ICYMI, George Floyd’s brother Philonise and nephew Brendan…
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Nine Minutes (i.m. of George Floyd)
Five hundred forty seconds.
Time in which an athlete
Can run a mile and a half.
A couple can have rushed,
Workday-morning sex.
A teacher can teach about the stars.
A killer can keep his knee
On the neck of a man.
Simple Justice & Complex Protests
Mass uprisings are complicated ecosystems. This one especially, perhaps, because of how unbelievably complicated our world has become.
Flakes of Wisdom
On the day that the fascist gangster in the White House declares anti-fascist activism as such a “terrorist organization,” I find myself wondering what words we will use to greet and know each other.
Street Legal
One bright spot–Trump’s tweet about his “vicious dogs and ominous weapons”–most protected man in the world and he’s scared–thinking of those gladiator movies where someone throws a spear at the Emperor–if only.
Pouring Salt on a Wound (Media Criticism)
A Salt Lake City cop was filmed throwing an elderly bystander to the pavement in the first 50 seconds of the video posted below. It’s just one of many brutal acts that have been committed by cops under pressure from protesters in cities all over America. (I’m not claiming that pressure has been all good. I doubt the woman who blew up a police van in New York with a molotov cocktail is George Floyd’s sister under the skin.) What distinguishes this scene of brutality, though, is the nada response of one reporter who witnessed it.
Notes on Being Down But Not Out with Hip-Hop
The author of this piece wrote it before the killing of George Floyd. (See his postscript on that score below.) Osborne notes “recent real-world events take precedence over bitching about good or bad rappers.” Your editor takes Osborne’s point but his act of imagination isn’t out of time. His refusal to buy into ugly images of black men is, in its sweet way, a contribution to the struggle against real killer cops.
Burning Down the House? Ben Carson and U.S. Housing Policy
MAGA-ites have leaned on Ben Carson’s bland invocations of color-blindness in the wake of George Floyd’s murder so it’s a good time to re-up on Brendan Williams’ lucid account of Carson’s deplorable record at the Department of Housing and Urban Development…
Homage to Spanish Anarchism
Stephen Schwartz, co-author of Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism: A History of the P.O.U.M. in the Spanish Civil War, has linked a number of his associates to the film below (which is available on Youtube). Your editor, in turn, passed the link on to another distinguished author of a recent book on the Spanish Civil War, Adam Hochschild, who was wowed: “Amazing. I’ve seen lots of still photos from this time—which must have been in the first month or two after the beginning of Franco’s coup—but didn’t know there was film.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVv6ampdPeY
Rip it Up (W.T. Lhamon Jr. on Little Richard)
What follows is an excerpt from W.T. Lhamon Jr.’s Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s (1990). Thanks to the author for giving First permission to reprint his revelatory writing on the lore of Little Richard.
Long and Winin’ Road: Jelly Roll Morton and Little Richard
Jelly Roll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy Blues” from the famous Alan Lomax Library of Congress sessions seems to belong somewhere in the rootsy back story that W.T. Lhamon dug up above. In his account of Little Richards’ rise, Lhamon notes Richard was shy about singing gay sexy lines in his original version of “Tutti Frutti” to the lady lyricist who helped him clean them up (a tad). The history behind that shyness is hinted at in Jelly Roll Morton’s recitation before singing “Winin’ Boy Blues” which, as Morton explained, was part of a campaign intended to forestall any doubts about his own sexuality: “Of course, when a man played piano, the stamp was on him for life–the femininity stamp. And I didn’t want that on, so, of course, when I did start to playing, the songs were kinda smutty a bit. Not so smutty, but something like this.” (I should add that Jelly’s rough and rowdy ways co-existed with a genteel side; he asked Lomax to have the lady stenographer who was transcribing his words leave the room before he did his dirty work of genius and lust.)
Still Bill
Damn near everything you want to know about the late singer/songwriter Bill Withers’ music is in the following line from his bio: he was born July 4th, 1938 in Slabfork, West Virginia.
He Gotta Go Now
Per Bob Dylan: “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree… If I had to pick one song of his, it might be ‘Lake Marie.’” (There’s a great live version here.)