1.
Quotes of the Week:
From my musical compadre in the Determined Luddites and fine gentleman here in Tucson: “I guess mocking Simone Biles has become a favorite right wing bully pastime in the last few days. I've heard the words ‘quitter’, ‘loser’, and ‘sociopath,’ because why pass up an opportunity to be egregiously cruel to a young Black woman who survived poverty, foster care, and years of sexual abuse from a team doctor to become the greatest gymnast of all time, at one of the most vulnerable moments of her life? When you take pride in being as shitty of a human being as possible, there really is no bottom.” – Dan Hostetler, 2021
“Depending on your sources, approximately half the people eligible to receive the FREE vaccine in this country have been poked. People in other countries are struggling to get their people vaccinated as there are shortages everywhere. Here, we have a surplus. That means that there are 152,261,219 in the YouKnighted States who either live in a cave in Appalachia with no TeeVee or are just too dumb and mean to get the damn shot.” – Me, 2021
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of severe breakthrough COVID infections is exceedingly low: As of July 19, the CDC had received reports of 5,914 COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths out of more than 161 million fully vaccinated people in the United States.
2.
Today’s News of the Bizarre: Over 200 families have sued a fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate patients.
3.
Ass of the Week: Texas Gov. Abbott issues executive order prohibiting cities from requiring masks, vaccines.
4.
After the Marfa post on Wednesday, a friend of mine wrote to ask if I had seen the series I Love Dick starring Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Hahn, and Griffin Dunne. And the answer was yes. It was produced by and shown on Amazon 2016-17.
The novel, written by Chris Kraus, takes place in California but the series location is Marfa, Texas. It’s a take-off on the New York culture vs small town ways, and, of course, sex and desire as the title implies.
As director Jill Soloway put it in an interview in the New York Times, “I don’t necessarily know what the female gaze is, but I’m in the process of excavating it, just like a lot of women are. It starts with an attempt to recognize how much being seen stops us from being. I’ve also been thinking about defining a Heroine’s Journey as a story that moves in spirals or circles, instead of the Hero’s Journey, which is more of an arc. That’s why this book was so exciting to me: Chris was falling backward and spiraling down heroically. I felt like I was able to finally read the trajectory of someone who wasn’t succeeding on male terms. Were any man to look at this woman, they would say, ‘She’s crazy, she’s a slut, I don’t like her,’ but when a woman reads the book, she says, ‘She’s my hero, I am her, and the more they don’t like me, the further this thing goes.’ ”
I hope you love I Love Dick as much as we loved I Love Dick.
5.
This same friend also wrote and asked if I had read Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, which I had midway through 2020. The first one I read by Towles, titled A Gentleman In Moscow, was borrowed from a neighbor in the fall of 2019.
From Gentleman…
Adversity presents itself in many forms; and that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.
For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too.
How humbly it bows its head as the emperor is dragged down the steps and tossed in the street. But then, having quietly bided its time, while helping the newly appointed leader on with his jacket, it compliments his appearance and suggests the wearing of a medal or two. Or, having served him at a formal dinner, it wonders aloud if a taller chair might not have been fitting for a man with such responsibilities. The soldiers of the common man may toss the banners of the old regime on the victory pyre, but soon enough trumpets will blare and pomp will take its place at the side of the throne, having once again secured its dominion over history and kings.
From Rules…
But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance, and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags, and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn’t be hocked.
It is a bit of a cliché to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time––by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still?
In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions––we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.
6.
The Green School, in Bali, Indonesia, is the location for this amazing bamboo building designed by the school's founders John and Cynthia Hardy's daughter Elora Hardy and her studio Ibuku in collaboration with bamboo architect Jörg Stamm and structural engineering firm Atelier One.
According to the article in Dezeen, “Several months of research and development led to the creation of a precise geometrical solution that allowed the structure to enclose a large inner volume with a minimal amount of material.”
7.
OK, more blatant self-promotion to remind you, if you’re in Tucson tonight, it’s the debut performance of The Tirebiters at Monterey Court. We go on at 7pm followed by Nancy McCallion’s fine band. Yes, the calendar on their website has the right poster but the wrong name.
8.
Interesting arguments being made this week about student loan debts and forgiveness. According to Danielle Douglas-Gabriel of the Washington Post “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and other powerful Democrats Wednesday by disputing President Biden’s authority to cancel federal student debt.” Douglas-Gabriel goes on to say that “Biden has questioned whether he could make a unilateral decision on any portion of the $1.6 trillion in federal debt held by Americans.”
I don’t really know how money works. I do know there’s a collective agreement that our greenbacks mean something, and when staring at our various accounts and such on our computers the numbers are supposed to mean something, that being the wealth attributed to each of us.
So it was with great curiosity I read a FB post by an acquaintance here in town, Jeffrey Anthony (Drummer, Research Assistant at University of Arizona School of Government & Public Policy, and going for Master of Public Administration at the same), regarding the student loan mess. (copied verbatim)
“(Nancy) Pelosi, who has got to go she is awful, was pontificating yesterday that we can't possibly cancel student debt because it is 'taxpayer money,' she is engaging in a normative argument, not a positive argument.
For example when a bill is passed she supports, normatively, like unemployment insurance boost of $600 a week, she never said this was a taxpayer funded bailout, no she said it was a government funded program. (Just like all federal government spending folks)
Why?
Because the phrase 'taxpayer funded' is used to make an appeal to emotions and illogic, and government funded is used when that appeal to emotion is not desired.
And also, this is key, the federal government is not constrained by tax revenues, as federal tax revenues do not fund government expenditures. The federal government can spend any amount it wants at any time as long as Congress authorizes it. Full stop.
Want to go to the moon, well we did that and how did we do that? Congress authorized the massive spending for it. What happened? We went to the moon. Did the government go bankrupt? Nope. It can't.
We need to invade Iraq because blah blah blah. But that is going to cost trillions of dollars? So what, Congress authorizes it and we spent the money and our country did not go bankrupt. Why? Because our country can never go bankrupt. Ever.
Hey we should invade Afghanistan because they used all the money and weapons we gave them to fight the USSR and turned it on us, OK that will cost TRILLIONS. So what do it. Congress authorized unlimited spending in Afghanistan. What happened? We paid it because the US Constitution says that when Congress authorizes spending, spending will happen. Did we go bankrupt? No. Will we go bankrupt? No because the United States can never go bankrupt. How did we pay for it? By marking up reserve accounts at the computer at the NY Federal reserve for the contractors that prosecuted the war.
So why can't we just go into that computer at the NY Federal Reserve and mark down all the accounts of student loans to zero?
Because Pelosi says it is unfair to taxpayers and she is the most powerful person in Congress, not because of any other reason than that. The US Constitution also says Congress has the power to do that. But it has nothing to do with fiscal constraints.”
I dunno. Intriguing. What are your thoughts on this?
9.
Genius at work…Joni Mitchell as recorded by Jimi Hendrix, live at Cafe Le Hibou, Ottawa, March 19, 1968. This cut is among the unreleased material that’s been rounded up for her next boxed set, “Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971),” coming in October.
And now, two philosophical cartoons for today. You are as big or even bigger fan of Roz Chast than I am, amiright? From the December 28th, 2020 issue of the New Yorker.
Interesting post through and through. Don't know what to think about student debt loan forgiveness, although it would be great if people could get some kind of relief. I wonder about fairness - one kid borrowed $250,000, one borrowed $10,000, one made it through with no loans because they worked their way through in 8 years making minimum wage. So how do we do something fair? forgive $10k for the first two, and write the third a check for 10k$? Do we inflation adjust the check for #3? Just not sure what a common sense approach is that is fair. I don't have a clue.
Momma Chast is awesome! and the last panel makes me think Joni Mitchell is a genius, not a talent. And wow, Jimi really did have an excellent tape recorder - such quality in a portable machine, in 1968???? wow, and he put it to good use!