Come dance with me

Ah, Halloween. I usually avoid the festivities. I don’t have children. Because of previous dietary issues I don’t eat candy and wouldn’t want to deal with leftovers if I didn’t accurately judge the number of kids coming to the door. So I usually disappeared for the evening, going to a restaurant for supper (they’re usually rather empty on this night) and a movie (attendance also sparse). I’d get home about 9:00 and spend some time with the neighbors who have gathered around a fire in a portable fire pit. But tonight there were no movies worth risking a trip to a theater. So I’m sitting with the lights off to give the impression no one is home. I’m helped by rain falling in the prime visiting hours. If the rain clears up I may join the crowd around the fire pit. In the meantime a neighbor has a recording of a scream that goes off about every half minute. A good Halloween comic in today’s paper. And the origin story of the Jack O’ Lantern. On Friday evening I went to the Detroit Film Theater in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The movie this time was In Balanchine’s Classroom. That’s George Balanchine, dancer and choreographer, the most influential choreographer of the 20th century. His early training was in Russia. He fled to Paris during the Russian revolution of 1917 and joined up with Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballet Russe. When Diaghilev died, Balanchine didn’t know what he would do next, so when he was invited to America in 1933 he took the offer. He quickly opened the School of American Ballet (backed by the people who invited him). He eventually co-founded the New York City Ballet. The State Theater at Lincoln Center was built to his specifications. One interpretation of the title is working with Balanchine was so informative it was like being in his classroom. That’s not correct. He literally ran a ballet class as part of being part of the ballet company. The dancers needed to learn a lot of basic technique. So every day he had an hour of class. It may not have been required but dancers soon learned to get a role in an upcoming ballet one had to show up frequently. Much of the movie is discussions with his dancers. Many of those now have prominent roles in other dance companies and we see them at work. While these dancers are talking we see Balanchine in action in the classroom and leading the dancers in creating a work. The classroom was a training ground for technique. It was also Balanchine’s lab where he tried things before including them in a work. How fast could dancers move? Was it possible to do this move or that? How could these steps be combined? It was during class that Balanchine saw which dancers needed to have the choreography laid out in detail and which ones were good co-creators. One of his dancers talked about him insisting that dancers move to the music. The music must guide what they do. That made me think of Merce Cunningham, about a generation younger than Balanchine who choreographed a style where the people moved and there was music but neither had anything to do with the other. Balanchine pushed his dancers so they got past thinking about the technique and got past thinking about what steps were done in what order into just dancing. Towards the end one of his dancers talked about the feeling Balanchine was after. I don’t know if I heard it right, though what I heard is pretty sweet. He wanted us to think God was inviting us. It doesn’t matter if we’re good or felt worthy. God was saying just four words: “Come dance with me.” From this week’s Michigan COVID data: The weekly peaks in the number of new cases per day dropped! Over the last five weeks the peaks have been: 3926, 4378, 4432, 4153, and 4174. Some of those have been revised from earlier weekly reports. The deaths per day have been adjusted. One day six weeks back has been adjusted up to 53. During the week before last and the week before that the death count has risen to 50 twice, otherwise mostly above 42. Last week scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam spoke to Daily Kos about the COVID pandemic. Mark Sumner reported on what Bar-Yam said. The scientist is a specialist in complex systems and played a key role in ending the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2013. Some of his major points: * We have little understanding of what it means to live with a deadly disease as a constant in life. We don’t think about taking a trip and picking up a virus that can kill us. * We don’t think about orphanages that are filling because caregivers have died. * We have an economy that had worked as a well-oiled machine with workers who had an assurance of safety and of coming home at the end of the day. An ongoing epidemic would be an ongoing disruption where schools, businesses, and sporting events close when the number of cases got high. * COVID, and other viruses, don’t become milder over time. * So we must work to eliminate the disease. This must be a community effort. Government response is critical, but not the only component, because government amplifies conflict. Then media focuses on that conflict, amplifying the worst behavior and most outrageous statements. * Instead of focusing on the individual (as in contact tracing), focus on the community. Create a response appropriate for the community. Enlist community members to work for their community. Check on neighbors and know their situation. * We don’t have a safe place for people to go when they are sick. There is the hospital and there is home – where they can infect the rest of the family. * Yes, this takes work. The alternative is orphanages. “Remember the Alamo” was a famous battle cry in Texas history. SemDem of the Kos community wrote that we would be better to Forget the Alamo. That’s the first part of the title of a book by three Texas researchers. Texas Republicans quickly tried to ban it from classrooms. Yeah, there was a siege at the Alamo and a lot of people inside died. But there is a lot more to the story. * Texas wanted to be independent from Mexico because Mexico banned slavery and those settling Texas considered it crucial to their economy (they were also highly racist). Antonio López de Santa Anna, newly elected president of Mexico, attacked the Alamo to enforce the end of slavery. * Those in the Alamo were warned several times of Santa Anna’s approach. They ignored it, then they were trapped. Davy Crockett begged for mercy. * The story excludes the local Tejanos and African Americans, who fought alongside the white rebels. * That story of William Travis drawing a line in the sand never happened. That myth was promoted by Disney (see: Fess Parker) and John Wayne’s The Alamo. The truth of the Alamo matters because a lot of important decisions are based on that myth. * President Lyndon Johnson considered Vietnam just like the Alamo. * Bush II built a replica of the Alamo on a military base outside Bagdad. * A lot of Texans feel this origin story gives them a reason to consider their state special. * The story makes people of color dread that part of social studies classes. * This attempt to hide the truth and promote the myth is a part of the current attempt to ban teaching of certain topics, such as racism. It is also a part of the attempt to gerrymander the state so white people will maintain control of government. Leah McElrath tweeted a quote that said we have no right to Elon Musk’s money. She also quoted a Bloomberg Business tweet saying the combined net worth of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is approaching a half trillion. McElrath added:

Money is a social construct that represents stored value in excess of tangible goods and services. In no rational or moral universe does any individual have an inherent right to stored value as massively disproportionate as that claimed by Musk and other multi-billionaires. The only way to accumulate this much stored value is via theft: Theft of worker value, via inadequate compensation. Theft of consumer value, via overpricing and elimination of competition. Theft of planetary value, via privatizing resources and ignoring environmental costs. Etc.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the parent company of Facebook changing its name to Meta. I’m familiar with the term metaverse through reading lots of science fiction. It is similar to virtual reality and means living our lives within a computer generated world. Zuckerberg, of course, wants that to be his computer generated world. Responding to the announcement. Zamandlovu Ndlovu tweeted:

I wish I had the English to explain how scary it is that billionaires are at the point of selling us a virtual reality of the lives they live to keep us distracted from the deterioration in the real lives we are living.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included late night commentary:

The constant refrain we hear from cops every time they kill an unarmed Black person is, 'They should have complied with the law, because as long as you comply, things will supposedly go well.' But that only seems to work one way. Because when officers are asked to follow simple rules or face consequences, a not-insignificant amount of them flip their s---. So you know what? If an officer wants to quit over this [vaccine mandate], f---ing let them. Let the individuals who clearly don't care about public safety stop being in charge of public safety. —John Oliver

The neighborhood gathering at the portable fire pit didn’t happen this evening.