these are the boxes painted by my artist daughter Julia for friends.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Hear the People Sing
The other night, my 12-year-old grandson came out to where I was sitting. He seemed vaguely agitated.
"Do you want to have a conversation?" he asked. "What shall we talk about?"
Momentarily taken aback, I sputtered and took off my headphones (having been listening to "Lodi"). He went into the next room and approached the box on the counter. "Alexa, what is a good thing to talk about?"
Alexa hadn't been programmed for that, so he came back in to where I was sitting.
"I know," I suggested. "What about fantasy baseball?"
That worked. And kept working.
An hour later, after he had asked (and answered) every conceivable question one could possibly have about fantasy baseball, he seemed satiated and returned to his room.
***
One conversation we all need to be having is why so many Republicans have deserted President Trump to endorse Joe Biden. Dozens of prominent GOP figures, hundreds of leading scientists, public health experts, and constitutional law experts and military leaders have signed statements opposing Trump.
Meanwhile, I have not been able to identify even one prominent Democrat who has switched support in favor of Trump. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, convicted of a variety of crimes involving corruption, endorsed Trump after he pardoned him.
Why is this the case? The conspiracy theorists will tell you there is a "deep state" that is aligned against Trump, but there is not, and never has been, any "deep state" -- this is a fiction devised by paranoid extremists.
In reality, the cross-over support for Biden is unprecedented and it comes at a time of the worst partisan divide in modern history. Reasonable, rational people understand what is happening, and are stating that when it comes to Trump, enough is enough.
***
* President Donald Trump intends to choose Amy Coney Barrett to be the new Supreme Court justice, according to multiple senior Republican sources with knowledge of the process.In conversations with some senior Republican allies on the Hill, the White House is indicating that Barrett, a federal appellate judge and Notre Dame law professor, is the intended nominee, multiple sources said. (CNN)
* Trump declined for a second day to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election, while Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, implicitly rebuffed him, promising an “orderly transition.” (NYT)
* At Pentagon, Fears Grow That Trump Will Pull Military Into Election Unrest -- Defense Department officials said top generals could resign if Mr. Trump ordered the active-duty military into the streets to quell protests. (NYT)
* A former senior aide to Vice President Mike Pence who’s come out against Trump’s reelection issued a stark warning about another Trump term. “We will no longer be America after four more years of Trump,” warned Olivia Troye in a new ad from Republican Voters Against Trump. She pointed to the moment in June when Trump forced the clearance of peaceful protesters outside the White House for his church photo op. Mary Trump, the president's niece, warned that the president would be willing to go "further than you could possibly imagine" to stay in power. [HuffPost]
* Trump and McConnell are speeding the GOP to permanent minority status (WashPo)
* A wave of federal executions began in July when the Trump administration resumed carrying out the death penalty for the first time in 17 years, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The government is using a drug that may torture as it kills, according to autopsy reports. Several of the men selected for execution over the past two months still had pending litigation related to their cases when their deaths were scheduled. Black people are disproportionately sentenced to death, and many people on death row were arrested before they were old enough to legally drink. [HuffPost]
* Ocean Heat Waves Are Directly Linked to Climate Change -- The “blob” of hotter ocean water that killed sea lions and other marine life in 2014 and 2015 may become permanent. (NYT)
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***
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again
Who will not be slaves again
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free
--Les Miserables
Friday, September 25, 2020
Beauty v. Hate
This pandemic is having many ancillary effects, some only obliquely related to the suspension of our old lifestyles. One such effect may be a renewed interest in the past.
For me, this became apparent during my virtual reunion with fellow Rolling Stone staffers from the San Francisco era in the 70s. Although I visited the magazine's office in Manhattan many times after it moved there in 1977, I didn't realize until Wednesday that the San Francisco years have acquired something approaching legendary status in the collective memory of those who worked there.
The most spot-on comment any of us who attended the call was made by Jann Wenner, the founder, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, when he said that after all this time, mainly it's the good memories that remain.
We all remember the disputes, the firings, and the melodrama of a fledgling Baby Boomer institution growing up in a warehouse South of Market Street. But that was then.
As Rolling Stone evolved into a cultural icon, we all grew stronger in the process. Perhaps most importantly, those of us who are writers and artists developed a sense of responsibility to speak out about what is right and what is wrong in this society.
What is right and good is the diversity of today's America. We are fortunate that our neighbors speak so many languages, practice so many religions, and reflect so much of the lovely racial diversity of the larger world.
It is also beautiful that so many millions of our fellow citizens are willing to march peacefully in support of the movement to end the structural racism that stains this society.
But what is NOT beautiful is the attempt to berate people who are different from the traditional white European culture that once but no longer dominates this society.
And what is NOT beautiful is using code words to celebrate racism and hate.
This is why people of conscience are speaking out against Trump. Not because he espouses conservative views, many of us like conservative ideas and thinking. Not because he is a Republican, most of us don't like either party, frankly.
No, we oppose Trump because he epitomizes what is wrong at a time when we need to embrace what is right.
One small but important example. The Affordable Care Act that Trump wants to dismantle protects those among us with pre-existing conditions like diabetes and asthma. If he succeeds, they will no longer have access to affordable health care.
That is simply wrong.
By contrast, Biden won't undo that protection.
That is right.
***
Sadly, the news indicates that the faultiness dividing us are widening, not narrowing. Too many are still falling for the wrong. That is indeed bad news.
* ‘Vote him out’ chant greets Trump on rare trip outside his hyperfriendly political bubble (WashPo)
* Americans say by a 13-point margin that Trump should allow the winner of the presidential election to nominate a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. And they say 44% to 37% that presidents in the final year of their term should generally wait until after the election to handle any Supreme Court vacancies. Ginsburg's casket was laid in repose on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. [HuffPost]
* “Don’t think of it as the warmest month of August in California in the last century. Think of it as one of the coolest months of August in California in the next century.” [The New York Times]
* China is building vast new detention centers for Muslims in Xinjiang (WashPo)
* Of the Americans who’ve contracted COVID-19, 63% are facing serious financial problems, according to a survey from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. (NPR)
* Weeks after universities reopened across much of Europe, thousands of students are in quarantine (WashPo)
* San Francisco expanded its Slow Streets program, creating a car-free route through Golden Gate Park. [The San Francisco Chronicle]
* Wildfires taint West Coast vineyards with taste of smoke (AP)
* Trump said that the expansion of mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic is a “scam” and that he wants a new Supreme Court justice in place to ensure election-related cases are decided in his favor. (HuffPost)
* Commissioner Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission has a news flash for Trump and anyone else who needs to hear it: “In the United States of America, we do not ‘get rid of’ ballots.” (HuffPost)
***
The county clerk hereabouts confirmed my accurate address, so I'll be voting soon. By mail, which is the patriotic way to do it in the time of Covid-19.
Though my picture never appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, my byline did.
My memories of those days are available via Google (isn't everything?) The best piece, "Wenner's World," appeared in Salon.com in 1999.
Well, we're big rock singers
We got golden fingers
And we're loved everywhere we go (that sounds like us)
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth
At ten-thousand dollars a show (right)
We take all kinds of pills that give us all kind of thrills
But the thrill we've never known
Is the thrill that'll gitcha when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rollin' Stone
-- Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Big Waves & the Moon
Amidst the usual sludge moving through the news channels overnight are two encouraging stories. One, a woman surfer rode the biggest wave this year, and two, NASA plans to send a woman to the moon.
These are notable in themselves but especially because women's rights have again moved to central stage in this year's election debate. Among a woman's most fundamental rights -- to have an abortion if she chooses to -- is now at risk due to the next justice Trump and his Senate allies plan to place on the Supreme Court.
Roe v. Wade could well be struck down this winter.
The historic struggle to gain equal rights and in the case of abortion, a gender specific right, has been long and difficult, marked by heroic efforts by many people, not the least of whom was the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Part of me can't believe this country could be on the verge of going backward in this way, but the trajectory of what Trump intends to do is clear.
I suppose this will secure Trump's renewed support from evangelical Christians, despite his many depredations on the very notion of what it means to be a person of faith, especially a Christian. The hypocrisy of all involved is breath-taking.
If the worst comes to pass, many women will fight back and many of us will be right by their sides. Because this is another stark case where there may be two "sides" to the issue, but only one is right. And that right, guaranteeing a woman's right to choose, will prevail.
BTW, one need not like or even support abortion to be on the right side of history here. It is not the state's business to tell a woman what to do with her own body, period.
On to the sludge, and the two bright spots:
* Trump's refusal on Wednesday to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power if he loses to Joe Biden in November is leading America towards a dark place during a year of incendiary political tensions.Trump intransigence, included in his latest assault on perfectly legitimate mail-in ballots on Wednesday, posed a grave threat to the democratic continuum that has underpinned nearly 250 years of republican government. (CNN)
* Protests erupt across the U.S. after no officers indicted in Breonna Taylor's killing by Louisville police.(CNN)
* Louisville police confirm two officers shot, one suspect in custody (CNN)
* As Schools Go Remote, Finding ‘Lost’ Students Gets Harder -- Early data for the new school year suggests that attendance in virtual classrooms is down, possibly because students are working or caring for siblings. (NYT)
* The Russian Trolls Have a Simpler Job Today. Quote Trump. -- As part of their attempt to interfere with the 2020 election, Russians are grabbing screenshots of President Trump’s tweets, or quoting his own misleading statements, analysts and officials say. (NYT)
* Study shows virus mutating and potentially evolving amid rapid U.S. spread (WashPo)
* NASA revealed this week that it plans to send a woman to the moon for the first time in 2024. [HuffPost]
* In secret tapes, mine executives detail their sway over leaders from Juneau to the White House (WashPo)
* Democratic Donors Push Biden for a Cabinet Free of Fossil Fuel Connections -- A group of more than 60 donors is urging Joe Biden to renounce advisers with ties to the fossil fuel industry. (NYT)
* You Can Get Covid-19 And Flu At The Same Time – And It Can Be Deadly (HuffPost)
* Uber and Lyft Could Gain From U.S. Rule Defining Employment -- The Labor Department proposal would most likely treat drivers and other gig workers as contractors, not employees. (NYT)
* Trump has launched another racist diatribe against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). “She’s telling us how to run our country!” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania. “How did you do where you came from? How is your country doing?” Omar was born in Somalia and immigrated to the United States as a child when her family fled the violence there. She’s been a U.S. citizen for 20 years. She fired back on Twitter: "Firstly, this is my country & I am a member of the House that impeached you. Secondly, I fled civil war when I was 8. An 8-year-old doesn’t run a country even though you run our country like one." [HuffPost]
* Governor Gavin Newsom of California announced that the state will phase out sales of internal combustion engines. By 2035, every new car will be an emissions free vehicle, in order to green and decarbonize the transport sector. (4media-group.com)
* Trump, Biden in tight races in Florida and Arizona, polls find (WashPo)
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Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Tears and Surprises
So now Covid-19 has killed over 200,000 Americans, more than all who died in the last five wars combined. And of course there is no end in sight. We may my be experiencing a slight respite before the winter flu season kicks in, but health experts say we're unlikely to see any real improvement in the situation until sometime later in 2021, if then.
Life has changed beyond anything we could have imagined as recently as early March. Only about ten percent of the office workers in New York City are going into their high-rise offices these days, and no one expects the others to return soon. Many people with the means to do so have fled cities like New York and San Francisco for second homes in less densely populated areas.
These predominantly are wealthy white people. Meanwhile, black and Latino people are roughly twice as likely to get Covid, probably because they have many of the front-line jobs that put them at increased risk. And they have nowhere else to go.
This as Trump continues to spread misinformation (that's the polite term) that "virtually nobody" is getting sick.
The president's campaign for re-election is being boosted by Russia, and according to some reports, being personally directed by his buddy, Vladimir Putin. Some Russian media satirize Trump as Putin's puppet, which could have never been said about any previous GOP president.
As a native of the Midwest, I struggle to understand why the people I grew up among with would ever fall for a charlatan like Trump. We were always skeptical of his kind of coastal huckster who showed up with potions and sales pitches.
Trump is the ultimate pitchman. He sells the fiction that he is an outsider draining the "swamp" of Washington politics, but he oversees the most corrupt administration in modern history. He violates every value I was taught as a child -- honesty, decency, modesty, compassion, a good work ethic and respect for people of faith.
Over the decades, I've occasionally fantasized about moving back to Michigan, with its lakes and rivers and trees, and people and places I love. But my fate is tied up with California, a land of its own and the birthplace of all six of my children.
Those of us out here reject Trump and his policies en masse. But all we can do is hope our family members and friends in the Midwest join with us to take our country back from the edge of tyranny. It's really all up to them now.
I hope everybody recognizes that 200,000 isn't a number -- it is two hundred thousand individual lives, now lost, directly affecting two million other survivors and friends. We need to grieve these terrible losses, and we need to allow ourselves to cry with them.
***
One certainty in all of this is that the news will get worse before it gets better. But I still, against the odds, trust that one day it shall get better.
* Women working in retail jobs are struggling as they are forced to choose between keeping their jobs and making sure their kids are keeping up with remote learning. (NYT)
* Biden’s moderation contrasts with Democratic rage as court fight looms (WashPo) The Democratic Party will likely split in the next few years. (DW)
* Hollywood unions and major studios have reached a deal to resume filming. (NYT)
* Sen. Mitt Romney said Tuesday he would support a floor vote to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, essentially clinching consideration of Trump’s nominee this year despite the impending election. (Politico)
* Climate Disruption Is Now Locked In. The Next Moves Will Be Crucial. -- The Times spoke to two dozen experts who said decisions made now would spell the difference between a difficult future and something far worse. (NYT)
* NYPD officer, an Army reservist, worked as spy for China, federal prosecutors allege (WashPo)
* CDC guidelines urge families to avoid trick-or-treating this Halloween (CBS)
* So far this year, 3.6 million acres, an area roughly the size of Connecticut, have burned just in California. That’s about 23 times the acreage that burned in the state last year. (NYT)
* Race to Rescue Hundreds of Whales Stranded Off Tasmania -- More than 450 pilot whales became stranded on the west coast of the island state in Australia. Rescuers estimate that over half of them have already died. (NYT)
* Berkeley City Council Approves Nation’s First Healthy Checkout -- Grocery Stores Required to Sell Nutritious Options (Center for Science in the Public Interest)
***
On a personal note, my youngest daughter is traveling east next week to live in the best time zone for her senior year in college at a small private college outside Baltimore. As she told me yesterday, "No more 6 a.m. classes three times a week!" She's moving to the Jersey shore with a friend and I'm thrilled this is working out for her.
Also, my old friend David Talbot, founder of Salon.com, had his birthday yesterday. Each birthday is a gift after a serious stroke, which David suffered and has written a book about. There's talk of a virtual reunion of those of there at the founding and early years of Salon 25 years ago later this fall.
Speaking of virtual reunions, later today I'll be participating in one with fellow staffers from Rolling Stone in the 70s and 80s when the magazine achieved its status as an icon of American culture. Founder Jann Wenner is said to be attending.
I'll write about that event tomorrow.
***
"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." -- Robert Frost
-30-
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Decision Time
With all of the artificial controversy over mail-in ballots created by Trump, millions of Americans have to worry that their votes may not be counted in the election now only six weeks away.
I'm one of them.
Th facts: There has never been any evidence of systematic fraud involving ballots mailed in by voters. What there are, naturally, are occasional cases of human error, which is what happened to me.
My current address is the third I've had this year, and it is one of those four-digit street numbers that can easily be transposed when somebody is in a hurry. That's exactly what occurred on the way from the county clerk's office to me. The letter "9" became a "7" while an actual "7" became a "9." I got the confirmation of my registration courtesy of a neighbor who figured out the error.
In my case, when it comes to the presidential election, it really doesn't matter, because the electoral votes from the state I reside in will be cast for Joe Biden -- that is a foregone conclusion. But I will be disappointed if my ballot does not show up in what will undoubtably be a massive popular majority rejecting Trump across this nation.
That's right. Trump will lose the popular vote -- that is another foregone conclusion. Ultimately, from all of the polling I can locate so far, the Electoral College appears to be going Biden's way too, but by the time that all gets sorted out, and the mailed ballots counted, all sorts of damage is likely to have been done to American democracy.
Do I exaggerate? Hardly. Trump has made it clear he intends to do everything within his power -- legal or illegal, ethical or unethical -- to secure his re-election. His current obsession is to appoint to the Supreme Court a justice who will help him steal the election.
Americans of all persuasions have two stark choices and only two: We can sit by passively and let this criminal undermine our constitutional freedoms, or we can speak out, rise up, and rebel if it comes to that.
We can speak, we can write, we can sing, we can walk, we can march and we can organize a rebellion against the tyrant if need be. We can even go beyond that when the time comes. Perhaps for some this is a difficult decision, but not for me.
I already know which side I'm on. Do you?
* Under a lawless Trump, our system of checks and balances is being destroyed (WashPo)
* House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday left open the possibility of using the impeachment process to prevent the Senate from confirming a new Supreme Court associate justice in the next few months. [HuffPost]
* In Colorado, six protesters, including organizers of demonstrations over the killing of Black 23-year-old Elijah McClain in Aurora, could face years in prison over what critics say are trumped-up charges representing an attack on the Black Lives Matter movement. McClain died in 2019 when police used a stranglehold to arrest him and paramedics injected him with an excessive dose of a powerful sedative. [AP]
* Trump's Ohio suburb slide signals peril in industrial north (AP)
* New York City is one of three places that "have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities," leading to its designation as an "anarchist jurisdiction," the Justice Department said Monday. (Portland, OR and Seattle are the other two. (NBC)
* House, Senate on collision course over government funding as shutdown looms in nine days (WashPo)
* Denial and Defiance: Trump and His Base Downplay the Virus Ahead of the Election -- With resistance to face masks and scorn for science, President Trump and a sizable number of his supporters are pushing an alternate reality minimizing a tragedy that has killed almost 200,000 Americans. (NYT)
***
To everything
There is a season
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
There is a season
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
--The Byrds
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