Month: January 2023

MLK: “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore”

Two years after Brown v. Board of Education

mlk targetedMartin Luther King, Jr. delivered the sermon “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore” on May 17, 1956, to 12,000 people. The venue was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, the headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of New York State.

The occasion was an ecumenical program commemorating the second anniversary of the Supreme Court school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education. As the Montgomery bus boycott was still going on, this was early in this phase of the civil rights movement.

King had preached this sermon at least twice in the past, based on the biblical story of the exodus from Egypt, comparing the Israelites’ captivity with the plight of African Americans.  The scripture text was: “And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore.”-Exodus 14: 30

I try to find sermons by MLK for the holiday that are both well-regarded yet largely unfamiliar. 

Evil

There is hardly anything more obvious than the fact that evil is present in the universe. It projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles into every level of human existence. We may debate over the origin of evil, but only the person victimized with a superficial optimism will debate over its reality. Evil is with us as a stark, grim, and colossal reality…

But we need not stop with the glaring examples of the Bible to establish the reality of evil; we need only to look out into the wide arena of everyday life. We have seen evil in tragic lust and inordinate selfishness. We have seen it in high places where men are willing to sacrifice truth on the altars of their self-interest. We have seen it in imperialistic nations trampling over other nations with the iron feet of oppression. We have seen it clothed in the garments of calamitous wars which left battlefields painted with blood, filled nations with widows and orphans, and sent men home physically handicapped and psychologically wrecked. We have seen evil in all of its tragic dimensions…

[The telling of the Red Sea story in Exodus]

This story symbolizes something basic about the universe. It symbolizes something much deeper than the drowning of a few men, for no one can rejoice at the death or the defeat of a human person. This story… symbolizes the death of evil. It was the death of inhuman oppression and ungodly exploitation.

Colonialism

Notice how we have seen the truth of this text revealed in the contemporary struggle between good, in the form of freedom and justice, and evil, in the form of oppression and colonialism. Gradually we have seen the forces of freedom and justice emerge victoriously out of some Red Sea, only to look back and see the forces of oppression and colonialism dead upon the seashore.

[Statistical analysis of colonialism and how it was slowly breaking down.]

What we are seeing now in this struggle is the gradual victory of the forces of freedom and justice. The Red Sea has opened, and today most of these exploited masses have won their freedom from the Egypt of colonialism and are now free to move toward the promised land of economic security and cultural development. As they look back, they clearly see the evils of colonialism and imperialism dead upon the seashore.

The struggle in the United States

In our own struggle for freedom and justice in this country, we have gradually seen the death of evil. Many years ago, the Negro was thrown into the Egypt of segregation, and his great struggle has been to free himself from the crippling restrictions and paralyzing effects of this vicious system. For years it looked like he would never get out of this Egypt. The closed Red Sea always stood before him with discouraging dimensions. There were always those Pharaohs with hardened hearts who, despite the cries of many a Moses, refused to let these people go.

But one day, through a world-shaking decree by the nine justices of the Supreme Court of America and an awakened moral conscience of many White persons of goodwill, backed up by the Providence of God, the Red Sea was opened, and the forces of justice marched through to the other side. As we look back, we see segregation caught in the rushing waters of historical necessity. Evil in the form of injustice and exploitation cannot survive. There is a Red Sea in history that ultimately comes to carry the forces of goodness to victory, and that same Red Sea closes in to bring doom and destruction to the forces of evil.

Hope

This is our hope. This is the hope and conviction that all men of goodwill live by. It is… the conviction that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that the whole cosmic universe has spiritual control. It is, therefore, fitting and proper that we assemble here, just two years after the Supreme Court’s momentous decision on desegregation, and praise God for His power and the greatness of His purpose, and pray that we gain the vision and the will to be His co-workers in this struggle.

Let us not despair. Let us not lose faith in man and certainly not in God. We
must believe that a prejudiced mind can be changed and that man, by the grace of God, can be lifted from the valley of hate to the high mountain of love.

Let us remember that as we struggle against Egypt, we must have love, compassion, and understanding goodwill for those against whom we struggle, helping them to realize that as we seek to defeat the evils of Egypt, we are not seeking to defeat them but to help them, as well as ourselves…

I prefer to live by the faith that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever,
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!

The full text is here.

Sunday stealing: Favorites

Green. Or blue.

Bartholomew_and_the_Oobleck-Dr._Seuss_(1949)This week’s Sunday Stealing is Favorites.

1. What is your favorite accent?

It varies. Sometimes it’s French. I love the sound of even mundane French words. My high school French is all but gone. “Je m’appelle Roger Vert.”

Other times, it’s Italian, which has a lot of musical terms, some of which I know.

2. What is your favorite animal?

In what context? I like the idea of the kangaroo and its pouch. The ant’s industriousness is impressive. But I don’t want them in my house.

I’m a cat person, though my male feline,  Midnight, is demented.

3. What is your favorite band?

Historically, it’s always been The Beatles. But there are LOTS of bands I’ve loved, such as Talking Heads and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Speaking of the latter, John Fogerty just got the rights to his songs back after a half-century.

Other artists aren’t in what are “bands” but groups such as the Supremes and the Temptations—or solo artists such as Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin.

4. What is your favorite childhood book?

Bartholemew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss. Speaking truth to power.

5. What is your favorite color?

Green’s up there. Or blue. Or blue/green.

6. What is your favorite drink?

It’s Diet Cherry Pepsi, but it’s TERRIBLE for me for a lot of reasons. Lemonade, I guess.

7. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Easily strawberry.

8. What is your favorite place on the planet?

IDK. It would have to be near water. My favorite specific event was going out on a pier in Galveston, TX, in 1996 or 1997 at five a.m. and watching the tide come in.

9. What is your favorite sandwich?

There is a 2014 movie called Chef, starring Jon Favreau. The title character makes a Cubano that is practically food porn. On rare occasions, I’ve had one; stellar.

Mothertrucker

10. What is your favorite swear word?

Growing up, not only were obvious even mild epithets disallowed, but also their tame equivalents, such as darn, sugar, BS, and jeepers creepers.

I have a friend of mine whose use of the word @$$h0!e is quite exquisite, but I don’t have the artistry to pull it off.    Mine is probably bull$h!t, which I’ve used far more in the past eight years than before.

11. What is your favorite thing to wear?

Caps in summer and wool hats in the winter to protect my head from the sun. I have approximately 1.37 zillion T-shirts, usually with designs. Sneakers, almost always sneakers.

12. What is your favorite food to eat on a rainy day?

Macaroni and cheese.

13. What is your favorite food to eat on a sunny day?

Fruit cocktail and cottage cheese.

14. What is your favorite number?

37. If I played sports, that would be my number unless it was unavailable, in which case I’d take 73. They’re both primes.

15. What is your favorite snack?

Golden Oreos, which purist friends of mine say can’t be REAL Oreos because REAL Oreos are chocolate. Sure, whatever.

January rambling: India #1 in ’23

Arthur answers my questions

Happy New Year! 2023

The U.S. Census Bureau’s projections

India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country in 2023
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Don’t Sleep Through the Revolution 
Bossism: Revolt of the Oligarch Class
The Debt Ceiling: a (p)review
Social Quitting: How social media barons squandered their lock-in and made themselves obsolete.
Attack of the Chatbots: Screenwriters’ Friend or Foe?
Person to Person with Norah O’Donnell, interview with Jon Stewart

Clint Meneely: 1975 recording about Meneely bells of Troy, NY

Barbara Walters Remembered by ‘The View’ Co-Hosts, Past and Present, in Show Tribute Episode
Pelé, , Charismatic Master of the “Beautiful Game,” Dies at 82

Sign Up To Be An Organ Donor. You can provide lifesaving organs to as many as eight people.

The Curious Case of Nebraska Man

A Plane of Monkeys, a Pandemic, and a Botched Deal: Inside a Science Crisis You’ve Never Heard Of

Now I Know – Grapefruits: The Nuclear Fruit? and 
The Littlest Big Winner and Then, Their Pants Exploded and The Sesame Seed Backlash of 2023 and America’s Secret, Tasty World War II Weapon? and Why Can’t Californians Buy This Snack?
Abortion rights

The Supreme Court’s decision last summer that overturned the federal right to an abortion sent Rachel Sweet into overdrive focused on two states (Kansas, Kentucky) that share traditionally conservative values.

“With those [successful] campaigns behind her, Sweet has had time to reflect on the lessons learned from those hard-fought victories, including what many activists on her side of the issue misunderstand about voters who are persuadable on abortion rights.”

(The takeaway here is that one should not be so quick to pigeonhole people who could turn out to be your political allies on some issues.
2022

overthink

Partying like it’s 1942 – was 2022 a hinge year?
Golden Duke Winner: The Odds Were Never In Your Favor; it celebrates the cartoonishly corrupt and incompetent in American politics
Gallup’s Top Workplace Stories
Pew Research: Striking findings
McSweeney’s countdown of its top 20 most-read articles
Chuck Miller’s Best Photos
Buffalo
People have been talking about Buffalo, the second-largest city in New York State, a lot recently. Part of it has to do with the deadly weather; folks there are used to snow but not that. Some of it surely with the near-death on national television of  Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin, coincidentally, the first game I started watching from the beginning all season. There’s been a lot of “the city’s been through a lot this year,” going back to the shooting deaths of ten black folks at a supermarket in May 2022.
I’m not unhappy about it. It’s just that I hope we can show such concern for each other when there’s no crisis. I know this is an unrealistic ideal.
Quizzes and questions
fillyjonk does the annual quiz I completed
Arthur answered my questions about Nancy Pelosi v. Kevin McCarthy, and Sinema and  ranked voting and sheep
Music
Coverville 1425: The 2022 Coverville Countdown, Part One and 
1426: : The 2022 Coverville Countdown, Part 2 and 1427: The Kenny Loggins Cover Story and 1428: The Jeff Beck Tribute

Hymne (Hymn to the Blessed Sacrament), by Olivier Messiaen

Could It Be Magic – Barry Manilow and My Sharona – The Knack, a couple examples for this quiz
Pale Blue Eyes – the Velvet Underground
The Boxer – Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin, Jerry Douglas
The Stars and the Moon – Audra McDonald
Sumer is Icumen in – The Hilliard Ensemble
To Whom It May Concern – Lisa Marie Presley, who died at 54

“Weird Al” Yankovic Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tracks

Jeff Beck:  Farewell and Guitar Giant  dies at 78 and his 10 Best Songs: With Yardbirds, Solo & Beyond

Most awarded songs #7

“the catchiest song in the history of pop music”

These are the most awarded songs #7. They’ve won commendations from the Grammys, the Oscars, Rolling Stone magazine, RIAA, ASCAP, CMA, NPR, and similar entities. Yet, there is one song on this list I had never heard before. Naturally, it came out after 1999.

90. I Will Always Love You – Whitney Houston. I never owned this record. Never had to. It’s embedded in my brain forever, even though I haven’t heard it much in thirty years. I don’t even much LIKE it from overexposure. Still, I’m glad that songwriter Dolly Parton used some of the royalties to invest in an office complex in a Black neighborhood in Nashville, TN.
89. In The Still Of The Nite – The Five Satins. I never knew that “Nite” was spelled that way, to avoid confusion with a Cole Porter tune. A great song that may lay claim to being the origin of the term doo-wop.
88. I Hope You Dance – Lee Ann Womack. I did not recognize this 2000 song from its title and performer. Though it was highly regarded, I just managed to miss it.
87. On Broadway – The Drifters. The Drifters, I once wrote, were my favorite 1950s/early 1960s group, even though I never owned their albums. They were always generously represented on compilation albums. A Mann/Weil song tweaked by Leiber and Stoller.
86. Johnny B. Goode – Chuck Berry. Quite probably the first rock and roll hit about rock and roll stardom

Very Brazilian

85. The Girl From Ipanema – Astrud Gilberto/Stan Getz. Even as a kid, the song seemed exotically sexy. it may be the second-most recorded pop song after Yesterday.
84. King Of The Road – Roger Miller. I got the Roger Miller Greatest Hits album, on Smash Records, from the Capitol Record Club c. 1966. I LOVED it, especially this song. Lyrics: “Two hours of pushin’ broom Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room. I’m a man of means by no means.”
83. We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions – Queen. I associate both of these with sports. We Will Rock You is a stadium anthem. Any number of championship sporting teams have attempted to sing We Are The Champions. “In 2011, a team of scientific researchers concluded that ‘We Are The Champions’  was the catchiest song in the history of pop music, despite its not reaching #1 in the charts in any major market.”
82. Green Onions – Booker T. and The MG’s. Since it came out, it may have been the most popular choice by disc jockeys breaking away to the news at the top of the hour. Or so I remember. Unlike other hit instrumentals of the era, it was really funky. And it had the word Green in the title. I remember Wolfman Jack saying in the movie American Graffiti that the green onions hanging all over the studio would “keep the vampires away.”
81. Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Going On – Jerry Lee Lewis. Big Maybelle made the first recording of the song in 1955, produced by Quincy. A couple of years later, Jerry Lee’s version added the boogie piano and the “suggestive spoken asides”. Sam Phillips thought it was too risque.

Myths retconned to advance diversity

multiverse

Uthaclena poses a question for Ask Roger Anything.

Should icons, legends, and myths be retconned to advance diversity and inclusiveness? Is creating new stories and characters stifled or advanced by doing so?

Maybe. And maybe. A post by Mark Evanier this year addresses this.

“Among the pro-social requirements at that moment was that every [cartoon] show that particular year [1980] had to have minority representation. Someone in it had to not be a white guy.

“As it was explained to me, Standards and Practices at ABC had made up a list of racial and ethnic minorities, and it was kind of like ‘Pick one.’ Joe Ruby, one of the producers of the show, looked it over and picked ‘Hawaiian.’ He and Norman had previously invented a sidekick for Plas, who had perpetual bad luck and whose voice would be based somewhat on Lou Costello’s.”

So I asked him, “I was wondering if you thought that was a good thing, a bad thing?” He replied, “In this world — or in my world, at least — one often finds situations that fall under the category of ‘Doing the right thing for the wrong reason’ or maybe ‘Achieving the proper goal in an improper way.'”

I agree with him that ABC was hamfisted about this. Thus,  the inclusiveness checkmark was achieved but at a creative cost.

A better solution would be to create situations that reflect the characters portrayed. To achieve that, one needs to have more writers who are black, Hispanic, gay, women, fat et al. You know, people who have some experience with being what the stories are trying to portray rather than having a white character in blackface.

MCU

To the specifics of the question, when I was growing up reading comics, DC came up with different “earths” to explain the difference between the Golden Age and Silver Age heroes.

Someone recently wrote that there were too many characters named Superman. I can’t speak to this because I’m not following the comic books. The marketplace, I reckon, will decide.

I’ll point to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As you know, Sgt. Fury, fighting in WWII, was a white guy in the comics. But movie fans now can’t think of anyone but Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Here’s the problem with comic books that are more than a quarter-century old. You always have to retcon the storyline, or it doesn’t make any sense. The Lee/Ditko Spider-Man is in his 70s. Reed Richards and Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four fought in World War II, so the Lee/Kirby characters are centenarians.

I’m cool with the changes because we’re dealing with the multiverse, which was used to tremendous effect in  SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME and especially  Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Heck, anyone who has ever watched soap operas for any length of time knows that babies suddenly age for storyline reasons.

If you’re going to alter something, having media that reflects our evolving understanding of the world makes sense to me.

And if someone is pearl-clutching over people of color in the Tolkien universe, for instance, they can write off the finished projects as bad fan fiction.

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