Don't be Cruel - RIP Peter Yarrow
Once in an Iowa City bar frequented by Writer's Workshop people I was feeling sorry for myself and used a quarter in the box to play "Don't be Cruel." Some drunken guy (presumably a writer) lit into me saying that Elvis was a mean redneck s-o-b and we should never support anything he did for any reason. I totally and heartily disagreed but kept my mouth shut and fortunately came out of that bar alive.
So you can tell that I am in the "separate the art from the artist" crowd, which I freely admit, but the Peter Yarrow story is a little more complex, because he was a leader and important figure in making the Kerville Festival what it is.
The "separate the art from the artist" crowd, including me, argues that an artist's morality is separate from his/her art, so that it is possible to be a good artist and a lousy person, or fallible may be a better word. As a musician there were some songs I wanted to hear and enjoy regardless of the moral culpability of the performer; in other words, the sum total of musical skill should all be available to me just on principle. If you start refusing to support Elvis, or Peter, or anyone, then where does it end? Do you stop listening to all his band's music? Or that from the festival he helped make famous? And what if the crime is questionable (not sure about Peter's), or he was sorry and genuinely repentant (again, not sure; I believe he was)? Does that make it ok to listen to his music now?
Apparently in the history of the Kerrville festival, it was Yarrow who befriended Rod Kennedy, a conservative old Texas rancher, to make it what it was. He opened up Kennedy and convinced him that the folk music culture was a good one to propagate and invest in, and Kerrville became the Woodstock of Texas, a refuge from the very cruel world of south Texas. I experienced it and love the place. But the founders and long-time administrators of the festival all acknowledge the pivotal role Yarrow played in making it what it was. And those who will never forgive him for what he did, will never forgive him, it's that simple. Like maybe he was using his stardom, and his association with the festival, to pick up groupies? That's possible. And he may have done it more than once, with some who were underage.
I never had trouble with Clinton being a sex addict, as his victims seemed to be at least willing and of age, though it's possible I didn't know them all. I had a little more trouble with Trump, who was actually a predator (assaulted the unwilling) and probably did a young 13-year-old knowing full well she wasn't of age. Their morality can be separate from their effect as a leader or at least it could in the case of Clinton, and perhaps JFK. We "separate the..." advocates say simply that they are separate things and it's possible to be a good leader and morally corrupt at the same time (for another example, look into MLK Jr.). But in the art field we would have to refuse to partake in a wide swath of good art if we were to be serious about simply rejecting the morally corrupt. And the odd thing is, they seem to go together, good art and moral corruption, like priests and altar boys. The cross between them is remarkably common, frequent, even ubiquitous.
I have to admit that there is some sense for the other side. If someone is really bad, the less you glorify them, praise them, put them in the spotlight, etc., the better. You can see people wince when other people praise Yarrow for his music or whatever - how does that make his victims feel? How can I say "let's not think about that" or even write paragraphs about his greatness while
omitting his crimes? You can't. Much of this will be forgotten and to his victims, the sooner the better.
But Kerrville was historic in that the alliance between Yarrow and Kennedy was apparently similar to the general alliance between Texas longhairs and rednecks (longhair + redneck = longneck?) which produced Willie Nelson and made Austin the music capital of the nation. It wasn't just that they opened Kerrville up to be what it was; it became what it was because Texas needed it. It was a fantastic place in the same way Woodstock was fantastic - historically fantastic. And still is. I tip my hat to it and to Peter Yarrow - not to sweep under the rug all that terrible stuff he did, whatever it was. I'm with the "separate the artist..." crowd.
crypto & the hawk tuah
My more conservative friends would all say crypto is pure gambling; my ex-father-in-law says it's "suicide." My reading about it led me to the story about the Hawk Tuah Girl.
Let's go back a little further. My young sons always called my oldest daughter Josie
Doge. We called her
Doge igifor so many years that we felt like we owned the name. But, not being tuned in to memes and the online culture, the whole
Doge culture came and went and I barely even knew about it. Then there was a Dogecoin, competing with Bitcoin as onne of the more stable kinds of crypto. And
now crypto bros are working to make DOGE a government agancy. Appropriation! Travesty!
But back to crypto. Bitcoin is a stable one; Dogecoin is up there; but anyone can start one and see what happens. That's what the Hawk Tuah Girl did. She had a lot of fans on Instagram and she got them all to invest in her personal crypto. Thenn the price crashed and they all lost like millions. And needless to say they're mad and they're going to sue her.
It's not the first time this has happenned (it's called a soft rug-pull) - recently a 14-year-old kid started a crypto, got lots of investors, got out of it, made $20,000 in a day, and his parents got flooded with calls and had to disconnect their phone. It was legal what he did; what Hawk Tuah did was legal too. It's just pure gambling. You invest in crypto, it's only worth what someone will pay for it.
What's interesting is that some people blame the bots. Bots apparently can detect its rising value and buy, and then detect when it goes over the top and sell right away, and thus a $200 catastrophe becomes a 200 million catastrophe. The bots are all in there gambling too, and they're better than we are because they've seen it so much more often. They have it
programmed into them.
I was interested in crypto - not so much gambling on one coin or another, but starting my own. It would be cool to have your own crypto. But how could you keep the bots at bay? It seems like a dicey situation, having your coin out there on the open market. As far as I can tell, the Hawk Tuah Girl was trusting some agent to run her whole PR thing. Some agent didn't quite know when to take a bat to the bots. And now she's sorry.
There is already no restriction on crypto, no regulation. At the same time anyone can start a coin, any bot can jump in there and buy one, raising the value. The price has been jumping because people think the Trump era will be the crypto era. Well Hallelujiah. But easy come, easy go. I'm not touching it, at least for now.
Labels: crypto
Furever Friends Anthology
Proud to be part of this anthology, a large book of many different stories, all romance,
intended to help shelters deal with an influx of pets. Here's the information:
Furever Friends
A Collection of Stories
Coming from Wycked Minds Publishing
Releasing November 30th! Get yours now, and let's help our furry, feathered, and scaled friends affected by the hurricanes that tore through the Southeast!
🐶🐱🦎🦜
When disaster strikes, not only humans are affected. Our four-legged companions are as well. Sadly, many get left behind, and rescues and shelters scramble to save them before it's too late.
This anthology is packed full of stories about animals who have been rescued and given a second chance at life! Each story is uniquely different as is each author.
All proceeds for this anthology go to Best Friends, a non-profit animal rescue that has mobilized to help animal shelters in the Southeast that have been affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
https://books2read.com/ForeverFriendsAntho
🐶🐱🦎🦜
#comingsoon #preorder #bookpreorder #charityanthology #charityanthologies #hurricanesheleneandmilton #disasterrelief #recoveryeffort #fundraisers #romanceanthologies #romancecollections #fureverfriends #helpourfurryfeatheredscaledfriends
#bestfriendsrescue
#operationfureverfriends #helene #milton
school reform
Brooks, David. (2024, Nov. 14).
How the Ivy League Broke America.
The Atlantic. Online: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/meritocracy-college-admissions-social-economic-segregation/680392/.
The above article was given to me for free, for some reason; usually
Atlantic articles are behind a paywall.
In my opinion school reform is a necessity and this article addresses the problem squarely. It is clear that education has failed and that the system has set up a distrust of the educated people that we were counting on. Need I say more? The article is good in identifying the problem and giving some concrete solutions. It's a start.
This is a topic that is close to my heart, having worked in academia most of my life. I now find that my special-education kids, the remaining ones, are underserved or failed by the modern schools, and it's not really the schools' fault. Teachers are the saints they've always been. Something (besides the pandemic) has gone wrong, very wrong, and we need help.
Labels: school reform
whoa
I've been uncharacteristically silent about the stunning election results, and this will probably be the last and only thing I'll say about them. In general, although most of my friends are wailing and gnashing their teeth, I don't feel like jumping in.
Yes I'm disappointed and angry about the results. I'm angry at my fellow countrymen for betraying democracy and the free world for whatever reasons they had. My guess is 1) racism and sexism (just didn't want a woman boss), 2) blaming Biden/Harris for big inflation during difficult times, and 3) endless wars that seem to be our responsibility. Actually strike off #3, people don't care about Ukraine or Gaza. But make #1 into two reasons, as they're both good enough for her to lose the South & Appalachia.
There is one winner, and that is the system itself, which worked well; all the votes were counted fairly, the dems didn't shout "cheating cheating!" or run for their lawyers; people counted votes as they were supposed to. All of this to me just shows that he was a big liar to claim the 2020 one was "rigged" as there was never any evidence of that. His attacks on the counting system, not to mention the courts and the post office, were all unfounded.
October
October is synonymous with good, playoff baseball. But baseball has a serious problem. It's overextended. It needs to bring back October.
Here's a fact about the North: sometime in late October, the weather turns. By Halloween, it's always cold, windy, snowy, below freezing. There is some variation: sometimes it turns early (the 20th), sometimes late (the 25th), but it always turns. You don't really want to be outside after it turns, at least, you don't want to stand around, outside, or sit. If you're trick-or-treating, you'll survive, because you have a couple of extra layers. But you might be cold and miserable when you get home.
Here's baseball's problem: we're in the playoffs now, but we've just started. Somebody will win spots in the NL and AL playoffs this weekend, and we should be ready for the World Series in what, about ten days? That's too long! Once it's cold, we're busy. We have to plastic up the windows, shovel snow, get antifreeze in the cars, etc. It's too late!
We can watch baseball NOW. Playoffs, more playoffs, we're good. It's good baseball and these are good teams. I can also follow even if I don't watch. The weather is right: cool, orange leaves everywhere, fresh air; it's nice outside. Once it turns, forget it.
Baseball needs to maximize the World Series, not marginalize it. Maximizing it means making it OVER before it turns. We should be doing the World Series now. We should give the World Series its ten days and make them all good, not November days.
There are several ways to do it: make a shorter season; squeeze up the wild-card games (making it best of three was good), squeeze up the division playoffs (make them best of three?), cut with the days off between games, etc. Every day helps. You need ten for a seven-day series and
all need to be before it turns. I don't want to watch it in the snow. Even if I'm a faithful Cleveland fan.
Missouri kills an innocent man
When DNA testing came out, a professor in Chicago turned his students loose on the 19 people on Illinois' Death Row, and said, use the new DNA testing to review these cases. It took a while, and the number of people on Death Row changed over the years. But within a few years
13 of them had been proven innocent.
This points out a big problem with our justice system. The jurors do the best they can; so do the police; everyone does their jobs. But big people at the top, who are often elected, have a vested interest in securing "justice" by making sure someone dies for every murder. If these 13 didn't kill the people they were charged with killing, who did? Well, somebody else, obviously, and it appears they got away with it.
It is pretty easy to force a confession. You just make someone suffer enough, and you make them believe thier life will be over
now if they don't say what you want. You can even make them believe that their life is as good as over already, if they don't say what you want. So they said it. You got it on tape. And their life is as good as over.
That doesn't make it right. We're talking about poor, defenseless black men here for the most part, people who don't necessarily know at the moment that their defense attorney is worthless and not on their side. Or, they're unable to
do anything about it.
Let's talk about Khalifah for just a minute. It didn't help that he became Muslim; that adds to the suspicion that what they really wanted to do was kill a Muslim. But he was a typical case in some ways. There was no credible evidence to convict him, outside of a forced confession. When the facts came in, his blood and DNA weren't on the scene. Everyone admitted that the defense attorney was worthless and/or not on his side. Even the families of the victims had asked that he not be killed. But high-up political people needed to prove they were tough. It doesn't matter that no evidence shows that capital punishment deters crime, either. It's posing.
So they kill an innocent man. They are no better than the people they rail on against in their campaigns.
