It’s time for some wearin’ o’ the Green!
Posted: March 17, 2019 Filed under: open thread | Tags: Joni Mitchell 8 Comments
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
This is going to be a short open thread. For some reason, all the crazy sexism and misogyny floating around the Dem primary candidates got me thinking on this Joni lyric:
This signal here
I hope you can pick it up
Loud and clear
I know you don’t like weak womenYou get bored so quick
And you don’t like strong women
‘Cause they’re hip to your tricks
This is a few years old but I enjoyed it all the same: From The New Yorker: “Joni Mitchell’s Openhearted Heroism. She made the best music of her generation by falling in love, over and over, while defending her sense of self.”
Mitchell writes about emotional information: who controls it, and how it is squandered or hoarded, withheld or weaponized. This requires some reconnaissance, which for Mitchell involves falling in and out of love, over and over—not so much a research method as a form of self-surgery. Her songs report on those lessons, which are, in an instant, in performance, happily forgotten. She is always thinking about the ways in which calculation fails, as guile yields again and again to innocence. As she put it in “Song for Sharon”: “I can keep my cool at poker / But I’m a fool when love’s at stake.”
She was never a fool for longer than her art required, though, and she could be withering, in interviews, about the lovers who misread her patient scrutiny of them for acquiescence. David Crosby, who produced Mitchell’s first record, would “trot me out” in front of his friends, she said, “and watch me blow their minds.” Crosby is the smooth operator in the first verses of “Cactus Tree”:
There’s a man who’s been out sailing
In a decade full of dreams
And he takes her to a schooner
And he treats her like a queen
Bearing beads from California
With their amber stones and greenIt sounds like a cross between a hippie valentine and an abduction scenario. As the tune progresses, one suitor after another makes his approach, but Mitchell’s refrain wards them off: “She’s so busy being free.”
That freedom was hard-won. Men often wanted Mitchell to be a wife, a muse, a siren, or a star. Instead, they got a genius, and one especially suited to deconstructing their fantasies of her. When David Geffen, her manager, implored her to write a hit, she came up with “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” which mocks the request while heedlessly fulfilling it:
I come when you whistle
When you’re loving and kind
If you’ve got too many doubts
If there’s no good reception for me
Then tune me out, ’cause honey
Who needs the static
It hurts the head
And you wind up cracking
And the day goes dismal
From “Breakfast Barney”
To the sign-off prayerThe song checks all the boxes: it’s hummable, it’s accessible, it’s a love song—but it’s also a sabred refusal of all of the above. Mitchell was frank but weirdly Parnassian about male sexual appetite, which she saw as not so different, finally, from her own. When she resisted the advances of Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, it was partly because she recognized her own techniques in their vulpine attentions. (She always said that she preferred “the company of men.”) In “Coyote,” a song about her fling with Sam Shepard, Mitchell describes his roving eye: “He’s staring a hole in his scrambled eggs / He picks up my scent on his fingers / While he’s watching the waitresses’ legs.” The detail is crude and adolescent, but it’s also very sexy, and Mitchell sings those lines to sound like a boast. Prowess is prowess.
What really got me thinking about the entire treatment of the incredibly talented Democratic women running for the Presidency in 2020 was this discussion we had earlier this week on Boomer’s thread about Beto and this Politico headline ‘Not one woman got that kind of coverage’: Beto backlash begins by Natasha Koreki.
Since announcing her 2020 run, Elizabeth Warren has dispensed three major policy proposals, held 30 campaign events and visited nearly a dozen states.
Since announcing his 2020 run, Beto O’Rourke has made one visit to Iowa, where he vaguely outlined his positions, including from atop a cafe counter.
Guess who’s getting the star treatment.
And it’s kinda like today. February 1st was St. Brigid of Kildare’s Day. She is also a patron Saint of the Irish yet she get’s no play at all here.
Little is known of her life but from legend, myth, and folklore. According to these, she was born of a noble father and a slave mother and was sold along with her mother to a Druid, whom she later converted to Christianity. On being set free, she returned to her father, who tried to marry her to the king of Ulster. Impressed by her piety, the king removed her from parental control. According to the Liber hymnorum (11th century), the Curragh, a plain in Kildare, was granted by the king of Leinster to St. Brigid. At Kildare she founded the first nunnery in Ireland. The community became a double abbey for monks and nuns, with the abbess ranking above the abbot. Her friend St. Conleth became, at Brigid’s beckoning, bishop of her people. She is said to have been active in founding other communities of nuns.
St. Brigid appears in a wealth of literature, notably the Book of Lismore, the Breviarium Aberdonense, and Bethada Náem n-Érenn. One of the loveliest and most gently profound legends of Brigid is the story of Dara, the blind nun, for the restoration of whose sight Brigid prayed. When the miracle was granted, Dara realized that the clarity of sight blurred God in the eye of the soul, whereupon she asked Brigid to return her to the beauty of darkness. Brigid is also said to have miraculously changed water into beer for a leper colony and provided enough beer for 18 churches from a single barrel; she is sometimes considered to be one of the patron saints of beer.
So, she’s really the patron saints of beer and known for turning water into beer. But who get’s all the beer in celebration? Hmmm? So, here’s to Saint Brigid who was known for giving everything away and for having a brilliant little woven cross.
And here’s to the women who are trying to find all the oxygen taken by the Bad News B boys (Bernie, Beto, Biden) to give voices to the rest of us.
Anyway, have a happy day!!!
What’s on your mind today?
Sunday Reads: Another open thread.
Posted: March 10, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, open thread | Tags: hospice 10 Comments
The front door remains open, rain has been falling for most of the day.
It almost seems like the scene playing out in my mother’s room is being conducted with a soundtrack, the tinkling of windchimes, very much like the ones played in the background of the film The Letter with Bette Davis…as she meets with Gale Sondergaard.
Only the chimes do not call out the tune of anxiety and dread between the meeting of two characters in a Somerset Maugham story. These twinkling sounds make out an undetermined tune, like theater of absurd, while the nurses tell my mother that her periods of hallucinations are part of the “disease process.”
That is the new phrase of the week, disease process.
Everything that brings ill outcomes…vomit, pain, forgetfulness, is all…part of the disease process.
I can’t even begin to find articles to write about. I don’t have the energy to look at the news. I cannot or have not read the blog all this week. I am exhausted. My father is exhausted. It is the way with having a mother or wife in hospice care, for you see, this fatigue that overcomes caregivers… it is all part of the disease process.
This is an open thread.
Sunday Reads: Witches of Women
Posted: March 3, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, open thread, Women's Rights | Tags: Katherine Helmond 18 Comments
Some observations, and if I had the the time…this motherfucker would…
Union County High School, here in Banjoville, has a problem. A rape culture problem.
You can read the pdf of the story here:
Just 57 boys sharing sexting pictures…nothing to see here. Send them to church, it will be ok…
Can you believe this shit…fucking hell.
(BTW, 57 boys, is about the entire team.)
I don’t know, I think we need some W.I.T.C.H.s up in here:
The only thing more powerful than a confident woman? An army of them. For the 31 days of #WomensHistoryMonth, we’re highlighting 31 badass feminist fight clubs you may not know, but should. Like, W.I.T.C.H., or the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, that formed on Halloween 1968 to protest sexism, racism and patriarchy. With chapters called “covens” (13 members in each), WITCH staged colorful hit and run protests called “zaps”—once gluing the doors to the New York stock exchange shut (the Dow fell five points the following day 😹); staging a “hex” on a Manhattan bridal fair in which they released 100 white mice into the convention hall; and organizing an “ogle-in” on Wall Street where the witches catcalled men. Today, WITCH is still active — with chapters in Boston, Seattle, Portland and more. From the original WITCH Manifesta: “There is no ‘joining’ WITCH. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH. You make your own rules.” 💫 #31daysofFFC
Check it out:
These two articles from last year….
How the Socialist Feminists of WITCH Use Magic to Fight Capitalism – Broadly
The first incarnation of WITCH performed their inaugural action—a hex on Wall Street—on Halloween in 1968. Now a new generation of witches is taking up the mantle from the infamous provocateurs.
Is It OK to Hex a Nazi? How Anti-Fascist Witches Are Mobilizing Under Trump – Broadly
As Trump supporters and antifa clash throughout the country, witches are turning their magical attention towards the new administration—and their spells are not all about love and light.
I seriously wish there was a local chapter around here.
Just a few links on the Global Women’s Rights movement, Global women’s rights movement SheDecides event concludes in Kathmandu
The flagship event of SheDecides Day 2019 concluded in Kathmandu with a firm commitment from participants to advance the movement in their home countries, and plans taking shape in Nepal to build local momentum.
A decade ago, no country in the world treated men and women equally under the law, according to a gender equality index from the World Bank. Today, only six countries do — and the United States isn’t one of them.
A new index released this week by the World Bank analyzes how each country’s laws affect women at every stage in their working lives — from applying for a job to having a child to receiving a pension — and the extent to which legal gender equality has progressed over time.
The study shows that over the past 10 years, the majority of the world moved closer to gender equality under the law, raising the global average score from 70.06 to 74.71 today.
Well, we could always find ourselves living in a cubby hole: Will these be the worst new ‘rabbit hutch’ flats in Britain? | Money | The Guardian
Wearing one of these thingamabobs, Scold’s Bridle, a Metal Mask Was Used to Punish Mainly Women Found Gossiping, Nagging, Brawling With Neighbors or Lying ~ vintage everyday
Scold’s bridle is a metal mask meant to bring upon public humiliation. It originated from Britain and spread to other European Countries and was used to punish and torture women till about the 1800s. Scold’s bridle was assigned by the local magistrate to women found gossiping or quarrelling.
The device was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head (although some bridles were masks that depicted suffering.) A bridle-bit (or curb-plate), about 2 inches long and 1 inch broad was slid into the mouth and either pressed down on top of the tongue as a compress or used to raise the tongue to lay flat on the wearer’s palate. This prevented speaking and resulted in many unpleasant side effects for the wearer, including excessive salivation and fatigue in the mouth.
We lost Katherine Helmond this week, Katherine Helmond Golden Globe-Winner of ‘Who’s the Boss?’ Dies at 89 · Guardian Liberty Voice
Katherine Helmond’s talent agency APA informed CNN on Mar. 1, 2019 that the actress who was best known for her roles on “Who’s the Boss” and “Soap” died on Feb. 23 at her home in Los Angeles from Alzheimer’s disease. She was 89 years old.
Katherine Helmond, ‘Soap’ and ‘Who’s the Boss?’ Star, Dies at 89 – The New York Times
On “Soap,” ABC’s prime-time parody of daytime soap operas, which ran from 1977 to 1981, Ms. Helmond played Jessica Tate, a lovable aristocrat who was one of the show’s main characters. Some viewers, as is often the case, wrongly assumed that the character was her.
“After I did ‘Soap,’ ” she told The Boston Globe in 1998, “people thought that the casting director had gone to a dinner party or something and found this dizzy lady and brought her to Los Angeles. People are surprised to find out that I’m from a very working-class Irish Catholic family and that I didn’t come from a lot of money and go to a nice finishing school and live in a grand house in Connecticut.”
[…]
…more important to her was the example the character set for women in midlife, especially if they had been widowed or were otherwise facing an uncertain future.
In a videotaped oral history, she recalled in 2008, “I got letters from people saying, ‘When my husband passed away I thought it was the end of the world for me, but by watching your silly show I found out that there were other things in life.’ ”
[…]
Katherine became involved in local community theaters in junior high school and high school.
“I did everything,” she said in the oral history, for the Archive of Television History. “I pulled the curtain, I learned to do the lights, I did the props, I held the script. And I truly learned everybody’s job that contributed toward the total piece.
“I think that that helped me tremendously when I became a professional actor. I didn’t have the deluded notion that I was ‘it.’ ”
That community theater experience was essentially her acting training; she did not go to college or acting school. After graduating from high school she worked for several years with a professional theater in Houston, then went to New York. She began landing Off Broadway and summer-stock roles, and with several friends ran a summer theater in the Catskills for three seasons.
Ms. Helmond became a well-regarded stage actress in New York and beyond. In 1966, working with the Trinity Square Repertory Company in Providence, R.I., she took on the role of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“Miss Helmond gives all of Blanche’s irritating mannerisms,” Kevin Kelly wrote in a glowing review in The Boston Globe, “the coquettish come-on, the infuriating pretense, but she makes us understand (far more persuasively than many actresses I’ve seen in the role) the demons driving her beyond the brink. I’m not ashamed to admit that Miss Helmond brought tears to my eyes in three scenes.”
I always loved Katherine Helmond, especially fond of her performance in Brazil.
More pictures at the link.
I’ve got a few more items to share:
10 ‘Little People’ Myths From Around The World – Listverse
Domovoi
Photo credit: Ivan BilibinIn Slavic folklore, they have house spirits called domovoi.[8] They look like a small man with either a beard or hair all over. Some stories say that they end up looking like the owner of their house, just with a grey beard and sometimes also a tail or horns. These spirits live behind the oven and protect the house, its inhabitants, and their animals. Every house has one, but it is never seen. Instead, people are only aware of it through the noises it makes, such as through footsteps or murmuring.
To keep the domovoi happy, people would leave milk or bread in a corner near the oven. When the domovoi feels respected, he does his best to protect the family, but if they upset him, he causes mischief. He does so by riding their horses or cows all night so that they’re too tired to work during the day, tripping them in the dark, or making milk go bad. If people moved, the domovoi would come with them; otherwise, they wouldn’t be safe.
I saw that bit come through my Newsblur service and I had no choice but to post it here…y’all know my weakness.
And since we started this post about teenagers….and women, and stuff, here is a compare and contrast….
45 Cool Pics Show What Teenage Girls Looked Like in the 1850s ~ vintage everyday
28 Cool Snaps That Defined the ’80s Teen Hairstyles ~ vintage everyday
It is funny, the clothes and hairstyles may change, but the expressions are similar…
This is an open thread.
Wednesday Reads: I have forgotten…
Posted: February 20, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, open thread, Political and Editorial Cartoons, Wednesday Hump Day Cartoons | Tags: #FuckBernieSanders 8 Comments
This is just another day, I look forward to forgetting.
and this,
Take a look at this full thread:
Sure…listen and believe to this dude over your own intel sources.
Cartoons:
Black History Month John Robert Lewis: 02/20/2019 Cartoon by David G. Brown
Crazy Alabama Publisher: 02/20/2019 Cartoon by J.D. Crowe
Trump’s Irrational National Emergency: 02/16/2019 Cartoon by J.D. Crowe
Bennett editorial cartoon: 02/19/2019 Cartoon by Clay Bennett
02/17/2019 Cartoon by MStreeter
Everything is Pretend: 02/20/2019 Cartoon by Jen Sorensen
Presidents Day 2019: 02/18/2019 Cartoon by Deb Milbrath
Fuck Bernie Sanders.
This is an open thread…
Sunday Reads: Hypocrisies of Dead White Soldiers
Posted: January 20, 2019 Filed under: Donald Trump, morning reads, open thread, racism, Republican politics, the GOP, white nationalists 44 Comments
The image above is from the town of Blue Ridge GA…as a White dead soldier is driven home…
Procession for fallen North Carolina Marine – Story | WAGA
USMC Sgt. Christopher J. Lockett died last week at a U.S. facility, but military officials have not yet offered more details.
Tuesday, his body was flown into Atlanta and driven in a solemn procession to Murphy. Hundreds lined Highway 515 in Fannin County, waving flags and showing their respect for the fallen hometown hero.
The people lining the streets are “tRump supporters,” in every sense of that description.
I do not want to diminish this man’s death, in any way, but I want to point out the hypocrisy…the difference in respect given this white soldier compared to other soldiers of color (killed in the line of duty)…as well as their gold star families.
Lest we forget:
The parents of Capt. Humayun Khan…
Donald Trump Criticizes Muslim Family of Slain U.S. Soldier, Drawing Ire – The New York Times
And the entire incident that occurred with the widow of U.S. Army Sergeant La David Johnson…
Trump Call Controversy Renews Spotlight On Gold Star Families : NPR
The widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the four U.S. soldiers killed in a military operation in Niger earlier this month, says President Trump’s condolence call only made her feel worse.
I started to write this post for Wednesday…but decided to hold it for today. I don’t know why, but it would appear like fate:
The Stupidity of Evil: Teens Shouting ‘Build that Wall’ at Native American Vet
Some high school young men from a private Catholic school in Kentucky had been encouraged to attend an anti-abortion “March for Life” near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on Friday. Nearby, Native Americans were rallying for their rights.
Vietnam Vet Nathan Phillips saw a mean crowd of white teens in Trump’s red “Make America Great Again” caps harassing four African American young men. He was beating his drum and chanting, and came forward, drawing the attention of the young thugs, realizing the danger, he said.
They then mocked and taunted him, doing a bad sing-along of his chant, and then one of the teens, an unbearably smug look on his face, planted himself in Phillips’s way and trapped him in the ugly crown of Mean Boys. They were chanting “Build the Wall.”
[…]
Nathan Phillips gave a chilling interview about the incident to CNN, in which he expressed fear about where the United States is going. Remember, Phillips risked his life for a country that had treated his people like crap, stealing their land, putting them on reservations, forbidding them to practice their religion, and occasionally massacring them.
[…]
Hannah Arendt spoke of the banality of evil, of the way in which boring routine bureaucracy had been deployed by the Nazis to commit unspeakable crimes against humanity.
What struck me from looking at those young men was that she could have perhaps even more usefully spoken of the stupidity of evil.
How stupid do you have to be to chant “build the wall” at a Native American whose people were here at least 13,000 years ago before the European undocumented migrants showed up in their lands?
How stupid do you have to be to chant “build the wall” at African-Americans whom white slavers kidnapped from their homes in Senegal and Nigeria and Angola and transported here against their will?
How stupid do you have to be as a Catholic not to know that anti-immigrant slogans like “Build the Wall” and “Make America Great Again” are the descendants of the racist slogans (such as “Keep America American”) that white Protestants of the 19th century ‘Know Nothing’ secret society chanted at Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Italy and Germany just before they burned down Catholic churches?
How stupid do you have to be to insist on a fetus’s right to life but to endanger the life of an elderly Vet by putting him into a bottleneck in the midst of an angry mob?
How stupid do you have to be to think that “Make America Great Again” could possibly mean anything when chanted by chickenhawk young men at a Vet who risked his life for this country?
How stupid do you have to be not to realize that the people Trump wants to keep out of the United States by building his idiotic, cruel and ineffective wall are for the most part Catholics?
Nathan Phillips said he is afraid for where the country of going because of the wave of hatefulness sweeping the country.
He is too polite to blame Trump for our collective national two minutes hate, but I’m not. This incident was Trump’s fault.
Mean boys in high school acting out evil may be a bit banal as well. But if Nathan Phillips is apparently afraid that hatred is contagious, I am afraid that stupidity might be an infectious disease.
The following are various tweets about this…another fucking disgusting episode in The tRump Chronicle of Shit.
This is an open thread….
Sunday Reads: Quickly
Posted: January 13, 2019 Filed under: 2020 Elections, open thread | Tags: All Woman Ticket 49 Comments
And the new season is upon us…I’m not talking GoT…
Obama ‘new blood’ remark has different meaning for Biden | TheHill
Former President Obama’s talk about how politics need “new blood” is being seen as a blow to Joe Biden, the former vice president that Obama did not back to succeed him in 2016.
[…]
…Obama and Biden as friends…
[…]
…recent remarks like the one Obama made this week in Hawaii represent a sort of threat to Biden, who has told allies in recent days that he’s likely to enter the 2020 presidential race.
Obama was speaking broadly about the need for new blood in politics, not specifically the need for new blood in the Democratic Party.
But coming on the heels of Obama’s meeting with former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Texas), a rising Democratic star who most political observers see as competing with Biden for a slice of the primary electorate, it also sent a signal to the wider political world.
The remark and the burgeoning flirtation between Obama’s political network and O’Rourke also stings Biden given the 2016 campaign, when Obama backed Hillary Clinton and nudged the vice president away from the race, insiders say.
Blah, blah, blah. Then there is this actual quoted dialogue about how much Obama loves “Joe” …seriously:
“The president loves this guy, loves Joe, thinks the world of him. He would go in a battle ditch with Joe but that’s different than giving his brand to him,” one ally of Obama’s said in describing the political dynamic and the former president’s actions.
“He has an incredible soft spot for him. And I’m sure he’ll do everything he can to make Joe feel good, but he won’t come out and make Joe his candidate,” the ally said. “And I think that hurts Joe.”
Poor Joe Biden. I don’t know why I started this post off with this little nugget from the Hill. Perhaps, it was the way they are already framing Biden in this coming blood sport of the Democratic Presidential Primaries. If you read the rest of the article, it once again brings up Hillary…and how she stole Joe’s chance back in 2016, by gaining Obama’s support. Considering the fucking horrible display the press has given Warren and Harris, the mysoginistic treatment we saw of Hillary back in 2008 and 2016 will be nothing compared to what the women candidates will face this time around.
This, for me at least, makes the case for an even for bolder Dem ticket in 2020:
An all women ticket.
Yes, I am for a full kitty administration. Fuck all these dickheads who have gotten us where we are today!
This is an open thread.
Trump Tantrum Open Thread
Posted: January 8, 2019 Filed under: open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: Trump tantrum 47 Comments
Here’s a fresh thread in case anyone wants to discuss the televised Trump tantrum tonight. One good thing, Rachel Maddow is going to be on at 8PM with Chris Hayes and will follow the Trump tantrum with other guests on her show.
A few reads:
George Packer at The Atlantic: The Suicide of a Great Democracy.
Also at The Atlantic: Why Mike Pence Couldn’t End the Shutdown.
Reuters: A growing number of Americans blame Trump for shutdown: Reuters-Ipsos poll.
CBS News: Every congressperson along southern border opposes border wall funding.
This is a wide open thread.
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