Black Friday | The Electron Pencil

12/04/2014

Hot Air

Endless (Season Of) Love

Are you sick of Xmas yet? I am.

And guess what: it’s a full three weeks away. Yeesh.

Anyway, I’m reading The Eve of Destruction, a history of the year 1965 written by former Indiana University professor James T. Patterson. It’s a recount of the year historians now generally believe to be the watershed moment when this holy land began transforming itself from a somewhat benign, caring, liberal society to an aggressive, acquisitive, soulless one.

One line in the book’s intro caught my eye:

… President Lyndon B. Johnson turned on the lights of the National Christmas Tree on the evening of December 18, 1964….

Did you catch that? December 18th. A mere week before Christmas. If one is to assume the official starting date of the Christmas season is when the huge tree in front of the White House is turned on, then that season lasted a sane-sounding seven days 50 years ago.

LBJ Celebrates Christmas With Kids In 1964

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Now, Christmas starts well before Thanksgiving, wrapped up with the late fall feast in something now referred to as The Holidays. And it ain’t the lighting of the National Christmas Tree that is our ritual cue to start shopping and baking. We used to wish for a White Christmas. Now we wrestle for an overnight place in line on Black Friday more than a month before the day itself.

So yeah, I’m sick of Xmas already.

This year’s National Tree Lighting ceremony? Tomorrow night.

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Interstate Art

Carisa Whittall used to run the Jerseyana Gallery in Nashville and was a proud sponsor of community radio WFHB. Business was lousy in our next-door burgh, though, so Carisa moved lock, stock, and barrel to New Jersey where she now lives.

Whittall (L) At The May Re-Opening Of Jerseyana Gallery

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Her operation still is called Jerseyana Gallery and, with her biz partner, she peddles art, including local works, online. How about if we let her tell her own story:

Initially, I focused on showing Indiana artists, contemporary or non-traditional Nashville artists in an art salon environment who didn’t have space in local galleries. We sold art, and the furnishings, decor and books. But we didn’t sell much. Nashville is a tough market now unless you’re selling beer, food or inexpensive souvenirs — then it’s a great market!

We sell directly to designers, and stagers in the interior design/home remodeling business in the New Jersey and New York City area. We’ve opened our virtual store and our ebay store to sell directly to collectors and people who love beautiful, quality art, antiques and artisan goods.

We still source in Indiana — my business partner lives in Bloomington. We go back to B-town to visit family, and it’s a good excuse to get out to Brown County couple times a year too!

Internet sales are going well and we are looking forward to exhibiting art in a couple of locations in New Jersey and, hopefully, New York City in the new year.

Patricia Rhoden is our featured artist. Designers love her work and I am looking forward to a great show for her in Millburn, New Jersey.

I continue to sell a lot of Indiana artists — listed, up and coming and flat-out dead. My favorite is Joni T. Johnson. I just love her work. She is underrated and undervalued but people are buying it here; they were not in Nashville.

Too bad, huh? In any case, cop some of her goods online, just to show her we Hoosiers can appreciate a spot or two of art now and again.

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Another Hero

I’ve long been a fan of a brilliant, strong, tough, determined, athletic young woman named Émilie du Châtelet. She’s been dead for 265 years now but were she alive today, she’d still be the role model girls and young women around the world would look up to. Compared to her Oprah’s a slacker, Sheryl Sandberg‘s unambitious, and Hillary Clinton’s just a backroom pol.

A Real Woman

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Born Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, she was one of the greatest figures of the Age of Enlightenment. A mathematician, physicist, translator, champion fencer, dancer, and harpsichordist, she was fluent in French, Latin, Greek, Italian, and German and was the first woman to have a scientific paper published by the French Académie Des Sciences.

Want more? Sure:

She researched the science of fire and proposed the existence of infrared radiation
She wrote one of the first basic, accessible physics, general science, and philosophy books
Through experiments and developing mathematical formulas, she helped develop the idea of kinetic energy
She publicly argued with philosopher John Locke in favor of the principle of universal truths as opposed to the Lockian subjective perceptions
She created what can be described as the first financial derivative, purchasing the future earnings of independent tax collectors
She argued vociferously for women’s education, especially calling for access to France’s colleges
She was a biblical scholar and she wrote on happiness, free will, optics, and rational linguistics
The crowning achievement of her life was her translation of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica into French

Nearly two centuries after she’d developed the classical mechanics formula, E ∝ mv², indicating the proportionality between energy, mass, and velocity, Albert Einstein acknowledged her finding as a basis for his iconic E = mc², the foundation of his special theory of relativity.

Three plays and one opera have been written about her life.

And just to show she wasn’t all work and no play, Émilie was a well-known gambler and card-player.

She lived with and collaborated with Voltaire for much of her adult life.

She was, in short, one of the first feminists. With the likes of Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, why is feminism such a dirty word?.

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11/16/2012

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“More things in politics happen by accident or exhaustion than happen by conspiracy.” — Jeff Greenfield

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BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG SKY

Heads up for another cool sky show tonight.

The annual Leonids meteor shower will peak tonight after midnight. Look toward the constellation Leo when it rises and, if you’re lucky, you’ll catch ten or a dozen shooting stars and hour. The apparent origin point of the shower will be smack dab in the middle of the question mark formed by the lion’s head. That bright star at the base of the question mark is Regulus, known as “the lion’s heart.”

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This should be a terrific year for viewing the shower because this sky is expected to be clear and the moon will be a sliver.

So turn off your TV, bundle up, and watch that sky.

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MAD MEN

A hat tip to Professor Richard Lloyd of Vanderbilt University for pointing out this one in Salon.

Republican state senators in Georgia held a meeting a month ago to discuss the maddest conspiracy theory yet. Apparently, the GOP legislators believe President Barack Obama is using advanced brainwashing techniques to turn Americans into pliant sheep so that he and the United Nations can take away private property rights, depopulate the suburbs, move everybody into the cities, and otherwise turn this holy land into some kind of dystopia straight out of a cheap science fiction novel.

Svengali

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Again, this is not an Onion article. It’s no joke. I get the feeling I’m going to have to get used to typing that line as time goes by in this, Obama’s second term.

Here’s the dope from the dopes:

The United Nations has an action plan called Agenda 21, created 20 years ago during the Rio global environment conference. It deals with sustainable development, which the sane among us dig, but the psychologically disturbed see as some kind of an Hitlerian/Stalinist plot to enslave us all.

Agenda 21 is a non-binding, voluntary program that most countries of the world, even these United States, at least pay positive lip service to. The Georgia senators, on the other hand, see things differently.

It’s a “conspiracy to transform America from the land of the free to the land of the collective.” So says a man named Field Searcy, a former Tea Party honcho (that figures) who was booted from the party because he seemed a tad, shall we say, deranged.

If you’re considered deranged among Tea Party-ists, you are deranged indeed.

If This Guy Thinks You’re Nuts….

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Searcy led the meeting which was called by Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, who bills himself the “taxpayers (sic) best friend,” and was held at the state capitol. So this is no secret cabal getting together under cover of night in some dank basement.

Anyway, Obama’s using a something called the Delphi technique to control the innocents of our nation. It was developed during the Cold War by Project RAND (later known as the RAND Corporation) and it has something to do with making behavior forecasts utilizing the collective thinking of a group as opposed to the wildly divergent thinking done by individuals. How this becomes a nefarious thought control tool is not explained by Searcy et al.

Searcy and his fellow dementos believe municipal, county, and state governments are in on this plot along with the commies, brown people, and Muslims of the UN as well as the chief destroyer of America, Obama himself.

According to political reporter Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, a videographer recorded the first hour of the meeting and then was kicked out of the room. The logical conclusion is that subsequent discussion must have been even more batty than that recounted here.

I suppose if certain anti-Obama-ites have their way and do indeed secede from the union, they should call themselves the United States of the Cuckoo’s Nest.

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AUSTERITY, NO

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! writes in Truthdig that the movement against austerity measures is gaining ground all across the globe.

This news makes me feel a bit better after writing the previous story.

Thanks, Amy

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It seems the reelection of Barack Obama and the repudiation of so many Republican candidates a week ago Tuesday is our nation’s little way of rebelling against austerity. Sure, some young people took to the streets for a few months in the Occupy movement of 2011 but, honestly, that had about as much effect as tossing an LSD tab into a big city’s water supply in hopes of turning the populace on.

Most of the American citizenry believe money should remain safely in the hands of the uber-wealthy, no matter what folks say about raising taxes on the rich. Not so elsewhere in the world. We fetishize the plutocracy; the rest of humanity looks upon the Midas class properly, as one would a mobster making you an offer you can’t refuse.

How else would you explain the popularity of Donald Trump?

Execrable, Albeit Explainable

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APPROPRIATELY NAMED

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11/23/2011

2 Comments

Auto Racing, Black Friday, Bloomington Indiana, Candidate Debate, Dallas Cowboys, Donald Trump, Foreign Aid, Freedom of Speech, House Intelligence Committee, Jabar Gaffney, Judas Priest, Lindsay Lohan, Miami, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Obama, NASCAR, Nobel Prize, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Pakistan, Republican Party, Rick Perry, Teen Suicide, Twitter, US Supreme Court, Washington Redskins

The Pencil Today:

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POT VERSUS KETTLE

I’d imagine the number of local residents paying the slightest bit of attention to last night’s debate between Republican candidates for president hovered somewhere around, oh, zero.

This is, after all, Bloomington, Indiana, the capital-in-exile of the former Soviet Union and geographical magnet for this holy land’s unscrubbed beatniks, bomb-throwers, abortionists, and other Democrats.

So, The Pencil will do y’all a favor and point out the most eye-opening statement made by one of the fine and decorated statesmen and women who gathered to verbally spar in that other locus of undesirables, Washington, DC.

Minnesota Congressbeing Michele Bachmann dug deep into her her pocket thesaurus and threw a sophisticated two-syllable pejorative at Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Bachmann: “Fingers crossed — Someone Has Less Of A Clue Than I Do.”

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The issue was Pakistan and Perry had just pronounced all future financial aid to that nuclear armed Stone Age nation a no-go as long as its leaders wouldn’t keep “America’s best interests in mind.”

Y’know, the way every other nation on this spinning globe keeps the well-being of the land of Donald Trump, Lindsay Lohan, and Black Friday in the forefront of all its deliberations.

Well, our plucky gal Michele found Perry’s logic rather lacking. Bachmann is a member of the House Intelligence Committee which, if nothing else, proves our elected representatives possess a sense of humor. She reminded Perry and the world that this country gains a lot of inside dope on the doings of the wild-eyed gun-toters who populate much of Pakistan’s desolate countryside. Our dough, Bachmann insisted, also insures that the borderline lunatics who run the place aren’t overthrown by certified lunatics.

Bachmann characterized Perry’s statement thusly: “I think that’s highly naive.”

Kudos to Bachmann on grasping the fact that the syllables of a word needn’t be separated by consonants.

Now, imagine how discouraged the cowboy governor is this morning to realize that Michele Bachmann — Michele Bachmann — considers him naive.

The election, folks, is a mere 49 weeks away.

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“KILL URSELF”

I have a Twitter account, I’ll admit it. On the other hand, I haven’t touched it in more than a year.

Twitter is the 140-character preserve of semi-literate pro athletes, pathologically self-involved Hollywood stars, and that portion of the populace that was born, sadly, with the condition known as anencephaly.

Take the recent Twit (screw “Tweet” — I’m going with Twit) from Washington Redskins pass catcher Jabar Gaffney.

Poor Jabar was in a funk after his team lost to the rival Dallas Cowboys Sunday. Some Cowboys fan sent him a Twit ridiculing him and his Redskins mates. (By the way, I was under the impression that this was the year 2011. And still there’s a pro team called the Redskins? The Redskins?!)

Anyway, Gaffney promptly advised the Twit-sender to, um, commit suicide.

Yup. Gaffney thumbed these proto-words into his connection to the civilized world: “… I’m just proud I ain’t you get a life or kill urself.” The line is close enough to the human language known as English that I needn’t translate it for you.

Naturally, the NFL and representatives of the sane population of America had apoplexy. Hell, if people can blame Judas Priest, whose song obliquely referred to the ultimate form of self-determination, for a couple of teens’ deaths in 1985, then Gaffney’s unmistakable advisement is fraught with peril.

Gaffney then quoted another Twit-person who agreed with his original broadside. Gaffney thumbed: “I do want that man to kill himself..one less cowboys fan…”

Existential Advice

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Sheesh. Now we know there are at least two people in this nation who don’t know ellipsis is indicated by three dots, not two. America is indeed going to hell.

Cooler heads got to Gaffney and he apologized — the way many celebrities, politicians, and corporations apologize these days, which is not at all.

Gaffney Twitted a third time, “They say I can’t tell people to kill themselves didn’t know freedom of speech had limitations so I’ll just say #uknowwhattodo #HTTR better?”

In case this puzzling series of electronic grunts is indecipherable to you, I’ll help. Gaffney is saying: “My heavens, despite the landmark US Supreme Court decision wherein the noted jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. opined that shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater is a practical violation of common sense, civility, and the spirit of the original 1st Amendment, I was under the impression that the concept of Freedom of Speech is sacrosanct. I will therefore alter my original pronouncement by saying, ‘Sir, do you recall that action I advised you to take which, apparently, I am not at liberty to utter in a public setting? If so, please take it.'”

Big time sports and the reprobates who perform in it and operate it are becoming less and less attractive by the week.

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DON’T CRY FOR ME HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY

The Loved One was incensed that First Lady Michele Obama caught the raspberry Sunday at a NASCAR race in Miami.

Obama: “I Can’t Hear You Because I Have These Big Things On My Head.”

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Many in the crowd of some 80,000 booed the president’s wife lustily when she was introduced prior to shouting “Start your engines” into a microphone.

Aside from the fact that the speedway was filled with people who find deafeningly loud cars continually turning left at life threatening speeds entertaining, the race, it must be said, was held in Florida. That double-whammy indicates the crowd probably was lacking in thinkers who grasp the subtleties and nuances of today’s domestic and geopolitical debate.

Who was the last Nobel Prize winner to hail from the Sunshine State?

No matter, I actually tried to defend the crowd, which caused my lovely bride to eye me through narrowed lids.

I said, “The fact that people feel free to boo the wife of the boss of the most powerful nation on Earth is a good thing.”

The Loved One shook her head almost imperceptibly. And, I have to admit, I’m not thrilled with my argument either.

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The Electron Pencil

Category Archives: Black Friday

Hot Air

Endless (Season Of) Love

LBJ Celebrates Christmas With Kids In 1964

Interstate Art

Whittall (L) At The May Re-Opening Of Jerseyana Gallery