May rambling: Mount St. Helens + 40

Many per capitas

murder hornets
Yeah, right
U.S’s oldest living WWII veteran celebrates his 110th birthday. Sometimes, when people talk to Lawrence Brooks, he has to tell them “there’s no need to yell, I can hear you just fine.”

Conservative victimhood complex has made America impossible to govern.

John Pavlovitz Official YouTube channel, including An Honest Conversation About Disciples of the MAGAChurch.

You Can Have A Black Friend, Partner, Or Child And Still Be Racist.

Leonard Pitts: When a child goes missing, you call the police. You don’t grab a gun and try to push your way into the wrong house.

Larry Kramer obituary: American playwright, author and Aids activist best known for The Normal Heart.

Jelle’s Marble Runs, sponsored by LastWeekTonight with John Oliver, starts again June 21.

Ken Osmond & Eddie Haskell & Insincerity As an American Art Form.

I was aware that Phyllis George, who recently died at age 70, had been crowned Miss America in September 1970. The pageant was a whole lot more culturally relevant then than it’s been this century. Still, I was surprised when she became a sportscaster in 1974, and joined the cast of The NFL Today a year later. She was a trailblazer, and many women now cover major sports in the United States.

Mount St. Helens, 40 years later.

Messed up things you never noticed in your favorite ’80s movies by Mick Martin.

Mark Evanier is now interviewing tons of his friends on his YouTube channel, including Cheri Steinkellner, Scott Shaw!, Paul Levitz, and a Cartoon Voices Panel.

Catherine O’Hara: The Queen of Schitt’s Creek.

Top TV ratings from 1951-2019.

Former White House employee who served 11 presidents dies of coronavirus at 91. Wilson Roosevelt Jerman, who began working at the White House in 1957.

Trevor Noah and The Daily Show Aren’t Just Surviving—They’re Thriving.

COVID-19

100,000 dead in America and Earlier Lockdowns Could Have Saved 36,000 Lives.

Universal Testing Is the Answer to Social Distancing.

Inflamed brains, toe rashes, strokes: Why the weirdest symptoms are only emerging now.

Huge Study Throws Cold Water on Antimalarials such as hydroxychloroquine; Remdesivir Data — “Not a panacea” or a “cure-all”, seems more effective when given to patients who weren’t as severely ill.

Masks, Men, and the Exhausting Pursuit of Desperate Masculinity.

JESUS IS MY VACCINE has a millennum-long history rooted in anti-Semitism.

Amy Biancolli: faith, fear of death, and fatheads.

Me and we: Individual rights, common good, and coronavirus.

I Think You May Be Wasting Freedom.

Getting richer during the pandemic.

Double bubble buddies: How to choose the first household you’ll socialize with. SO Canadian.

New Zealand went from Level 4 to Level 2 lockdown, and Arthur reports it all.

Alas, the last of the posts from Notes From The Pandemic.

self-quarantine-jeopardy

Donnybrook

Running America ‘Like A Business’ Is A Road To Ruin.

How he became the GOP’s ‘new normal’

Many per capitas.

He tried to troll Michigan’s Secretary of State on voting laws. It didn’t end well for him.

Nine Questions For The White House Physician On His Use Of Hydroxychloroquine.

He Has No Endgame.

Promoting Posts From Racist and Sexist Twitter Feed.

It Shouldn’t Take A Disaster For Us to Recognize a Disaster.

Fortunately, there is the Environmental Protection Network.

Distraction – Randy Rainbow.

Now I Know

The Poison Squad and The Silvonze Medalists and Music in the Key of K and The Speed Trap That Trapped Itself and Les Gardiens de Zoo Accidentels and The Big Brick Loophole.

bread-making-instructions

MUSIC

This Too Shall Pass – Mike Love with John Stamos.

You Can Close Your Eyes – James Taylor and family.

At Times Like These – Live Lounge Allstars.

Mother – Roger Waters.

Symphony No. 50, Mount St. Helens, by Alan Hovhaness.

Coverville 1309: Tributes to Kraftwerk and Little Richard and 1310: The Devo Cover Story III.

Overture and incidental music from Rosamunde, by Franz Schubert.

Shakespeare In Love composed by Stephen Warbeck.

RIP: JIMMY COBB, LEGENDARY JAZZ DRUMMER (1929-2020).


Wrong Hands: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 Unported License.

Being a good black person with a gun

the perception of arms and race

art of the shot
Photo courtesy of the Department of Defense
Annoyingly frequently, a story will catch my attention in the “while black” section of the news. In this case, “sleeping while black.”

A black woman was shot and killed after Kentucky police entered her home as she slept, her family says. “Louisville Metro Police Department officers were looking for a suspect at the wrong home when they shot and killed Breonna Taylor, according to a lawsuit.” Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who had a licensed firearm, fired his gun when he thought someone was breaking in. He was arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder on a police officer.

People have asked me if I would feel safer being a good black person with a gun. Hell, no.

Back in 2018, a black man killed by police in Alabama mall was shot from behind. “Emantic ‘EJ’ Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., 21, was shot when police officers responding to reports of gunfire at the mall mistook him for the gunman. According to witnesses, Bradford was helping other shoppers to safety.”

That same year, there was an interesting article in The New York Times. ‘I Am the “Good Guy With a Gun’: Black Gun Owners Reject Stereotypes, Demand Respect. “After recent incidents in which police officers shot black men who tried to stop a shooting, African-American gun owners told us how they navigate being wrongly perceived as a threat.”

In the second half of 2018 alone, at least three black men in the United States had been shot by police in separate incidents while trying, according to witnesses, to stop an active shooting. Jordan Klepper, in his short-lived series, produced a piece, Open Carrying While White vs. Open Carrying While Black.

Philando Castile, RIP

I’m still pained, and slackjawed by the death of Philando Castile in 2017, a black man with a legally-owned gun, who announces in a traffic stop that he has a weapon in the vehicle and ends up dead.

This story is interesting: Racism and the black hole of gun control in the US. “Would tighter gun laws help protect African Americans or make them more vulnerable to racism and police brutality? Charles E Cobb Jr notes of the civil rights movement that “if not for the threat of gunfire, many more peaceful protests – and possibly the movement itself – would have been silenced by violence.”

Still, the perception of arms and race are quite different. And historical. Check out The Racist Origins of US Gun Control Laws Designed To Disarm Slaves, Freedmen, And African-Americans by Steve Ekwall.

In 2016, Agent Orange encouraged supporters to “watch” polls on election day. And similar noise is being made this year. Yet the tiny New Black Panther Party doing it in previous years was seen as terrorism, not Second Amendment freedom. What’s the difference here? It’s as simple as black and white.

May rambling: Put on your mask

Zero-sum politics don’t work in a pandemic

Seuss shirt
From here

If you haven’t, PLEASE fill out your Census form.

Ida B. Wells receives Pulitzer Prize citation. Her long-overdue recognition was for her groundbreaking coverage on lynching in the 1890s.

Charges Filed After Armed All-White Mob Led By Off-Duty Deputy ‘Terrorized’ Black Family in North Carolina.

Adam Zyglis: Put on your mask.

Take Me Out of the Ballgame: the Decline in Participation and Identification of African-Americans in Baseball by Holly Prior.

Asking for a friend. DICKS: Do you need to be one to be a successful leader?

Last Week in Corruption and What’s Up With the Stock Market?

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: United States Post Service.

The country is witnessing his steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition and Zero-sum politics don’t work in a pandemic.

The Worlds of Kickstarter Comics, featuring 12 Kickstarter-funded tales.

How to Draw Disney characters by Eric Goldberg.

Do Marvel Masterworks Contain Comic Stories Redrawn By Modern Artists?

The Oatmeal: Finishing a project and Positive vibes.

Cracking the mystery of Don Mattingly’s birthday.

The New York Public Library is excited to announce the release of the new album, Missing Sounds of New York.

A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work.

Obits

Longtime comic book and TV writer Marty Pasko has died at the age of 65 and the coroner is saying “natural causes.”

Disco Percussion Pioneer Hamilton Bohannon Dead at 78, an influence on Talking Heads.

Dolphins Hall of Fame coach Don Shula dies at 90. 17-0 in 1972 (cf 18-1).

Betty Wright, US soul, funk and R&B singer, dies aged 66. She was the Cleanup Woman.

Now I Know

What’s the only US state with a four-syllable name that doesn’t border another US state with a four-syllable name? (Answer below)

Nebraska’s Fearless Maid and Shear Determination and The Belgian Grandmothers That Helped Win the War and The Illegal Onions That Go Great With Spaghetti and It’s Genuine, but is it Genuinely Good? and The Sandwich You Don’t Want to Eat.

Video: Why Does Pisa’s Tower Lean? (And How to Fix It)

MUSIC

Wear a mask
Beautiful Song of the Week, going strong for 10 years!

Pandemic Saturday.

Longest Time – Quarantine Edition – Phoenix Chamber Choir.

What A Wonderful World – GECA & Aubrey Logan

You Can’t Do That – MonaLisa Twins

Stranded In The Jungle – starring Big Daddy.

Any Wednesday – the Royal Guardsmen.

In the South overture, subtitled “Alassio – Edward Elgar.

Sesame St parody of Glee.

Paradise Garage – Tim Curry.

Coverville: 1307: The 50th Anniversary of Let It Be and 1308: They Might Be Giants Cover Story II

K-Chuck Radio: The many hits of one-hit wonder Robin Ward.

Black folk musicians created the soundtrack for a movement—and helped Bob Dylan find his sound .

Answer: Indiana

Trudy: black, proud, and offended

Harvey Gantt

Trudy.CN JenkinsHere’s my mom, Trudy, on the left, with a couple of other women from her church some years before she passed. She was always black and proud and often offended when people thought otherwise. More than one person asked if she had ever tried to pass as white; she was appalled.

Being light-skinned, though, provided her some insights. She once tried to get an apartment with my dad when they were first married in Binghamton in the early 1950s. But when the landlord saw Les Green, he decided he could not rent to a “mixed-race couple.” I noted a story set in San Francisco in the late 1960s. My sister Marcia shared more tales from her time living in Charlotte, NC, starting in 1974.

A black mayor

My mother was a teller for a bank for much of her time in North Carolina. Charlotte elected Harvey Gantt in 1983, the first black mayor of the city’s history. In the 1990s, he ran twice for the United States Senate against segregationist Jesse Helms, losing both times. Some white people felt free to say to my mother racially disparaging remarks about Gantt, figuring that Trudy was one of “them.”

This continued when she worked in a free-standing drive-through bank branch. A customer would complain about getting a moving violation or ticketed for failure to register their vehicle in a timely manner. Occasionally, the white person would say to my mother, “Why are the police going after me? They should be going after those [N-word, plural] instead.” Trudy would go home, crying.

Apparently, one’s race is, or at least was, a descriptor on the voter registration rolls in North Carolina. She was listed as black, yet she’d be indicated by the registrar as white. Or she’d be marked as white when she’d cash a check, as she could see when the canceled check was mailed to her each month.

My mother seldom showed her anger openly about this, even at home, but this misidentification clearly wore on her. When one of my nieces was a child, she was asked why her grandma was white. Being a light-skinned black person in America had its downside.

Mom would have been 92 today.

November rambling: triple plays

Rebecca Jade And The Cold Fact

Awkward
From TheAwkwardYetti.com
The Violent History of the U.S.-Mexico Border

The Revolution Isn’t Being Televised

Stephen Miller E-Mails Show How He Promoted White Nationalist Ideology In Media, going back to when he worked for then-Senator Jeff Sessions

How women fall into the white supremacist movement

Maligned in black and white– Southern newspapers played a major role in racial violence. Do they owe their communities an apology?

Religious Freedom for Loganists!

My Childhood in a Cult

Republicans want to out the whistleblower because they can’t defend him on the merits

His tortured English

The Obama date-night controversy

Amazon’s Absence from Worker Safety Alliance Highlights Dangers of Unsafe Supply Chains

How One Employer Stuck a New Mom With an $898,984 Bill for Her Premature Baby

Charles à Court Repington and when did we start to refer to the horrors of the 1914-1918 conflict as ‘The First World War’?

Weekly Sift: Sacrifices

Yvette Lundy: French Resistance member who survived Nazi camps dies at 103

UK halts fracking, effective immediately

The Untold Story of the 2018 Olympics Cyberattack, the Most Deceptive Hack in History

AIER: Questions for Immigration Skeptics

Court Allows Police Full Access to Online Genealogy Database

In a rural Wisconsin village, the doctor makes house calls — and sees some of the rarest diseases on Earth

Dial 911 if there’s an emergency, not 112

Social Security and SSI Benefits Are Increasing in 2020

Wealth Is About Much More than Physical Things

New Airplane Feature Could Save You If Your Pilot Can’t

There’s no reason to cross the U.S. by train. But I did so anyway.

Fully Accessible Guide to Smart Home Tech for Disabled and Elderly

That’s entertainment

Washington Grays baseball, in honor of the Homestead Grays, a Negro League Team

All 720 Triple Plays in Major League Baseball history

Beany and Cecil

The accidental brilliance of Silly Putty

Four toy commercials from the sixties – I definitely had a Slinky, and I know I played someone’s Rock ’em, Sock ’em Robots

Tips on attending TV Tapings

Amy Biancolli: I Really Don’t Care

Now I Know: The Last Army Pillow Fight and Why Filmmakers Use That Black and White Flapped Board and The Ark That Went Full Circle

MUSIC

Rebecca Jade And The Cold Fact: Songs From Their New Album ‘Running Out Of Time’ and Gonna Be Alright and how they began

Viola Sonata in D minor by Mikhail Glinka.

The Wolf Glen scene from the opera Der Freischutz by Carl Maria von Weber

Coverville 1284: Cover Stories for Grace Slick and Katy Perry

Go up Moses – Roberta Flack

Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper! by Jaromir Weinberger

How to Play Guitar Like Keith Richards

What Does ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ Really Mean?

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