Bach To The Future by Brendan Loonam

The easiest way to deal with the web apps site is just to paste it in to your browser, because you are dealing with, as of mid-August, just for Apple, alone, 1,700 Applications. There is such a vast variety of Applications that they must be personally experienced by the user. For example, you can have a map showing the most recent lightning strikes for an area; you can calculate your blood alcohol content after your dinner out; you can calculate the tip for your server; get driving directions from MapQuest; and one can even get a romantic quote to accompany the goodnight kiss. These apps can be employed on the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, the Mac or a PC, or whatever device you happen to be working with; who knows, by the time this is printed, one may be able to run apps on one’s car radio.
APPLE:
http://www.apple.com/webapps/calculate/index1.html
Currently, Video calling is in full effect on iPod touch. Now your friends can see what you’re up to, when you’re up to it. With the tap of a button, you can wave "hi" while standing in a foreign country, get a second opinion on a pair of boots, or have your friends bear witness to the everyday pranks, bets, and dares that they otherwise might have missed. How outstanding is that? Some of the things being discovered and being released to the public right now, and I must add that the rate has been so ramped up that it is a relentlessly ongoing basis, seem not just business as usual, but seem like they might be not the stuff of Science, but Science Fiction. One might think of a classic film like 2001:A Space Odyssey , whose elements, like Video-Phone, from the Space Flight to the Cosmonaut’s daughter’s birthday party back on Earth, at first glance, were eye-poppingly futuristic, but today they can be bested by the most elemental cell-phones.
Indeed, if an average “Baby-Boomer” were to look at the wide swath of items available to the current up-to-date media user, it might be tough to determine which is fact and which might be fancy. It has been so vast that it has been difficult to wade through this morass of applications which were designed primarily for the purpose of entertainment.
Education has always been a focal point for me, and when I see a company aiming its resources toward instruction, it always catches my attention. For example, when I was teaching High School English, although supplies were limited, I always sought and usually was able to find 16mm film versions of certain classic novels and short stories, like Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.“ Students were electrified by the transformation of the written word into moving visual images. We also had read The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles and had lively discussions, but, sadly, did not have the benefit of that magnificent film, which was not released until well after I had left OLVA. Another film that I believe we would have made great use of is, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, based on the Ken Kesey novel. The film was released to great acclaim in 1975, and the cinematic sophisticates among us were individually able to seek the balance between the written word and the visual images by visiting available cinemas.
There were many at the time who complained that, if they were made available, students would just watch the movies instead of reading the books, but that kind of thinking is based upon the idea that the prize being sought is simply the intellectual possession or completion of that item. The idea behind education is to have students internalize a given intellectual item, and then challenge them to determine how the artist, be she novelist, poet, filmmaker or graphic artist, has manipulated his or her medium in order to achieve a particular goal. Again, these exercises were not designed to be used exclusively for that particular artistic work, but rather to develop a set of skills which could be used to analyze and enjoy any work of art.
Take, for example, Shakespeare’s MacBeth, which we used to study in the 11th Grade classes: should the reader fly willy-nilly through the text; picking them up and knocking them down, or should she stop and pick up all the evidence that has been laid out for her, examining carefully and deliberating? Are those three witches just there to spook-up the atmosphere, to make predictions of things that are to be wrought which will change the position of MacBeth, or are the predictions to be judged as reflections of MacBeth’s own unconscious wishes? And measured deliberation also gave us the opportunity to enjoy the stunning language that Shakespeare was able to employ in the spinning of his tales.
Looking at Shakespeare’s language, we also had an opportunity to look at a small collection of the Sonnets. With Juniors, there were many who really got them; who were able to read them as statements from one human being to another; on the other hand, there were many who had not yet reached the point where they could read,
THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:
And see it as a beautifully stated tribute by an older person thanking a younger one for recognizing the “choir, where late the sweet birds sang.” The young, inexperienced students would sit with a pained expression when confronted with such phrasing that was just too intellectually challenging in a situation that should, rather, have been emotionally weighted. Those poems were put in the Curriculum because of their intellectual “value,” but with little thought given to the skills of the school populations who were going to be engaging them. Modifications were able to be made with singularly bright students, but that was on a very individual basis. The songs of the Folk Movement did yeoman
work in that regard; both teachers and students were thanking god for Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, among others.
After a brief encounter with the 8-Track Tape Player, which seemed to have been favored mostly by guys who drove convertibles and loved the way that “VCR-seeming”-cassette looked sticking up out of the center of their automobile’s dashboard, the cassette tape, capable of being tucked right into the front of the car radio, briefly took over the industry, that is until the explosion of the Compact Disc, but that was later.
When the audio cassette arrived on the scene, it seemed to be a perfect marriage with the 8 mm film. It was also tailor-made for partners working together, and the pairing seemed to bring out the best from each side. I believe it was during school year ’73-’74, that girls started using tapes of rock songs that best represented the message or mood they wished to declare, and then, for the first time, they filmed striking images, either from nature or their own creation to highlight the ideas in those songs making 8mm films for their Final Projects. I remember being stunned by the images of the reels spinning on gas pumps and cash register drawers opening and closing, accompanied by Pink Floyd singing “Money,” which was newly released at the time. A few years ago, I received an email from an OLVA alumna, who was a member of a very creative family, Joanne Hopkins, and she said something along the lines of, “We were making music videos before MTV was.” To tell the truth, I am more inclined to agree with her than not.

Irish Names and New York City by Brendan Loonam

Writing as I am now only from the New York Metropolitan Area, it occurred to me to put in something extraordinary about New York City and Irish names, something that at one point in time were thought to be synonymous, and unfortunately, now are really only considered together automatically when bars are mentioned. It will be seen, however, in these two stories, that bars and Irish names are inextricably interwoven. For the first, I must thank an old and dear friend, John Murray, for passing on the investigation that his father had in turn shared with him. This dates back to the time when New York City was among the forerunners when it came to installing indoor plumbing. As the largest metropolitan center in the Northeastern United States, New York City had the largest work force, in addition to the greatest commercial marketplace. These forces would, daily, bring together great numbers of people, mostly men, and in New York City, at its beginnings, most of those working men were Irish. Some genius realized that the thirsts of all those Irish working men would have to be slaked every day while they ate their lunch. Another genius realized that he could provide that lunch for a pittance and make a fortune selling spirits to go with it. It wasn’t much of a stretch to extend the drinking hours throughout the working day, and then, of course, carry on after work. With all that drinking going on, it stood to reason that the sanitary needs of the drinkers would have to be looked after. Unfortunately, the foresight of many of the proprietors of those early saloons did not extend beyond a shallow channel running from a pit behind the establishment out to the gutter and into the street. The accumulation of the waste thus expended caught the attention not only of the neighbors and hapless passersby, but also of the Authorities, and in fact, where none existed, causing Authorities, such as Boards of Health, to come into existence. Like many businesses and services that were aborning at the time, in the mid 19th Century, plumbing services and fixtures had to be brought into being. Now, is there anyone still alive who remembers Jack Paar’s contretemps with the Media Powers for uttering, in the face of the American Viewing Public a joke containing the vile phrase, “water closet?” Poor Jack; the least offensive man who ever appeared on television, allowing a euphemism for “toilet” that could have been recognized only by natives of Great Britain, but some NBC television executives deemed it sufficiently repulsive that they deleted it from the show before it could be aired . Paar so resented this censorship that he resigned from hosting the Tonight Show, citing the hypocrisy of the ultraconservative Fox Media Empire as his reason for doing so. But I digress; this hesitancy to mention toilets has existed for centuries. The installation of toilets in late 19th Century New York City, particularly in the Public Houses or Pubs, was accomplished using fixtures manufactured by a man named John Murray, and featured prominently in the center of both urinals and toilets was the name of that gentleman: John Murray. So striking was the contrast between the black letters of the name and the white porcelain, that it was immediately imprinted on the consciousness of the viewer. From as far back as the 1870’s, it seemed to be a race for everyone to get their indoor plumbing installed, and it soon became a status symbol to have it done. In pubs, where men would go to relax after work, they wanted to be able to drink and then relieve themselves without any undue stress; therefore, when they first poked their head in the front door, they would ask, “Is there a John Murray in the house?” Receiving a negative answer, the prescient drinker would move on to the next ale house. This, of course, happening enough times would educate the proprietor as to the wisdom of acquiring a toilet. Also, in the way of fast-moving, fast-talking workingmen, the ones poking their heads in the front doors soon transformed their question to, “Is there a John in the house?” A tradition was born; a name was created. ”Where’s the john?” “Straight back.”
The second piece about an Irish name and New York City was revealed to me by my sons. First, by Brendan, the elder, who rented an apartment around the corner from the place for five years, and then by my younger son, Matthew, who tended bar there as a second job for about three years.
Before I go any further, I think I should explain the milieu in which it was all engendered. During the 1920’s, in New York City, Boxing was controlled by the Irish, or at least that part of the Irish-American population that could control things like the sport of boxing, with some Mob intrusion. If a young man wanted to pursue a successful career in boxing, the word on the street was that if he didn’t have an Irish name, he could just forget about it. In Hoboken at that time, there was an Italian-American young man who felt he had the skills and courage to battle for the Lightweight title; his name was Anthony Sinatra,. Unfortunately, as stated previously, there was no way he could vie for that title with a name like Sinatra. In a stroke of genius, his Manager stepped up and for the purposes of fighting the good fight, changed his ring name to Marty O’Brien Sinatra, which he used during his career of over 40 bouts. He also later became a captain in the Hoboken Fire Department and had 24 years of service before his retirement. Parenthetically, he was also the Father of Frank Sinatra, world renowned singer and entertainer. He died January 24, 1969 at 74 years of age. ,
Pete Hamill, long a chronicler of the Irish in America, also created what is considered to be the definitive book about Frank Sinatra, Why Sinatra Matters. While Liam McCormick was thinking about a name for the Pub he was about to open on Second Avenue, between 87th and 88th Streets, he was filling in his down-time by reading the Hamill book on Sinatra. After reading about Anthony Sinatra’s tenacity in pursuing a boxing career, Liam slammed the book down, leapt, laughing, to his feet and allegedly thanked God, Sinatra and Pete Hamill, for he had just found the name for his pub: Marty Obrien’s Pub. Affixed to the wall, right inside the front door, is a black plastic plaque explaining the significance of the Marty O’Brien name, and when the unsuspecting visitor reaches the part about Anthony Sinatra, it usually elicits something approaching a squeal.
Liam is glad to have created a memorial for that extraordinary step taken by that young man from Hoboken.