I am most decidedly not a sports fan.  About the most excited I get sports-wise is around Olympics time.  I do like the summer Olympics.  I do cheer for the USA, but not exclusively.  I have become something of a fan of Korea’s Olympic team, but after all, I live here.  And they did do their nation extremely proud last year.  I do like soccer very much.  Living in Korea, you hear a lot about soccer.  I have students who want their English names to be Beckham.  I generally, though, do not take sides in the World Cup with one exception.  I generally tend to cheer on anybody who is playing against France.  I do not like American football.  In fact, you might say that I pretty much despise American football.  Some might attribute this to treasonous Eurocentrism on my part, but I find nowhere in the constitution where it explicitly states “all American citizens shall be fans of American football and Congress shall enforce this by appropriate legislation”. 

Knowing that there are very strong feelings about American football, that most pointless of human endeavours, I must say with great respect that everybody is entitled to their own opinions in the matter and yours is wrong.  I find football a profoundly tedious sport where the clock is stopped for arbitrary reasons and the games seem to go on forever and ever without end.  I know that this must sound strange, coming from someone who will sit through a full eighty minute Bruckner or Mahler symphony and what’s more enjoy it.  Perhaps I need to learn about football in order to understand the seeming arbitrariness of it all.  I never really understood the rules, so I never really enjoyed it.  But then again, I really don’t WANT to enjoy it. 

There is only one game which I can get even remotely excited about in American football and it isn’t the Superbowl.  Rather, it is the annual BYU-University of Utah game.  I was raised in the Mormon religion, though I am no longer a member.  I am a Catholic, but I have no particular fondness for Notre Dame except when they are playing against BYU.  There are, after all, other Catholic universities than Notre Dame in the USA.  If Notre Dame loses to BYU, it is no great loss to me personally, but I rather tend to see it as divine retribution for having kept Richard McBrien on the theological faculty for so long.  I don’t really have any strong loyalties to any Catholic institution with football teams.  I used to live in Salt Lake City.  I am, in fact, a proud former resident of Salt Lake City.  I do have many fond memories of the place and it still is in some sense home, though I have no immediate family living there.  Seeing as the University of Utah football team is the closest SLC is likely to get to having a professional team, my loyalties, assuming that one who doesn’t like the sport to begin with has any, lie with them.  I still probably won’t watch the game, though.  I’ll check the scores later.  But if the Utes lose, it’s no great loss to me.  IT’S ONLY A GAME!

To BYU fans, I must say that one of the best talks I ever heard as a young man came from LaVell Edwards.  He was speaking over in Eagar, Arizona which is about thirty miles away from my hometown.  I was intially skeptical of going.  “He’s a football coach!  I don’t want to hear football stories for an hour and half!”  was what I was thinking as my dad and I drove to the Eagar Stake Centre. Instead an hour and a half of football stories, we heard a lot about life from a man who has lived it a great deal.  I am very glad that I heard him speak.   

Robert Kirby, a humour columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a very funny column about the fierceness of the BYU-U of U rivalry.  I just can’t get that excited about sports, though I know many people who can.  While Kirby doesn’t have great taste in university football teams, he is a very talented writer.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

http://www.sltrib.com/features/ci_13868522

The words “Catholics” and “Utah” are often seen as two terms which don’t go together at all.  Nevertheless, the Catholic Church has been in Utah for a good long time now.  Perhaps as a sign of determination to remain in Utah, Catholics built one of the most impressive cathedrals in America, the Cathedral of the Madeleine. 

When the cathedral was originally built, the interior was quite plain, especially in comparison to now.  During the episcopacy of the second Bishop of Salt Lake City, The Most Rev. Joseph Sarsfield Glass, CM, the Cathedral was significantly renovated and adorned.  Many of the feautures which adorn the building now, such as the brilliant frescoes not to mention the tympanum over the main entrance, were added during the Glass years. 

Here are some images from the Salt Lake Tribune celebrating one of America’s most unique Catholic cathedrals.  The music is sung by the choristers of the cathedral’s choir school.  Unlike most Catholic cathedrals in America, the Cathedral of the Madeleine has a choir school.  It is made up of children who have auditioned for and been accepted to the school.  It is a Catholic parochial school with a choral mission, if you will.  In addition to their studies, they are also responsible for providing the music for many of the cathedral’s services throughout the year.  Such an institution is very common in the UK, but it is rare in North America. 

In keeping with this blog’s celebration of the Haydn Year, namely the 200th anniversary of the death of Franz Joseph Haydn, I thought that I’d post yet another excerpt of a Haydn work. 

Haydn did not start life as a prodigy, though he was certainly schooled in music as a child.  He developed slowly, composing his greatest works well into middle age and beyond.  He also had a great sense of humour and loved to employ it in his music.  While Haydn knew and embraced the musical conventions of his time, he also knew how and when to break them and how to get away with it with impunity.  Haydn’s music can never be wallpaper music.  There is always something unusual going on and you must pay attention. 

Vienna is thought of to have been intimately bound up with the lives and works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.  Not one of the three was a native of Vienna.  Haydn, born near the Hungarian border in the little town of Rohrau, did come to Vienna as a child to sing in the choir of St. Stephen’s Cathedral.  He also obtained composition lessons from Niccola Porpora and stayed in Vienna until his first appointment to the house of Count Morzin.  When Count Morzin had to let him go, over the cost of keeping an orchestra, Haydn was hired by the princely family of Esterháza de Galatha, one of the most prominent of Austro-Hungarian noble families and still quite wealthy and prosperous today.  Essentially, he was a servant to this noble family.  He was in their employ and his duties involved in composing music for and directing the performances of symphonies, operas, and so forth for the entertainment of the prince, his family, and their guests some of which included the Empress Maria Theresia. 

Apart from some journeys to Vienna in the company of his employer, Haydn generally kept to rural Austria, living in Eisenstadt for some of the year and at the palatial estate of Esterháza during other parts of the year.  Unlike Mozart, who travelled the length and breadth of the European continent as a child and as a young man, Haydn did not really travel until later on in life.  In fact, until his great trip to London, the most he had travelled was a small part of his native Austria amounting to an area about the size of Connecticut.  His reputation, however, preceded him.  His works had been published in Paris and in London.  In 1790, he made the first of two trips to London.  The prince who had originally hired him had died and his successor did not care much for music.  He fired the orchestra, put Haydn on a pension, and basically made him a free man. 

The trips to London were to prove very beneficial to Haydn.  He quite literally took London by storm.  While Haydn was not poor, but rather middle class throughout most of his life, he left London a very wealthy man.  His last symphonies were composed in London.  This is the Symphony No. 103 “Drumroll”.  For some reason, The Netherlands in general and Amsterdam in particular have become the leading centres of Early Music.  Some of the most prominent names in the Early Music Movement are Dutch, such as the organist, harpsichordist, and conductor Gustav Leonhardt and the organist, harspichordist, and conductor Ton Koopman whom you shall see in this video.  This symphony, composed and first performed in London is called the “Drumroll” Symphony because of the prominent part the tympani plays throughout the work. 

Mr Obama is finding himself not much in favour these days with foreign countries.  While in China, he received a very strong talking-to by China’s finance minister in which he was told that the USA needs to clean up its finances and that the weak dollar is unacceptable. 

Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s most prominent news magazines has basically stated that Obama’s “nice guy” approach to foreign policy is not working.  They also quote former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in which he compares Obama to Jimmy Carter, something the White House fears even more than comparing him to George W. Bush.  You can read that here.  The Rt Hon Bob Ainsworth, the UK minister of defense is publicly criticising Obama’s handling of Afghanistan these days.  You can see his criticisms of the whole campaign by clicking on this link. 

For those who care about such things, it seems that Hillary is getting several living magazines to help her spruce up the State Department.  Better Homes & Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Mother Earth News, and This Old House will redecorate portions of Blair House and the Harry S Truman Building.  You can read about her latest grand plans here.

The Telegraph and other media have reported a story about global warming and how a number of scientists may have conspired to hide evidence of global cooling.  An enterprising hacker broke into the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit computers and posted a whole bunch of compromising e-mails which could potentially wreck the careers of those involved. 

You can read about Climategate here.

Deoksu Palace, right near City Hall in downtown Seoul, was where Korea’s penultimate king and emperor, Gojong of Joseon, lived for a time and where he later died.  Up to and including the time that he proclaimed the Dae Han Empire, Korea was under great pressure from the Japanese.  After the assassination of his wife, Queen Myeongseong, King Gojong sought refuge with his son, the Crown Prince Sunjong in the Russian Embassy for about a year.  From the Russian legation, he controlled the Korean government.  While there, he developed a taste and liking for coffee.  After ending his time in the Russian Embassy, he commissioned a Russian architect to build a pavilion for him where he could drink coffee and host parties.  This is the first European building in a Korean palace complex.

The pavilion is adorned with traditional East Asian symbols of longetivity such as deer and bats.   It is a very nice fusion between East and West. 

As set forth in the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Union will now have a permanent president and a foreign minister.  In addition to the embassies of the member states, the EU has its own embassies and diplomatic missions around the world.

Henry Kissinger once famously quipped, “If I want to call Europe, who do I call”?  I suppose that his question has been answered.  The president of the European Council will be Herman van Rompuy, former Prime Minister of Belgium and Baroness Ashton of the UK. 

You can read about these two people whom many people have never heard of here.  The Telegraph, being a generally conservative British daily, is somewhat of a euroskeptic persuasion.  You can read their opinions of him and the Baroness Ashton by clicking here.  Apparently, the new President of the European Council, Mr van Rompuy, is something of a “Eurofanatic” and a great believer in federalism.  If there is anything that the members of the EU ought to learn from the American experience, it is that the principle of subsidiarity is a precious thing which larger federal entities, in which this case the Eurocrats in Brussels, will do everything they can do to dilute it to where it risks becoming meaningless.

The Korea Times is reporting that Google, in an effort to gain a greater foothold in Korea, is going to be making their website look more like the Korean search engines Naver and Daum.  If you visit either of those search engines, you will notice that they are a bit cluttered especially in comparison to the sleek and simple design of Google.

You can read more about the changes set to happen to google.co.kr here.

In 1897, King Gojong of what was then known as Joseon (McCune-Reischauer: Chosŏn) announced the end of Korea’s tributary status and thus proclaimed the Dae Han, or Great Korean Empire.  Today’s South Korea is known as the Dae Han Min Guk.  Back then, it was Dae Han Je Guk. 

During that time period, the new Korean Empire began to experiment with westernization and modernization.  Emperor Gojong began to dress much like how western European monarchs dress, even today.  At Deoksu Palace, there were some photos of the late Gwangmu Emperor.  In East Asian society, it would have been unthinkable to address a king by his name.  Often, emperors have a ceremonial name by which they are known.  It is unthinkable in Japan to refer to Emperor Hirohito by his name.  As is common with all his ancestors, he is known as the Emperor Showa, the posthumous name given him.  When he dies, Emperor Akihito will be known as the Hesei Emperor. 

Here is the Gwangmu Emperor in all his western finery complete with decorations.

Here’s a more traditional shot with the royal family.

The Gwangmu Emperor was to be forced to abdicate.  The throne passed to his son, Sunjong who became the Emperor Yunghui.  The Yunghui Emperor was not mentally sound, perhaps relating to his poisoning by the Japanese in the infamous coffee poisoning plot.  Gojong tasted his coffee and noticed it tasted strange so he didn’t drink it.  Sunjong drank his as was poisoned.  He was never quite the same after and was thus an easily malleable figurehead for the Japanese to manipulate.  The Gwangmu Emperor, King Gojong, died in Deoksu Palace under mysterious circumstances, having seen his proud country’s sovereignity lost and the Japanese haven taken control.  Both emperors are buried not far from my home in an exquisitely beautiful park near city hall.  The tombs are modelled on those of the Ming and Qing emperors of China.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, more commonly known as the Uijeongbu 2-dong Catholic Church, is the cathedral church of Bishop Joseph Lee Han-taek, S.J., founding Bishop of the Diocese of Uijeongbu.  On the grounds of the cathedral complex is this little beautiful chapel, a relic of that bloodiest of conflicts, the Korean War.

It was built by Catholic soldiers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a gift to the Catholic people of Uijeongbu.  For quite a while, this little church served as the parish church.  In 2002, a brand new church was built and dedicated only to find itself a cathedral church a year later when the Vatican decided to carve off some of the territory of the Archdiocese of Seoul and create the Diocese of Uijeongbu.

While this little stone church is no longer the main parish church, it has been lovingly maintained.