Ramblin' with Roger

July rambling: the most peaceful

Forever Chemicals

For the 13th year in a row, Iceland ranks as the most peaceful country in the world, according to t he Institute for Economics & Peace’s annual Global Peace Index (GPI). The United States? We’re #131!

At Least 45 Percent of US Tap Water Contaminated With PFAS “Forever Chemicals” – So far, the scale of contamination in local water systems and private wells outpaces detection and cleanup efforts.

For Your Safety: What to Know about Door Knock Journalism

Facing extinction, Tuvalu considers the digital clone of a country

Oklahoma judge dismisses Tulsa race massacre reparations case filed by last known survivors

The displacement of homeowners to build Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine

Jan. 6 suspect arrested near Obama’s house after Trump posts the address

Hunter Biden, and why he did not get a sweetheart deal

US Senate confirms first female Muslim federal judge in US history. Civil rights attorney Nusrat Choudhury was confirmed this week to the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York after the Senate voted 50-49 mostly along party lines. Choudhury also makes history as the first Bangladeshi American to serve as a federal judge.

Other courts continue to make news.Tributes to Alan Arkin, Virtuoso Comic Actor With a Serious Side, Who Died at 89

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right” – the 75th anniversary of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

The Man Who Broke Bowling: Jason Belmonte’s two-handed technique made him an outcast. Then it made him the greatest—and changed the sport forever.

Now I Know: Minecraft 1, Censorship 0 and The Cold War’s Most Important Hot Dog Stand and North Korea’ Crappy Way to Feed People and The Record Setting Olympian Who Was Lost to History and When Exercise Was Actually Torture

Moms for “Liberty”

USA Today has a pretty straightforward piece about the so-called Moms for Liberty, and how djt, DeSantis, Nikki Haley et al. found it necessary to pay homage. As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar noted. M4L “aren’t supporting liberty but taking away the liberty of those they oppose.”

“Our children belong to the Lord, not the government,” declared Patriot Mobile spokeswoman Leigh Wambsganss. “This is not a political war, it is a spiritual war!”

As the Weekly Sift guy observes: “An authoritarian world with clear rules and clear categories comes with an implicit promise of safety for those who obey and conform. So that nonbinary kid on the subway whose gender you can’t quite identify — it’s not that they’re going to attack you themselves. It’s that they represent a crack in the ‘safe’ world order, a manifestation of Chaos. And as those cracks grow, who can predict what demons will spill into the world?”

Of course, obedience and conformity are the exact opposite of the Liberty the group is supposed to stand for. But I guess Moms For Obedience and Conformity just doesn’t have the same ring.”Also, Kareem also notes how Ron D’s “campaign has decided to abandon any pretense of rational arguments and embrace open hatred and contradictory messaging.” I hate it when I agree with djt, but Ron DeSanctimous is about right.

MUSIC

Peter Sprague Plays Guinnevere featuring Rebecca Jade

At Broadway Backwards 2023, Les Misérables’ inspiring anthem One Day More was set among a modern-day, ragtag group of activists preparing for an equality march in Washington.

Jolene – the PFC Band

Coverville 1447: Cover Stories for Colin Hay of Men at Work, and George Michael & Wham! and 1448: Cover Stories for The Seekers/New Seekers and Bill Withers

The Annotated “Stars and Stripes Forever”

Increase and Multiply – dropped from 1776

Both Sides Now – Annie Lennox (Live at Gershwin Prize 2023)

June and Hey, Bulldog – the Mona Lisa Twins

Light My Fire– Big Daddy

Helene’s Theme from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Distiny by John WilliamsDo We Really Need Christian Lofi? Even when it comes to ambient mood music, there’s no such thing as secular. (No, I was unfamiliar with the Lofi term.)

Finally

Wings by Jessica KantrowitzThere is a fence to keep us in and a fence to keep us outand there are gatekeepers and those who debate the requirements for entry or exitBut you and I, my friend we are birds we have wings.

1972: meeting with my draft board

follwing suit

I met with my draft board on September 7, 1972, to appeal being reclassified as 1-A, eligible for military service when my initial request for conscientious objector status had been rejected. For some reason, I thought it was later in the fall. And other details I misremembered.

As I sought a graphic, I discovered the current vernacular of draft board involves fantasy league sports. Nope, not that.

The board

There were three men on the panel. Someone asked me if I had a bugging device. (I didn’t and wasn’t sophisticated enough to jerry-rig one.) “The chairman knew me from the fact that I was B.C.H.S. [Binghamton Central] student gov’t pres. He asked me vague and unanswerable questions about my beliefs and asked what I had done for humanity lately.”

(In retrospect, I could have mentioned how I had fought against war, was getting myself to be an educated citizen, and the like.)

“He also said that in trying to understand me thru my letters, he found me rather flippant and is trying to find the real me. I’m not flippant – rather wry but also honest. He said that if a Hitler [or a Nixon, I noted in my head] tried to take over the world, wouldn’t my love of humanity [have me] fight to save them? He paralleled helping countrymen with helping family.”

Garland Hamlin was on the panel. He was a member of my church. His wife tried to teach me piano. I went to school with his two daughters and his nephew. His parents-in-law were my godparents. Yet he acted as though he did not know me, so I followed his lead.

He “asked questions like, ‘Do you think WWI was justified?’ I wasn’t about to justify ANY war, but he kept driving at it.

The third guy bugged me the most – he didn’t say a damn thing. [It all [left a bad taste in my mouth, but no worse than expected.

Hitchhiking back to college

My father gave me a ride out onto Route 17. It took me three rides to get back to college. One from some “freaks” to Windsor; this was a positive term in my mind, i.e., hippie freaks. One ride to Liberty with a guy from Rhode Island. Then an older black man from Ellenville took me to New Paltz. The commonality is that all those drivers either disliked or hated Richard Nixon.

After visiting friends, I hitchhiked to Kingston. The guy drove too fast and tailgated. When he stopped at a bar for cigarettes, the guy stole a pack, then the proprietor took them back. I feared a fight, especially with the driver’s “Don’t tell me what to do” attitude.

I hitchhiked a LOT in those days, from Binghamton to New Paltz and back; from New Paltz to Kingston and back – the Okie and I lived there briefly; and especially New Paltz to NYC, though one needed to take a bus out of the city to hitch back.

There’s one particular hitchhiking story that I’m hoping I wrote about.

Films on a plane

Persepolis

Flying from JFK to CDG took seven hours, and the return trip took eight. I guess we’re going to be watching some films on a plane. These are in the order I watched them, which also involved viewing a few television programs.

A Man Called Otto (2022). I saw this trailer in the movie theater more than once but was wary of seeing it. Otto was a remake of a 2015 Swedish film, A Man Called Ove, which my wife had seen in the cinema, but I had not.

The trailer made it appear that Otto was a grumpy old man won over by the spunky Latina and her cute kids. Meh.

The actual film was much more substantial, with a backstory that reminded some of the emotion tied to the first ten minutes of the animated movie Up. Tom Hanks plays Otto, and his son Truman as Otto in flashbacks with Sonya (Rachel Keller).

Marisol (Mariana Treviño) is a stronger character than I believed she’d be. This article compares the film with some major spoilers. The last line: “The unique traits in Otto’s interpretation of this story make it clear that this is no shameless carbon copy of what’s worked in the past.”

A Man Called Otto is recommended.

CRA

I managed to miss Crazy Rich Asians when it came out in 2018. In many ways, it is a basic rom-com with Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) going with her boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding) to his best friend’s wedding back in Singapore.

When they went out, Nick avoided telling Rachel that 1) his family was insanely wealthy and 2) he was expected to take over the family business. Rachel meets Nick’s disapproving mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), and others in Nick’s sometimes vicious circle of family, friends, and acquaintances.

Mostly, I liked it, even when the jokes were broad. But I was unconvinced by the tidy ending. I was excited that a film with a different geography and demographic existed.

Italy

I had heard about Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, the 2021–2022 Emmy-winning series about the actor traveling across the country “to discover the secrets and delights of the country’s regional cuisines.”

The episode I saw was about Venice. It was interesting because it showed how eclectic and wide-ranging the foods of the region were, in large part because of the wide-ranging immigration in the port city, both ancient and recent. Very interesting.

On the return flight, I decided to watch First Cow (2019), which I had seen teased in the cinema. But it was too dark. I don’t mean the story was too dark, though a skeleton was found early on. The visual contrast on my screen made it difficult to see, so I abandoned it.

French animation

I watched an hour-long television program in French with English subtitles. The title translates to The great history of animation cinema in France. It was fascinating.

The French were early in the animated pictured movie. Émile Reynaud and Émile Cohl were pioneers in the field. But the work of Walt Disney and others left France behind.

The industry started to turn around somewhat with the success Kirikou et la sorcière (Kirikou and the Sorceress), 1998; Les Triplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville), 2003; and Persepolis,2007. Still, the French felt they were playing on an uneven playing field when they spent $8 million on a movie, but Disney et al. could spend $80 million.

I had always wanted to see The Triplets of Belleville, which did play in the cinema in Albany in 2003 or 2004, but I had missed it.

Iran

I needed to see Persepolis, Oscar-nominated as the best-animated film. The graphic novel I’ve owned for years.

“In 1970s Iran, Marjane ‘Marji’ Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah’s defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However, as Marji grows up, she witnesses firsthand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny.”

It is a compelling autobiography. The animation is somewhat rudimentary but effective.

With less than an hour before landing, I watched an episode of Friends in French, the one with Elle Macpherson; the dubbed voices made it enjoyable.

Recent Supreme Court rulings

rogue court

I wanted to write about recent Supreme Court rulings, some of which I found both disturbing and frankly baffling. Baffling because the justification for taking up at least some of the cases at all were specious. The words weren’t coming, so I have purloined others.

Arthur noted the case that “involved a fundamentalist ‘christian’ web designer who thought one day she might like to create wedding websites, but her religious views compelled her to refuse to create a website for a same-gender couple, in the event she ever started providing such services, of course, and if a theoretical same-gender couple ever tried to hire her services. While the supposed ‘injury’ to her was entirely hypothetical, she sued the State of Colorado, anyway—well, the ultra-far-right ‘Alliance Defending [sic] Freedom [lol]’ sued on her behalf.

Worse, “it emerged that, allegedly, someone named ‘Stewart’ had contacted her through her website’s contact form to try to hire her web services for his marriage to his ‘husband’. The problem was, the whole thing was faked by someone…. He also had no idea his name and details had been used in a Supreme Court case.” The guy, I’ve read, is mortified by this.

And lower courts had passed on the case, but the Supremes took it on.

The ruling allows for violations of well-established public accommodation laws. Specifically, advocates in Massachusetts and elsewhere fear the effect of the ruling. Will some business owners have the right not to serve customers based on personal or religious beliefs?

See also the People for the American Way (PFAW) analysis.

Student loan forgiveness

This piece by the new Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) suggests that CJ John Roberts was intellectually dishonest in his opinion. In her dissent, Elana Kagan said as much. “From the first page to the last, today’s opinion departs from the demands of judicial restraint. At the behest of a party that has suffered no injury, the majority decides a contested public policy issue properly belonging to the politically accountable branches and the people they represent.”

Teresa M. Hanafin addresses some of the questions Boston Globe readers s have asked. “Many of those folks, relieved of that debt, would have helped give the already robust economy a boost: They’d have been able to buy houses, pay down other debt, start small businesses, rely less on other social service programs. It even helps with their mental health.

“Asking why today’s students should get debt relief when yesterday’s students didn’t is a question that could be asked about any social program. Do you think that elders nearing the end of their lives when Social Security was introduced in 1935 demanded that it be squashed because it hadn’t been enacted when they were 65? Should we stop giving food stamps to single mothers simply because most of us don’t need them?

“I’m sorry, but that question is so typically American: If I can’t have it, then neither can you. Oddly, conservatives have that attitude only when it comes to poor and marginalized people; they’re fine with social welfare benefits such as tax cuts for wealthy households and corporations and subsidies for fossil fuel companies…”

See also this PFAW piece.

College Affirmative Action

From PFAW: “Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a powerful dissent, joined by Kagan and Jackson. As she has in the past, she pointed out that the far-right justices’ assumptions around race are not based on reality: “

[T]he Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.

Some interesting responses have emerged. lawsuit Uses SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling to Go After Legacy Admissions. “’Harvard’s practice of giving a leg-up to the children of wealthy donors and alumni…must end,’ said one advocate.”

Another fix: With End of Affirmative Action, a Push for a New Tool: Adversity Scores

The broader issue

The Weekly Sift covers these cases but also the broader context of a court bent on overturning precedent, disrespecting lower courts, and ahistoric rules of interpretation.

Arthur: “The court’s far-right Republican majority is doing the one thing that Republicans have long pretended was an unpardonable sin: They’re legislating from the bench.”

Vanity Fair also has taken the wider view: America Has a Supreme Court Problem. “Hillary Clinton tried warning us. Now, what do you do with a rogue Court?” In other words, she told you so.

“A year ago, in their joint Dobbs dissent, justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and former justiceStephen Breyer wrote that the ruling ‘breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law…. It places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy.’”

Did anyone REALLY believe the anti-abortion activists would leave the issue to the states? At least some Republican candidates are looking for a federal restriction.

From NCRM:Well-known political expert, author, journalist, and CEO David Rothkopf is blasting conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court after their disastrous rulings…, warning the Court is now a ‘threat to democracy’ and suggesting some justices should be ‘considered’ for impeachment.” Specifically, Justices Alito and Thomas.

The “conservative” response

I’m always monitoring some of the rightwing media. The Daily Signal wrote a piece called To Gain Power, the Left Seeks to Destroy the Supreme Court, which I shan’t link to. The piece bashes Pelosi, the Squad (AOC, et al.).

It seems, in a linked Tweet to suggest that there WASN’T a “stolen Supreme Court seat.” Obama wasn’t allowed by the Senate to replace Antonin Scalia (d. Feb 13, 2016) but djt could replace RBG (d. Sept 18, 2020).

Perhaps off-topic, or maybe not: “Do you remember America?”

Sunday Stealing: Swap-Bot redux

Am I mellow?

This Sunday Stealing is Swap-Bot redux.

1. Do you trust people at restaurants who handle your food that they aren’t doing anything gross to it while you can’t see them?

What a weirdly paranoid question. Of course, because if they were to do so over time, it would likely be discovered. Incidentally, my wife, my daughter, her friend, and I went to an Italian restaurant called Tesoro in June on its last day before the owners would retire. Usually, when I have leftovers, the server will bring the empty containers to us. But this place put the food in the containers and bagged them up. That was the way it used to be, and I think it’s classy.

No hair day

2. How do you wear your hair each day?

If you’ve ever seen my hairline, you wouldn’t ask that question. The picture of the duck on my page, drawn by the late Raoul Vezina is a caricature of me that he did when I was 30 or younger It is so good that my old buddy Dan, the fuirst time he saw me on the street in 1985, after having previously seen the cartoon, KNEW it was me.

3. Have you ever worn:

A gas mask? Not to my recollection.

A blindfold? Undoubtedly, for the purpose of some game.

Is this a fashion question?

5. What is the difference between a man’s button down shirt and a woman’s button down shirt?

They’re buttoned on the opposite sides? IDK, and I don’t care. OK, I care enough to look it up afterward. Yup.

No, non, nein, nyet

Tthe answers to

4. Would you be willing to go hang gliding?

6. Have you ever taken a lock of someone else’s hair?

7. Have you ever given anyone a lock of your hair?

8. If you had a locket what would you put inside?

16. Do you have any tattoos or piercings?

are no, don’t think so, I doubt it, I’m not a locket kind of guy, and no, respectively

9. Have you ever written something on a bathroom wall?

It’s possible, though i don’t remember specifically. but it would have been one that had been severely graffitied previously.

10. When was the last time you fell down in public?

I don’t recall. I remember doing so on my way to church pre-COVID whe it was icy out.

Have I ever been mellow?

11. Are you more aggressive or mellow?

I wouldn’t use either of those terms. There are times when I will exhibit a flash of anger, usually when I, or someone else, has been wronged. I can be mellow about things that just don’t matter much to me. If a group is going out to a restaurant, and they want my preference, generally, I don’t care.

Conversely, if something is important to me – and I had made it quite clear that it was, and yet I’m not heard – I can be quite vociferous. This happened at least twice at my last job.

What is life?

12. What have you done with your self to keep your life worth living?

Being useful, broadly speaking. That was the great thing about being a librarian; I could answer questions that some wanted to know the answer to. there are things I know – CDTA bus routes, certain music trivia, news – that can be helpful.

13. What is the most incredible thing you can do?

Incredible? IDK. I do know all of the US Presidents in order, by year inaugurated. Indeed, muy brain is so full of ephemera that I can’t even remember what I remember.

So I asked my wife. She mentioned two separate things: my ability to remember the dates of many events in my life; and recalling music ties to lyrics, when I got the album or first heard the song. I see them as part of the same brain process. For instance, I first heard The Beatles white album in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Binghamton, NY shortly after Thanksgiving 1968 when friend Steve used his LRY (Liberal Religious Youth) credentials to be able to use the building.

14. Do you bury your pets, flush them, or throw them away?

I haven’t had fish since I was kid. Probably flushed them.

15. What’s your favorite thing that is yellow?

An electrical banana. Nah, probably a T-shirt.

(Thanks to Gus for the graphic.)