Two different ways of knowing

One of the books I bought in Australia and finished (maybe three weeks ago) is Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, edited by Anita Heiss. Fifty people, teenage to elderly, wrote essays of two to eight pages describing their lives while young. A few are what one might expect from a modern youth – I went to this school and got my dream job or joined a professional sports team.

Most, however, speak of of discrimination. The worst were the older ones who were part of the Stolen Generations. For a while Australia had a policy of trying to Westernize Aboriginal youth. They were taken from their homes and put in boarding schools. They were forbidden to speak their tribal language. Some lighter skinned children, those thought might be able to pass as white, were forbidden from seeing darker skinned siblings. This was a policy similar to those in the United States and in Canada.

Many of the writers had one white parent and one Aboriginal. They talk of one family in the city and one in the bush. There was a frequent list of questions and comments: How much Aboriginal are you? When did you realize you were Aboriginal? You don’t look like an Aborigine. You’ve really done well for an Aboriginal. Do you get the benefits? And some are told they’re too dark to be white and too light to be Aboriginal. One was wisely told by an elder you are not part Aboriginal. You are Aboriginal. You are also Irish.

Don Bemrose is an opera singer. He wrote a letter to his country. Excerpts:

I’m sorry I identify as Gungarri and Aboriginal. I know you would prefer I added ‘part’, ‘quarter’ or some other quantifier to to signify that I’m less than full; to reinforce my lesser status, and as a reminder that my people are to be bred out.

I’m sorry I am neither white, nor black enough for you to easily label or identify me as ‘other.’ I understand how hard it can be for you to be openly funny or casually racist when people like me are around.

I’m sorry I’m not a ‘real Aboriginal’ living in a remote part of Australia, surviving off the land.

Please forgive me for identifying as gay, because I know you hate double and triple minorities, which are such a threat to your monocultural, patriarchal, 1950s utopia.

Please forgive me for not being lazy: I know how you prefer your natives to want nothing but a free handout, but somehow I have become a ‘want-for-nothing’ Aboriginal who lives the best life I can.

Todd Phillips talks of two different ways of knowing. From his Aboriginal family he hears stories of ancestors as he sits to fish with his uncles. Phillips and others talk of fishing at the same spot along the river as their ancestors have done for thousands of years. Quite a connection to the land! He also went to public schools and university. In his mob (Australian word for tribe) the elders were intentional in passing along the ways and knowledge of their people to the youth. These elders told them to think outside the box – beyond professional sports – to consider being doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other professionals. We need our own to be in these professions. Phillips added that his public school teachers had only talked of a life of manual labor. They had never talked of professions and of being role models for the community. Phillips got a PhD in education.

Want us to buy those things?

A few industries are dying because of the buying habits of Millennials. They aren’t buying such things as diamonds. Whitney Spalding Howard, a little too young to be a Millennial, wrote a guest editorial for the Detroit Free Press which appeared last Sunday. Her response is simple: Want us to buy those things? Deal with our economic insecurity. Between student debt and minimum wage jobs that are far from a living wage, we don’t have money for diamonds.

Spoof and love letter

Last evening I went to Detroit’s Fisher Theater to see the show Something Rotten!. Nick Bottom and his brother Nigel have a theater troupe in 1590s London. They’re struggling to survive because Will Shakespeare’s plays are the best in town. And Nick gleefully tells us how much he hates Shakespeare. To stave of Shylock, his creditor, Nick visits Nostradamus. He peers into the future and concludes the best thing to happen in theater will be the musical. In a wonderful and funny song-and-dance Nostradamus shows Nick what a musical is. But what story should this musical be wrapped around? Nick asks Nostradamus to see in the future for Shakespeare’s most famous play. Nostradamus does and comes up with … Omelette. With a side of Danish.

Oh, yeah, this is a spoof and love letter to the musical. Throughout the show there are lots of one-line references to famous musicals and Shakespeare plays, to the delight of the audience. Will Shakespeare is there as a glam rock star, complete with leather pants and backup dancers.

Nigel Bottom, the actual wordsmith of the team, falls in love with Portia, daughter of a Puritan who thinks theater is evil. She convinces Nigel to thine own self be true.

The singing(though perhaps a bit overmiked) and large amount of dancing were first rate. Quite a fun evening!

Politics, not jurisprudence

Dianna Anderson, writing for Dame, explains the tortured denials that Brett Kavanaugh made at Thursday’s hearing. It all has to do with the definition of sexual purity in the Catholic and Evangelical traditions. A person is still considered a virgin of the man part didn’t go into the woman part. So if a man traumatizes the woman but doesn’t actually do that, then nothing happened. Never mind that the woman was and remains traumatized.

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post notes that between the accusations that Kavanaugh made that the Democrats rigged this embarrassment and the determination that GOP has to “plow right through this … many Americans may always suspect the Court’s decisions are motivated by politics and not jurisprudence.” The Supreme Court is another victim of an awful day.

In a Twitter thread Abigail Disney says she has also experience sexual assault. She was very uncomfortable watching Kavanaugh testify because he acted just like her angry, alcoholic father. Her father could be sweet and gentle. But his rage, usually over some aspect of status and entitlement, was terrifying. These were the same things that enraged Kavanaugh.

In a tweet, Melissa McEwan of Shakesville quotes the New Yorker.

It should be as plain as day that what we witnessed was the patriarchy testing how far its politics of resentment can go. And there is no limit.

In a blog post McEwan talks about how GOP men do not value women. She quotes Senator Kirsten Gillibrand:

Any senator who votes to confirm Judge Kavanaugh after Dr. Ford's testimony is telling our country exactly this: The experiences of women don't matter. Their trauma doesn't matter. Their stories and their voices don't matter.

McEwan adds:

That is correct. And that is not incidental. It is entirely the point.

Commenter LSM adds:

So, this little theatrical stunt was entirely performative. They made a show of listening to Dr. Ford - of letting her eviscerate herself, and giving more than half the American populace a week full of rage-fueled, PTSD memories (thanks for that, guys, by the way) and then just went ahead with their business as if she was just an irritating disruption.

A fruit fly to be flicked away, while the grown-ups got on with the REAL BUSINESS at hand.

They did it on purpose.

So they can crush it

I didn’t watch the hearings the Senate Judiciary Committee held for Christine Blasey Ford, who is accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. I have been reading some feminist reactions.

A large number of women are in tears today. They’re being traumatized again. Blasey Ford’s testimony brings to mind their own assault – which never goes away. These women are thankful that she is telling her story and angry that she has to. They appreciate every expression of kindness the committee Democrats are showing. Sarah Kendzior describes it this way: “She bares her soul so they can crush it. There aren’t words for how sick this is.”

Then Kavanaugh took the stand. And proved everything his opponents have been saying about him. His testimony was full of “unhinged, entitled rage.” Twitter user umairh wrote:

The contrast between an obviously traumatized, shattered victim of abuse and an equally obviously entitled malevolent abuser has rarely been clearer or so public.

Matthew Chapman adds:

I have never seen anyone behave this rudely when called to testify before the Senate. Ever.

That prompted comments that Kavanaugh is playing to a specific audience – the extreme right and their conspiracy theories that this is a Democratic sabotage. The part he is playing is the aggrieved white dude. No matter what happens – especially if he is not confirmed – he’ll join their pantheon of heroes.

TbashII notes:

anyone else worried about the degree of flagrant and ludicrous perjury going on here without any regard for consequences?

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a photo and notes the expressions of every woman caught in the frame. She adds:

I just briefly turned on the hearing so I could get the tone of Kavanaugh's opening statement. Holy christ. If you're trying to convince someone you don't have a problem with violent entitlement and uncontrolled rage, this ain't the way to do it. Just to be clear: Kavanaugh is using the occasion of defending himself against allegations that he committed a violent sexual assault to issue vague threats of retribution and to behave like a rageful, entitled tyrant. Anyone who doesn't have an overt agenda, or a haughty commitment to maintaining "objectivity" even when it's manifestly unwarranted, will note that Kavanaugh exudes precisely the spoiled, narcissistic, entitled ego of repeat abusers who have never been held accountable.

Fanny Wolfe comments, “If you're still denying the role misogyny plays in rigging systems for men and against women, you're hopeless.”

And a couple more comments from McEwan:

In addition to everything else, Kavanaugh has made it abundantly clear with this opening statement that he is comprehensively incapable of being an impartial jurist. Or even a reasonable one.

Trump's whole presidency so far has been about giving sadists opportunity to cheer for public malice. This hearing is a case in fucking point.

It seems the GOP is so annoyed with how the day has gone they threaten to make false sexual abuse accusations against Democrats in future hearings. McEwan adds:

It's remarkable (if unsurprising) to see conservatives just openly threatening to make false accusations against Democrats in future. That's their takeaway: Not "don't nominate abusers," but "invent abuse accusations." Deplorable was far too kind.

The war against women is now blatant.

We have to protect the children!

It’s National Banned Book Week! Doctor RJ of Daily Kos tells us about this year’s report from the American Library Association. A lot of books are banned under the guise of “protecting children.” That has a political edge because who would want to be caught not protecting children? Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart dissented by writing that censorship reflects “a society’s lack of confidence in itself,” and is the “hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”

So here are the top ten most challenged books of 2017.

1. Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, because it discusses suicide.
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, for profanity and scenes thought to be sexually explicit.
3. Drama, by Raina Telgemeier, for LGBT characters.
4. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, for sexual violence, also it might lead to terrorism and promote Islam.
5. George by Alex Gino, for a transgender character.
6. Sex is a Funny Word, by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth, for making children curious about sex.
7. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, for violence and use of the n-word.
8. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, for being pervasively vulgar.
9. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell, Justin Richardson, and Henry Cole, for featuring a same-sex relationship. It’s back in the top ten after a brief break.
10. I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel, Jazz Jennings, and Shelagh McNichols, for addressing gender identity.

Four of the ten are challenged because of LGBT characters. No, we’re still not treated equally.

The ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom saw an increase in “blanket bans,” such as challenging all LGBT books, all books by a certain author, or all R-rated DVDs. The OIF also notes an increase of administrators removing books against policy to try to avoid controversy.

Doctor RJ reviews some of the challenges over the years. One of those was a challenge to Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Beatrice Clark, who is African American, objected to the book being assigned to her granddaughter’s 11th grade language arts class. The complaint: the n-word appears 215 times. Said Clark:

It's not just a word. It carries with it the blood of our ancestors. They were called this word while they were lynched; they were called this word while they were hung from the big magnolia tree. That word, in the history of America, has always been a degrading word toward African Americans. When they were brought to America, they were never thought of as human beings in the first place, and this word was something to call a thing that wasn't human. So that's what they bring into the classroom to talk about. I just think it's utterly unconscionable that a school would think it's acceptable.

She has a point, but it completely misses the story. The word gets used a lot and Finn might use it (been a while since I’ve read it), but that is quite different from the way Finn treats Jim.

Scroll down Doctor RJ’s post to read a letter by Kurt Vonnegut to Charles McCarthty, the chair of the Drake, ND school board.

Commenters to the post noted the irony of wanting to censor Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

We believe survivors

A second person is accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of improper sexual conduct. There are rumors of a third. The GOP leadership in the Senate are trying to force a vote of confirmation. Polls show Kavanaugh is deeply unpopular with the American public. So that public is taking matters in hand – on Monday hundreds of protesters were on Capitol Hill (in the Rotunda? – not sure), outside the Senate Office Building, and outside the offices of Republicans Ben Sasse, Susan Collins, and Jeff Flake, the three GOP senators thought to be most likely to vote no. The Twittersphere has lots of photos.

Several women’s organizations encouraged smaller demonstrations around the country. People were encouraged to wear black, walk out at 1 PM ET, and post a selfie. Their message was simple: “We believe survivors.” Again, lots of photos appeared on Twitter

Floating around Twitter has been the idea that Kavanaugh should be excused from his high school shenanigans because he was only 17. Laura Seay responds:

We routinely lock up 17-year-olds - especially black & Latinx boys - for decades or life. If you're defending Kavanaugh on the basis of "He was 17 & dumb," you'd better be consistently arguing against trying minors as adults & giving teenagers life sentences, too.

Journalistic malpractice

Six voters are featured in an advertisement denouncing Rep. Paul Gosar, Republican from Arizona, in his re-election bid. The six talk of the candidate’s many failings. Then we get the big reveal: all six are Gosar’s siblings. I think the candidate is going to have a lonely Thanksgiving. And Christmas.



The *New York Times* published an article saying Rod Rosenstein had been discussing whether the 25th Amendment should be invoked to oust the nasty guy. Rosenstein, deputy Attorney General and the one refusing to fire Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, denies it.

In a Twitter thread, Leah McElrath states her complaint:

Publishing an incendiary report like this based on such thin and distant sourcing is journalistic malpractice. Publishing an incendiary report like this without revealing the relationships of the sources to Trump (ie “close to the WH” or “Dem operative”) constitutes propaganda.

She also sees a reason behind the article. It serves as justification for the nasty guy to fire Rosenstein. And that firing doesn’t need to be based on the truth (which can be said of a lot of things this administration does).



I had mentioned Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s strange finances. Steve Reilly, investigative reporter and Pulitzer finalist, tells more. He found that in 2005 Kavanaugh had a net worth of $91K. In early 2006 Kavanaugh took out a $980K mortgage on a $1.2M house with a down payment of $245K. Where did the money come from?

Are we better off?

Hillary Clinton understood the nasty guy from the start and, like most women truth-tellers, she was ignored. She is still describing what she sees. She wrote an essay for The Atlantic titled American Democracy Is in Crisis. She begins with five assaults on democracy.
* The nasty guy’s assault on the rule of law.
* Doubt of the legitimacy of our elections.
* The nasty guy is waging war on truth and reason.
* Breathtaking corruption by the nasty guy and his administration.
* The nasty guy undermines the national unity that makes democracy possible.

She then connects these destructive actions to their source – the GOP and its billionaire backers.

There is a tendency, when talking about these things, to wring our hands about “both sides.” But the truth is that this is not a symmetrical problem. We should be clear about this: The increasing radicalism and irresponsibility of the Republican Party, including decades of demeaning government, demonizing Democrats, and debasing norms, is what gave us Donald Trump. Whether it was abusing the filibuster and stealing a Supreme Court seat, gerrymandering congressional districts to disenfranchise African Americans, or muzzling government climate scientists, Republicans were undermining American democracy long before Trump made it to the Oval Office.

Clinton even talks about what to do.
* Mobilize a massive voter turnout in the 2018 election.
* Do some serious housecleaning, similar to what was done after Nixon abused power. She intends for this housecleaning to be thorough because she starts the next sentence with, “After Trump…”
* Reforms to include requiring all presidential candidates to release tax forms, secure voting systems, repair the Voting Rights Act, enact a voter Bill of Rights, overturn *Citizens United* to get corporate money out of politics, and abolish the Electoral College.
* Restitch the fraying social fabric through civics education in schools, expanded national service programs, reforms to reduce inequality, give a strong voice to working families. And all of us reaching across the divides of race, class, and politics.

Several election cycles ago the question we were to ask ourselves was, “Am I better off than I was four years ago.” Clinton challenges that.

We have to ask, “Are we better off? Are we as a country better, stronger, and fairer?” Democracy works only when we accept that we’re all in this together.

I’m delighted that Clinton has not disappeared (even though Republicans – and many Democrats – wish she had). And I’m delighted with her analysis of the problem and the solutions.

Alas, I think she missed a key point.

She missed the force behind what the GOP and the nasty guy are doing – the enforcement of social hierarchy. Yes, I write about it a lot. But until that is included in the equation about 30% of Americans (known as the nasty guy’s base) are going to be really annoyed that the guy who validated their racism and misogyny has been removed. They want the social safety net to be frayed if it helps those people. They want suppressed voting to make sure those people can’t vote. And these are the people who like the Second Amendment because guns are the best way to enforce the social hierarchy. 30% is a sizable chunk of the citizenry. Until we talk about this need for hierarchy and start taking steps to lessen it, we’re not going to get very far on all those wonderful reforms Clinton talks about.

Mom and Dad of computers

Last evening I went to the Open Book Theatre, a little theater south of Detroit (in what we call Downriver), to see the play Ada and the Engine by Lauren Gunderson. Any computer geek with any sense of history (and that should be all of them, but, well…) would know the names Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.

We meet Ada at age 18 before she marries Lord William Lovelace. She is the daughter of the poet Lord Byron who abandoned the family, then died at a young age. Ada’s mother Anabella does not want Ada to be reading her father’s poetry. Too much of it is about his wandering from bed to bed. Mom very much wants Ada to wed a man of position.

Ada meets Charles Babbage at a party. His talk of a difference engine, the predecessor of a calculating machine (if it was ever built), captures Ada’s mind. However, he is too old to be a suitable husband (he’s also a widower with kids). Ada finds Lord Lovelace a sufficient husband and grows to love him. He wisely allows her to correspond with Charles and he notes that when Ada and Charles are together in person she lights up, enthused about all the ideas around the engine.

In 1837 Charles extends the idea of a difference engine to an analytical engine. This is the idea of the modern computer. He gives a series of talks about the idea in Italy. I’m not sure how an Englishman giving a talk in Italy ends up with a transcript of his talks that are in French. Charles hands the transcript to Ada and suggests she translate it, add her own context, and prepare it for publication.

Her “context” becomes about two-thirds of the final manuscript. She projects what the device might do beyond calculation – even suggesting that music could be encoded into numbers and the device could compose. She considers a sample problem and lays out the steps the analytical engine would need to follow to come up with an answer – essentially creating the first programming language.

She was an amazing woman. She clearly didn’t fit into her time, which wanted to keep women bound to the home. When she disagreed with Charles – and a couple of their arguments play out in front of us – she did not give an inch. Th program suggests books to teach young girls about Ada so they too might succeed in math and technology.

Ada died young and the last scene of the play is encountering her father in the afterlife. They begin to understand each other and she begins to forgive him for being absent in her life. She says her fascination with numbers is partly because they don’t abandon you and they don’t die.

Charles didn’t actually complete either the difference engine or the analytical engine, mostly due to funding issues. However, others have used his designs and constructed the actual machines. And they worked.

The story was well told and the acting fine. I’m glad to learn a bit more of my professional ancestry.

Wrestling with Big Tech

I finished the book World Without Mind; the Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer. He is a former magazine editor and had direct experience into what Facebook did to the content of what he produced.

I keep a book in my car for times I know I’m going to have to wait, such as before a movie. This was one of those books. Sometimes it takes a while to get through the book. I started this one well before my summer travels, so there was a six week gap in the middle of reading it. I read the first parts of the book quite a while ago.

Foer begins by looking at Big Tech as a whole and their reasons why they say they need to be huge monopolies as they assure us they do what they do for the benefit of humans, a world healed by technology – healing that was needed because of earlier technology. Computer tech would free us from the shackles of industrial tech and the misery of capitalist overlords. Those promoting these ideas, beginning in the 1960s, tended to use lofty language to say how wonderful our future in a global village would be.

But we weren’t freed from monopolies, we were captured by new ones. Along the way the idea of a monopoly was was trimmed of its negative meanings. Competition means strife, they say. It keeps us from appreciating the value of monopolies. Without rivals a monopoly can focus on the important things, such as treating their workers well and generating world-changing innovation. Monopolies are natural and desirable, as the Silicon Valley thinking goes.

As Foer examines each tech giant he delves into the thinkers from the past on whose foundation these modern giants built. Some of these philosophers lived a couple hundred years ago. I won’t go into them much.

The leaders at Google have a core belief, even more central than allowing users to find their way around the web. That belief is that they can create an artificial intelligence that will move beyond and then merge with humanity in what is known as the Singularity (I’ll let you explore that one on your own). Their project to scan all the books in all the libraries isn’t just to allow humans access to all that knowledge. It’s to provide comprehensive teaching material to their AI. The folks at Google, when a bit unguarded, talk of a time when it has a million employees, 20 times larger than it is now. It appears to be a boast to dominate, to impose its values on the world.

Facebook runs on algorithms that feed on Big Data. They have amassed huge mounds of tidbits about each of its users (and likely even those who, like me, refuse to use it). These algorithms can sort through all this data to find connections and do analysis that a human simply could not do. In some cases, this is a good thing, such as quickly finding an obscure fact or locating a long lost friend.

Algorithms and the mounds of data are also behind the recommendations one gets from Amazon and Netflix. I’m encountering that recommendation system right now as I listen to music on YouTube – and I’m a bit frustrated with the narrowness of what thinks I would like to hear next. These algorithms might guide us to something new (or guide us to something less expensive for the company to deliver). If we let them, these algorithms do our thinking for us.

But when we outsource our thinking to algorithms, we’re really outsourcing our thinking to the people who built the algorithms. Facebook and others like to talk up their algorithms as independent and unbiased arbiters of what we would like in our recommendations and newsfeeds. Facebook may also say (though they won’t say it very loudly) that they have scientists to adjust and perfect the algorithms. So Facebook can put together a complete social psychological understanding of us.

But those algorithms are created and tweaked by humans. They display the biases of their creators. Through its algorithms, recommendations, and newsfeeds Facebook can guide us into not thinking and nudge us into accepting the direction it wants to take us. And it wants to take us into a more perfect social world. Under its control.

Organizing the vast mound of knowledge on the internet is indeed necessary and useful. A lot of human activity run on knowledge, including newspapers (obviously), music, and art (not so obviously). What Amazon and the others have done is to knock out the support of knowledge. Musicians don’t make much money for their music anymore. But iTunes does. Authors and publishers rarely made big money selling books. But Amazon does. They do it by providing the only access to sales and then squeezing the creators for every possible penny. Amazon becomes an arbiter of what is available by choosing what it provides. If you don’t play their game (you get the risk, they get the reward) you don’t appear to the wider world.

Big Tech likes to say they are eliminating the gatekeepers. Amazon would bust the cartel of New York book publishers. As a group they would shatter the grip of the American elite. The idea of gatekeepers became popular after WWII. Social scientists wanted to determine if a dictator could exploit public opinion in America. One study determined that newspaper editors acted like gatekeepers and what was published reflected their biases. Editors determined if a story had enough interest to their readers to make publishing worthwhile. But these gatekeepers could also simply exclude a story they thought was damaging to an important person. Or a gatekeeper could amplify a story and take down a president, as the *Washington Post* did with Nixon. A lot of power there.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s owner, now owns the Washington Post. Though he denies it, he is acting like a gatekeeper. He may not (yet) be doing it at his newspaper, but he is doing it to the book publishing business. He may not be doing it based on the content of the books, but he is doing it based on the crushing deals he can extract. Don’t play by the rules Bezos creates and your books don’t appear on his website. Amazon has such a huge part of the bookselling market that a publisher severely limits his options if he doesn’t play along. Before Big Tech there were lots of gatekeepers. Now Amazon is working towards there being one gate – theirs.

Can media control politics? When the telegraph was big, Western Union was the monopoly. They joined with the Associated Press, which allowed newspapers to fill their pages. The AP demanded its customers not use any other wire service and never say anything bad about the AP. The AP was very pro Republican, so while the AP archives are full of GOP malfeasance, but little of that reached the public. In the 1876 election the AP set out to install Rutherford B. Hayes into the White House. The Convention was grueling and the final election even more so – the results weren’t confirmed for four months. Behind the scenes Western Union passed along telegrams between Democratic strategists and the AP steered the negotiations. Hayes won. But the price was agreeing to pull federal troops out of the South, ending Reconstruction and allowing the start of Jim Crow. So, yeah, it has happened here.

Now consider a modern scenario, which probably hasn’t happened yet. We come up to an election. The results look close. So Facebook starts showing ads to remind people to vote – but does so only for users it knows will vote for the candidate Facebook wants.

These Big Tech companies have shown to be indifferent to democracy. Yet, they have acquired an outsize role in it.

As news became accessed through Facebook and news aggregate sites the “worth” of an article was reduced to the number of times people clicked on it. So all journalistic standards were dumped to embrace research on how to attract the click and how to appear in the list of what’s trending. Writers are rated on how well they attract clicks. Solid, thoughtful reporting and analysis didn’t attract clicks. Big Tech has engulfed journalism.

Big Tech likes to talk about shared creativity, about literature that is crowdsourced – various users can add their ideas and commentary. Big Tech also believes content should be free. That means an author has no way of earning a living from his writing. He can no longer afford to be a professional. Great works of literature cannot be crowdsourced. They have to spring from a single mind that can afford to sit at the keyboard perhaps for years. If an author can’t afford to do that we lose the great works he might have produced. We are also left with works that can be dashed off quickly. Or writing becomes the playground of those who are rich enough to not need to work. And the types of stories and the diversity of voices we encounter are lost. We hear only the stories that the rich want to tell – without dissent.

Big Tech has mastered Washington. They get laws passed and rules adjusted so they pay little tax (partly by threatening to take their office space elsewhere). They are barely regulated. But The Big One, a very disruptive security breach, is coming and Big Tech is bracing for it (a wise move). It could be a Big One because Big Tech has such a vast hoard of information about us. Even without a catastrophe all that data can be a source of invisible discrimination. It is time for a Data Protection Authority, similar to the recently created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Europeans have already done it. We need to do the same.

Can we get out of the mess Big Data has put us in? Foer says America has, in the past, turned away from its monopolies. Back in the 1970s Big Food made things more convenient, but at the cost of sameness and health. Big Food isn’t gone, but the artisan and organic food markets have grown by quite a lot. In the same way we have become careful about what we put into our mouths we can be persuaded to be careful about what we put into our brains.

Journalists should start charging for content and stop chasing clicks. They will be able to improve the quality of what they offer and consumers will respect it more. Perhaps you’re skeptical that is possible? Consider that the growth in ebooks has dropped. Books, and the contemplation that comes with their use, are not going away (Foer includes a history of bookshelves in houses). Contemplating with paper in hand means Big Tech is not learning your secrets and not trying to sell you stuff. We can set aside convenience and efficiency and focus on things and ideas that last. Many of us are finding the things that last aren’t on the internet.

A flick of the tail of a dragon

Yesterday I posted a possible reason why Brett Kavanaugh was nominated for the Supreme Court. I suggested that perhaps the nasty guy has some dirt on Kavanaugh and is ready to blackmail the justice if he strays too far from what the nasty guy wants. That implies Kavanaugh is hungry enough for the job that he’s willing to put up with the threat.

But why is the GOP in Congress putting up with Kavanaugh? They could tell the nasty guy, sorry, but this one has too much baggage. There are lots of others who will do what we want who will be much easier to confirm. So why the harder route?

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has an answer:

Because to back down, even for an easier road to the same destination, would concede that they are not yet all-powerful; that they can still be stopped.

By public pressure, if not rules, laws, norms, or ethics.

The only reason to dig in is to prove that their coup is virtually complete. To show that not only are they refusing to provide checks and balances on the president, but that there are no longer any checks or balances on them.

This is a display of dominance, a flick of the tail of a dragon who has just learned to breathe fire.

Keep up the pressure. Keep making noise. Keep resisting.

Last night the nasty guy released a stack of top secret documents in an attempt to damage the investigation against him. McEwan explains the details and tells us how rare it is for a president to do such a thing and how damaging it can be in several areas.

This is such an unprecedented, extraordinary, gravely serious event. It is the President of the United States interfering in an ongoing investigation with a profound abuse of his power, demonstrating overt hostility for the rule of law.

It's yet another signal that the imperious scofflaw occupying the White House will not be constrained by norms or ethics or laws. He does whatever the fuck he wants, to get whatever the fuck he wants.

We really and truly need a more comprehensive plan than "vote," folks.

Because I don't see Donald Trump just reasonably accepting the outcome of any election that doesn't go his way. Do you?

Hardest possible choice

Allegations of assault and attempted rape are swirling around Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. There are people who have evidence that he perjured himself during the hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some are wondering about Kavanaugh’s history of huge gambling debts that were paid off in unexplained ways. Any of those would disqualify someone from a minimum wage job. And here we are talking about the top justice job in America.

This has John Rogers, in a Twitter thread, wondering: Why Kavanaugh? His paper trail is a nightmare (and, when this started, didn’t include the assault charges). Does he have a great legal mind? Because he vowed to overturn Roe v. Wade? Other judges have vowed the same and are just as smart and are squeaky clean.

Trump's superpower is attracting other people venal enough to do whatever he tells them to do in order to advance themselves. It's his one genuine talent. … Kavanaugh was the hardest possible confirmation choice on that list. There can only be one reason you choose the guy who makes the process that much harder. One.

Alas, Rogers doesn’t name that one reason.

However, some reading I’ve done recently (which, even though I’ve searched through my browser history, I can’t find or credit) does suggest a reason:

Perhaps the nasty guy has dirt on Kavanaugh and will blackmail him unless he does the nasty guy’s bidding.

Some people, when faced with that threat, will simply not play. But go back to the nasty guy’s “genuine talent” of finding people who desperately want what he is offering and willing to live under the threat of blackmail.

Family Bible as proof of citizenship

A woman in Kansas was denied a passport renewal. She was told her birth certificate wasn’t good enough to establish citizenship. She was born in a farmhouse in the 1970s, so her birth certificate wasn’t issued by a hospital. She was told she needed more documentation, such as a border crossing card (her parents were born in the US) or a family Bible (don’t have one).

She said they won’t accept an official birth certificate and they do accept a family Bible? (Atheists and Muslims need not apply.)

She finally asked her senator to intervene and the passport arrived a few days later.

The website describing what documents are needed for a passport do not say the birth certificate needs to come from a hospital.

Sarah Kendzior commented:

Birth certificate is the essential document for completing certain transactions as well as obtaining drivers licenses, passports, etc. Which is why it's VERY disturbing that an admin led by the guy who lied about Obama's birth certificate is now lying about the validity of others.

Political scam

A couple weeks ago I saw a brochure mentioning four proposals that could be on the Michigan ballot in November. At the time two proposals were confirmed. The first is whether to allow recreational marijuana. The brochure did not mention this one, perhaps thinking it was too controversial and they didn’t want to jeopardize more important issues.

The second is whether to create a citizens redistricting commission, which would end gerrymandering. I’m a volunteer for the second one. I took part at an event Thursday night that had a GOP tilt. Several people sat at our table and said straight off I’m against it, you’ll never convince me, but I want to sit here and argue with you. One wasn’t even a registered voter. My colleagues were better at handling this than I was.

The three other proposals mentioned by the brochure were for: establishing voter rights (same day registration, etc.), raising the minimum wage, and (I think) providing for paid sick leave. These last two are not constitutional amendments (as the gerrymandering proposal has to be). That means they have a much lower signature threshold and the legislature has a chance to enact the proposal, thus keep it off the ballot.

And for the minimum wage issue the GOP controlled legislature did exactly that.

When I heard about it I was immediately a skeptic. The GOP approving a minimum wage hike and doing it quickly? Right.

Over the last decade the Michigan legislature has a record of undoing citizen issues in the lame duck session. They did it for the Emergency Manager law that was to put a city’s finances in order, but only got applied to cities with majority black officials. Voters repealed, it. Politicians immediately restored it.

So I figured approving a minimum wage increase in September (with delayed implementation) was a way for the GOP to keep the issue off the ballot but give them a way to rescind the increase right after the election. Yeah, I’m cynical that way.

I’m not the only one. In last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press (yeah, I’m slow writing about it), opinion columnist Brian Dickerson is just as skeptical. He calls what the politicians did a scam.

Alas, our proposal to end gerrymandering won’t have any effect on the Michigan legislature until 2022. But it is sorely needed now.

Prevent unwanted pregnancies

Want to stop abortion? Prevent unwanted pregnancies. To me that has meant providing widely available birth control. But Gabrielle Blair, in a long Twitter thread, says I’m only skimming the surface. She’s a Mormon mother and is tired of the usual arguments about banning abortion.

Before I get to her discussion I’ll cover an area she doesn’t get to. Men say they want to stop abortion and claim they care for the life of the unborn. But the real reason is because they want the woman pregnant and in the home – and out of the workplace, which they consider their domain. Yes, this an aspect of social hierarchy or ranking, which I discuss frequently. Blair’s discussion is too.

Blair takes the whole discussion in a different direction. Along the way she talks about aspects of the sexual act. And uses the words necessary to discuss it.

Want to prevent unwanted pregnancies? It’s all about men and irresponsible ejaculation.

There’s birth control! Yes. But the side effects can brutal (something I hadn’t heard of – yeah, I’m a guy). An oral contraceptive was developed for men. It didn’t get approval because of the side effects. Yet women still take them, in spite of the side effects, to avoid being pregnant. We as a society don’t mind if women suffer if it makes life easier for men.

There are condoms! They’re quite effective, help prevent disease, easily available and easy to use, and are really low in side effects. But that one side effect is a deal-breaker for men. Their pleasure is an 8 rather than a 10.

So… there are men willing to risk getting a woman pregnant — which means literally risking her life, her health, her social status, her relationships, and her career, so that they can experience a few minutes of _slightly_ more pleasure? Is that for real? Yes. Yes it is.
…
It’s mind-boggling and disturbing when you realize that’s the choice men are making. And honestly, I’m not as mad as I should be about this, because we’ve trained men from birth that their pleasure is of utmost importance in the world. (And to dis-associate sex and pregnancy.)
…
Let’s talk more about responsibility. Men often don’t know, and don’t ask, and don’t think to ask, if they’ve caused a pregnancy. They may never think of it, or associate sex with making babies at all. Why? Because there are 0 consequences for men who cause unwanted pregnancies.

He doesn’t know if she becomes pregnant, he doesn’t know if she had an abortion, he doesn’t know if there is a child with his DNA. Child support? A joke.

Stop protesting at clinics. Stop shaming women. Stop trying to overturn abortion laws. If you actually care about reducing or eliminating the number of abortions in our country, simply HOLD MEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.

Should the consequences be as “harsh, painful, nauseating, scarring, expensive, risky, and life-altering as forcing a woman to go through a 9-month unwanted pregnancy?” Perhaps castration? Too cruel and unusual? Worse than “forcing 500,000 women a year to puke daily for months, gain 40 pounds, and then rip their bodies apart in childbirth?”

Can’t wrap your head around a physical punishment for men? Even though you seem to be more than fine with physical punishments for women? Okay. Then how about this prevention idea: At the onset of puberty, all males in the U.S. could be required by law to get a vasectomy.
…
If/when the male becomes a responsible adult, and perhaps finds a mate, if they want to have a baby, the vasectomy can be reversed, and then redone once the childbearing stage is over. And each male can bank their sperm before the vasectomy, just in case.

Stop abortions? Then stop unwanted pregnancies. The only way to it is to stop irresponsible ejaculation.

If you’re a man, what would the consequence need to be for you to never again ejaculate irresponsibly? Would it be money related? Maybe a loss of rights or freedoms? Physical pain?

Ask yourselves: What would it take for you to value the life of your sexual partner more than your own temporary pleasure or convenience?

Blair concludes:

STOP TRYING TO CONTROL WOMEN'S BODIES AND SEXUALITY. UNWANTED PREGNANCIES ARE CAUSED BY MEN.

Of course, she got pushback. A dude said, well, a woman can insist on a condom or she could refuse to spread her legs. Blair responded, you don’t understand power dynamics.

The step beyond stateless

I recently posted that the nasty guy and his minions have started refusing to renew passports and even taken some away. Jennifer Wright, in an article for Harper’s Bazaar, takes it one more step. Revoking citizenship is a precursor to genocide.

Yeah, we’ll go there – in 1938 Germany declared passports held by Jews were invalid.

But genocide? Here? In America? Yes. Already happened. We slaughtered Native Americans. We kept autocratic policies, such as slavery and Jim Crow, in places for decades. And just this year we started stripping children from immigrant parents. All these cases, now and in the past, are about race.

After the Holocaust the Universal Declaration of Human Rights said, “Everyone has a right to a nationality.” The American Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that a U.S. citizen cannot lose his or her citizenship unless he or she willingly surrenders it. The nasty guy is disobeying the law.

So the solution is deportation? Germany tried that too. They proposed several deportation solutions, such as sending all Jews to Madagascar. Then they concluded one way to get rid of Jews is to kill them.

If that starts happening in American with Latinos as the target we probably won’t hear much. Despots usually don’t announce how they are persecuting minorities. But leading up to that we’ll hear a lot about “othering” – declaring them to be those people, who aren’t really human. Not like us. Asylum seekers have already been called people who want to “infest” our country.

Yeah, making a lot of noise about this is not fun. Especially since we have to keep doing it. Protesting isn’t fun. Calling Congresscritters isn’t fun. Anything else is more fun.

Now consider if your grandparents lived in Germany during the rise of the Nazis and did nothing. They might offer all kinds of reasons. But once you found out how would you think of them when you saw them at Christmas? Perhaps a tiny bit disgusted?

Now what about your grandchildren? How will they think about you?

I can’t tell you what actions you should take, because I don’t know what talents you have at your disposal. Do you have legal skills to help people who may be threatened by these new changes? Use them. Can you write about what’s going on? Write about it. Do you have a church or place or worship to help organize refuge for the persecuted? Do so. Do you have time to call your senators and congressmen? Call. Keep calling. Make them hear you.

Do something today to make your descendants proud.

Yeah, it is easy for me to say that because I don’t have descendants. Even so, the people watching me aren’t always related by genetics. And I’m writing about it.

Never forget the associated things

Jay Kirell is a veteran of the Afghanistan war. In a Twitter thread, he has a few things to say about the event of which today is the anniversary.

The attacks 17 years ago are the only traumatic event I can think of that people constantly urge others to remember.

Why are we urged to remember the event and not some of the things associated with it?

We’re still in the war that sprung from those attacks with no end in sight. We never question why we’re still there.

Never forget the only thing we were asked to do is go shopping.

Never forget we never asked the wealthiest to fund the wars – we gave them a tax cut instead.

Never forget that thousands in Iraq & Afghanistan who had nothing to do with that day were killed.

Never forget the damage caused trying to fix the world while giving the least amount of thought and effort.

Why vote?

All this week NPR news is doing a series on why people don’t vote. In midterm elections, such as we face in less than two months, 60% of eligible voters don’t. So NPR is exploring the issue. Are there particular types of people who don’t vote? Are there common reasons?

Normally, NPR has a page for each story it airs. This time it seems there is one page for the series. That’s why I can post about the whole week on Tuesday.

Non voters are more likely to support redistribution of wealth, housing bailouts, and expanding the social safety net. Meaning they like the Democratic Party platform.

There are people who want to vote and can’t. The barriers include voter ID laws, registration difficulty, and criminal records. An example of the last one, 10% of adults in Florida can’t vote because of felony convictions (any guesses on the likely race of those in this situation?). There have also been aggressive purges of voter rolls.

What about those who can vote and don’t?

We hear from a resident of North Las Vegas. He doesn’t vote because nobody taught him how. Where to go? What must I have with me? What happens there? How does my vote affect government policies? Do I know enough to vote? A lot of people in Las Vegas apparently feel the same way – people who would vote Democratic if they voted.

People who recently moved may not feel connected to local politics, so leave their voter registration in their previous city.

Because of things like this frequent voters tend to be older. Non voters tend to be younger. As a result, politicians care about Social Security, but not about student debt.

A big reason for not voting: I don’t think my vote matters. The system is rigged anyway. I didn’t like the choices in the last election. There is a long history of political corruption. The Electoral College (with its winner-take-all) means a Democratic voter in a red state, such as Texas, doesn’t have much incentive to vote. In addition, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and we still got the nasty guy. My vote doesn’t matter.

McDowell County, West Virginia has the lowest voter turnout in a state that has almost the lowest voter turnout. A big reason: Politicians never help McDowell County – the kids have to leave to have a good life. They promise anything, but it’s all a lie. Another reason: Voting takes time and that time is taken away from other priorities, such as working at one of several jobs. These people tend to be low-income and low-education.

Research shows that class – whether one is rich or poor – is more of a predictor of whether one votes than anything else – race, ethnicity, gender, or other demographic factor. And class tends to be determined by education level and parental class.

Being taught to vote has an ethnic component. Hispanics and Asians usually aren’t taught. Many in this group don’t want to show up to vote and not be prepared, yet they feel they don’t have enough time to study the candidates and issues.

And one more reason: If you have a history of not voting politicians ignore you. They have a budget that rarely allows them to chase down infrequent voters. They’re too busy chasing people they know will vote. So we get into a spiral: If politicians ignore you and your issues, why vote? If you don’t vote, politicians ignore you.

Dissident cello

Last night I went down to the Detroit Film Theater for the documentary Mstislave Rostropovich, the Indomitable Bow. Yes, this is about the famous Russian cellist. A rather nice way to spend the evening listening to all this wonderful cello music performed by the master of the instrument. His career took hold in the 1950s and he was known as the best cellist in the Soviet Union. He was given a few extra perks and even allowed to travel abroad. Rostropovich was somewhat protected when his friends, composers Serge Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich were censured by the government, though he protested the action.

He met singer Galina Vishnevskaya and four days later they were married. Several years later he was asked, what do you think now about getting married so quickly? He replied, “I wasted four days.” He was also very good on the piano and soon was her only accompanist. He was so busy that they usually didn’t have much time to rehearse and spent much of that time arguing. So when they went on stage they were usually feeling grumpy towards each other. Then they started to perform and magic happened, the anger forgotten.

One of those trips abroad was to play in London with the Soviet orchestra in 1968. The day of the concert was the day that the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. On the program was the Cello Concerto by Antonin Dvorak, a Czech. The concert was difficult for Rostropovich because he felt betrayal. It didn’t help that the audience was a bit hostile. Afterward he held up the conductor’s score as a gesture of solidarity. The incident made him realize the Soviet system had more problems than he thought and he spoke out.

Dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn attracted too much attention of the government in 1970. The writer and cellist were friends and Rostropovich invited Solzhenitsyn and his wife to live with them, to provide shelter. Rostropovich started losing his perks. No more travel abroad. His and her concerts were canceled except in the small cities. He finally asked the government, let me go. In 1974, they did.

Though it was hard to leave his homeland, it didn’t take long for his international career to blossom. Playing the cello, teaching, and directing, including the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington for 17 years. But his continued outspokenness annoyed the Soviets and they revoked his citizenship. He thought that was especially cruel.

In 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, Rostropovich dashed to the scene and played beside the wall. That image was shown around the world. His citizenship was restored in 1990. He made a triumphant return.

Rostropovich was quite annoyed with Mozart and Brahms for not writing cello concertos. He’s also annoyed with the cellists in those days for not asking the great composers to write for them. To make sure he wasn’t accused of such a thing he asked every composer he knew (and he knew a lot) to write for him. Only Stravinsky didn’t respond. Rostropovich premiered over 100 works for the cello.

He was unfailingly kind and generous. One person said being with him was like being with a geyser.

Problems with that holy protection

Yesterday I mentioned the *New York Times* op-ed by an anonymous White House official saying they were part of the internal resistance, keeping the nasty guy from harming the country. Today, Melissa McEwan of Shakesville adds:

As long as they stay working within the administration, every single horrible thing that Trump does now gets filtered through the prism of questioning whether it was one of the things they support, or one of the things they supposedly tried to stop but failed. Are they really unable to stop Trump's ongoing and escalating war on the press, for example, or are they actually okay with it?

Then there was a video of the nasty guy at a rally and a man behind him (there as a supportive prop) seemed to question the speaker. That, says McEwan, means there was a problem of vetting who stands behind the speaker.

Which should make all of us wonder: Are the security staff part of the "White House Resistance" and deliberately letting things slide? How can we even know the answer to that question, even if we're reassured it isn't the case? After all, the anonymous official disclosed they are willing to lie to "protect the country," and we're supposed to just trust them that whatever that means to them will mean the same thing to us.

I hope you're beginning to see, if you didn't already, the many problems with the "White House Resistance."

Make us feel old

Every year Ron Naif, Tom McBride, and Charles Westerberg, retired from Beloit College, produce The Mindset List. This is to tell college professors about the cultural references of the incoming freshman class. It also makes the rest of us feel old. Here’s some of the items on this year’s list, describing youth born in 2000.

Among the iconic figures never alive in their lifetime are Victor Borge, Charles Schulz, and the original Obi-Wan Kenobi Alec Guinness.

Among their classmates could be Madonna’s son Rocco, Will Smith’s daughter Willow, or David Bowie and Iman’s daughter Alexandria.

Outer space has never been without human habitation.

Same-sex couples have always found marital bliss in the Netherlands.

They’ve grown up with stories about where their grandparents were on 11/22/63 and where their parents were on 9/11.

King Friday the 13thand Lady Elaine Fairchild have always dwelled in the Neighborhood, but only in re-runs.

Undeserved

Sydette Luceo wrote in a tweet:

There is nothing we did, or do, that make the mechanisms of oppression operating on us “deserved.” Not a thing.

There was a little incident during the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Jaime Guttenberg was killed in the massacre in Parkland, FL last February. Her father Fred Guttenberg went up to Kavanaugh, introduced himself and offered to shake hands. Kavanaugh glared and turned away. Guttenberg was detained by security.

That, more than anything else, tells me what kind of man Kavanaugh is: vile. He does not have empathy and should not be on our Supreme Court. I’m pleased to see the Democrats are putting up a strong fight. Alas, it probably isn’t enough, now that the filibuster for justices has been abolished.



Back at the beginning of August Apple became the first company with a market value (stock price times number of shares) to reach $1 trillion. Alas, Apple doesn’t have a sterling reputation of fair dealings with subcontractors and their employees, or of protecting the environment.

Just over a month later Amazon also topped $1 trillion in value. I’ve got an even bigger complaint against this behemoth. (1) They’ve destroyed a lot of community retail. (2) They don’t pay their employees well. (3) They are working to underpay authors, undercutting literature. (4) Owner Jeff Bezos is sucking up cash.

I heard, and checked the simple math, that Bezos, whose net worth is $178 billion, could buy a house ($200,000) for each of 500,000 homeless people and still have a net worth of $78 billion.

I’m done fattening his wallet, except Amazon owns Whole Foods, where I get a few specific things for my unusual diet.

The media is speculating that Amazon could beat Apple to $2 trillion. Like that’s a good thing.

Heroic protection of democracy

The nasty guy and his minions are quite upset and the mainstream and social media are all abuzz (and atwitter) over an op-ed that appeared last night in the *New York Times* written by an anonymous White House senior official with the title “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”

I won’t link. If you really want to read it I’m sure you can find it.

I’d much rather write about Melissa McEwan’s response on Shakesville. The premise of the op-ed: the author is part of a team that prevents the nasty guy from indulging his worst instincts, they’re keeping him in check. There are adults in the room. They’re trying to do what is right, even when the nasty guy won’t. The result is a two-track presidency. Aren’t we heroic! We’re protecting democracy!

McEwan responds by saying these people are not elected. They should not be taking over for a president. If they don’t like what the nasty guy is doing, they should not undermine the president but unseat him – argue for his removal, persuade colleagues in Congress to do their jobs, invoke the 25th Amendment (a point Leah McElrath adds).

But they’re not.

So McEwan notes what these people are doing is not protecting democracy, but protecting the GOP agenda of authoritarian takeover from being derailed by the nasty guy.

By writing the op-ed the anonymous author is saying a couple important and scary things:

* The nasty guy isn’t so useful anymore. Though he still warms the chair in the Oval Office, the coup is complete. You don’t have to go through the mess of impeachment.

* Don’t worry, the adults have taken over. You (the voter) don’t have to fret over voting GOP in two months.

McEwan describes the author and colleagues this way:

They want to keep him in place while the GOP consolidates power behind this presidency, whoever is running it. While elections are rigged, while districts are gerrymandered, while votes are suppressed, while dark money funds their candidates, while the judiciary is stacked with corrupt right-wingers, while state legislatures are gerrymandered and stolen, while marginalized people are oppressed, while babies are kept in cages, while class warfare is waged against the 99 percent, while unions are busted, while workers lose their rights, while public education is destroyed, while the environment is irretrievably fucked.

There is, of course, lots of speculation about who the author is. Some of that speculation names the vice nasty guy. He’s always wanted to be president. Perhaps he just announced that though he doesn’t have the title, he wields the power. But the op-ed is awful no matter who wrote it.

Dark and stormy

The Bulwer-Lytton awards for 2018 have been announced! Mr. Bulwer-Lytton is famous for his book that begins, “It was a dark and stormy night.” The contest named after him looks for worst possible opening sentences for stories. There is a grand winner every year plus winners in various categories, such as romance, western, science fiction, and vile puns. Here are the winners (or Dishonorable Mentions) that caught my attention.

Dreaded Pirate Larry was somewhat worried, as he looked down at his boot, where his first mate was stretched out, making whooshing sounds, attempting to blow him over, that despite having the fastest ship, the most eye patches, and the prettiest parrots, his crew may need a few lessons on the difference between literal and figurative, as evidenced by the rest of the crew applying ice to the timbers.

Shelley Siddall, West Kelowna, BC, Canada

Sufficiently numerous airborne water droplets struck various grounded objects at appreciable velocities, illuminated by ambient light from a sub-horizon sun such that fewer photons were absorbed by the retina of our protagonist’s eyes within a given interval of time than the number at which he would struggle to decide whether the amount of light he perceives should be considered “bright” or “dark”; in other words, it was a dark and stormy night.

Shea Charkowsky, Santa Clara, CA

And it came to pass that, in those days when the young and powerful Alexander, called The Great, boldly ventured forth on his mighty steed Bucephalus, leading a vast army to conquer, claim, and generally visit the more tourist-y areas outside his empire, there remained at home his lesser-known brother Demetrius the Mediocre, who kept the fires burning and, to everyone's surprise, produced a pretty decent BBQ.

Marsha Engelbrecht, Lafayette, LA

He was a bold man, thought Arial Calibri, the typesetter’s daughter, but he wouldn’t recognize a superscript if it was underlined, believed that “strikethrough” was a baseball term, thought italics were people from Italy, and that sans serif was a Caribbean island.

Sara Hough, Blacksburg, VA

In preparation for visits by African dignitaries, we had redecorated the West Wing of the White House in an African motif with numerous artificial plants and animals, but the President asked that we remove the papier-mache wildebeests, saying he was "tired of fake gnus."

Wm. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Snellville, GA

Once upon a time, there was a place where things happened; allow me to be more specific.

John Wallace, South Australia

Cancer and the battle

In the last few days there were funerals for Aretha Franklin and John McCain. I have a lot of respect for Franklin, though I don’t listen to her music. Everyone is praising McCain, though I stop at one aspect of the man – he was a Republican and bought into a great deal of the party’s goals and dogma, all of which are harmful to the marginalized. He may have been a maverick on a vote here or there, but not anywhere near enough for me to add my praises.

But enough of them. I’d rather talk about something brought up by NPR (alas, I don’t remember which show and can’t find the story). Both Franklin and McCain died of cancer. Nearly every news source (and NPR pulled out a large number of them) said both had courageously “fought a battle” with cancer.

Then NPR asked is such militaristic language appropriate? Probably not.

Since I can’t find the NPR story I went looking for their source. I found a few. The most recent was from last February. Other stories go back to 2014. This idea has been around for a while. Here’s some of what they talk about.

Militaristic language implies that treating cancer is a battle that can be won. What are we actually fighting for? Elimination of cancer? Normalization of life? What about when cancer returns after a relapse? Did the patient lose? Are all those cancer free years devalued? Perhaps we should talk about cancer survivors and apply that term even to those who hold off death long enough to attend a grandson’s graduation.

If cancer is a battle, what do we say to people who choose to forego treatment? Are they losers? What about those whose treatment doesn’t bring renewed health? If cancer arises from within my own body does battling cancer mean battling myself?

When someone dies of cancer does it mean they should have fought a bit harder? Why don’t we hear the phrase, “He battled heart disease.”? Even if the cancer is gone but took body parts with it, was that a win? That doesn’t seem like it.

Perhaps it is better to say cancer is a journey.

Legends and secrets

I wrote about one of the books I read during my trip to Australia, a history of an Irish family that emigrated to Australia and settled in western Queensland and later in the Kimberley. I had also mentioned a boring book for the return flight.

There were a couple more books I read during the trip. I began the first on the outbound flights, so hadn’t had a chance to buy any Australian books. This was the novel The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. The book was appropriate for the trip anyway – though the story is set in South Africa, where Courtenay grew up, he later moved to Australia.

South Africa was colonized by two groups, one group was the Dutch and Germans, known as Boer or Afrikaans, and the other was the English. Both groups treated the natives in the ways colonizers have always treated natives. But the two white groups also battled each other (such as during the Boer War), with the English ending up ahead. At the time of the story South Africa isn’t a colony, but is controlled by white people.

The story begins with our narrator, Peekay, who is English, going to a boarding school at age 5. He is sent because his mother is ill. At the school he is mercilessly abused by the German students. In 1939 they claim that Hitler will soon come to South Africa and liberate the Germans and march the English into the sea.

Family situations change and Peekay, still quite young, is reunited with his family. On the two-day train trip he meets a boxing champion and watches a match. He sees a way to deal with future bullies. At the new house he befriended a German professor. This town is predominantly English, so Doc, as the professor is called, is imprisoned (America did the same to the Japanese). Peekay visits Doc in prison every day and begins boxing lessons that the prison staff holds for area boys.

Because Doc and Peekay treat the black prisoners as real people (and Peekay becomes adept at smuggling stuff into and out of the prison) the black people begin to see the two as deliverers of sorts. This intensifies when Peekay begins winning his fights. He gets a strong black following and is called their Tadpole Angel.

Peekay goes off to an English boarding school for what we consider the high school years. He keeps the Tadpole Angel legend going. Since he doesn’t get into Oxford on scholarship he takes a year to work in a mine in a very dangerous job. At the end of his time there he encounters his chief tormentor from when he was 5. The book ends with that encounter.

Towards the end of the book, Peekay began to annoy me. During that original abuse he way too perceptive for a five-year-old. And after that he excelled at everything he did. He seems to magically escape disaster at the mine. I also thought the book ended too soon. I wondered what Peekay would do with the legend of the Tadpole Angel. How would he help the black people who held him in such high regard? Other than that it was a pretty decent read and offered insight into South Africa before Apartheid became official law.

The other book was the novel In My Father’s House by Jane Mundy. The story is about Beth, who moved into her father’s house in Sydney to care for him during his final illness. Now that he is gone she has to deal with all his stuff as well as her own stuff she brought when she moved in. One guess why this story appealed to me. So Beth hires a clutter buster to help her cope.

As various items are uncovered we get the history of Beth, her brother, and her parents. We also get the history of Martha, the clutter buster, and her son Tom. For several years Beth dated Jake, who was quite active in the Australian peace movement, protesting Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war. Jake and Beth’s father don’t get along because her father was prevented from serving in WWII. He thinks Jake is a coward. Beth concludes Jake is the bravest man she has ever met.

Of course, various secrets are revealed as Beth reaches the end of her decluttering work (and does it in a much shorter span of time than I would have thought). Overall, an enjoyable story.

Travelogue – walking the coast

Monday August 20

In the morning I walked along Oxford Street, the “gay area.” I didn’t see a lot that was specifically LGBT, though there were a few places advertising LGBT shows (“The Outback is Never a Drag”). On one plaza there was this wonderful marker of Forty Years of Love, which must be how long the Sydney Pride Festival has been running. With this kind of acceptance gay specific shops may not be necessary.

However, I did find an LGBT bookstore. After browsing I asked the clerk for recommendations. I bought several.

I spent the afternoon at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (the state Sydney is in). This is a very fine museum. There are some European masters and galleries of Australian art. It was fascinating to see the subjects they decided to paint, which are quite different from American and European artists think is important. I joined a tour of some of the contemporary installations. It was helpful to have a guide explain some things. My favorite was a room filled with 50,000 balls about an inch in diameter painted in rainbow colors and strung on lines stretching across the space. On seeing it the reaction is usually oh, this is fun! A camera can’t capture all of it, but can show a bit.

I spent the evening at the Opera House, using that expensive ticket I bought a couple days before. The opera was Aida (Italians pronounce it eye-EE-dah) by Giuseppi Verdi. Here are the main characters:

Aida, daughter of the King of Ethiopia and a slave to Amneris.

Amneris, daughter of Pharaoh of Egypt.

Radames, commander of the Egyptian army, fighting the Ethiopians.

And this is why it is opera:

Aida is in love with Radames.

Amneris is in love with Radames.

Radames is in love with Aida and definitely not with Amneris.

Which means:

Aida's loyalties are split between her lover and her country. Radames' loyalties are split between his lover and his country.

Amneris is caught between her love for Radames and her fury at him for his love for Aida and not her.

Can you say impossible situation?

It's a dramatic opera. Of course it doesn't have a happy ending.

The Sydney Opera House has two large spaces for music performance. These account for the two sets of sails in the exterior of the building. There is also a theater for plays underneath. In talking to the clerk at the gay bookstore that morning he said the stage for the opera is much smaller than the stage for the concert hall. It was supposed to be the other way around. So opera productions have to design for a cramped space.

This one did it with ten panels the full height of the proscenium. I'm pretty sure they were display screens and not receivers of projections. They moved around and provided a shifting background. They were pretty well controlled because an image will be stationary in space while the screen displaying it moved. Some of the images were pretty cool. But the stormy roiling red clouds got tiring after a while. As did the watching panther when Amneris schemed against Aida.

The music was, of course, wonderful. The big scenes, such as the Triumphal March, filled the stage as they should. It was a good evening. And worth the money.

Tuesday, August 21

I spent the morning in a big book store, Kinokuniya Books. I don’t know the source of the name. It had all the departments one might expect in an American bookstore (or the Aussie equivalent). But it also had a large section I didn’t expect – books in Japanese. There was a separate section for books, such as manga, translated from Japanese. I saw a lot of Asians around Sydney, but I couldn’t tell if they were immigrants or had grown up in Australia. From the size of this section a large number are immigrants.

One purpose in seeking out such a big store was to see if there is much Australian science fiction. Other than authors I can find in a US bookstore there isn’t. Most of the authors on these shelves were English and American. There is more Australian fantasy, which I don’t care much for, though I did buy a book of fantasy by an Aboriginal author. The clerk I talked to was sweet (or at least doing his job) who would appear by me every so often saying I might want to consider whatever new book he had in his hands. I also bought two other books considered to be classics of Australian literature, one of those was the boring book I read on the flight to Los Angeles.

I dropped the books at the hotel and headed for what would be one of the highlights of the trip. I took the subway and then a bus to Bondi Beach. This is one of the famous ocean beaches of Sydney, good for both bathing and surfing. I did neither. Instead I did the Coastal Walk. There is a very good footpath from Bondi Beach south along the coast, looping outward for each point of land and inward for each protected beach. It was beautiful, dramatic, and restful. Several times I stopped to watch the waves roll in (no waves like that near Detroit). I went as far as Clovelly Beach and decided I was tired and didn’t need to go on. I caught a bus back into the city.

After a buildup like that I’d better have pictures.

This is part of Bondi Beach, with the Pavilion in the center. I took the picture just before rounding the first headland.

And after rounding that first headland I saw a few more headlands to the south. I went only a bit beyond the first one in the picture.

This is what I mean by both dramatic and restful. There is a bit of the walk in the upper left corner of the picture. I had just come down that part.

I think I’d just passed Bronte Beach when I took this picture looking north. The headland farthest to the right is on the far side of Bondi Beach. In the foreground, yes, there are bodies in the water. They’re wearing wetsuits and trying to surf. Occasionally they succeed for a short distance.

Once back in town I went to the State Library and used a computer to read email. I didn’t write any notes about what I did that evening, so I guess I found supper and went back to the hotel.

Wednesday, August 22

By this time in the trip I felt I was running out of things to do and would have preferred to be heading to the airport. I had put together a long list of things to do in Sydney and surrounding area and though I had done many items on the list there were still several more things I could do.

Such as a few more museums.

I took a bus to the bottom of the hill where the Sydney Observatory is and took the stairs up. It’s a small observatory, used now mostly for verifying time. It has a ball on a pole on the roof that drops every day at 1:00 pm to give a time check to the ships in the harbour. Not that there are many ocean going ships in the harbour these days.

Since the Observatory is on a hill one gets a good view of the west side of the Harbour Bridge. Across the water is North Sydney and the entrance to an amusement park.

From here I went to The Rocks Discovery Museum. I happened to arrive just after a couple school groups, so I did the museum in reverse. It’s a small one and didn’t take much time. The Rocks is the area just to the west of Circular Quay and its rocky terrain was one of the areas first settled. So this museum told the story of that settlement. It also told of the time, maybe 50 years ago, when the city council wanted to tear everything down for urban renewal. The residents protested and after convincing a few construction companies to boycott the renewal project the council turned from renewal to renovation.

After lunch I went to the Museum of Sydney. This is on the site of the first governor’s house and the museum’s existence is a way of preventing a skyscraper from obliterating the house’s foundation and its historical resource. The museum’s plaza shows the floor plan of the foundation of the house now below it.

One of the displays in this museum is models of the ships in the First Fleet that arrived in 1788 to colonize the land for England. That trip took a long time and the new colony was short of supplies. The convicts and settlers were not chosen for a breadth of skills so weren’t really prepared to build a colony and get food from the land. Fresh supplies from England were delayed due to ships getting wrecked.

There were also displays of the growth of Sydney, especially the coming of the car and creation of suburbs. The city had a pretty good streetcar system. In the 1950s it was taken out. And now George Street (a block from my hotel) is closed while a streetcar line is put in.

When the museum closed I had about half an hour to enjoy the adjacent Royal Botanical Gardens. This would have been a place to explore some more. Even so, I was able to get a farewell shot of the city.

Back at Circular Quay I found an Indian restaurant with reasonable prices. Alas, it was a small place and all the tables were already reserved. So I did take-out and carried it on the subway back to my room.

I’ve already posted about the trip home. So this concludes my Australia travelogue.