Sometimes ceremony is all one has to offer. From the NYTimes:
… “It’s important that this be done right,” said the man, Zhao Ru.
In the complex choreography of Chinese funerals, an important element is the funeral scroll, made from cloth or paper and adorned with messages rendered in calligraphy to express condolences or to praise the life of the deceased.
Mr. Zhao, 73, a Chinese calligrapher who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, has been making ceremonial scrolls for much of his life. On Friday, he undertook one of his most high-profile jobs, creating a pair of scrolls for the wake and funeral of Wenjian Liu, one of the two police officers killed last month by a gunman in Bedford-Stuyvesant…
In his home city of Toishan, in southern China, Mr. Zhao was a schoolteacher and well-known calligrapher. He immigrated to the United States in 1989 with several family members, and he worked in Chinese restaurants and garment factories in New York.
But his fame as a calligrapher had migrated with him, and over the years he has frequently been commissioned to provide calligraphy for funerals and other occasions.
In the case of Officer Liu’s funeral, Mr. Zhao said, he was acting on his own accord and was not getting paid: He had been planning to do the scrolls since hearing of the officers’ murders.
“I could use my calligraphy to memorialize the officer,” he said in Mandarin. “What a pity it is. He was such a good police officer. He was an only son.”…
Read the whole story here.
***********
What’s on the agenda for the new day?
BillinGlendaleCA
Take down Xmas things. Maybe take a walk into the hills.
Phylllis
As little as possible before everything ramps up again Monday.
raven
In the 70’s a big counter-culture hangout in Champaign-Urbana was The House of Chin owned by a true madman named George Chin. His dad sat at the bar and watched every minute of Nixon’s 1972 China trip that he could. Shortly after he passed away and George put on a Chinese funeral to beat all. Paid mourners, jazz band on a flatbed out to the cemetery and a huge “real” Chinese banquet full of dignified Chinese people and off-the-rails hippies raging to another band. Folks knew how to say goodbye!
OzarkHillbilly
Uck. Supposed to rain all day. Granddaughter is here now. If they stay all day, we’ll bake. If not, I’ll spend the day in the shop.
raven
Ha, a little write up in the San Fran Weekly that includes a misspelled piece about Chins!
raven
The proprietor of the House of Chin talking over fireworks laws with a Champaign cop!
Zinsky
I need to start practicing on my new mandolin, to work up a few new songs for our annual outdoor music party next summer. I am thinking about Winwood’s Back In the High Life and Led Zep’s Battle of Evermore. Any other mandolin song suggestions out there?
Bystander
People who question the necessity of learning cursive writing need to read this article.
raven
@Zinsky: Scroll through here to #5 and check out my friend Pat and his huge hands holding a mandolin.
Mustang Bobby
@Phylllis: Same here. Back to work on Monday. The good part is that there won’t be much to catch up on because everybody else has been off for two weeks as well.
Phylllis
@Mustang Bobby: There is that. The finance folks have to come out swinging because payroll transmits on Wednesday, but I can ease in.
Christine Eddy
https://www.change.org/p/channel-4-petition-not-to-make-a-comedy-series-about-the-irish-famine?recruiter=110911190&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-lg-share_petition-no_msg&utm_content=rp_petition_fb_share_desc%3Acontrol
Sorry I know this is off topic, but I couldn’t find an email to send it to Annie Laurie.
NotMax
50 mph wind gusts and thunderstorms.
Raven
@NotMax: Bet it’s nice on the mountain of the sun!
Tokyokie
@Bystander: My cursive is downright awful, but for a gaijin, my ability to write kanji characters is fairly good. And I’ve never understood why.
NotMax
@Raven
It ain’t a fit night out for man or beast.
Amir Khalid
I’ve had better starts to the weekend. I was getting out of the house when I noticed I didn’t have my wallet on me. It wasn’t in my inside jacket pocket where I always keep it. I knew it was on me when I got home last night. Went back to my room, couldn’t find it there either. I had to have my nephew drive me to the station to make a police report. Monday morning will be spent at the National Registration Dept office to get the new MyKad and at Public Bank to get the ATM card replaced and take out cash to replace what I lost. Feh, and other expressions of unhappiness.
Raven
@NotMax: That’s why they call him honest john!
Amir Khalid
@Zinsky:
Check out Led Zeppelin III and their cover of Richie Valens’ Ooh My Head off Physical Graffitti, where it’s titled Boogie With Stu.
Raven
@Amir Khalid: I did that in the fall, football tix, cards, cash! Freaked out and canceled everything and went back to the drugstore three times. On the third try they realized they had it from when I set it down whilst showing fishing pictures to the kid behind the counter!
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
MyKad?
Amir Khalid
I saw another headline on the page: the Commish is asking cops attending Officer Liu’s funeral please not to turn their backs on the mayor again. Does anyone think they’ll heed him?
Raven
@Baud: Irish for card.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Malaysian ID card. (Malaysia’s two-letter www. domain name is MY.)
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Cool.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Domain names apply to more than the web.
In any event, isn’t it much too hot there for a jacket?
(Sorry to hear about the lost wallet.)
satby
@Amir Khalid: that stinks! And if you have luck like mine, you’ll find the wallet as soon as everything has been cancelled or replaced.
Amir Khalid
Some Scandal with a capital S.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
It’s a light jacket.
Baud
Maine’s postal abbreviation is ME so every type of initiative there is called “something ME.”
burnspbesq
@Zinsky:
How about this?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x05z27blg80
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
So, Amir, once the Gerrard transfer is confirmed, will we be welcoming you into the ranks of L.A. Galaxy supporters?
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
I’m more of a club supporter than an individual-player supporter. It
wouldwill feel strange to see Liverpool’s Roy Race figure in a shirt without a Liverpool or England badge.debbie
@Amir Khalid:
If they comply, it won’t be the New York I used to live in. No such thing as overmaking a point.
JPL
Today I’m going to finish clean up after the holidays. Fortunately, I have my wallet so don’t have to go through the same angst as Amir.
satby
Freezing rain right now, and no salting of roads in my neck of Michigassippi, so I’m staying home today. I’ve been rearranging my tiny house and moving some stuff to store out to the now empty garage. Amazing how less cluttery it seems.
Pogonip
Waiting to hear from Full Metal Wingnut, the Russian blue, or both about how their first night went.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Left for Alabama on 12/26. Just got back and I’m enjoying a weekend getting used to seeing Mrs. Thunder again for a while. Next 2 weekends will be spent getting to and back from Germany.
It’s cold out but we’ll walk Doglius anyway because when they’re 12 years old and feel like going for a trot around the block that’s what you do.
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
I have a big smile on my face imagining all the horrible things that Gerrard, Robbie Keane, Gyasi Zardes, and Stefan Ishizaki are going to do to MLS defenses.
I think Gerrard will turn out to be a suitable replacement for Donovan, and being around him every day is sure to accelerate the development of our young guns (Jose Villareal, I’m looking at you).
OzarkHillbilly
Dayum. Ellie May Clampett, the subject of all my pre-adolescent yearnings, has died.
WereBear
@Zinsky: Blackwater Side. Barbara Allen.
zippity
A little bit of snow here-supposed to turn to rain for the day, it’s 33 right now. I woke up to a couple of texts from my ex-fiance. Seems like he was at my house trying to get me to wake up at 1 am. Isn’t that interesting.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: That’s terrible! And I hope it ends there.
I once lost my wallet in the grocery store parking lot. Replaced everything, instituted a New Policy of wallet policing. About 18 months later, after a huge mess of work on the car, my wallet appeared again. One of the mechanics found it, and put it on my passenger seat for me.
Everything was still in there. I managed to lose it inside the car.
New Wallet Protocol: no black wallets.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
My new wallet policy will be a security chain.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: You might consider manufacturing the chains.
OzarkHillbilly
@zippity: Actually, that’s a little scary.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
That happened to me once when I misplaced a passport.
Violet
@zippity: That sounds a little creepy. Stay safe.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: So now you can clone yourself?
zippity
@Violet: Thank you. I’m not worried. I’ve heard that he is filing for divorce, so it’s not a big surprise he’s trying to contact me. Doing it at 1 am wasn’t a good idea.
OzarkHillbilly
Really? A waiter at a Lebanese restaurant named Ragheed (Raghead?) called customers Ni**er 1, Ni**er 2, Ni**er 3? Not even the Onion could make that up.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
Alas, I decided it was better to just cancel the lost-passport report.
Eric S.
I’m going through a slow motion deep clean of my condo. The kitchen is done. The tub is done. I think the rest of the bathroom today. Also I’ll sirens some time studying vb.net. This old COBOL dinosaur is trying to update his programming skilz.
Zinsky
@burnspbesq: Ha! It would take me decades to play like Grisman! I am a decent but not expert musician. I am looking for playable, contemporary songs that feature mandolin. An example would be “Losing My Religion” by R.E.M., which I already know. Thanks, though.
sempronia
It’s been weird to read these articles about Wenjian Liu where they keep saying that the family, the 70-something-year-old calligrapher, etc. are from the Toishan area but everyone speaks Mandarin. The names are all Anglicized using the Mandarin pronunciation. Someone the calligrapher’s age is unlikely to have used the Mandarin version of their name. Maybe it’s just NYT style, or just an NYC Chinatown thing. Or maybe the reporter only speaks Mandarin.
/ toisan language pedant off
burnspbesq
@Zinsky:
The same feeling you get watching Grisman, i get watching Tony Rice.
Bob In Portland
When Andrew O’Hehir sees it, it must be pretty obvious. Are we on the same page yet? How many more wars?
TaMara (BHF)
Thanks for giving me something I felt I could post on FB that was non-political in regards to all of this.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
No one takes Andrew O’Hehir seriously as a movie critic, let alone as a political pundit.
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
Sorry about the nuissance that befell you.
Buckingham Palace is of course denying any involvement of his Royal Highness, but I think a few years of the next generation on the throne, if not skipped, may be just about what the UK needs to start giving Republicanism a good look.
Mnemosyne
@SRW1:
Andrew has absolutely no chance of ever getting to be king now that Prince George is on the scene (and has a sister on the way), and he knows it. Younger brothers have always been problematic for the British sovereigns — see also Prince Harry’s various scandals. So, no, Andrew’s troubles are not going to move Great Britain even half a step closer to being a republic.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: You’re right. The NYPD isn’t fascist. Glad you were here to reassure us.
My knowledge of O’Hehir goes back to his writing in the SF Weekly, I believe as far back as the 90s. He had several “anti-conspiracy theory” articles at the time which I found silly and mostly devoid of facts and offered the kind of reassurance that everything is A-OK, there aren’t conspiracies.
To bring up It Can’t Happen Here is a step in the right direction in recognizing what is apparent all around us. I am thankful for small victories.
So, Amir, did you even read the article? How tight are your blinders? When the lightbulb goes on for you it will be another small victory, but I think you can hold out for a little while longer. I wouldn’t have brought up It Can’t Happen Here. I’ve found that Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is a better literary metaphor for our times.
SRW1
@Mnemosyne:
I am aware of Prince Andrew having dropped a spot, but the possible problem in the next generation I meant was Prince Charles, the man of the meddling kind. Isn’t there a High Court decision due about whether the public has a right to know about the content of his letters to ministers in the then Labour government?
ETA: Btw, there was a comment about Charles propensity to make his positions known on all sorts of things in todays Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/03/prince-charles-meddling-monarch-royal-neutrality
SWMBO
@SRW1: There was the suggestion at the bottom that Charles could be passed over for William. Wouldn’t that raise Andrew’s position a point?
SRW1
@SWMBO:
In principle it would. But I have a hard time seeing Charles step aside after having waited all his life. And even if he did, that would still leave Andrew behind little Prince George.
Mnemosyne
@SRW1:
There’s always the rumor that Queen Liz will skip over Charles and have William inherit the throne directly.
burnspbesq
@Bob In Portland:
So, Bob, have you come to terms with your complete lack of credibility on any subject?
Bob In Portland
@burnspbesq: Is Balloon Juice the place to come to get credibility or the place to find neo-liberals in various stages of denial?
I find it interesting what constitutes credibility to you, pbesq. Did you look at either of the articles linked? I doubt it. I doubt that anyone here would deny that the head of the NYPD union is a horse’s ass, and most here would be uncomfortable with their behavior against the Mayor of NYC.
But to link them to fascism? Well, if I say it then it’s obviously not fascism. But if someone else, someone with credibility here says it here, you would accept that it’s kinda fascism, or close to fascism, or actually fascism but not that kind of fascism. Sort of like how you can accept that the US lied to you about Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Libya, but maybe it was because someone in the State Department was confused or a Republican holdover, or some excuse to avoid the obvious. But our leaders, Obama et al, would never lie to us about Ukraine (that is, until five or ten years from now, but by then you’ll be denying something else).
Being late to the party doesn’t mean the part didn’t start without you. Why, there was probably a reason why you weren’t invited.
Amir Khalid
@SRW1:
I doubt that Prince Charles’ opinions, often eccentric but never scandalous, are anywhere near enough to disqualify him for the throne. He’s only missing out on it if he dies before the Queen.
As for Andrew, I have no opinion on the truth of the allegations. I think he’d only stand a chance at the throne if Charles died while still Prince of Whales. If Charles dies as King, then William succeeds him, and King William’s son George will be made Prince of Wales upon adulthood.
Comrade Dread
Hey, they replaced WND headlines with Wonkette headlines. Now where am I going to find out how Obama’s secret love child with Ayers is plotting to destroy America with an army of big gay Bigfoots?
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Of course I read it. Did you read these sentences?
They don’t sound like a warning of an imminent new birth of Fascism in America.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
As I understand it, Andrew has zero chance of being king short of some kind of massacre, because the line of succession currently goes like this:
Charles
William
George
George’s sister (who will be born in April)
Harry
Andrew
ThresherK
We’ve lost Edward Herrmann.
My favorite role of his: William Randolph Hearst in “The Cat’s Meow”.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne: “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, anyone? I mean, stranger things have happened to English nobility.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
I wasn’t sure if that was so. So I must correct this sentence
to
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@ThresherK:
You know that “Kind Hearts and Coronets” was not a documentary, right? ;-p. Neither was “King Ralph,” for that matter. Previous lines of the British royal family died out because they didn’t have enough heirs thanks to infertility, infant mortality, or fatal childbirth, not because someone wiped out the heirs standing in their way. That hasn’t happened since Richard III.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Who’s talking about a birth of fascism? I guess you don’t think when you read.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Point taken. And I’ll have to talk to our town’s resident expert on English succession, Aaron O’Spair, lest I embarrass myself on the subject again.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Says the man who’s quoting fiction. Bob, this is even weirder than your recent foray into Malaysian politics.
drkrick
@Amir Khalid: Andrew is behind William, George and Harry whether Charles is king or not. Each took their places ahead of him in line at birth.
Mnemosyne
@drkrick:
And don’t forget the player to be named when she’s born in April — despite her XX chromosomes, she would still inherit ahead of Andrew.
I think. Damn, I may have to go look it up. I’m pretty sure that the “boys come first” rule of succession only applies to the immediate line, so the new princess would inherit after any brothers but before any uncles.
I was just reading about some of the machinations around the marriage of Henry VIII’s sister Mary (Tudor), who was briefly Queen of France. France had the Salic Law that said women could not inherit the French throne or have their descendants inherit it, which had its own set of major complications.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
Salic law said a lot more than that but, you’re right, it did include agnatic succession.