This morning I'm a little hung up on the concept of time. Again. Which means that we've monkeyed around once more with its perceived linear construct for the purpose of Daylight Savings. These days, it's about the only 'savings' most people have. I waited until this morning to set my clocks ahead. For a brief moment, I considered setting them so far ahead that I'd have to deal with the Morlocks rather than the Trump reality show.
For those who have forgotten, or for the uninitiated, the Morlocks are creatures who inhabit a utopian/dystopian future in the H. G. Wells novel, 'The Time Machine' and its various subsequent radio, film, and television adaptations. In its future epoch, long after nuclear wars have devastated our planet, humans have evolved into two distinct branches. The Eloi live on the planet's surface enjoying -without work- a strife free existence of idle play, lush vegetation, and meals of fruit provided for them. Their only task is reproduction. 'Eloi' is the Hebrew plural for 'lesser gods' in the Old Testament. Think idle rich. The workers of this future have lived in the dark underground for so many eons that they can no longer tolerate light. They are the Morlocks, who tend the machines, and collect and provide fruit as food for the Eloi. Central to the story is a giant sphinx. This is more of a Greek sphinx that an Egyptian one. In Greek legend, the Sphinx asks a riddle. Those who can not answer it are killed and eaten. And therein lies the relationship between the Eloi and the Morlocks, who are, as you might guess, meat eaters.
I have the 1960 George Pal film adaptation in my DVR. I saw it at the movies back when it was released, and I've never forgotten it. In the part of the pretty blonde girl in distress (there was always a pretty blonde girl in distress back then) was Yvette Mimieux, who would be emblazoned into my consciousness in 1964 as the epileptic surfer girl love interest for tv's Dr. Kildare, as personified by the sigh-worthy Richard Chamberlain. The first episode of the two parter was called "Tyger, Tyger", a reference to a poem. I searched it out, and that is how I began reading William Blake at the age of 13. Surfer girl had grand-mal seizures, which was my introduction to such crises and attendant terminology. Also in the movie, in the part of 'best friend', was Alan Young. Mr. Young was quite well known to me, as he had been appearing on tv since 1958 as Wilbur Post. My father's name was Wilbur, so of course I was amused by this coincidence of nomenclature, and a fan of the show. The show was 'Mr. Ed', whose hero was a talking horse. Considering the movies and tv shows I watched as a kid, (which included action heroes like Superman and Zorro, do-gooders who wore capes and extremely tight pants) no wonder I was/am so fucking weird. (Sorry for the language there. I had considered the euphemistic 'fugging', which Norman Mailer utilized in 'The Naked and the Dead'. That tome was written in an era in which such words could not be seen in print without risking some quality time in prison. When Mailer was introduced to Tallulah Bankhead, she immediately remarked, "Oh, Yes. The young man who can't spell." As I often engage in battle with various spell-check and auto-correct programs, I am loathe to be the old guy who can't spell. At least my time at the computer isn't in the basement where I won't have to deal with a biologically acquired aversion to bright light while indulging in carnivorous pursuits. No, I'd be the Time Machine's narrator, trying to help the poor thoughtless Eloi survive. In my version of the story, the Morlocks are led by Steve Bannon.
I first recorded The Time Machine when it was last on Turner Classic Movies a couple of years ago, and deleted it after watching. That was before I got the video projector. When it was shown again last month as part of their Academy Award films run-out, I recorded it again. (It won for Special Effects.)
It should be noted that the lengthy set of steps going to the dome under which the Eloi eat and sleep were originally built for the 1944 MGM version of Kismet, which detailed fun with Muslims in old Bagdad. They were used every now and again, most memorably (for me) as the steps to a library on the Twilight Zone. By the way, in the Time Machine novel, neither the narrator, nor the machine's inventor, are named. In the 1960 movie, the hero is referred to as 'George'. Which was the G in H. G. Wells. Furthermore, when George sits in his machine in the movie, we see an engraved plate on the console which states, 'Manufactured by H George Wells'. In need of space on the DVR, I thought I'd delete the movie, but as I had only watched the Victorian era part of it via the projector, I decided to catch the rest of it first, which I did a few days ago. Seeing the various future sets, and noticing how cheap some of them were, there was no way I could erase it yet. It was just too much fun.
As it happens, there is a fairly recent entertainment trend of the last couple of years with which I've been intending to catch up. I first noticed it with a Fox tv series in which Ichabod Crane wakes up to fight the Headless Horseman, as well as various minions of darkness, in present day Tarrytown, NY. There are now three or four shows whose heroes travel around in time to solve whatever existential crisis is featured that week. I find it interesting that as vampires returned to being a bit passé, as zombies began wearing thinner than their ragged clothing, and as superheroes became too numerous and oversaturated, the problems we face are now solved through time travel. I should point out that one of the new tv shows, based on a 1979 movie, has a plot in which H.G. Wells uses his time machine to visit the present to track down a time traveling Jack the Ripper. I suppose in my mental casting for the ripper, who is out to destroy whatever he can, the part will be played by Stephen Bannon. Or maybe Stephen Miller.
It has been awhile since I've scribbled any meandering thoughts in this particular back road of cloudy cyber-space. Life has just been too busy for this aging semi recluse. I haven't even posted my weekly radio shows for awhile, and am somewhat disappointed with myself in this regard. That project has gotten so far behind that I am not going to bother to catch it up. Instead, here's a link to my account on the show's web-stream service provider, SoundCloud, where the last year and a half of my humble weekly efforts of musical exploration are available. My current shows are mostly done in a jukebox format, songbook style interspersed with a few clips I've made from old music and variety radio shows.
One of my old real camera pictures, a few miles up the road outside of Grafton, VT, probably July 4th, c 1993- 1994
I've also disappointed myself by failing to make notes on the movies I've watched recently. When I used to screen movies in 16mm, I kept a list of titles I'd shown, mainly as a method of counting bulb hours. As the hours of use added up, I'd be sure to purchase a standby bulb to have at the ready just in case. I don't quite remember how many hours I used to get per bulb - was it 40? Did it stay the same when bulbs changed from incandescent filament to halogens? My cheap little video projector advertised its bulb life at "up to 50,000 hours". Figuring average running times of the movies and occasional tv programs I watch on it, that's well over 20,000 movies. At this point I don't think I need to keep a bulb check. When I last looked at the list from the halcyon days of my 16mm screenings, there were a number of movies I can't recall watching. There were also a number of movies I can remember watching, but that doesn't imply that I remember anything about them. In our current era of instant internet info, it only takes a moment to look up one such title, Dario Argento's "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" from 1971. There are plot synopsis, reviews, "making of" info, as well as the entire movie itself all for free at the click of a mouse. Such access still amazes me. I only got to see it because I worked for the company that had the 16mm rental rights. When it gets right down to it, when I look up movies I remember quite well from watching dozens of times, I often find errors in online materials. Sometimes I wish I had made notes on some titles so I could check my impressions and reactions all these years later; kind of like re-reading a favorite book and noticing how some parts no longer affect you while others now have great consequence and import.
Another of my old 35mm film camera pics, at the Grafton cheese company c July 1993 - 1994
Oh, no! Oops, sorry about that, we've undergone a sudden shift in subject matter, and I just got a bit of a shock. It's the Fourth of July. Our local Independence Day parade should be stepping off at the south end of town just about now. I didn't get any sleep at all last night, and am in a snitty cantankerous mood. My feelings for my fellow human beings over the course of this past year are best summarized by that old Charles Bukowski quote, "I don't hate people. I just feel better when they aren't around." So I am staying home today as my personal sacrifice for the betterment of humankind. I just turned on our local cable access station (also available via webstream when the gods of electronica smile upon us). The first visual was of the retail portion of downtown. It's the main part of Main Street. Even though the parade won't get there for a bit, it was quite a shock to see so few people that huge portions of the street and curb sitting space are empty. When I moved here, it would be difficult to find a decent parade watching spot at this point in the morning. And that would be on the sunny side of the street. Now there are huge empty spots even on the shady side. (Being that this is Brattleboro in the age of Social Media, an age of constant umbrage, I feel I should point out that the use of the word "shady" was not a reflection on local businesses or their practices, but a reference to that side and portion of sidewalk which is not in full direct sun.)
The parade - not my picture, taken from a website which credited it to "Kristopher Radder/Brattleboro Reformer Staff"
Many years back (stop me if I've noted this before), our 4th of July parade was one of the biggest around, drawing state politicians as well as those from the county and local towns, bands from all the area high schools, synchronized snowmobile spectaculars from the Shriners, and so on and so forth. This being Brattleboro, protest groups were an integral part of our July 4th parade. A few such groups would participate while protesting the local and problematic nuclear power plant. The Chamber of Commerce used to stage the parade; when a good bit of funding began to come from the power plant company, the rules were changed to forbid protests. Parade participation and attendance dropped over such heavy handed attempts at censorship in a event celebrating our country's freedoms. Not long after all of that occurred, a new parade and festival started on the first Saturday in June. When first proposed by someone who moved here from the cities, the proposal was for a parade of bovines down Main Street so that tourists could see the animals from which their milk originated. We used to refer to the idea as "the running of the cows".
All I remember about taking this was that it was off of a back road about a half hour west of Brattleboro, July c1993 - 1994
For the first few years of this new extravaganza, sponsorship was provided by corporate agribusinesses in an area known for localism, small family farms, and organic and natural foods. The first year or so, at the once little festival at the parade's end, free samples of ice cream (the kind with bovine growth hormones) were given out, as well as bottled water whose origin was suspect. The organizers learned quickly and by year three the only available refreshments cost a good bit of money. Over the next several years, the parade folks began to acknowledge their localism faux pas, and the sponsors began to change to concerns which didn't seem to be the diametric opposite of everything our local farms stood for. It is now the big event of the year, and not meant for local folks as much as their relatives who come to visit that weekend, as well as the standard tourist crowd. Their success has helped to kill off the annual parade of the High School alumni and the current year's graduating class, the Winter Carnival parade, and a couple of others I can't quite recall at the moment, The kiddie Halloween parade is a shadow of its former self when it happens at all. Seeing empty sidewalks where people used to stand four to five deep on July the 4th is truly sad. As I write, the parade has already ended, and another tradition has been broken. The official end of most local parades has, for several years now, featured Alfred, our local black celebrity drag queen "debuting his annual top-secret ensemble". Now there is a parade unit after him, while he sits in a car and is seldom in full regalia. During the years I've watched or participated in the various parades, all of the local dairy farms have vanished, their herds sold off. The changes, from local to corporate, to 'localism' as supplied to tourists by corporations which bought most of the organic companies, the killing off of local traditions in favor of corporate sponsored, branded and promoted tourism designed to separate the remains of the middle class from their money, is a reflection of the changes in the country during the same years. The meaning of the day seems to have been lost to the empty calorie glitz of pandering to the tourist dollar. Sic transit Gloria mundi.
Alfred - not my photo, and, sorry, but I don't know who to credit.
About a half an hour after I finished the last post, I finally remembered the film I'd watched (and deleted form the DVR) which I wanted to note someday before I forget it completely. It was Tim Burton's "Big Fish". I like Burton's movies, even the less than successful ones. It's the kind of movie in which no one gets any appendages cut off in clinical detail while fighting invading intergalactic warriors. There aren't even any transforming intergalactic warriors. There is a transformation of sorts, but it's part of a story about a man who is a teller of tall tales, and his relationship with his son. Released in 2003, it probably couldn't get made today, even for an internet only streaming content provider. All in all, a lovely little film I hope to see again someday.
As usual, I'm running late on some things and rushing through others. One item in the "late" category is the posting of my radio show from April the 2nd. The show opened with a few songs to greet the new month, then turned to a meditation of sorts on the idea of a pop song "April in Paris".
By the way, I've noticed that some of my shows posted here through SoundCloud no longer display the player/picture for that episode. Just click on the square and go to my account on SoundCloud - I have shows archived there going back to November 29th, 2014.
There's lots of other stuff and nonsense on which I'd like to catch up, but have little time to do so. Which means that I'm going to post last night's show and go do other things.
I would like to make a mental note that today is the anniversary of my turning on the new transmitter which put WVEW-lp back on the air almost a year after the fire at the Brooks House. This event was on April the 10th, 2012. I had also turned on the old transmitter when the station made its broadcast debut on September 1st, 2006. I turned the transmitter on for radio free brattleboro a couple of times, too. It's probably quite wrong to be proud of such things, but I am for many reasons I'm not going to enumerate just now.
Okay, now - last night's show played a few for lyricist E. Y. "Yip" Harburg, whose birthday was April the 8th. And I played a few for Capitol Records, which was founded around this time in 1942. Accounts differ, and I've seen April the 9th (1942) listed as the day the company was founded, the day it changed its name from Liberty Records to Capitol (about a week after the founding), and the day on which its first record was cut. And finally, there was a set for pianist/band leader Martin Denny who practically founded the "Exotica" movement of the late 1950's and early 60's which resulted in a proliferation of Tiki bars and lounges. The image for the sound file for the show is of a woman listening to a crystal radio made out of a coconut shell. It seemed appropriate at the time.
As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show(s).
p.s. Well, what do you know, all of the shows form this year are now displaying their players properly. I'd written an old address I had for Soundcloud's tech support (all such info having vanished from their site), but never heard from them. I'm just glad it's working again. It's not like friends or family are currently waiting with baited breath for each and every post, but I'd like things to be available for anyone who stumbles upon these pages.
I've probably mentioned this before, but I miss the local tradition of a downtown Easter Sunday zombie walk. I think the last time I saw it was on Easter Sunday 2012. That was on April the 8th, and the main reason I remember is that I spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon assisting our engineer with setting up and wiring the new WVEW-lp studio. You know, it would explain a lot about these last few years if I were to assume that the zombies got me.
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Curses! Sidetracked again!
On to other tasks. I shall have to miss today's chance to be brilliantly witty, charming, and possessed of... well, maybe just leave it as possessed.
And now (drumroll please) last night radio show. (Applause, cheers) (moves hands up and down, "Thank You, Thank You, that's enough now, thank you".)
As you may have guessed, it's a themed show chock full of secular Easter time stuff from ye olde days of radio, and commercially released sound recordings made on black shellac.
Do you know what happens when you get too busy for the daily chores of life? You get onion rings for breakfast. My schedule got messed up again thanks to stuff at the radio station (all volunteer, including humble self) and I never got to the supermarket for groceries. As I don't have a car these days, I have to rely on the bus. I missed my planned excursion on Friday morning, with the result that while I have plenty of leftovers for dinner, I'm out of cereal, eggs, and well, just about everything. I could make rice and veggie dishes for dinner for a couple more days without a shopping trip, but I've been trying to be better about actually eating breakfast. Balance and all that. Last night I wasn't all that hungry after doing my radio show, so this morning I was primed for some nice scrambled eggs with veggies, French toast, cereal - something. But the cupboard for the necessary ingredients is bare. (Studio apartments don't have much in the way of cupboards.) All that's in the freezer is some turkey stock, and the onion rings. They made a good brunch.
Logging in to the blog made me realize that I never posted last week's radio show, which was the 16th anniversary edition. The show has gone through a few evolutions, but lately I haven't been able to spend the time to do the shows the way I want to do them. Between running the station, and being President of the station's non-profit, there is just too much to keep me busy. ("If only I were paid rather than a volunteer", he thought to himself for the 1,474th time.) Over the last few years the show has concentrated on the mid 1940's. This has been mostly due to the number of music oriented shows from that period which have become available. Those episodes, when the entire broadcast was spent in a certain week or two with various excerpts from radio shows of the weeks involved - including the news - are the shows of which I'm proudest. But I've been feeling like I'm stuck in a rut. There's no time to listen to the radio shows of the period, no time to make new clips from the shows, I've just been re-using the clips I made in the year and a half I wasn't running the station. I was thinking of calling it a day last August with the show that marked the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII. At the time I didn't think that I'd accomplished what I had wanted with that show, so I figured I would just keep at it for awhile. Since then, I've had an increase in the odd verbal mistakes I've been making ('senior moments'), and an increase in the feeling that I'm not putting together the quality of shows that I want to accomplish. And I feel like I'm done with the WWII story for awhile. Over the last few weeks, I gave a lot of thought to calling it a day. Just before the anniversary show, I decided that while I'm done with the WWII shows for awhile, I'm not done with the show itself. That decision had a lot to do with my thoughts about Delores deleting her blog. I wrote to her, by the way - she's fine. She didn't say why she deleted it, and I didn't ask. At any rate, here's the 16th Anniversary edition of Recycled Radio:
Another thing that got away from me this week - I'd intended to start writing a bit about the movies I've been seeing. When I first started collecting 16mm movies, I began a practice of noting the movies I showed - mostly as a way of tracking bulb life. When I worked in film distribution, I took home a lot of movies from the company's non-theatrical library. Now I wish I had made notes about the films as well. I remember my assistant asking me to show him Mario Bava's 'Four Flies on Gray Velvet', but I'll be darned if I remember much about it 40 years later. I actually went out to the movies at a movie theatre last week to see - oh, great - I can't remember the name. It's a Marvel anti-superhero superhero movie. Ah, "Deadpool". (Bless the ability to instantly look things up on the internet.) It was in its last week at the local theatre, a late era smaller town movie palace, built in 1938. I've posted about the Latchis before. For its last week the movie went back to the main auditorium which is mostly intact and still has an old fashioned big screen. (The only change of consequence to the main auditorium was turning the "crying room" into a separate screen.)
I've not really seen much of the wave of superhero movies of the last decade. While the special effects made possible by computers have opened up a whole new world of possibilities, I can't say that using them for ever bigger explosions and more intense battle scenes has any kind of innate appeal for me. Plus, I was never a Marvel kind of guy. My era was DC comics with the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Justice League of America, et. al. Over the years I've known a number of people who have toiled in the comics industry - when I used to manage that big bookstore in NYC in the 1970's, the guys from Marvel were regular customers. At that same store, I gave several autograph parties for various illustrators. So I've been aware of many of the problems of the artists, especially the shameful way Jack Kirby's heirs were treated, and etc. So a part of my boycott of superhero movies was due to my feelings about Marvel specifically. At any rate, 'Deadpool' makes fun of its own genre without really making it to the levels of camp. It's a movie for the teenage boy still hiding inside of adults no matter what chromosome set they have. It's got the best opening and end title sequences in recent memory, and is highly entertaining. But even though it was very enjoyable, it was kind of like popcorn without butter on it - something was missing, it was satisfying in an empty calories sort of way. Now I have no problem with sheer silly entertainment for entertainment's sake, after all, one of my favorite movies is "Cobra Woman" with Maria Monetz as twin sisters. The problem I have with this kind of big budget film making may come down to the budget itself. When one is spending over a hundred million dollars to make one two hour movie, problems with protecting the investment arise. The necessity of having every single thing planned out leads to a certain lifelessness. This kind of filmmaking used to be the B picture, inventiveness due to budget constraints was required; there was a kind of 'make it up as you go along' giddiness to many of them. Now, it's a very studied affair, a linked group of set pieces told in broad strokes and broadswords. Even the cheeky vulgarity seemed too planned. When I see things like this, I keep wondering what if Kurosawa had been able to use this technology while making 'Dreams', or if Orson Welles or Dali had been able to use it.... etc.
I keep thinking that I must have seen a movie at home this week, but I can't recall having watched one. I did watch a few pieces of movies on the Blue-Ray player a friend lent me to test the format. And one day was spent at the Smith College annual bulb show. Tuesday night a friend without tv came over to watch the primary election returns, and to bitch about the current state of politics.
Spring arrived at 12:30am this morning. We've had a temperature drop, and at one point snow was predicted. No matter, it's Spring. My radio show had its annual 'Swing Into Spring', on last night's program, which also played a few for Stephen Sondheim's birthday on March 22nd. 'Senior moments' intruded when I noted Ted Lewis as Al Lewis; and totally forgot to credit a lovely piano solo on "Meditation" to Marian MacPartland, whose birthday is today, March 20th. These kinds of mistakes have been increasing in frequency. My memory doesn't work as well as it once did - or as quickly. This morning I read that statins, which I take for high levels of bad cholesterol, can cause this kind of thing as a side effect. I once went on a specialized diet for many months without any change to the cholesterol reading. My doctor smiled as she said, "this is genetics laughing in your face". When compared to the size of my father, his brothers, and my brothers from both my father and my mother's later family, I may be taller than my Dad and his brothers, but otherwise as far as bulk is concerned, I'm the runt of the litter. Also possibly contributing to these little lapses in memory are the antidepressants I used to take. Ditto the anti-anxietals I used to take. Luckily I got off of those years ago. Next time I see my doctor, I hope I remember to discuss the statin. At any rate, here's the annual "Swing Into Spring". As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show.
I'm really tired of torturing the language to find ways not to start a post with "I". Such an opening seems far too egotistical. In the long run, however, this blog is about - well, me. My attitudes, my thoughts, my activities, my diatribes against the slings and arrows, my fears (if I want to go that far), and so on and so forth. That's a lot more 'me' than I sometimes find comfortable expressing, or for that matter, reading. In the long run, I suppose this is kind of like scribbling on a fence or a bathroom wall somewhere. I don't really kid myself that I'm all that interesting, or that my thoughts are all that different and are therefore deserving of notice. My writing style isn't especially interesting either. Sometimes I kid myself that distant friends, internet friends, far off family, can occasionally check in and see what is happening in the life and times. Maybe a nephew or niece will one day decide to find out whatever happened to that crazy uncle who, rumor has it, all but ran away to join the circus. It would be nice if they found these ramblings and read just enough to catch the memories, dreams, ideals, and contradictions that make up the old psyche.
I verbally ramble. I am not comfortable with the quick spittle expressions of not quite face to facebook, or tweeting twitterers. My thoughts and words meander. I often feel helplessly old fashioned in this regard. I've no burning desire to be as verbose as Charles Dickens who, after all, was paid by the word. Then again, reading Dickens is a joy in my universe. (I'd have said "in my book" but the books in question were his.) (Ba-da-dumb.)
This morning, I wondered (not for the first time) why I hadn't seen any posts from Delores' blog in about a month. I subscribed to her 'Under the Porch Light', so her posts arrived by email. She had trouble some time back with her electronic interface device, and I had assumed that she was either taking a break, or that such trouble had returned. She was often the only person to leave notes on this page of the electronic universe. I steered my browser to her blog. It is gone, vanished into the sub electronic ether, the online evidence of her being has been removed. There may be any number of very good reasons for this turn of events. Perhaps there was too much information which was used by someone stealing her identity. A hundred quick explanations form in the thought process.
The blogs, facebook accounts, and etc. of people I know or hardly know or would like to know have vanished before. I find it unsettling. These twistings of the ones and zeroes are part of the evidence that we were here, they are expressions of our humanity, a record of our species, the modern equivalent of graffiti etched onto the walls of ancient Egypt. It is unsettling to realize how quickly it all can vanish.
Today, March 8th, is International Women's Day. I think I've noted it in previous posts. For the last couple of years, I've done my annual radio show about the "all girl" big bands on the weekend closest to this date. This year, I had other plans, as it's the 16th anniversary of my program; I've been giving serious thought to calling it a day and closing down the show. I've thought about doing it a couple of times over the last year or so. The anniversary seems like an appropriate time. Last Saturday's show was going to be a kind of tale in the telling, a history of how the show developed and why I think it might be time to stop. This coming Saturday would be the actual anniversary, the slam bang fabulous finish. Now, my show is on for two hours starting at 6pm on Saturday nights. It's a time when people are making or eating dinner, getting ready to go out, deciding what to watch that night, etc. I've always thought it more of a music show and less talk about the music or the whys and wherefores. So deciding to proceed in such fashion was an exception to the way I've conducted my program. Of course, the guy on at 2 o'clock that afternoon suddenly decided to do a show in which he autobiographically told the story of how he found the music that became important to him, and what meaning it had in his growing into allegedly responsible adulthood. It was a great show. I couldn't follow that act. I'd intended to play a song or two for International Women's Day, but with the last minute change in plans ended up playing about an hour's worth. The remaining hour was more or less just doodling around, not unlike the way the show started out. I still haven't made the decision about the future of the show, I've wavered back and forth. I guess in a way it's my scratchings on the wall.
In 1927, the four time Governor of the state of New York, Al Smith, ran for President. A Progressive Democrat, Smith was anti-prohibition, improved worker's rights, women's rights, worked to improve the lot of children in the workforce, was anti-lynching, and so on and so forth. He was also the first Catholic to run for the office. His opponents stirred up fears in the Southern States that he would follow the bidding of the Pope, not the American People. He was, as was pointed out at the time, defeated by ""the three P's: Prohibition, Prejudice, and Prosperity". Republican Herbert Hoover won the election; the Prosperity part would vanish with the Wall Street crash, Prohibition would be ended about four years later. You can guess what remained.
Religious leaders at the time were concerned by these events and formed the National Conference of Christians and Jews to discuss ways to improve the situation. In 1934, they hit upon the idea of Brotherhood Week. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had become President the year before, liked the idea; Brotherhood Week was declared as the third week of every February. It was still around when I was in grade school in the 1950's, and class discussions centered on people living and working together. The week began to fade somewhat in the social foment of the 1960's. It seems to have died out in the early 1980's after Ronald Regan became President.
This year, during what had been Brotherhood Week, the lead candidate seeking the Republican Party nomination for President repeated an historical fiction about a Muslim insurgency being stopped by killing the insurgents (except one to tell the story) using bullets dipped in pigs blood, and burying their bodies with the carcasses of pigs. (The pigs being an unclean animal which would result in the deceased's inability to enter Heaven.) The implication was that the United States should be doing such things today. The same candidate just yesterday stated that we wanted to punch a protestor in the face. (He previously suggested another protestor be "roughed up".) Oh, yeah, he also had a dustup with the Pope.
This week's radio show listened in to February 1946, and some of the music in the airwaves, on the juke boxes, and for sale on popular 78rpm records, that would have been heard during that year's Brotherhood Week. The War was over, our men and women were returning home. Along this week's journey, were excerpts from radio shows with the Incomparable Hildegarde, Cowboy Slim Reinhart, and for the finale an entire broadcast of "Songs By Sinatra" originally heard on February 20th, 1946. Listening to the show, I discovered that I had a 'senior moment' at the very end when I credited the woman singing "Be-Baba-Leba" as Helen Hayes instead of Helen Humes. I also seem to have failed to mention the date of the 'Songs By Sinatra' broadcast - which had occurred exactly 70 years before on that very evening. As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show.
At 7:45am this morning, the temperature was already 45 degrees Fahrenheit. While this may not seem remarkable, it is not the normal order of things in Vermont in February. The snow and ice from the only snow which has had accumulation so far this winter is just about gone. In February.
It is political season in the U.S. (when isn't it anymore?). The Republican party, which controls both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Congress still denies climate change. Although, to be fair, some in that party are now beginning to admit that it is happening - they just don't think that humans have played any part in it. So, there is no need to address pollution, carbon emissions, how we supply our energy needs (meaning don't mess with big oil or nuclear power), or do anything to address the situation. Other than provide more tax cuts and legal protections to the corporations which have played a major role in creating this mess.
Bernie Sanders is a U.S. Senator from Vermont, the state in which I live.
He is running for the Democratic nomination for President.
This is the kind of plain, direct statement he usually makes.
In December, an international accord was reached in Paris to lower greenhouse gas emissions. While it is nowhere near what is needed, it is at least a start. It's taken close to what, 40 years, to get this far? (It was in the mid 1970's that scientists gave up on the idea of aerosols as possibly creating global cooling and more or less agreed - and published - that global warming via the 'greenhouse' effect was actually happening. Climate change theories that incorporated a human causal factor go back to the late 1800's.) The Paris accord hasn't been signed yet - that won't happen until April.
This is one of the nicer responses to Senator Sanders
from the conservative right. So far, the money source
funding "Rebooting Liberty" has not become public.
The agreement had barely been announced when Republicans in the U.S. government made it clear that they did not support it, and that they would work to prevent the President of the United States from being able to deliver on promises made to other countries in the negotiations (in which our country and our Secretary of State, John Kerry, played a major role). The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is against it. That committee is chaired by Lamar Smith, Republican form the state of Texas, who believes that climate change not only doesn't exist, but is based on data that was intentionally manipulated to produce this result for some nefarious purpose. Lamar Smith, by the way, has received well over $600,000.00 from the fossil fuel industry during his years in office. (Although he hasn't stated it explicitly, he has made statements which could easily be interpreted as rejecting the concept of evolution. It plays well to his base. Something like 47% of Republicans in one survey stated outright that they do not believe in the "theory of evolution".) The House Committee chaired by Representative Smith began new hearings on this subject yesterday, February 3rd. The hearings have a title - “The Paris Climate Promise: A Bad Deal for America". The Chair's opening statement included the thought that the deal would help destroy the U.S. economy without producing any appreciable result.
As the primaries for the Democratic and Republican nominations for the office of President of the U.S. are underway, one might wonder about the candidates' respective positions regarding climate change. The two Democratic candidates consider the issue real, and one that needs immediate responses. The top three Republican candidates (as of this writing) all either deny climate change outright, or deny that mankind has had a hand in it.
Shirley Temple and Eddie Cantor
My radio show last week was about a different U.S. President, as the program took place on January the 30th, the birthday of Franklin D. Roosevelt. When he was 39, Roosevelt contracted infantile paralysis, a disease so old that it is depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphs. It left him crippled. As he searched for a way to deal with it, he discovered the healing effect of the Warm Springs spa in Georgia. He won the Governorship of New York after campaigning in a wheelchair. When Warm Springs fell on hard financial times, he bought it and opened it to anyone who needed it, regardless of ability to pay. By the time he was elected President, it had eaten up 2/3 of his fortune. His first year in office, at the height of the Depression, he held a Birthday Ball whose proceeds would go to his new Warm Springs Foundation. It raised over one million dollars in one night.
In 1934, the Presidential Birthday Ball concept went national. Any community which held one would split the proceeds with the President's foundation. The foundation also began to fund research for a cure for the disease, which was becoming known as 'polio'. One night, during a radio show, entertainer Eddie Cantor asked all of America to contribute, to send any spare change they had, even a dime. He wanted to see a march of dimes from every town to the White House. It wasn't long before the President's foundation became known as the March of Dimes. Roosevelt died in the Spring of 1945, just before the fall of Germany in WWII. That January, the Birthday Balls contributed $18.9 million to the foundation. After his death, the U.S. Congress requested the U.S. Mint honor Roosevelt by putting his profile on the dime.
The research funded by Roosevelt's foundation resulted in Jonas Salk's vaccine, which became available in the mid 1950's. Polio was, for the most part, wiped out. Sadly, it reappeared a couple of years ago in war torn Syria.
This week's radio show also took note of Eddie Cantor's birthday, which is on January 31st. Far too few pieces were played for jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge, whose birthday was on January 30th. As a finale, there is the January 30th, 1946 broadcast of the Old Gold show, better known as "Songs By Sinatra". The Benny Goodman sextet appeared in the guest slot.
It happened twice yesterday morning - the media didn't latch on to the mass murder in Savannah, Georgia. Only four were shot there, with only one death. Such events aren't really news anymore. The US is currently averaging one mass shooting per day.
In all of the news stories, whenever the situation hasn't been 'resolved', mention is made that workers/residents/shoppers were told to "shelter in place". It's an awful phrase. What message does that phrase send, I wonder? It implies that the war (any war, any killing, any major storm, any threat) is all around us, it can reach anywhere; take refuge, hunker down, hide, stay out of the way, the evil lurks without even while it is within. The battles around us rage on.
The phrase even has its own entry in Wikipedia. It is an official SAME warning. The acronym means Specific Area Message Encoding. To be honest, it never occurred to me that if bullets were flying, police sirens wailing, bright bluewhitered lights flashing, and etc. that one would need to be told to get out of the way.
Perhaps the message that is being sent is really one of preparation: The war is coming to a theater, home, small town, anytown, everytown near you. Get used to seeing the flack jackets, the camofashion protective suit, the guns, always more guns, the vans, the flashing lights. You'll be seeing a lot more of them. As soon as they become normal, accepted, the tanks will roll up. Will they be there to protect us, or will they be there to protect property - wealth? Will they be coming for us? They will know where to find us - sheltered in place.
Meanwhile, a message flashes across my computer screen - the stock market has opened higher.
The build up of anxiety is almost overwhelming. How will things be straightened out? A superhero - we need a superhero. The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade had a new balloon - a bonafide superhero, introduced a year before in the comic books, earlier that year on the radio.
The year was 1940, the war was 'over there'. We'd been through a great economic depression, which was still lingering about. With Thanksgiving falling at the end of the month, thereby creating a short holiday shopping season, a plan was hatched to move the holiday ahead by one week to give the merchants more time to make money. It was considered unseemly to start such sales before Thanksgiving. President Roosevelt agreed. For three years, from 1939 through 1941, Thanksgiving was moved a week earlier. Many did not agree with the idea. The Republican Governor of Vermont was a Progressive - and even he wasn't having any of it, nor were many of the states. So while Federal employees, many liberals and Democrats celebrated on the third Thursday, State workers, conservatives, and Republicans celebrated on the fourth. As one column in the newspaper noted, the kids loved asking if one was celebrating "Franks, or Thanks?"
The entire second feature which starts on Thursday....
The Tuesday night before that traditional Thanksgiving in 1940, there was broadcast from the new Palladium Ballroom in Los Angeles. It's dance floor could hold 4,000 but on opening night a month before over 10,000 had crowded in to dance to the music of that Sentimental Gentleman of Swing, Tommy Dorsey. Dorsey's girl singer, Connie Haines, was pretty good - but he had a hot new boy singer being backed up by the Pied Pipers, some kid named Frank. The broadcast was on at 11pm on the East Coast - the doors had just opened on the West Coast where it was 8pm and the evening was just getting underway. My radio show last Saturday listened in to that November when the war was overseas.
As always, I hope any one who listens in enjoys the show.
Today, November 11th, used to be known as Armistice Day.
Many of my generation can recite the phrase... "on the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month...". I occasionally wonder how many people know to what event that phrase refers? The thing is, the import and meaning of that day has changed.
An Armistice is defined as an agreement whereby warring parties end their armed engagments. The quote above refers to the end of fighting on the Western Front of The Great War, now known as World War One. November 11th, 1918 was the unofficial end to the war. The paperwork took awhile longer. It always does. Just between the agreement to end the fighting and the arrival of the fabled hour, another 3,000 soldiers were killed in battle. Thousands more were still to succumb to the remains of the conflict.
In both Great Britain and France, a day of remembrance for those who gave their lives in the service of their countries in the war was declared. It became customary to observe 2 minutes of reverent silence in their honor at the 11th hour on Armistice Day.
Part of the celebration in London
the celebration in Paris
In the United States, something quite remarkable occurred. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson declared November 11th be a commemoration of the Armistice; "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"
The key phrase is "sympathy with peace". Armistice Day was a celebration of Peace breaking out. It was intended as a day of reflection on the concept of peace and international co-operation.
Soldiers on the Western Front celebrated
Those who think I am off the mark should look no further than the Congress of the United States, when it issued a resolution on Armistice Day in 1926 with the following words;
"Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and
Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples."
London
In 1938, the U.S. Congress passed an Act which proclaimed the 11th of November a legal holiday: "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'."[
In 1954, not quite 10 years after the end of World War Two, the Congress of the United States changed the meaning of Armistice Day, basically by doing away with it. The President at the time, a member of the conservative Republican Party, was Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had previously been known to most of the world as the General whose careful planning helped defeat the fascists in Italy and Germany, ending the Second World War on the European continent, and freeing the world from the vile machinations of the Nazis. The idea for the change to honor all Veterans of all of the US wars came from a WWII veteran, who led a delegation to the Capitol to express the idea directly to the President, who had been a man of War. This occurred in the greater context of the Red Scare, the early days of the Cold War; the Army-McCarthy hearings were underway. It was around the same month that the words "Under God" were inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance - a recitation required of US school children while saluting the US flag. The Pledge became an official requirement in 1942, after the US was brought into WWII. It had become a contested practice as the clouds of war had gathered over Europe. There were teachers who refused to institute it and quit their profession rather than require the youth of the country to participate in what they regarded as militaristic training. It was originally written by an Admiral who had fought in the Mexican-American war as well as the Civil War. It was then revised by a Baptist minister with socialist leanings.
Americans in London joined the celebration
At any event, while it is fitting that the people who serve their country be honored, a day dedicated to thoughts of peace was turned into a day of commemoration of specifically military service, which in our own day has become, for various reasons, a flag waving celebration of 'warriors' and military service.
Lest we forget, when the bill to allow conscription was passed as we geared up, ummm, prepared for our possible involvement in WWII, there were warnings that we might never get rid of it. Had it not been for conscription, there would have been no standing army to send to Korea, nor to Vietnam. Soldiers of that era were not volunteers. The idea had been promoted that one owed four years of their life and their youth to the government of the geographic bit of space on which they were born.
celebrants in New York City
Now that we have a supposed 'volunteer' army, our military has become a chance for the underclass to get a leg up towards the "better" lifestyle depicted in the movies and on tv. There are many benefits. I have friends and family who served, and whose service was in army camps in Germany, or other non-combat areas. They were able to buy their homes through Federal assistance to veterans. They get healthcare, and a number of other benefits - depending on their geographical location to access them. They are among the first to fly the flag and point out that they "served", even though they never seem to recall the non-combat part. I don't begrudge them their benefits, even though some of them had no choice in the matter.
These days, after our National Guard was sent to war, after the non-traditional battles against Islamic foes, torture (not ours, theirs), beheadings, and other horrors, it seems as though those who served are honored every day, by specially advertised on television sales deals, special insurance rates - business gladly waving the flag for customers - and at sporting events in large Roman style Coliseums, er... sports arenas. As it turned out, these events have been bought and paid for by the government. They aren't about honoring the brave men and women who served, they are propaganda. Our television programs feature action adventures of specialized government units which used to serve those who serve us, but for several years now mostly fight terrorism, often by breaking the rules or fudging the rights of suspects. The excess military equipment from the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Libyan war and etc. has become part of everyday life - given or sold to police departments in my country to preserve the peace - but from whom? A town not far from here, a bit larger than Brattleboro where I live, now has its own tank. Our police, often ex-military people, have a cowboy us versus them mentality. They do not shoot to disarm, they do not shoot to immobilize, they shoot to kill. We've just had the interesting spectacle of a female police officer being exonerated for killing an unarmed civilian. She couldn't see his hands, you see. She demanded that he show her his hands. He was lying face down on the ground. He moved his hands underneath his body. She was certain that he had a gun, so she shot him in the back. A new wrinkle in women warrior rights.
As for our actual warriors, the Republicans in our government (them again!) have cut the budgets which provide for the care of our fighters, then blamed the Democratic government opposition for the lack of care while they wrap themselves in the flag. These Republicans, however, are a world away from anything President Eisenhower would recognize. Once they were a great party, now they are a bowdlerized version of that group, providing lap dog services to the wealthy and corporate elite.
Even though I was a child at the time, I remember President Eisenhower's farewell address. Because I was a child, I didn't understand all of it. But I remember his warning about something he called the "military industrial complex".
The phony cause known as the Iraq war ably served corporate interests, while destroying the minds and bodies of our youth. Those it served well included a company for which the then Vice-President had been Chief Executive Officer. That company earned billions, made more billions vanish into the desert sands of time, and provided services to our soldiers that included such niceties as providing drinking water which wasn't safe. They were but one of many such companies, and their crimes would takes days to list, but since they were making money there have been no trials, no convictions, no investigations, no nothing except their continuing to 'honor' those who serve. Some honor.
So please excuse me for not jumping on the online bandwagon and attempting to wave the flag higher and more ferociously than my friends and neighbors. I won't buy the special coffee that earns money for warriors. I won't buy any of the special products. I don't buy it at all. I'll take time to observe Armistice Day, and think about a time when peace broke out.
