Yesterday, Colorado Public Radio newsletter sent this. A little late. I knew this existed, and the origin story, but there’s more detail in the article. Fortunately there are still enough people who have the Christmas Spirit to keep it going. And enough kids to enjoy it.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone at The F* News would believe in any kind of miracle – and this isn’t one IMO – the 46% he and The Conference Board refer to are all people who voted for Kamala, or would have had they voted. But it’s an eye-catching header. We can hope that it gets widely read and quoted.
Harry Litman of Talking Feds calls this a “change of pace” post, which is certainly an understatement. But I have no problem taking time to recognize that these people to whom we go for expertise and wisdom are also human, and have human likes and dislikes. And he also has a list of podcasts he has made and will be continuing to make, which “dive deep into seven critical areas where Trump will be looking to attack government as we know it.” Four have already aired, but are still available (and I assume transcripts are also. At least I hope so.) The next one, coming up Monday – well, I’m thrilled that he considers my state’s attorney general to be “pure gold.” I certainly do, but what do I know.
Yesterday, I continued knitting, finishing a couple of small things. I also tried a cup of coffee flavored with Torani’s white chocolate flavor syrup. The flavor of white chocolate seems to me such an unobtrusive, mild flavor that I wasn’t expecting much, but they nailed it ) Earlier this month they sent me an email announcing it was their 100th anniversary. I’ve dealt with them before – they’ve always made more flavors than you’ll ever see in the stores, but I wasn’t prepared for just how many they do make. I splurged on a sampler pack of flavors designed to go with coffee, and the white chocolate was one of those. Also, I stepped away from the computer for a while because the mouse I am now using is one that you never have to change the battery, but you do have to charge it periodically, and it ran out of charge. It’s charged now obviously, since this post is up. I hope y’all had as peaceful a day as mine, whatever, if anything, you celebrate.
This, by Marc Elias, was recommended by Joyce Vance a few days ago, and I put it aside until after Christmas. Maybe I should have put it aside until after New Year’s Day, hoping we would all gather more strength by then to grasp it and act on it. But here it is. I have to hope that he is at least correct in not expecting us to have a full-blown fascist government. I am not so confident.
Heather Cox Richardson on the history of polarization in the United States, starting with Nixon. To my mind she omits the one thing Gingrich did which had the most dire consequences, although there is plenty of evidence without it. (He removed the requirement for Congressfolk to maintain a residence in DC. Yes, that could be reinstated, but it would take far longer to build trust back again than it required to deteriorate it.)
Yesterday, I considered starting a crockpot, but decided against it. Instead, I did a little knitting – very little and not really necessary, just a short flurry of mild OCD. But nonetheless satisfying.
I’m not thrilled to be sharing negative news on Christmas – but it won’t hurt to know a little more about the Georgia case, from Harry Litman at Talking Feds.
If you have been wishing for a recipe for a holiday cookie (I say holiday because her family celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah, and I’m not sure which tradition this comes from. I suspect Hanukkah but could be wrong), Joyce Vance has you covered. They sound quite decadent. I can figure out a substitute I could use for the flour that I could have, but, although I’ve been collecting information on egg substitutes, I’m not sure about that one. Also, there’s no need to go to the linked article she recommends, since I’ll be using it tomorrow.
Yesterday – actually Sunday night, but I saw it yesterday – Heather Cox Richardson had very little to say, but that little was mighty. She wrote about John Trumbull, hired to provide new art for the Rotunda after the War of 1812, being asked to recommend subject matter, and his response. He chose the moment of Washington’s resignation of his commission in 1783. “Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily giving up power rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.” I hope to heaven that when the Apricot Antichrist dies – and he will, sooner or later – that it is in some place or under such circumstances that we can avoid having his corpse lie in state in that very Rotunda. Such as maybe consumed in a fire. Or lost at sea and the body not found. Or falling out of a window in Russia and Putin refuses to release the body. I know, compared to all his destruction, it’s a small thing. But I really hate the idea of his presence, even dead, contaminating that room and that memory. Yesterday for real, President Biden commuted 37 federal death sentences (out of 40) to life without parole. Also, the House Ethics Committee’s report on Matt Gaetz was released to the public, thanks to two Republicans on the Committee, one from New York, one from Ohio, who voted (some time ago, apparently) with Democrats to release it after adjournment. I haven’t looked at it yet – but if there turns out to be more than I already know, it must be damning. If anyone wants it as a Christmas gift, here it is.
Yes, this is from Friday, and we know now that a CR was passed in the House and the Senate and signed Saturday, which we didn’t know then. But Robert Reich is still worth reading, because, with or without a shutdown, we still have battles ahead.
On Saturday night, Joyce Vance wrote about what is happening to Liz Cheney, why it shouldn’t be, and why it is anything but normal. She writes as a former prosecutor, and clarifies why no sane Attorney General and no sane judge would even consider prosecuting Liz Cheney. Since we are all expecting an Attorney General who is not sane, and also since, thanks to Republicans, so many judges are not sane either, I want to pont out that the Senate’s current push to confirm as many Biden-nominated judges as possible is probably the most influential thing which is actually possible to rectify that at this time.
Yesterday, Trinette came by and took out my trash and recycling (for once I had more trash than recycling), changed a light bulb, brought me a Christmas card, and then we chatted. It’s always so good to visit with her.
Rebecca Schoenkopf, the original (and current owner and publisher of) Wonkette, is pissed. And I believe rightly so. Elon Musk claims to support free speech – and means “as long as you agree with him.” Substack actually practices free speech – by not censoring or in any observable way even suggesting they might have an opinion on subject matter produced by a Substacker otherwise eligible, and now this. Rebecca puts it better than I would (and not only because the knows more in the subject from the inside – she’s also a better writer.) It would not surprise me if Substack were very soon to become the main source for people to get their – without their needing to distinguish fact from fiction – because anyone can pick and choose to whom they will subscribe – and there’s very full range. And it’s free. Sure, you can gat a paid subscription and get some extras – but you don’t have to. I have six free subscriptions, not counting the subscriptions to Wonkette, Talking Points Memo, and others who post as groups rather than as individuals), and it doesn’t cost me a dime. Read or skim Rebecca’s rant and see what you think.
Wolves and Sheep is a Substack which I don’t subscribe to, but Chris Bowers, who is connected with it, has started sending me newsletters of his own, and one of them included this, and I found it worth sharing. It really would be terrible if Democrats, buth elected and unelected, started acting like Republicans. I question whether life would even be worth living were that to happen. That said, that doesn’t mean we can’t take some tips.
Yesterday, I awoke to find that we have a continuing resolution. I can’t be certain that the F News coverage is the pest on the details, but it’s pretty darned good (should I have said pretty effing good?) so here’s the link. This doesn’t mean I won’t have articles or videos on the potential shutdown for the next couple of days – because there were a few which I thought had continuing value. Meanwhile, the radio opera was Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” in an abridged form and in English (in the spring they’ll broadcast the full one in German and will call it “Die Zauberflöte“). It’s a lot of fun – for adults also – especially in this Julie Taymor production with wretchedly excessive costumes and puppets. It’s designed to appeal to kids, but adults can enjoy is just as well – maybe even better. This opera is famos outside the opera world for the Queen of the Night’s aria (in German, “Die holle Rache,” and known by pro musicians as “The holy racket,” which is not unfitting.) But there are many wonderful tunes in it besides that one. Here’s a whole page of pictures which may give you an idea of the spectacle.
Andy Borowitz has what he calls a “starter kit” to boycott. I’m way ahead of him on all four, and I don’t feel even a smidgen deprived.
This from Wonkette qualifies, I believe, as good news. I will note that the author, “Doktor Zoom,” recently leased an EV and he loves it and, in his own words, “won’t stop talking about it.” So he’s admittedly not unbiased. But pretty much everyone at Wonkette is biased in one way or another, but they all appear to retain the ability to distinguish fact from fiction, even from theory.
Yesterday, Steve Schmidt had this to say about Elon Musk. It’s short, and it’s painfully humorous, as only dumb-criminal-level stupidity can be. So I’m throwing it in as an extra. Also the Talking Points Memo compared Congress to pro wrestling. Happy Solstice to all who celebrate!
As Heather Cox Richardson points out, last Monday, actual President Joe Biden designated a new national monument in honor of Frances Perkins, secretary of labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She deserves it. Much of what FDR achieved was due to her ideas and her pushing for them. Almost everything which os keeping us alive (certainly what is keeping me alive) was her concept and promoted by her. Every human being in America should rejoice at her getting a National Monument. Sadly, too many white men (no, not all not by a long shot, but still way too many) are doing their best to make themselves inhuman in the name of “masculinity.”
This article from Lawfare was referred to me by Talking Points Memo. I’m sharing it because it addresses my own biggest worries about a second Trump** administration, and that is that we are going to lose some battles, and it’s not predictable which battles they are going to be. And a big part of that is because we are going to have to pick the hills we are willing to die on. And that is at least in part because there are only 100 Senators, and only about half of them are Democrats. Steve Schmidt for one is saying we must fight hard against everything, and he is not alone. And I would love to be able to do that – but it simply is not going to be possible.
I’m sure everyone is familiar with the figure of justice, whose statue stand outside or inside many courthouses – not just the home of SCOTUS. But you may or may not know that the has a name and a history, Her name is Themis, and she is the daughter of Uranus and Gases(heaven and earth.) She was also the second wife of Zeus (his first wife, Juno, being notorious for her jealousy, which may partly explain why Themis is little known) and as such was the mother of the Hours, the Fates, and others. She was the goddess of law, cosmic order (equity), and oracular knowledge. Lawyers and law students know of her because her name is also the name of an online school which helps students cramming for their bar exams. She has been having a rough time lately, what with MAGA and other Talibangelical Christians who seem to think they can trifle with her.
Why do I bring her up in connection with an article on, among other things, Jubilee? Well, for one thing, sometimes true justice must be and is administered outside the courts. But as the Goddess of cosmic order, I think she would appreciate that.
Jubilee is not a Greek word; it presumably comes from Hebrew since it (the word and the concept) first appear, to my knowledge, in the complex details of Mosaic law. That law established the certain years would be years of Jubilee and all kinds of things must be done – probably any one of which would trouble the wealthy. Things like freeing slaves and canceling all debts. This article covers how at least some enslaved people in the United States were able to use the holiday season for individual Jubilees. (One of the songs from the period is even named “Jubilo.”) And then I’ll have a little more to say about Jubilee years.
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For enslaved people, the holiday season was a time for revelry – and a brief window to fight back
Adolphe Duperly’s painting depicting the destruction of the Roehampton Estate in Jamaica during the Baptist War in January 1832. Wikimedia Commons
During the era of slavery in the Americas, enslaved men, women and children also enjoyed the holidays. Slave owners usually gave them bigger portions of food, gifted them alcohol and provided extra days of rest.
Those gestures, however, were not made out of generosity.
As abolitionist, orator and diplomat Frederick Douglass explained, slave owners were trying to keep enslaved people under control by plying them with better meals and more downtime, in the hopes of preventing escapes and rebellions.
Most of the time, it worked.
But as I discuss in my recent book, “Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery,” many enslaved people were onto their owners and used this brief period of respite to plan escapes and start revolts.
Feasting, frolicking and fiddling
Most enslaved people in the Americas adhered to the Christian calendar – and celebrated Christmas – since either Catholicism or Protestantism predominated, from Birmingham, Alabama, to Brazil.
Consider the example of Solomon Northup, whose tragic story became widely known in the film “12 Years A Slave.” Northup was born free in the state of New York but was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana in 1841.
In his narrative, Northup explained that his owner and their neighbors gave their slaves between three and six days off during the holidays. He described this period as “carnival season with the children of bondage,” a time for “feasting, frolicking, and fiddling.”
According to Northup, each year a slave owner in central Louisiana’s Bayou Boeuf offered a Christmas dinner attended by as many as 500 enslaved people from neighboring plantations. After spending the entire year consuming meager meals, this marked a rare opportunity to indulge in several kinds of meats, vegetables, fruits, pies and tarts.
Isaac Mendes Belisario’s ‘Band of the Jaw-Bone John-Canoe’ (1837). Slavery Images
There’s evidence of holiday celebrations since the early days of slavery in the Americas. In the British colony of Jamaica, a Christmas masquerade called Jonkonnu has taken place since the 17th century. One 19th-century artist depicted the celebration, painting four enslaved men playing musical instruments, including a container covered with animal skin, along with an instrument made from an animal’s jawbone.
“Every child rises early on Christmas morning to see the Johnkannaus,” she wrote. “Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction.”
On Christmas Day, she continued, nearly 100 enslaved men paraded through the plantation wearing colorful costumes with cows’ tails fastened to their backs and horns decorating their heads. They went door to door, asking for donations to buy food, drinks and gifts. They sang, danced and played musical instruments they had fashioned themselves – drums made of sheepskin, metal triangles and an instrument fashioned from the jawbone of a horse, mule or donkey.
It’s the most wonderful time to escape
Yet beneath the revelry, there was an undercurrent of angst during the holidays for enslaved men, women and children.
In the American South, enslavers often sold or hired out their slaves in the first days of the year to pay their debts. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, many enslaved men, women and children were consumed with worry over the possibility of being separated from their loved ones.
At the same time, slave owners and their overseers were often distracted – if not drunk – during the holidays. It was a prime opportunity to plan an escape.
John Andrew Jackson was owned by a Quaker family of planters in South Carolina. After being separated from his wife and child, he planned to escape during the Christmas holiday of 1846. He managed to flee to Charleston. From there, he went north and eventually reached New Brunswick in Canada. Sadly, he was never able to reunite with his enslaved relatives.
Even Harriet Tubman took advantage of the holiday respite. Five years after she successfully escaped from the Maryland plantation where she was enslaved, she returned on Christmas Day in 1854 to save her three brothers from a life of bondage.
‘Tis the season for rebellion
Across the Americas, the holiday break also offered a good opportunity to plot rebellions.
In 1811, enslaved and free people of color planned a series of revolts in Cuba, in what became known as the Aponte Rebellion. The scheming and preparations took place between Christmas Day and the Day of Kings, a Jan. 6 Catholic holiday commemorating the three magi who visited the infant Jesus. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, free people of color and enslaved people joined forces to try to end slavery on the island.
In April, the Cuban government eventually smashed the rebellion.
In Jamaica, enslaved people followed suit. Samuel Sharpe, an enslaved Baptist lay deacon, called a general strike on Christmas Day 1831 to demand wages and better working conditions for the enslaved population.
Two nights later, a group of enslaved people set fire to a trash house at an estate in Montego Bay. The fire spread, and what was supposed to be a strike instead snowballed into a violent insurrection. The Christmas Rebellion – or Baptist War, as it became known – was the largest slave revolt in Jamaica’s history. For nearly two months, thousands of slaves battled British forces until they were eventually subdued. Sharpe was hanged in Montego Bay on May 23, 1832.
After news of the Christmas Rebellion and its violent repression reached Britain, antislavery activists ramped up their calls to ban slavery. The following year, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which prohibited slavery in the British Empire.
Yes, the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day offered a chance to feast or plot rebellions.
But more importantly, it served as a rare window of opportunity for enslaved men, women and children to reclaim their humanity.
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As I said, Mosaic law established years of Jubilee, during which, essentially, everyone had a chance to start over, freed from obligations. I did not check my memory against the Bible, but IIRC, it was every fiftieth year. But if Pope Francis wants to make it every 25th tear, I’m all for it. And apparently he does. Because he has invited me to join a Zoom call on planning for Jubilee 2025 (the last one was Jubilee 2000.) And that call is happening Monday, December 23. I didn’t get an invitation because I am special – I’m not – I assume it’s because I have signed petitions for justice that I got on the list. So I am extending it further to all of you.
Here’s the description:
“Live from St. Peter’s Square, Jubilee and Caritas Internationalis leaders hold a press conference to launch campaigns on debt relief in 160 countries for Jubilee 2025. The December 23rd St. Peter’s press conference explains the themes of debt cancellation lifted for special Jubilee Years among faith communities. The high-level press panel takes place 24 hours before Pope Francis begins Jubilee 2025 by opening the Holy Jubilee Doors and Calls for global debt relief for our people and our planet.
And here’s when it starts on Zoom:
December 23, 2024 | Rome: 3:00 PM – Accra: 2:00 PM – Rio de Janeiro: 11:00 AM – Washington DC: 9:00 AM [EST, 8:00 AM Central, 7:00 AM Mountain, 6:00 AM Pacific – and I believe 5:00 AM Alaska and 4:00 AM Hawaii.]
And here’s how to get the Zoom link:
Go to https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZKbW9lh_ULG-poup0aCHHyXTViC-gXCZE-Aihlu_Mz94BCg/viewform Fill in your email address – click the circular box that says “Virtually” – add your name and a couple of other items, and you’ll be sent a live link. If you have never Zoomed before, you’ll b taken to a place where you can get their app, which takes up very little space on your computer and doesn’t mess with anything there; if you have Zoomed before this shouldn’t be necessary. And there you are.
If you have doubts that there are still any real Christians left, especially in major denominations (and I’m the first to admit that the Catholic Right is horrendous), maybe even just knowing this is happening may help alleviate them.
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