Luckie
Posted: July 17, 2017 Filed under: desert, the California Condition Leave a comment
If you’re like me you saw this and wondered who Luckie Park is named after
I didn’t have to look far:
“This Luckie Reilly may be a relation,” I thought. Sure enough:
It’s this Dr. Luckie that the park is named after. Here’s some good info about him in the Morongo Basin Historical Society’s newsletter:
There’s a mural of him:
That’s from Google Earth. Better picture at Action 29 Palms – The Mural People.
I wonder if this James Luckie was the son or grandson of James Buckner Luckie, who was a doctor with the Army of East Tennessee in the Civil War, and performed one of the first ever triple amputations. More info and (warning) a photo on this German language (?) wikipedia page.
Luckie Reilly sounds great. From a 2006 article about her, “10 Things To Know About Luckie Reilly,” in the Hi-Desert Star in 2006:
10. Susan continues to weigh in on local land-use issues, sometimes speaking her mind at City Council meetings and through letters to the editor. “I’ve been an activist for years,’ she says. “I’ve opposed power plants, polluting industries and waste dumps in the desert. You can’t just sit back and watch things go to heck!”
He’s like an old doughnut seller
Posted: July 16, 2017 Filed under: Japan, religion, Sunday sermons Leave a comment
Stop, stop. Do not speak.
From:
A good one from Penguin.
Myself, I find stuff worth pondering in Gateless Gate:
(you can skip Mumon’s comment if you want, it’s not on the quiz)
Fitful sleep on the moon
Posted: July 13, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, moon Leave a comment
source. Photographer: Neil Armstrong.
After our heroes walked around for two hours, it was time for a restful nap on the surface of the Moon.
from:
About Deke:
One reason why the moon landing is so compelling is that it was pointless. Sure, the Cold War blah blah but really we did it just because it was cool.
Like climbing Mount Everest: the point is just to see if we (humans) can.
Imagine sleeping in this thing:
Where is the capsule now? Crashed on the moon someplace.
The fate of the LM is not known, but it is assumed that it crashed into the lunar surface sometime within the following 1 to 4 months.
Mattis interviewed by a high schooler
Posted: July 10, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
Mercer Island by Wiki user Dllu
In a photo published alongside this article by The Washington Post on May 11, Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, could be seen carrying a stack of papers with a yellow sticky note stuck on the top. Written on it, in black ink, was the name “Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis” and a phone number.
A high school student in Mercer Island, Washington, followed up and asked Secretary of Defense Mattis for an interview, which you can find here.
TEDDY: Out of thousands of calls, why did you respond to this one?
MATTIS: You left a message there and I was going through listening to the messages and deleting them. But you’re from Washington state. I grew up in Washington state on the other side of the mountains there on the Columbia River. I just thought I’d give you a call.
State Dept photo, source
Hard not to find Mattis a pretty compelling American character, imo.
On the education, I sometimes wonder how much better the world would be if we funded for nations where they have ideology problems, where the ideologies are hateful, full of hatred. I wonder what would happen if we turned around and we helped pay for high school students, a boy and girl at each high school in that country to come to America for one year and don’t do it just once, but do it ten years in a row. Every high school whether it be in Afghanistan or Syria or wherever, would send one boy and one girl for one year to Mercer island or to Topeka, Kansas or wherever.
It wouldn’t cost that much if you had sponsoring families that would take them in. Most American families are very generous, unless they’ve lived in places where they’ve adopted kind of a selfish style. But, that’s only a few pockets of the country that really have that bad. Although they’re big pockets in terms of population, most of the country is not like that. I bet we could do that.
Where is he talking about? Name names!
Could he be talking about New York City, where the President, a notably non-generous person, comes from?
Later, Mattis gives advice on how to avoid the psychiatrist:
TEDDY: Any advice for graduating seniors?
MATTIS: I would just tell you that there’s all sorts of people that are going to give you advice and you should listen to the people you respect, but I think if you guide yourself by putting others first, by trying to serve others, whether it be in your family, in your school, in your church or synagogue or mosque or wherever you get your spiritual strength from, you can help your state, you can help your country, if you can help the larger community in the world, you won’t be lying on a psychiatrist’s couch when you’re 45-years-old wondering what you did with your life.
Go out of your way. Not everyone has to join the military, it’s not for everyone. For one thing it’s scary as all get out at times, but whether it be the Peace Corp or the Marine Corps, whether it be serving on your local school board when you’re still not even 30-years-old, by running for office and trying to get a good education for the kids in your community, just try to put others first and it will pay back in so many ways that you’d be a lot happier in life. So just look for ways to help others all the way along, Teddy, and you’ll never go far wrong if you’re always looking to do that. You won’t get all caught up in your own problems if you’re out helping others overcome theirs.
Ants
Posted: July 9, 2017 Filed under: animals, heroes, Life, nature Leave a commentreprinting this 2013 classic because can’t find my copy of this book, wondering if I loaned it to one of you.
Nice work boys.
Wilson got his start doing a survey of all the ants in Alabama.
There’s the question of, why did I pick ants, you know? Why not butterflies or whatever? And the answer is that they’re so abundant, they’re easy to find, and they’re easy to study, and they’re so interesting. They have social habits that differ from one kind of ant to the next. You know, each kind of ant has almost the equivalent of a different human culture. So each species is a wonderful object to study in itself. In fact, I honestly can’t…cannot understand why most people don’t study ants.
(source)
Somewhere else I think I heard Wilson say something like “once you start to study ants it’s hard to be interested in anything else.”
Look at the wild coolness on Bert Hölldobler:
Bert Hölldobler:
Happy birthday America
Posted: July 4, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, history Leave a comment
Check out this letter Abigail Adams sent to her son, John Quincy Adams, when he was ELEVEN:
(Funny to read that as I sit here at what could be described as a literal Pacific station)
That is from:
which is a collection of David McCullough’s speeches.
Many of the speeches were given in the triumphant mid-late-1990s, when History was ending and it was easy to be fooled into thinking it was one long hike to the sunny meadows where we would now reside forever.
In that context this book can be almost painful to read.
Here, for example, McCullough talks about the history of the White House:
If there’s a single American out there who wants to claim the current occupant is either wise or honest, would love to have you on Great Debates.
After McCullough wrote a book about the Johnstown Flood, it was suggested he write about other disasters. He didn’t. He didn’t want to be “bad news McCullough,” he says.
We need more McCulloughism.
Unless you’re a McCullough completist I’d suggest bypassing The American Spirit and going instead to:
Bob Marley in Boston
Posted: July 2, 2017 Filed under: baseball, Boston, music, New England Leave a comment
Because people were talking about Baby Driver, I started singing it in my head to the tune of Bob Marley’s Slave Driver.
What a song. So then I went looking for Slave Driver on Spotify. I found a recording of Bob Marley and The Wailers, Live At The Music Hall, Boston, 1978. “Easy Skanking In Boston ’78” is the title, which I don’t love saying. “Bob Marley and The Wailers Live At The Music Hall – Boston – 1978” seems like it gives you what you need?
The Music Hall is now the Wang Theatre. Photo from Wikipedia by Tim Pierce.
Somehow shocking that Boston would be the scene of a legendary Marley concert. Who was in the crowd?!
Steve Morse wrote about this recording for The Boston Globe when the album was released in 2015:
My one meeting with Bob Marley was memorable. I was sent by the Globe to interview him at the Essex Hotel in New York before his show at Boston’s Music Hall in 1978. I walked in to Marley’s room, which looked out over Central Park, at 11 a.m. It was a chaotic scene. Four or five members of his entourage were kicking a soccer ball that banged off the picture windows. Two king-size joints were being passed around. Bob sat on a couch, reading aloud from the Book of Revelation.
Realizing I was in over my head, I waited a while before daring to ask Marley about his music. He agreed to talk, shut the Bible, quelled the soccer noise, and stated his worldview: “Everything is going to be united now. Everything is going to be cool. Forget the past and unite.”
Marley’s response to a country politically divided and stricken with gun violence was notably cooler and more Christian than the NRA’s response.
|
” |
Two months later he’d be in Boston.
(Minute 34-38 or so a good sample)
June 8, 1978 was a Thursday, a hot night, 89 degrees. The Red Sox had an off day, but that weekend they’d start a ten game win streak on the road in the West Coast.
The Sox would win 99 games that year, but lose a one game playoff to the Yankees at home in Fenway Park.
Ned Martin would call the game for WITS radio.
Years later he’d die of a heart attack in a shuttle bus at the Raleigh airport on his way home from Ted Williams’ memorial.
A Norm gem from the Bookbinder
Posted: July 1, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, comedy Leave a comment
always such excellent dispatches over there
Us vs Them
Posted: July 1, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, politics Leave a comment
This NRA ad is so twisted and vicious that I hate to sully Helytimes with it. You don’t have to watch it, I will tell you the key parts.
From the woman’s tone to the images it is so intense, so designed to provoke fear and anger.
Imagine something less helpful than showing this to a fearful person or a deranged person who also owned a gun.
I learned a tiny bit about the woman in the ad and I don’t want to ever think about her again.
I do want to examine the use of the words “us” and “them” in the ad.
Sometimes I felt frustrated by the attempt to over-explain Trump’s popularity as just racism because I felt that like while racism was absolutely in the mix, that wasn’t a big enough word. What I really heard was something like “themism.”
Themism
It was obvious to anyone I talked to at Trump’s rally or the RNC that I was a “them” even though I felt like we were and could be and should be an “us.”
Who is them and who is us?
In the first twenty seconds of this ad, you hear about how “they use”:
- “their media”
- “their schools”
- “their movies stars
- their singers
- their comedy shows
- their awards shows”
(with lots of exterior shots of LA, by the way, including Disney Hall)
- “their ex-president”
As a media-working school-liking person who works on a comedy show in LA who loves and gave money to my ex-president, I am obviously a them.
What the hell? I want to be an us!
I am an us!
Who is the us, according to the ad?
Well, against the them is:
- “the law-abiding”
Me, definitely, I love the law, some of the people closest to me are professional law enforcers.
- “the police”
Same, I love one police in my own life and like the police in general.
So, I am also an us.
Right?
Can I be an us and a them?
What kind of wicked, nasty person would try and drive us apart like that? What sinister agenda would be behind that?
Anyone trying to divide us is wicked.
Which is better: united or divided?
Uniter or divider?
Everyone knows the answer to that. This is the United States.
If you are trying to divide, if you are sowing division, you doing wickedness. This is simple.
This ad is some kind of vicious dog-whistle designed make some loose category of people who feel angry and put upon and threatened feel more angry, put upon, and threatened. This ad uses the language of violence to suggest channeling those feelings into violence.
In this world you will see so much wickedness that you can’t possibly handle it all but somehow this one got to me.
Part of what makes me made is that a club for people who like shooting guns could be so positive. Lots of people in this country have guns because they like hunting or because guns are exciting. What if they were in a club that made them feel proud and noble instead of vicious and afraid?
The language about the “well-regulated militia” in the Second Amendment is so important. Adding those words was not an accident. The Founders didn’t want every gun-haver running around on his own kick deciding who to blast away. Read
or
A militia was a community. It brought people together. And it was a responsibility. To call this NRA video irresponsible is a wild understatement.
I suspect I have no more than two Helytimes readers who are in the NRA. There has to be a faction of the NRA that can see how wrong this ad is, how destructive. I could be wrong but my guess is this strategy of marketing for the NRA will not be successful.
My purpose in writing this was just to bore down and clarify mostly for myself what is so wrong and wicked about this ad and what larger principle that leads us to.
Also to shine a light on why the message is not just wicked but un-American.
A Smaller Thing That Made Me Mad From This Ad
:16
“make them march, make them protest”
let’s pause here and remember you can say whatever the hell you want about movie stars and comedy shows but marching and protesting in American history is maybe not all the time but by an overwhelming margin a pretty darn heroic and positive thing in American history.
A Leonard Freed Magnum photo from the 1963 March on Washington. Am I allowed to use this? Maybe not technically but is it ok because I direct you to the source? Hmm am I as law-abiding as I thought?
the ad is ignorant as well as wicked, the two often go hand in hand.
Tranquility Base
Posted: June 27, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, moon Leave a comment
photo credit: Neil Armstong
The same society that was doing Vietnam, at the same time, did this.
During training, Armstrong and Aldrin had exclusively used the callsign “Eagle” in simulated ground conversations, both before and after landing. Armstrong and Aldrin decided on using “Tranquility Base” just before the flight, telling only Capsule Communicator Charles Duke before the mission, so Duke would not be taken by surprise.
We came in peace for all mankind.
Wild. America: a land of contrasts.
Ken Burns Vietnam
Posted: June 26, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, Vietnam, war 1 Comment
This fall, Ken Burns new documentary about the Vietnam War will be on PBS.
Any one of these clips from it will make you still for a minute.
The intensity of what happened with the US in Vietnam is insane. The magnitude of the scar is unspeakable. Literally: we can’t talk about it.
When Ken Burns made The Civil War, about something 150 years ago, it made people cry. What is it going to be like to watch The Vietnam War, a thing every person in my parent’s generation had to reckon with in some serious way?
I saw that one of the talkers is Karl Marlantes. His book What It Is Like To Go To War is astounding.
I’m not sure enough people heard about it. At one time I had the same publisher as Karl Marlantes, which I was very proud of, they sent me his books for free.
Marlantes tells this story about running into Joseph Campbell, by chance:
Absolution.
Imagine having whiskey with Joseph Campbell.
The best discipline:
The other day on Reddit “Today I Learned” I saw this.
I went to check the source, the Lodi News Sentinel, 1971:
Preserved at this blog:
There the author gives a question and answer about his own time in Vietnam and after that I would describe as harrowing and illuminating and powerful.
Ken Burns made some darn good movies.
Jeremy Corbyn
Posted: June 25, 2017 Filed under: politics Leave a comment-
Pretty compelled by British politics, where a 68 year old socialist inspires mobs of young people with poetry while a former banker and political operator whose political arrogance blew up in her face clings to her job as Prime Minister.
Reader Laura M. calls our attention to another verse from that Shelley poem:
“…Next came Fraud, and he had on, Like Lord Eldon, an ermined gown ; His big tears, for he wept well, Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
And the little children, who Round his feet played to and fro, Thinking every tear a gem, Had their brains knocked out by them.” 
Lord Eldon. source.
The opening of the poem, The Masque of Anarchy:
- “Stand ye calm and resolute,
- Like a forest close and mute,
- With folded arms and looks which are
- Weapons of unvanquished war.
- And if then the tyrants dare,
- Let them ride among you there;
- Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;
- What they like, that let them do.
- With folded arms and steady eyes,
- And little fear, and less surprise,
- Look upon them as they slay,
- Till their rage has died away:
- Then they will return with shame,
- To the place from which they came,
- And the blood thus shed will speak
- In hot blushes on their cheek:
- Rise, like lions after slumber
- In unvanquishable number!
- Shake your chains to earth like dew
- Which in sleep had fallen on you:
- Ye are many—they are few!
Written in response to the Peterloo massacre:
This blog post is not an endorsement of the band Run The Jewels.
Melfax
Posted: June 24, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
The street art scene in my neighborhood is fantastic.
Beyond Meat Bolognese
Posted: June 23, 2017 Filed under: food Leave a comment
Used some Beyond Meat to make a bolognese. I used more or less this recipe from attorney and new mom Michelle.
Shoutout to Filip H. for teaching me the secret to sauces is using this particular brand of crushed San Marzanos.
As you can see I still used 4 oz. of pancetta – baby steps, right?
Used one package of “beefy” flavor and one package of “fiesty” flavor Beyond Meat.
Gotta say it was pretty darn good.
Starting to become a believer in Beyond Meat.
Houellebecq
Posted: June 22, 2017 Filed under: writing Leave a comment
found here
from the Paris Review interview with Michel Houllebecq
INTERVIEWER
You have a bit of a scientific background. After high school, you studied agronomy. What is agronomy?
HOUELLEBECQ
It’s everything having to do with the production of food. The one little project I did was a vegetation map of Corsica whose purpose was to find places where you could put sheep. I had read in the school brochure that studying agronomy can lead to all sorts of careers, but it turns out that was ridiculous. Most people still end up in some form of agriculture, with a few amusing exceptions. Two of my classmates became priests, for example.
INTERVIEWER
Did you enjoy your studies?
HOUELLEBECQ
Very much. In fact, I almost became a researcher. It’s one of the most autobiographical things in The Elementary Particles. My job would have been to find mathematical models that could be applied to the fish populations in Lake Nantua in the Rhône-Alpes region. But strangely, I turned it down, which was stupid, actually, because finding work afterward was impossible.
INTERVIEWER
In the end you went to work as a computer programmer. Did you have previous experience?
HOUELLEBECQ
I knew nothing about it. But this was back when there was a huge need for programming and no schools to speak of. So it was easy to get into. But I loathed it immediately.
INTERVIEWER
So what made you write your first novel, Whatever, about a computer programmer and his sexually frustrated friend?
HOUELLEBECQ
I hadn’t seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work. And, furthermore, that some people have a sex life and others don’t just because some are more attractive than others. I wanted to acknowledge that if people don’t have a sex life, it’s not for some moral reason, it’s just because they’re ugly. Once you’ve said it, it sounds obvious, but I wanted to say it.
Talking about his novel The Possibility of An Island:
INTERVIEWER
Why did you make your main character a comedian?
HOUELLEBECQ
The character came from two things. First of all, I went to a resort in Turkey and there was one of those talent shows produced by the guests. There was this girl—she must have been fifteen—who was doing Céline Dion and clearly for her, this was very, very important. I said to myself, Man, this girl is really going for it. And it’s funny because the next day, she was sitting alone at the breakfast table and I thought, Already the solitude of the star! I sensed that something like that can decide an entire life. So the comedian has a similar experience. He discovers all of sudden that he can make whole crowds laugh and it changes his life. The second thing was that I knew a woman who was editor in chief of a magazine and she was always inviting me to these hip events with Karl Lagerfeld, for example. I wanted to have someone who was part of that world.
On Anglo-Saxons (apparently including the Irish) and Americans:
INTERVIEWER
And what do you think of this Anglo-Saxon world?
HOUELLEBECQ
You can tell that this is the world that invented capitalism. There are private companies competing to deliver the mail, to collect the garbage. The financial section of the newspaper is much thicker than it is in French papers.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that men and women are more separate. When you go into a restaurant, for example, you often see women eating out together. The French from that point of view are very Latin. A single-sex dinner would be considered boring. In a hotel in Ireland, I saw a group of men talking golf at the breakfast table. They left and were replaced by a group of women who were discussing something else. It’s as if they’re separate species who meet occasionally for reproduction. There was a line I really liked in a novel by Coetzee. One of the characters suspects that the only thing that really interests his lesbian daughter in life is prickly-pear jam. Lesbianism is a pretext. She and her partner don’t have sex anymore, they dedicate themselves to decoration and cooking.
Maybe there’s some potential truth there about women who, in the end, have always been more interested in jam and curtains.
INTERVIEWER
And men? What do you think interests them?
HOUELLEBECQ
Little asses. I like Coetzee. He says things brutally, too.
INTERVIEWER
You’ve said that you possibly had an American side to you. What is your evidence for this?
HOUELLEBECQ
I have very little proof. There’s the fact that if I lived in an American context, I think I would have chosen a Lexus, which is the best quality for the price. And more obscurely, I have a dog that I know is very popular in the United States, a Welsh Corgi. One thing I don’t share is this American obsession with large breasts. That, I must admit, leaves me cold. But a two-car garage? I want one. A fridge with one of those ice-maker things? I want one too. What appeals to them appeals to me.
The Paris Review website has given me an awful lot.
Wanted to listen to the original record of Sgt. Pepper’s
Posted: June 20, 2017 Filed under: music Leave a comment
I knew my man Jeff was the guy to talk to. Pictured: Jeff’s stereo.
Island Fighting
Posted: June 18, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, WW2 Leave a comment
Picked up the Island Fighting volume of the Time Life World War II series and found this incredible picture:
Couldn’t find a name of a photographer.
Mysterious Notes
Posted: June 17, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, mysteries Leave a comment
I’ve come into possession of someone’s mysterious notes on a printed out copy of Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us. Reason to suspect the note-taker is a Helytimes reader.
If they belong to you, claim them, otherwise I intend to auction them to the highest bidder. God only knows what these insights could be worth.
Beyond Meat
Posted: June 14, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, food Leave a comment
Grilled some Beyond Meat burgers yesterday (over a combo of mesquite briquettes and mesquite chips). As a noted burger enthusiast I declare this: pretty darn good.
File this under: Long June news you can use.
A Strange Tale From East of the River
Posted: June 8, 2017 Filed under: Japan Leave a commentMy favorite book title of the year.
A lonely man meets a mysterious woman in a strange neighborhood of Tokyo. Nagai – a proto Murakami?
From now on I will insist that it be noted in all foreign translations of my work that my English is somewhat eccentric.
Seidensticker, ever precise.
Helytimes 
