Reading the News

 I gave up reading my local paper during the 2008 recession , when I was given a 10% pay cut and the editor said City employees were overpaid anyway and we should be grateful.  I called them and cancelled my decades long subscription, saying their editor suggested we cut back on our expenditures and , gosh  I realized I didn't need to pay to be insulted every single day.  The then-Mayor suggested things we could do on that extra day off- like "Go to Disneyland" or "volunteer somewhere"   Marie-Antoinette Villaraigosa had no clue.  A lot of people lost their homes- some people for whom both wage-earners were City Employees got a 20 % hit.  Yeah, so no more "Daily News" although I missed the Human Interest column written by  Dennis McCarthy.

I do miss spreading the Sunday paper on the bed and starting with the Comics.  Don't judge me.

Now I get most of my news online and I try to read the Associated Press website, the are the most objective, straight news I can find. 

I subscribe to Dan Rather's blog "steady" and also the brilliant Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American.  She's particularly insightful, given her background as a history professor, she brings it all together in historic context. 

I was thinking about how we got the news when we were kids.    In the evening, we would watch the news on television.  The straight talk from Walter Cronkite.  The final exchange  from Hunter and Brinkley, who would always sign off "Good night Chet" Goodnight David" from their respective studios.  Somewhere in the 70's the news turned to "Happy Anchors" who would cut up and laugh and guffaw while delivering the news.  Don Henley wrote a song about it "Dirty Laundry"   The news became less news and more new-with-opinions.  No filter and frankly the "Happy News anchors" were annoying to me.  I longed for Uncle Walter- as many people called Cronkite- to give us the straight dope.

What passes for news these days is sometimes like talking to a misinformed friend who only wants to present their view of things.  People who, for instance think ANYTHING coming off the Fox Channel -an ENTERTAINMENT CHANNEL- is anything akin to news are sadly mistaken.  I love Rachel Maddow and I often agree with her. Her monologue at the beginning is a mixture of hard news and opinion, but you can TELL the difference, unlike   F-er Carlson and Laura Ingram (the woman is the epitome of the "Bubble headed bleach blonde who comes on at 5") who look straight into the camera and lie; telling you their opinion as if it were fact.

I long for what Sgt Joe Friday used to say  "Just the facts, ma'am"

Ya gotta have faith

 Faith is defined as a noun  "complete trust or confidence in someone or something."     The SECOND meaning is a belief in a god or a religion.

I recently read a meme, posted by someone who I used to know about how Joe Biden  in asking people to have faith in what he was trying to do, was somehow blaspheming.  The post then showed a picture of St Donald of the Grift, talking about worshiping God.  

It got me to thinking about the word and how evangelicals seem to have changed the meaning of the word, that "faith" means only your religion or your belief system.  They seem to think they own the word faith, as if it can only mean the belief in a Christian god.  They get all flibbertigibbet when it is used in its more common meaning- trust in someone or something.

I am sure evangelical heads exploded when George Michael came out with the song "faith"  I wonder if the title made them all squishy in their tingly parts until they actually heard the tune, but as usual, I digress

When someone asks you to have faith in the process, they are not asking you to worship them or the institution that will guide the process; they are asking you to trust the process. (slightly off topic- when someone declares themselves the Chosen one, and says they are the Second coming of God- showing a decided lack of knowledge of who is coming back, in the Christian Doctrine, well, I have a problem with people saying what a great practitioner of the religion said person is)

So, I will hold on to my faith that things will be ok, eventually.  That the balance of the universe will come back to some kind of order.  That criminals will get their just desserts ( what the hell?) and that people who believed in them will be healed.

Ya gotta have faith.

Mondegreens and other lyrical musings

 Chris and I were driving last night and one of the games we play in the car is to come up with songs related to a word or phrase.  It's fun, each of us has a weird bank of songs we tap into .  Last night was "sun" and we came up with:

Here comes the sun

Sunshine Superman

Sunrise sunset

and a few others I can't remember.  The game came to a close when he quoted some lyric from Frank Zappa about roaches in a strange kitchen at night.  We were almost where we needed to be at that point and I just gave up.  My mind wandered, as it usually does these days, and I wound up thinking of a mondegreen- or misheard lyric- that is one of my favorites.  In the song "LA Woman" Jim Morrison growls "City at Night" a book by John Rechy about a seedy "underground" in a City I THINK is New Orleans, but I can't remember.  I tried to read it in High School but it did not "grab" me.  Maybe I should try it again.  Anyway, I always heard "Obsidian Night"  which I think is pretty cool, although the theme of the book is probably closer to what Morrison was getting at.

I have been watching the Beatles movie and watching them create their music.  A lot of musicians just riff lyrics until they come up with something that fits.  Phil Collins song "Sussudio" comes to mind.  I remember reading that it was a nonsense word he just sang and likes it so well he kept it.  The songs in the Beatles film that have been haunting me are "I , me, Mine"  and "Dig a pony" George says his song was influenced by a strange Sci-Fi film that had been on television the night before.  They show clips of what he was talking about and the song makes sense.  "Dig a Pony" however is just one of John's nursery rhymes.  I was looking for the lyrics and found a website where someone is absolutely convinced it's about heroin; "pony"="horse" a slang term for heroin.  I doubt it.  From watching him, I think he was just playing with words.  Sometimes, as it has been observed, a cigar is just a cigar.

The same thing happened with the America song "a Horse with no name" that the writer, Dewey Bunnell  says- and I have no reason to doubt it- was a song about the environment.  People swore it was code for his heroin addiction.  uh, yeah.  My favorite America mondegreen is "Bench on a highway" for "Ventura Highway'

The cutest one I ever heard was the sister of my daughter's BFF, who was in the backseat singing with all her heart "Going to the jack-o-lantern, gonna get married" ( see Chapel of Love by the Dixiecups for the real lyric here.

Sometimes a misheard lyric makes the song more meaningful to you.  I wonder if we mishear what our hearts want and our brains comply.

Weird dreams

 Last night, for the first time in a long time I slept through the night, without waking once.  I have been suffering from nightmare induced insomnia- horrible dreams that would give Sam Pekinpah  a run for his money.  I had this really weird dream, which I will share

I was going back to college and was in Arizona of all places.  For my "English class"  I decided it would be fun to take a class in baseball writing. Dream me (in a lot of my dreams I play another character and this was the case here) decided that "hey I like baseball and I like to write, so win-win"  The teacher was a taskmaster.  We were to buy a newspaper ever day and read the articles on baseball.  Fair enough, but when I went to buy a cup of coffee and the LA Times ( I was looking for the Daily News but I was in Arizona)  the thing cost me 7 dollars.   I reasoned as a poor college student I had better get a subscription but my classmate told me people stole them from your door if you did that.  huh .  Somewhere in my dream the online version never occurred to me.  The teacher also told us that we had to be glued to the tv right after the National Anthem.  Baseball is, as Robin Williams observed, a "slow damn game"  Dream me wondered about meals and bathroom breaks.  I fell asleep and missed the opening pitch.  It was a Yankees game ( see I still have nightmares!)  I began writing my opinion piece like this:

"AS a kid, I grew up listening to the best baseball commentator in the business, Vin Scully.   My two favorite teams have always been the Dodgers and whoever is playing the Yankees.  Being forced to watch and comment on a Yankee game without bias is going to be hard for me, but I will try. "

So, are my dreams telling me to move to Arizona ( FAT CHANCE) or go back to college?  I don't know what to make of it, except maybe the fiction part of my brain relaxed enough to give me a pleasant dream.

 I CAN write about something OTHER than politics.

Politics, Politics Politics

 I often think of the scene in History of the World, where Mel Brooks bombs in a comic act before the Roman Senate.  He changes gears, yelling "Politics Politics politics" and gets in even more trouble.  

Sometimes I feel like it's the only thing I talk about.  One day I want to talk about books or movies or ANYTHING but what is going on in the world, but if we act like it isn't  bad out there, then the bad will take over.

I see the Trump organization id being dragged into civil court for lying about their finances.  Someone on Facebook ( I Know)  observed that he might finally get his due, because the Rich cheer when you screw the little guy, but it's GAME ON when you screw the Rich.  I hope so.  I hope this is just step one in what will happen to him.  His base, however is probably cheering that they 'stuck it to the man" even though Trump and his cronies ARE the man.

I saw that one idiot (sorry there is no other word for someone so crack-brained) is advancing the theory that the person who spoke last weekend at the Arizona Rally was NOT Trump but... wait for it... JFK.  Yeah.  Right.  The BEST response was someone who observed that "Trump DOES speak like 104 year old man with half a brain" (OUCH!)

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  I wonder if they know anything about JFK or are simply moony-eyed over the romance of "Camelot" which was not real either.

I am watching Rachel Maddow with a mixture of hope and trepidation.  The January 6th Commission is working methodically toward the truth, but I think for most Trumpers, it IS true that he could shoot someone and rape their daughter in front of them and they would vote to acquit him of all charges.    I pray this will end well, but Trump does not have the conscience of Richard Milhous Nixon and THAT was precious little. There are few Republicans willing to go against him and those that are are reviled by his schoolboy taunts.

I hope the presidential documents will be in the hands of the committee soon and I hope that if they really did subpoena Eric Trump, he sings like a canary. 

Stuff I am thinking

 It's Monday and I am discombobulated so forgive me

We are in Laughlin, for what should have been a relaxing weekend.  Nope.  Water -lakes and rivers and the ocean- are my peaceful place. No luck here as the  river is effectively "closed" for the drought or repairs depending on who you talk to.Our room overlooks the HVAC system . Enchanting.  Staff are more grumpy than before and I suspect two years of simultaneous forced cheerfulness while reminding inebriated Right wingers that they need to wear a mask has something to do with it.

Chris and I need a real vacation, given the past 5 months, but who know when that will be.  I am going to need a good attorney for a small bit of legal advice-UNRELATED TO CHRIS!- so if anyone knows someone who know about contracts, let me know. It has to do with my ex..

Today we remember the work and words of Dr. King.   I was reading Dan Rather's Steady and if you haven't seen it, you should   I subscribe for 5 bucks a month, as I also do to Heather Cox Richardson.  Both are worthy of the sawbuck, but are also shared for free.   Mr Rather recalls the times spent with MLK and said something that resonates with me.  He was a radical and had he lived he would have continued the fight in radical ways.  We have made the man a saint.  He wasn't one. But he stood for a change we need in this country and that makes the Established Order uncomfortable.

They tell us not to cherry pick, but the statement of his that always meant something to me- I was ten when he was assassinated-was his hope that his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  Many adults in my orbit had trouble with that and as I became an adult I continually fight the programming, I recognize it and fight it off in my head/  They say the first thought in your mind is what you were taught, but the second is who you are.  I'm going with that.

As we remember this man's work today, remember to be kind but also to recognize and fight injustice  and HELP PASS THE JOHN LEWIS VOTING RIGHTS ACT!