Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

MUSIC AND THE BRAIN AND HEALING

Lauren Neergard reports on something I think of universal interest:  "NIH Taps the Brain to find out how music heals."

Like a friendly Pied Piper, the violinist keeps up a toe-tapping beat as dancers weave through busy hospital hallways and into the chemotherapy unit, patients looking up in surprised delight. Upstairs, a cellist plays an Irish folk tune for a patient in intensive care.

Music increasingly is becoming a part of patient care — although it’s still pretty unusual to see roving performers captivating entire wards, like at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital one fall morning.

“It takes them away for just a few minutes to some other place where they don’t have to think about what’s going on,” said cellist Martha Vance after playing for a patient isolated to avoid spreading infection.

The challenge: Harnessing music to do more than comfort the sick. Now, moving beyond programs like Georgetown’s, the National Institutes of Health is bringing together musicians, music therapists and neuroscientists to tap into the brain’s circuitry and figure out how.

“The brain is able to compensate for other deficits sometimes by using music to communicate,” said NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, a geneticist who also plays a mean guitar.  

POPE JOHN PAUL II ON ISLAM

The other day I picked up Pope John Paul II's brief comments on Islam from Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 92-93.  I thought their succinctness and clarity worth recording.  Pope John Paul II writes:  (italics in the original)

"As a result of their monotheism, believers in Allah are particularly close to us. . . .

Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation.  It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about Himself, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son.  In Islam all the richness of God's self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside.

Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us.  Islam is not a religion of redemption.  There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection.  Jesus is mentioned, but only as a prophet who prepares for the last prophet, Muhammad.  There is also mention of Mary, His Virgin Mother, but the tragedy of redemption is completely absent.  For this reason not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity. 

Nevertheless, the religiosity of Muslims deserves respect.  It is impossible not to admire, for example, their fidelity to prayer.  The image of believers in Allah who, without caring about time or place, fall to their knees and immerse themselves in prayer remains a model for all those who invoke the true God, in particular for those Christians who, having deserted their magnificent cathedrals, pray only a little or not at all." 

MODERN FEEDING OF THE 5,000

Chick-fil-A comes through -- and on a SUNDAY!  Breitbart article below.

Breitbart news:  Atlanta Chick-fil-A Earns Praise for Feeding Stranded Atlanta Airport Passengers. 

Thousands of passengers at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport found themselves stranded during a massive power outage over the weekend, but on Sunday a local Chick-fil-A surprised everyone by rolling in to feed the starving passengers.The world’s busiest airport ground to halt on Sunday, as a sudden power outage grounded more than 1,000 flights in Atlanta. While authorities insisted that no one was endangered by the outage, the ripple effect of the problem spread across the nation’s air transportation system. 

But the stranded passengers and busy airport workers weren’t left to starve. The fast food company reported serving over 5,000 people.  

Chick-fil-A is famously closed on Sundays, but the location’s workers jumped to their stations when the emergency befell the busy transportation hub. In turn, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed thanked Chick-fil-A owner Dan Cathy for his support, Atlanta’s WSB TV reported.

The company released a statement about their efforts to “serve a community in need.”

“The mayor called about 10pm and asked for assistance. We immediately mobilized staff and team members who live and work near the airport, and they are making sandwiches and delivering them to the EOC (emergency operations center). City and airport officials there are distributing sandwiches to passengers who are stranded due to the power outage. It has been a very difficult day for thousands of travelers, and while Chick-fil-A is always closed on Sunday, our restaurants open occasionally to serve communities in need. We do not make a profit, but do what we can to offer comfort to people experiencing hardship.”

WHAT TO READ? CLAREMONT OFFERS A FEAST OF SUGGESTIONS

In a special issue of The Claremont Review of Books dozens of noteworthy individuals offer suggested reading for the holidays.  Best of all, mini-reviews and explanations accompany almost all of the suggestions.  I find the list stretching (to put it mildly) and an enjoyable read in itself!  Below, to offer one example, I've posted Mary Eberstadt's suggestions.  (She has penned, by the way, an essay in the current "First Things" journal, "The Zealous Faith of Secularism: How the Sexual Revolution Became a Dogma.")

Once upon a time, as CRB readers know, soi-disant enlightened progressivism merely disdained religious believers and other traditionalists. Nowadays, it goes after them with spite and glee. Yet the force that to the slammer would drive the cake-baker—and others—now bears paradoxical fruit: it’s inadvertently inspiring some of the finest writing of the time. 2017 has been a banner year for books about faith, by writers of faith and otherwise.

For literary as well as spiritual pleasure, one new offering of interest to anyone who luxuriates in reading is George Weigel’s Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II. With settings as panoramic as those of a thriller, and anecdotes about some of the most fascinating figures and scenes of the twentieth century, it’s a moving, personal, melodically rendered memoir of the biographer’s times with the late great saint.

As others have noted in 2017, Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation is the religious book of the year. It’s also a modern pilgrim’s progress whose passion and sincerity stand as a tacit rebuke to secularist prejudice. Dreher’s truth-telling has achieved something rare these days: a respectful hearing outside the flock for a moral traditionalist.

Another essential new volume is Anthony Esolen’s Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture—an often plangent, and always crystalline, homage to civilization as it should be, unplugged from the distractions and delusions that diminish us.

Exodus: Jews Flee Paris Suburbs over Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism

Breitbart carries the following story:  

French-Jewish families are being forced from their homes in Paris suburbs as Europe continues to be convulsed by levels of anti-Semitism not seen since the end of the Second World War.

The Paris commuter newspaper 20 Minutes documents an “internal exodus” during 2017 of Jews from the Seine-Saint-Denis department, saying it is emblematic of broader concerns that French Jews, like their brothers and sisters across Europe, are finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile their faith with the changing demographics of the continent.  . . .

As Breitbart Jerusalem has reported, the experience of Jews in Paris is much the same across the rest of the country. More and more are feeling so unsafe that they now feel they have no other choice but to move to Israel for safety.

They are continuing a trend that has seen tens of thousands of Jews quit the country in the past decade.

More than 5,000 departures were recorded in 2016 on top of the record 7,900 who left in 2015 and 7,231 in 2014. In total, 40,000 French Jews have emigrated since 2006, according to figures cited by AFP.

On the evidence, that number will not be falling anytime soon.    [more. . . ]

MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN PROCESS OF TRANSFORMING SWEDEN

Tucker Carlson talks with Mark Steyn about Muslim immigration to Europe.  In this case, Sweden.  (12/11/17)

Steyn:

Malmo was the first Christian city in what was then Denmark, and it's now going to be the first Muslim city in Sweden...  At twilight I walked from downtown Malmo to Rosengard, which is the big Muslim suburb, and the Swedish blondes thin out and the covered women and the bearded men come towards you, until eventually you are in a part of Sweden in which there are no uncovered women.  And in which Muslim women who come from countries where they didn't have to go covered such as Bosnia suddenly find they have to go covered when they immigrate to Sweden. 

That walk, as the blondes thin out and the big bearded men come towards you in ever greater numbers, that is Europe's future walking towards you.   It's the biggest story of our time, that Christendom is being transformed at an extraordinary level to the point where Swedes will be an ethnic minority in their own country by mid-century. . . .    

INTERVIEW WITH VETERAN MIDDLE EAST AMBASSADOR RYAN CROCKER

https://ricochet.com/podcast/q-and-a/man-middle-east/

I listened to this 43 minute interview last night and found it full of information and insight.  The Ricochet blurb introduces the Crocker interview this way:

Ryan Crocker is one of the outstanding U.S. diplomats of our time. In addition to his other posts, he was ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He has had some of the most challenging assignments on offer. George W. Bush, in the last days of his presidency, hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Crocker’s neck.

In this “Q&A,” Jay asks Crocker about the State Department today. Along with others, Crocker has sounded the alarm about cuts to the Foreign Service. He and Jay also take a tour of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, discussing matters past, present, and future.

One of the dismaying things I learned is that presently the U.S. has no Ambassador in Saudi Arabia!

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON SPEAKS ON "THE TWO CALIFORNIAS"

I fail many times to post items that I share with others via email, a mistake on my part.  When I sent the following video to a friend he said he found it insightful and learned a lot.  That caused pangs of guilt that I had not posted it on my blog when first I listened to it.

Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor and public commentator on current events, talks about California being a combination of Massachusetts and Mississippi.  That situation cannot continue indefinitely.  Check out his talk below to see what he means.

BOLTON: TRUMP'S BOLD RECOGNITION OF JRUSALEM AS ISRAEL'S CAPITAL MARKS HIM AS A VERY DIFFERENT CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LEADER

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton declared President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was “exactly the right move to make.”  Following are quotes from an interview Bolton gave to Breitbart SeriusXM radio interviewer Raheem Kassam:  

“Israel is one of the very few, maybe the only country in the world where the American embassy is not in its capital city,” Bolton pointed out. “From the American point of view, let’s start with us, it only makes sense to put our embassy where the institutions of government are located, in the country to which our diplomats are accredited. If we found, for whatever reason we came across a European country we didn’t have an embassy in – a new country was created, for example – we wouldn’t put our embassy in a city 50 miles away from the capital.”

“Why Israel should be different than any other country in the world, no one has been able to explain. What Trump has done is not extraordinary. It simply conforms Israel to the other 190 or so countries that we have diplomatic relations with. It is, from an efficiency and an effectiveness point of view, good for the United States,” he said.

President Trump was very careful yesterday to say that that obviously the embassy is going to be in West Jerusalem, which nobody has ever claimed would go back to Palestinians under any conceivable settlement, so it doesn’t prejudice the final status of Jerusalem,” he noted.

 Bolton said recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel “breaks so many illusions that people have been holding.”  [bolding is mine]

JAY NORDLINGER INTERVIEWS VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON WORLD WAR II

There's hardly a commentator who I respect more than Victor Davis Hanson, the great Classics professor and military historian.  His latest book, published less than a month and a half ago, is The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. 

In introducing his podcast interview with VDH, Nordlinger says:

I take the opportunity to ask some fundamental questions: What if Hitler hadn’t declared war on us? Would we have gotten into the war — the European theater? What if Japan hadn’t attacked us? Could they have triumphed in the Pacific?

What were the causes of the war?

Was Hitler a little nuts — did that save our bacon? If he had been saner, could he have pulled it off?

How was FDR as wartime leader? And Truman? Were we right to drop the A-bomb(s)? What about Yalta? Was FDR, were we, guilty there? What about the Holocaust and the war? Could the Holocaust have been carried out without the war? Would it have?

Who are some unsung heroes of the war?

And more. Victor Davis Hanson knows the answers, I can tell you. Knows them cold. This podcast with him is both an education and a pleasure. Again, here. 

ON TREATING PEOPLE AS INDIVIDUALS RATHER THAN AS MEMBERS OF A GROUP

Jay Nordlinger, in commenting on Mark Halperin's new book, Paris in the Present Tense, highlights this passage, which I think wise and estimable:

A man says to the main character, Jules, “What do you think of the Arabs?” Jules says, “I don’t.”  The man says, “What do you mean, you ‘don’t’?” Jules says, “I don’t think about Arabs, per se.”

The man presses on. And Jules says this:

“I’m a Jew. My parents were murdered by the Germans because they were Jews. The gravest, most persistent sin of mankind lies in not treating everyone as an individual. So, in short, I take Arabs as they come, just like everyone else.”

The man presses, “But as a group?”

Jules repeats, “As a group?” Then he says, “They have a very high incidence of killing innocents with whom they disagree. It’s part of the culture, part of Islam, part of their nomadic origins. But no individual is merely a reflection of a group. That’s the injustice that ruins the world. So, my answer is that for me an Arab is the same as a Jew, a Frenchman, a Norwegian, anything you’d like. If I were to judge people by their identity, I’d be like the people who killed my parents. Those were called Nazis. Do you think I could ever be one?”

Nordlinger likes to point to phrases he finds arresting:

Mark has a marvelous phrase: “militantly helpless.” At a neighborhood meeting, Jules is trying to rouse people to defend themselves, and others, against violent criminals in their midst. They will have none of it. In fact, they resent him, and contemn him. So, “he was ostracized forever by everyone present, an indignant crowd bravely determined to be militantly helpless.”

Nordlinger refers to a lovely quote on music - 

This is Jules, a composer and a teacher, talking to his students: “Music is not made by man. If you know this and surrender to it you’ll allow its deeper powers to run through you. It’s all a question of opening the gates. Of risking your disappearance and accepting it. If you arrive at that state you’ll be effortlessly propelled, seized, and possessed by the music. Paradoxically, your timing will be perfect as time ceases to exist.”

David Pryce Jones also reviews Mark Halperin's book but gives away a little too much of the plot.  I am glad to know of Mark Halperin's work.  His other novels include In Sunlight and in Shadow (what Nordlinger refers to as a hymn to New York), and Freddy and Fredericka, a hymn to Britain even as Paris in the Present Tense is a hymn to France.

EXCITING RIDES IN CHINESE AMUSEMENT PARKS! - VIDEO

Amusement parks in China have some exciting rides.   MUCH TOO EXCITING for me!    HT:JS

ROD DREHER'S PRECOCIOUS 11 YEAR OLD VISITS WASHINGTON, DC

I really loved this post.   Rod Dreher's remarkable blog never fails to stimulate; this post struck me as particularly unique.   It would be quite an experience to meet the little Miss Nora!!

I told y’all that I was doing something neat on Friday. Well, here it is. That’s a shot of my daughter Nora in the control room at NPR in Washington, watching Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep broadcast. We are here because Nora is a massive public radio fan, and my kind friend Miranda Kennedy, senior editor at Morning Edition, invited her to shadow her for the morning. You might recall that I decided to spend my 50th birthday year taking each one of my kids on a special trip. This is Nora’s.

It might sound weird to you that an 11-year-old girl would be really into NPR, especially a girl from a conservative Orthodox Christian family. But she is. Our family is eccentric and eclectic that way. What’s funny to me is that Nora knows no TV news personalities, but she can tell you all about NPR hosts and correspondents. She was thrilled — really, thrilled — to meet Steve Inskeep and Rachel Martin this morning, though for her, the gold standard is Lakshmi Singh. After I was at NPR in March being interviewed about The Benedict Option, Nora asked me, “Did you meet Lakshmi Singh?”  (more...)

Update: Rod and Little Miss Nora spent Sunday morning at the home of David and Ann Brooks.  Short account here.

 

Klein: Six Reasons Jared Kushner is Dangerously Delusional on the Middle East

I think Aaron Klein's analysis important enough to create a link.  It begins:

Earlier today, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, made a rare public appearance to discuss his efforts to secure an Israeli-Palestinian deal and forge a wider Middle East peace.

While Kushner’s remarks were short on specifics, his 30-minute Q&A at the Saban Forum in Washington revealed dangerously delusional thinking when it comes to issues of U.S. national security, the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran, and the largest Middle East.   (more...)