Month: June 2022

Hippie Roommate – Louis Katz

I don’t know why there’s still hippies, anywheres. It’s like the only group that’s still around. Right? You never run to a beatnik. Right? Never see a fucking flapper Charlestoning down the street. Right? When was the last time you saw a raver? Huh? You never see em anymore. You see one you got to hit him with a blow dart, trap him, force him to breed. They’re rare, like pandas. Yet for some reason, still hippies. I had this hippie roommate for a while. Her name was Juggle Sticks…

Juneteenth Celebration – Five Points, Denver – 2022 – Some Pics

Juneteenth celebrates the day African Americans in Texas learned of their freedom two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Celebrated in cities across the country, Denver is home to the Juneteenth Music Festival, a dynamic community event which annually attracts 50,000 people. In 2021, Juneteenth was recognized as a commemorative holiday by Denver City Council.

https://www.juneteenthmusicfestival.com/

Mega Drought in Western US

But bring up the American West’s worst drought in 1,200 years and their reverie turns to head-shaking anxiety and disgust. They may have more water than most — hundreds of miles from fallowing farms in Arizona or browning lawns in Los Angeles — but they know that on the Colorado River system, the massive, unchecked demand for water downstream is threat to everything upstream.

“It takes millions of gallons of water for a golf course,” Tharrett said. “It’s going to reach a point when people have to decide, ‘Do I survive or do I play golf? Should I have a lawn in the desert or pay a $100 for a basket of berries?'”

…

“How long can we do this?” Williams said of the Flaming Gorge releases. “It’s limited to a few years. The rest of it is going to depend on how long do we persist in the drought, and where does our water use go? We’re going to have to learn to live with the water we have, and the use we’ve sustained for the last several decades is going to change.”

The Southwest’s unchecked thirst for Colorado River water could prove devastating upstream

Getting an Abortion in Texas – Travel to New Mexico

Under Texas law, insurers are forbidden to cover abortions unless the woman’s life is at risk. At the New Mexico clinic, the appointment to get a sonogram and obtain the five abortion pills would cost the family seven hundred dollars. And, because the trip was so long—ten or eleven hours by car—they would also have to leave a day early and pay for somewhere to spend the night. The previous month, the father had ransacked his savings to make a five-thousand-dollar down payment on a three-bedroom house—a step up from the decrepit rental where the family had lived for five years. After renting a U-Haul truck for the move, paying utility deposits, and buying pots, pans, and a toaster, all he had left was fifteen hundred dollars—his emergency stash, “something to fall back on,” he said. He felt sick at the thought that he’d now be using that stash to secure a legal abortion for Laura in New Mexico.

The father understood intimately what teen-age parenthood entailed. Laura was born when he was a high-school sophomore. She was, as he always told her, a wanted child. But, after his relationship with Laura’s mother imploded and he found himself raising their daughter and, later, two younger girls, it had taken him a decade, and at times three jobs, to get his family off public assistance. If Laura had a baby, they might find themselves slipping back into the food-stamp life they’d left behind. More than that, though, the pregnancy threatened a particular dream he had for Laura: that she would press through this hard phase of her adolescence childless, and enjoy some of the fun, silliness, and high-school dance parties that he had missed.

One in four girls and women in the United States will, at some point in her life, seek an abortion. Yet, if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which, in 1973, established a woman’s constitutional right to the procedure, the long journeys to oversubscribed clinics that have become a fact of life in Texas will almost certainly become the norm throughout much of the country.

A Texas Teen-Ager’s Abortion Odyssey
The Heartbeat Act is forcing families to journey to oversubscribed clinics in other states—offering a preview of life in post-Roe America.
By Stephania Taladrid

Fake it Till You Make it – Psychiatric Advice

Toward the end of his terrific new philosophical investigation, “Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life,” Eric G. Wilson admits that, as with many of us, learning how to be a good dad was something he had a tough time figuring out. On the cusp of fatherhood he was working too much, and drinking too much — sound familiar? — and battling depression. But he had the good sense and good luck to find an excellent psychiatrist.

“Dr. S. maintained — no, bellowed, for he was a crazy man, not afraid to go to the floor and scream to make a point — that I would never be able to be a good father or husband, or indeed person in general, and never be able to find a jot of joy until I stopped treating my depression as a tyrant determining all my moves. I needed a new narrative.

“ ‘Go home, Eric,’ Dr. S. urged. ‘You’re an English major guy and so should enjoy this; construct a new book of life, a novel in which you as protagonist have power and grace.’ ”

NYTIMES

Review of:
Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life
Eric G. Wilson

See also:
Act Your Way into Right Thinking – The Gospel of relaxation

Rita Hayworth – Anecdote

I visited publicist Tom Miller in Mexico on the set of “The Wrath of God,” Rita Hayworth’s last completed movie, I assume the one on which Mr. Langella had the brief affair with her (not his only affair on the film). One evening we had a nightcap with Rita. (Rita’s idea of a nightcap was a vodka and tonic to which she kept adding vodka to keep the glass filled and flavored. Tom decided thought she was drinking to give herself an excuse for not remembering, for already, as he saw in retrospect, there were signs of encroaching Alzheimer’s.)

Tom staged some of the last glamor shots taken of her , but they were never used because MGM threw the film away. (It wasn’t all that great, but what Ralph Nelson film ever was? But it wasn’t all that bad either. And what with her and Mitchum in their latter years and Frank Langella playing Rita’s son (!), it really deserves a decent video release.)

One night in Mexico City Tom dined out with Rita, and when they got back to her hotel,they discovered the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars being presented in one of the meeting halls. Rita was tuned on. “Let’s go!” Rita said. Tom replied, “Rita, we don’t have an invitation!” She looked at him and said, “But I am Rita Hayworth!” Tom said, “So you are.” He spoke to an attendant at the door, who ran up the MC, who announced to the crowd the presence of a surprise guest. She went up on the stage to a standing ovation. I wish someone would discover footage of that moment.

Theater Talkback: Frank Langella Telling Tales
BY CHARLES ISHERWOOD

From the comments section.

The Freedom of the Surfer

Savvy philosophers distill their core insight into a short phrase. For Adam Smith it was “invisible hand,” for David Hume “confined generosity,” for John Rawls “veil of ignorance.” In James’s book, the fundamental idea is “adaptive attunement.” This is what he takes to be “the essence of surfing.” For someone to be surfing, three conditions must be met: He must be attuned to a shifting phenomenon outside of himself (like a wave); he must be adjusting himself in response to it (adapting), “so as to be carried along by its propulsive forces”; and he must be doing so intentionally and “for its own sake” — that is, because negotiating the world in this manner strikes him as intrinsically valuable. You are surfing if and only if you are adaptively attuned.

By defining surfing in this formal and abstract way, James frees himself to talk not just about surfing waves but also about surfing “in an extended sense”: for example, “surfing” through a cocktail party conversation or down a busy Manhattan sidewalk. Surfers surf when they are in the water, but in other aspects of their lives, too — as can we all, and well we should, James contends. He presents adaptive attunement as a fruitful way to understand how much of the world works, as well as a winning strategy for life.
…
James regrets that Sartre did not get to think about surfing. If he had, he might have been led to a different and, as James sees it, more convincing theory of freedom. Sartre was an “incompatibilist” about free will: He considered freedom to be at odds with the deterministic universe implied by our best physics. (In what sense are you free if you could not have acted otherwise?) But James is a compatibilist: He thinks there is a meaningful sense of “freedom” consistent with being trapped by the laws of nature — indeed, he thinks the surfer-derived notion of adaptive attunement captures that sense.

As the surfer knows, freedom is not a matter of imposing your will, Sartre-like, on the world. That’s a surefire way to wipe out. Freedom, rather, is a matter of transcending your will, and accepting the “exchange,” or two-way relationship, between what you intend to do and what you are constrained to do by the forces around you. You take what the wave gives you. In a deterministic universe, freedom is the sensation, known to the adaptively attuned, of “efficacy without control.” The surfer is right; Sartre is wrong.

‘Surfing With Sartre’: Does Riding a Wave Help Solve Existential Mysteries?
James Ryerson

Review of:
SURFING WITH SARTRE
An Aquatic Inquiry Into a Life of Meaning
By Aaron James

Books from All Fifty States – NPR asked poets laureate, state librarians, bookstore owners

As the summer travel season kicks off, many of us look forward to exploring new places on trips away from home. To help with this, NPR asked poets laureate, state librarians, bookstore owners and other literary luminaries from all 50 states — plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico — to recommend quintessential reads that illuminate where they live.

Here are more than 100 recommendations for you — whether you want to read about somewhere you’re heading, a place you hope to go someday, or somewhere you live and want to get to know better….

The Man Who Came Uptown by George Pelecanos: The latest from George Pelecanos, The Man Who Came Uptown is a crime novel focusing on a man returning to a Washington, D.C., that has changed dramatically during his time in prison. In researching the story, Pelecanos spent time with the D.C. Jail’s librarian to develop one of the main characters in the story, Michael Hudson.
Washington, D.C

New Jersey Noir edited by Joyce Carol Oates: This anthology is a collection of stories from all around New Jersey and is a representation of the richness of experiences with a twist: It’s not all glass skyscrapers and clouds. This anthology gives voice to stories that don’t make polite society, as most of us urban Jersey kids wouldn’t. It’s a thrilling read that brings shadows to life.
New Jersey

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines: The award-winning novel by Ernest J. Gaines focuses on two African American men: Jefferson, who is accused of murder, and Grant, who had gone away for school and returns home to a community struggling to survive. Grant visits Jefferson in prison as he waits to be executed, and the men develop a bond, both eventually learning from the other. Set in a small, segregated Louisiana town in the late 1940s, A Lesson Before Dying is filled with important and timeless themes, including justice, growth, dignity and death.
Louisiana

The Virginian by Owen Wister: For many, Owen Wister’s The Virginian established the myth of the West and Western pulp fiction. Wyoming walks the dichotomy between the myth and our reality: Wyoming turns to the myth for tourism and great stories, but we ultimately find that keeping to the myth holds us back and becomes something that we cannot shake off even today. The Virginian is a great snapshot of Wyoming’s past and present struggle with our relationship to the myth of the West. the myth of the West and Western pulp fiction. Wyoming walks the dichotomy between the myth and our reality: Wyoming turns to the myth for tourism and great stories, but we ultimately find that keeping to the myth holds us back and becomes something that we cannot shake off even today. The Virginian is a great snapshot of Wyoming’s past and present struggle with our relationship to the myth of the West.
Wyoming

See the whole selection here:
Traveling this summer? Here are book picks for all 50 states (and then some)