True indeed

I've always found a lot to enjoy in the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Could say, Milt Jackson especially, but they all count as superstars. They obviously have a lot of comfort with each other as well. 

Maybe I could take fashion tips from them as well. Talk about timeless style.

An eerie sight

Take a look at the photograph illustrating this article about the human rights campaign. See anything that all participants have in common? It might be subtle, but you'll find it.

Joe Biden needs some people to still be religiously masking up in the Summer of '23 in much the same way that George W. Bush needed some to believe that Saddam Hussein gave the order for 9/11. In both cases they have just as much plausible deniability as they need, which isn't much.

Anyway, the activist class is chock full of this kind of person. Which is why a declaration of emergency can be had so cheaply. If enough people in the right conference rooms and Zoom meetings want it, they'll find a reason why they need it.

Needled

The ongoing kerfuffle regarding Robert Kennedy Jr., Joe Rogan, and Peter Hotez MD is bizarre and ridiculous, but telling. In brief, Hotez castigated Rogan for interviewing Kennedy about COVID vaccines, and vaccines in general. The expectation, I  guess, is that Rogan either not talk to a major party Presidential candidate or avoid his signature issue. Rogan made hay by inviting Hotez onto his show to debate RFK Jr. The doc firmly rejected this option. 

The media has overwhelmingly taken Hotez's side on this, on the basis that scientists are serious people and shouldn't have to debate randos. This is not confidence. Almost everyone tacitly seems to know that Hotez is an empty lab coat. But the weak link in a chain is still part of the chain. If that link breaks, the chain is broken. So stopping this debate is a way to fend off future debates.

Van Dine plans, Christie laughs

The time between the two world wars (uh, so far) is remembered as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. While there had been some popular practitioners such as Doyle and Chesterton before, now countless authors rushed into the field. Not surprisingly some successful exemplars had opinions on the best way to go about it.

Ronald Knox's 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction comprise a famous example. They've mostly stood the test of time, and are only deliberately broken by authors trying to deconstruct the genre. Interesting that he forbids supernatural explanations when he was a Catholic priest, but not too surprising when you think about it. Murderers are neither God nor the Devil. Modern readers may look askance on the "no Chinaman" rule, but that has to be taken in context. The interbellum era was also the Golden Age of the yellow peril villain, Fu Manchu being the best remembered. So Knox wasn't being racist or―in the Kendian buzzword―anti-racist. He was just warning against lazy writing.

Then there are SS Van Dine's Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories. Van Dine's list overlaps with Knox's at some points, a fact of which I'm sure they were both aware. Some of his additions are good, such as forbidding the "butler did it" twist and accident/suicide as a solution, which has generally been frown on over the years. Other items, such as love stories and detective teams, were already in popular use and he was just saying he didn't like them, Old Man Yells At Cloud-style. Notably his last item is just a list of transgressions, most of them appearing in Sherlock Holmes stories. Think Doyle cared?

14

Am now reading A Little Book of Form by Robert Hass. Hass used to be Poet Laureate of the United States, a prestigious office albeit one whose term only lasts for a year. Based on class lectures he gave, it's idiosyncratic but illuminating, highlighting things that poets used to be expected to know but have grown out of fashion in the past few decades.

Sonnets, for one. There was a time not too long ago when anyone starting on a career as a poet could be expected to struggle with and master the sonnet form, even if they never pursued it again in their life. Now sonneteering is like making wooden barrels by hand. That may be a loss on our part. 

Anyway, here's one collected in the book, written by Charlotte Smith. She was an influence on many Romantic poets, coming even a little before William Blake.

"Written Near a Port on a Darkening Evening" (1797)

Huge vapors brood above the clifted shire, 

Night on the Ocean settles, dark and mute,

Save where is heard the repercussive roar

Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot

Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone

Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell

The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone 

Singing the hour and bidding "Strike the bell."

All is black shadow, but the lucid line

Marked by the light surf on the level sand, 

Or where afar the ship-lights faintly shine

Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land

Mislead the Pilgrim―such the dubious ray

That wavering reason lends, in life's long darkling way

why just why

You have to wonder what the ACLU was thinking in this case. Who did they think they were talking to?

Opposing the death penalty for everyone in all cases is an honorable position. It's one that the ACLU has advocated basically forever. The biggest advantage is that you don't have to get bogged down in questions of "Why that guy?"

So yes, if you say that Duane Owens shouldn't have been put to death in spite of his truly repugnant crimes, that there's no earthly authority prepared to make that call, you'll get some disagreement. But it's an argument your representatives can take up without embarrassment.

Insisting that the state should have made him look pretty* in his final days , well, that's something else again.

*Right, like that was going to happen.

✪

 

It's a memorable song. A tourist walking down Hollywood Boulevard, eulogizing these beloved stars with a smile on his face and a tear in his eye.

Which makes it a little weird when you remember that in the early 70s when the song was written, half these people were still alive. I mean, unless Ray and Dave can motivate themselves to get out there again, I think it's safe to say that Mickey Rooney outlived the Kinks.

So I think Ray Davies is writing in character here. What sort of character is open to question, but there's at least another level here.