It is difficult to even begin saying something, or anything. "Rampant killings" sounds harsh, or isn't harsh enough, or could possibly be trounced upon for insensitivity at this difficult time. The struggle to use words that won't prove incendiary when noun meets adjective has become stupefying. After yet another massacre by white racist hate mongers incident of the type which has so recently occurred in a Florida high school, it becomes imperative to avoid all of the currently popular social media platforms; they become deadly cesspools of unhinged 'call and response' political insanity.
One of the first posts I saw after this incident occurred was a 'meme' which condemned liberals who wouldn't let the families involved suffer mourn in peace, insisting instead on using what happened to promote their anti-gun agenda. I should point out that at that moment, I hadn't seen a single post calling for gun control. The issue was raised by the person condemning it.
This reminds me of a number of posts from alt-right wing conservative folks I know. A recent photo of an American flag flying proudly in the breeze was accompanied by text which noted something on the order of "Liberals say this triggers Muslims". I think there was more, but I don't remember if one was supposed to 'share' or 'like' to show support for the flag, country, Christian God, or for possibly murdering the liberals. What struck me is that I live in what is regarded as the most 'liberal' state in the union, but I've never heard anyone, not one single person, make such a suggestion. It's a phony argument that does little more than sow dissention through the use of trite soundbite phrases coupled with what are supposed to be soul stirring images (i.e. propaganda). One might be forgiven for assuming that the flag in the photo was billowing due to all the hot air expounded in its direction. Hot air seems to be all our country's Congress and politicians can muster these days, aside form giving enormous tax breaks to the wealthy and to the corporations. Oh, sure, there is some righteous indignation being spread about, some of it from the lefteous. (Sorry about that one.)
This morning, this image was posted and 'shared' with me:
I wrote a couple of lines of commentary about the message on the above t-shirt. As soon as I finished, Blogger closed either of its own accord, or possible outside interference by a deity. I have decided not to tempt fate, becoming a wishy-washy adult who fails to respond to inanity, just in case.
The simple fact of the matter is this: the Republicans sold out long ago to moneyed interests who give them millions. The Democrats, many of whom have also enjoyed the same largesse, sputter, putter, mutter, and do nothing substantial.
It remains to us, and to survivors, to do something. The Republicans show every sign of being terrorized by the thought of angry women targeting them. If anyone has any doubts that the protests of the last year haven't been effective, just look at how the White House crew couldn't get out of the line of fire fast enough when it was revealed that they had a wife-beater amongst their midst. Oopsie, it was more than one. I hope women take up this issue. I do not wish to add to their burden, it's just a thought based on the observation that they seem to be the only ones getting any action out of this administration. Outside of the rich, and the corporations, I mean.
Therefore, I am moved to suggest a new approach, based on the line of reasoning previously espoused by some of our finer Republican elected officials. There is a simple, and direct way to solve the problem of adults, or for that matter, kids, taking guns into a school and going on a rampage of destruction.
Arm the kids. And make schools 'open carry'. If every kid in the classroom, hallway, gym, music room, lunchroom, or bathroom was armed, there would be far less incentive to shoot at them; they would be able to shoot back and defend themselves as God intended. No one is going to push their way into a kindergarten with evil intent when there is a roomful of armed preschoolers on hand. Students will no longer feel comfortable bullying one another, not when their intended target is aiming a glock semiautomatic at their little heads.
Oh, sure, there may be a few problems for teachers when homework assignments are given out, or discipline is required, but so what if we lose a few? It's not like our government wants those kids to get a decent education. If that happened the kids might realize that the folks who should be working to protect them are little more than lying thieving bastards who have set the kids up for a lifetime of menial jobs and starvation wages, lightened now and again by the receipt of a box of canned vegetables to prove that government cares.
I would further suggest that the both the White House and Congress allow open carry of firearms. Then, when the kids go to visit on 'learn about your government day', they might do themselves some good.
March? I haven't posted since March? Jeepers (mentally adds, singing, 'creepers, where'd ya get those peepers...'). Makes me wonder just what the hell I've been up to all this time. I'd write a bit of it out if I could remember any of it. Actually, I do, but much of it isn't that interesting, and a large part of the rest would be stressful ranting and raving about the political situation in my country. There have been a number of wonderful movies I've watched, or watched again. And there has been the garden, of course. As for the movies I've screened, there have been so many it would be a minor miracle if I could still name them all. The idea was to write them down here, making notes about each, but that project fell by the wayside.
A page from the Tyndale Bible.
Now there's a phrase I haven't used for awhile, "fell by the wayside". While it's meaning is readily apparent, the origin of the phrase may not be. It goes back to a 1526 translation of the Bible by William Tyndale. It was the first bible in English to be translated from Greek and Hebrew sources, and the first to hit the printing press. There had been an earlier version (the Wycliffe Bible) in Middle English in the late 1300's, but due to its use in a pre-Reformation movement, it was banned in 1409. By the late 1400's, owning one could bring the death penalty. But that's another story. The Tyndale translation, by the way, became a principal source for the King James version of the early 1600's. The "fell by the wayside" reference is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8, verses 5 thru 8. It occurs just after a mention of unclean spirits being cast out of Mary Magdalene and two other women, and concerns a farmer who went out to sow his seed. The sower was a bit sloppy, and some seed 'fell by the wayside'. In fact, a lot of it seemed to fall by the wayside. Only that seed which fell upon the 'good ground' was productive. Just after the teaching of this parable, the Teacher walked upon the waters, a pretty nifty act.
Now that I've wandered off onto this tangent, I'm no longer sure of where the heck I was headed. Was it to post a few pics from the garden? Or the chance to write mildly amusing commentary on making my own tomato paste, or the adventures of putting up copious amounts of fresh homemade pesto against the depravations of winter? (I used up the very last of last year's pesto a few days before starting this year's batches.) Or were the seeds a reference to all the movies I've watched lately? Or haven't watched?
A part of the larger garden at Solar Hill (which I help maintain) where my garden is located.
At the top of the photo is a bit of the playground for the Neighborhood Schoolhouse
More of the Solar Hill garden. Just off to the left are a large number of peonies, one of which can be seen here.
The Japanese dogwood was kind of spectacular this year; it demanded a photo.
A portion of my garden this past June.
Another part of my garden in mid to late Spring.
There's lots more, including other seasons. I'm considering starting a garden blog.
That last bit in the text above (the 'haven't watched' part) refers to an attempt to screen the RKO 'Hitler's Children' for one of my younger friends. While he's knowledgeable about independent movies from the late 1980's or so up to today, he's somewhat less aware of earlier movies. At any rate, my younger friend is going to be a first time daddy soon. He made his announcement via a Facebook post whose only content was a sound file that mystified a number of folks. It was the sound of the baby's heartbeat in the womb. Now, he's never seen any of the Nancy Drew movies, and thus has no associations what-so-ever for Bonita Granville, or, for that matter, with cowboy star Tim Holt, both of whom have the lead roles in the movie. So one night not long after the incidents in Charlottesville with tiki torch bearing American Nazis, white supremacists, and the follow up ravings of Donald Trump in the role of President of the United States, we settled in to watch this bit of lurid potboiler propaganda history.
The film starts out with a Nazi rally (above), and proceeds, via flashback narration, to a 1933 confrontation between American students in Germany, and a group of teenage male Nazis in training. A fight breaks out, during which wholesome Nazi Tim Holt holds onto the American's baseball bat, refusing to give it back. Plucky Bonita Granville looks him in the eye and suddenly exclaims, "Heil Hitler". When Holt's arm rises in automatic salute, she punches him in the stomach. When the German headmaster refuses to stop his charges from fighting, the American teacher (Kent Smith, giving a performance only slightly more lively than a cigar store Indian) simply yells out, "Achtung!", which causes the German boys to fall into line. If only it were that easy in real life. We then see a little bit of the school room education of the day:
Just after Tim Holt's praise for Hitler in the clip above, my young friend asked me to stop the movie. Under the current political climate, and being an expectant father, it was too much. His heart had started racing, and he was beginning to have a bit of a panic attack. We were only about 10 minutes into the film. Thinking back on it, it was probably a good thing we changed the picture. I'd have freaked out if I was an expectant parent, too. And I'm not just thinking of the scene in which a young mother to be hopes her birth is painful as a tribute to the Führer. This picture gets far more lurid and serious.
Of course, the reverberations of movies like 'Hitler's Children' into our own time should give us pause. We currently have an administration in power which excuses the outrages of the far right, pretending there were good people amongst them, condemning those on the left for their part in the violence (even though every report I saw or read stated that the 'antifa' crowd only resorted to violence when the Nazi types began charging at women, children, the clergy, and people with brown skin). Pictures that came out of the event were startling.
Is it live, or is it Memorex?
Today I turned 67 years old. My parents divorced when I was quite little; my mother was gone by the time I was 6 months old. My father, my brother, and I lived with my Aunt and Uncle in what had been my Grandfather's house. My Uncle had fought in WWII. When television came in, I wasn't allowed to have it on much after 5pm, when my Uncle got home. The noise and cacophony of tv shows with children's laughter, and especially sudden loud sounds, unnerved him and he would fly into rages. I won't dwell on it, or on what would now be easily recognizable as PTSD, except to say that I often felt terrorized as a child. The experiences I had in those years would come back to affect me later in life. As it turns out, I was diagnosed as having PTSD too. The stresses and coping mechanisms from those days got me through my first years on my own in the late 1960's, the Vietnam war protests, getting beat up because I had long hair, being beaten up and/or threatened for being perceived as gay, being shot in the head (not as serious as it sounds, except for the psyche - it was delivered via a pellet rifle after I was seen returning a European kiss on the cheek to a male friend returning to Germany. Still, the bullet lodged in my skull and they thought I might have some damage.) During my years managing bookstores in NYC, my assistant was from Pakistan. When the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, my assistant became agitated and predicted the rise of ultra conservative Islam. He was in New York studying to become an architect so he could build decent homes for the poor of his country. He told me flat out that with the rise of conservative Islam, he was concerned about returning home; he might be killed for becoming educated, and going to the United States. The best cashier I had was a gorgeous black woman from the Caribbean, with a lilt in her voice which would make most people smile. My warehouse manager, who was the guy I trained to run the science fiction section, was from Cuba. You get the idea; I had a lot of friends and co-workers who, if they were around today, might face deportation. The sad fact of the matter is that my country is rounding people up. Some have been deported, some are being held. Many on trumped up charges, or minor traffic style violations. Now a movement is on to deport those who were brought here as children, who grew up here, and became part of the fabric of life here. Legal protections for transgender folk are being removed. Repealing the right of marriage for gay folks won't be far behind. The Trump Department of Justice has already insisted that gay folks are not entitled to job protections under federal anti-discrimination laws. Confrontations in the culture wars continue, and will, until decent normal everyday people start to riot. And what then? Well, perhaps that's why the Trump administration has 1.2 Billion dollars in the Federal budget for 'detainee beds'. I have been accused of having a decidedly liberal paranoia about this, but I could spend several hours writing out the reasons for such suspicions, and pointing out the similarities between the US today and Europe in the early 1930's. You're free to laugh at me if you want, I won't mind. But I will remind you that Nazis are on the march. In America. They may be carrying mass market torches, but that doesn't change the fact that they are there, marching, provoking, waiting. Their own leaders will tell you that an army is being built. We have a President who threatened violence from his supporters if he wasn't elected. His supporters threaten violence if he is removed from office. Go ahead and laugh some more. But remember the following image when the 'arrests' start. It was painted on a fence in California a few days after the Charlottesville events. And you'd better hope to hell everyone in your family is straight, and white. A lot of the seeds being sown aren't for flowers.
I have things to do, but I don't feel like doing them.
Watching the snow is peaceful, even with the roar of traffic going by; the sounds, not of quiet, but of tires on wet asphalt, punctuated by the whirrs of small motors, and the occasional groans of trucks.
I haven't been able to write much, and what I have been able to get out has been in orgasmic spurts on Facebook, commentary meant to attract the reader to news stories that seem important.
There are too many stories.
There is too much to try to understand.
There is too much to think about,
there is just too much.
One night last week, I watched 'Gojira', the 1954 Japanese movie that was altered for release in the United States, where it became known as 'Godzilla'. I dare say everyone knows the outline of the story: a few years after the atomic bomb, a monster arises from the seas, a monster that shows little use for logic, a monster bent on destruction.
Such plots call for a scientist who will quell the beast. In 'Gojira', that role was filled by Takashi Shimura, known to film buffs worldwide for his roles in the films of Akira Kurosawa. In his role as the scientist fighting Godzilla, every time the camera zoomed in for a close-up of his concerned face, all I could see was his face at the end of Kurosawa's 'Ikiru', in which he plays a bureaucrat struggling to find the meaning of life, his life, as he dies of cancer.
The picture I want to use as illustration shows the actor, in the snow, on a child's swing. It has a stock photo company's watermark on it. A lot of photos which used to be considered to be in the public domain are now claimed as the property of such companies. They want to be paid for their use, and the amount they want to be paid, even for a blog almost no one will read, is not cheap. I know the progression of this takeover for a fact, as for several years I have done occasional searches for particular photos, and watched as this has happened. In this case, a 65 year old photo from a Japanese movie is claimed to be under the ownership of a stock photo company. Much of the world seems to be becoming divvied up by owners who were not creators.
The snow outside of my window isn't sticking to the road yet, but is already piling up on the earth which had just started to suffer the appearance of crocus and the earliest signs of Spring.
About two weeks ago, I woke repeatedly throughout the night, which is not at all an unusual occurrence. That evening was different, however, in that every time I woke, I was in the same dream. I only remember the part at the end, from my stirring in the early morning. That's a metaphor, I suppose. In the dream, people were being rounded up. Color was draining out and everything was becoming, well, not black and white, but gray. Gradations of gray. Gray upon gray. People were being rounded up and sent off to somewhere. Younger men were being sent to the army, that much was known. Other people were being sent someplace unknown, to be unknown. I managed to sneak away from the roundup, and made my way down a long corridor which seemed an endless void. There were doors everywhere, lined up neatly, evenly, like some Levittown style apartment house. As I came close to my door, the corridor was flooded with people, people rounding up people, people trying to escape, there was a crush of people. I managed to open the door to my place, and snuck in, hopefully unobserved in the chaos. It was my space without a doubt. Except that my stuff had been largely removed. The furniture that was left had been covered by sheets and tarps, resembling one of those old closed up apartments opened years later with layer upon layer of dust covering everything. That was when I woke up.
The snow covers the world like layers of dust.
I feel stupid. I may have misread the situation, and the intentions of the Trump coterie. I just read several of the comments made by Nikki Haley, the new United States Ambassador to the United Nations. The situation in my country grows more surreal by the day, by the hour. I'd long assumed that the takeover by the reactionary right was an attempt to gut the government, to remove any help given to the working class, to move as much money and resources as possible to the rich, the oligarchs, the robber barons of our time. This seemed like the natural, and predictable, outcome of years of de-regulation, of lies and distortions by media representing the far right. A fight that had used the religious culture wars had paid off, but the cost was Donald Trump and the destruction of the Republican Party. I think I was wrong. I should have kept focus on the religious right. They don't just want to end abortion, or end gay rights (and gays). They don't just want their version of Sharia law, a world in which the husband will rule the home, with an obedient wife to wait on him (if she knows what's good for her - by now a working life in an often corporate culture should have taught women that they are expendable, their roles replaceable).
As I look at the proposed cuts to -this year's - budget, the toll in human misery can easily blind one to the toll on science, on the arts, on international aid, basically everything. I thought these people were simply ignorant of the interdependencies of the world, and had no understanding of the outcome of their actions.
But it's what they want. They are depending on it. Many of this crowd are fundamentalist Christians. The Bible is their word, their God, infallible, and Trump is His servant. They are not here to destroy the world so the United States can take over, so the moneyed class can acquire more than they already have. They are here to destroy the world. Period. They seek nothing less than to force Armageddon; they aren't looking for the end times - they consider that we are already in the end times. They are looking to hasten the end.
Mr. Trump isn't the intransigence and chicanery of the Republican Party come back to haunt them. He is their monster, rising out of the sea of their despair, come to destroy.
And me? I'm just another observer, a loser at life, swinging back and forth in the snow.
For the last few days those moments just before waking have provided a continuation of the same dream. I don't remember most of it; Dreams often fade quickly. I can recall that just before waking, in an era in which people with education were suspect, a roundup of intellectuals and dissidents had begun.
I was trying to save people, including myself.
Every morning has seen an intention to write in this space. I have started many posts, and left them abandoned. I am certain of the cause; it starts, much as it always does, with reading the news. It just happened again as I began sipping my coffee on a beautiful late Spring morning during the last official month of winter. The news makes me wonder about the use of winter as a metaphor.
For many years, I have kept a file in the "pictures" section of my computer labelled "Dreams Remembered". It consists entirely of old, often fading, photographs of men together, or women together. They are part of a history intentionally buried. When such images were found, often I would guess after the owner of the photo passed, they were destroyed by concerned family members. A good number of them escaped attention even though the pictures seemed to show affection between the subjects. After all, people note, men and women were freer to show affection to each other in days gone by. Such photos depict good friends, or family members. Yet now, in a more liberal time, many such photos seem to imply other relationships were depicted. They may be mementoes of a more innocent time, but they are also stories lost, or destroyed. For those who can see what is there, they are dreams remembered.
Two civil war soldiers in a hand tinted photo from the Library of Congress, posted to the Shorpy site.
Lest anyone assume that over interpretation is involved, here's a relatively sedate photo in which closeness
is portrayed, but there is no physical contact. Poet Walt Whitman is on the left, Pete Doyle on the right.
Pete Doyle, it should be noted, was Whitman's lover.
Having one's picture taken in those days was expensive. There was only one copy per photograph.
Were these two friends sharing an expense, a memento of a friendship, or something more?
As the process of photography changed and the cost was reduced,
some photographs began to suggest a little more about the nature of a relationship.
These dreams come to mind due to a four night drama program which has been unfolding on the Disney owned ABC broadcast television network. "When We Rise" is a slightly fictionalized story of three people whose lives intersected in San Francisco, and the parts they played in the gay liberation movement. The first part was shown on Monday, just a few days after the newly installed U.S. Attorney General rescinded and abandoned the previous administration's policy that allowed transgender teens to use the bathroom of the sex with which they identify. The new Attorney General had promised, just a few days before, that despite his past record in the segregated South, he would uphold civil rights of all Americans. He was passed on a party line vote, "conservative" and reactionary Republicans outnumbering the Democrats. The mini-series episode that night portrayed a time, in the first years after the Stonewall riots, when gay men and women were considered mentally ill, were routinely denied the rights of Americans, were routinely dismissed from their jobs, thrown out of their homes, denied housing, and just as routinely beat up and/or killed by thugs and police alike. I remember all of it, and was not ready for the pain it brought back.
Anita Bryant, pictured above, was a singer and orange juice pitchwoman who campaigned to rescind a Florida law
which banned discrimination of the basis of sexual orientation. She famously said that she would prefer
"my child be dead than homo".
The second night of the mini-series was postponed due to the new President of the United States giving an address to the entire assembled Congress. The speech was remarkable for dropping Mr. Trump's confrontational style, acting like an adult instead of a raving lunatic. The immediate response from the press, which Mr. Trump had constantly belittled, castigated, accused of making up stories (i.e. the unfavorable ones), and declared the enemy of the American People, was overly kind, remarking that he suddenly seemed presidential. They didn't really discuss his misrepresentations, distortions, outright lies, and attempts to cover up what may or may not be the truth.
Last night's episode of 'When We Rise' focused on relationships being built by the story's participants, the elation of the election of a gay man (Harvey Milk) to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, his assassination 11 months later, and the rise of what was being called a 'gay disease'.
The episode ended with one of the principals holding a protest in which people in San Francisco began posting the names of friends and lovers lost to this new disease onto the side of city hall. I've been crying a lot. The memories of the death of dear friends, the men with whom I was forming my family, have been overpowering.
This morning, intent on resuming my post of thoughts arising from the old movies I've been watching, I logged onto my computer to discover news that the new Attorney General had been caught lying about his contacts with Russia. These contacts, as well as a number of others surrounding the new administration, seem to expand into an ever deepening well. There are lies upon lies. As the stories of investigations into these incidents become public, they aren't just denied, the press is accused of making them up to discredit the President. Also in the news were further stories about the new administrator of the Federal Communications Commission and his repeal of polices protecting access to the internet, programs which helped the poor afford the internet in their homes, and rules of privacy which had hemmed in internet providers ability to keep records of what sites and information anyone had accessed. All of this is, of course, in the name of fostering business growth and competition. Such information would never be used to assist in rounding up people.
Other news stories concern the President's travel bans, people being deported due to such criminal backgrounds as having traffic violations, people being detained for hours or days without warrants, people having their identification papers checked as they left a flight which started and ended within the United States, and so forth. When the travel ban was imposed to protests and legal actions across the country, Homeland Security backed the President. They will be getting 15,000 new agents. The Department of Defense will get billions, partially to fund new atomic weapons. Other areas of the budget will have to be cut; these include monies for health care, social security, education, and the arts.
The man in the center of the above photograph is Bix Biderbecke. He is one of the men who was instrumental in the development of jazz. He was an alcoholic who died young, at the age of 28. He was gay.
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.
"It's been how long since I posted?", he thought to himself. (Take that rules of punctuation.) Uh, oh. He's feeling a little surly today. Ah, yes, it's 'talk about yourself in the third person day'. Actually, I've no idea if such a day exists, but why shouldn't it? After a quick Google search, it turns out it does exist - every Third of March. Should'da known. As I look up I see that it is snowing to beat the band, although why anyone, or for that matter the snow, wants to beat the band is beyond me. (ba-dum dumb)
You'll have to excuse me, I've been cooped up a bit too long. (Internal struggle - overcoming urge to add picture of Gary Cooper.) That freakin' cold I had since just before Thanksgiving to about Christmas either came back again, or I got another one. Only this time, I went down for the count. I'm not the kind of guy who can lay in bed when I'm not feeling well. Usually, I get up, clean myself, up, read, watch tv, listen to music, etc. and keep things fairly quiet. This time I ended up in bed for three and a half days. And it wasn't like I was just lyin' there staring at the uneven place on the textured plaster ceiling - nope, I slept. Last Saturday (Jan, 23rd) I didn't even do my radio show.
Speaking of my radio show, I've got a couple of them to catch up on posting here. So, let's get the first one out of the way right now with the show from Saturday January 9th, 2016. That program began with a tribute to Kitty Kallen, songbird with the bands of Jan Savitt, Jack Teagarden, Jimmy Dorsey, and Harry James. Ms. Kallen shuffled off the mortal coil on January the 7th. Then it was off to January 1945 as the Philco tuned in The Kraft Music Hall with Bing Crosby (and guests Spike Jones and His City Slickers!).
Between being constantly sick (all chest and up, thankfully), trying to keep the radio station going, trying to shop for food while in a muddle-daze, trying to find enough energy to cook a decent meal, you know - the usual suspects - I have to admit that I'm not getting a heck of a lot done. I have watched a couple of movies I had on the cable box DVR. The other night I watched the 1936 "Things to Come", with a script by H.G. Wells based on his own book. I last saw it in the early to mid 1970's. Made in England in 1936, the story starts with an all out world war in 1940, which more or less ends in the late 1960's with a new dark age and a plague; salvation arriving in the 1970's with the intervention of scientists and their "Wings Over the World" organization. By 2036, the populace begin to rebel against the more or less totalitarian technocracy that replaced the totalitarian society before it. It's the triumph of the luddites that gives rise to philosophical debate. That's a heck of a lot of oversimplification, but the subject is worth noting - let's face it, there just haven't been all that many movies that ruminate on the nature of war, good versus evil, the future of civilization, the nature of progress, and humankind's place in the universe. Besides, I find it wonderfully reassuring the cities of the future will be of art deco designs.
I have to make an admission here. It's been many years since I really gave myself anything much for Christmas. From my childhood years into my late 40's, I was an active film collector. I miss movies shown at a proper size. I like movies on tv well enough, but at the modern standard (?) of 32" or so they are still tv images. Certainly I watched many years of movies on a 19" screen growing up. But most movies are meant to be bigger than life, or at least bigger than a tv screen. So this past holiday, after scrimping and saving for quite awhile, I gave myself a cheap little video projector. It was one of those momentary "oh, hell, just do it" moments. And I'm very happy I did it. It's a tad awkward to use, as the method of projecting I prefer, down the length of my space, will give my own viewing a large and wonderful picture, but won't work very well for inviting guests over - due to the arraignment of the furniture they'll be far too close to the screen. My old motorized 5' screen is perfect for older movies with a more or less square shape (a ratio of 1.33:1). But it isn't big enough for the tv version of widescreen (16:9, which isn't the size of any widescreen process ever used). My 10 foot screen would be perfect for this, but at the moment it is in storage in a friend's barn. It will need a bit of sprucing up and possibly bleaching of the surface to make it useable, and even then that designation may be somewhat questionable. At the moment, I'm simply using a wall that is a light beige color, projected across the room so friends can sit and watch as well. Here's a pic of the widescreen image, shown in snowy day daylight (thin drapes closed, but still light enough to read a book or newspaper)(sorry about getting the fan blade in the picture). The image is roughly 6 feet long by 4 feet in height.
A scene from 'Jason and the Argonauts' in the tv version of widescreen.
Of course, this jump in technology will come with added costs. A standard DVD is of about the quality of older tv images. Over the last few years, I've grown quite accustomed to high def images. The projector isn't full high def (which would be 1080 pixels); that would have cost far more than I could afford. But it is the lower form of high def (720 pixels) and is pretty darn good, especially considering that it was priced quite a bit under $200.00. To be honest, I'm still surprised I spent that much money on myself. The problem is that movies recorded in 1080p high def via my cable box DVR are of excellent quality when projected - much better than DVD. Now I'm possessed of the idea that its time to go Blue Ray DVD, which is 1080p Hi Def. (I'm so old fashioned I prefer to own a copy of a favorite movie instead of paying per view.) That changeover is not likely to happen, and so far my DVDs look just fine. But the obsession has started.
Now that the images are of a decent size, I find I'm watching movies again. It's not like watching half heartedly on tv while I play solitaire on the computer, and etc. I mean fully engaged watching. This has happened just in time. The political commercials on the television are depressingly overwrought. My sanity needs to avoid them. The Republican party is out of control. All of their advertising (one can't forget these are infomericals selling a packaged product) is set in an alternate world America as they sell fear - where there are nasty terrorists among us plotting their daily bombings and destruction of our homes. Look - is that one? Report them now. An America where affordable healthcare has caused a majority of the populace to lose their jobs and live in dire poverty. An America in which the President of the United States has betrayed the country, and where those running for the nomination in the opposing party aren't fit for office. This isn't a distillation of what's behind their ideas - they say these things. Boldly. They talk about carpet bombing, they talk about rebuilding our military (which is still the largest and best trained in the world) and going after the terrorists of ISIS, capturing those they can, and carting them off to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for the rest of time, where we -will- learn what they know. The implication of torture is pretty hard to miss. Oh, yeah, they are all for constant electronic monitoring of the populace. Give up that freedom in order to save it.
This political situation was going to be the focus of today's post, but I find it overwhelming to even think about today, as this is the first day I am really starting to feel better and I have a lot of other stuff to catch up on. The sad thing is these candidate 'contenders' don't even realize that they will not really be in control. They rail against Vladmir Putin, as though he has any real power left. When he was rattling the sabers, friends of mine were quite concerned that he was going to start a war. Russia, like China, is now part of the world economy. The interdependencies of trade and commerce have moved the actuality of power to the corporations just as predicted. At present, they can't afford war. There is too much to lose, and not enough to gain. When war comes in the future, it will be over economic spheres of influence, over who controls what products, what information, what data. Wars over who controls what geographic areas are passe, they are old school. That world is rapidly fading away. It's part of what makes the immigration debate in this country so ridiculous. Forget building walls on our borders. Forget "figuring out who they are before we let them in" - that is already being done. If these people manage to get one of themselves elected, I've no doubt that the walls will go up. The real question is whether they are there to keep the infidels out, or the unwashed populace in.
There's a lot more that's been bouncing back and forth, but I need to get doing other things.
My radio show of Saturday January 16th took note of the birthdays of Sophie Tucker (the Last of the Red Hot Mamas), trumpeter and bandleader Billy Butterfield, drummer and bandleader Gene Krupa, and promoter, lyricist, and music publisher Irving Mills.
As always, I hope anyone who listens in enjoys the show(s).
Today is Thanksgiving Day here in America. It's an old tradition, one which goes back to at least the time of Henry the VIII. Here in the US, its origin is traced to the 1620's at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Puritans and Pilgrims would have been familiar with the ideas of fasting and feasting in Thanks for all that God had given them. (The Canadian Thanksgiving goes back even further.) The story has it that the refugees from England shared a bountiful harvest with the Wampanoag Indians, without whose help they might not have survived.
These days, many people take great delight in skewering the story, labeling the arrival of people of white European ancestry as the purveyors of genocide against the native Americans. Whenever a holiday rolls around, these folks can be counted upon to proclaim what they see as the truthful history behind the myth. Much of their revisionist history is as "full of it" as the stories they seek to debunk.
The myth of America was created over a long period of time. It was once a myth of hope, a light in the darkness. It's long been apparent that these tales weren't literal truth. The greatness of my country lay in the willingness of good people to go out and try to correct the wrongs in our land, to bring the dreams of equality, the chance to better one's self and family through education and hard work, to life for everyone.
These days, we are presented with candidates for the Presidency who talk about making America great again. The current frontrunner for the Republican nomination has advocated everything from requiring registration of all Muslims, to stating that we should use methods of torture such as waterboarding to defeat terrorists. After all, he noted, "they deserve it anyway". He has ridiculed the press who fact checked him (even mocking one respected reporter's disability), and urged the crowds at his events to beat up and eject those who disagree with him - although he has also mentioned protestor's actions as part of the attraction for his rallies - its entertainment value, after all.
It makes me wonder if he pays the protestors to be there.
Personally, I'll hang onto stories like the origin of the U.S. Thanksgiving - stories of cooperation between different races, breaking bread together, freedom and equality. They might not be true, but they are one hell of a goal. I can only hope that we can honor them, and work towards them before those of us who don't fit in are forced to have registration cards, or are taken off to the camps.
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Last Saturday's radio show played a couple of songs for Thanksgiving before the juke box got loaded up with nickels to celebrate the birthdays of Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael.
When I was young, I realized that we shouldn't think of evolution as something in the past. It seems clear that the human species is still evolving. Back then, I believed that we were on an upward progression. I no longer have any such certainty.
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The above was the start of a post I doubt will be finished. (It will join the pile of discards, where it will find much company.) Partly because I'm not feeling my best (nasty-ish cold running through the system), partly due to time constraints, partly because the writing of it is likely to make me scream at nothing in particular in order to vent building frustration and anger. To resume writing what I had in mind, I'd have to go back to Facebook or some other form of 'social media' to collect images and information. Blogs are social media, but they are different; one can take a little bit of word time to actually express (or attempt to express) one's thoughts or observations. Blogs also have to be sought out, or one has to click on a link. They aren't part of a scrolling feed.
The problem started with the terrorist attacks on Paris. People on Facebook immediately used a program which superimposed the French flag over their personal image icons. Other people immediately responded with links to blogs, mostly think pieces which declared why they wouldn't comment on the terrorist attack on Paris; where were the cries of outrage for the week's other terror attacks, they demanded to know? - those victims were passed by, not mentioned - not worthy - as Paris is a White city, not a place of brown skin people. Now, those posts had a bit of a point, but to post someone else's article about the terrorist attacks on Paris to demonstrate why one isn't posting about Paris is a kind of internet passive aggressive statement of extremely annoying and cloying condescending superiority - and some odd attempt to prove that the poster's heart bleeds for the world more than their ill-informed reader's.
Those posts began to get a response. The me-me posts proliferated. The news media and the video clip posters ran the same footage constantly. The news media did scrabble to send their top anchors or writers to Paris to find the woman who was standing three blocks away from the stadium who heard the bang of the bombs and grew fearful. (Okay, I made that up but the exaggeration isn't that big.)
Then the politicians began chiming in. As most folks who read this blog probably know, I live in Vermont. Our local tv and video news sources originate in one upstate minor city, or from Boston. Both cover the New Hampshire market, where the first primaries in our upcoming (one year away) Presidential contest will be held. We have been inundated with political advertising for months already. Most of the advertising has been for the Republican side, which seems intent on reversing any possible upward trend evolution might provide. They, and a seemingly large segment of the population, have centered on stopping any influx of Syrian refugees into the country (but they're okay if they are Christians). The issue has become a social media war. The images proliferate, with commentary which exposes the sad state of American language skills, the sad state of American education, media, news - oh, hell, the responses below (from people I know to be kind, decent folks) are as frightening as the terror attacks.
It's been a sorry, disgusting spectacle.
This doesn't seem to be particularly appropriate, but it makes as much sense as anything else this past week: Here's last Saturday's radio show. The show did start off with a comment, albeit musical, on the current events before paying birthday tributes to musician-conductor-composer Billy May, singer Jo Stafford, crooner Johnny Desmond (the "G.I. Sinatra"), one of the sadly forgotten early jazz men Eddie Condon, and the 'Father of the Blues' W. C. Handy. Handy was the subject of, and guest on, the show's featured broadcast - 'The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street' of June the 14th, 1940.
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.
