Nov. rambling: gifts of grace

Contractions-bitsThe Child Soldier Crisis: ‘Kids Are Cheap’

1619-2019: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration

Flat Earth conspiracy is growing especially among born again religious zealots

John Oliver Slaps Down Coal Baron’s SLAPP Lawsuit: ESB

Samantha’s Journey Into the Alt-Right, and Back from The New Yorker Radio Hour with David Remnick. I happened upon this while listening on the radio in the car last week. Whoa.

Susie Meister: How Studying Religion Made Me a Liberal and The Reality of Being a Reality Star, from Ken Levine’s podcast

Why use Ukraine to impeach when you’ve got the emoluments clause (and the Hatch Act)?

Weekly Sift: An Impeachment Hearing Wrap-Up

Recognizing Israeli Settlements Marks the Final Collapse of Pax Americana

The GOP Tax Cuts Didn’t Work

As a Veteran, I Refuse to Celebrate War

On Nov. 19, 1863, the accomplished Massachusetts statesman Edward Everett gave a two-hour speech at Gettysburg, but history gave him the shaft

RIP, the great Howard Cruse, from cancer.

Now I Know: The Woman Who Sniffed Out Parkinson’s and The Man Who Won a Trip to Mars and The British Ban on Clapping and When the US Air Force Bombed Montana and How Luke Skywalker Beat the Puffins and Why Did the Crab Cross the Road? and The Poacher Who Got Sent to the DVD Player

Gifts of grace

Ranked-Choice Voting “Allows You to Vote for the Person You Really Like”

Why bad taste is over – An interview with John Waters

Ruthie Berman & Connie Kurtz Residence – NYC LGBT Historic Site

Worker Training Program tackles opioid misuse and addiction. I know Jonny Rosen IRL.

Syracuse University janitor who cleaned racist graffiti replaces it with kindness

We desperately need to get out kids back outside

blue books

250 families receive “gifts of grace” to donate to meaningful causes

US Census Bureau: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month

Authentic black beauty

102 Common English Idioms with Meaning and Examples

The Beautifully Macabre Cartoons of Gahan Wilson

Massachusetts Highway Exits to Be Renumbered by 2022

It’s a Musical

Who’s the greatest JEOPARDY! player of all time? I’m so glad this is on ABC-TV in January, not part of the syndicated series

Gone in 13 Episodes (or Less!)

The story of The Whistler radio program

Groucho Marx on TV after the game show You Bet Your Life

MUSIC

He’s Just a Gurl Who’ll Quid Pro Quo – Randy Rainbow

Dommage – Bigflo & Oli; English lyrics to Dommage

Papaoutai – Stromae

I’m Going Home – Sacred Harp Singers At Liberty Church; Idumea– ditto; Sacred Harp and Shape Note singing

The Rock by Sergei Rachmaninov

Mr. Tambourine Man – the Starbugs, from New Zealand

One, a U2 cover, features McKenna Breinholt as the soloist and the 100-person Cinematic Pop orchestra and choir, arrangement of Rob Gardner

Hooked on a Feeling – Pomplamoose

Coverville 1285: The Bonnie Raitt Cover Story and 1286: J. Geils Tribute and Indie Hodgepodge

Metamorphosis episode of Star Trek (original series), incidental music

Rockin’ in the free world, the Netherlands, 2016

Mah Na Mah Na – Piero Umiliani (1968); Mah Na Mah Na – first Seaame Street appearance (1969)

LAY DOWN (Candles In The Rain) – Melanie & The Edwin Hawkins Singers (1970). Full recording.

I Wanna Be A Lifeguard – Blottomoji version

A highlight of the Barbershop Harmony Society’s International Convention

Tina Turner is 80 years old. The big Interview

The Best-Selling Music Artists of the Last 50 Years

May #2: Philosophy of the world

Why Is Everyone Running for President?

Waiting for the But
xkcd -licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
What I Lost (and Can Never Get Back) When My Father Was in Guantanamo North

How Poor Oversight and Fraud in Generic Drug Industry Threatens Patients’ Health

Why Is Everyone Running for President? It’s a Billion-Dollar Industry

‘We’ve created a civilisation hell bent on destroying itself – I’m terrified’, writes Earth scientist

What Changed My Mind About Climate Change? Risk management is not a binary choice

Last Week with John Oliver: Green New Deal and Death Investigations

Last American slave ship discovered in Alabama

What Reparations for Slavery Might Look Like in 2019

Largest ever class of black women graduating from West Point – 32!

Hilde Lysiak of the Orange Street News gives commencement address at Reed School of Media at West Virginia University

‘We must be in this together. Relentlessly.’ Deborah Lipstadt, MA ’72, PhD ’76, delivered the keynote address at Brandeis University’s 68th Commencement

Arthur’s Unexpected reboot

Understanding the divine sense of humor

Why certain words are left out of our English-language Bibles

Kindness Can Be Taught. Here’s How

Casting announced for The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen’s acclaimed Off-Broadway hit, at the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, NY July 11-14, 18-21

Portrait of Steve Martin and Martin Short on 60 Minutes Australia

The Bob Emergency: a study of athletes named Bob- Part I and Part 2

The Secret Behind the Success of Avengers Endgame – not that much of a secret

Blogging revelation and reflection

How to Be an Ethical Influencer and I’m A Supposed Influencer and An Open Letter to Professional YouTubers

Now I Know: What do you do when someone you don’t like is wearing your clothes? and The Second Life of Crayons and Pigcasso

Does This Dress Make Me Look Guilty?

Why do people love coffee and beer

Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln was one of the most remarkable adventurers, scoundrels and fraudsters of the 20th century

To keep his daughter from getting bored on a family trip a dad had her Irish Step Dance in every location they stopped in at Ireland

8 Things Your Credit Card Can’t Buy

The Worst Product Ever

MUSIC

Rolling Stone – Annie & the Hedonists

Someone You Loved– Lewis Capaldi.

And The Waltz Goes On – André Rieu, composed by Anthony Hopkins

Symphonic suite for the Hayao Miyazaki film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Joe Hisaishi

Coverville: 1262: This Day in Covers – 1989 and 1263: The Smiths Cover Story

Keats writes the blues

“The blues is truth, truth the blues.”

Keats_PortraitMy near-relative Arnold – he’s my late great-aunt Charlotte’s brother, sent a bunch of us three blues songs he posted on his website:

Insomnia Blues
Cigarette Blues
Statistician’s Blues

One of the recipients was his nephew Jonny Rosen, he of the band Annie and the Hedonists; Jonny is married to Annie. Got to see them perform their “eclectic mix of acoustic blues, vintage jazz and swing, and folk roots Americana.” Check ’em out if they come to your neighborhood. Here they are performing You Don’t Know.

Arnold wrote: “Truth is in the blues and the blues will set you free. Speaking of truth through the blues. wasn’t it Keats who wrote in Ode On A Grecian Urn:
‘The blues is truth, truth the blues,’ – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. The Mississippi Delta blues singers well understood that.” See, for example, here.

B is for the Bermans

The photo portrait of Rosa Parks that hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery was taken by IdaBerman BEFORE Rosa refused to yield her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in December 1955.

Charlotte (Berman) Yates, Gertrude (Yates) Williams, Trudy (Williams) Green, Roger Green- 13 Maple St, Binghamton, NY

When Charlotte Berman married Ernest Yates in 1937, it was a pretty radical event at the time. Charlotte was from a family of Jews from eastern Europe, and Ernie was black.

But let’s back up a bit. “Pinches Barosin, a teacher in the small town of Warklian, Latvia, and his wife, Slatte” had five children, the youngest of which, Isaac, was born in 1886. In the US, Barosin became Berman; Isaac married Sara Schmuelowitsch in 1910. They had eight children: Ida, Benjamin, Charlotte, Frances, Jacob, Mary, Samuel, and Arnold, most of whom I got to know to various degrees. Isaac, a trucking company executive, died before I was born, but Sara lived until 1971 and died in my hometown of Binghamton, so I did meet her.

Of the children, I’ll take Charlotte (1914-2003), the third child, out of order, because she’s the link to me. Ernie Yates, who she married, was the brother of my maternal grandmother, Gert. Ernie and Charlotte’s kids were my mother’s first cousins. And until Ernie died, shortly after I was born, they lived in Binghamton. Even after they moved to St. Albans, Queens in New York City, we saw Charlotte, her kids, and eventually her grandkids all the time. The photo is of Charlotte (I think Ernie is just out of the frame), my grandmother, my mother and me, at my grandmother’s house.

Ida (1911-2009) was the Berman, other than Charlotte, I was closest to. She was an accomplished photographer. The photo portrait of Rosa Parks that hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery was taken by Ida BEFORE Rosa refused to yield her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in December 1955. Never married, she seemed to have adopted me and would take me to art galleries whenever I saw her in NYC.

Ben (1912-1989) I knew not well, but like his siblings, I would see at him at the weddings of Charlotte’s children and other events.

Fran (1916-2011) married Professor Irwin Corey, the comedian, c 1940, and it was exciting to see him on Ed Sullivan or some other TV variety show. For some reason, Charlotte once took us to Fran and Irwin’s house when they weren’t there. I saw Fran and Irwin at a couple of birthday parties for Charlotte in 1994 (her 80th) and 2002 (her 88th, and last).

The kids of Jack (1918-2001) and Berta, known as Chicha, grew up in Binghamton; they were born between 1948 and 1957, around my time. Didn’t know them well, and was unclear to me at the time of their relationship to me.

Mary (1922-2006), who married Sam Rosen, I don’t really recall; she wasn’t living in New York State, though she probably showed up at some family events too. But her youngest son, Jonny Rosen, is one of the leaders of the Albany area band Annie & the Hedonists, “an eclectic mix of acoustic blues, vintage jazz and swing, and folk roots Americana.” They are, BTW, really good. (n.b., Sharp Little Pencil – I think you’d like them). I just saw them play this past Mother’s Day.

Charlotte always referred to her two younger brothers collectively as “the boys,” even when they were adults. Sam (b. 1923), who is still alive, and married to Vivian, was a folk singer. I wonder if he influenced my father somehow?

Arnold (b. 1924), a widower (Miriam), is not only alive; he put together this extensive website on the Barosin/Berman family. He also recalls a trip Charlotte and my sister Leslie took to Mexico in the summer of 1972: “[His wife] Miriam and I visited while [Charlotte] was there. I know that Ida was there at the time. My most striking memory in that visit was Leslie, that beautiful, tall Black girl who attracted so much attention from the local short Mexicans as we traveled by bus through the small villages.” Leslie got a kick out of THAT.

There are some gaps on the website – Charlotte’s youngest, Robert isn’t represented, e,g. – but it is filled with fascinating stuff. There are photos, many taken by Ida, and videos. I highly recommend that you check it out.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

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