April rambling: Silent Scream

It is brutal, damaging and untrue

Condolences to Dustbury on the loss of his brother James, his last sibling

Thousands of internal documents that help explain how the Islamic State stayed in power so long

The root of all cruelty?

Travel is fatal to prejudice

Why does the Right hate victims?

50 years after the Wahine Disaster (New Zealand)

Corruption, Not Russia, Is His Greatest Political Liability

His long-term effect on American democracy: How worried should we be?

The Crime-Fraud Exception in the Michael Cohen Case

What Will Our Society Look Like When Artificial Intelligence is Everywhere?

Ten Things That Have Zero Effect on What the Truth Is

Daniel Van Riper’s Albany Weblog: They Want To Fill In The Ravine In Lincoln Park

The Real Story of the Hawaiian Missile Crisis

The REAL Consumer Price Index?

Congress, Not Amazon, Messed Up the Post Office

the beautiful human gumbo

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLOUR

Steven Bochco, RIP; a retrospective – I loved many of these shows

Remembering Winnie Mandela

Living the beam onstage with William Shatner

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Oprah’s Full Chat from SUPER SOUL SUNDAY

From the nifty historical fiction Silent Scream #1
Kickstarter: THE TRUST BOOK ONE: SILENT SCREAM ISSUE 2 – Dennis Webster, Bill Anderson, Gabriel Rearte and Laurie E. Smith

Mark Waid tells a new Captain America story with original artwork from Jack Kirby!

Top 37 Parks To Visit Before You Die

After 40 years, Wendy and Richard Pini finish ‘Elfquest,’ the ‘first American manga,’ and go on fanquest

SNL: Black Jeopardy with Chadwick Boseman

Seth Meyers’ great “desk story”

A Weird and Beautiful Sports Story

150th anniversary of Little Women

vlogbrothers: On Punctuality (John) v. How to Stop Being Late Forever (Hank)

Now I Know: How Overdue Parking Tickets Took Over an Innocent Person’s Life and The Therapeutic Value of a Not-Quite-Flying Pig and The Race to Determine the Fastest Man Alive and Why You Can’t Steal First Base and Why You Shouldn’t Eat Those “Do Not Eat” Packets and The Elevator Light That’s a Total Gas

How he is transforming himself into the greatest president ever

MUSIC

Found Tonight – Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt

Listen to the Music – Playing for Change

Catch Me If You Can -John Williams score

She’s A Rockin’ Machine – Archie and the Bunkers

Coverville 1212: Cover Stories for Jimmy Cliff and Pharrell Williams

Oriental Rhapsody – Alexander Glazunov

Stephen Hawking Picks the Music (and One Novel) He’d Spend Eternity With: Stream the Playlist Online

‘The Weakness in Me’: Notes on Joan Armatrading

Can’t Take My Eyes Off You – Sonny Vande Putte

Never tell someone they can’t sing – it is brutal, damaging and untrue

Connective tissue on Groundhog Day

This is Smalbany, so SURELY they would have met each other by now.

On February 2, my friend Mark, who I’ve known since 1971, when I met him in at college, wrote: “I was at a concert recently and met a woman named Judy. She has friend-requested me [on Facebook], saying she knows Roger Green. I think you’ve mentioned her over the years.”

And evidently, I mentioned him to Judy, who I’ve only known since 1977, when I met her in that same college town. Judy’s also met other friends of mine, somehow, and realized they both knew me.

That evening, I went to First Friday at my church. The singer, Carla, who sang beautifully, BTW, has known a woman I’ve known through the library foundation for years. My activist friends Lynne and Dan were there, who I’ve known since the early 1980s. So was my activist friend Darby, who I’ve known since the late 1980s.

This is Smalbany, so SURELY they would have met each other by now. They knew other people in common besides me. But no, they had never crossed paths. So I introduced them.

And because it’s been on my mind a LOT lately, we discussed genealogy. Darby, Dan, and I all have misidentified ancestors in our family trees. As I’ve noted, mine involves my father’s biological father.

My second cousin Lisa called me that day. We’re working on a project that I’ll describe soon. She’s been doing genealogy of her family for years, and of course, there is some crossover.

To that end, she’s pretty much ordered me to do one of those DNA tests that Ancestry and others sell. Lisa had done hers and it pretty much disproved a family myth in her lines. But maybe some of the other lines in my past will tell a different story.

I related much of this to my wife just before we went to bed. She said, “You have an interesting life.” I guess I do.

Black History Month: Skin Deep

Seven ideas to help Boston become a more welcoming place to all

Bring Black History Month to the classroom by teaching your students about the work and lives of influential African-Americans

Presbyterian Church USA resources to understand and combat racism

The arc of history bends towards justice quote originally came from Theodore Parker

Celebrating the Afro-Puerto Rican ‘Father of Black History’ Arturo Schomburg

Jimmy Durham, Victoria soldier

In 1887, African-American cane workers in Louisiana attempted to organize—and many paid with their lives

Fredi Washington negotiated bigotry and made her way in the movies; the black celebrity from Hollywood’s Golden Age who revealed the complexities of passing for white

When cops raided a hip 1970s London cafe, Britain’s Black Power movement rose up

AND EVEN TODAY

From online troll to white supremacist leader: exposing the lie behind one man’s rise

Cheap White Whine: Racism, Affirmative Action, and the Myth of White Victimhood

Racism, fundamentalism, fear and propaganda: An insider explains why rural, white Christian America will never change

Rev. Robert Wright Lee IV Statement on Leaving His Church after Speaking Out against White Supremacy at MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS

Defiance In The Cold Sunshine: The Martin Luther King March overshadowed by racist profanity

Banned – Reports of Voter Suppression Tactics Pour In From Alabama Election

I used to lead tours at a plantation; you won’t believe the questions I got about slavery

Owning My Racism: a sermon given at First Parish Church in Billerica, MA on January 14, 2018

Boston. Racism. Image. Reality. A better Boston? The choice is ours; the final installment of The Boston Globe Spotlight Team’s series on race showcases seven ideas to help the city become a more welcoming place to all

MUSIC

Skin Deep – Playing For Change and Buddy Guy; the song includes over 50 musicians from coast to coast featuring Tom Morello, Billy Branch, Chicago Children’s Choir, and Roots Gospel Voices of Mississippi

Shakedown – Valerie June

Jumpin Jive – Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers; from the movie “Stormy Weather” (1943)

Black Pearl – Sonny Charles and Checkmates, Ltd.

Quincy Jones Has a Story About That

January rambling #1: A Patriotic American Liberal

I’ve known moot, as in “the question is moot,” but not this

LEAVE IT IN 2017 and Some looks at the year just gone

A Radical New Scheme to Prevent Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise

Americans Don’t Really Understand Gun Violence

How America is Transforming Islam

The scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

Proud To Be A Patriotic American Liberal

Senate Judiciary Committee Interview of GLENN SIMPSON, AUGUST 22, 2017, released by Diane Feinstein

Latrine politics

Conspiracy sites claim he was ‘FEARED DEAD’, targeted by ‘DEEP STATE’ in minor Tower fire

A tax on a free press

New mom Serena Williams had to talk her hospital staff through saving her life

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among UK men but this is a faulty conclusion

Google Thinks I’m Dead (I know otherwise)

What’s wrong with the Internet, whether it’s new, and the power (and value) of our attention

Empörungsgesellschaft – Crazy bloggers, twitterers, facebooklings, and so forth, are able to impinge upon the public consciousness in new and historically unprecedented ways?

Takeout creates a lot of trash; it doesn’t have to

Cory Doctorow’s recent novel Walkaway imagines a world where scarcity is unnecessary and generosity is a feasible way of life

This expanding house is ready in 10 minutes

Growable shoes

Chuck Miller: A few words on my son’s wedding day

A Writer’s Guide to Permissions and Fair Use

We Have A New Prime Number, And It’s 23 Million Digits Long

Darlanne in the 1971 Panorama yearbook, Binghamton, (NY) Central High School

Darlanne Fluegel, Actress in ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ and ‘Running Scared,’ Dies at 64 – I knew her a little when we were briefly in Binghamton Central High School together

Jerry Van Dyke, RIP

Ray Thomas, Moody Blues Flautist and Founding Member, Dead at 76

Keith Jackson, the folksy voice of college football has died at 89

Actress Greta Thyssen, Blonde Bombshell of the 1950s and ’60s, Dies at 90in action; see 185 Pies And Guys, esp from 13:00 in

How to pronounce Gyllenhaal

Musicals Into Movies

Op-Docs Contenders for the 2018 Academy Awards

Which Film Critics Are The Most Contrarian?

Must there be a Marvel Comics?

Babies weren’t cute until…

First new word of 2018 for me: mooted: raised (a question or topic) for discussion; suggested (an idea or possibility) – I’ve known moot, as in “the question is moot,” but not this

Now I Know: The Panhandler Who Returned a Treasure and When Breaking a Record Really Blows

What’s a Wendy’s doing there? The story of Washington’s weirdest traffic circle

MUSIC

The 2017 Coverville Countdown Part 1 and Part 2

Coverville 1200: This Day in Covers: January 3, 1978

Shelter from the Storm · Rodney Crowell / Emmylou Harris (HT to Jaquandor)

Echo Beach (2010) – Martha and the Muffins

Something’s Coming – Voctave

Your Song – Elle Goulding

Bagpipes/Dubstep/Star Wars

Someone to Lay Down Beside Me – Karla Bonoff

Ken – Barbie sings!

50 Best Folk Music Artists of All Time

The Beach Boys Are Better Than the Beatles

November rambling #1: until we get power again

Controversial Newsweek cover
Amy Biancolli: Slave castles, and the weight of history

The lost children of Tuam: Ireland wanted to forget

After I Adopted Two Black Babies, I Realized My Church Was Full Of Racists

Chaz Ebert: My daughter loves country music

I Want ‘Allahu Akbar’ Back

The Billie Jean Republicans

Every scandal plaguing him

A LOT of smoke

‘I want the government…to bring kindness back’ – Alas, not here. Jacinda Ardern sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand

When he was a kid, he said, they didn’t use the word autism, they just said ‘shy’

Floods: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Saudi Arabia issues first non-human citizenship to humanoid AI robot Sophia and Are We Ready for Intimacy With Androids?

Why This Cardiologist Is Betting That His Lab-Grown Meat Startup Can Solve the Global Food Crisis

The ‘good guy with a gun’ theory didn’t work out well in Colorado

Philip Schuyler’s Last Project: Before the Erie Canal

Effective November 30, 2017, AOL will no longer offer the ability to add new usernames or restore deleted usernames to an account

How Betsy DeVos Became The Most Hated Cabinet Secretary

Why you hate contemporary architecture

The Hotel at the Center of the World – I’ve been there

Judi England: Life is change (redux)

Born this month (1954)
Goodbye Katie Lee

Robert Guillaume RIP; Benson theme; SOAP- Stop in the Name of Love

Farewell, 747

David Letterman reflects on Harvey Pekar

Creating Saturday Night Live

Back To The Twilight Zone and Rod Serling’s Binghamton

Frank Oz news

Woody Woodpecker cartoon called The Bird Who Came to Dinner redux

Now I Know: How a Minnesota Town Body Slammed Its Neighbor and Stolen Smile and The Problem with Seven Eights and When Ice Was a Hot Gift

How Pringles Potato Crisps are made and how do they make crayons?

MUSIC

(Earth is) Not OK – Ingrid Michaelson -October 25, 2017 Full Frontal on TBS (language)

The Story Behind Devo’s Iconic Cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”

Good For Me – Aimee Mann from season 3 of Supergirl

K-Chuck Radio: Edison Diamond Discs and Until we get power again…

Coverville 1192: The Cover Me Interview

Lorena -John Hartford, written in 1856

It’s Not Your Nationality (It’s Simply You) -Billy Murray (1916)

The Oz medley

All Through The Night – the Mystics, with Jerry Landis aka Paul Simon

Rumble – Link Wray

Immigrant Song – Led Zeppelin

Neuroscientists Discover A Song That Reduces Anxiety By 65 Percent (Listen)

NOLA The Cat Performs John Cage’s 4’33”

Ringo Starr Talks New Album, Reuniting With Paul McCartney

The Unlikely Return of Cat Stevens

Sex, spies, and classical music: The BSO scandal

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