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[ by Charles Cameron — fifty years later, two kennedy deaths remembered ]
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I had a couple of other posts in the works, but the one that was closest had a mean tinge to it so I set it on one side, sorry to have nothing to offer you this last Sunday, and consoling myself with music.

And so it was that I recalled one work of music, and searching it out on the web, came across another. Here Erich Leinsdorf announces the assassination of President John F Kennedy, and then, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, turns to Beethoven, to the Eroica, and plays the Funeral March as a lens through which to process the most immediate, intimately Bostonian, grief:

As NPR testifies:

But what is most remarkable to me as as listener, hearing the Boston broadcast from Symphony Hall on that Friday afternoon, is the sense of how those people in that time and place — performer and audience member alike — process this shocking event collectively, in a way that is totally unimaginable to us 50 years later, as we learn each minute’s news within the weirdly solitary glow of our screens. First, we hear the gasps and shushes after BSO music director Erich Leinsdorf utters the words: “The president of the United States has been the victim of an assassination.” Second, a wave of groans and sighs after Leinsdorf continues, “We will play the funeral march from Beethoven’s Third Symphony” — as if the crowd’s shared response is that they couldn’t possibly have heard the first part right, but that then the orchestra’s change in repertoire confirms the awful, unimaginable truth. And then, for the next 14 minutes … utter silence, save for the incomparably somber music.

If we could filter our lives through such music..

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And then as Cardinal Cushing celebrates a Pontifical Mass of Requiem for JFK, it is again Leinsdorf who conducts the music for that celebration — Mozart‘s glorious Requiem, from which extraordinary ceremonial this is the Dies Irae (turn down your volume control, this was recorded at a much louder volume range than the Beethoven IMO):

and, literally and emotionally, movingly tearful, the Lacrimosa:

Dona eis requiem..

If you wish to reach as deep as deep grief and process it, and Boston‘s response to the death of its favorite son President is anything to go by, Leinsdorf is your man, Beethoven the most immediate lens to hand, and the sacramental celebration with Cardinal Cushing as a no less impressive backup..

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I would be remiss, however, were I to write only of high cultural music (no matter how popular) and high ceremonial religion here — of equal passion as I have been reminded recently was the spontaneous outpouring of love and reverence shown on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, JFK‘s brother, as the train carrying his body passed from New York to DC for burial (a high ceremonial of the military variety) in Arlington National Cemetery. The crowds who turned out, in ones and twos, in clusters, both black and white, perhaps a million or two oin all, were captured by the extraordinary photographer and friend of the family Paul Fusco in close to a thousand images, of which these are but a few:

The train has been much in the news recently, with exhibits such as The Train: RFK’s Last Journey at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, reviewed in The train was moving mournful slow’: Exhibit shows haunting photos of Bobby Kennedy’s final journey and also described with selected images at Robert F. Kennedy’s Funeral Train, Fifty Years Later, along with the DVD One Thousand Pictures: RFK’s Last Journey drawn from Fusco’s work on that train, the publication of Chris Matthews‘ biography, Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, and MSNBC’s Headliners docu tribute to RFK.

Even the most unexpected moment, infused with love and grief, can ignite a spontaneous, informal ceremony of great power

Sub umbra alarum tuarum..

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[ It has taken me several days to formulate this post, and I’m on fairly strong pain meds for my foot wound, so please blame them for any excessive typos or lack of coherence — I’m sure the general message comes through… ]

[ by Charles Cameron — adding angles to an existing series of posts on a crucial (pun fully intended) topic ]
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I’m doing some catch-up on uncompleted posts here, and today I’d like to add two comments I ran across a while back to the two posts I’ve already written on forgiveness:

Some recent words from the Forgiveness Chronicles

More recent words from the Forgiveness Chronicles

Given time, I’d probably edit these down a bit, but (a) I got unceremoniously dumped from my abode less than a week ago, with two hours to move my library and my life, courtesy of the landlord’s violation of safety codes — or perhaps courtesy of someone’s opportunity to make a bundle in real estate by closing down two hotels, who knows? — and (b) I therefore no longer have my library to hand, and am backed up in terms of my writings, so..

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Without further ado and with little or no editing, here are the voices of:

[ by Charles Cameron — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and those black banners again — I’m just curious ]
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Judy Clarke, an attorney specializing in death penalty cases, addresses the Tsarnaev jury in the closing statement for the defense:

Clarke: The govt. wants you to see this picture to suggest Dzhokhar self-radicalized; it's just a religious flag. pic.twitter.com/lG966aCe8I

— Jim Armstrong (@JimArmstrongWBZ) April 6, 2015

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Clark is right that the flag is a religious flag, but whether or not for Dzhokar Tsarnaev it had further, specifically jihadist or even eschatological implications is open to question. As you know, black banners commonly signify apocalyptic jihad.

By analogy with the presumption of innocence, though, this flag should be presumed to be purely religious (ie without jihadist implication) unless demonstrated otherwise, no?

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Incidentally, Aaron Zelin dealt carefully with a similar question about essentially the same flag — the calligraphy differs slightly in detail — in a tweet regarding the Sydney incident:

This is flag currently held in Sydney window, a garden-variety Islamist flag. Therefore, doesn’t tell us anything yet pic.twitter.com/DgC6wIsE47
— Aaron Y. Zelin (@azelin) December 14, 2014

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And in any case, while we’re waiting for the verdict in the Boston trial, I’m just curious.

How does the law deal with issues such as this? To what extent is non-definitive circumstantial evidence contextual and cumulative?

[ by Charles Cameron — for the record, there’s a Boston “special edition” of Azan, though I’ve only seen the ad! ]
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The second issue of Azan magazine is out, and not all that exciting — but just as I did last time, I’ve scanned it for bits that interest me, and come up with a couple — but first I’d like to note is the teaser on p. 49 (below) for a “special issue” on the Boston bombings, dated 15/5 on the cover and claiming to have been published “soon after the attacks”:

I haven’t seen it, but there’s corroboration. SITE appears to have found a copy and announced it in this tweet on May 25th:

So somewhere between Azan #1 and Azan #2, there would seem to have been an out of series issue. Since it concentrates on Boston, however, and not Khorasan, there’s probably not much in it along my line of interest, so knowing it’s out there only piques my curiosity just a tad.

[ by Charles Cameron — often puzzled & shocked at the way some algorithms behave in public ]
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I was on Silobreaker this evening, looking at a page called Dead Terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev Channeled Islamic Videos, and what I found curious was this little network diagram, presumably algorithmically-generated from the Silobreaker database:

I have to tell you, I like network diagrams — but what are we supposed to infer from that?

Do you see the same diagram when you visit the site — or is this display just for me, knowing what books I buy, what movies I see, what friends I have — and tailored to sell me something, or get my vote?