Category Archives: PBS

03/31/2015
1 Comment
Anne Vestuto, Bloom Magazine Book Club, Diversity, FARMbloomington, Indianapolis Star, Kent State, Nathan Montoya, PBS, Poetpalooza, Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Scott Russell Sanders, Tony Brewer, Village Lights Bookstore

Hot Air

A Declaration

Y’know, it’s a damned shame I have to do this but considering the state of our bizarre, regressive, antediluvian, smug, arrogant state I have no choice.

Declaration

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That last line, BTW, was originally written If you don’t like this, fuck you. Then I figured it’d be a tad more civilized the way it ended up. My original sentiment stands, though.

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A Bold, Moral Stance

Kudos to the editors and publisher of the Indianapolis Star. Today’s front page is groundbreaking, even monumental.

Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s a welcome departure from the careerist, too-cautious, phony-baloney objectivity that characterizes corporate news media these days (with the exception of the amorally subversive Fox News).

Indy Star 20150331

 

Click Image To Read Complete Editorial

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Let’s recognize the people who made this happen:

  • President and publisher Karen Ferguson
  • Editor and vice president Jeff Taylor
  • Editorial pages editor Tim Swarens
  • Designer Emily Kuzniar

Good job, folks!

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Join The Club

A quick reminder: The second meeting of the Bloom magazine Book Club happens late this afternoon, 5:30pm, at FARM Bloomington’s Root Cellar Lounge.

Sanders

Scott Russell Sanders

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Scott Russell Sanders will read from his latest, the novel Divine Animal, and will answer questions. The Pencil will be there, too. You don’t even need to have read the book. Just come to hear the author speak and rub shoulders with people who dig reading.

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More Word-y Stuff

The southern half of Indiana boasts a second, beloved independent bookstore down by the Ohio River in Madison. Friends of Bloomington’s own Book Corner, Village Lights Bookstore props. Nathan Montoya and Anne Vestuto have been peddling new and used tomes since 2008 in the picturesque river town.

The two also stage Poetpalooza, an annual bash for local and regional versifiers. This year’s event takes place Friday and Saturday and will include readings by former Poets Laureate Norbert Krapf of Indiana as and Maureen Morehead and Richard Taylor of Kentucky. B-ton’s Tony Brewer will pound out Poetry on Demand on his old-school typewriter throughout the course of the affair.

Brewer

Tony Brewer Loads His Smith-Corona

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Here’s the 2015 Poetpalooza schedule:

Friday, April 3

  • 5:00pm Open Mic Kick-Off Emceed by Alex Acosta (IN) & Harlan Kelly (IN)
  • 6:00pm Tom C. Hunley (KY)
  • 6:30pm Barbara Sabol (OH)
  • 7:00pm Bianca Bargo (KY)
  • 8:00pm Book Launch “Black Achilles” by Curtis Crisler (IN)
  • 8:30pm Katerina Stoykova-Klemer (KY)
  • 9:00pm Film Screening “Proud Citizen”

Saturday, April 4

  • 10:00am Book Launch “The Work of the Body” by Jill Kelly Koren (IN)
  • 11:00am Maureen Morehead, Kentucky Poet Laureate, 2011-2012
  • 12:00pm Norbert Krapf, Indiana Poet Laureate, 2008-2010
  • 1:00pm Tom C. Hunley (KY)
  • 1:30pm Barbara Sabol (OH)
  • 2:00pm Gerry Grubbs (OH)
  • 3:00pm Nettie Farris (IN)
  • 4:00pm Richard Taylor, Kentucky Poet Laureate, 2011-2012
  • 5:00pm Frederick Smock (KY)
  • 6:00pm Curtis Crisler (IN)
  • 6:30pm Katerina Stoykova-Klemer (KY)
  • 7:00pm Book Launch “Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café” by Jack Ramey (IN)
  • 8:00pm The Reservoir Dogwoods (IN) — Jason Ammerman, Tony Brewer, Matthew D. Jackson, Joseph Kirschbaum
  • 9:00pm Film Screening “Proud Citizen”

It’s a two-hour car ride from Bloomington to Madison via SR 46 and SR7 (catch it at Columbus). The view is delightful as you enter the Ohio River Valley, though, so make it a neat day trip.

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Four Dead In O-Hi-O

It’s been 45 years since four young anti-war protesters were gunned down by Ohio National Guardsmen on the Kent State University campus.

Kent State became a touchstone term for a generation. It might well have been the most dramatic salvo in a general violent uprising — one that never really took place for a variety of reasons, many of which remain hidden or willfully unexamined to this day. A careful reading of the history of this holy land between the years 1954, when the US Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of the Topeka, Kansas, school district, and the January 27, 1973 treaty ending American involvement in Vietnam shows a nation perilously close to a second Civil War.

Kent State

Protesters Take Cover As Shots Ring Out (Image: Reuters)

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PBS will air a new documentary, Kent State — The Day the ’60s Died Tuesday, April 28th, at 8pm. Documentary production company Room 608 Inc. and PBS also will release the 60-minute film on DVD. The program is part of a week of specials airing on PBS to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the end of our nation’s Vietnam War.

One more thing: Kent State gets all the ink and the attention but a mere 11 days later, Jackson police and Mississippi Highway Patrol troopers opened fire, killing two and wounding 12 students at Jackson State University. The campus, like hundreds of others across the nation, had been roiled by anti-war and civil rights protests that spring. Back in 1970, though, the killing of black students was deemed not as newsworthy as that of whites by the then-mainstream news media.

Things change, natch, even as they stay the same.

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10/21/2012
1 Comment
Big Bird, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, George McGovern, Human Rights, NPR, PBS, Richard M. Nixon, Springfield Missouri, Tom & Ray Magliozzi, Wounded Knee 1973

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I think we ought to move tanks, the whole goddamned thing. Put a division in there, if necessary. It’s time for action on it. If some Indians get shot, that’s too goddamned bad. If some Americans get shot, that too bad, too.” — Richard M. Nixon on the Wounded Knee protest, 1973.

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A LIFE: JULY 19, 1922 — OCTOBER 21, 2012

George McGovern

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PUBLIC BROADCASTING’S NEWEST STAR

I had a chat with one of the big shots from the shakedown department at a large Midwest NPR station this past week.

This person said the station had just completed its fall fund drive and it was a smash this year.

The station, according to the nabob, breezed way past its fundraising goal.

“Hmm, why do you suppose?” I asked.

“Oh, simple,” the person said. “The minute Mitt Romney started talking about Big Bird the calls started coming in. And this was even before the fund drive began.”

Fundraisers: Ray Magliozzi, Mitt Romney, & Tom Magliozzi

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Thanks, Mitt.

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LOVE AND MARRIAGE

As you know, plaster saints from coast to coast can hardly pray themselves to sleep at night for fear that gay marriage will be imposed upon them tomorrow morning.

Because, you know, all heterosexual marriages will be declared null and void and everyone will be compelled to marry and get naked with a member of their own gender. I wonder who my government-mandated new spouse will be. Pat Murphy?

Murph & Big Mike: Dear God, Please, No

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Yeesh, no wonder the pious of this holy land are petrified.

Anyway, they’re fighting gay marriage like the deranged tigers they are. For instance, the town of Springfield, Missouri, this summer considered adding sexual orientation and gender identity to its boilerplate human rights ordinance. Natch, the righteous of Springfield started quaking and hollering that the world was hurtling toward hell.

The Springfield City Council held hearings during which the public was allowed to comment on the whole shebang. Some pastor got up and began railing about “the word of god” and “the immorality and lawlessness that will be characteristic of the last days.”

He went on to say…, oh, just watch it.

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Hehehe. Neat, huh?

By the way, Springfield’s official nickname is “The Queen City of the Ozarks.”

Is there any need for comedy writers anymore?

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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.

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Sunday, October 21st, 2012

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Semi-finals of competition; 10am-1pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Sweeney Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Youth competition; 10am-3pm

CLASS ◗ Dagom Gaden Tensung Ling Monastery — Introductory Course on Buddhism; 10am

STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October

SPORTS ◗ IU Field Hockey Complex — Hoosier women’s field hockey vs. Villanova; Noon

SPORTS ◗ IU Bill Armstrong Stadium — Hoosier women’s soccer vs. Wisconsin; 1pm

HALLOWE’EN ◗ Haunted Hayride & Stables — Friendly hayrides; 1-7pm

FILM ◗ Buskirk Chumley Theater — Dark Carnival Film Festival: Schedule:

  • Screening Series 4: “Mother Died,” “Chompers,” “Shine,” “Roman’s Ark,” “Harsh Light of Day“; 1:30-3:30pm
  • Screening Series 5: “Lovebug,” “Weight of Emptyness,” “Firelight,” TBA feature: 3:45-6pm

OPERA ◗ IU Musical Arts Center — “The Merry Widow“; 2pm

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Curator’s Tour of “The Day in Its Color: A Hoosier Photographer’s Journey“; 2pm

STAGE ◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Drama, “Last Train to Nibroc“; 2pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Doctoral Recital: Joni Chan; 2pm

FILM ◗ IU Cinema — “Detropia“; 3pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Sweeney Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Master Class, Martha Masters; 3-5pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Senior Recital, Daniel Herrick on tuba; 3pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Faculty/Student Recital, Emile Naomoff & Kajeng Wong on piano; 4pm

MUSIC ◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — David Sisson; 5-7pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Junior Recital, John Cooksey, baritone; 5pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Finals of competition; 5:30-7pm

MUSIC & BENEFIT ◗ The Player’s Pub — Salaam, For Middle Way House; 6pm

FILM ◗ IU Cinema — “Unprecedented: The 200 Presidential Election“; 6:30pm

FILM ◗ Bear’s Place — Ryder Film Series: “Side by Side”; 9pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Octubafest, Daniel Perantoni, director; 7pm

STAGE ◗ Bloomington Playwrights Project — Ike & Julie Arnov PlayOffs, Writers, directors, & actors stage original mini-plays using themes, props, and single lines given to them 24 hours previously, Mayor Mark Kruzan will open the proceedings; 7:30pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bluebird — Drive-By-Truckers; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Guest Recital, Edoardo Catemario; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bishop — Brainstorm, The Kickback, Mid-American; 9pm

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ONGOING:

ART ◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “New Acquisitions,” David Hockney; through October 21st
  • “Paragons of Filial Piety,” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi; through December 31st
  • “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers,” by Julia Margaret, Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century;” through December 31st
  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Film: Pop-art by Joe Tilson; through December 31st
  • “Threads of Love: Baby Carriers from China’s Minority Nationalities“; through December 23rd
  • “Workers of the World, Unite!” through December 31st
  • “Embracing Nature,” by Barry Gealt; through December 23rd
  • “Pioneers & Exiles: German Expressionism,” through December 23rd

ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “Ab-Fab — Extreme Quilting,” by Sandy Hill; October 5th through October 27th
  • “Street View — Bloomington Scenes,” by Tom Rhea; October 5th through October 27th
  • “From the Heartwoods,” by James Alexander Thom; October 5th through October 27th
  • “The Spaces in Between,” by Ellen Starr Lyon; October 5th through October 27th

ART ◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibit:

  • Buzz Spector: Off the Shelf; through November 16th
  • Small Is Big; Through November 16th

ART ◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibits:

  • “A Place Aside: Artists and Their Partners;” through December 20th
  • “Gender Expressions;” through December 20th

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibit:

  • “CUBAmistad” photos

ART ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits:

  • “¡Cuba Si! Posters from the Revolution: 1960s and 1970s”
  • “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”
  • “Thoughts, Things, and Theories… What Is Culture?”
  • “Picturing Archaeology”
  • “Personal Accents: Accessories from Around the World”
  • “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”
  • “The Day in Its Color: A Hoosier Photographer’s Journey through Mid-century America”
  • “TOYing with Ideas”
  • “Living Heritage: Performing Arts of Southeast Asia”
  • “On a Wing and a Prayer”

BOOKS ◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit:

  • “Outsiders and Others: Arkham House, Weird Fiction, and the Legacy of HP Lovecraft;” through November 1st
  • “A World of Puzzles,” selections from the Slocum Puzzle Collection

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ Soup’s On — Exhibit:

  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Culture: “CUBAmistad photos; through October

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibit:

  • “Bloomington: Then and Now,” presented by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

ARTIFACTS ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

  • Doctors & Dentists: A Look into the Monroe County Medical Professions
  • What Is Your Quilting Story?
  • Garden Glamour: Floral Fashion Frenzy
  • Bloomington Then & Now
  • World War II Uniforms
  • Limestone Industry in Monroe County

The Ryder & The Electron Pencil: Bloomington’s Best

08/04/2012
Leave a comment
al Qaeda, Antonin Scalia, Duck and Cover, Eugenics, Forced Sterilization, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Indiana Farm Colony for Feeble Minded Youth, Iraq War, Michele Bachmann, Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, Nixonland, Nuclear Weapons, Occupy Wall Street, Omar N. Bradley, PBS, Revolution, Richard M. Nixon, Rick Perlstein, Saddam Hussein, Tea Party, US Army, US Supreme Court, Watts Riots

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” — Omar Bradley

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BOOM!

WFIU reports that the US Army is staging a two-week nuclear explosion response simulation through mid-August right here in South Central Indiana.

Some 10,000 soldiers and civilian responders are play-acting what they’ll do in the event that some mad brown people drop a nuke on, say, Bloomington or even Indy.

The big burlesque is happening at the Muscatatuck Urban training Center, about 75 miles east-southeast of Bloomington.

Muscatatuck Urban Training Center (Click to enlarge)

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MUTC covers a thousand acres and has more than a hundred training buildings including structures up to seven stories tall as well as good old split-level suburban type homes.

Now, I mention mad brown people because that’s who we’re really afraid is going to hurl the big one at us, no?

Didn’t George W. Bush whisper the words mushroom cloud and Saddam Hussein into our ears back in 2002 and 2003 to convince us to go along with him and his cronies on their war party? How much has changed regarding how we look at Arabs and Muslims since then?

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When Michele Bachmann can get media mileage and a sharp increase in campaign donations out of linking one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aides with al Qaeda even now, we haven’t moved an inch off that witless, brainless dime in ten years.

Anyway, MUTC is located, appropriately enough, on the former site of the Indiana Farm Colony for Feeble Minded Youth. Adding to the irony of it all, the IFCFMY is where several thousand forced sterilizations took place after Indiana became the first state in the union to allow that eugenic practice.

I wonder if the people who ran IFCFMY instructed the kids to duck and cover back in the ’50s.

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And how feeble-minded do we have to be to figure we’ll survive a nuclear blast if only we have enough ambulances and EMTs?

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WHAT’S THE ANTIDOTE FOR ANTONIN?

I’ve been taking my time reading Rick Perlstein’s fab book, “Nixonland,” this summer.

Perlstein posits that Dick Nixon was the first television era president to give voice to the bleatings and ramblings of the gleefully uneducated in this holy land.

Rick Perlstein

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Nixon’s was truly a grass roots campaign in 1968. He portrayed college-educated people as snobbish, superior, sex- and drug-crazed lunatics who were going to ram blacks, Jews, peace, welfare, and even a little bit of the Communist Manifesto down good people’s throats. Nixon was savvy enough to realize most Americans had a hard enough time getting out of high school.

He rode a wave of self-pity and manufactured paranoia into the White House.

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The divisions Nixon capitalized on in the United States at the time make today’s Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street tête-à-tête look like a pillow fight.

Perlstein suggests that this nation avoided an actual second civil war by a hair’s width. Bombings, murders, assassinations, mob actions, and the army on American streets were as common from 1965 through 1973 as texting while driving is today.

Watts, August 1965

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Anyway, during Nixon’s early years in the White House, PBS was coming into its own as a news operation to be reckoned with, especially since it didn’t have to answer to advertisers. PBS started nosing into some of the more unsavory aspects of the Nixon administration. The President directed the general counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy to draw up a plan to defang PBS.

That general counsel wrote memos spelling out precisely how Nixon could bring PBS to heel. He wrote: “The best possibility for White House influence is through Presidential appointees to the Board of Directors.”

Once Nixon had stacked the board with his boys, they could then work on local PBS stations to play ball with the White House through the granting of moneys that were originally meant to go to the national network. The reason? The national network was top heavy with people from “the liberal Establishment of the Northeast.”

In other words, college-educated men. Bad guys who must be battled.

The author of that strategy was a fellow named Antonin Scalia, now the longest serving member of the US Supreme Court.

Antonin Scalia: Warrior Against Liberals

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Yeah, there was a revolution in the ’60s. Only the guys in power staged it — and won it.

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present and Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

◗ Bloomington High School North — Yard sale to benefit the Color Guard; 7am-noon

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Farmers Market; 8am-1pm

◗ Monroe County Fairgrounds — Day 8, 2012 Monroe County Fair, Veterans Program; 2pm — Dead Giveaway; 5pm — Demolition Derby; 7pm; Noon to 11pm

◗ IU Art Museum — Tour: Exploring German Expressionism with docent Yelena Polyanskaya; 2pm

◗ IU Art Museum — Talk: Focus on Hockney with curator Nan Brewer; 2:15pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “David Hockney: The Bigger Picture”; 3pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Kumaré: The True Story of a False Prophet; 7pm

◗ Bloomington Playwrights Project — Original musical, “Dreams & Nightmares”; 7pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Jeb Brester; 7-9pm

◗ Buskirk-Chumley Theater — “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast”; 7:30pm

◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Cari Ray, The Not Too Bad Bluegrass Band;  7:30pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Polisse”; 8pm

◗ Cafe Django — Dave Gulyas & Dave Bruker; 8pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Costaki Economopolous; 8 & 10:30pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Oslo: August 31”; 8:30pm

◗ The Bishop — Jason Wilber, e.a. strother; 8:30pm

◗ The Bluebird — Pam Thrash Retro; 9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Lexi Minich and the Strangers; 9pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Bonz; 9:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Otto Mobile; 10:30pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; opens Friday, August 3rd, through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th
  • Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

  • “What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
  • Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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