Dee and Dum

Geoff Shullenberger has written an excellent article on the rise of wokeness, the attendant rise of anti-wokeness, and the failure of either to offer any satisfying solutions. It's fairly long, being as it is a review of a handful of books, but it's well worth whatever time it takes to read. Should be noted that it's also a complex subject, with a few different theories of how the present situation developed. 

For me the problem with woke―aside from but related to its focus being on providing boosts to the professional classes―is that offered no way to unite disparate groups. Explicitly did the opposite in fact.

Given that, a serious and constructive opposing movement would have sought a way to find common ground between left and right and move forward without all the cultural and ethnic baggage. Obviously, this didn't happen. Most professional anti-wokes have just tried to promote their usual rightist hobbyhorses: plutocracy, neocon foreign policy, and some ancient grudges dating to when their parents used to go around beating up hippies. Andy Ngo, for example, has exposed himself as the kind of neurotic superpatriot who used to scribble down gossip and send the journals to J. Edgar Hoover. No one's building bridges.

Crash

I've started reading, and am still in the early chapters of, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline. Curious title if you don't know the context. But yes, that was about the time that most established societies suffered a catastrophic breakdown, ending what's commonly known as the Bronze Age.

It's long been theorized that the Sea Peoples were responsible for the collapse. They weren't a single people but rather a confederation of residents from islands to the west. They did attack Egypt and other big civilizations, but it doesn't seem like they were actually the root cause. In essence they just had the misfortune to be displaced.

This is an odd time period to think about. There was already a sophisticated system of trade, and densely built cities. Yet the players on the world stage weren't the ones we'd recognize. For example, it wouldn't make sense at this stage to talk about Europe and Asia in the way we know about them. The Iron Age and the rise of the Roman Empire really would change everything. As the letters in which you're reading this show.

And away he went

Watched a Jackie Gleason Show tonight. It was about the Honeymooners characters, but it's from the hourlong variety show. One result is that the story is longer than a Honeymooners episode would have been, about forty minutes without commercials.

A new boy in the neighborhood looks up to Ralph. The kid is played by Van Dyke Parks, whose subsequent musical career may well have been influenced by Gleason's mood music albums. Anyway, Ralph is initially uncomfortable with this kid idolizing him, but warms up to the idea. He also gives a very creative account of his own past and athletic prowess.

There's a scene where Ralph and Ed go to see one of the kid's teachers. Ralph is bothered by the sound of chalk on blackboard. Ed picks up a stick of chalk and scrawls on the board. At the squeak of chalk on graphite Ralph makes these weird, unnatural motions. It's almost like a modern dance recital. 

The Honeymooners, and the variety sketches that preceded it, was as impoverished-looking as any American sitcom would ever be. The stage set had the rough textures of a tenement apartment, and the actors acted like tenement dwellers. Some of Gleason's odder, hammy choices may have been meant to inject a quality of escapism, just for leavening. Art Carney's reassuring presence certainly helped.

...and in conclusion

 

How did A Charlie Brown Christmas get to be a beloved classic, shown every year for decades? The response quite likely surprised the producers, who made it quick and cheap. Still, it deserves every bit of success it's gotten. In the end it's faithful to the spirits of both Christmas and Charles Schulz. And Vince Guaraldi serves both with aplomb.

Location scouts

I was just thinking, sort of unbidden, about a nearby part of town. It's a place I went to just earlier today. And yet the picture in my mind was obviously embellished into something else. I had to concentrate on certain blocks and storefronts to make the image in my head look like the real place again.

Maybe it's just me, but I think this is a function of the unconscious mind. It reconfigures places we know into different ones, through editing a few things out or combining it with someplace else. And it's not necessarily even a bad thing. This is an especially active process in dreams, of course.

Got 'em just where we want 'em

Wow. What can I say? If you actually believe that Palestinians in Gaza getting slaughtered is some kind of play for world domination―and a successful one at that―you need to be kept away from cutlery, heavy machinery, and any active role in caring for...anything really. Of course the obvious attitude is that only the suffering of one side matters, for only one people actually exists.

I seem to remember that the author of this piece had a beat writing about how the political establishment was screwing over Donald Trump. Which given current events many sane people could get onboard with. I guess that one's no fun anymore, then.

The works

Quite a day. Part of a day, part of a night?

It rained for about 24 hours, by my estimate. Now when it started yesterday afternoon it was just spitting. By the time I went to bed the rain had gotten a lot heavier.  Like curtains of rain.

But at some point the wind kicked in, and wow. Nothing like walking down the street and seeing that not only are Stop signs lying on their side, but so are some realtor's signs from the front lines of homes. Those always seem indestructible, so it's pretty freaky.

SAQ

During the general Advent season it's always been the tradition for the Salvation Army to post people outside big stores like Stop & Shop to make collections. And I think I remember seeing one this year in late November or early December. Other than that they haven't been around. 

Now I'm not a member of the SA, although I have relatives who are or have been. My relationship to the sect has basically just been buying secondhand clothes. But the collectors seemed pretty wholesome. Wonder what happened to them.

Just sitting and thinking

I'm a bit under the weather tonight. The main symptom I have is that while I know it's cold out and some of that cold has got in here, I feel even colder than I should, all things considered. Experience has taught me that when I try to post after taking something for a cold, the results can get pretty incoherent. So I'm doing so before I take anything.

Actually that's about it. Except for an open question. Why is it that power―military, economic, what have you―so often winds up in the hands of people who can't be trusted with it? It seems to be a constant for most of my lifetime, if not longer.

Bridge to nowhere

Monday evening I got on a bus in Rumford bound for Providence around 6 p.m. I got off said bus at about 8:40. Mind you, I still had one more bus to catch before I got home. What was the cause? A last minute bridge closure, of course. 

The best part is that you just know there was money "earmarked" for inspections and repair, and that it wound up in some guy's pocket. After all, the sunken pool in my backyard is infrastructure too, is it not?

Yet another Red Scare

 

Elise Stefanik, an Upstate New York Representative who will inevitably inflict herself on some Presidential primary or other, has words for the university presidents who have been getting a bipartisan grilling over the past week. These school officials quite probably are rather mediocre, as people in their position often are. But make no mistake. What's gotten them into trouble is that they haven't been cracking down on free speech enough. Evidence that there are actual threats of genocide being made on campus is remarkably thin, but there's an information war to be fought, and for that reason alone heads must roll. So rolling they are.

As for this standard of "moral clarity" being thrown around, well, it has some history behind it. But does it mean "being clear and consistent in your morals"? Um, no. Very much not.

Mikadorable

 

One thing that it's very difficult to find on the Internet is a decent performance of "Mi-ya Sa-ma" from The Mikado. Modern companies always seem to get Katisha wrong. Perhaps out of some kind of half-assed feminism, they try to turn her into a cute jokester who undercuts the pompous Mikado. But if she's not scary, she's nothing. If she is, you can start to respect her.

The actress who plays the actress who plays her in Topsy-Turvy gets it exactly right. While only audio is available unless you have time to watch the whole movie, the way she wields her fan like a deadly weapon is something to behold.

That time of year

The weather widget on my laptop says that it's 24 F. I believe it. During the day it was somewhat blustery, somewhere in the 30s. So while we're still a couple of weeks away from the equinox, winter has in fact arrived. And that's good. A couple of months hopping from cave to cave, trying to keep warm, has a way of focusing the mind.

Saw a few snowflakes falling in the late morning, but nothing accumulated.

Sense of place

The above is a landscape by Fairfield Porter. I'm not sure of the title, or if there even is one. It's a very interesting piece, though. You can tell it's in a rural location. The single story white building marks something close to a halfway point. It, the car, and the red house (and most brightly colored object) dominate the right side. The left is ruled by fields, hills, one side of a barn or shed. So the presence of unseen people is much more apparent on one side.

Porter was a twentieth century American artist. He was a contemporary of Abstract Expressionists like Pollock and Rothko. He was a representational artist himself, in some ways a traditionalist. Still, he could work in elements of abstraction. 

Power play

I recently saw "Dead Weight", and episode of Columbo from its first season. A decorated veteran soldier and businessman (Eddie Albert post-Green Acres) kills an Army officer who could implicate him on bribery charges. An art teacher out sailing (Suzanne Pleshette pre-The Bob Newhart Show) sees him from the boat she rented. There's no evidence to back up her claim, though, and her confidence has been worn down over the years by her epically awful mother (Kate Reid.) Her certainty is even more shaken when the old codger takes an interest in her and moves his general onto her battlefield. So while Columbo comes to believe her story, he can't get her to cooperate.

It's not bad, impressive looking, fun to watch as most 70s Columbo is. One of the main flaws is that the evidence he uses to close the case isn't something he's been mulling over and pulling at the whole way through, in his usual style; but is rather a deus ex machina that turns up at the last minute. There's also a certain distance between him and the other main actors, and it turns out the story behind this is kind of interesting.

Peter Falk had signed onto the series with an understanding with Universal that he'd get to direct an episode. At some point he sensed they were reneging on him. Miffed, he stormed off and essentially went on a blue flu strike, doctor's note included. When he returned he found that wherever possible his scenes had been filmed with his photo double, and he wasn't allowed to reshoot. 

What surprises me about this story is that Falk had only just started playing the role on any kind of regular basis, and the show was in its first season (small batch of TV movies, really,) Usually actors don't start playing hardball until they've been on the job for at least a couple of years. If they start earlier it's at risk to either the show or their own employment on it. (See David Caruso getting canned from NYPD Blue for an example of the latter.)

Falk didn't actually get what he wanted from his walk-off and pissed off several of the other people involved. Still, the show wound up lasting for seven years, then got revived later. Even fighting to a draw is rather significant.