The Twelve Days of Christmas!

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When I was still in high school, my siblings and I decided to sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" for our parents' wedding anniversary!  I was learning a lot of music in school, and I had become fairly confident with writing 4-part harmony, so once the holidays came round, I frantically ruled my own manuscript paper, and made the arrangement of the popular carol.  Let's face it: there are only nine distinct bars of music that are repeated over and over again, so it was not very difficult to work out, and not difficult for my siblings and me to learn.  It was a screaming success, back then, and it was performed again and again at holiday family gatherings, but I had all but forgotten it, until my Uncle recently played me a cassette recording of it!  Back then, it had been taped on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and had been re-recorded into the cassette player about fifteen years ago.

I decided to transcribe it into notation in my computer, and here it is!

Notes:

(1) The fabulous glissando in the 11^th day was intended to be played by a trombone!  Generally speaking, the group on the left channel was intended to be flute, clarinet, trombone, and bassoon, to fill in the tenor, but for some reason the trombone sound was not smooth enough, so I ended up using a bass clarinet.  Unfortunately, the bass clarinet can't really do a glissando, so it sounds a bit silly.

(2) Initially, as I said, the piece was intended to be sung, and when I put it into the computer last week, I imagined it being sung by a choir, with the verses being alternated between three quartets, with everyone joining in for the opening lines, and "And a partridge in a pear tree!"  But it was too difficult to come up with three contrasting instrumental quartets, so I'm making do with just two.  I must say that the double-reeds on the left channel really sound wonderful.

(3) Notice the use of staccato.  I think I've overdone it, but it does add something to the performance, and makes it a little more familiar when compared with the sung lyrics.

Do enjoy it, and feel free to use this arrangement anytime.  I'll post the sheet music somewhere convenient, if anyone is interested.

Arch

Fox News's Megyn Kelly states that Jesus (and Santa Claus) were White Men

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The whole concept of race, as exemplified by the question of whether a given person is white (or perhaps I should put that in quotes: "white") is shrouded in vagueness.  Is Megyn Kelly white?  She would probably feel very put upon if we were to conclude that the issue is in doubt, but for people like Ms Kelly, it is desperately important to be classified as white, which is why she is probably such a prominent figure at Fox News.  They need people who see things in black and white, pun intended, and Megyn is cute, and she has a cute name, so, there you go!

It seems to be, without getting too technical, that the label "belonging to the white race" means, today, that someone has a majority of genes inherited from the peoples of Western Europe.  This, unfortunately, excludes the Hebrew peoples, among whom we consider the historical Jesus to have been born.  Israeli people of today, of course, have a significant proportion of European ancestry, courtesy of their protracted exile in Europe.  While Hebrew folks of the Year Dot were probably of at least partly Caucasian ethnicity, they were hardly any more white than Mahmoud Abbas or Benjamin Netanyahu, and it is to Ms Kelly's credit that her concept of whiteness stretches so wide.  Incidentally, Mr Netanyahu probably has more European ancestry than he cares to admit.

I think most rational people, Christian or otherwise, are just as concerned about any attempts to classify Jesus according to American ethnical categories as Megyn Kelly is upset about Jesus being anything but white.  Jesus's color is entirely in the eyes of the beholder, and the Romans of Jesus's time would have seen Jesus as most definitely black, if they were familiar with the concept of color (and they probably were).

From an social-anthropological perspective, the particularly pernicious twist given to the somewhat naive concept of color in the late seventeenth century in England and Western Europe, and elevated to almost maniacal heights in some parts of the US, almost certainly served as a justification of slavery, especially among Christian intellectuals, who may have been secretly troubled by the morals of the practice.  In any case, the convenience of racism was eagerly embraced by people of lesser intellectual capacity, so much so that it became part and parcel of their self-esteem.  Today, a century removed from the economic necessity of the fiction of racial differences, the concept of race is still a major part of the concept-world of many influential people, such as Megyn Kelly, evidently, who appear to use race as one of the ways they use to explain the world to themselves and each other.  Ms Kelly was at pains to emphasize to young people in her audience that, in fact, both Santa Claus and Jesus were white men.  What does that mean?  Perhaps it means that, despite the fact that our President is black, and seems to be accomplishing a lot more than all the white presidents who preceded him, we still have white people to be proud of?  This appears to give us a rather dismal glimpse into what goes on inside Megyn Kelly's confused head!

Let me repeat to anyone who is still confused: White people have nothing to be ashamed of.  Failures of white folks and successes of black folks have less to do with their race than with their individual motivations, their personal histories and circumstances, and their upbringing and education.  Any mental adjusting Megyn Kelly accomplishes is not likely to be very useful to most members of US society.

Health Care

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The amount of hype, both pro and con, concerning Obamacare/ACA is stupefying.  I'm not making fun of it; after all, this is one of the boldest moves in cultural advancement since Franklin Roosevelt was president, in the USA.  Some folks see it as wrong-headed, and a precursor to a Byzantine government bureaucracy that will destroy every cent of discretionary income anyone might hope to earn in the future.  This fear is completely justified, because Americans have, among them, some of the most creative gangsters outside Russia, and they will surely find ways to siphon off some of the money that has to go back and forth in the Health Care industry of the future, just as they did for food stamps, alcohol, firearms and tobacco, and, best of all, drugs.  (Drugs are so much fun that the CIA got into it, and never got out.)

One problem is that health care professionals command such high salaries.  Medical college is far more expensive, ounce for ounce, than other sorts of education, and everything to do with health care is just more expensive, by association.  A friend of mine recently said that the profit margin for certain insurance companies is around 3.5%, which they know from studying the public information on the companies.  But of course!  Most of the money is eaten up by the high salaries, which are all classified as expenses.

Health professionals in other countries are not paid as much, even allowing for the different standards of living.  When one examines the process through which a kid goes to become a doctor, you begin to see why.

First, a would-be doctor has to get a bachelor's degree.  It need not be in science; in theory, a philosophy major could become an MD, provided he or she takes the required coursework.  Many of these kids are driven by a combination of relentless parental pressure, an insatiable greed for money, a need for social advancement, and a modicum of altruism.

Secondly, because of the high admission standards of the leading medical schools, these students apply a great deal of pressure on their instructors to give them high grades, pointing out that all the extra coursework they're taking is not because they're intrinsically interested in it, but because it is needed by the fact that they're Pre-Med, a state that has lost some of its shine in recent decades (but of course, these kids haven't got the memo).  They must "take" college physics, which means they must also "take" Calculus, something about which roughly half of them care less than nothing.  But those of them who can drive their sheer hate of the subject into maniacal memorization actually do better than physics majors, which shows that hate is a more powerful force than love!  Heh-heh.

Thirdly, now that a vast host of students are applying for entrance into Medical School, these schools can demand almost unbelievably high admission standards, in terms of coursework and grade point averages.  They don't care that the applicants despise practically everything they've ever learned; they know that the successful applicants can take an enormous amount of academic punishment and bullying, which makes it easy for their teachers, who need not put a great deal of effort into the process of teaching.  Luckily for us, graduating competent doctors is a major deal, because the reputation of the school enables the students to be more easily employed.

Fourthly, Medical School professors are paid almost as high as football coaches, and have to carry, I don't doubt, a lot of mal-teaching insurance, which probably contributes to the fact that tuition at medical school is very costly.

Fifthly, students who don't make the grade for acceptance into Medical School end up elsewhere in the Health Care Industry, and because of likelihood of litigation in any branch of the industry, all these people carry their own malpractice insurance, and all of them demand high salaries.

Sixthly, possibly because they deal so closely with people in the medical professions, those employed by the Insurance Industry have historically commanded astronomical salaries.  A lot of the money that consumers pay into health insurance actually stays in the insurance companies, so that while shareholders may not net much out of their holdings in these companies, they're a very dependable source of income.

Finally, once a doctor establishes himself in some location, he or she finds, to his or her astonishment, that the health system administrators make a lot more money than the actual doctors.  The administrators, after all, must negotiate with insurance companies exactly how the moolah is divided up, and the remuneration of all concerned parties is most definitely proportional to the moolah concerned.  Not included in this list are the malpractice lawyers and ambulance-chasers of all stripes, who make money on a per-disaster basis!  It is a lovely win-lose situation that can hardly be improved upon.

[More later]