Reader Tips

Reader Tips 30 Comments

Welcome to SDA Reader Tips. Tonight’s musical accompaniment comes in the form of a song by the late Judee Sill, a remarkably talented but largely unheralded musician whose beautiful voice and spiritual, baroque pop songs are so beautiful, gentle and clear-headed as to be hard to reconcile with her dark and troubled life.
Tim Page, in the Washington Post:

Tom King’s “The Operator,” a 650-page biography of David Geffen, who founded Asylum and signed Sill as the first artist to record on his new label, devotes only one sentence to her, calling her “a former prostitute and reformed junkie.” King might have added “stick-up artist,” “drug dealer” and “street hustler” to his capsule biography, for Sill led a troubled and unsettled life. And yet…she was also an artist of extraordinary gifts, one whose best songs are suffused with a radiant, prayerful and excruciatingly tender innocence, all the more affecting because it must have been so hard-won.

The immediate temptation is to classify her with some of her more famous contemporaries — Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro and Carole King — and, indeed, the similarities are there. Yet Sill’s body of work is both more limited and more perfect. Virtually all of her songs are intensely devotional; along with J.S. Bach and Mahalia Jackson (two of her acknowledged influences), Sill believed that the purpose of music was the glorification of God. Instead of sharply etched social vignettes or cosmopolitan evocations of modern life and love, she wrote her own sort of hymns — guileless, urgent, naked, absolutely personal.

Here, for your Sunday evening pleasure, is the late Judee Sill’s 1971 release Jesus Was a Cross Maker.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips. Please read on for an important note:


The Reader Tips comments thread is not intended to be a chat room for regulars, but rather a go-to resource in which SDA visitors can find links to interesting articles. You can certainly comment, if you feel the need, on the contents of a linked-to tip, but responses to other commenters, i.e. chat-room behaviour, may well result in your comments being deleted, with repeat offenders being first in the queue. These rules will be applied most forcefully in the first twenty-four hours; during that time the adjudication process for deleting such comments will be cruelly and inconsistently applied, maddeningly opaque, and entirely unfair. Just so you know.)

30 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  2. My head hurts.
    From YouAreNotSoSmart.com:
    “Suppose you are on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors. You get whatever is behind the door you pick. Behind one door is a car. Behind the other two, goats. You pick a door. Let’s say it was number one. Monty Hall knows what’s behind all the doors, and he opens another door instead. Let’s say he picks number three. When the door opens, a goat is revealed. Monty asks if you would like to change your choice. Two doors remain closed. You originally picked door number one. Nothing has changed behind the doors.
    “So, here is the question. Would changing your answer improve your chances of getting the car?
    “The insane answer is – yes. Changing your answer to door number two improves your odds from about 33 percent, to about 66 percent. Even though nothing has changed, changing your answer will now double your odds of winning.”
    (…)
    “In a study by Mueser and Granberg in 1999, 0nly 13 percent of 228 people presented with this problem chose to switch.”

  5. Norman Tebbit, former cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, on the numerous difficulties facing the Cameron-led coalition:
    Part of the problem is, I believe, that government has grown so big – that it regulates, licenses, forbids, encourages, subsidises, taxes, moralises, employs, delivers services, on such a scale, across such a wide spectrum of society and the economy. It is really hard these days not to be told what to do, or what not to do, by some agency of the State every day of our lives. As ever, those who are sufficiently upset, dissatisfied, or feel short-changed by what government delivers to them are likely to be more vociferous than those left reasonably content.
    “The result is a near permanent atmosphere of dissatisfaction simply because we all feel bossed around and let down. Mr. Cameron’s plea for ‘a bigger society and a smaller state’ is a rational, even if as yet a shapeless response to this problem.”

  7. Devolution is evolution.
    “The euro will have broken up before the end of this Parliamentary term, according to the bulk of economists taking part in a wide-ranging economic survey for The Sunday Telegraph.”

  8. How could I have lived this long and not heard of this lovely singer/songwriter before? What a gift!
    I would quibble with the spelling of “cue” (in the explanation of Readers’ Tips). Queue perhaps? I hate myself for doing this but like picking at a hangnail, I simply can’t help it.
    (Thanks Rita, it’s been corrected. Don’t hate yourself for it, at least not on my behalf – I actually appreciate it. Please feel free at all times to point out any typos or, as in this case, brain farts. – EBD)

  9. Much obliged, Mr. EBD. I just spent an illuminating hour listening to Judee over at YouTube.
    An outstanding song, and one of Andy Partridge’s all-time favourites, “The Kiss” is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feFedDW_iQ
    Again, many thanks. … But for your great tip all that excellence might have sailed past me forever.

  10. EBD
    Hippie chick to the enth and so true.
    Jesus was a tradesman…A carpenter…ironically enough he got nailed to his own work.
    Go figure.
    Syncro

  11. I just watched on PBS in the states a program of US forces talent presenting a program of patriotic music supporting their roll in the middle east and the US in general. It was really good. Even PBS and their left wing leanings could not prevent a production like this from being broadcast.
    I know from personal experience that the Canadian forces are just as talented in this way as any American group and wonder why something like this has never been shown on CBC. If our great Canadian broadcasting entity will not produce something like this promoting Canada why are the other networks not picking up the slack?
    In my lifetime Canada never blew its own horn until Molson`s beer put out their “I AM CANADIAN ” adds a few years ago.
    I THINK IT IS TIME TO TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL CANADA.

  14. EBD @10:30 – that broke my brain, and I wasn’t finished using it. Not nice.

  15. Monty Hall?
    pffft. I saw a variation in an issue of Economist. the flaw is exactly the same. it’s like the ‘where’s the missing dollar’ riddle.
    here, the position is to mix a KNOWN HISTORICAL EVENT, ie monty revaels contents of one door with 2 events still unknown, ie where are the car and the other 2 goats.
    probability is strictly and EXCLUSIVELY confined to calculating odds of FUTURE events. when hall exposes the contents of one of the doors that then removes it ENTIRELY from the equation. ie you have to recalculate based on only 2 possible events. keep hall’s goat out of it.
    what are the odds of winning 2 lotto jackpots in a row?
    astronomical because they are in the realm of unknown FUTURE events.
    what if you already won a jackpot and buy another ticket? same as odds of everyone else in the game, same if you didnt win any jackpot and only bought one ticket. the known event has NO effect on the probability.
    stop mixing in known events for which the ‘probability’ is 100%.

  17. The Leadership Thing.
    …-
    “Harper scores foreign policy victories in lead-up to summits
    On funding for maternal health, a proposed bank tax and efforts to combat climate change, the agendas of the June summits reflect Canada’s priorities, leaked documents show”
    “Despite weeks of setbacks and scoldings, from allies as well as critics, Canada scored one success after another over the weekend in its efforts to shape the agenda of the G8 and G20 summits, thanks to Stephen Harper’s ability to exploit the swiftly transforming global balance of power.
    Leaked communiqués and background briefings revealed that on the issues of funding for maternal health, a proposed bank tax and efforts to combat climate change, the agendas of the June summits reflect Canada’s priorities.”
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-scores-foreign-policy-victories-in-lead-up-to-summits/article1594274/?cmpid=rss1
    …-
    Liberal Ziffy’s Harvard buddy: O.
    Stuck on O’s Gulf Oil Spill/KatrinaBP.
    “Fight to contain Gulf oil spill could last months CTV.ca”
    http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/06/06/half-baked/#comment-83073

  18. O’Helenback. Where’s your voice?
    Face the live cameras/microphones; speak clearly; enunciate slowly: I am not an anti-semite bigot.
    …-
    “Hearst heiress demands Helen Thomas be fired
    ‘She has poured mud all over my family’s name’ with anti-Semitic remarks”
    In the wake of widely condemned anti-Semitic comments by long-time White House reporter and Hearst newspaper columnist Helen Thomas, Hearst heiress Victoria Hearst is demanding that the corporation bearing her family’s name fire Thomas immediately.
    “She has poured mud all over my family’s name,” Hearst told WND. “I’ve never heard any Hearst family member make an anti-Semitic remark, and none of them would be in agreement with Helen Thomas.”
    Thomas, on hand for a Jewish Heritage Celebration held at the White House May 27, told Rabbi David F. Nesenoff on camera that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.” (Watch video below)
    Following the resulting uproar and demands she be terminated, the 89-year-old Thomas – often called the “dean of the White House press corps,” having covered every president since Eisenhower – tried to back away from her comments by issuing a written apology: “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians,” she wrote, adding they “do not reflect” her “heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance.””
    http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=163517

  19. Bah, I ordered the Judee Sill double CD after reading all the hype on its re-release. A couple of decent songs but extremely over-rated is the term that comes to mind.

  20. Thanks for the Monty Hall problem EDB…I love that one.
    If the explanation on your link is a little too convoluted for some readers, go check out the wiki page on this. The “lets repeat the experiment with 100,000 doors and open 999,998 doors” tends to get peoples brains working properly on this one.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

  23. oh what the hell do I/we know for certain? Now at gatewaypundit he’s saying this is all a hoax, who knows where it’s going…?

  24. Check this: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=iran-sends-aid-ships-to-gaza-2010-06-07
    The Iran Red Crescent is sending three ships and a plane to break the blockade in a “humanitarian” invasion. Best quote:
    “If this symbolic campaign continues, it will result in the surrender of the Zionist regime, which will certainly be one of its biggest defeats.”
    Hurriyet is the Turkish national daily; contains many anti-Israel pieces. IMO almost time to kick them out of NATO so we won’t have to think of them as an ally when they go Jihadi on us and/or Israel.

  26. Follow the bouncing O’narcissist* … O … O … O … O’narcissist*.
    “*This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.”
    O’s KatrinaBP.
    …-
    “Video: Obama Says US Will Bounce Back From Oil Crisis”
    The Associated Press
    …-
    More: the bouncing O meets the Dark Side of left-liberalism:
    “US liberals vow to put pressure on Obama”
    ““People are strongly feeling that they need to push more. He has compromised too readily, too early,” Robert Borosage of Campaign for America’s Future said of U.S. President Barack Obama.”
    “But Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, who heads an environmental activist group called Green for All, said Mr. Obama’s initial acceptance of what he was told about the Gulf Coast oil spill by officials of London energy giant BP Plc BP.L was a sign of his hands-off approach with the corporate world.
    “The handling of BP has been atrocious at best. I believe in the president, but I believe in the needs of the Gulf Coast residents more,” she said.”
    http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/liberals+pressure+Obama/3123980/story.html
    …-
    *O’narcissist:
    http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections

  27. Sorry – pointless, crappy and irrelevant song.
    It has sunk into much-deserved obscurity

  29. I’d never heard of Judee Sill, and yet I was a folkie in the ’60s and ’70s.
    Was it her singing about Jesus that put her on the margins?
    Sorry her life ended so soon.

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