U2 Coming Up Roses

YouCan watch U2 live on YouTube tonight. But...but the Angels and Yankees will still be on! Let's see: Computer with 'phones. TV on mute. As God is my witness, it could work.

America, Like A Ring In A Bell

U2's Bono says that President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because of his promise (which we can be sure the dedicated citizen-rocker will do his best to make sure Obama keeps) to put the U.S. foreign policy establishment firmly behind the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Bono agrees with his pal the President's national security adviser, Gen. Jim Jones, who says, "Stability = Security + Development." Riffing in the New York Times this morning, Bono sounds a characteristically constructive note:

In dangerous, clangorous times, the idea of America rings like a bell (see King, M. L., Jr., and Dylan, Bob). It hits a high note and sustains it without wearing on your nerves. (If only we all could.) This was the melody line of the Marshall Plan and it’s resonating again. Why? Because the world sees that America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology and extreme climate change. The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy.

Hat tip to Maarja Krusten

Huvane's U2

Fordham University IDs were on sale for $300 on Craigslist after word got out that U2 would play a free concert on campus last Friday. The photo above was taken by Tommy Huvane, husband of my wife's younger sister. Tommy even got backstage and met drummer (and band founder, evidently) Larry Mullen, Jr., pictured below with Tommy and his niece.

Why did the biggest band in the world decide to play for free on a college campus one morning? It's a Jesuit thing, reports the New York Times:

After the band played two rousing short sets of music, Fordham’s president, the Rev. Joseph M. McShane, took the stage and addressed the cheering students.

“You may wonder why U2 chose us,” he said. “They chose us because we’re in New York, because we are Fordham, because of the warmth of the campus.” He drew a parallel between the campus principles of Fordham and those of U2’s members, mentioning “social justice, service of the poor and advocacy.”

Father McShane said he was pleased to see so many students show up for the concert so early — students began lining up at 3 a.m. — and joked that the university would add extra-early classes to the curriculum.

Happy Songs: "Beautiful Day" (2000)

U2 on Letterman, Thursday night

A Free Man In Joshua Tree

The morning sky over Joshua Tree National Park is crisscrossed with vapor trails left by planes flying east from Los Angeles, heading west to Hawaii, coming north from Mexico. After a while they look like clouds. All those people going somewhere, while Twentynine Palms stays the same, or seems to. Just two miles away from the quiet center of town is a teeming Marine base. An expansion of the massive facility will soon be underway, we understand. The high desert-based 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, 1st Marines lost 20 of their number at the hands of the Taliban during a difficult recent deployment in Afghanistan. So there are plenty of opportunities around town to thank young men and women for their service. But by and large visitors come to Joshua Tree for the peace and silence, the rock climbing, and, in the springtime, the desert flowers.

Yesterday it was 92 degrees at Cottonwood Spring, at the southern end of the park; today, around 86. Kathy and I climbed to the top of Mastodon Peak, which sounds a lot tougher than it really was. A few miles north, acres of cholla cactus spread across the desert, their spines glowing in the sun and seemingly from within. Of course everyone, including U2 and Gram Parsons, who died near the park in September 1973, comes for the Joshua trees, named by 19th century Mormon pioneers who were reminded of the great Hebrew Testament general gesturing heavenward. As sturdy as they look, they're prone to disease. They're pollinated only by a certain species of moth, so keep the mutually interdependent Joshua trees and yucca moths in your prayers. Tomorrow we're thinking of visiting Samuelson's Rocks, on which a Swedish gold miner carved his theological reflections. Can't miss that!