Persons – Page 37 – GEORGE ROTHERT

Preparing for Lent

For Christians, Shrove Tuesday is a traditional day given to self-examination and seeking absolution for wrongdoing. The day is also known as Fat Tuesday – or Mardi Gras – the last day to indulge in rich foods such as butter, eggs and sugar, before beginning forty days of Lenten fasting. A pancake feast is the custom for many. If pancakes aren’t enough for a last-day blowout, then take to the streets and join the Mardi Gras or Carnival celebrations. Which brings us to Professor Longhair.

Roy Byrd, born in 1918, grew up on the streets of New Orleans. He progressed from tap dancing for tips on Bourbon Streets and gambling with card games, to becoming a piano legend, revered long past his death in 1980. Fats Domino, Huey “Piano” Smith, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Marcia Ball and many others paid homage to Professor Longhair – nicknamed for his shaggy mane – as their inspiration and whom they did and still do try to imitate.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Christo & Jeanne-Claude and Artsy

About a year ago, we reported on The Floating Piers, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s participatory installation in northern Italy. As with their other public projects, The Floating Piers was temporary, removed last July. If you want to keep up with the artists or purchase some of their work, check out Artsy.net.

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While We Are Distracted

Filled with outrage or scorn about the Bowling Green Massacre or the Nordstrom attack on Ivanka? While we’ve given our attention to these and other inanities, there’s serious stuff going on – very quietly. Here’s a couple:

Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, held a hearing titled “Making the E.P.A. Great Again.” Rep Smith’s plan to make the EPA great again is to replace their science advisory board with scientists employed by the industries it regulates.
The newly-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, is wasting no time attacking net neutrality. Net neutrality requires Internet service providers to deliver consumers equal access to all legal content and applications without favoring or blocking particular sources. The Internet has become, in effect, a public utility. It would be like the electricity provider slowing down your service because they made a deal with certain brands of appliances and you don’t have that brand.

It’s what we don’t know that’s really going to hurt.

A Little Behind in My Reading

Next year will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre at My Lai. U.S. troops led by Lieutenant William L. Calley in 1968 burned the village in central Vietnam and murdered nearly 500 unarmed residents, mostly women, children and elderly. The Pentagon tried mightily to suppress the story, but a year-and-half later Seymour Hersh reported the story. My Lai was headline news for weeks. Lt. Calley became the face of everything wrong about the endless war in Vietnam that was killing 1,500 American soldiers every month. He was the only one convicted of any wrongdoing. The Vietnam misadventure sank the U.S. into a general moroseness for more than a decade. It took Ronald Reagan’s heroic invasion of and stirring victory over archenemy Grenada to make us feel good about ourselves again.

Seymour Hersh returned to Vietnam in 2015. Take some time to read his follow-up story more than four decades after the original.

It Wasn’t My Fault, Officer

Former Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman driving in the wrong direction? On Interstate 5? (“The Five” as they say in southern California.) On the Santa Ana Freeway in Orange County – home of Disneyland? In the carpool lane? Hard to imagine, I know. But Mr. Rodman had a good excuse. It was someone else’s fault. According to his attorney, “The driving error at night was due to poor sign placement.”

No word from the driver who swerved to avoid Rodman’s vehicle and crashed into a concrete barrier.

Evening in America

In 1967 the governor of California signed into law a bill effectively ending involuntary commitment of people suffering from mental disorders. At the time 22,000 Californians resided in state mental hospitals. Ten years earlier the number had been 37,500. These institutions were seen as dehumanizing. Involuntary commitment would now be restricted to those who were deemed as potentially dangerous to themselves or those around them. The commitment had to be sponsored by a family member and/or ordered by the court. A mentally-ill patient who refused treatment typically did not receive any at all. That governor won election to the presidency with a landslide victory in 1980.

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