WFIU | The Electron Pencil

01/07/2016

Bloody Sunday, Civil Rights, Claire McInerney, Guns, Jim Lucas (R-Seymour), John Bailey, John Lewis, Selma Alabama, US Navy, WFIU

Hot Air

Just Folks

Just in case you’ve forgotten, Bloomington not long ago was a sleepy, small college town. Even though we have developers coming in here hoping to build more hulking monolithic apartment blocks along the burgeoning mini-canyons on Walnut and College avenues, and even though our pop. is fast approaching 100k, we still retain bits of that endearing, quaint, small-town-ness.

To wit: This past week, both Claire McInerney and John Bailey, reporters for NPR-affiliate WFIU have come into the Book Corner to make purchases. Each used a credit card, affording me the opportunity to see who she and he were. Each time, I reacted with pleasant surprise: Oh, you’re the voice from the radio, or some such thing.

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McInerney & Bailey

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And both Claire and John reacted with such delight that I felt as though I was in a scene from It’s A Wonderful Life. Claire beamed so broadly I thought the ends of her grin might meet at the back of her head. John thanked me repeatedly as if I’d told him his Pulitzer Prize had arrived in my mailbox by mistake.

See, I come from Chicago and even the minor-est media figures there are well-practiced in either canned gratitude or annoyed harrumphing at being recognized. In the big town, expressing joy when someone says they know you through radio, TV, or the newspapers is tantamount to admitting you’re a rube.

Well, you know what? I dig rubes. At least Bloomington’s brand of rube-ishness. It’s a hell of a lot more likable than studied jadedness. I hope we don’t lose that quality for many years to come.

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USNS John Lewis

The US Navy is naming its new oil tanker ship after legendary civil rights activist and US Congressbeing from Georgia, John Lewis.

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Lewis Gets His Ship

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How cool is that? I bet when that Alabama state trooper was clubbing him to the ground, breaking his skull in the process on Bloody Sunday back in 1965, the last thing on Lewis’s mind was the possibility that his country would name a ship after him.

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Lewis Gets His Head Busted

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Of course, Lewis has always maintained a sense of optimism about and belief in this bizarre holy land. I envy him his fidelity. My occasional frissons about Murrica’s goodness and exceptionalism are fairly balanced out by glumness. We shoot each other up seemingly on a daily basis, our legislative processes are manipulated by banksters and corporatists, too many of us still fear black- and brown-skinned people, and the gap between the rich and the poor widens by the minute.

Yet Lewis still loves America. He appeared at the Indiana University Auditorium last September, along with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, his collaborators on the March series of graphic novels recounting his activist career. You could sense his ardor for this lovable/detestable land from the moment he opened his mouth.

I don’t believe I possess the strength of character and will to believe that Lewis has. Were I he, I’d hold a grudge against a country that broke my head simply because I wanted my people to be able to vote. I wish I were as strong as John Lewis.

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Gun Crazy

So, here’s prima facie evidence that I shouldn’t love and forgive this holy land so readily. In the aftermath of President Obama’s heartfelt, sincere sermon regarding our national love affair with (or sexual fixation on) firearms, Seymour State Representative Jim Lucas — a Republican, duh! — has reintroduced a bill to allow people to carry shootin’ irons on state-supported college campuses. He sez he wants his “wife and daughter to be able to protect themselves especially on dark evenings walking alone.”

His bill aims to end state firearms carry licensing as well as to prevent all state agencies from banning guns on their properties or inside their facilities. The bill specifically mentions colleges and universities.

The-Wild-Bunch

The Wild Bunch Goes To College

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With all due respect (read: none), I might suggest Lucas, his wife, and his daughter actually attend a college campus and try things like reading books wherein they might learn about the nature of crowds, the physics of ballistic projectiles passing through bodies and inanimate materials, the effect of panic on people who might be tempted to protect a classroom by blasting away at some intruder, among other fascinating and informative areas of study.

In other words, you are one dumb son of a bitch, Jim. Again, with all due respect.

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02/24/2015

1 Comment

2015 Mayoral Election, Amy Cornell, Annie Corrigan, Antonia Matthew, Bill De Blasio, Boxcar Books, Darryl Neher, Five Women Poets, Gabriel Peoples, John Hamilton, Rahm Emanuel, Stevie Wonder, WFIU, Writers Guild at Bloomington

Hot Air

Winter’s Winning

Okay, things are getting weird now. WFIU’s Annie Corrigan told me this morning that the temp was -11º. So when I went outside to let Steve and Sally the Dogs out, I figured I’d freeze my delicate Fred Flintstone toes off.

Didn’t happen.

In fact, the air outdoors didn’t feel all that cold. It felt more like 11 degrees above zero.

Aha, I thought, Annie’s reading the temp wrong. Or something. Admittedly, 11 degrees above is not the condition under which you’d start thinking bikinis and fishing poles. But it is a 22-degree shift which, at any temp, is significant. I dashed back in to check the NOAA’s National Weather Service website. Lo and behold, the feds said we were sitting at -12º, a precious degree colder than Annie said.

What’s happening? Am I — shudder — starting to knuckle under to winter?

Ahead?

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It’s depressing I tell you. Well, even more depressing than I’ve been thanks to this winter that began, um — when was it, back in September?

The Loved One snapped at me the other day in response to yet another of my ranting diatribes regarding this second yucky winter in a row. “Just get used to it!” she said.

Can it be? Am I getting used to it? Pardon me while I cry.

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Humans Write

You and I both know this thriving, throbbing megalopolis is chock-full of writing talent. Do you need proof? Then hie down to Boxcar Books, Sunday for the Writers Guild at Bloomington‘s monthly First Sunday reading.

This month’s featured scribes include Amy Cornell, Antonia Matthew, and Gabriel Peoples.

Amy Cornell is one of the many good local souls involved in helping Monroe County Corrections Center inmates read and write. She leads writing circles there. Her work includes poetry, creative non-fiction, novels, blog posts, book reviews, and short stories.
Antonia Matthew has led the writing group Five Women Poets for years. She’s written, among other things, about her mother’s experiences with Alzheimer’s and her own time as a child in World War II England.
Born in Detroit, Gabriel Peoples lives in both Bloomington and College Park, Maryland, where she’s working toward her PhD in American Studies at the University of Maryland. She’s focused her studies on Black Performance Studies & Visual Culture.

Sounds like a compelling, varied line-up, no? Go there and support these writers.

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Other than giving her a fat paycheck, the greatest thing you can do for a writer is listen to her read her stuff. Boxcar is at 408 E. 6th St. The readings begin at 3pm and run through 5pm.

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The Mind Of A Leader

So, Rahm Emanuel goes before the voters of my beloved hometown Chicago today seeking a second stint as the object of hundreds of thousands of people’s rage, disappointment, and contempt.

Why anyone would want to be a president, a state governor, or the mayor of a city is beyond me. Some suggest such ambitious folks are, well, sort of off in the head. Several psychological observers have even advanced the notion that presidents and prime ministers are more sociopathic than not.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? What kind of person says, “Yeah, I want to be the most powerful human being on the planet, possessing the full capability to incinerate hundreds of millions — nay, billions — of my fellow human beings with the press of a button.”

Honestly, when The Loved One says it’s my turn to let the dogs out, I feel crushed and oppressed by the responsibility. “Do I hafta?” I whine.

Mayors must juggle the wants and demands of a seemingly endless parade of satisfaction seekers. And to do this, those mayors must slice up an ever-shrinking pile of dough. No matter what Rahm Emanuel or Bill De Blasio chooses to do, he’s going to make a lot of people mad. Not just mad as in angry; mad as in, well, mad.

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A quartet of men want to be Bloomington’s next mayor. Two of them have an honest chance. By a couple of years after the election, the victor will be both the most hated and loved man in this city of some 75,000. For my money, Darryl Neher and John Hamilton are capable, nice, good guys. But, let’s be frank, they’ve both got to be crazy to want the job.

Let’s hope the next mayor’s skull doesn’t explode when, at some point in 2016, his wife says it’s his turn to let the dogs out.

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Summer Soft

No, no! I won’t let winter win!

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02/21/2015

2 Comments

Brother William, Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats, Kyle Schwarber, Rocket "88", WFHB, WFIU, Will Murphy, William Morris

Hot Air

War!

War was declared against Winter last night by the People of South Central Indiana.

The Allies struck first, with Commander-in-Chief Big Mike ordering several divisions to attack a Winter front that had been slowly advancing from the west. Reports from the field indicate Allied forces marched through the ominous, dark gray clouds “as if they weren’t even there.”

Homefront observers, though, report Winter’s forces dumped up to a half a foot of snow on an already battle-scarred landscape. Winter terrorists had staged several dastardly attacks of snow and frigid cold in the previous months, leading up to yesterday’s declaration of war.

Dictator Old Man Winter

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The Commander-in-Chief has issued a statement assuring South Central Indiana that the threat of Winter will be short-lived. “Our brave men, women, and children can expect to lay down their snow shovels and mittens within weeks, if not days,” Big Mike said early this morning on his white house’s lawn.

Meanwhile, the Allies have called up reserves including the 4th Mechanized Snowplow Battalion and have begun to stockpile road salt.

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The Brother With The Grooves

Whatever you do these days, start listening to Brother William on WFIU’s Friday edition of Just You and Me. The show, formerly hosted by ‘FIU legend Joe Bourne, has been an oasis of good tunes for years. Bourne spun rock, pop, and soul classics until his retirement to New Albany at the end of 2014.

I’d thought Bourne was tops but, honestly, Bro. W. can match him disc for disc. Known to the square world as William Morris, attorney at law, Brother William digs deep in his record library for fabulous hits from the old R&B labels like Stax, Atlantic, Hi, and Chess. He throws in gospel and straight blues for seasoning and his hour-and-a-half whooshes by.

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It’s a good thing WFIU ops. director Will Murphy snagged Brother William because the Indiana University-sponsored public radio station had been glaringly white for far too long. Last I checked, there were two or three dark-skinned folks who claimed Bloomington as home. Not only that, music lovers (like me) get a little tired of hearing only Motown when DJs want to strut their soul chops.

Motown was fine for what it was — a sepia Tin Pan Alley-esque factory for very talented songwriters, albeit their end products were a tad too polished and excessively palatable, created for a crossover audience. The Supremes were Vegas; I want something more gritty.

Give me Big Joe Turner, Betty Everett, the Impressions, some barrelhouse piano, and a lot of jumped-up blues and I’ll listen, religiously. Speaking of that, I’ll take some Mahalia as well.

Brother William gives it all and more.

BTW: B.W. still spins on community radio WFHB. He mans the board for his regular Tuesday Afternoon Mix 2 as well as Jazz Menagerie. If you’re not listening, you’re nowhere.

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Kyle’s Kudos

Following up on Thursday’s Kyle Schwarber follow-up, the former Indiana University slugger has been named baseball’s number 19 prospect in Baseball Ameirca’s Top 100, released this week. The Chicago Cubs’ first round selection in last June’s amateur draft (no. 4 overall), Schwarber hurt the feelings of a lot of pitchers in his first pro season.

Schwarber’s bat makes him special. He was a catcher for the Hoosiers but his efforts behind the plate leave a lot to be desired for the big league game. The Cubs tried moving him over to left field last summer but he damaged his own team with an outfielder’s glove on his hand almost as much as he did the other team with the lumber in his mitts. The Cubs say he’ll stick at catcher from now on.

Schwarber Last August With The Daytona Cubs

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The Ohio native is aware he’s got plenty of work to do to bring his catching skills up to par. He told attendees at last month Cubs Fan Convention that he’d learned to catch only by watching Major League games on television. He continued:

As it turns out I was doing a lot of things wrong. Luckily, I got a crash course when I was at Kane County how to catch. You know what, it totally flipped right there. It made sense. I got it. So then I went to instructs and we kind of slowed it down and made sure I got it. It was really fun. I love catching. You have to like the position to be there and if you don’t like it, you’re not going to have success back there.

So, the attitude’s top-notch, too. Stay tuned for more on Schwarber as news develops.

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Rocket “88”

Some folks consider this the first real rock ‘n’ roll song ever recorded. Its standard blues bass line reveals the black roots of what became a white art form.

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08/08/2014

1 Comment

Alycin Bektesh, Book Corner, Cassidy Stay, Conspiracy Theory, Drew Daudelin, GMO, Guns, Indiana University, Kat Carlton, Martha Crouch, Monsanto, Racism, SketchFactor, Union of Concerned Scientists, WFHB, WFIU

Hot Air

Just The Facts, Ma’am

Loyal Pencillistas know I’m a defender of Genetically Modified Organisms, AKA GMOs. That puts me in a distinct minority in this food fetishist town. People here know me as a liberal-bordering-on-radical and so are aghast when they discover I don’t see GMOs as the tools of the devil.

They say: But what about Monsanto? To which I reply: Sure, Monsanto’s about as evil as, say, Halliburton or Academi (the former Blackwater.) Monsanto makes tons of dough on its patented GMO seeds and uses the most bullying tactics possible to make certain every farmer, every gardener, hell, every kid who plays in the dirt buys its product. Plus, Monsanto actively squashes competition, infringes on free speech, impedes investigations, harasses critics, and literally writes laws that legislators on its payroll can then obediently introduce and pass.

Monsanto is, in short, a bad guy.

A Monsanto Corn Sprout [photo by Peter Newcomb/Reuters]

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The ways Monsanto is forcing GMOs upon the world may be despicable but that that doesn’t mean their new species per se necessarily spell the end of civilization. That’s my position.

That said, it was my good fortune to meet Dr. Martha Crouch, better known as Marti, at the Book Corner Monday. “Hey,” I nearly shouted as I read the name on her credit card, “you’re you!”

“Indeed I am,” she replied, smartly.

Marti Crouch, Surrounded By Green, Naturally

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I explained how I’ve heard about her through countless folks who’ve taken me to task for defending GMOs. I then asked her to educate me. “I’d be more than happy,” I said, “to change my mind if you’d take the trouble to persuade me — and I buy your argument.”

Marti Crouch is the “real thing” — so sez Pencillista Nancy Hiller. She’s earned herself a national rep. Here, for instance, is a description from a short piece about her appearing in Mother Jones magazine back in 2000:

Martha Crouch, a biology professor at Indiana University in Bloomington and once a pioneering biotechnologist, studied her entire life to reach the pinnacle of her profession. She earned a Ph.D. in developmental biology at Yale before landing at Indiana University, where she teaches and once ran a lab dedicated to cutting edge plant research. In 1990, her lab made the cover of The Plant Cell, the leading journal in the field of plant molecular biology. Instead of launching Crouch into professional nirvana, however, the article marked the end of her research career.

Crouch had tenure and was well-known in her field. But she had awakened one day to the realization that her research was being co-opted by corporations which hoped to apply the science for profit. Further, the manner in which those firms used her discoveries was destroying the natural processes that attracted Crouch to the study of biology in the first place.

In the piece, Crouch is quoted as saying, “You are basically treating the agricultural environment as if it was a factory where you are making televisions or VCRs.”

She’s no longer teaching science because she stopped doing research (IU looked askance at her public denigration of the commercial exploitation of her research.) If anyone can sway me, she’ll be the one.

Marti Crouch has sent me the first of what promises to be a long series of info-packed articles and tracts. It’s an excellent introduction to GMOs from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Consider it GMOs 101. Here it is.

Click Image For Full Article

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Even if you think you know all you need to know about GMOs, you should read these pieces. Hey, you may learn something! I know I’m hoping to.

Let the conversation begin.

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White Fright

h/t to both Chuck Rogers and Jerry Boyle for this one:

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Need I even tell you how much this disgusts me?

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Wahoo, Drew & Cool Kat

Congrats to Drew Daudelin, the new news reader/producer over at WFIU.

Daudelin (r) With Teller of Penn & Teller

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I met Drew at WFHB where he volunteered five days a week to edit each Daily Local News script. The kid was good, I’m telling’ ya. He brought the writing level up dramatically while he was there.

Now, apparently, he’s making real dough. Good for him.

You may also have caught Kat Carlton reading the news during local breaks on Morning Edition the last few months as well. She, too, prepped at WFHB, in fact writing up news stories right next to me on several occasions. Just watching the way she carried herself, I could tell she was going places.

Carlton

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That Alycin Bektesh, WFHB’s redoubtable News Director, she’s got a nose for talent, no? A thought: Maybe WFIU should become a major contributor to WFHB, considering the latter is now the talent pool for the former.

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Criminally Cynical

Remember the teenaged girl in Texas who survived the massacre of her family a few weeks ago? The one who gave a heartfelt speech at her family’s memorial? The latest poster child for gun sanity?

Cassidy Stay (center) At Her Family’s Funeral

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Her name was (and is) Cassidy Stay. The shooter, if you don’t recall, was searching for his ex-wife and held her sister’s family hostage until they told him where she was. They refused to and as a result were executed, Nazi-style, with bullets to the backs of their heads. Cassidy survived the carnage.

At the memorial Cassidy (who played dead during the gunman’s rampage) said:

I really like Harry Potter. In “The Prisoner of Azkaban,” Dumbledore says, “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.” I know that my mom, dad, Bryan, Emily, Becca and Zach are in a much better place and that I’ll be able to see them again one day. Thank you all for coming and for showing support for me and my family. Stay strong.

Gun control advocates, naturally, lauded Cassidy to the skies and asked, for the zillionth time, why we have to endure yet another firearms atrocity.

Just as naturally, gun nuts on the far end of that particular spectrum didn’t look as kindly upon the teen girl and those who hero-ized her. In fact, a certain number of people believe Cassidy never was shot at all and that her family was killed in that old reliable trick of the jack-booted gov’t, the false flag job. Not only that, the gun control crowd, acc’d’g to this train of “thought,” works hand in hand with purported “victims” of gun crimes merely to make money. Want detail? Check this vid out. It just may be the most cynical thing you’ve ever seen or heard:

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A reminder, kids: There aren’t two sides to every question.

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08/03/2014

1 Comment

Adrian Matejka, David Torneo, The Big Smoke, WFIU

Hot Air

David Torneo And Adrian Matejka

Just a quick tip today.

Make sure to catch Dave Torneo’s interview with Indiana University faculty poet Adrian Matejka. today at noon on WFIU’s Profiles. Matejka teaches the metric arts in IU’s Creative Writing Program. His book, The Big Smoke, is a smash in the poetry publishing world. Matejka was a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist as well as a 2013 National Book Award finalist for the collection.

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A side note about Torneo — he’s the last of a breed. Should you ever run into him at a coffeehouse or any other place where he can sit and he has a writing surface before him, he’ll likely as not be writing a letter. Put that in perspective: when’s the last time you wrote an actual letter? On paper? With a pen?

Torneo (l) & Matejka

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Anyway, I’ll put up the link to the Torneo/Matejka podcast as soon as it become available.

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05/23/2014

5 Comments

Big Talk, Career Workplace Specialists, Charlotte Zietlow, Indiana State Board of Education, Indiana State Teachers Association, Pedagogy, Teresa Meredith, The Ryder, WFHB, WFIU

Hot Air

Those Who Can…

I’ll be making a lot of teachers mad today. That’s nothing new; some four and a half decades ago I was an unruly little shit terrorizing any number of trained experts in the art of controlling and forming the minds of feral beastlings like me.

The Indiana Board of Ed last week voted to allow non-professional teachers to teach in state schools. Professional teachers, naturally, are up in arms.

The Board sez it would like to okay something called Career Workplace Specialists, folks who’ve made their daily bread in specific fields and who then would be qualified to teach our kids that stuff. Well, your kids. I don’t have any. You’re welcome.

Anyway, the state teachers union thinks this is the worst thing since MERS. Union boss Teresa Meredith told WFIU reporter Brandon Smith that teachers need intensive “pedagogy training” before they can be allowed to face a classroom full of brats like I was.

From The Movie “Blackboard Jungle”

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That quote alone is enough to convince me I’m going to side with the Board. The teaching profession has become a priestly caste with an obfuscating language all its own. The entrenched pro teaching people forget that we’re all teachers; the very nature of civilization forces each and every adult to be a life-certified pedagogista.

This is not to say that pro-teachers haven’t learned a thing or two about imparting knowledge, getting kids to think critically, and preventing impromptu riots from breaking out. Problem is, it seems the teaching profession has been, for all intents and purposes, restricted only to the third pillar of those qualifications. What with a rigid common core, teaching to the test, and the alarming popular distaste for science and empirical facts, teachers are hamstrung these days.

Let’s be clear: the teaching profession, by and large, has opposed the general trend away from getting kids to learn how to think and toward producing standardized, docile little graduate lambs. Sadly, the efforts of teachers unions and the pedagogical academia have had next to no effect on the educational paradigm of turning out kids who know how to spit back facts but have absolutely no acumen for analyzing and critiquing. So, it can be said the only thing teachers unions have left to fight for is their own jobs.

And now, they fear, they’re going to be losing them to people who aren’t professional teachers.

But, as I say, we’re all teachers. And I’d rather have, say, a professional chemist teaching me chemistry than a person who finds it necessary to use the term pedagogy.

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Hear Charlotte Here

Here’s your link to hear the WFHB Daily Local News feature on my Big Talk interview with Charlotte Zietlow.

Charlotte Zietlow (Photo: David Snodgress/Herald-Times)

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The latest issue of The Ryder magazine hits the streets today, carrying the entire hour-long chat I had with the doyenne of the Democratic Party here in Bloomington and Monroe County. The piece will go up on The Ryder website in about a week.

Tune in to WFHB and read The Ryder each month to catch the long and short versions of the monthly Big Talk series. And stay right here on The Electron Pencil for updates on who I’ll be interviewing next.

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03/14/2014

1 Comment

Barack Obama, Brook Benton, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Fox & Friends, Fox News, Joe Hogsett, Justin Wykoff, Matchbox-Chicago, Republican Party, Steve Volan, Tony Joe White, Twitter, WFIU

Hot Air

The Political Asylum

Our Fox News friends and other purported inhabitants of this Earth who, in truth, live in other worlds, are mad at Barack O. because he wants companies to pay certain salaried employees for their overtime hours.

Philosopher and women of letters Elisabeth Hasselbeck (who, in her spare time, co-hosts the Fox & Friends morning gabfest) sez mandating overtime will undercut America’s work ethic. According to this titan of cerebral stuff and other defenders of the plutocracy, now peeps who hope to get ahead by “going the extra mile” will become lazy, unambitious and, well, probably Democratic, mainly because they’re going to get paid for the time they work.

Hasselbeck: Only Lazy Bums Want Paychecks

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That, my babies, is today’s Republican Party in a nutshell. Robert Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Tricky Dick Nixon are spinning in their graves as we speak. That’s how mad the mad, mad, mad, mad party has become.

And yet, our Dems still lose any number of elections to them.

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Park It

B-town city council guy Steve Volan will be on WFIU’s Noon Edition today at, duh, noon. He’ll be perorating about the parking situ. here in our burgeoning burgh.

Steve Volan

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And I’m certain the genteel hosts of NE will treat him with the respect and deference a statesman of his high station truly deserves.

[Personal to Steve: As if you couldn’t have guessed by now, I’ll never stop being a smart-ass.]

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Confidence Game

So the Feds have dropped the hammer on former Bloomington Public Works big shot Justin Wykoff and a couple of henchmen from Bedford for allegedly bilking the city out of 800-large.

Busted

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Acc’d’g to US Attorney Joe Hogsett, the Bedford boys submitted phony invoices for construction work and Wycoff approved them, a task he handled with great aplomb and for 33 percent of the take.

It wasn’t until a puzzled fellow Public Works employee dropped a dime on him that the first dark clouds marred Wycoff’s day. Wycoff was a project manager, which means he had a certain amount of say-so in how the city’s dough got spent. Still, you mean to tell me there was no one with the fiduciary responsibility to occasionally peek over Wycoff’s shoulder?

We’re a trusting lot here in B-town.

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Twitter Twaddle

As you may or may not know, I don’t really use Twitter. Oh sure, I’ve got an account (don’t ask me how to get there) but I have it set up so it automatically puts out notifications that there’s a new post on The Pencil. Otherwise, I have no idea how many followers I have or even if some terrorist group has hijacked it and is even now devising plans to make another jet vanish.

See, Twitter serves no purpose for me at all. Not even to pimp for this blog, considering I’ve done absolutely nothing to grow my followers list. I just set my account up, well, because it seemed the right thing to do, rather like that time in the early ’90s when I grew a ponytail even though my hairline had already receded dramatically.

Anyway, I’m a strong proponent of using any tech advancement only if it serves a need I already had when said machine or service came onto the market. And I had zero need for Twitter before Twitter came out.

It never occurred to me that I needed to let a widening circle of semi-acquaintances know that the slice of sourdough bread I ate this morning gave me gas.

So, here’s a listing of ridiculous Tweets that illustrate precisely how useless the damned thing is. BTW: h/t to my old pal Jacqueline Gevercer for this. Jacqui was the chief bartender at the Matchbox (“Chicago’s most intimate bar”) back when I met the future Mrs. Loved One there. She was one of toughest dames you could imagine (Jacqui was; although T-Lo could give her a run for her dough).

Click Image To Read

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Sample Tweet:

queue at @sainsburys salad bar for 15 mins to find they had no egg OR giant cous cous. To say this has ruined Monday would be an understatement [all sic]

Read away, with the understanding, I’d suspect, that a few of these Tweeters were aware of their own over-dramatizations. Some of them, though, seem truly distraught by their imagined ordeals.

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Rainy Night In Georgia

Here’s the prettiest sad song you’ll hear today — or this year, for that matter.

Tony Joe White wrote it and it became a hit for Brook Benton in 1970. TJW has recording a couple of versions. This one is my fave. It makes feeling the blues a pleasure.

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02/11/2014

1 Comment

Angela Merkel, Bloomington Plan Commission, David Brent Johnson, European Union, Geoffrey Pyatt, Internet Scams, Night Lights, Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, Vitali Klitschko, WBEZ, WDCB, WFIU

Hot Air

Another Box

Oh great. The Herald Times this morning reports a new soulless downtown mixed-used building has been approved by the Bloomington Plan Commission.

The Proposed Building

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The structure will house three residential apartments with ground-floor commercial space. Acc’g to the HT, the proposed project has been granted six zoning waivers, thereby allowing it to violate that many not-so-sacred municipal commandments to preserve the treasured look and feel of central B-town.

The building will stand next to the equally anonymous and utilitarian Bloomington Transit Center at 3rd and Walnut streets.

[I’d provide a link but the HT has a paywall so you can either trust me or drop 75 cents on a copy of today’s paper.]

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Money For Nothin’!

I’ve been feeling down of late so this email really brightened my morning:

What A Lucky Guy I Am!

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I don’t know who Michael or Ira Curry are but as of now, they’re my Best Friends Forever.

Feel free to suggest what I should do with my fresh, crisp 600,000 USD in the Comments section. And, hey, if you find yourself short of cash over the next few weeks, you can count on me to help. I am, after all, rich now!

[UPDATE: I did a little googling and found out that Ira Curry won big in some regional lottery this past December. Michael Curry must be a relative. How nice of them to think of me.]

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Hitting It Big

Equally fortunate, it seems, is our town’s David Brent Johnson. He’s no newly-minted $600,000-aire but his weekly jazz program, Night Lights, has been picked up in the Chicago market by radio station WDCB.

David Brent Johnson

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DBJ’s show debuted in the big market last week. WFIU‘s Night Lights is syndicated on 17 stations in 14 states as well as one station in the Philippines. WDCB is trying to position itself as Chi.’s radio place for jazz. NPR affiliate WBEZ dumped its overnight jazz and blues programming in 2007. Music aficionados were up in arms but the decision stood, as opposed to last year’s brouhaha over a proposed elimination of opera programming at WFIU.

Slowly but surely the world is learning about Bloomington as a music capital.

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You Will Speak Correctly

How about that heretofore anonymous diplomatic bureaucrat’s street-talk dis of the European Union last week?

Victoria Nuland, who is the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, was phone chatting with the US ambassador to the Ukraine the other day. She and the ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, talked about the rebellion in that country. They speculated on the role of opposition leader Vitali Klitschko in any subsequent reorganization of the Ukraine gummint. Nuland pretty much told Pyatt that Klitschko ought not to be too big a shot because he’s essentially a babe in the woods.

Tough Negotiator

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Which makes perfect sense because the sum total of Klitschko’s life experience thus far has been his success at beating the bejesus out of men wearing shorts. See, Klitschko’s a boxer. He gained the world’s heavyweight boxing championship back in 1996. He retired from the Sweet Science last December still wearing one of the bazillion belts that the various international boxing authorities hand out. Experts say he was a powerful puncher and had strong chin.

These attributes stand a politician well only in a metaphorical sense. It’s been several millennia since we’ve asked our dear leaders to personally whack the crap out of each other for the good and glory of our respective peoples.

Still, Klitschko is popular in the Ukraine, the way, say, Peyton Manning would be in this holy land should he decide to chuck football and run for the United States Senate.

Nuland went on to tell Pyatt that the United Nations should try to broker an agreement between the Ukraine state and the opposition, not the European Union. Apparently, she doesn’t hold the Union in terribly high regard. “Fuck the E.U.,” she said.

The Money Shot Comment Is At 3:04

■

Somehow, a recording of the phone conversation was made public. And, natch, European leaders are screaming bloody murder. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel tut-tutted the comment. One of her PR flacks said Merkel considers the verbiage “absolutely unacceptable.”

I’m just wondering if the folks who gave the world the phrase deutschland über alles some 75 years ago have as yet earned the privilege to criticize other people’s lingo.

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08/16/2013

Your Daily Hot Air

Peace

Yesterday was the anniversary of the end of World War II.

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I just happen to be reading the first book in historian Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, An Army at Dawn. It tells the story of Murrica’s first WWII ground action, the invasion of North Africa, nearly a year after entering the war at the invitation of Japan and Germany (Italy was handling the catering.) Imagine, it took just shy of twelve months for American soldiers to see action after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Oh sure, there’d been some monumental sea clashes, including Midway, during that time, but as for huge numbers of US Army men facing off against the enemy, it wasn’t until November 8, 1942 that Operation TORCH, the Algeria-Morocco landings, commenced. Throughout that year, Russia and the American military brass lobbied hard for an immediate Western Europe invasion. President Roosevelt and the British nixed that idea for fear a premature Allied D-Day would be crushed and, subsequently, the war might drag on for a decade or two.

Apparently, FDR and Churchill were right. The Russians (at a cost of some 20 million human beings) wore down the Nazis on the Eastern Front so that when the D-Date actually arrived in June, 1944, Germany was sufficiently softened up for the taking.

Anyway, Emperor Hirohito announced on August 15, 1945, three months after the Nazis had given up the ghost, that Japan was finished fighting. It wasn’t of course; sporadic violence took place here and there between the Japanese and the Americans and Russians. You know people.

Douglas MacArthur & Hirohito In September, 1945

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That’s 68 years ago, for the mathematically challenged among you (and, believe me, I’m not being superior here; I had to use my laptop calculator to figure it out). So, nearly three quarters of a century has passed since humankind’s most cardinal sin finally was stopped. The US was drafting 18 year olds in 1945 so, conceivably, the youngest kid who saw action in Okinawa would be 86 years old today (again with the calculator). Suffice it to say there aren’t all that many souls left to whom the words Dirty Jap weren’t always a forbidden ethnic slur.

Still, many people in the corner of the world that was ravaged by Imperial Japan find themselves getting a little testy when the subject comes up. The Pew Research Center yesterday released results of a poll that shows significant percentages of folks in places like Korea and Indonesia want Japan to apologize even more than it already has. Remember, Japan is now ruled by the sons and grandsons and even great-grandsons of the bellicose ultra-nationalists who’d pushed that country into war. No matter, scads of people want some dramatic mea culpa-ing.

Here are results of the Pew poll:

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If I was Japan, I’d say, Sure, man, Great Gramps was a jerk. I can’t believe he was such an asshole. And, trust me, we’d never do crazy crap like that again. C’mon over for a visit. We’ll give you some discounts at restaurants and really posh hotels if you’d lost your Great Gramps or Grandma when my ancestors were having their psychotic spell.

In fact, I’d stage a daily atonement ritual in Tokyo, complete with the flags of victim nations and honored guests from those lands, just to show bygones can be bygones.

I mean, how can it hurt?

Just the way we Murricans couldn’t do anybody any harm by staging daily atonement rituals in Washington, DC for slavery and the Native American holocaust. Sometimes all people want is a simple acknowledgment that you’ve treated them like dirt.

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All Bloomington, Some Of The Time

■

◗ Meters. Made.

We’re five days into the Great Parking Meter Era here in B-town. Most of the nearly 1500 meters scheduled to be installed in the central business district this summer were activated Monday.

The city says it’s raking in $5000 a day already. And this is without the expanded crew of ticket-writers actually writing parking tickets just yet. All those Day-Glo yellow-green-vested scribblers you’ve seen darting between parked cars are only writing out warning citations until the end of next week.

Courthouse Square business owners, who’d feared the collapse of Western Civilization once the meters went online, are fairly surprised to find that their busy-ness so far hasn’t fallen off.

Go to WFHB’s podcast of its Thursday, August 15, 2013, newscast for my story on downtown businesses and the new meters.

◆

◗ Evacuate Bloomington!

I ran into good old Will Murphy at the East Side Kroger Wednesday night. The former General Manager at our town’s WFHB and Ft. Wayne’s NPR station, is now the Operations czar at Bloomington’s NPR outlet, WFIU.

As such, poor old Will Murphy has established himself as an acclaimed town baddie. I told him I’ve been hearing he is Hitler. He said he’s heard he is Satan. In any case, he’s Public Enemy Numbers 1 through ten, inclusive, here.

Why? Simple. Murphy cancelled the station’s live Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturday afternoons last month. The news turned local opera lovers into, well, opera singers. The moaning and gnashing of teeth could be heard all the way in the uppermost office suites of the WFIU World Headquarters Tower.

Will Murphy Destroying Bloomington’s Cultural Institutions

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With this town being the locale of one of the country’s more renowned music schools, things like opera mean a lot to certain segments of the citizenry. So much so that anybody who dares to mess with radio listener habits does so at his own peril.

Janis Starcs, a big mover and shaker on WFIU’s Community Advisory Board, came into the Book Corner the other day carrying a violin case. I told him I didn’t know he played the violin; he said he didn’t. So I asked what was in the case. “None of your business,” Starcs replied in a clipped tone. Speaking of clips, Starcs also wore a handsome pair of bandoliers, filled with shiny cartridges, natch.

Marked Man

■

“Where ya headed?” I asked.

“To the Advisory Board meeting,” he said.

Next thing you know, WFIU’s men-behing-the-curtain are hanging plain old Will Murphy out to dry at the behest of the Adv. Bd. The Met cancellation has been reversed.

Now, the opera lovers and opera singers of B-town’ll have to dig deep for the dough that Murphy’d hoped his schedule change would generate in the coming years. We’ll see.

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Bohemian Rhapsody

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07/30/2013

1 Comment

Annie Corrigan, Fast Food Workers Strike, John Kerry, Labor Movement, Labor Unions, Major League Baseball Players Association, McDonald's, MLBPA, Pope Francis, The Dick Cavett Show, Vietnam Veterans Against The War, WFIU

Your Daily Hot Air

Hey kids, just a few quick hits today because I’m in a hurry.

◆

Union Now!

How cool is it that fast food workers in selected cities are going out on a series of one-day strikes this week?

The Big Mike answer and Official Pencil Policy Statement? Very cool.

NYC McDonald’s Workers On Strike Yesterday

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Ever since Saint Ronald Reagan institutionalized this holy land’s policy of crushing labor unions by decertifying PATCO back in 1981, the labor movement has slid inexorably nearer to irrelevance. Dig: by general acclamation, the single most powerful workers group in the United States is the Major League Baseball Players Association. That is, a group of workers whose entry-level annual base pay is for the 2013 season is $490,000. That comes out to cool $30,625 per two-week pay period for the newest, rawest, and, perhaps, least productive worker in the business. Try to find a currency exchange that’ll cash that check.

But the MLBPA has consistently beaten the major league baseball owners at the bargaining table for the last 40 years. Baseball is the only major pro sports operation that doesn’t have a hard salary cap and big league ballplayers are entitled to the most liberal free agency system in all sports. Oh, and all contracts are guaranteed, meaning if a player is cut by a team, the team still owes him all the money due through the end on his contract. Pretty sweet, eh?

Of course, most things are pretty sweet for the 1% in this great nation.

Pretty Sweet

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Then there’s the poor slob who’s pouring your cup of McDonald’s coffee, maybe even as we speak. He earns minimum wage. Which, as any kindergartner can calculate, is not enough to support a family of one, much less two, three, or more.

The big cheeses at Mickey Ds, Burger King, Wendy’s, and all those other salt-and-fat emporia are wringing their hands and dabbing at their eyes with their Kleenexes [boxes of which they purchased at drug-and-convenience stores that also pay their “valued associates” that same princely minimum wage], trying to convey to us through their subs that their businesses will crumble if they have to pay out a penny more in wages.

Bullshit.

I for one would be more than happy to pay a dollar extra per Big Mac just so’s the single mom flipping the horsemeat over a hot griddle can buy her kid[s] some shoes.

And if you wouldn’t, let me be the first to inform you that you are a jerk.

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The Pipes, The Pipes Are Calling

This needs to be said and I’ll be the first: Annie Corrigan of WFIU carries the best set of pipes in all of Indiana broadcasting.

The Voice Of Bloomington

■

She is the consummate professional and her joyous, dulcet lilt wakes me in the morning like the call of the cardinal.

My only fear is she’ll soon follow the scent of real b-casting money to a larger market, a reward of which she’s more than deserving. Oh, Annie girl…!

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Not So Fast

Pope Frankie made a big splash yesterday by holding an impromptu press conference on the airplane as his entourage high-tailed it out of Brazil.

Idols

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Among other things, the new Vatican princeps said he wasn’t about to judge anyone for being a homosexual and that women ought to play a larger role within the Church.

Now, before we all start throwing huzzahs around, let’s remember it is still the policy of the of the Roman Catholic executive committee that homosexual acts are sins and women shall never be priests.

Here’s my Latin response to the putative groundbreaking pronouncements by the Pontiff: Facta, non verba.*

[* In English, Actions, not words.]

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America Grows Up

Back to coolness. How cool is it that John Kerry is the 68th Secretary of State of the United States of America?

Kerry, The Antiwar Protester

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Honestly! Kerry was one of the faces of the anti-war movement back when this nation was debasing itself and committing crimes against humanity in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1960s and ’70s. In April, 1971, Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the atrocities and general wrongheadedness of our excellent adventure in Southeast Asia. Later, he and other vets marched to the US Capitol and threw their service decorations at the place. At the time, Kerry said, “I’m not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.”

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President Nixon and his gang of gasbags would have thrown a party had Kerry, then one of the leaders of Vietnam Veterans against the War, been run over by a bus. It’s a shocker that one of the rat-fuckers didn’t get that bright idea and try to recruit a down-on-his-luck bus driver to carry out the contract.

And now, Kerry is in charge of US foreign policy. We’ve still got a lot to be ashamed of and apologetic for in America, but we’ve come a long way, baby.

[BTW: Speaking of cool once again, imagine that a national talk show would have a civilized, rational, intellectual debate between representatives of opposing sides of a hot-button issue. The Dick Cavett Show was analogous to, say, today’s Conan or Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. I don’t want to slip into that old Things-were-better-in-my-day routine but, jeez, at least some of TV acknowledged that the average American had an organ in her or his skull.]

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Category Archives: WFIU

Just Folks

McInerney & Bailey

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Lewis Gets His Ship

Lewis Gets His Head Busted

Gun Crazy

The Wild Bunch Goes To College

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Winter’s Winning

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Humans Write

The Mind Of A Leader

Summer Soft

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The Brother With The Grooves

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Schwarber Last August With The Daytona Cubs

Rocket “88”

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Just The Facts, Ma’am

A Monsanto Corn Sprout [photo by Peter Newcomb/Reuters]

Marti Crouch, Surrounded By Green, Naturally

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Cassidy Stay (center) At Her Family’s Funeral

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David Torneo And Adrian Matejka

Torneo (l) & Matejka

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Those Who Can…

From The Movie “Blackboard Jungle”

Hear Charlotte Here

Charlotte Zietlow (Photo: David Snodgress/Herald-Times)

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The Political Asylum

Hasselbeck: Only Lazy Bums Want Paychecks

Park It

Steve Volan

[Personal to Steve: As if you couldn’t have guessed by now, I’ll never stop being a smart-ass.]

Confidence Game

Busted

Twitter Twaddle

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Rainy Night In Georgia

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Another Box

The Proposed Building

[I’d provide a link but the HT has a paywall so you can either trust me or drop 75 cents on a copy of today’s paper.]

Money For Nothin’!

What A Lucky Guy I Am!

[UPDATE: I did a little googling and found out that Ira Curry won big in some regional lottery this past December. Michael Curry must be a relative. How nice of them to think of me.]

Hitting It Big

David Brent Johnson

You Will Speak Correctly

Tough Negotiator

The Money Shot Comment Is At 3:04

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Peace

Douglas MacArthur & Hirohito In September, 1945

All Bloomington, Some Of The Time

◗ Meters. Made.

◗ Evacuate Bloomington!

Will Murphy Destroying Bloomington’s Cultural Institutions

Marked Man