It’s an “off year” for voting. No big names at the top of the ticket. No president to elect. Ho-hum.
In Cincinnati, today’s election will only determine the new mayor. And the new members of City Council. And the school board. Oh, and there are a couple of proposed tax levies, and one charter amendment. NBD.
Actually, it’s a very big deal. The new mayor and City Council members will help determine the direction of our city. The school board will have a huge influence on the education of our children. The tax levies will come out of our pockets. The amendment proposal would make eight (count ’em) major changes to the city charter.
Voting may not be as exciting this year, but it’s just as important.
I’m really torn about the recent spate of billionaire rocket rides.
I do think there’s a need for space exploration.
But it feels like it’s turned into a “willie waving contest” as a Brit former co-worker put it. It’s about ego, and conquest… and commerce. (Get your tickets now!)
Our space icons are now the powerful owners of private companies, who have infused space travel with their own personal narratives and idiosyncratic ambitions. During the Apollo era, the most visible participants in the moon effort were the astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins—men who were certainly venerated but who approached their task with the duty of soldiers. At this moment, the most visible participants are eccentric billionaires having rocket-measuring contests in public.
They’ve certainly got the cash to burn. Perversely, the pandemic was like a booster rocket for their personal fortunes:
But it seems like such a waste of resources. I know some will counter that we have to look at the bigger picture, and that the know-how needed to put those flights into space will benefit all of us down the line.
But I don’t know how willing these titans of industry will be to share the secrets of their interstellar success. They’re more likely to try to corner the Milky Way market.
I’m actually aligned with another rich guy:
We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.
Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge
Can’t Musk, Bezos and Branson focus their billions on the 8 billion people on the single planet we all share, instead of taking Captain Kirk on a joy ride?
Dave Whamond | Copyright 2021 Cagle Cartoons
The “moon shot” we all need is a bit more down-to-earth.
Charlie Watts passed away Tuesday, at the age of 80. For nearly 59 years, he was the drummer for the Rolling Stones… “the greatest rock and roll band in the world” according to none other than Bob Dylan.
On stage, while Mick was strutting around like a peacock and Keith was firing off those classic guitar riffs — usually while a cigarette dangled from his mouth — Charlie was the quiet guy in the back, just doing his job, keeping time.
Off stage, while Mick was hanging out with Andy Warhol at Studio 54, and impregnating Brazilian models… while Keith was ingesting every drug under the sun, Charlie was hanging out with his wife Shirley. They got married in 1964 and remained married until the day he died.
Picture: Getty/ SWNS
In Robert Greenfield’s STP: A Journey Through America with The Rolling Stones, a documentary of their 1972 American Tour, it is noted that when the group was invited to the Playboy Mansion, Watts took advantage of Hugh Hefner’s game room instead of frolicking with the women.
From this article about Charlie Watts in the Independent
Rock and roll drummers are supposed to be the crazy ones. Keith Moon of The Who practically invented the port of trashing hotel rooms. John “Bonzo” Bonham played 20 minute drum solos during Led Zeppelin concerts, and rode a motorcycle through the lobby of a Hollywood hotel. Actually, he rode one through the lobby of three different hotels.
(It’s also worth noting that Keith Moon died of a drug overdose at age 32, and John Bonham also was 32 when he drank so heavily (the equivalent of 40 shots of vodka in a 24-hour period) that he choked on his own vomit and died.)
At some point in our lives, most of us want to be the rock star or the the guitar hero. But maybe it’s better to be in the background, keep a steady rhythm, and stay true to the beat of your own heart.
Singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith passed away Friday at the age of 68. Not only did she write some amazing, and amazingly literate songs — like four minute novels — she also had the voice of an angel. Her singing and writing skills would be enough for most, but she also was a brilliant interpreter of other folk’s songs… the best proof is her Grammy-winning Other Voices Other Rooms album from 1993 where she covered such luminaries as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt and John Prine… and did their songs justice. It’s also worth noting that she was the person to record Julie Gold’s “From a Distance”… a more bombastic (and inferior, IMHO) version became a big hit for Bette Midler years later.
That pattern of other folks having bigger hits with the same songs was part of Nanci’s lot in life. Kathy Mattea covered “Love at the Five and Dime” and Suzy Bogguss hit the country Top 10 with Nanci’s “Outbound Plane.” She was too folk for country, and too country for folk.
She told Rolling Stone in 1993 that “the radio person at MCA Nashville told me that I would never be on radio because my voice hurt people’s ears.”
Her live ’88 album One Fair Summer Evening was my gateway to the magical stories that Nanci could weave. I was working at a commercial country music station at the time, and the album was in the throwaway pile. If you ask me, it would’ve been better to take 99% of the stuff the station was playing and throw it away, and play that album on repeat.
She didn’t shy away from social commentary either. Check out “Trouble in the Fields” or “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go” or “Deadwood, South Dakota” (videos below).
A brilliant songwriter in her own right, she was always willing to shine a light on others. I saw her in concert a handful of times, and if she covered someone else’s music, she was sure to credit them and promote them. Other songwriters loved her as well.
She was then afforded the special compliment of being asked by Bob Dylan to perform his “Boots Of Spanish Leather,” which she’d recorded on Other Voices, Other Rooms, at his anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden in 1992.
Nanci was basically retired from music – her last album came out in 2012. But her influence is still strong. R.I.P. Nanci Griffith – folks like you come along only once in a very blue moon.
The West Coast is on fire… after suffering through a “heat dome.” Lake Mead — which supplies water to multiple states — is drying up. What’s going to happen when places like Phoenix are uninhabitable? Where will the people go when there’s no water left?
We thought The Twilight Zone episode called “The Midnight Sun” was just a fever dream… but it’s coming true.
The word that Mrs. Bronson is unable to put into the hot, still, sodden air is ‘doomed,’ because the people you’ve just seen have been handed a death sentence. One month ago, the Earth suddenly changed its elliptical orbit and in doing so began to follow a path which gradually, moment by moment, day by day, took it closer to the sun. And all of man’s little devices to stir up the air are now no longer luxuries—they happen to be pitiful and panicky keys to survival.
We take our daily conveniences for granted – cranking up the AC, taking long showers, watering the lawn. But the clock is ticking, and the world is burning.
An example of gerrymandering at its finest. Courtesy of the Republican party. Because if you can’t win fair and square, you have to try to win unfair and trapezoid… or rhombus… or whatever shape will give you the edge. But sometimes gerrymandering isn’t enough, and you have to resort to voter suppression.
This paragraph from an editorial in — of all places — a music magazine, really sums it up nicely:
Having lost the Presidency, the House, and the Senate over four years by margins so wide that Democrats were able to overcome the structural bias, Republicans have not responded as Democrats did, by trying to expand the elctorate, or convincing the existing one that their own policies and platforms merit a change. The entire story of 2021 so far has been Biden and his party trying to govern, at least trying to tackle dire emergencies it inherited , largely from four year of Republican inaction, incompetence, or inadequate response — a pandemic, economic devastation, worsening inequality, alarming climate change, decayed bureaucracy, etc., etc. — while the Republican party has spent all its time tackling the problem of… too many people voting.
The best response is to A. fight these voter suppression laws and B. vote, no matter the extra hurdles. (Easier said than done, I realize, when you are elderly and/or handicapped and the only mail ballot drop box is miles away. )
Here’s more from The Big Takeover editorial (bold emphasis mine):
But the ultimate effects of all this suppression and a fresh round of gerrymandering this spring won’t be seen until the next round of elections. Over the next two years, Democrats and others who believe in democracy had better stay vigilant, instead of making the classic midterm mistake that all is OK if their side won and is now in office. Memories fade, and the Capitol riot will too, especially if half of us insist upon it. But the effort to defend democracy against a party that has largely lost faith in it, will be as much the most important long-term effort we engage in alongside climate change mitigation and getting out of the pandemic alive. A responsible, accountable right of center party is crucial to our politics. But until the G.O.P. pays a steep enough electoral price for its big lies and continual partisan sabotage, it will never reform itself from within.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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