Category Archives: Marvin Gaye

12/10/2015
1 Comment
Charlotte Zietlow, Marvin Gaye

Hot Air, Back Again!

One Woman’s Life In Several Hundred Pages

Phew. It’s been three months since my last post here. Wow. Been doing a lot of scribbling on the Charlotte Zietlow book. Right now, the bulk of it is at the local FedEx Office store being photocopied and collated. It’s a thick stack representing 81 years of Charlotte’s life — and one and a half years of mine.

So, the project’s sorta finished. We just need it edited and a coda chapter or two tacked on at the end to let the world know what lessons Charlotte has learned in this life and how you too, if you follow her lead, can became the Grande Dame of a small-sized Indiana city.

It’s been so long since I’ve hung around these precincts that the whole WordPress platform has become almost alien to me. The WP geeks redesigned the dashboard and just writing this post up is taking twice as long as it normally should because I’m busy looking for things like the italic button.

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Oh Yeah, There It Is!

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Anyway, the world has been spinning along, bumpily, frighteningly at times, exhilaratingly at others, without me helping the mass of humanity negotiate its path through fate and the solar system.

Somehow you’ve managed not to blow yourselves to smithereens, not that there aren’t plenty of members of Homo Sapiens sapiens doing their damnedest to accomplish just that.

So whaddya need me for?

The more important Q is, what do I need you-all for? Simple answers; to read me, to nod your head, to roll your eyes, to tell me I’m full of horseshit, to alert the FBI to my rabble-rousing, to marvel at my deep insights, to titter at my bons mots, and to send my daily hit count through the roof so that movers and shakers’ll think this blog carries a tad of weight around these parts.

I’m excited. How about you?

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What’s (Been) Goin’ On?

I was listening to one of my fave albums in the car yesterday eve, Marvin Gaye’s brilliant, anthemic What’s Going On, released — believe it or don’t; although you’d better because it’s true — May 21, 1971, a Friday. That’s 44 flippin’, freakin’ years ago, babies! The gist of the disk is the return of a Vietnam War veteran to this troubled holy land. He fought for…, well, for something in Southeast Asia and when he got back home he found the entire nation ready to pick sides and whale the bejesus out of each other. He learned, too, about the scourges of drug addiction, poverty, systemic and institutionalized racism, and even the nascent threat of environmental disaster.

Well whaddya know, nothing’s really changed in those 44 years, has it? Only, I suppose, that the threat of environmental disaster is no longer nascent — hell, the Marshall Islands, f’rinstance, are in imminent danger of going completely underwater should the average global temp continue its annual rate of rise. The nation of 70,000 populating 29 bars of sand and coral over a million sq. mi. of the south Pacific already is rapidly losing land to the rising ocean.

Marvin Gaye created one of the most stunning, gorgeous, compelling song cycles of the pop era, warning us about the world of shit we were falling into. And guess what: We didn’t pay a whit of attention.

Here we are, well into the 21st Century and our highest-profile presidential candidate is a nativist, xenophobic, Know-Nothing, boor whom gazillions of Murricans are enthralled over because he “speaks his mind” — this despite the fact that his every utterance is prima facie evidence that he lacks one.

trump

The Ugly American

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Cops are gunning black guys down and municipal officials are standing on their heads to cover it up.

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The New Nixon

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Anti-abortion zealots are shooting people for the stated purpose of “saving lives.”

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Life Saver

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Religious fanatics are pumping lead into co-workers and friends because god has instructed them to pull the trigger.

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Godly

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Fer chrissakes, even a US Supreme Court Justice has suggested that maybe black people ought to stop trying to get into top-flight universities and just settle for mediocre ones because, y’know, they oughtta go where they belong.

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Don’t Go There

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Protesters are in the streets, the deck is stacked against blacks, whites feel they’re the real victims of racism, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and “what about this overcrowded land, how much more abuse from man can she stand?”

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Talk On The Street

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How in the hell have you-all refrained from blowing this planet to smithereens? Well, I’m back on the case now, pretty much, save for an occasional break here and there to put the finishing touches on the Charlotte book.

Of course, if you expect me to save the planet, you’re hanging on by the thinnest strand of hope imaginable. But as long as we’re tumbling down the rabbit hole together, you may as well pay heed to The Pencil and we’ll all have a laugh or two along the way.

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09/01/2013
1 Comment
Genocide, Labor Movement, Labor Unions, Marvin Gaye, Michael Dobbs, Native-American Holocaust, Oxfam America, Politicide, Poverty, Six Months In 1945, Slavery, Yalta Conference

Your Hot Air Today

Labor Day.

Celebrate it.

Why?

Simple.

Labor Day

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According to a recent study released by Oxfam America, one of every four working Americans earns less than $10 and hour.

$10 an hour! That’s $400 a week. $20,800 a year. You’d better be living alone if you make that kind of scratch. And I do mean scratch. If you have kids, you’re screwed.

At least a quarter of this holy land’s population lives, therefore, in poverty. As Oxfam America concludes, the United States is “The most unequal rich country in the world.”

Need any more reason to support organized labor?

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The Limits Of Evil

This nation commits its share of crimes, both great and minor, against humanity. There is no argument. It is in the nature of empire to steamroll individuals and even other nations. If you don’t like it and wish it to change, then you must be prepared to give up cheap gas, air conditioning every single enclosed space you enter, filling your refrigerator enough to feed a small Bangladeshi town, and paying a first baseman $25 million a year.

Gas Europe

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I don’t like much of what the Earth’s only superpower does in the name of god and country and I’m not afraid to say so. That’s what this space has been all about for the last five years (we moved from The Third City to The Electron Pencil a couple of years back.)

On the other hand, are we really all that bad? Is America as evil as, say, the old Soviet Union or even, as some on both ends of the spectrum love to shout, Nazi Germany?

Hell no.

To say so is to identify one’s self as a boob.

Tea Party Rally

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Our most heinous evils, I daresay, are behind us. The Indian Holocaust and slavery are history and although we still have economic Jim Crow and we relegate Native Americans to sports mascots, the leaders of America are not ordering their mass killing.

An example. I’m reading the book Six Months in 1945, by Michael Dobbs. It covers the endgame of World War II when the leaders of the USSR, the United Kingdom, and America carved up the post-war world. In February of that year, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta, a spectacularly gorgeous stretch of waterfront on the Black Sea in Crimea.

Yalta

“You Take This; I’ll Take That.”

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The victors of “The Good War” were gathering in a place that was surrounded by desolation. The Crimea had been ravaged by invading German armies. In fact, as Roosevelt rode through the countryside on his way to the Livadia Palace, where he’d stay during the talks, he watched the passing lifeless landscape and remarked that he must suggest to Stalin that he re-forest the great Crimean plateau. He also said that the scorched and empty lands made him want to visit revenge upon the Nazis more than ever.

The only problem was, as much as the invading Wehrmacht devastated the Crimea, the Soviet Union itself, under orders from Stalin, had destroyed, killed, and razed in the countryside as efficiently and happily as the Nazis had. See, a few Tatars had more or less cooperated with the invading Germans. Therefore, in Stalin’s mind, every Tatar was guilty (at least potentially so) of collaboration.

Stalin

Man Of Steel

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In Stalin’s mind, even the possibility that an individual or group might commit treason was the equivalent of guilt. A few Tatars flipping to the enemy was the same as all of them doing so.

Stalin ordered the relocation of the Tatars from their centuries-old homeland to a desert in Uzbekistan. That is, some 190,000 civilians were forced into train cars, locked in without water or waste disposal facilities, and sent off on a days-long journey. Nearly one in five died. While this was going on, the Soviet security forces flattened the land from which they’d come.

This happened in 1944. Anyone who is 69 years old or older was alive when it happened. My mother was 23. George H.W. Bush was 20. Warren Buffet, George Soros, Clint Eastwood, Rupert Murdoch, and Vin Scully all were alive.

The incident is within the lifetime memory of thousands, hundreds of thousands — hell, millions — still alive today.

That didn’t happen here. Nor did the mass killings in Cambodia in the late 1970s. The East Pakistan politicide of 1971. The almost countless genocides of sub-Saharan Africa since the 1950s. The +40 million killings in Mao-ist China.

Cambodian Genocide

Cambodia

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The United States often is a bad player. But our evil of late has been finite.

That’s something to remember. Even if we are the the most unequal rich country in the world.

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What’s Going On

The full album, right here.

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05/25/2012
1 Comment
Abortion, Baby Doe, Bill Cook, Birth Defects, Book Corner, Brynda Forgas, C. Everett Koop, CFC Properties, Fountain Square Mall, Joycelyn Elders, Marvin Gaye, Ronald Reagan, Stefano's Ice Cafe, The Hidden Closet, US Public Health Service, US Surgeon General, What's Going On?

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“We need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children.” Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former Surgeon General of the United States (h/t to Susan Sandberg)

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HIDDEN NO MORE

Fountain Square is a lovely development and Bloomington will forever be in debt to the late Bill Cook for ponying up the dough to rehab the place, but let’s be frank — it’s tough for a retailer who doesn’t have sidewalk frontage to make a go there.

Hello? Anyone There?

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Brynda Forgas, boss-lady at The Hidden Closet boutique, has been surviving in Fountain Square for a few years. She hopes to thrive elsewhere now.

She’s opening up new digs behind the Book Corner in the old home of Glorious Moments, an art emporium that closed down suddenly under fishy circumstances a couple of months ago.

Forgas & Friend

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Brynda and her husband are hustling to rebuild the interior of the space for the Closet’s “grand-ish” opening party, Friday, June 1st, at 5:00pm. She says she’s calling it “grand-ish” because she doesn’t want to raise people’s expectations too much but she did reveal she’ll be serving cream puffs.

That’s grand enough for me. See you there.

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HIDDEN TREASURE

Speaking of Fountain Square, one of Bloomington’s secret pleasures remains hidden there.

That would be Stefano’s Ice Cafe, down in the lower level of the mall. Fab sandwiches and sides. The place is run by a husband and wife team from Afghanistan. They treat customers as though they’re long-lost cousins.

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If Stefano’s had a streetside storefront, the line to get into the place would be halfway around Fountain Square.

As it is, you can go there at lunch time, get served in the snap of a finger, and eat like a king. May as well take advantage of it now, before they move out, too, and you’ll have to wait.

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WHY THE UNIFORM?

BTW: Have you ever wondered why the US Surgeon General always wears a uniform?

Here’s the answer: the US Public Health Service, which the SG commands, originally was a uniformed arm of the nation’s defense apparatus. When it was formed in the 18th Century, the USPHS originally was called the Military Health Service. It’s job was to tend to sick and injured sailors (at the time the US only had a naval military service.)

The post of Surgeon General today carries a military rank equivalent to a vice admiral in the Navy.

The wearing of the uniform had fallen out of fashion among SG’s until C. Everett Koop came along under the Reagan administration. Koop was a national health evangelist and he felt wearing the uniform would would cause citizens to pay a little more heed to him than other fed bureaucrats.

Surgeon General Koop

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Considering the fact he yelled at Americans to stop smoking and stood on his head to raise AIDS awareness, any trick he could think of to get us to listen was worth a shot.

Koop was a strong anti-abortion advocate, although I can’t come down too hard on him because his belief stemmed from years of treating fetuses and newborns, so I don’t suppose it was born (pardon the pun) of some lockstep religious conceit. He also wouldn’t take to the bully pulpit to condemn doctors who performed abortions or women who received them.

Anyway, Bloomington has a notable Koop connection. In 1982, local parents of a child born with severe Down Syndrome, esophageal atresia, and a tracheoesophageal fistula wrestled with the decision to treat the child or let him pass. The attending physician advised them the boy, known as Baby Doe, only had a 50 percent chance of recovering fully from surgery and even if he did, he would be virtually unable to care for himself for the rest of his life due to mental retardation. The parents elected to withhold food and water from the boy and he died after six days.

Koop, a noted pediatric physician before taking his government job, had performed surgery on hundreds of newborns with the maladies and said he’d never lost a patient. Moved to action by the Bloomington Baby Doe case, he advocated a national statute protecting children born with severe birth defects, eventually passed by Congress as the Baby Doe Law.

Koop seemed a decent Joe despite the fact that he championed a “right-to-life” agenda. Just goes to show not everyone we disagree with needs to be demonized.

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GO!

Hey, don’t forget to check the Pencil’s GO! Events Listings.

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SAVE THE CHILDREN

From one of the five greatest pop albums of all time, Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?”

If you don’t have this disc or mp3, your collection is incomplete.

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03/02/2012
1 Comment
Alex Straiker, Arsenic, Borders, Dartmouth College, Erika Biga Lee, Homeschooling, Indiana University, Jim Wager-Miller, Katy Perry, Kurt Vonnegut, Marvin Gaye, Moomins, Neil Gaiman, NPR, Rachael's Cafe, Rick Santorum, Science Cafe, Tintin

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” — Kurt Vonnegut

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THE RETURN OF THE SCIENCE CAFE

Yep, the Bloomington Science Cafe is back. The shebang petered out when its home at the time, Borders, closed down here a couple of years ago.

Now it’s got new digs: Rachael’s Cafe.

Cerebellum tinkerer Alex Straiker of the IU Psychological and Brain Sciences Department is the driving force behind the local Cafe’s resurrection.

Straiker

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Science cafes, Straiker explains, exist all over the world in big cities and college towns. They bring researchers and scientists together with less cranially endowed folk. Typically, they’re at coffeehouses and bookstores.

He’d hoped to start a Science Cafe when he arrived in town some five years ago but found one already underway. Graduate School Communications Director Erika Biga Lee was the mad scientist behind that incarnation. She’d started the thing in September, 2006, and welcomed Straiker aboard.

Biga Lee

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Erika Biga Lee’s baby was sponsored in part by Borders until the bookstore chain sputtered to its demise. “It sort of went down with the ship,” Straiker says.

While Science Cafe I was up and running, the general public could stop by and listen to lectures on the science of marijuana, say, or the geology of Mars. One night, peak oil was the topic.

“Typically, 30 or 40 people would come,” Straiker says, “but attendance could range from 25 to 65.”

Erika Biga Lee is too busy these days to direct the get-togethers so Straiker and his lab colleague, Jim Wager-Miller, will run the show. They’re looking to present talks on the science of coffee, addictions, and dark matter within the first few weeks.

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Straiker says he comes up with the topics, based mostly on ideas that intrigue him. Then he and Wager-Miller go around the IU campus looking for experts in those fields who’d like to make presentations.

“There’s an emphasis on openness and participation,” Straiker says. “We welcome questions. It’s meant to be a bridge between scientists and people.”

Straiker is hoping the first Bloomington Science Cafe II session will be either Wednesday, March 21st or 28th, 2012. Admission is free and open to the public. Rachael’s is at 300 E. 3rd St. Phone: 812.330.1882. Science Cafe sessions will be every Wednesday from 6:30-8pm.

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CERTIFIED ORGANIC POISON

Interesting little piece on NPR this morning. Dartmouth College researchers have found high levels of arsenic in rice around the world.

Killer Weed

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The horror. Surely our local food faddists will be up in arms about this. Just another example of the fascist-corporate agri-business tyrants poisoning us for fun and profit, no?

No.

“It turns out that arsenic is naturally occurring in soil and water and rice plants seem to have this special ability to soak up more arsenic from the environment than other plants,” says reporter Nancy Shute.

Brown rice actually contains more arsenic than white rice because it hasn’t been stripped of its constituent substances. And, no, buying organic rice won’t make any difference because, well, arsenic is there, folks, right in the holy dirt we plant our crops in.

Mother Earth is a killer.

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THE SANTORUM SCHOOL

Now we know Rick Santorum and his wife have homeschooled their seven children.

I imagine they didn’t want the young’uns to be tainted by too many things like facts and knowledge. Man, I shudder to think what, for instance, the daily math lesson must have been like in the Santorum boot camp.

Mrs. Santorum: “Children, god created all the numbers. Let us remember that six times two equals twelve. We know this because that’s how many apostles Jesus had. Who can name all the apostles?”

Young Patrick Santorum: “Peter, James the Greater, James the Lesser, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, Thaddeus, Simon, and Judas.”

Math, Santorum-Style

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Mrs. Santorum: “Very good. And which apostle betrayed our lord and savior, Jesus Christ?”

Peter Santorum: “Judas.”

Mrs. Santorum: “Now, Peter. Pronounce his name correctly.”

Peter: “Um…, uh….”

Mrs. Santorum: “Say it like this: JEW-diss.”

Peter: “JEW-diss.”

Mrs. Santorum: “Very good. How much did Judas sell out our lord and savior for?”

Sarah Maria Santorum: “Ooh, ooh, ooh!”

Mrs. Santorum: “Yes, Sarah.”

Sarah: “Thirty pieces of silver.”

Judas Loved Money, Had a Sharp Nose, And Was Sneaky — You Do The Math

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Mrs. Santorum: “Very good. And did the apostles accept food stamps?”

Daniel Santorum: “No.”

Mrs. Santorum: “So should Americans accept food stamps?”

All (in unsion): “No, ma’am.”

And so on. Math.

I’m still of two minds regarding the question of homeschooling. I subscribe wholeheartedly to Mark Twain’s line, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

Meaning, among other things, that making kids sit in a classroom all day is about as ridiculous a way to impart knowledge to hungry young minds as can be conjured by the most cruel sadist.

I’ve met so many homeschooled kids who speak remarkably well and can relate to adults confidently. Most of the school-schooled kids I know are pretty much rotten little bastards who I’ll be happy to spend time with only after they reach the age of 30.

“Do Me A Favor, Kids — Go Away For A Few Years, OK?”

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I know of homeschooled kids who devour books on the Moomins and Tintin and then graduate to Neil Gaiman. Again, most of the school-schooled kids I meet have never once in their lives heard the sound of a vocalist that wasn’t Auto-Tuned and pitch-corrected. I mean, they actually believe Katy Perry sounds that way.

One of the things that concern me about homeschooling is the desire on the part of parents to isolate their kids from the world. Of course, when you take the aforementioned contrasts into account, isolating the kids from the world doesn’t sound like the worst thing you could do to them.

But if you’re hoping to isolate your kids from liberals, agnostics, Muslims, Hallowe’en witches, Harry Potter, “In the Night Kitchen,” and M&Ms, homeschooling seems more a sentence than a choice.

Perhaps worst of all, Rick and his wife, Karen, compelled their children to spend the vast majority of their days with, well, them. The poor kids.

But there is a bright side to all this. At least neighborhood schoolkids were isolated from Santorum-think.

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TOO BUSY THINKIN’ ‘BOUT MY BABY

Marvin Gaye didn’t have time for school — he had girls on his mind.

He became one of this holy land’s most beloved recording artists. Later, he tumbled into substance addiction and then his old man pumped him full of lead, snuffing his life out at the age of 44.

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12/10/2011
1 Comment
1968 Democratic Convention, Alan Cromer, Bloomington Indiana, Chicago Police Department, Chicago Sun-Times, Durban Climate Conference, Environment, Fox News, G-8, Jon Burge, Kirk Douglas, Marvin Gaye, NATO, Neil Steinberg, Occupy Movement, Police Riot, Roger Ebert, Summerdale Police Scandal, What's Going On?

The Pencil Today:

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WE’D RATHER FEEL THAN THINK

The late physicist Alan Cromer suggested that scientific thinking is not a natural process for the seven billion of us who muddle through this life. “Human beings, after all, love to believe in spirits and gods,” he said. “Science, which asks them to see things as they are and not as they believe or feel them to be, undercuts a primary human passion.”

Cromer

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BLOOMINGTON REDUCES ITS GAS PAIN

Environmental issues, both local and global, are in the news this Saturday morning.

The Herald Times reports that the City of Bloomington used five percent less gasoline in its fleet vehicles during the first half of this year, as compared to the same span in 2010.

Good news, no?

Less Of This Here

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It’s important to keep in mind, though, that Bloomington, being the capital-in-exile of the former Soviet Union, is chock-full of liberals, Democrats, and other sinners who go in for that kind of Earth-y stuff.

The rest of this holy land? Well, you know.

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WHAT DO THOSE DUMB SCIENTISTS KNOW ANYWAY?

So, the South Africa climate talks are petering out with no agreement in sight.

It’s the usual snag: the big countries (like you-know-which holy land) that pollute most are pushing for a tepid pact to curb greenhouse gases and other flotsam and jetsam. Developing nations, which have a lot less to lose economically, want strong environmental safeguards.

I understand the motivations of corporate robber barons and their coatholders in Congress who want to forestall any restrictions. It costs dough, after all, to sanitize smokestacks that belch toxins.

The Sweet Smell Of Success

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Why, though, would that certain segment of the general populace that drools before any TV screen with Fox News on it not want stringent global environmental laws? Don’t they want to breathe fresh air or drink clean water?

Perhaps not. Perhaps they wish only to inhale Camels and slurp Diet Coke.

Anyway, that gang doesn’t believe the overwhelming majority of climatologists who are convinced humankind is mucking up the atmosphere so badly that Hurricane Katrina in a few decades will seem like a spring shower.

Many of them do believe in things like ghosts, UFO visitations, astrology, intelligent design, spontaneous human combustion, numerology, angels, homeopathy, feng shui, clairvoyance, Nostradamus, and other fairy tales.

In that sense, the Fox News audience is far more “natural” than I am.

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MERCY MERCY ME

Heck, let’s stick with the ecology. Here’s the final track on side one of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” vinyl disc, released in May, 1971. For my money, it’s the best pop album ever made. Enjoy.

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WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

◗ Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert can’t speak anymore but his voice rings out louder than ever these days. He’s become a writing machine. He reminds us that Kirk Douglas is now 95 years old.

By the way, you have to read Roger’s take on the Occupy Movement. He goes a little too soft on the Democratic Party, IMHO, but his righteous indignation is refreshing.

◗ And so we’ll stick with the Sun-Times. Columnist Neil Steinberg writes today about the Chicago Police. The boys in powder blue will be on world display next spring with the G-8 and NATO summits coming to town. The CPD has been tarnished through the years by the Summerdale Scandal, the ’68 Convention, the Jon Burge torture case, and too many others to name here. I personally took a beating in the back seat of a squad car once for the unforgivable sin of being a mouthy sixteen-year-old. Steinberg is no more popular with Chicago’s cops today than dopey kids like me were back then. His FB link illustrates why.

FYI: It was Steinberg who, as a pseudonymous critic of a well-known, pathologically flatulent Chicago newspaper columnist back in the ’90s, inspired the title for this feature. I wish I could tell you what Steinberg’s nom de plume was or who was the blowhard he skewered but, well, I just can’t.

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