This is Boulder from up in the mountain park. This view is as close as I could find, but it isn’t as beautiful and it definitely needs a hawk. Still…
I have the fondest memories of my brief time spent in Boulder, Colorado in the summer of 1985. I was 20 years old and On The Road.
I remember seeing the first Ashrams I’d ever come across. Though unusual in my limited experience, their presence gave me a cosmopolitan sense of security and serenity. There were several here with mystically-odd-sounding Eastern names, like Way of the Lotus, or Green Mountain Enlightenment Center. They were perched on street corners like watching sentinels, the way the First Baptists and Third Presbyterians are in towns back on the East Coast where I’m from.
At almost any time of day, I would notice little knots of 10-12 orange-arrayed buddhist practitioners moving together through the streetscape like bright, humming basketballs rolling through the kaleidoscope of pedestrians. Especially so on the weekends when the normally serene downtown park, usually frequented only by frisbee throwing tie-dyed hippies, became a veritable street fair. From the right vantage point, you could monitor three or four orange balls of slightly different hues; the distinctive robes signifying disciples from different ashrams. They moved along in the crowds like competing characters in a PacMan game, gliding as single entities pausing only to sell flowers to passers-by.
Throngs of happy people crowded in, and the aromas of food trucks, and music on the air, reminded me of the Stumptown Festival of my boyhood in my hometown of Matthews. The park at something and Broadway with idyllic Boulder Creek running through it (every Western town I visited had a downtown park at something and Broadway) became Central Park West. Those scenes of living innocence, peace and safety, and harmony, and happiness, and good vibes, will forever live in my mind.
On my last Sunday in town, I was invited to attend the wedding of a giddy young couple who were friends of friends. Mind you, having been there less than a month, everyone was a ”new friend” to me, but as hippies and DeadHeads, we were instant family in a way I’ve never experienced as part of any other community.
Early in the morning, maybe twenty of us attended the ceremony high up on the scenic overlook above the town. The Native American who performed the ceremony deemed it a ”good match” and a ”good omen” when a hawk flew out, gliding lazily into view over the backdrop of the sleepy town on the prairie floor, just as he pronounced the lovestruck pair man and wife.
That was a good omen. That was a good day.
That’s the Boulder of my youth. Lovers kissing on a mountain with a hawk circling overhead in approval. That’s the Boulder that I’ll remember, even though the image of peaceful, hippy town was murdered yesterday along with the poor people and policeman who lost their lives to a deranged gunman.
My God. May the people of Boulder lift their eyes up unto the Mountains, from whence their help comes. There is no help but in You, Maker of Heaven and Earth.
I saw a revealing article this morning about a French actress stripping bare on a stage during an awards ceremony with the words ”No Culture, No Future” written on her front.
French actress Corinne Masiero stands naked on stage next to French actress and Master of Ceremony Marina Fois – BERTRAND GUAY /AFP
I beg to differ with her view. Without getting into the weeds about her own protest, which really seems to be relegated to whether French people should have the right to crowd into movie theaters together, regardless of whether they make each other sick and possibly dead, I’m quite positive there will be a future, with or without culture, unless there aren’t enough people left to attend.
I will spare you the photos of my own planned protest. I have in mind to use some of Beth’s lipstick and write across my ample front, ”No People, No Culture” as a repartee.
This brings up one of the most troubling basic premises of Darwinian evolutionary theory. He posits the maxim survival of the fittest to describe those members of a species able to remain in the gene pool and pass on their genetic material to insure the species survives.
Western culture seems determined to have a PASS/FAIL test as to the veracity of this theory. Like, this year.
It’s already troubling to me that what is supposed to be one of the smartest sub-groups of our species has developed technology that, if deployed, would assure the destruction of our species. So, there’s that.
Then, there’s the current fact that a significant portion of our fellow homo sapiens seem hell-bent on deploying brilliant and ”free” behaviors to the same end.
This begs the question, what is fitness, n’est pas?
Obviously, nuclear physicists need not apply.
And the shrinking freedom brigade is cancelling itself by its own proficiency at using freedom to kill off a large number of its practitioners.
This ”give me liberty, or give me death” crowd seems too ideologically pure to be bothered with the concern that they’re killing a lot of the rest of us, too. Maybe a better mantra for these folks would be, ”give me liberty, or give everybody death.”
It’s becoming apparent that anyone who would rather die, or kill someone else, than wear a piece of fabric over their mouth and nose when they’re near other people doesn’t meet another of Darwin’s fitness qualifications either, that of adaptability.
I like Me & Bobby McGee as much as the next fellow, but come on, now, that’s pushing the chorus a little far.
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’? Literally? Click the link above for some culture. Photo is screenshot of video. Thanks YouTube.
Forgive me, but I think there’s a pretty simple sequence here: People before Economy and, People before Culture, and People Before Freedom. Seems right. Check me if I’m wrong.
For my math nerd friends: People>Freedom>Economy>Culture
I’ve got plenty of room to scrawl No People, No Economy on my backside. Heck, there’s probably room to get No People, No Freedom drawn on too. That way, I too, can have my moment of performance-art protest fame.
Note: I’m gonna need help writing this on myself. If those persons who helped write on the bare ass cheeks of those other Darwinian genii, the Proud Boys, could give a guy a hand, I’d be much obliged.
Screenshot capture of widely available video. (Someone wrote with that marker, y’all)
Note on note: I got a good chuckle when looking for the image above when I saw that those pretty yellow plaid kilts were made by a gay-owned Virginia company, Verillas, known for its support for the LGBTQ community. Has anyone noticed any Proud Boys Indeed job postings for the position of ”Kilt Procurement”?
Walter Cronkite, signing off for the last time in 1981
Saturday, March 6, marked the fortieth anniversary of Walter Cronkite signing off the air for the last time.
And that’s the way it is.
1981…No worldwide, omnipresent internet…no social media…CNN less than a year old. No news on FOX (well, that hasn’t changed), but, otherwise, it’s a different world.
I’m old enough to remember Walter Cronkite as the consummate newsman. He was trusted.
The anniversary got me thinking about how the word ”news” came to mean the entire apparatus that discovers, curates, produces, and distributes the stuff occurring during a calendar day. It became weird to me that an adjective got turned into a noun and used this way. We don’t say, I’m gonna be doing some “funs” this weekend, wanna join me? Right? So, I got to pondering.
I figure someone, no doubt a marketer, came up with the word ”news” as shorthand for the Press.
But then, I thought, ”the Press”, is just shorthand for printing press; the actual machine that was used to press print onto a page using manually placed typeset letters, and ink. The cadre of reporters, editors, producers, etc. could have just as easily been called the ”page”, the ”type”, or the ”ink”. But ”press” became the de-facto, catch-all substitute to mean professional journalism, what is also sometimes called the ”fourth estate” .
Hmmm. Let’s think for a minute. At some point in past history, say around the time of the Colonies, there were relatively few printing presses, therefore relatively few public information journals. There were only a few existing publications we now refer to as ”newspapers”, and these were limited by the cost and time involved to set up and print an edition. Maybe they could afford to print a two-column, single sheet broadside, once a week. Then, a time came when the publishers realized if they printed a daily edition of their paper, they could charge more to advertisers, and amortize the costs of hiring teams of full-time typesetters, and the ”Daily” was born.
These caught on because of course readers wanted access to the most current events; at least those deemed fit to print, which often meant print to fit. So phrases like, ”hot off the press”, and ”scoop”, come into vogue. This created a climate in which reporters and papers were always vying with one another for the freshest information, the newer the better.
By 1900, the competition for readers becomes so fierce that papers would print nearly anything as ”News”: not only the newer, the better; the more sensational, the better. The term ”Yellow Journalism” refers to this period. It’s what is commonly called tabloid journalism. Catchy headlines, spotty reporting, and unsubstantiated rumors are the stock-in-trade of this new brand of ”news”.
Warning: Rabbit Trail:Unfortunately, the remnants of yellow journalism practicioners have stuck around to this day, and are in the midst of quite the revival. Scandal-mongering, non-factual-salacious gossip, and fear-and-anger-inducing disinformation sells. Sadly, many people take it seriously. Not only is there now no penalty for lying to the public, lying can actually confer benefits to the liar, especially if the liar(s) can obtain the complicity of ”news” organs to help with propagation of the propaganda. Claim anything you want, stamp ”news” on it, and gain instant credibility with the intellectually lazy. By intellectually lazy I mean anyone who gets their information solely from television and/or the internet. I regard print media as the true, last bastion of serious professional journalists. YMMV.
Finally, the term ”news” is born as that which is reported, distributed, and consumed as the most recent events of the day. It literally gets its meaning from the French plural noun nouvelles used to designate ”things which are new to you”, and ”things you haven’t heard yet.”
This usage of nouvelles first applied to current events in French radio broadcasts. Information could be presented by radio more quickly than by print. This was decades before television became the go-to medium for current events, ”news”.
But, Cable Things Which Are New To You Network, or Cable Things You Haven’t Heard Yet Network, just don’t have the same ring as Cable News Network or the even shorter, CNN.
But presenting only “news” is a dog chasing its tail. Is it okay to sprinkle in some olds for context? Watch news programming, and the most recent information comes with a banner proclaiming, ”BREAKING”. Which, as we know, is to compete with the proliferation of instantaneous information coming from those highly trusted sources Twitter, FacebookLive, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and various live-streaming blogs, which serve as proxies for legitimate, trained, responsible journalists. Yet, most watchers know even when the banner screams, ”BREAKING”, the information could be several hours old. And hours old is hardly current ”news”, right? But ”RE-CYCLED BREAKING NEWS” definitely won’t work as a catchy banner graphic.
I predict it won’t be long before some clever marketer coins a term for ”Nows”.
Anyway, like I began, the anniversary of the legendary and trusted Walter Cronkite signing off for the last time got me thinking about the absurdity of the word ”news” as used for current events media.
I find it amusing that there is such a thing as the ”24hr News Cycle”. That’s shorthand for anything that can capture the attention of the fickle, ADHD public for one day. Not much!
The news cycle is so meaningless (in every sense of the word), that I think I’d rather watch the 24hr Olds Cycle. It would be like watching M*A*S*H* and Kung Fu re-runs in the student lounge at my dorm in college.
Someone could sign on in a deep, serious voice:
Coming up, an hour of things you’ve undoubtedly seen and heard by now. Just in case you missed it on our sister station when it was News, we present the following Olds.
An hour later the same serious baritone could sign off:
What a start to the new year, huh? Last week was momentous, and this week and the next promise more of the same.
The country is reeling from an attempted insurrection on Wednesday, January 6th, incited by the President himself against the Legislative branch of the United States government and inside of the Unites States capital building where the Legislature was engaged in the pro forma certification of the electoral college votes from the states. Terrorist rioters roamed the halls chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and searching for Nancy Pelosi by name.
The resultant aftermath of analysis and hand-wringing has been must-see TV of real-time history.
There are many unknowns this morning:
Will Mike Pence do the right thing and invoke the 25th Amendment?
If done, will half of the remaining cabinet go along?
Will Trump pardon himself, his allies, his children, his cronies, the participants in Wednesday’s coup attempt while he can?
Will the House, under Nancy Pelosi’s speakership adopt and pass Articles of Impeachment?
Will the House adopt provisions under Article 14 to remove seditious representatives?
Will the Senate adopt provision under Article 14 against Senators Cruz and Hawley, possibly others?
Will the Senate convict if the House passes Articles of Impeachment?
Is there enough time left to do any of the above to remove Trump before the January 20th Inauguration date?
How many more Trump staffers and cabinet members will resign this week?
If you tried to write this many storylines and cliffhangers into a fictional television series, you’d be laughed out of the writer’s union.
But here we are. Keep that seat belt fastened. The captain has not turned off the seat-belt sign.
Yesterday, January 6th, 2021 will undoubtedly go down in history as either one of America’s darkest days or as the precursor to the end of American Democracy.
Most Americans, including myself, having grown up here, have also grown accustomed to a cultural bubble from which we look out at the world with a kind of smugness. We may feel ourselves blessed, or we may believe we have an exceptionalism, but we’ve felt an immunity to the kinds of upheaval that we’ve witnessed in other countries and among other cultures.
That smugness is gone. The storming of the Capital will be indelibly etched on the minds of all of us who sat watching it in sickening horror and revulsion. For me, it echoed the feelings of helplessness and disbelief of 9-11.
Yesterday showed that some former-Americans, former brothers and sisters in a shared national family, have been radicalized into something else entirely. That horde has been fed on lies and conspiracy theories. They ingested and internalized them. And yesterday they received marching orders from the President of the United States himself, Donald J. Trump, to ”go to the Capital”. With a religious-military fidelity to his command, they acted to fight back and retake ”their country”. He told them weakness wouldn’t get the job done. They rewarded his belief in them with a ”righteous” show of force.
If you poke your head out of the American cultural bubble, and take off the nationalistic blinders, it is entirely predictable that yesterday’s insurrection was a possibility. We have all been too naive to think this couldn’t have happened here. We don’t build madrassas in the US. It turns out we didn’t need them. Rather, we have FOX, and OAN, twitter, and facebook.
Politicians obviously believe in the idea that they can say things to their followers that the followers will believe. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the politician himself believes it, only that it will be beneficial to the politician to get the follower to believe it.
When a politician preys upon a certain type of individual who may not be the most intellectual, or may not have learned critical thinking skills, or developed the power of healthy skepticism, the politician is treating that kind of follower like one does who trains an attack dog. The politician is conditioning and controlling the follower with the promise a certain type of reward in return for a predictable behavior and response.
Ideologues, demagogues, religious ”prophets”, and con-men have used these techniques to train and control their adherents and ”marks” for centuries. Rarely so in America.
The stormers of the Capital, came to Washington, DC at the behest of their leader, Donald Trump, to prevent the ”theft” of an election he has repeatedly claimed to have been ”stolen from him” and has told them was ”stolen from them”. Many came in para-military garb. Many came armed with weapons that included axe handles, hockey sticks, batons, pistols, and pipe bombs.
They came with flags bearing the name of their Leader, and with flags bearing the symbols of their political ideology. They came having been told they were the true Patriots and the true defenders of Freedom. They believe that about themselves. As all true-believers everywhere, they believe it enough to act on it. At the end of Trump’s speech in front of the White House, he gave the radicalized, weaponized, flag-waving mob the Capital as a target. And off they marched.
Like a well-trained pack of dogs…
What the hell did we think was going to happen?
What the hell do we think will continue to happen over and over again if we allow Trump and all of his complicit conspirators who radicalized this horde and millions just like them all around the country, get away with it scot free?
The correct response can bring this nasty, horrible chapter to an end. My fear is that our leaders are too craven to give the correct response and that yesterday was only the first thread to pulled out of the fabric of our Democracy that will unravel the whole thing.
It’s too early to figure out if it’s the end or beginning, but I know the bubble of naivety has burst.
Today, Sunday, January 3, 2021 is the first day of the first full week of the new year. And a momentous day it is too. Here are a few highlights of the day and the upcoming week.
The new congress will be sworn in making the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives considerably narrower.
Today marks the anniversary of the US killing of Iranian General Qassim Suliemani. There are concerns that Iran may attempt a retaliatory strike against American targets.
Today also marks the beginning of what will certainly turn out to be week of tremendous consequence in the history of the United States:
1) Tuesday is election day in Georgia for both of that state’s senate seats. The Republicans hold the senate majority going into the election by a 50-48 margin. If the two Democrats, Jon Ossof and Raphael Warnock win their special elections, the senate would be split 50-50, with newly elected Vice President, Kamala Harris, a Democrat, holding the tie-breaking vote.
2) Wednesday is the day Congress will tabulate the electoral college votes submitted by the states. All of the states have submitted legally verified electors giving President-Elect Joe Biden a substantial EC victory of 306 votes to 232. This event would ordinarily be pro forma and largely symbolic. But there are rumblings that GOP representatives and senators are planning to challenge the slate of electors submitted by several of the states where Donald Trump lost in an effort to use the procedure to overturn the election and hand it to Trump.
3) Lame Duck President Donald Trump has called for Wednesday to be a day of protests over what he claims is a ”stolen election” in Washington, DC. The MAGA contingent will be joined by members of several right-wing para-military groups including the infamous, ”Proud Boys” who have told their members not to wear their typical black and yellow colors, but instead to blend in amongst the other MAGA protesters. The day could turn violent. Perhaps even violent enough to provide a pretext for Trump to declare martial law in the District of Columbia or even in a broader more general sphere.
