Cindy Walker Lives On

“I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down’.”  – Bob Newhart

Ray Benson, front man for the venerable country-swing band Asleep at the Wheel, introduced the band’s next song with some background about its composer. The tiny Texas town of Mexia boasted two celebrated women, he said: Anna Nicole Smith, infamous 1993 Playboy Playmate of the Year and Country Music Hall-of-Famer Cindy Walker. Benson went on, explaining that the song was written by a lady from Mexia, “The one with the big… er… hits!”

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Border Conflict

A number of the bridges spanning the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon have or did have tolls. The toll booths are/were on the Oregon side, leading to the inescapable conclusion that Washington cannot be trusted with the money.

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What Would Mr. Carnegie Think?

The University of California-Berkeley recently remodeled its undergraduate library. With the remodel, they have lifted the ban on bringing food and drink inside. There is no longer any danger of books in the library being damaged by spilled food or drink. The reason: there are no longer any books in the library.

As we all know, if it’s on the Internet, it must be true, so the library has been re-styled to serve as a gathering place for students to gather for important discussions, complete with power supplies for laptops and whiteboards for recording vital ideas, and monitors to view work produced in PowerPoint, that scourge of civilized discourse.

What, no Foosball table?

“It’s the wave of the future,” a professor said. “The idea of research in a library is becoming archaic, versus Googling on the Internet. Maybe they’re not accessing the best information with what comes up on Google, but people are used to finding things on the Internet.”

Read more about it here.

Postscript: At my high school – an all-boys institution –  a major project junior year was the research paper. This involved evenings of research at the downtown public library. The downtown library was usually frequented by students from other schools – of the girl gender.

Keeping Things in Perspective

Millions of people took to the streets on Earth Day to promote science as necessary to save the earth. Nearly 900 million people in the world are undernourished. In Syria, 6 million people have lost their homes; another 4.8 million are refugees who have left the county. In the Vatican City, cardinals are outraged that Pope Francis has said that it might be okay for divorced Catholics to take communion.

Writing in his 2016 “Amoris Laetitia” – if you didn’t study Latin that means “The Joy of Love” – Pope Francis said bishops can use their discretion in allowing Communion for Catholics who have divorced and remarried. A few years earlier the Pope said it was probably all right for Lutherans to receive Communion. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he later surmised that is was not for him to judge if gay people could take communion. To conservative bishops in Germany and the U.S. this is not acceptable and goes against what has been Catholic dogma for centuries. The Church does not recognize divorce and so those who remarry are living in sin.

If you’re like many people, you don’t care.

Earth Day – Then and Now

Gaylord Nelson, Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, originated the first Earth Day in 1970. (Also born in 1970 was Paul Ryan, an Ayn Rand acolyte elected to Congress by Wisconsin voters in 1998.) Nelson wanted a “national teach-in on the environment.” Pete McCloskey, a Republican Congressman, from California, served as Nelson’s co-chair. What are the chances today of a Democrat and a Republican coming together on environmental issues?

Twenty-million Americans demonstrated on April 22, 1970, sending a message that it was time to address the deterioration of the air, the water and the land. Later that year, President Richard Nixon issued an executive order creating the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress soon after ratified the order. Nixon – yes, that Richard Nixon – also signed the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Forty-seven years later, flanked by coal-company executives, coal miners and the vice-president, along with various administration flunkies, Donald Trump signed an executive order rescinding his predecessor’s “Clean Power Plan.” Just to rub the EPA’s nose in it, the president held the signing ceremony inside the agency’s offices. He finished by telling the deluded coal miners, “C’mon, fellas. You know what this is? You know what this says? You’re going back to work.” According to the Associated Press, renewable-energy jobs already outnumber coal jobs, and many renewable-energy technologies are on their way to being cheaper than coal.

Obama’s executive order was a plan to reduce carbon emissions. Trump’s EO lifts a moratorium on new coal mining leases on federal land and relaxes limits on new coal power plant construction.

I wonder what our children and grandchildren will think about this.

…and in other news…

In a lawsuit filed against Palm Beach County, Trump demanded $100 million damages, alleging that emissions from the jets flying overhead are “causing substantial destruction of the materials” used to build the club, which include unique and historical items like “porous Dorian stone, antique Spanish tiles and antique Cuban roof tiles.”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the suit claims noise and fumes from the air traffic have “substantially deprived” Trump and the club’s members the ability to use the property’s outdoor areas and amenities.

Records… What Are Records?

Vinyl records are having a resurgence. Enough people remember what music sounded like before the current era of sterile downloaded digital recordings reproduced through crappy ear buds. Vinyl discs required careful handling, touching only the edges, to avoid scratching the playing surface. When the needle dropped into the groove, pops and skips and scratchy sounds showed the futility of the effort. In spite of that, serious audiophiles spend thousands of dollars on turntables and tube-powered amplifiers.

And record stores are still in business. Some people still purchase compact discs and brand-new twelve-inch vinyl record albums. (No doubt including oldsters who have a much easier time trying to read the notes and deciphering the graphics on the larger album sleeves.) Some artists still record albums with thematic unity. Buying and selling used vinyl and CDs is a thriving business.

Tower Records is gone, but independent record stores are still in business. April 22 is their day. (It’s also Earth Day.) Go visit your local business where they care about the music.

 

My favorite: Last Record Store in Santa Rosa, California.