Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations that force thinking and response. This Sunday, New Year’s Day, 2023, we target: Resolutions
Wouldn’t the New Year be off to a great start if important resolutions were nice and easy to keep?
While the Third Degree is supposed to generate weekly, Niebuhr-like, moments of agonizing reappraisal, after a strenuous December, why not some nice and easy does it, but illuminating and satisfying, resolutions?
Will you resolve to view a painting purchased by Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum for 8200 British pounds in 1952 (with stern criticism by town residents and media) and now the most famous painting in all of Scotland including a rejected, Spanish government, 80 million dollar, offer to buy?
Easy enough to view on line the amazing “Christ of St. John of the Cross”, one of three Salvador Dali paintings the Third Degree deems captivating?
FYI, are the unresolved two: Corpus Hypercubus (NY Metropolitan) and Sacrament of the Last Supper (National Gallery,Washington)?
Can you hum a bit of “Full Moon and Empty Arms”, then why not resolve to thrill to Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in C minor? Isn’t it easy to YouTube my favorite, Anna Fedorova in live concert, if only to sample (and marvel) from the 25 minute point to the 37 minute ending, and thus enticed, start at beginning as you should have anyway?
If Nureyev and Fonteyn were stunning and so worthy a duo in ballet, can we resolve to see the overwhelming dance routine, Bolero, on ice, performed to scoring perfection by Torvill and Dean at the 1984 Olympics?
Will you resolve to not embarrass the dog? When Laura Huxley provides lessons for life in her seminal work “You are not the Target”, can we resolve to follow her instruction concerning personal release and realization?
Why does Laura suggest that you pull down the shades and lock up the dog, and playing some favorite piece of winsome music, begin to interpret and dance being lifted up by sound and sense?
Oh, did I forget, Laura, and I, want you….. nude—-dancing naked with the music? Are reports or inquiries welcome, or not, from you daring, dancing souls? Don’t neglect to cover the fish bowl too?
So far so nice and easy and not a lot of time invested, but how about resolving to fix the ailing American K-12 schools and, so sorry to say, the really failing, collegiate system?
Can you construct a universal definition/maxim that, if enacted, will fix this pressing situation?
Is it all about purpose? So, how to complete: “The purpose of the American educational system is to…….”?
Not so nice and easy? Breaking boundaries, The Third Degree resolves to suggest an answer this New Year’s morning, so, why not: “The purpose of the American educational system is to provide the student with the skills and confidence to identify and deal with life’s problems, have good manners and appreciate beauty”?
Now, about those unresolved ten (?) pounds?
Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living. The answers and actions remain yours. Happy New Year.
The new, secure, Third Degree website, www.third-degreeUS.com, is up now with improved security, administrative and financial capability. Full functionality will take effect Mid-January–watch for separate messages.