Open Thread March 27, 2022

 Posted by at 7:25 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 272022
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was Don Carlos (which is how it’s spelled when it’s done in French. The Italian is Don Carlo.) There are more differences in the two versions than just the;anguage, however. The French version (which was the original) can be more than an hour longer – it includes scenes deleyed from the Italian version, and, os course, a ballet. The Paris Opera House would not stage any opera which didn’t have a ballet. In both cases, the enotions of the principals are depicted against the background of 16th century Spain. including the Spanish Inquisition which is seen) and the war in what is now Belgium to keep Spain (and therefore the Inquisition) in power over all French speaking people, including the Huguenots (French Protestants. Most of the principals actually lived, but they were not (especially Carlos) much like the way they are portrayed. Carlos and the one character who did not actually exist, Rodrigue, talk a lot about freeing the Huguenots from Spanish rule, but it doesn’t happen, as the Inquisition disposes of both to prevent it (Rodrigue is shot dead by an Inquisition hack, and Carlos is whisked away to – somewhere – by the ghost of his dead grandfather.) Those parts seem very timely to me. Verdi was always deeply interested in political freedom (he even served in the first Parliament of united Italy freed from Austrian rule.)

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Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – White House Assembles Tiger Team To Plan Contingency If Putin Uses Chemical Warfare, Or Worse Nukes, On Ukraine
Quote – Joe Biden has arrived in Europe for an emergency NATO summit, the G7 summit and a meeting of the European Council in Brussels on Thursday. It’s safe to say that with things the way they are in Europe at this moment that these are all groups that are thrilled to see the return of sane US leadership and engagement in Europe after the train wreck and colossal embarrassment that was the former administration.
Click through for more, including a lot of speculation. It’s good that the West is being pro-active, not reactive. I don’t say we won’t make any mistakes, but I’m fairly confident we will not make stupid ones.

Bill strengthening election security policies advances in Colorado legislature
Quote – The measure was crafted in response to Mesa County’s Republican Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, who is under indictment for allegedly compromising her county’s voting machines while searching for proof of fraud in the 2020 election. Critics had focused on a provision in the original bill that tried to prevent misinformation and disinformation. A prominent First Amendment attorney warned it could be problematic to try to regulate speech in that way, a concern also raised by the Colorado GOP, who said it was unconstitutional. The main sponsor of SB22-153, Democratic Senate President Steve Fenberg, said he doesn’t believe banning officials from spreading misinformation about elections violates free speech, but acknowledged the provision would likely be unenforceable in practice. He also didn’t want controversy over the idea to detract from the overall measure.
Click through for story. Republicans will be Republicans, but Tina Peters was a bridge too far even for them.

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Ana de Mendoza y de Silva, Princess of Éboli
Quote – Ana de Mendoza de la Cerda y de Silva Cifuentes, Princess of Eboli, Duchess of Pastrana (in full, Spanish: Doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda), (29 June 1540 – 2 February 1592) was a Spanish aristocrat,[1] suo jure 2nd Princess of Mélito, 2nd Duchess of Francavilla and 3rd Countess of Aliano…. It is possible that Ana was the mistress of Philip II, King of Spain…. [She] form[ed] an alliance at Court with the King’s undersecretary of state… [and T]were accused of betraying state secrets which led to her arrest in 1579. Ana died 13 years later in prison on 2 February 1592.
Click throuch for bio. Many considered her the most beautiful woman in Europe, eyepatch and all (most little girls then didn’t play with swords, to that is also a revealing detail.) “A character mased on her” appears in the opers Don Carlos (and often steals the show). A spicier biography is here. I realize this makes her sound larger than life, but she is still a legend in Spanish-speaking areas.

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Open Thread March 26, 2022

 Posted by at 6:35 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 262022
 

Yesterday, I didn’t get my groceries. However, I did get my refund approved. The amount of the refund was $144, out of an order which (before delivery charges, which I didn’t expect to get refunded) was $177. Fortunately, there was nothing I neded urgently -I basically wanted to stock back up. But I can definitely wait. It was just frustrating. And I will say they were prompt. The interval between the email that said they were looking at it and the one that said it was approved was 14 minutes. I applid and was approved on Wednesday, and by yesterday the credit was already showong on my card. So that was good. Unfortunately, the car didn’t start. So I put in an online request for “roadside assistance,” which is covered by my insurance policy.And he came so fast (I was expecting a call with ETA, but the call that came was “I’m here”) I hadn’t gotten out to the living room. I won’t say it started right up – but when he got everything adjusted just right, it started right up. I ran it for an hour (sitting in the car with a small knitting project and listening to a CD), so it should be fine Monday.

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Short Takes –

NM Political Report – Advocates call for end to Trump-era policy that prevents asylum seekers from crossing border
Quote – Nonprofit groups have called for an end to the Trump era policy, called Title 42, which prohibits asylum seekers from crossing the border. Trump initially said he was implementing the policy in order to protect the U.S. from the spread of the respiratory disease just a few days into the pandemic. Rodriguez said that, by now, the U.S. has the means to prevent disease spread among individuals who cross the border and with the numbers of cases in a downward trend and mask mandates lifting, the policy is even less defensible now than it was two years ago.
Click through for details. This is not just a bad policy. It is a violation of international law. I don’t say it might not have been justified as a temporary measure in a pandemic But two things – there needed to be quarantine accomodations so people would not have to live in misery, and also, temporary means temporary.With proper testing facilities we could have dealt with a lot of this two years ago, before it even started to become the humanitarian crisis it now is.

Mother Jones – Why Josh Hawley Is Smearing Ketanji Brown Jackson as Soft on Pedophilia
Quote – In trying to paint Jackson as a pedophile sympathizer, Hawley is tapping into the same thing as Posobiec: the recurring impulse of reactionaries who are on their back heels to try to reset an imperiled position in the culture wars. It’s a mini-version of the pedophile conspiracies QAnon, Pizzagate—which, uncoincidentally, Posobiec was a key early proponent of—and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when numerous false child sex ring accusations were leveled at daycare centers.
Click through for more examples and reasoning. I had this penciled in for today before I saw Nameless’s article yesterday, but kept it because it doesn’t detract from his, but does offer additional information about motivations (and evidence that we are not the only ones looking at how dumb he is.).

Women’s history – Wikipedia – Rebecca Latimer Felton
Quote – Rebecca Ann Latimer Felton (June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, lecturer, feminist, suffragist, reformer, white supremacist, slave owner, and politician who was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, although she served for only one day. Felton was the most prominent woman in Georgia in the Progressive Era, and was honored by appointment to the Senate. She was sworn in on November 21, 1922, and served just 24 hours. At 87 years, nine months, and 22 days old, she was the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate.
Click through for bio. This is not the “first woman U.S. Senator” we would have liked to see. But she is the one we got. And I think her story has some educational points. But I promise to get positive again for the rest of the month (what’s left of it.)

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Open Thread March 23, 2022

 Posted by at 6:47 am  Open Thread, Personal, Plus, Politics
Mar 232022
 

Yesterday, my mail contained a jury summons. That’s the kind of mail that gets me off my fanny to go out to the mailbox, and of course I did. Now, I’ve seen this film before, so I know it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll have to serve. Also, it isn’t until the end of April. So it’s cool. Also, I had a hard time finding things that were both interesting and not repetetive. There was a whole lot of repetition going on yesterday. I got to the point that if I had had to read one more story about a racist Republican Senator, I might have barfed. So I filled in with the Smithsonian, which is trivial, but at least different. (The Food for Thought is also just for fun.)

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Short Takes –

The New Yorker – Radio Ukraine
Quote – The station staff has dispersed, with Bogdan Bolkhovetsky, the general manager, and Roman Davydov, the program director, holed up in a town in the Carpathians, keeping production moving over unreliable Internet and communicating with listeners by text. They don’t know how many of their broadcasting stations are still functioning, and their tower in Kyiv could be destroyed at any time. But “we are not doing anything heroic,” Bolkhovetsky told Nicolas Niarchos, who visited their makeshift studio. “We are still in a lot of luck, having what we have right now. Thousands of people were not so lucky as we are. . . . We’re just doing what we can under these unusual circumstances.”
Click through for David Remnicks podcast and/or even more articles on the war.

Smithsonian – Take the cherry blossom personality quiz to see which species speaks to you!
Quote – Six varieties of cherry blossom trees bloom in the Smithsonian Gardens, each with its own unique flowers and features.
Click through for the quiz. As usual, there are questions for which no answer is right for me, and it will probably be the same for you. But at least it’s fun looking at the pictures. (I came out as the “weeping” cherry tree.)

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Rosalind Franklin
Quote – Rosalind Elsie Franklin … was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognized during her life, for which she has been variously referred to as the “wronged heroine”, the “dark lady of DNA”, the “forgotten heroine”, a “feminist icon”, and the “Sylvia Plath of molecular biology”.
Click through for bio. You may have heard of her. Watson and Crick could not have completed the DNA model without her work Women from prehistory and up to the end of the Middle Ages appear to have had less difficulty getting recgnized for their accomplishments, and lso more freedom to make them, than from the Industrial Revolution forward.

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Video Thread 3/21/22

 Posted by at 12:10 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Mar 212022
 

Glenn Kirschner – A Tale of 2 Americas: First Black Woman Headed to the Supreme Court vs. Trump’s Racism & Misogyny

Meidas Touch – The GOP BLOCKED US on Twitter!! (Congratulations, Broothers!)

No Dem Left Behind – Marjorie “Traitor” Greene wants us to turn our backs on Ukraine and let Putin win!

VoteVets – War Powers

Radio Free Europe – Taking Calls On Ukraine’s Help Line For Russian Military Moms (and dads and sibs) – hanky alert

Brent Terhune – Elon and Grimes’ secret baby

Beau – Let’s talk about HB 800 in Tennessee….

Finally, I want to give a hat tip to a video Lona posted – a stirring prody of “London Calling called “Kyiv Calling. You can click on the link, or scroll back a few posts to see it (with her comments.)
https://youtu.be/9guzUoTNxeE

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Open Thread March 21, 2022

 Posted by at 7:19 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 212022
 

Yesterday was the Vernal equinox (at 9:33 am where I am).However, I have been keeping track of the times of sinrise and sunset for several months now – and the day that there was exactly 12 hours each of daylight and dark was not yesterday, but last Thursday. Three days off. That is close, but not close enough to be a rounding error. There musy be another factor. The fact that the eastern plains stretch out so evenly (gradually going down a little)? Maybe the altitude itself? I was tracking sunset at the winter solstice, but not yet tracking sunrise then. If Colorado transitions to year-round daylight time by November (states have some options and I think they have until next year to do it anyway), I won’t need to track any more for safety reasons, but now I’m intrigued.

Also yesterday, I received (as I do daily) Robert Reich’s newsletter. On Sundays there is always a cartoon caption contest. This week I actually thought of a caption. Because the site where one posts entries is for paid subscribers and I am a free one, I didn’t post it, but I’ll share it here.
“How much longer are we going to have to wait for these Karens to quit screaming and leave?”

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Short Takes –

The Guardian – Star Trek makes Stacey Abrams president of United Earth – and stokes conservative anger
Quote – Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays [Captain Michael] Burnham, told Variety she was “taken aback … and really moved” by Abrams’ performance. “It really signaled the culmination of the season having her there,” she said, “because she’s such this symbol of hope and strength and connection and sacrifice and building something bigger than yourself that will last generations, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about doing in the story.”
Click through for story. Keep an eye out for the show if yu use whichever streaming service it is that carries Discovery (I’m not on any.) I did see a gorgeous photo of her in cosyume over on one of George Takei’s sites. (If an actor, in order to “deserve” a role, had to be able to do IRL everything the character does – that would be the end of stunt doubles. And also of the Marvel franchise.)

Eight House Republicans Side With Vladimir Putin Against The United States
Quote – The Suspending Normal Trade Relations with Russia and Belarus Act, which passed by a 424-8 margin, allows President Joe Biden to increase tariffs on products coming from the two countries and requires the US Trade Representative to seek suspension of Russia’s participation in the World Trade Organization.
Click thrugh for list. I don’t know whether anyone else is calling them “The Hateful Eight,” but I certainly am. And particularly when one considers the numbers and names of the low-lifes who did vote for it.

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Andrée Borrel
Quote – Andrée Raymonde Borrel, code named Denise, was a French woman who served in the French Resistance and as an agent for Britain’s clandestine Special Operations Executive in World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. In September 1942, Borrel was the first female agent of SOE to arrive in France by parachute.
Click through for bio. Women in resistance movements in any war under any government are well aware they may not have a long life. Andrée Borrel did not live to see her 25th birthday. But what she accomplished in that roughly 24 and a half years was remarkable.

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Open Thread March 19, 2022

 Posted by at 6:49 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 192022
 

Yesterday, I had not slept terribly well, and kept nodding off. I did accomplish a little knitting, but not much, and not much else either.

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Short Takes –

Rolling Stone – Manchin’s Coal Corruption Is So Much Worse Than You Knew
Quote – At this point in human evolution, burning coal for power is one of the stupidest things humans do. Coal plants are engines of destruction, not progress. Thanks to the rapid evolution of clean energy, there are many better, cheaper, cleaner ways to power our lives. The only reason anyone still burns coal today is because of the enormous political power and inertia that the industry has acquired since the 19th century. In America, that power and inertia is embodied in the cruel and cartoonish character of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who, paradoxically, may have more control over the trajectory of the climate crisis than any other person on the planet right now
Click through for details – lots of details and links to more. But right now we really don’t have a choice. This is why it is SO important to gain a REAL majority in the Senate as soon as possible.

The New Yorker (Jill Lepore) – Why the School Wars Still Rage
Quote – A century later, the battle over public education that afflicted the nineteen-twenties has started up again, this time over the teaching of American history. Since 2020, with the murder of George Floyd and the advance of the Black Lives Matter movement, seventeen states have made efforts to expand the teaching of one sort of history, sometimes called anti-racist history, while thirty-six states have made efforts to restrict that very same kind of instruction…. While all this has been happening, I’ve been working on a U.S.-history textbook, so it’s been weird to watch lawmakers try their hands at writing American history, and horrible to see what the ferment is doing to public-school teachers.
Click through for story. Besides the “new” stuff, evolution is still a bone of contention. Teachers in the line of fire are very visible – but my biggest worry is what will happen to America whenit becomes a nation whose citizens know noththing of real history.

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Christine de Pizan
Quote – Venetian by birth, Christine served as a court writer in medieval France after the death of her husband. Christine’s patrons included dukes Louis I of Orleans, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, and his son John the Fearless. Considered to be some of the earliest feminist writings, her work includes novels, poetry, and biography, and she also penned literary, historical, philosophical, political, and religious reviews and analysis. Her best known works include The Book of the City of Ladies and The Treasure of the City of Ladies, both written when she worked for John the Fearless of Burgundy.
Click through for bio. Not only did she write and get published in her own name … but she made a living doing it. That was a first for a woman, as far as we know.

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Open Thread March 18, 2022

 Posted by at 7:11 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 182022
 

Yesterday, I watched the Theater of War “The Nurse Antigone,” in which Margaret Atwood played Tiresias. Tiresias was blind, and she chose to present blindness with a hoodie covering a lot of her face, including her eyes – but oh, what a voice! All the actors were powerful certainly. And the discussion at the end raised issues which I didn’t realize that I didn’t realize, and not just pertinent to nurses. It was taped, which I hope means it will be available to re-watch – I will be looking for it. But a moral here is, don’t dismiss presentations for military because you’re not military (or have never been in compat), don’t dismiss presentations for medical professionals because you’re not one, and so on .. you could learn something, or hear something that really speaks to you, from any group in this web of projects.

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Short Takes –

The New Yorker – How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London
Quote – Invoking Dean Acheson’s famous observation, in 1962, that Britain had “lost an empire but not yet found a role,” [Oliver] Bullough[, a former Russia correspondent,] suggests that it did find a role, as a no-questions-asked service provider to the crooked élite, offering access to capital markets, prime real estate, shopping at Harrods, and illustrious private schools, along with accountants for tax tricks, attorneys for legal squabbles, and “reputation managers” for inconvenient backstories. It starts with visas; any foreigner with adequate funds can buy one, by investing two million pounds in the U.K. (Ten million can buy you permanent residency.)
Click through.  It certainly gives me no pleasure to share this information. However … it is what it is.

The Daily Beast – ‘Many’ Spy Agency Staffers Think Capitol Riot Was ‘Justified,’ Ex-NSA Veteran Says
Quote – An internal U.S. intelligence messaging system became a “dumpster fire” of hate speech during the Trump administration…. Dan Gilmore, who was in charge of overseeing internal chat rooms for the Intelink system for over a decade starting in 2011, says that by late 2020 the system was afire with incendiary hate-filled commentary, especially on “eChirp,” the intelligence community’s clone of Twitter…. “Hate speech was running rampant on our applications… I’m not being hyperbolic. Racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobic [sic], and misogynistic speech was being posted in many of our applications.”
Click through for detail.  I’m not naive enough to think the it would ever be possible to eliminate all of them (and I realize I am inviting the question “How many traitors would be about right?”), but before I would believe that so many of our intel agents knowingly and delberately lied under oath about their intentions, I would believe that so many of them simply do not know what the Constitution is and says. And that would be a failure of education.

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Enheduanna (23rd century BCE)
Enheduanna … was the EN priestess of the moon god Nanna (Sīn) in the Sumerian city-state of Ur in the reign of her father, Sargon of Akkad. She was likely appointed by her father as the leader of the religious cult at Ur to cement ties between the Akkadian religion of her father and the native Sumerian religion. Enheduanna has been celebrated as the earliest known named author in world history, as a number of works in Sumerian literature, such as the Exaltation of Inanna feature her as the first person narrator, and other works, such as the Sumerian Temple Hymns may identify her as their author.
Click through for more. Sure, we can’t prove she did write everything attributed to her – but they also can’t prove she didn’t. But ar least she got recognition for the work. We do know for sure that she did not have to write under a male pen name to be piblished, like Amantine Dupin and Mary Ann Evans, to name just two. That is an accomplishment in itself.

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Open Thread March 17, 2022

 Posted by at 6:37 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 172022
 

Yesterday, aas you will see below, i had a story fall into my lap (so to speak) at exactly the right moment. That doesn’t happen very often. I also spent more time looking for parody and satire for the video thread, since the parodisis and satirists are often in sync with each other. (If you missed Randy Rainbow and Betty Bowers in yesterdas video thread, click back to it.)  I found a few, which will show up in due course … but I didn’t find a new Rocky Mountain Mike, which I was hoping for.

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Short Takes –

Crooks and Liars – 300K Hackers Come Together Online To Fight Russia
Quote – Kali – and many others who contributed to this article – declined to share his real name because some of the action he is taking is illegal and because he fears Russian retaliation. He is one of about 300,000 people who have signed up to a group on the chat app Telegram called “IT Army of Ukraine”, through which participants are assigned tasks designed to take the fight to Vladimir Putin. In so doing, they are trying to level the playing field between one of the world’s superpowers and Ukraine as it faces bombardment and invasion.
Click through for C&L story, and through again to the Guardian if you want more. I find this very sweet … but sweetness doesn’t always also have teeth. This does.

Mother Jones – Invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, Zelenskyy Issues Extraordinary Plea for Help
Quote – During his speech, Zelenskyy urged Americans to recall the panic sparked by the attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11 terrorist attacks. “Our country experienced the same every day,” he said. “Right now. At this moment, every night for three weeks now.” To conclude, Zelenskyy switched from Ukrainian to English, calling directly on President Joe Biden to become the “leader of the world.”
Click through for more excerpts, analysis, and a link to the full speech. I really couldn’t ignore this. It’s also noteworthy that on Tuesday the Senate voted unanimously to censure Putin as a war criminal. Sure, talk is cheap – but not as cheap as we used to think before TFG.

Colorado Public Radio – Without Ouray, Colorado, there’d be no ‘Danny Boy’
Quote – It was [in Ouray] in 1913 that Weatherly, the wife of a patrician miner from England, linked an old Irish tune to a poem that had been written by her brother-in-law, Frederic Weatherly, an English barrister and lyricist. The poem was written in 1910 as Frederic mourned the deaths of his father and his son. He intended for it to be a song, but no one had succeeded in coming up with the right melody to suit the sad words. That is, until Margaret Weatherly thought of a tune she had heard her father, who immigrated from Ireland, and other Irish railroad workers play when she was a child in California.
Click through for story. Who knew that a story combining Women’s history and irish culture would fall into my lap. I knew Ourau was historically significant (it’s named after a chief of the Tabeguache band of the Utes), but I certainly did not know this. (Ouray is also absolutely gorgeous, and photographs do not do it justice.)

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