Yesterday, the radio opera was Puccini’s “La Boheme” – a very short and very tragic opera which was the first vinyl recorded opera I ever bought – and then within ten years bought again with a different cast afer the lead tenor in the second recording died – because he – Richard Tucker – was such a legend I was afraid if I didn’t buy it right away it would sell out. It’s short – without intermissions it’s under two hours – but it packs a punch. Also, as is only to be expected at my age, during the broadcast I learned of the death of someone else I cared about – bass Paul Plishka, who I mentioned in passing a while ago while talking about the Kennedy Center. At least he didn’t die young -he had a 51 year career, and left a legacy which includes a reputation for kindness to all but particularly to young (nervous) singers. Rest in peace, Paul. Next week I’ll gave more to say about the opera, which will have the theme of courageous opposition to political corruption (and political revenge.) Also yesterday I was (and still am) coping with changing my email address – and preparing to visit Virgil today. But I’ll manage to check in in a comment as always. Also, I put in a substitute for Belle today – Rocky Mountain Mike – to keep it upbeat. I hope he gives you a chuckle.
This from Colorado Public Radio is a bit on the old side, but since it’s still in the early stages I don’t think that matters. I kind of hope to be around to see the finished project. One thing, no one on this project would censor a military history photo of the “Enola Gay,” which the current administration is doing, for heaven’s sake.
This comes from Democratic Underground, and it’s not exactly news – in fact it’s from prehistory – but it is hard evidence (literally hard) that love transcends time. The farther I read into it, the more deeply I was touched. And you can see from the comments that that was a common response.
Yesterday, I started working on setting up my new email inbox with folders and changing the address on all my newsletter subscriptions. Most of them, there is no way without unsubscribing and resubscribing, so I did a fair amount of that (and I’m not done.) Fortunately, I did find a way to change my address for all my Substack subscriptions in one place. That would have been a day’s work in itself. And then migrating my contacts is going to be even worse. But I’m getting closer. In case I didn’t give y’all the new email, it is jvdix@tutamail.com. I’m probably the only one here who would like it, but for me it’s as close to perfect as it gets. Simple, good sized print, white space as needed and not more (he white space they added in Yahoo was more than twice the space of the print.) I did take a few minutes for sanity’s sake to look at Democratic Underground, where I discovered that a wide variety of Trump** voodoo dolls are now available.
And this from ProPublica contains a number of articles, all of which would be front page above the fold news if it weren’t for us currently having an administration which is a mob under the mob boss President and being supported by the mobsters in Congress, and even by non-mobsters who have no idea how to deal with a mob.
This is from People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch newsletter, so naturally it is outrageous. I don’t like to use the word “demonic” because they fling it so often at us, but on the other hand, we know how how they project, and it really does feel that strong to me.
Yesterday, as if I needed another problem, Yahoo Mail decided to change its format to onw which is completely unacceptable. So, if you have me in your contacts, please change my email address to jvdix@tutamail.com. I’ll have to have the yahoo account open for a while because for at least some things I subscribe to the only way the change the address is subscribe under the new address and unsubscribe under the old one – and there doesn’t seem to be any simple way to transfer contacts. Because I work ahead you can expect new posts for a few days at least – and if I need to take some days off, I recommend checking at one of the following – Talking Points Memo, The Contrarian, or ProPublica. The first two are good at looking at and picking up a wide spectrum of news. The last is strong on doing its own investigations and digging up the dirt. Y’all mostly also have your own sources and may not need to come here, and that’s fine. I’m subbing a Randy Rainbow for Belle today to give myself an extra day’s time – I have started it just after the advertising – but his sponsor, Ground News appears to be another good general source, so there’s that.
Steve Schmidt has a daughter who is a career skiier. After JD Vance went skiing, she sent this rant to her dad, who published it Wednesday. (When I saw the title, I thought of “jerry” as being the World War II term for Nazis among English speaking allied countries. But it is a skiing term and apparently unrelated to the WWII usage.) I find a righteous rant cathartic – if you don’t, feel free to skip this one.
I didn’t watch the State of the Union address Tuesday. I have enough trouble watching speeches by people who are competent. I also figured if I was encouraging my Dem Senators to boycott it (which they didn’t), I was more than justified in doing so myself. I did, after the fact, hear about Al Green, though not in as much detail as here in The F* News, including the details of the consequences and/or lack thereof for comparable acts historically. I think it’s important to give him credit for the courage which so many of our elected representatives in both Houses seem to lack. Of course they have voted to censure him. Barf.
And speaking of attention – certainly any honest outlet (which Axios more or less is) which came upon this information is doing the right thing to release it immediately. But I can’t help but wonder how much of it will disappear in the fallout from the SotU and other distractions.
Yesterday, a petition I signed for Care2 reminded me vividly of “The Kennel Murder Mystery,” a Philo Vance mystery by S.S. Van Dine. The Vance novels are not for everyone, not even for every mystery fan. The series ran in the 1920s and 1930a, and in the 1920s it was the fashion for young men of some means to be eccentric, and Vance was probably the most eccentric, to the point that this jingle became what we would today call viral: “Philo Vance/needs a kick in the pance.” (Off topic, but wouldn’t that work nicely with the substitution of J.D. for Philo?) The Kennel Murder Mystery is from the 30’s and one critic said it was the best of the later ones because it was a locked room mystery and because in it Vance was “less unbearably obnoxious than usual.” But I digress. From time to time a petition, particularly one involving dog abuse, will remind me of this novel, and the look in the eyes of the dog in this photo pushed that button. The content in question is in Chapter 19 (or XIX), and i see the link I copied should take you directly to that chapter – but it doesn’t. But putting “As we approached the western entrance to the park” take you right to the place to start. There are several points to stop at, but when Vance says he wants to talk to Liang, the episode is as over as it’s going to get. I went a bit farther and found this quote from Lao-Tzu: “he who abuses the weak is eventually destroyed by his own weakness.” It might make a decent protest poster.
On Monday, I received a “Damn-giver Dispatch” from John Pavlovitz, and decided I needed more. So I signed up for a free subscription to his Substack (“The Beautiful Mess”) When I got there and started looking, I discovered that one of his posts there has been picked up by MoveOn and turned into a petition – not that it’s asking for anything, but to provide a vehicle to get it to the person to whom it is addressed, and to express the number of people who are in agreement. He certainly speaks for me, so of course I signed it. The link here is to the column – the petition link is at the bottom (before the comments). speaking of Substack, I seem to remember when I started linking to Substack articles and the “please subscribe” request looked like a paywall, saying something like “Please get adjusted because this thing is growing so fast that just about everyone who has something helpful to say will be on it.” Well, I also got an email from Theater of War – and checked the email address – and yup TOW is now on Substack. [The Pavlovitz and the ProPublics article below were intended for Tuesday.]
ProPublica’s weekly “The Big Story” newsletter from Saturday was just packed with news, most of which others are not covering. Fortunately, they provide a “view in browser” link – which as you know not everyone does.
I don’t suppose anyone here doesn’t know this now. Although you may not know just how far back it goes. Evan Hurst with Wonkette also has his own Substack, titled “The Moral High Ground.” Having that mind set, he sees things which other sometimes miss.
Yesterday, The computer I keep the most up to date things on still wasn’t booting. I did some looking up on the other computer, did a little playing around in the system settings, and surprisingly (at least to me) got it to boot. Checking what I did against what I had planned, I hadn’t done too badly. I’m including a few items today which were lost from yesterday, and the rest tomorrow. Thanks for bearing with me. One thing I did fail to mention is that Trinette has been unwell for a bit over a week now – she is getting better, but it’s slow. I’m sure she would appreciate prayers, healing vibes, or however you communicate with the universe (and I would also appreciate on her behalf.)
Heather Cox Richardson from (late) Saturday and including a previously aired interview even older. But some things take time to reveal themselves, and I think this may be one.
Wonkette got the title wrong – it’s clear from the article the correct figure is $2,400 a year. Which makes it even more disgusting that it was blocked. Wealthy people already get a free ride. But they still want even more.
Wonkette is singing my song. Someone should respond to some of these gripes with something like “Tell me you are both ignorant and insecure without telling me you are both ignorant and insecure.” Also, I have noticed (and I never use the phone for anything which can be done by email) that companies are NOT using “Press 1 for English” or anything similar in their menus – haven’t for years. They do have “Press 5 [or whatever] for Spanish,” but it’s clear English is assumed to be the default. If these snowflakes didn’t know that, they can’t be using phones for personal business much, if at all. Also, with regard to the poster from World War II, I might point out that, in a war, if no one on our side can “speak the enemy’s language,” it is impossible to get any kind of intelligence, which almost certainly will cost lives. That is why the Diné code talkers were such game changers. (It’s pretty easy to tell when something pushes my buttons, isn’t it.
Yesterday, for maybe a second and a half, my power went out. I only had to set one clock (so far), and I don’t think I lost any unsaved data, but I couldn’t get in to find out because of the “no operating system” error. I’ve had that before, and, given enough time, it goes away. But in case it doesn’t do so fast enough, I thought I’d better prepare this backup. If it comes back in time, I’ll post my original plan and you’ll never see this.
The 19th gives us a twofer here – as the end of Black History Month meets the beginning of Women’s History Month.
This Morning Memo from Talking Points Memo was a part of my original plan, and I remember saying I wouldn’t comment because there’s too much in it and it would take both me and y’all all day to cope with it if I tried. And that’s still true.
The Week Ahead by Joyce Vance is from Sunday night, but she skips Monday and starts on Tuesday, and I remember including it for today. Opiion seems to be divided over sites I visit as to whether all DEmocrats should stay away or whether all should attend and boo in chorus when appropriate.
Yesterday, I signed a couple of petitions for LeftClick, which is now using Care2 as a platform, at least sometimes, and at least these two. Both were addressed to the people of Ukraine. Both were offering apologies to them and expressing support. One was for the Mango Monster being an idiot. The other was for the Hillbilly Huckster being a jerk. Both expressed something like “We know you don’t need this, especially when you are fighting for your existence.” Seldom have I been in so much and so passionate agreement with a petition – and I’ve been passionate about a lot that I have signed. Also, is anyone here interested in getting stickers of Trump** saying “I did that!” to put on products ot product labels showing highly inflated prices, or closed federal buildings, or any other indicator of a catastrophe which this administration is responsible for? Progressive Change Campaign Committee is offering them for as little as a $5 donation. Check out the offer at ActBlue. Oh, and the night before the volcano went off in the White House, Mary Trump and Alex Vindman did a live streamed convo on Substack which is now available to all, here (it’s about an hour, but there’s a transcript).
Well, this from HuffPost is not exactly encouraging – but it certainly is honest. And honesty, integrity, truth are the first steps to ending authoritarian regimes. And at the site of the article was a link to this story, which graphically shows what it looks like.
Yes I realize this news from The F* News is news from last week. I’ll always try to get critical breaking news up when I can (probably mostly in comments since I do work ahead as much as possible), but when I can’t get it to you that fast I go for analysis, clarity, and attitude.
Yesterday, the radio opera was Bizet’s “Carmen.” I doubt I have to say anything about the plot, but this is a recording from 2010 wth Robertu Alagna and Elīna Garanča, which may have been a Live in HD presentation, and if it was, I saw it on television, back in the day when it was easy to get multiple channels without cable. You may laugh at what I remember … but one of the features in the production was that as Don Josê got farther and farther from respectability, they want to show that his hair had grown. (Wigs are nothing new at the Met – many people with perfectly good hair use them, and sometimes a production will require one or more as in this production.) By the time they got to act four it was a wig at or a little below the shoulder. Between the stage business and the lighting, it made Alagna look like Alan Rickman playing Snape. (If you have read the last book and/or seen the last two movies, you know that killing the woman he loved is NOT something Snape would ever have done, no matter how jealous he was.) I know the opera well – have even played second violin in a college orchestra in the seventies (not well I’m afraid, but I worked hard.) If I hadn’t I would have been so distracted I’d have completely lost the plot. I even found an email address for the lighting designer and asked whether that was in tended (it wasn’t. And it’s impossible to predict what people will actually see in a production.) If I’m right, and that’s the same one, it was enough to make me forget Barbara Frittoli and Teddy Tahu Rhodes (there is an actual website called “Barihunks,” and he is one). On another subject, I want to mention “Americans of Conscience.” This is a good site to have in your playbook, especially if you are fit and wanting to do something but don’t know what. Even I, who have issues these days with activity, can find something in their site – in their gratitude section, I can send thank you notes to people who have displayed courage and doing the right thing. I would look at their cookies and opt out of the non-necessary ones, but then I mostly do that anyway. They use WordPress, as do we, so they may already have anything they would collect. In Friday’s email they listed five people to thank and I thanked four of them – I could not bring myself to thank Susan Collins for voting the right way on a Trump** nominee. Had her vote prevailed, I might have, but it didn’t. One other thing – After finding the Ukrainian government’s GoFundMe-like site Friday, I subscribed to it, and yesterday I got the first email from it. They are not letting any grass grow under their feet. They are making 100 Tshirts with this quote from Zelenskyy’s – whatever it’s called when someone is attacked by a mob – Friday: “I’ll wear the costume when this war is over.” And anyone who donates from the email (or possibly just at the website for a limited time) will be entered into a drawing for one.
Wonkette‘s story here is I think mixed rather than totally good. But it does have enough smiles in it that I wanted to share it.
This, also from Wonkette, I consider very good. It’s a little less new, but I hope worth waiting for. I’m not crazy about the point of law on which they based the decision, which is that in order to vacate a conviction the defendant’s constitutional rights must have been violated in some way. And this is almost certainly not the time nor the Congress to ask to pass a law that a conviction may be vacated if there is proof of actual innocence even if there wasa just a good faith mistake. But maybe that’s something to look at.
This is from USA Today, and I would not have seen it had not Faithful America referred me to it. But I’d say it’s good news as far as it goes. It would be better news if there were anyone in this Justice Department who would enforce it (or allow it to be enforced.)
