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South Dakota Blogosphere Bulletin Board
Sadly, Blind Orange Julius is shutting down his “news service” for health reasons. Go read his post and then wander the archives.
Blog Headline of the Week Award
This link on The Faster Times: Cruise Industry to Wives: Ensure Your Husbands Aren’t Psychos Before Saying Bon Voyage. The link went to this story.
Bookish Linkage
Amazon makes the Kindle a memory hole. That is doubleplusungood.
The panelists for the 2010 Best Translated Book awards have offered a list of “translations that some of us have liked.” I’ve read one and hate to admit that I have five others in the TBR bookshelves.
Words Without Borders and Open Letter Books have launched a blog in connection with the forthcoming The Wall in My Head, an anthology commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The book will be released on November 9, 20 years to the day the Wall came down.
I readily admit I have no clue what postmodernism really means. But I’m even more confused given the breadth of attributes the LA Times uses in its list of 61 essential postmodern reads, a list that includes both Shakespeare and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Hmm, Book Blogger Appreciation Week. And it even starts on my birthday.
A top 10 list of books of the American frontier — from a Scottish playwright.
John C. Wright’s first commandment of writing: In order to be a writer, you must write. (Via.)
Remaindered books are selling well (and two of the last three books I bought). (Via.)
Lunar Linkage
The Big Picture does up Apollo 11.
Kottke has a giant Apollo 11 post.
National Geographic takes eight lunar landing hoax myths. (Via.)
New satellite images of lunar landing locations (of course, the conspiracy theorists will say these are fake too).
Where would we be if Congress hadn’t cancelled the Apollo program?
Nonbookish Linkage
As a follow-up to last week’s rant on airfares, I got a ticket on Southwest for $165.70, including fees and all other charges.
Timm Suess, a Swiss photographer, has a stunning collection of Chernobyl photos. (Via.)
The Big Picture also has a two part collection of Afghanistan photos.
Study reveals that “swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain.” No sh%@?
Are this many people really this stupid?
This could also fall into the “you know you’re a redneck when” category.
Once again, NASA gives us earth pron.
A nice collection of real and potential warning signs. (Via.)
Hong Kong moves beyond bottle and can deposits. For each plastic shopping bag requested by a customer, Hong Kong retailers must charge an “environmental levy” of about six U.S. cents.
When one knew that any document was due for destruction … it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
George Orwell, 1984
Bob Newland, take note: Michigan court says probation order with blanket prohibition against any “defamatory and demeaning communications” is void, even when the the probationer says of the sentencing judge, ” cursed shall be the fruit of thy body. The Lord shall smite thee with consumption and with a fever and with an inflammation and with extreme burning. They the demons shall Pursue thee until thou persist.”
This should not surprise anyone: part-time judge who “takes bags full of cash” left on his chair and then conceals the money from the IRS is disabarred. What is surprising, one judge on the Washington Supreme Court dissented, saying a suspension was the appropriate penalty.
Manufacturer should have warned Minnesota Viking Korey Stringer that “helmets and shoulder pads could contribute to heat stroke when used in hot conditions.” (Via.)
When state budgets and unemployed lawyers collide: working for free.
Hardheaded lawyer + stubborn judge = 14 years in jail.
Prison guard claims she was fired for being “too sexy.” (Via.)
If only she’d said it during her sentencing. (Via.)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Hanlon’s Razor
Given developments in technology and other issues confronting the world, no one should probably be surprised. Yet considering the state of technoogy when it occurred, it’s a shame that even in the last decade the moon landing has lost some its shine.
According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, fewer people today list space exploration and the moon landing as the greatest U.S. accomplishment of the last 50 years than a decade ago. During that time, it dropped from 18 percent to 12 percent.
But other figures are even more disconcerting and, again, likely not surprising. Baby Boomers rating space exploration as the nation’s greatest accomplishment increased from 17% in 1999 to 19% this year. I have little doubt that is because we grew up with the space program and were among the millions glued to a television set on July 20, 1969. Interestingly, though, for those born before 1946 — who also would have seen the landing and watched the space program from inception — the figures dropped from 21% to 13%.
A similar decline occurred with those born between 1965 and 1976 (Gen Xers), falling from 17% to 9%. Only 5% of Generation Y (those born from 1977 on) listed space exploration this year. Nearly three times as many (14%) said the election of Barack Obama was the greatest U.S. achievement of the past 50 years. And, overall, the number of people identifying achievements in science, medicine or technology as the greatest accomplishment dropped from 47% to 27%. I find that particularly surprising given the explosion in use of computers and the Internet.
Then, of course, we have the clueless. Those saying “nothing” or “don’t know” when asked for the greatest American accomplishment increased from 24% to 33%.
It’s (the moon) an interesting place to be. I recommend it.
Neil Armstrong, November 6, 2005
A double dose of BTT this week. I was in Massachusetts last week so didn’t have at hand the info to respond to that BTT, listed first. And since today’s is a follow-up, I’m posting both today.
Give me the list or take a picture of all the books you have stacked on your bedside table, hidden under the bed or standing in your shelf – the books you have not read, but keep meaning to. The books that begin to weigh on your mind. The books that make you cover your ears in conversation and say, “No! Don’t give me another book to read! I can’t finish the ones I have!”
Do you keep all your unread books together, like books in a waiting room? Or are they scattered throughout your shelves, mingling like party-goers waiting for the host to come along?
This is belated because it is actually from last Thursday. As I was in Massachusetts, I couldn’t look at or take a picture of the “to be read” bookcase next to the bed. I almost wish I’d taken a picture and put it here, though, as it took a while to prepare this. There’s so many books (51), that I’ve broken the list into genre/subject areas — and I’m not including the two books I bought last week that I haven’t read since they weren’t on the shelves when this BTT was posted.
So, here goes with the books listed within category by the order in which they are on the shelves:
Fiction
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
The Dream Life of Sukhanov, Olga Grushin
Innocent, Ian McEwan
Black Sheep, Ian McEwan
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
The Human Stain, Philip Roth
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Voices from the Street, Philip K. Dick
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
Translated Works
Windows on the World, Frederic Beigbeder (French)
Soldiers of Salamis, Javier Cercas (Spanish)
Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)
The Conqueror, Jan Kjærstad (Norwegian)
White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov (Russian)
Landscape in Concrete, Jakov Lind (German)
The Mighty Angel, Jerzy Pilch (Polish)
Death in Spring, Mercè Rodoreda (Spanish)
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (Russian)
Other Colors: Essays and a Story, Orhan Pamuk (Turkish)
The Stones Cry Out, Hikaru Okuizumi (Japanese)
Science Fiction
Counting Heads, David Marusek
Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe, Jane Espenson (ed.)
The Stochastic Man, Robert Silverberg
Blameless in Abaddon, James Morrow
Learning the World, Ken MacLeod
The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross
Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America, Brian Francis Slattery
The Eternal Footman, James Morrow
Thirteen, Robert K. Morgan
Matter, Iain Banks
Autobiography/Biography
Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter, Michelle Mercer
A Dreamer of Pictures: Neil Young, The Man and His Music, David Downing
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X
The Measure of a Man, Sidney Poitier
Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time, Karen Armstrong
Echoes of November: The Life and Times of Senator R.F. Pettigrew of South Dakota, Wayne Fanebust
History
Manhunt: The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, James L. Swanson
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, Michael Dobbs
Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II, Matthew Parker
A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945, Vasily Grossman
Music
The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, Daniel J. Levitin
The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, Nigel Williamson
Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Guterman
Miscellaneous
Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, Francine Prose
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, Thomas C. Foster
Ten Zen Seconds, Eric Maisel
An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan, Jason Elliot
The Book of the Damned: The Collected Works of Charles Fort, Charles Fort
Secret and Suppressed II: Banned Ideas and Hidden History into the 21st Century, Adam Parfrey (ed.)
Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, Gore Vidal
As the answer indicates, I have a bookcase next to my side of the bed that contains the designated TBR shelves. At the same time, I’ll admit that a few books have migrated from there to the regular bookcases without having been read. Still, I never, ever say, “Don’t give me another book to read!”
Reading has always been life unwrapped to me, a way of understanding the world and understanding myself through both the unknown and the everyday.
Anna Quindlen, NYT, Aug, 7, 1991
Today’s jazz fan could only dream of a line-up like this: Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz. Yet those are just a few of the artists who performed at the first Newport Jazz Festival July 17-18, 1954.
Newport is the granddaddy of the jazz festivals. The Monterey Jazz Festival kicked off in 1958 while the Montreux Jazz Festival began in 1967. Jazz critic Leonard Feather, in fact, once called the Newport Jazz Festival with giving rise to “the festival era.” The festival was organized 55 years ago by George Wein, who is still working with the event today.
While the festival sought to cover all forms of jazz, it was also cognizant of popular music. Thus, for example, in 1958 both Ray Charles and Chuck Berry performed at the festival. And, despite the quality of music, things weren’t always wonderful. At the 1960 festival, riots broke out when, the New York Times reported, “hundreds of youthful toughs” broke into the grounds when they couldn’t get tickets. The National Guard was called in, tear gas was fired and much of the event ended up being cancelled. In addition, the festival was not held in 1961, although a group of businessmen did get together and sponsor something called “Music at Newport.” It featured such artists as Judy Garland, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Vaughan, Maynard Ferguson, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Stan Getz and Mulligan.
The “Newport Jazz Festival” returned under that name in 1962. Not only did the festival continue to grow, it continued to broaden its musical scope. The broad range was perhaps epitomized in 1969 when Wein sought to explore the growing fusion of jazz and rock. Although such jazz luminaries as Miles Davis, Rahashann Roland Kirk, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans and Phil Woods were on the bill, there was also plenty of rock. The second night, July 4, was billed as “an evening of jaz-rock” and included Blood, Sweat & Tears, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull and Jeff Beck. Davis, John Mayall and Frank Zappa and the Mothers (Kirk had actually performed with the band at a joint concert a year earlier) were the artists appearing the next afternoon but the night of July 5 is when things got out of hand.
Following performances by Brubeck, Art Blakey and the Gary Burton Quartet, Sly and the Family Stone took the stage. Promoters opened a gate to prevent damage to a fence by crowds outside the grounds. At that point, Rolling Stone reported, “bands of wild hippies, LSD on their breath, swarmed through, pushing the bleacher audience forward, vaulting over the VIP box seats, shoving into the press section, slamming the customers into the stage, all the while Sly, monarch of his own fascist jungle, urging everyone higher! Higher! Higher!” The festival wasn’t cancelled, however, and closed with Led Zeppelin, which went on stage at 1 a.m. on Monday, July 7.
Although the problems did not cause cancellation of the festival, events in 1971 — and occurring during an odd time compared to 1969 — would lead the festival to relocate to New York. The 1971 festival again featured jazz greats like Brubeck, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Mann, Gillespie and Mulligan, On the night of July 3, however, young gate crashers once again broke through a fence and stormed the stage. But this wasn’t because of Sly and the Family Stone. No, this time the action occurred while Dionne Warwick was singing, ”What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.” (whcih seems like an odd artist or song to cause such commotion).
Beause it was evident the Newport location couldn’t hold all the people who wanted to attend, Wein relocated the festival to New York. It eventually became known as the JVC Jazz Festival, although it no longer is. In 1981, the festival returned to Rhode Island, taking place at a state park on Newport Harbor. Although Wein sold the festival in 2007, he is back in charge this year with the event being called George Wein’s Jazz Festival 55. And the festival remains true to a broad range of music. This year’s performers include not only Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Tony Bennett, Brubeck and Joe Lovano, but also Mos Def and a variety of modern avant garde jazz artists.
So, those attending JazzFest this weekend are engaged in a festival tradition that began 55 years ago to the day JazzFest kicks off.
By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
Duke Ellington
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