comes back from. This changed your perspective. We made the same resolution without consulting each other. An English Romantic once summed it up in a sentence: ‘There is no wealth but life.’

During the months you were convalescing, I decided to take my retirement at 60. I started counting the weeks till I could pack up. I took pleasure in cooking, in tracking down organic produce that would help you get your strength back, in ordering the specially tailored medications that a homeopath had recommended you take.

Ecology became a way of life and a daily practice without ceasing to imply the requirement of a completely different civilisation. I’d reached the age where you ask yourself what you’ve done with your life, what you would like to have done with it. I had the impression of not having lived my life, of having always observed it at a distance, of having developed only one side of myself and being poor as a person. You were, and always had been, richer than I was. You’d blossomed and grown in every dimension. You were at home in your life; whereas I’d always been in a hurry to move on to the next task, as though our life would only really begin later.

I asked myself what was the inessential that I needed to give up in order to concentrate on the essential. I told myself that, to grasp the reach of the upheavals that were looming in every domain, there had to be more space and time for reflection than the full-time exercise of my profession as a journalist allowed.

I was amazed that my leaving the journal, after 20 years of collaboration, was neither painful to myself nor to others. I remember having written that, at the end of the day, only one thing was essential to me: to be with you. I can’t imagine continuing to write, if you no longer are. You are the essential without which all the rest, no matter how important it seems to me when you are there, loses its meaning and its importance. I told you that in the dedication of my last work.

Twenty-three years have gone by since we went off to live in the country, first in ‘your’ house, which radiated a sense of meditative harmony. A harmony we enjoyed for only three years. They started building a nuclear power station nearby and that drove us away. We found another house, very old, cool in summer, warm in winter, with huge grounds. It was a place where you could be happy.

Where there was only a meadow you created a garden of hedges and shrubs. I planted 200 trees there. For a few years we still did a bit of travelling; but all the vibrating and jolting around involved in any means of transport, no matter what, triggers headaches and pain through your whole body. Arach-noiditis has forced you, little by little, to abandon most of your favourite activities. You hide your suffering. Our friends think you’re ‘in great shape’. You’ve never stopped encouraging me to write. Over the 23 years we’ve spent in our house, I’ve published six books and hundreds of articles and interviews.

We’ve had dozens of visitors from every corner of the globe and I’ve given dozens of interviews. I surely have not lived up to the resolution made 30 years ago: to live completely at home in the present, mindful above all of the richness that is our shared life. I’m now reliving the instants when I made that resolution with a sense of urgency. I don’t have any major work in the pipeline. I don’t want ‘to put off living till later’ – in Georges Bataille’s phrase – any longer.

I am as mindful of your presence now as in the early days and would like to make you feel that. You’ve given me all of your life and all of you; I’d like to be able to give you all of me in the time we have left.

You’ve just turned 82. You are still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. Lately I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and I once more carry inside me a gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by your body snuggled up against mine.

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It’s you the hearse is carrying away. I don’t want to be there for your cremation; I don’t want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr’ and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushes over you.

Each of us would like not to survive the other’s death. We’ve often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we’d like to spend it together. ’

–Extracted from Lettre à D. Histoire d’un Amour by André Gorz. Translated by Julie Rose.  Buy the book here.

LETTER OF THOMAS AQUINAS TO BROTHER JOHN ON HOW TO STUDY

Since you asked me, my dearest in Christ Brother John, how you should study in order to acquire the treasure of knowledge, I offer you this advice on the matter: Do not wish to jump immediately from the streams to the sea, because one has to go through easier things to the more difficult. Therefore the following points are my warning and your instruction:

• I command you to be slow to speak, and slow to go to the conversation room.
• Embrace purity of conscience.
• Do not give up spending time in prayer.
• Love spending much time in your cell, if you want to be led into the wine cellar.
• Show yourself amiable to all.
• Do not query at all what others are doing.
• Do not be very familiar with anyone, because familiarity breeds contempt, and provides matter for distracting you from study.
• Do not get involved at all in the discussions and affairs of lay people.
• Avoid conversations about all any and every matter.
• Do not fail to imitate the example of good and holy men.
• Do not consider who the person is you are listening to, but whatever good he says commit to memory.
• Whatever you are doing and hearing try to understand. Resolve doubts, and put whatever you can in the storeroom of your mind, like someone wanting to fill a container.
• Do not spend time on things beyond your grasp.

Following such a path, you will bring forth flowers and produce useful fruit for the vinyard of the Lord of Power and Might, as long as you live. If you follow this, you can reach what you desire.

One of our local publications, Main Line Today, just published a little feature on Metanexus.  In it, I am described as a “real-life philosopher,” an appellation I think I’ll keep, thank you very much.  Money quote from Hansell:  “The ideas here at Metanexus go beyond the jamming.”  I think we’ll use that for the title of our next conference:  “Beyond the Jamming:  A Transdisciplinary Approach.”

Some other observations:

• While it is true, as the article notes, that we do not “necessarily ‘foam at the mouth’” over controversy, we do contingently foam at the mouth over controversy.
• The article notes that Metanexus is “providing a forum for those passionate about discovery and cosmic fine-tuning.”  And…well…LOTs of stuff, too!
• I am quoted as saying, “It’s not a cocktail hour.”  I would never say that.  For me, it is–ontologically–cocktail hour!
• The article states (that we think, I guess) that “Everyone is an expert, and no one knows the answer to anything.” It is not a quote, and I never said it, but now I’m kinda wishing I did.  It’s a koan.

Elsewhere, I am quoted as saying,

“We’re always glad to have rich resources. Maybe there are none like we have here, but we’re still interested in these questions, and I’m convinced they should matter to everyone—academics and non-academics, young and old, the boy who works at Borders and also runs his high school philosophy club, and the churches and libraries.”

Uh…what?  What’s that about the resources?  And the boy who works at Borders? (Not me, brother.)  Also:  academics, non-academics, the young, the old, the boys and the men constitute, in part, “everyone.”  Churches and libraries do not.

The article goes on:

“Real wisdom is a collective thing,” Weislogel adds. “You draw out wisdom. The search for it is a form of intellectual and spiritual tourism—and the sun never really sets on such things.”

The quest for wisdom is NOT “a form of intellectual and spiritual tourism,” although the sun never really sets on it.  The “tourism” refers to some of those not in academia who choose to attend our annual conference, especially when we have them in interesting locales.  Not a bad little vacation, really.  But it doesn’t refer to the quest, the thing itself.

Anyway, thanks to Main Line Today, though, for checking us out and providing us a little local visibility (and me a bit of amusement).  And the picture makes us look every bit as awesome as we are!