Biblical paraphrase

The prophet Isaiah spoke of a coming day of peace and justice when "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the goat; and the calf and the young lion and the yearling together; and a little child shall lead them."

Obviously, we haven't gotten there yet. But at least in Russia there's a goat that lies down with a tiger (after taking its bed).

I reckon that's a start.

A little more than kin, and less than kind

Russian actor Nikolai Massalitinov as Claudius with Olga Knipper as Gertrude in the Moscow Art Theatre's production of Hamlet (1911), by way of wikipedia.

For first time visitors, the theme lately is Hamlet, but you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

We first get to meet what's left of Hamlet's family in scene II of Act I, which opens with the usurper Claudius justifying the hasty marriage to Gertrude that followed Old Hamlet's mysterious death:

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,--
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--
Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.

Young Hamlet isn't exactly wearing a party hat and is chided for his excessive grief. In what would turn out to be a big mistake, he is asked by Claudius and Gertrude to stay in Elsinore rather than resume his studies in Wittenberg. Note to Claudius: dude, you screwed up there big time.

Along with family hassles and political intrigue, the scene also contains Hamlet's first soliloquy in favor of death. Here's a taste:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely...

I've had days like that...

FROM THERE TO HERE. Here's Jared Bernstein on how bad the Great Recession is (was?) and how far we've moved back from the brink.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, over 60 percent of Americans opposed the US Supreme Court's Americans United ruling, which opens the floodgates for corporate contributions in political campaigns.

UNLIKELY ALLIES. For the last few years, some of the usual suspects have been trying to get a bill passed in the WV legislature that would set up voluntary employee retirement accounts for workers without pensions. It would be handled by the State Treasurer's office through payroll deductions and workers could continue to build savings as they moved from job to job. Recently, the WV Center on Budget and Policy teamed up with the Heritage Foundation to build support for this measure, something that doesn't happen every day.

NICE KITTY. Here's video of a wild Sumatran tiger and her cubs.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TAMING THE TIGER, A LITTLE GOOD NEWS, AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

Caption: These are good kitties.

Yesterday's post included a parable from the ancient Chinese Taoist sage Chuang Tzu. Here's another for good measure on the art of dealing with people...oh, yeah, and tigers too.

The basic idea is that if one takes into account the nature of those with whom one is interacting the outcomes will be better. The example is one of a trainer of tigers. Obviously, this can be a dangeous profession, particularly if one doesn't take their nature into consideration. Here's a suggestion on how to do it right:

Do you know how a tiger trainer works? He does not risk feeding the tigers live animals for fear of arousing their ferocity as they kill. He does not risk feeding them whole animals for fear of arousing their anger as they tear them apart. He knows when the tigers are hungry and when they are full; thereby he is in touch with their fierce nature. Tigers are a different species from man, yet by observing their ways, one can train them to be gentle. They will kill only when aroused.

Note to self: try not to feed the tigers live food...unless it really seems like the right thing to do at the time.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS FOR WV. The right wing noise machine in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia seems fixated on the idea that everything is bad here all the time. Perhaps they might wish to relocate?

Here's a little good news:

New data shows the average West Virginia worker earned nearly $1,400 more last year.

Workforce West Virginia says that 4.4 percent increase pushed the average worker's earnings above $32,700 last year.

George Hammond with West Virginia University's Bureau of Business and Economics says that's the state's fastest growth rate since 1990.

NO GLOBAL WARMING AROUND HERE, BOSS... Another canary in the old coal mine just went down:

Scientists on Tuesday blamed global warming for the disappearance of a glacial lake in remote southern Chile that faded away in just two months, leaving just a crater behind.

The disappearance of the lake in Bernardo O'Higgins National Park was discovered in late May by park rangers, who were stunned to find a 130-foot deep crater where a large lake had been.

After flying over the lake Monday scientists said they were able to draw preliminary conclusions that point to climate change as the leading culprit for the lake's disappearance.

MASSEY HIT BY SHAREHOLDER LAWSUIT. This should be fun to watch. Paragraph from the middle of Ken Ward's Gazette article:

The suit alleges a “conscious failure” by Massey management “to comply with applicable environmental and worker-safety laws and regulations.” It says failure has “caused and will continue to cause severe injury to the company by consciously ignoring Massey Energy’s legal obligations to comply with federal and state law, thereby exposing the company to a substantial threat of monetary liability for violations.”

Among other things, the suit cites a recent federal lawsuit over repeated water pollution violations, hefty fines for the deaths of two miners in the Aracoma Mine fire, and a nearly $2 million verdict against Massey for firing a worker who complained about safety problems.

GOATROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED