Long Weekend Open Thread — A Thousand Hands

By
Greg Diamond
– November 22, 2012Posted in: "The OC", Fresh Juice

The elections are over.  Shopping season begins in earnest.

Don’t shop in person today because it means that whoever you bought from made their retail employees work on Thanksgiving.  It’s supposed to be a holiday, bosses.

The movement for tomorrow is to encourage people to shop small and locally, not at big box stores.  (In my mind, Costco gets a pass.  It just does.  Don’t ask me to explain it.)

Walmart workers either are already on, or are going on, or are going on something like, or want consumers to go on, strike tomorrow.  The company is apparently freaking out over the prospective Black Friday actions.  I know that there is discussion of picket lines and actions tomorrow, but I don’t think that information belongs on a public blog.  (If any of you have disinformation, though, that’s welcome.)

China is, as usual, taking a rap tomorrow for the decisions of our retail overlords (good name for a band, that) to buy more and more merch from there.  I don’t know how to react to that, but I do have an alternative to China bashing.  Here goes:

My high school friend Rey writes this about this video:

“Dance of a Thousand-Hand Guanyin, nothing short of amazing, even if they were not all deaf.

“All 21 of the dancers are complete deaf-mutes. Relying only on signals from trainers at the four corners of the stage, these extraordinary dancers deliver a visual spectacle that is at once intricate and stirring. Its first major international debut was in Athens at the closing ceremonies for the 2004 Paralympics.

“But it had long been in the repertoire of the Chinese Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe and had traveled to more than 40 countries. Its lead dancer is 29 year old Tai Lihua, who has a BA from the Hubei Fine Arts Institute. The video was recorded in Beijing during the Spring Festival this year.

“Simply amazing.”

And there you have it: it can be a fractious world, but damned if it isn’t mind-bogglingly beautiful as well — not just the scenery and the cute animals, but we people, and what we can accomplish, as well.

Have a happy feast day and remember those who cannot feast. This is your Long Weekend Open Thread; talk about whatever you want, within reason.

And, oh yes, Happy Thanksgiving.

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)