hey, hey, we're the monkeeees...

[sergebroom]

We each are monkeys alone in the cold night on a branch in a tree that's being shaken by wind and rain. Sometimes we're lucky enough to find another monkey just like ourselves and we hang on to each other and the night is a little less cold on that branch in a tree that's being shaken by wind and rain.

Comments

Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It isn't all wind and rain. Got to have a little sunshine sometimes.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

True, true... Especially when the monkey isn't alone.

"Then I saw her face."
Neil Diamond according to Google.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It is Neil Diamond. The Monkees did a cover.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

By the way, I am quite curious as to what prompted you to come take a look at my humble cyberspace abode. Did something happen in Making Light? Was it something I said? I am VERY pleased, but I am indeed curious. Must be the monkey in me. Always asking why.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It was a simian impulse of my own, on seeing that you have an LJ page. I've enjoyed your comments on ML, and thought your page would be worth reading.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

It feels weird when I hear things like that, but a very nice kind of weird. Thanks.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

You're most welcome.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Thanks again. By the way, I've been following the exchange betwen you and Dave Luckett on Making Light. I'm curious to read your response to the comment about the virtues of slow change. I don't know if you saw the comments I posted to Albatross a couple of days ago, but if you did, well, that's where I stand on the subject.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I don't recall those comments, but my memory is a huge lumber room. I responded to Dave Luckett earlier this evening. If he's said more, I'll look at it. I'll look at your comments to Albatross too.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Having read your comments, I should note that for many people change cannot come too soon. It is very easy to speak of gradual change when you are comfortably off and not feeling the boot on your neck. It's quite another when you are stuck at the bottom, and being blamed for it by the ones whose feet are on your neck.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I didn't mean to sound like I expect people to remember every word of my awesome prose. Basically, I had said that my being from Quebec gave me a different perspective on gradualism. Quebec entered the 20th century only by the end of the Fifties. Its public-school system was lousy. My dad never went beyond 7th Grade because only well-to-do people could afford anything more and farmers certainly didn't. Things changed very rapidly, just in time for me to enter a school system that'd take me further than my dad had gone, and without my family being bled dry. Were there unfortunate consequences to such rapid changes? Probably. But there certainly was more good than bad.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I agree. I have students who tell me that things haven't changed over the past couple of generations -- and these are black Americans who are planning to go to law school and get rich. I wish I could put them in a time machine and send them back fifty years.

The world is not a nice place, all in all, but it is a better place for more people than it was a couple of generations ago. I think that's a good thing.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's what we should aspire to: improving the world in as large increments as can be done while we're here.

Linkmeister (http://www.linkmeister.com/blog/)

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

As much as we can.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Yes. By the way, do any of you know black Republicans? How does that work? It probably is one of those situations where people are conservative, and proclaim their pride in convervatism, but that conservatism's baseline always seems to start with the world they grew up in, without their looking back far enough to see that the world had to change for them to enjoy the world they don't want to see change.

Re: Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Black Republicans tend to be driven (1) by their religious commitments, i.e., many of them are religious conservatives; (2) by many of the same impulses as secular white conservatives, i.e., by dislike of taxes, condemnation of the poor for laziness and so on; and (3) by the opportunities open for those blacks who publicly support the Republican party.

death and taxes

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I wonder if California's Ward Connerly belongs in (3). I'm not sure where Condi Rice and Colin Powell fit in. As for people in (1) and (2), they have no problem belonging to a Party that used fear and bigotry in the Sixties to make Southern whites switch from Democrat to Republican, I guess. It's amazing the contortions that a mind can put itself thru.

Re: death and taxes

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I get the sense that Connerly is a sincere conservative, not a hustler. But I could be wrong.