Month: July 2023

July rambling: False Equivalence

Concert by Peter Sprague and Rebecca Jade

No Labels: The Party of False Equivalence

djt’s Attacks on the Legal System Are a Preview of How He Plans to Govern, so Authoritarianism Will Be on the Ballot

The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis’s Vaccine Turnabout and Republican Deaths in Florida, Ohio Linked to COVID vaccine Politics

Nikki Haley Calls for ‘Generational Change’ Then Declares She Would Support a Second djt Term

The Rogue Court vs. Modern Democracy

Arrgh. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) argued at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing that a tweet from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about baseball legend Hank Aaron’s death after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine was “just pointing out facts.” 

My Sister Lucy’s Death and Life: Picturing an Alternate Timeline of Recovery By Amy Biancolli

Irish Singer Sinéad O’Connor Dies at 56

The Emotional Recession Is Here

More Americans Are Living Alone

National Marriage and Divorce Rates Declined From 2011 to 2021

F-Rated Charities Receive Top Ratings & Seals From Nonprofit Trade Associations

Streaming Giants Have a Local TV News Problem

Comic books took center stage for the first time in more than a decade at Comic-Con

Bruce Lee & Me: A reflection on the 50th anniversary of my friend’s death by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Why We Say “Pardon My French,” “It’s All Greek to Me,” and Other National Idioms

The CJ Cregg Memorial Globe

Now I Know: How iTunes Saved Dunder Mifflin and The Third Little Pig’s Guide to Computer Hardware and Where There’s a Way, There’s a Will?

Intertwined

Two recent events have merged in my mind.  One was the video for Jason Aldean’s Try That In A Small Town. A right-wing online site I follow – so you don’t have to – calls it a fake controversy.

The song was released in May, but “not a peep from the perpetually offended. Another two months passed before his label released the video, and then the left unleashed the Kraken.” Bands and labels release videos so that more people listen to the song. Duh.

Not incidentally, after the controversy, streams for the song jumped 999 percent.

“If the words were offensive and scare-wordy ‘racist,’ why didn’t they seize and pounce on them when the song was first put out? Because there is nothing offensive or racist about the lyrics.”

Or because most racism exists without anyone using the N-word or whatever. Modern bigotry is coded with dog whistles. As someone wrote, “The lyrics alone are coded just enough to maintain plausible deniability.” Conversely, the video centered on a Tennessee courthouse that was the site of a famous lynching. 

Indeed, the song is part of a long legacy with a very dark side. “Betsy Phillips, a writer for the Nashville Scene…  explains: ‘There were at least two lynchings in Columbia, but I can’t stress enough that there were many, many lynchings in the surrounding counties.’

“Asked whether she believes Aldean had direct knowledge of the Maury County Courthouse’s frightening history, Phillips points to interviews where Aldean has boasted, ‘I haven’t read a book since high school.'”

An editor for a small-town newspaper notes: “While Aldean’s lyrics may seem flattering to small towns, they do the opposite. They do damage to our efforts to be welcoming communities. The song doesn’t inspire; it divides. It doesn’t promote small towns; it stereotypes and diminishes them.”

Several people on social media mentioned Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who tried jogging in a small town and was murdered by gun-toting racists. I immediately thought of Arbery, Emmett Till,  Trayvon Martin, Mathew Shepherd, sundown towns, and other manifestations of bigotry that Aldean may not be familiar with. 

Only heroes

This segues into the DeSantis-approved version of American racial history. “Florida wants to tell a story about race in America that has heroes but no villains. This is in line with the demands of DeSantis’ Stop WOKE Act, which requires that students be indoctrinated with an upbeat narrative.”

A Florida textbook publisher disallowed mentioning Rosa Parks was Black in one of their books because of the act.

“By banning an AP course on African-American studies, banning books about race, sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity in various school districts… DeSantis is showing he intends to not only purge Black history — he intends to rewrite it so that the ugly parts sound beautiful. This is a deliberate effort to gaslight citizens and teach children to believe the U.S. was always great, not because chattel slavery didn’t exist, but because it did.”

It’d be like saying Jews could avoid the Holocaust by being useful. Wait, someone from Fox news essentially did say that.

To the degree that enslaved people learned skills, they were designed for the enslaver to exploit further. An 1856 editorial in the Richmond Enquirer tells the truth: “Democratic liberty exists solely because we have slaves … freedom is not possible without slavery.” OK, “freedom” for those of power and privilege.

Also, in 7 of the 16 examples described by Florida education officials,  the people were not enslaved at all. Lewis Latimer was born to free, self-liberated parents in 1848 before he worked on the development of the telephone. Henry Blair, Paul Cuffe, John Chavis, and entrepreneur James Forten were other examples provided by Florida, despite them being born free.

Aldean said, “What I am is a proud American. I’m proud to be from here. I love our country, and I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bulls— started happening to us. I love our country, I love my family, and I will do anything to protect that. I’ll tell you that right now.”

In the “good old days,” ignorance was bliss… at least for some people. “They won’t listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don’t want the truth; they want their traditions.” ― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky.

MUSIC

Live(ish) at SpragueLand Episode 34 —Peter Sprague and Rebecca Jade – How Will I Know concert

Sinéad O’Connor’s Best: 12 of Her Finest Musical Moments

Andre Watts performs the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor by Camille Saint-Saens.

Coverville 1449: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees 2023 and 1450: Cover stories for Joan Osborne and Rufus Wainwright and 1451: Sinead O’Connor Tribute and Rolling Stones Cover Story

A selection of music about the moon

Hey Nineteen – Kent Nishimura on Solo Acoustic Guitar 

Common Tones in Simple Time – John Adams

For What It’s Worth –  MonaLisa Twins

Sunday Stealing: where love comes from

Chenango River

The Sunday Stealing this week, again from Swap Bot, asks where love comes from.

1. Does love come from the brain, the heart, or elsewhere?
Just this weekend, I saw a story from late June on about the importance of compassion.  In Davis, CA “is a gathering place known as the compassion bench. David Breaux often sat there and dedicated his life to studying and talking about compassion.”
Perhaps one must be intentional about being compassionate, which will change the [metaphoric] heart. Also,  check out this video, which says I Hypothalamus You.

2. Have you ever given a shot?
Sure. Usually whisky. Occasionally, rum, vodka, or a liqueur. Unless this is about an injection, in which case I had to stick my daughter’s Epipen into her leg once.

3. Can you lick your elbow? (Come on, didja try?)
No, and I probably attempted it as a kid. But on the July 25, 2023, episode of the game show JEOPARDY, a contestant did, to the annoyance of some TV audience members.  
Where did I come from?
4. If I was going to be talking to you for 10 minutes, what would be something really interesting you know a little bit about but would like to know more??
My ancestry. I can go back to the 15th century on one line, but can’t find my great-great-grandparents on two others.

5. What do you think of The Sopranos?
I have a Leontyne Price CD. Joan Sutherland and  Renée Fleming probably appear on albums I own. Oh, wait, you mean The Sopranos TV show?  Except for clips during the Emmys, I never saw it except for the last five minutes.

6. Have you ever had a crush on your teacher?  How about your boss?
A high school English teacher was less than a decade older than I was; I think her name was Miss Greene. Definite crush. Boss? No.

7. Have you ever seen a movie in 3D?
One or two, probably most recently The Lorax in 2012. I don’t enjoy it much. 
Migration
8. How difficult do you think it is for immigrants to enter your country?
Immigration is fraught in the United States.  This 2021 article from “Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute [a libertarian think tank with which I often disagree] offers nonpartisan facts in response to common myths about immigration.”

 

MYTH #9: “The United States has the most open immigration policy in the world.” FACT: The annual inflow of immigrants to the United States, as a percentage of our population, is below that of most other rich countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

9. Do you have what it takes to go live in another country, maybe for years, where you don’t speak the language as your first language?
No. And I don’t learn languages easily. Though the French I took a half-century ago was surprisingly useful when I went to France in May. 
Nightmare
10. Have you ever died in your dreams?
I’ve usually been in the back seat of a car falling into a river (often the Chenango River in Binghamton, NY). Water is rushing in through an open window. But dying, I don’t recall happening.

11. What book should our political leaders read and why?
I spent several minutes perusing my bookshelves and yet didn’t pick one. But my wife recommends Listening Is An Act Of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project, edited and with an introduction by Dave Isay.

12. What is your favorite glass object?
My Willie Mays drinking glass that I’m pretty sure I got from McDonald’s decades ago. The Say Hey Kid is my all-time favorite baseball player.

13. Do you like to window shop?
Not especially.

14. Are you more likely to buy one really nice expensive outfit or a couple of cheap outfits?
I don’t care much about clothes.

15. If you could, would you wear everything once, throw it out and buy something new?
Why on earth would I want to do that? That would be abhorrent, societally and ecologically.  I’m much more likely to join Buy Nothing. 

Filmmaker Ken Burns turns 70

devastating — and distressingly topical

I’ve been watching films directed or co-directed by Ken Burns, for decades.

In an interview, possibly on 60 Minutes, he noted that his academic family moved frequently, including southeastern France, Delaware, and Ann Arbor, MI.

His mother, Lyla Smith (née Tupper) Burns, a biotechnician, was diagnosed with breast cancer when Ken was three and died when he was 11. He said that circumstances shaped his career. His father-in-law, psychologist Gerald Stechler, shared a significant insight: “He told me that my whole work was an attempt to make people long gone come back alive.”

From the Wikipedia: “In 1977, having completed some documentary short films, he began work on adapting David McCullough’s book The Great Bridge, about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Developing a signature style of documentary filmmaking in which he ‘adopted the technique of cutting rapidly from one still picture to another in a fluid, linear fashion [and] then pepped up the visuals with ‘first hand’ narration gleaned from contemporary writings and recited by top stage and screen actors,’ Burns made the feature documentary Brooklyn Bridge (1981), which was narrated by McCullough, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary and ran on PBS in the United States.”

The films

I saw Brooklyn Bridge well after the fact, and The Civil War (1990) ss it came out. But it was with Baseball (1994) that I fell in love with his style. Someone gave me the accompanying book, which is at arm’s length in my office.

I had to watch Thomas Jefferson (1997), Jazz (2001), The Central Park Five (2012), The Roosevelts (2012) – I even have the soundtrack),  Jackie Robinson (2016) and The Vietnam War (2017) because of my great personal interest.

Here’s the blog post I wrote about Country Music (2019).

Then Hemingway (2021), because I didn’t know much about him, and Muhammad Ali (2021), because I thought I knew almost everything about him, but I did not. Benjamin Franklin (2022) was not that engaging to me.

The U.S. and the Holocaust (2023), which I’ve begun watching, is an exciting choice. Had he not covered this territory in The Roosevelts and Defying the Nazis? But it is powerful stuff.

THR’s review called it “devastating — and distressingly topical. Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein’s six-hour PBS documentary explores what the United States did and could have done in response to the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust.” Here is A Conversation With Co-Directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick On Authoritarian Parallels. A CBS Sunday Morning piece is interspersed with info re: wildflowers, but it’s easy to skip to the interview.

Ken Burns considers himself a patriot. When he appeared on Finding Your Roots in 2014,  he was pained to discover that he had a Tory sympathizer as an ancestor who fought for the British during the American Revolution.
In 2015, around the time of the rebroadcast of The Civil War, he noted on Morning Joe that the Confederate flag issue was not really about heritage.

In the fall of 2022, I received a mass email from Ken Burns.

It was a pitch to vote for incumbent Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) for reelection. She won in November 2022.

What I bought recently

J Alum Tee Shirt

My old blogging buddy Greg Burgas, who I’ve been following since late 2005, writes about what he “bought, read, watched, or otherwise consumed.”

In that spirit, here’s what I bought recently. I mention this while, at the same time, I keep saying I’m not going to buy ANYTHING except consumables: food, dish detergent, et al. So if I purchase something, it should bring me joy, in the word of Maria Kondo.

 Jeopardy Contestant Season 1-38 Alumni Tee Shirt. I was on Season 15. I recently went to an ’80s trivia night with several local Jeopardy alums. It was in honor of the birthday of Jay, who was wearing one of those T-shirts. As one customer who bought one from the Etsy site wrote, “It was the perfect example of ‘I didn’t know I needed that until I saw it.’” Incidentally, we led through the competition but lost when we muffed the final question about the first CD pressed in Japan in 1982.

PBS

Making Black America: Through the Grapevine. I recorded this on the DVR in the fall of 2022, but it remained unwatched. I waited for my wife to view it with me until July 2023. It’s “a four-part series hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., that chronicles the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people.”

While it addressed discrimination issues, it also lifted the sources of “Black joy,” from art, music, and literature to HBCU Greek organizations, barbershops, and beauty shops. I was so taken by it that I bought the DVD so my wife and/or daughter could watch it at leisure.

African-Americans in the Wyoming Valley, 1778-1990 (paperback, 1992) by Emerson I Moss. I bought it solely because it mentioned my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Patterson, thrice, albeit briefly. He was a very impressive man, and I will write about him in due course. I’ve also purchased many other books, none of which I have read to date. I got the new Paul Simon album, Seven Psalms, which is very good. 

Sept 1972: Pete Seeger, Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden

lettuce boycott

In two weeks in September 1972, I saw Pete Seeger, Jane Fonda, and Tom Hayden twice each.

Mon 11 Sep – Hitchhiked from New Paltz to Poughkeepsie to Nixon-Agnew headquarters to pick up some literature. [Even then, I always was interested in what the opposition was saying.]

Th 14 Sep – Congressman Howard W. Robison (R-Owego) was in town in his newly expanded district, supporting Nixon and the two-party system.

Mon 18 Sep – “I go to Nixon hq where I receive a warm reception.” [What was that about? Did they think I was a Nixon backer? Maybe they recognized me from my previous visit.]

My ex-roomie Ron, friend Mark, a guy named Bob, and I go to the Main Building auditorium. But the event is so significant that it’s moved to the Main Quad. There were several activists, including lettuce boycotters from the United Farm Workers. Jane Fonda talked about Hanoi. Tom Hayden said: “Unless Nixon thinks that down is up, we aren’t winding down the war.

Then the Okie, Mark, friend Alice and I went to a Kingston auditorium for another event with UFW reps, then a short play. Pete Seeger sang If I Had a Hammer, Land of A Thousand Songs, Songs For The Rifle, and Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag. Terry Morse (or Morris), “a black guy with a nice voice, but nervous,” sang A Better One and We Shall Be Relieved. He and Seeger sang Down By the Riverside.

An A.M.E. Zion pastor emceed and talked like a “Trinity A.M.E. Zion [my home church] pastor, including taking the collection.”

When Jane Fonda “discussed the anti-personnel weapons, I got very depressed and felt like crying.” The program broke up by 10:30 after Pete sang This Land Is Your Land.

Reportage

I checked the Kingston Freeman reportage on this. Yes, there were two different events on the same day. The first sentence in the story: “There is probably truth to the rumor that Jane Fonda had an easier time getting into North Vietnam than Kingston’s Municipal Auditorium.”

The bizarre story involved getting an insurance policy, which ended up in US District Court. Later, the agreement of a “12-hour period” of the policy wasn’t made clear, and the lawyer working on it was unavailable because of Yom Kippur. Ultimately, one of the organizers had to drive from Poughkeepsie to Kingston with the amended document and court order before the doors could be opened.

Given the fact that I remember SO many things clearly about 1972, I’m really surprised that seeing Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden TWICE in one day is not one of them.

On another matter, if you want to write to complain about Jane Fonda going to North Vietnam and posing on a tank, know that she has apologized repeatedly for that lapse, so I don’t feel the need to relitigate it here.

More Pete

Th 21 Sep – Mark and I went to see a speaker named Patrick O’Neill. “Anti SST, pro-NASA, anti-Lockheed type aid, pro-pot legalization, anti-pot decriminalization, likes Nixon only for his court choices, fears McGovern election like the San Francisco earthquake.”

Fri 22 Sep – Went to see Pete Seeger concert. He told tales about miners and farmers. Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag, Land of A Thousand Songs, Train to Nuremberg, Walk This Lonesome Valley, Vote Song, The Young Woman and the Lie, Turn Turn Turn, Peart Bog Soldier, Guantanamera, Wimoweh, Old Glory, Hobo’s Lullabye, Casy Jones, Little Boxes, , Banks Are Made Of Marble, D-Day Dodgers, The Farmer’s First Wife, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Yodel Song, The Water is Wide, If I Had A Hammer, A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. Encore: This Land Is Your Land. I knew I had seen Pete a lot, but I didn’t realize it was twice in one week.

Other things were happening, including attending class, negotiating a marriage with the Okie, and hanging out with friends.

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