RAY BRADBURY R.I.P.

I know you've probably already heard the news because, surprisingly (at least to me), it was all over all the media (network news and cable channels and newspapers and Internet etc.). But I still wanted to add my two cents. Bradbury gave me so much reading pleasure when I was young (my first wife, Lee, and I used to read him to each other before we had our kids).

It wasn't the more famous books and stories FAHRENHEIT 451 or THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES that got to me. But the less fantastical DANDELION WINE and stories like THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT. In my mind he was twinned with Jean Sheperd, another great story teller from the generation before mine. They both maintained a sweetness despite their sometimes ironic or dystopian visions of the future or the past. At heart, they seemed like optimists despite the realities of the worlds they came up in: The Great Depression and World War Two.

I miss Sheperd (I mostly encountered him as a radio storyteller at night in bed in my attic room as a kid—fortunately his voice still lives on the classic holiday movie he narrated from his story it was based on A CHRISTMAS STORY) and will miss Bradbury now. But his voice lives on as well, in his books and stories, some of which remain timeless.

Here's the obit from his hometown (as a teenager and adult anyway, he was born elsewhere) paper (and mine for the seventeen years I lived there as an adult), The L.A. Times.

QUOTE (+ EDITED QUOTE) OF THE(SE) DAY(S)

“Oh, how the rules change when Black Folks come up to bat! It's like you told us the game was Basketball, we showed up with sneakers, and now its Ice Hockey. Race continues to trump all other concerns. With all the achievements realized by President Obama, why the Democrats can't sell their agenda remains a mystery to me.    Regrettably, Progressives are lousing the opinion shaping wars in the electronic and print media. When you consider what will happen to all the progressive legislation since FDR if the Republicans retake the White House, it becomes a very scary picture.

Wake up Folks and get the vote out.” —Kenyon C. Burke,  Ed. D (a Civil Rights pioneer in New Jersey and elsewhere back in the day and still going strong)

And here’s my revised version of a post from Lydia Rivers that Doc Burke  sent me and others:

HERE’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!

Once Obama was elected, all of a sudden,
folks got mad and want to “take America Back”...
BACK TO WHAT/WHERE? Who took it?

 


After The 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster,

Now They Get Mad?

They didn't get mad when the Supreme Court
stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

They didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy

company officials to dictate Energy policy and

push us to invade Iraq .

They didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a

country that posed no threat to us.

They didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion

on said illegal war.

They didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more

money from foreign sources than the previous

42 Presidents combined.

They didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash

just disappeared in Iraq .

They didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and

outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American

jobs out of the country.

They didn't get mad when Bush/Cheney didn't catch

Bin Laden.

They didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion

dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

They didn't get mad when they saw the horrible conditions

at Walter Reed and other military hospitals.

They didn't get mad when we let a major US city,

New Orleans , drown.

They didn't get mad when we gave people who had

more money than they could spend, the 1%, over a

trillion dollars in tax breaks.

They didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job

creations in several decades.

They didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens

lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

They didn't get mad when lack of oversight and

regulations from the Bush Administration caused

US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments,

retirement, and home values. Etc. etc. etc.

They finally got mad when a black man was elected

President and decided that people in America

deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses

by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the

rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since

1929 were all okay with them, but helping fellow

Americans who are sick...saving the auto industry…

getting Bin Laden…actually reducing government

spending compared to Bush/Cheney…actually

creating jobs (but not fast enough because the

rightwing Republican Congress and governors

et. al. were cutting government jobs like cops and

teachers, faster than private sector jobs could be

created and corporate fat cats would rather sit on

their profits than invest in the economy while 

there's still uncertainty around the globe and 

just maybe because it will get someone more

sympathetic to their greed elected)...etc. etc. etc.


[And in many ways the above goes for a lot of
folks on the left as well as almost all on the right.]

MONEY AND ELECTIONS

When I was a boy, watching the 1956 Democratic Party Nominating Convention on a black and white TV with my "ward healer" father (i.e. Democratic Party chairman of our town who could get out the vote so well he could call the local election results almost exactly, and smart enough, despite only a seventh grade education, to do the same for state and national elections), when then Senator John Kennedy gave his nominating speech my father said, "He could be our first Irish Catholic president."  I asked him why he thought that and he said, "Because his father has enough money to make it happen."

It isn't always the case that money wins elections, but it's almost always the case. Today was one example. It looks like the huge amounts spent by the Koch brothers and other rightwingers in the Wisconsin recall election (eight to one compared to his Democratic opponent by most accounts) won Walker the right to stay in office and continue to carry out rightwing policies that favor the wealthy and hurt the working person. As my father also taught me, just because someone wins an election doesn't mean they're the best person for the job nor that the people who voted for them knew what they were doing.

If the Democrats don't learn the art of staying on message and keeping the message short and to the point and the rest of us don't vote or contribute to their campaigns, this doesn't bode well for the Fall elections. Since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision is what made it possible for these rightwing corporate behemoths to outspend those who threaten their interests the Dems have got to get a clear and simple message out, which is that yes, in fact we ARE better off than we were four years ago at the end of an eight year stretch of rightwing Republican policies being enacted and enforced, policies that destroyed our economy.

Of course, most folks, especially those who get their news from rightwing sources like Fox and Rush etc. don't even realize that under Bush/Cheney millions of jobs were lost and under Obama that was stopped and reversed and jobs have been created but just as fast as they're created the rightwing Congress folks and governors et. al. eradicate jobs in the public sector.  It's like they almost want the economic growth to be slow enough that they can call Obama a failure when he has actually succeeded where THEY failed. See, already that message is too nuanced and not simple enough for the right and the folks they have been able to sway with their billionaire backed ads.

Let's hope the center and the left get out and vote in the interest of all of us and not just the billionaires.

HERE'S WHEN I MISS THE YELLOW PAGES

Yeah I know, you can find them online now. But it ain't the same. I just looked up hardware stores for my town in Jersey and one top site said there were one hundred and forty-four listings for hardware stores in my little town, which in fact has none. They all disappeared when Home Depot built a giant store in a nearby town.

I was originally looking for a locksmith to open an old footlocker, the listings for those were extensive as well, there were even several on my street which is only a block long and mostly residential. The street numbers listed online didn't match up to any on my block, and when I called I got someone with a foreign accent who had no idea what a footlocker—or a trunk that isn't in a car—is. One guy said he'd drill the lock off (great for the old printed matter in the locker including first edition books etc I'm sure).

So I tried "hardware stores" because I know there are still a couple left in a few nearby towns, but instead of them popping up I got hundreds of listings for businesses like the locksmiths I kept getting, which, wherever they're actually located (none of them would say, unless they just lied and said they were in my town which we both knew wasn't true) seem to be a dispatcher and roving "technicians" who also have no idea what a footlocker or trunk is.

I did get the hardware store in a nearby town where the guy knew what I was talking about and said he had several skeleton keys for old footlockers and trunks one of which might work, otherwise he could pick the lock, but I'd have to bring it in. A good sized footlocker full of books etc. and on which the old leather handles have long since rotted (it was originally one of my older brothers who had it in WWII). I'm not bringing it in by myself, that's for sure.

I probably already wrecked the lock anyway trying to pick it myself or force it open. Man they made things well back in the day. I suppose now a footlocker full of books and printed material would just be virtual so the virtual locksmith could pick it from some remote office in another country.  Then I'd be the one not knowing what they're talking about.

QUICK, THINK OF A WORLD LEADER YOU WOULD COMPARE TO THE GREATS OF THE PAST

Yeah, I couldn't think of any either. I suppose we always need our elected representatives to be the best we can find, but these times certainly are demanding some strong leadership skills and I don't see them.

There's some politically shrewd ones (Nethanyahu) and some smart ones (Obama) and some staunch ones (Merkel) etc.  But where are the leaders willing to lead on the climate change crisis (including the diminishment of fresh water sources) which is the gravest long term and soon to be short term catastrophe facing all of us, or smart enough to see that "austerity" measures are not working in the worldwide financial crisis?

Obama may have beliefs I agree with in these areas, but he has not done a good job of leading on them. of course if Romney wins in November it will be even worse. And yes, I do believe the lesser of two evils is a better choice than no choice at all.  Maybe in a second term, if he wins one, Obama will be able to achieve more in these areas, but even then he'd have to have the support of Congress, which means the Democrats would not only have to win the House but also win more than sixty seats in The Senate (since the right has somehow won the filibuster battle meaning they have overthrown The Constitutions stipulation that a majority vote in The Senate is all it takes to pass a law etc.).

There are those two women in South America (in Chile and Brazil) whose policies and stated beliefs seem pretty righteous, but whose leadership skills may not be great enough to help them change things in their own countries let alone the world.  And yes, it's clear that the best leadership may often come from masses of people forming movements that influence policy decisions, but obviously that only goes so far: witness the Egyptian elections where the beliefs of the majority of the demonstrators that brought down Mubarak are not represented in the top two choices in the runoff, or in our own country where the rightwing media brain washing machine works so efficiently that working people continue to mostly vote against their own interests and in the interest of billionaires and corporations that deprive them of their rights, their economic security and their futures.

Which is not to say that all times aren't challenging for those alive in them and that humankind doesn't improve over time at least for long stretches. But it feels like a tough stretch we're in now.  

MELODY GARDOT

There's all kinds of charisma. Last post I was talking about Marilyn Monroe's (once in a poem I pointed out something that struck me in the mid 1950s when I was hitting puberty: the three sexiest movie stars in the world at the time were Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Bridget Bardot, hmmmm....). But the kind of charisma that a few music creators generate is something different than MM's. But no less sexy or transcendent.

Here's the latest musically charismatic creator in my personal pantheon: Melody Gardot (hmmm....).  Not only is she an exceptional singer and songwriter and performer, I believe she also is a survivor of severe brain trauma that left her with many of the difficulties I had post-brain-op only hers were much more severe. As part of her recovery, she got into Astrud Gilberto, the Brazilian singer who made "The Girl From Impanema" famous, and Gardot even went to Brazil to study the music up close and learn some Portuguese.

Just to show you how successfully she's incorporated that influence among others into her amazing new album [I guess that should be CD] THE ABSENCE check out this YouTube video of a live performance of her song "Mira" (I have speakers attached to my laptop—thanks to my oldest son Miles—so I can get the full sound, especially the bass, with extreme clarity, but I think even just through computer speakers you will feel the urge to dance in your seat as this song builds into an irresistibly rhythmic expression of joy [though many of the songs on THE ABSENCE are darker they are still as musically compelling]):

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NORMA JEAN

Someone said it's Marilyn Monroe's birthday, or the anniversary of her birth, today. The impact she had was so universal and lasting I'm sure it surprised many who survived her. At any rate, here's just one minute of her responding to the press on returning to Hollywood after being away for awhile in the mid-1950s, and as uneven as the sound is, and the quality of the print, the power of her charisma still transcends time and medium to charm the heart once again. At least mine.