Dec rambling: Year in the Wilderness

“What in God’s Name are You Doing?”

Tales of the Unelected
Courtesy of Rich Ragsdale – https://www.instagram.com/richragsdale/

For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet by  Joy Harjo (1951- ).

Beware of Bad Faith.

The untold story of how the Golden State Killer was found: A covert operation and private DNA.

Ken Levine, who used to write for CHEERS: I no longer find Cliff Clavin funny.

Race Car Crash From Hell—and the Science That Saved Its Drive.

R.I.P., Ann Reinking.

She’s from Schenectady. Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer  Becomes Winningest Coach in Women’s Basketball History.

What If You Could Do It All Over?

President Obama – Inspiring Future Leaders and “A Promised Land” | The Daily Social Distancing Show.

America’s Capital of Dead Vice-Presidents.

My Name Is Roscoe: The Life and Legacy of “Fatty” Arbuckle.

On Jeff Smith, problematic people, food, and memory.

Lethologica: When a word’s on the tip of your tongue.

Forgive Me, For I Have Sinned … Against the English Language.

Toledo Zoo’s Tasmanian Devils are biofluorescent.

Of Breakfast Cereals and Cults.

Texas Wedding Photographers Have Seen Some $#!+”

Now I Know: The Strange Brick Circles of San Francisco and The Programmer That Couldn’t Quit and The Man Who Was Dying to Be an Actor and The Hair-Raising Stunt That Scored a Secret Touchdown and Why Your Ice Cubes are White.

Ask Arthur Anything (I did): Surgery as a teenager and Same as it never was.

2020

The Year in the Wilderness. Despair too is contagious. We share it as we shed a spore.

Pew Research: 20 striking findings.

The 50 Most Popular Names for Dogs.

What the U.S. searched for.

J Eric Smith: Best of My Web. And [blushes] I’m on his list.

Race in America

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Pregnancy-Related Deaths.

Dr. Camara Jones Explains the  Cliff of Good Health.

Sheet from the American Psychological Association exploring the compounding impact of socioeconomic status and race on health.

Hear the story of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cells have been used to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to study the human genome, to learn more about how viruses work, and played a crucial role in the development of the polio vaccine.

IMPOTUS – three more weeks!

A Christian asks Christian Trumpers: “What in God’s Name are You Doing?”

Executions Will Be Most of Any President in Over a Century.

Spends Final Days Plotting Revenge Against His Enemies and Pardons for Everyone Else

A Shockingly Long List of His Controversial Pardons. Maybe He ‘Could Be Prosecuted for Bribery’?

Shares Video Suggesting COVID Pandemic Created to Make Him Look Bad, Lose Election.

He Leaves the U.S. Severely Compromised By Massive Russian Hack.

Mar-a-Lago Neighbors Are Trying to Block His Return.

The real reason he is so upset

Pence Blurts Out The Real Reason Why Republicans Hate Democrats.

The loathsome  Stephen Miller, The Frankenstein of Santa Monica.

MUSIC

Rudolph the Leaky Lawyer – Randy Rainbow

WE ARE · Jon Batiste · St. Augustine High School Marching 100 · David Gauthier · Gospel Soul Children Choir · Craig Adams · Braedon Gautier · Brennan Gautier · Autumn Rowe

Joel Ross’ Being a Young Black Man, Live @ The Jazz Gallery.

Johnathan Blake’s My Life Matters, Live @ The Jazz Gallery.

Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’ – Charlie Pride.

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto no. 1 – Maestro Mehta’s 80th birthday – Khatia Buniatishvili.

Coverville 1337: Paul Westerberg and The Replacements Cover Story.

The theme song from The Flintstones – Jacob Collier.

K-Chuck Radio: It’s all in Whodini’s wand

2020 music mashups here and here

Come Together -The Beatles.

Alec Baldwin interviews  Paul McCartney on John Lennon’s 80th birthday.

Beethoven

 Cello Sonata no. 5

Music for the play The Ruins of Athens

The Piano Concertos 1 and 2

Wellington’s Victory

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67.

This Night – Billy Joel.

July rambling: fog of confusion

A Harlan Ellison Story, featuring Jack Kirby

6 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Health

Poverty Is Criminalized, Wealth Is Immunized

10 Signs of Fascism

Accused Russian Spy’s Boy Toy Is a Serial Fraud

Fog of confusion

There Are 3 Main Theories That Explain His Approach to Putin and Russia—Which One Makes the Most Sense?

What changed in Helsinki

What if Russia took over the United States? We saw it in 1987

He doesn’t want skilled immigrants either

God, the regime, and the meaning of morality

She warned America that Russia hacked our voting rolls. Why is she in jail?

Dan Rather’s New Podcast

On Bullshifting

This conservative would take Obama back in a nanosecond

More Evidence That Half of Americans Are In or Near Poverty

What kind of justice would Brett Kavanaugh be?

Trevor Noah Responds to Criticism from the French Ambassador – Between The Scenes | The Daily Show

stating the obvious

What the Mystery of the Tick-Borne Meat Allergy Could Reveal

A Century of Global Warming, in Just 35 Seconds

A history of modern capitalism from the perspective of the straw. Seriously

Disney’s magic highway (1958)

Why Don’t More Men Take Their Wife’s Last Name?

Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor. He was everything he was on TV and more

The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo

Jaquandor writes his Thoughts on THE LAST JEDI, a lot of them

Greg Burgas: tribute to Steve Ditko without using Spider-Man or Doctor Strange!

Pepe Le Pew

Mark Evanier: Yet Another Harlan Ellison Story, featuring Jack Kirby

Actress Mari Blanchard

Now I Know: The Crime Witness Who Missed the Point and Why Hunters Wear Orange and Full-Circle Wikipedia and The Man Who Was Buried in Paperwork and How a Failed Star Trek Episode Helped Save the Franchise and The Far Side Dinosaur

Internet wading: Lost and found

MUSIC

Warzone – Yoko Ono

Keep a Little Soul – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, previously unreleased

Sober – Demi Lovato

Let’s Impeach The President – Neil Young

Tango Seasons: Seasons Recomposed III – the Cappella Gabetta ensemble

Benadryl – Sofi Tukker

3 a.m. eternal – KLF

Phree Burd · Beth Patterson

50/50 -Garfunkel and Oates

Sleepwalk – Scott Bradlee

These Days – Erin Bode

Lost in the Supermarket – the Johnny Clash Project

Coverville 1224: You’ve Got To Hide Your Indie Hodgepodge and Requests Away and 1225: Rolling Stones Cover Story V

Karelia Suite – Sibelius

Sergei Lyapunov’s Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes

Forgetting- Philip Glass

Die Fledermaus overture by Johann Strauss

Car Phone – Sheeler and Sheeler

RSA – comedy duo The Fan Brigade (Have you signed in?)

Those Sesame Street psychedelic videos

Obladi, Oblada – Bing Crosby

October rambling: Twilight Zone & the Confederacy

We are living in a kakistocracy

Hands up, don’t shoot (Nah, that never happened…)

The Twilight Zone and the Confederacy.

In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism

How the Nazis Used Jim Crow Laws as the Model for Their Race Laws

Trevor Noah: Race and Identity (NY Times interview)

No longer a convicted murderer, Carl Dukes faces life after 20 years in prison

A Fire Story -Brian Fies

Journalists’ lament

Heather Fazio’s exodus from the Times Union blogfarm

John Oliver: Why The Equifax Breach Is A Big, Scary Problem

The lie that poverty is a moral failing was buried a century ago. Now it’s back

How the Elderly Lose Their Rights

Labour will lead NZ Government

LIGO Detects Fierce Collision of Neutron Stars for the First Time

The day the sky turned red in the UK – but what caused rare phenomenon?

The Story Behind the Chicago Newspaper That Bought a Bar

We are alienating each other with unrestrained callouts and unchecked self-righteousness

Chuck Miller: Crossing past my failures

Burger King ad: Bullying Jr.

Vikings Razed the Forests. Can Iceland Regrow Them?

Archaeology in Albany

How did people sleep in the Middle Ages

The shortest regularly scheduled airline route on earth

Swedish death cleaning is the morbid new way to de-clutter your life

28 Boring Words and What to Use Instead

Where do mansplainers get their water?
From a well, actually.

How to Pronounce Paraskavidekatriaphobia

5 Zombie Walks to do for Halloween

Magazine of the Living Dead: The bloody rise and frightful fall of Fangoria – at FantaCo in 1980-1988, we sold a ton of back issues; #9 was considered rare

A brief history of Bat-marriage

The Great Catnip Caper Of 1909

Now I Know: Why Things are Tawdry and When Baseball Players Left it on the Field and The Special Sound a Mercedes-Benz Makes Before a Crash

Steve

THE MADNESS OF DJT

We are living in a kakistocracy

Taking Hostages and The chaos grows

The Self-Dealing Presidency

Rigged: How Voter Suppression Threw Wisconsin to Trump

Grief, compassion -advice ignored

George W. Bush: Bigotry in any form is blasphemy

Lawrence O’Donnell: ‘Stunned’ by John Kelly’s attack on Rep. Wilson and video of her 2015 speech at new FBI building

How Badly Is Neil Gorsuch Annoying the Other Supreme Court Justices?

MUSIC

We Will All Go Together When We Go – Tom Lehrer

Almost like Praying – Lin-Manuel Miranda and friends sing for Puerto Rico support

Since I Don’t Have You – Skyliners

What goes on – Beatles (Lennon vocal)

Coverville 1190: Indie Hodgepodge & Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute

K-Chuck Radio: But they’re not doing the Time Warp…

Hey Ya! – Walk off the Earth (Outkast Cover)

Up In A Puff Of Smoke – Polly Brown

You’re Still A Young Man -Tower Of Power (1972)

Go Go Shoes / Go Go Place- Lonnie Youngblood with Jimi Hendrix, May 1966.

Shocking Omissions: Joan Armatrading’s ‘Walk Under Ladders’

Female-female songwriting teams

Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius

Hallelujah! The Songs We Should Retire?

Why we really really really like repetition in music

Who first said, “Writing About Music is Like Dancing About Architecture”?

CAREER IN MUSIC IS DAMAGING TO MENTAL HEALTH

“Their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Political parties would “push a narrow, self-interested agenda that would block the national interest” and “create a deadlocked and dysfunctional democracy” that would “leave citizens frustrated by inefficiency and ineffectiveness.”

Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I have found many things that have taken place on the political landscape in the last six months or so worthy of celebration.

There have been protests, many of them local, for banning the bomb, upholding women’s rights, protecting the immigrant and the refugee, saving the environment, and several other causes.

People are becoming actively engaged in the political process, working on special elections, running for office, or at least considering it. They are showing up at town halls when members of Congress come back to town.

The veil is coming off FOX “news”. Yet other news outlets are thriving.

A couple interviews on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah in June 2017, on successive days in June 2017, gave me encouragement. William J. Barber II is shifting the moral conversation about the poor, a group neither major candidate for President talked about last year. Among other things, Rev. Barber is the architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement.

I was also taken by John Avlon. The Daily Beast’s Editor-in-Chief was promoting his new book “Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations.”

George Washington feared, he explained, that political parties would “push a narrow, self-interested agenda that would block the national interest” and “create a deadlocked and dysfunctional democracy” that would leave citizens “so frustrated by the inefficiency and ineffectiveness that it could open the door to a demagogue with authoritarian ambitions.”

And by demagogue, I mean “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.”

So on this Independence Day, it is important to note the words of another of our Founders, Alexander Hamilton: “Of those men who have overturned the liberty of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by playing an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

We must always push back against tyranny.

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