Acceptance of diversity

I watched the Oscars last night, all the way to the crazy mix-up for Best Picture. I’m delighted to see the Academy got over the Oscars So White thing from the last couple years with Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay going to Moonlight, a film about a gay black kid (double bonus!); both supporting actor awards going to black actors; best feature documentary going to the story of a black man (though since it is O.J. Simpson that may or may not be good); and the Best Animated Feature going to Zootopia, which is about the acceptance of difference.

My favorite for animated short won (you can probably find Piper on You Tube) and Sing, my second-favorite live action short, won. It is good because it is about standing up to misused authority.



This blog is setting a new record in page views this month with more than 4600. Recent months were 1508 for January, 2008 for December, and 2113 in July. The previous all-time high was 2790 in September 2013. February got a big boost with 843 page views on the 3rd, 1103 in the 4th, and 1278 on the 8th. I’ve previously gotten big spikes near the beginning of the month, but not this big. These previous spikes came from Russia. This one came from the United States.

Of course, I won’t know for a while whether this is a one-time spike or a continuing surge in readers. I also don’t know how accurate Blogger’s readership stats are.



A personal milestone: I retired from the auto industry 10 years ago. In that time I’ve done a lot of composing and had a five-year career in teaching which, I hope, I can continue sometime soon.



The beginning of Dustin Lance Black’s documentary When We Rise, a reenactment of the LGBT civil rights movement is this evening on TV. Black is gay and a prominent screenwriter. He wrote the movie Milk about the life of Harvey Milk and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. He said he made this new show specifically for people like his kin – a family that is Christian, Southern, and military. The whole thing is 8 hours, or 2 hours each evening. I’m set to record this evening’s episode.

The series was originally slated to run Monday-Thursday this week. But it switched to Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday because the nasty guy will be addressing members of Congress on Tuesday evening to urge them to pass a religious freedom protection act, recognized as a license to discriminate against LGBT people, though it also includes provisions to encourage discrimination against unwed mothers.

Pardon me while I go turn off the irony alarm.