Donald's Blog
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This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison,
Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the
winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were
AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there. |
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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever,
and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything
that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool
of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the
site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc.
to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.
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July 20, 2012A media snippetYesterday I was heard on a radio station talking about Billie Holiday (yet again). Yesterday was the anniversary of her death, and next Thursday is the anniversary of the death of Amy Winehouse, the highly regarded British blues/ torch singer, so this talk station was making a connection. The day before yesterday they emailed me wanting to interview me that day, which has never happened before. So I emailed back my telephone number, and it was done over a cellphone. The presenter had specific questions ready, and I enjoy being interviewed and I'm good at talking, so it went well. And when I listened yesterday afternoon (the spot less than 15 minutes long, streamed on the computer) they used me well. They had interview clips from Wynton Marsalis (from the Ken Burns TV series about jazz) and they had found an interview with John Levy, a marvelous gentleman who had been Holiday's bassist around 1950, and who just passed away recently. But they used more of me than of anybody, they mentioned my book prominently, and they even allowed me to sum up Holiday at the end, making me a real expert. So I don't want to complain too much.
But there were problems. There always are.
There has never been any doubt about her birth date, not during her lifetime or since. Her birthplace was always listed as Baltimore, where she grew up, and her birth name was always Fagan, that of her grandfather. Stuart Nicholson and I independently discovered her birth certificate back around 1995, establishing that she was born in Philadelphia, because that's where her mother was at the time, and that the name on the birth certificate was her mother's name: Harris. So here is what the presenter said yesterday:
She was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia in 1915. Or maybe 1912; nobody knows for sure...
They got the name of the club wrong where she was discovered by John Hammond. And they pointed out that the name of her manager/boyfriend around 1950 was "coincidentally" Joe Levy. In fact the coincidence was that the names were the same: John Levy the musician who later went into artist management had to keep explaining that he was not John Levy the small-time gangster who beat up girl singers and stole their money.
How do these things happen? How did they get the city right but not the name? Who told them there was doubt about the year of birth? Where did they get Joe Levy? Who makes up this stuff?
A lot of people listen to talk stations, which evidently have to put together programs on the fly, depending on a gift of gab to get them through. So they end up perpetuating misinformation, and I guess that's just the way it is.
July 20, 2012Bad joke
My favorite beer nowadays is a delicious Sky Saison, made in Pennsylvania, in a 750 ml bottle with a cork in it, the cork wired up like champagne: I can't get anybody to explain it to me, but this format is the only one in which the product tastes like it's straight from the keg. The problem is it's absurdly expensive, whereas Bud Lite costs about 25 cents a truckload. Tap water is even cheaper.
July 20, 2012Corporations are people?Readers' reactions to Jack and Suzy Welch's article in the Wall Street Journal (July 16):
Name all the corporations that signed the Declaration of Independence. Which corporations had a part in the drafting of the Constitution? Which section of Arlington National Cemetery has the graves of corporations killed in battle?
--West Springfield, Mass.
People have certain inalienable rights. Corporations don't.
--Fairview, Texas
People who say corporations are not people don't hate corporations. They simply understand the difference.
--Greenwich, Conn.
The Welches are confused. People go to the trouble and cost of incorporating precisely to become distinct from mere persons. Incorporating secures financial and legal status unavailable to unincorporated citizens.
--New York
I agree with the adage: "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one."
Iowa City, Iowa
July 20, 2012A transport pipe dream, and a new realityA big article in the paper on Wednesday by Clifford Winston, a senior fellow in economic studies, believe it or not. called "Paving the Way for Driverless Cars". Here's a strapline: "Instead of focusing on an enormously expensive high-speed rail system, government should promote modern highway design for cars of the future."
The car is operated by a computer that obtains information 10 times per second from short-range transmitters on surrounding road conditions, including where other cars are and what they are doing.
And so on, for many paragraphs. You'll be able to text safely while you ride. Just like on a train. You'll be much safer. Until the computer crashes.
Yes, Americans have been fascinated by the car for a century. What they have been fascinated by is driving their own cars. They won't want to ride in bullets. We can't afford to restore the railway system that once made us a great nation, bringing it up to date, safer and faster (the freight business is already doing it as we speak), but we should re-engineer and rebuild the Interstate and all our main state and local thoroughfares with narrow lanes for slotcars? How much would that cost?
What is this, the Boy's Own Paper? SInce when is the Wall Street Journal in favor of the government promoting anything?
Meanwhile, my old school friend Fritz Plous has been keeping tabs on changing times. More and more young people might actually prefer trains. He writes:
Annual Vehicle Miles Traveled by young people continues to drop. In 1995 they accounted for 20.8% of all VMT. By 2009 that was down to 13.7%. Getting a driver’s license no longer is an obligatory right of passage for American youngsters. In 1978 nearly half of all U.S. 16-year-olds had a driver’s license. In 2008 only 30% did. My 22-year-old daughter does not know how to drive a car and does not consider the issue urgent.
A major reason for this change is personal digital technology. Young people expect to have it with them and use it at all times, and they know they cannot do it while driving a car. This has led to another very serious (and still not well understood) tectonic shift in the culture: The latest generation of American young people is not interested in using cars as status symbols. That role goes to personal electronics now. Among the Millennials it’s perfectly okay to drive a junker but don’t you dare be caught with last year’s music player or smart phone. I’m fairly familiar with my 27-year-old daughter’s circle, asnd they’re not green anti-car fanatics. They all own cars, but they don’t treat them as sacred the way our parents and grandparents did. They’re just transportation. (Same with watches. Young people don’t wear them because every electronic device is now a watch—a development which has the watch manufacturers VERY scared...)
Some of this stuff is starting to be discussed. Advertising Age had a good article on it in the May 10, 2010 edition. And Prof. Joe Schwieterman, who runs the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, has for the last three years been sending out his grad students to survey on-board personal-electronics usage aboard Amtrak trains, commuter trains, curbside buses (like Megabus, Peter Pan, etc.) and Southwest Airlines. Each year the number of passengers using electronics rises, with the largest usage aboard Amtrak...
I believe it’s electronics, even more than the cost of driving, which accounts for the continuing steep ridership increases on Amtrak (which I have seen with my own eyes out here in the Midwest—whole trains full of young people using devices). One of Joe’s studies showed that on a typical Amtrak corridor train in the Midwest over 50% of the passengers were using electronics at any given time and over the course of the whole trip 80% did so.
As usual, times are changing in ways that no one will notice until the polar ice caps are gone and New York is under water.