I started thinking about the Anchorage International Film Festival late this year, so I'm not as organized as I have been in past years.
My sense, from reading the online program, was that there are a lot fewer films, turned out to be correct. Just 75. But the positive spin is that none are shown in conflict, so you can see them all.
Friday night's Turkish film The Last Birds of Passage, was a poignant narrative feature on a Turkish minority group that travels 400 kilometers with its goats and camels to the summer grazing grounds and 400 back. The migration in the film is faced with lots of obstacles - from within the family and from changes in the landscape they have to cross. The filmmaker was there for a charming Q&A by Zoom after the film and is scheduled to be in Anchorage Wednesday.
I haven't figured out how to find a page on the website that shows all the films for one day AND when they are playing. So I've tried to put that altogether here.
But here's the Saturday lineup - all at the Anchorage Museum Auditorium
Saturday
10am Shorts - Kids A Bonanza
Birthday Wish •
Footprints in the Forest •
Rain •
Santa Doesn''t Need Your Help •
Snowflakes •
SPIRIT: A Martian Story •
The Social Chameleon
12pm Big Crow -
"Born in 1974 on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SuAnne had become one of the state’s best basketball players by age 14. By the time of her tragic death in a car accident at age 17, her wisdom, leadership, and determination had made her a household name across the Great Plains. 27 years later, SuAnne’s legacy has proven legendary - everyone you meet on “the Rez” has a story about how SuAnne’s spirit continues to galvanize the Lakota in their fight to reclaim their language and save their culture, embracing what Su called “a better way”. From AIFF website
2pm Shorts - Made in Alaska
Kakiñiit • I talked to the director Patrick Hoffman at the opening. His film is about traditional Alaska Native tattooing.
Sabor Ártico: Latinos En Alaska (Arctic Flavor: Latinos in Alaska) •
Safe Enough
4pm Crows are White - Museum
"For over a thousand years, a secretive Buddhist sect has lived in an isolated monastery in Japan performing acts of extreme physical endurance in their pursuit of enlightenment. In CROWS ARE WHITE, filmmaker Ahsen Nadeem is struggling to reconcile his desires with his faith and sets off to the strict monastery in search of answers. Ahsen is not immediately welcomed and the only monk who will speak with him is an outcast who prefers ice cream and Slayer to meditation. Together they forge an unlikely friendship that leads them to higher truths and occasionally, a little trouble. Shot over five years on three continents, CROWS ARE WHITE is an exploration of truth, faith and love, from the top of a mountain to the bottom of a sundae." From AIFF2022 site.
6pm - SHORTS: Different Kind of Love Stories
Burros •
Honeymoon at Cold Hollow •
Jelly Bean •
Lead/Follow •
Peanut Factory •
Star-Crossed •
The Body is a House of Familiar Rooms • T
oo Rough
8pm You Resemble Me - Museum - This one got strong reviews from people I spoke to.
"Cultural and intergenerational trauma erupt in this story about two sisters on the outskirts of Paris. After the siblings are torn apart, the eldest, Hasna, struggles to find her identity, leading to a choice that shocks the world. Director Dina Amer takes on one of the darkest issues of our time and deconstructs it in an intimate story about family, love, sisterhood, and belonging." From AIFF website.
The Wiz was not high on my todo list. It wasn't even on my todo list. But when invited to accompany my daughter and granddaughter to see the Wiz, I, of course, said yes!
The ferry into Seattle was jammed with Seahawks fans.
We made our way to the Art Museum restaurant for lunch and while eating my daughter got a voice mail saying that the afternoon performance of The wiz wasn't. An hour before the show we learn it was cancelled? That's even more bewildering because looking on line today I find this at the 5th Avenue Theater site:
"Masks will be encouraged but optional for audience members at The 5th for performances of The Wiz. We strongly recommend and encourage the wearing of highly effective masks such as N95, KN95, or KF94. Please CLICK HERE for further details.
Please note, the performances of The Wiz on November 19, 20 and 27 matinee have been canceled."
If the matinee was cancelled last weekend, why didn't they notify us sooner? (I suggested to my daughter that they hadn't sold enough tickets and she responded that they'd been sold out.)
Oh well. Flexibility.
The Pacific Science Center at the site of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair was my granddaughter's immediate alternative destination. That meant a short rail ride to the monorail, then the monorail to the Space Needle.
A walk over to the Science Center and to the laser show.
I was underwhelmed. I expected a laser show in 2022 to be more than lots of moving squiggles and primitive cartoons backed with lame electronic music. (Note: I like good electronic music.)
A bathroom break. This was probably the best surprise of the Science Center. Most surfaces had great sciencish cartoons. Though this one leaves a sexist conclusion that lacks some key context. Did they have this same example in the women's room? (I think you can click on this to enlarge and focus it, but I won't know until it's actually up.)
Then we engaged in various science activities while waiting for a 4pm planetarium show. Some time in my favorite spot - the butterfly garden.
Parts do look like they were built 60 years ago for the World's Fair.
A four o'clock planetarium show was going to get us to a late ferry back to Bainbridge. And we found out that planetarium had an open house, so to speak, where people could drop in and ask questions. So we got to visit various planets and moons. It's been a while since I've considered how amazing and humbling the universe is. All those stars and planets out there that we only have a tiny inkling about.
From there, we wandered over to the Space Needle. It seems the women decided that this was a good opportunity for my granddaughter to go to the top of the Space Needle since both her parents have separate reasons for not taking an elevator 60 stories up in order to look 60 stories down and Grandpa was a perfect escort.
It's been 60 years since I went to the top of the Space Shuttle, when three friends and I drove up to the World's Fair in 1962 in a '32 Model A Ford. My memory of being up there is rather hazy.
But I remember yesterday pretty clearly still. There are three public floors. In the top one you can wander around inside with glass walls, drinks, snacks, photo opportunities, or wander around semi-outside, with large glass walls and benches. The picture above was from that level.
I'd point out that if you find the green ferris wheel you can see one of the ferries to Bainbridge and Bremerton right behind it.
Here's another view of that outside top area of the Space Needle.
Then there is a middle level that didn't seem to have windows, but did have bathrooms.
Finally, the lower level also had windows all around. And it had a ring of floor, sort of like a ring around Saturn, that was glass and slowly rotated. That took some instinct erasing to step on.
Then back on the monorail to the light rail and a walk back to the ferry where we encountered the Seahawks fans once again. You couldn't tell their team had lost. They were loud and chanting - one person shouting "Sea" and the crowd answering "Hawks." There also seemed to be some testosterone at work. Though a women managed to push one of the excited ones back until a security officer took him off somewhere.
And finally, as the ferry left the terminal in downtown Seattle, we could look back up to the Space Needle - that tall tower just left of the center.
A long and busy day with two of my favorite people.
Before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, my dad and I would root for the Hollywood Stars, a Pittsburgh farm team, at Gilmore Field in Los Angeles, near the Pan Pacific and Farmers Market. My dad was a very amateur artist and this picture of Gilmore Field was a birthday present the year the Dodgers moved to LA.
From then on it was the Coliseum to watch the Dodgers, and later Dodger Stadium*. But most times it was Vin Scully over the radio. I knew I enjoyed listening to him call the game. He knew all the players' stats, stories of their personal lives, their training, and lots of other baseball trivia, that he would weave together to make listening to a baseball game on the radio exciting. And there was that voice. He was like a family friend. Many nights I had my radio under the cover to hear the end of the game when it was supposed to be off. And if you went to the game you would hear his voice echoing from transistor radios all around you.
What I didn't know at the time was how special he was. That came over the years as I grew up and moved off. I'd come back and Vin Scully was still doing Dodger play-by-play. And he was at it, it seemed, forever. A part of my history kept alive by that voice calling plays. Even my grandson has heard Vin Scully calling Dodger games live.
So thanks Vin Scully. You enriched my life and millions of others for so many, many years.
My main Scully years were all radio and I tried to find some audio to post here, but here's a complication of Scully calling different games on television. Best I can do for now.
As I'm reading Caste I'm struck by so many things I never saw before. The title quote is probably the most profound. Of course, plantations with slaves were forced labor camps. The workers had no choice of anything - when to work, what work to do, how hard to work. They had no control over their own bodies or their spouses or children. All those decisions were made by their owners. And, of course, they didn't get paid. How come I never thought of that before? But our history books never use that description. Plantations are such genteel places with pretty green lawns, magnolia trees, white columns and mint juleps. But that was all cover up. But Wilkerson rubs off the cosmetics our historians have applied to what happened in the United States.
This is an important book. I'm not yet finished, but I've already been changed. This is one of several posts I expect I'll do on the book. For those who haven't read the book, consider this an appetizer.
I'll start with some quotes from the early part of the book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. After researching and writing a previous book, she decided that focusing on race doesn't capture the extent of the conflict that's usually depicted as a racial conflict in the United States. Race is relevant, but the real issue, she tells us convincingly, is CASTE.
"Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone based on their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy." (p. 70)
The rest of the book defines caste, looks at caste systems in India, the US, and Nazi Germany. Outlines the 'eight pillars of caste' and more. It's a very thorough explanation of how the hierarchy - with white on top and black on the bottom and shades of gray in between - permeates how we think even if our caste system is not explicit like the Hindu one.
In this post I want to look at a few quotes from the beginning and relate them to police treatment of African-Americans.
"The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master," wrote William Goodell, a minister who chronicled the institution of slavery in the 1830s. "What he chooses to inflict upon him, he must suffer. He must never lift a hand in self-defense. He must utter no word of remonstrance. He has no protection and no redress," fewer than the animals of the filed. They were seen as "not capable of being injured, "Goodell wrote. "They may be punished at the discretion of their lord, or even put to death by his authority."
"This fact is of great significance for the understanding of racial conflict," wrote the sociologist Guy B. Johnson, "for it means that white people during the long period of slavery became accustomed to the idea of 'regulating' Negro insolence and insubordination by force with the consent and approval of the law."
The vast majority of African-Americans who lived in this land in the first 246 years of what is now the United States lived under the terror of people who had absolute power over their bodies and their very breath, subject to people who faced no sanction for any atrocity they could conjure.
I think these quotes should help us understand some of the videos we've seen in the last couple of years of police beating and killing Blacks who have done little more than ask questions about why they were being stopped, who have hesitated when told to do something by the police. If you watch many of those videos again, you'll see cops who totally lose it the moment there is any resistance whatsoever by the person they've pulled over. There is little or no tolerance for the slightest disobedience.
"He must never lift a hand in self-defense. He must utter no word of remonstrance. He has no protection and no redress."
That was the rule throughout slavery and very much the rule in the post civil war South. Whites expected blacks to be polite, to get out of the way if they met on the sidewalk, to accept what the whites told them without question. To not even question the change they got from a white cashier.
Studies of why people become police officers show that "social-capital motives (i.e., power and authority, prestige, influence by media & friends)" (from Motivations for Becoming a Police Officer) regularly play an important role.
I would argue that for a number of police the authority of the badge and a gun plays a big role. And for them, respect from suspects - obedience and subservience - is important. And if these people come from families that have historically expected such obedience from Blacks, then their behavior can be better understood.
Just watch this video of how these officers speak and act compared to the black man they have stopped. It's consistent with the expectation that Wikerson says whites had for Blacks during slavery and Jim Crow.
This is a black military officer who has not actually stopped until he's pulled into a gas station nearby so that there would be light and other people around. While the cops seem to be reacting to his not instantly getting out of the car, the suspect is clearly worried he's about to be killed by out of control white cops.
As long as the judge or jury only had the word of the cop versus the word of the suspect (just the word suspect raises questions about the person's truthfulness), officers could pretty much do what they wanted with impunity. The rapid growth of small videos recorders and then phone cams, changed all that. And that's where we are today.
These behaviors and reactions are probably unconscious for most cops. They haven't been aware that they were treating white and black traffic stops differently. Or if they were, they believed that the blacks they were stopping were more of a threat and thus justified being tough or pulling out their guns.
So I urge people to look at the videos - old ones, and ones that will be shown next week and beyond on social media - to see what triggered the cop to become violent. And compare that, if you can, to how cops treat whites.
That's the key connection I wanted to make in this post, but I offer some other quotes from this same section - pages 44 or so to 49, where Wilkerson is trying to demonstrate the extent to which Blacks were considered a subservient class, lesser human beings, than whites.
"What the colonists created was "an extreme form of slavery that had existed nowhere in the world," wrote the legal historian Ariela J. Gross. "For the first time in history, one category of humanity was ruled out of the 'human race' and into a separate sub-group that was to remain enslaved for generations in perpetuity."
"The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium , the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies or loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, soon in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to cover an owner's debt or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them. Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Conventions would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil."
"Before there was a United States of America, there was enslavement. Theirs was a living death passed down for twelve generations."
"The slave is doomed to toil, that others may reap the fruits" is how a letter writer identifying himself as Judge Ruffin testified to what he saw in the Deep South.
"As a window into their exploitation, consider that in 1740, South Carolina, like other slaveholding states, finally decided to limit the workday of enslaved African-Americans to fifteen hours from March to September and to fourteen hours from September to March, double the normal workday for humans who actually get paid for their labor. In that same era, prisoners found guilty of actual crimes were kept t a maximum of ten hours per workday. Let no one say that African-Americans as a group have not worked for our country."
"For the ceaseless exertions of their waking hours, many subsisted on a peck of corn a week, which they had to mill by hand at night after their labors in the field. Some owners denied them even that as punishment and allowed meat for protein only once a year. "They were scarcely permitted to pick up crumbs that fell from their masters' tables," George Whitefield wrote. Stealing food was 'a crime, punished by flogging.'"
"Your slaves, I believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon you ride," Whitefield wrote in an open letter to the colonies of the Chesapeake in 1739. "These after their work is done, are fed and taken proper care of."
"Enslavers bore down on their hostages to extract the most profit , whipping those who fell short of impossible targets, and whipping all the harder those who needed them to wring more from their exhausted bodies."
"Whipping was a gateway for of violence that led to bizarrely creative levels of sadism," wrote the historian Edward Baptist. Enslavers used "every modern method of torture," he observed, from mutilation to waterboarding.
"Slavery made the enslavers among the richest people in the world, granting them "the ability to turn a person into cash at the shortest possible notice." But from the time of enslavement southerners minimized the horrors they inflicted and to which they had grown accustomed. "No one was willing," Baptist wrote, "to admit that they lived in an economy whose bottom gear was torture."
Slavery so perverted the balance of power that it made the degradation of the subordinate case seem normal and righteous. "In the gentlest houses drifted now and then the sound of dragging chains and shackles, the bay of hounds, the report of pistols in the trail of the runaway," wrote the southern writer Wilbur J. Cash. "And as the advertisements of the time incontestably prove, mutilation and the mark of the branding iron."
"The most respected and beneficent of society people oversaw forced labor camps that were politely called plantations, concentrated with hundreds of unprotected prisoners who's crime was that they were born with dark skin. Good and loving mothers and fathers, pillars of their communities, personally inflicted gruesome tortures upon their fellow human beings."
"This is what the United States was for longer than it was not. It is a measure of how long enslavement lasted in the United states that the year 2022 marks the first year that the United States will have been an independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on its soil. No current-day adult will be alive in the year in which African-Americans as a group will have been free for as long as they had been enslaed. That will not come until the year 2111."
"PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Thousands of retired Black professional football players, their families and supporters are demanding an end to the controversial use of “race-norming” to determine which players are eligible for payouts in the NFL’s $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims, a system experts say is discriminatory.
Former Washington running back Ken Jenkins, 60, and his wife Amy Lewis on Friday delivered 50,000 petitions demanding equal treatment for Black players to Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody in Philadelphia, who is overseeing the massive settlement. Former players who suffer dementia or other diagnoses can be eligible for a payout.
Under the settlement, however, the NFL has insisted on using a scoring algorithm on the dementia testing that assumes Black men start with lower cognitive skills. They must therefore score much lower than whites to show enough mental decline to win an award. The practice, which went unnoticed until 2018, has made it harder for Black former players to get awards."
Went for a walk at McHugh Creek Sunday. This was our greeting at the beginning of the trail (to Potter Marsh). That's when I realized that the bear spray was at home. I figured it was better off in the house than in the car during the winter. [Of course, when I say something like that, I have to look it up. There are forums where people talk about bear spray, but not very authoritatively. But from Mace.com:
" Do not store unit in a cold environment under 32 degrees F (0 degrees C). This may cause depressurization and the loss of effective range."]
Never mind, we aren't likely to see a bear.
It's still that in-between-time, not white and not green yet. But lots of light from very early to later and later each night. But it was a gray - not rainy - day and my phone camera was having trouble getting the colors right.
We took the trail going up to the homestead, but by the third long stretch of very muddy trail. Actually, water is using the trail to get down the hill. We decided to go back down and just stay on the trail that goes to Potter Marsh.
If you look closely, there are spots of green where plants are pushing their way up out of the earth.
A surprise was the vibrant green and apparent health of the spruce trees. Lots of trees have been killed by spruce bark beetle in South Central Alaska. But there were good sized young trees that were doing just fine. Or so it seemed. Notice the healthy spruce in some of the other pictures too.
The nasty spines on the devil's club are even more apparent than normal when the plants are still naked.
And during this still leafless period, the odd shaped trees along this trail are apparent.
And there were lots of broken trees leaning in odd angles and piles of broken branch debris. It was about this time that I remembered that our 2021 State parks parking permit was in my wallet and not on the dashboard of the car.
Unlike the first trail, this one has boardwalks when the water gets to be too much.
The picture below is my favorite from yesterday. The lower resolution on here doesn't help. But I just like the texture of the tree covered hill and the various subtle shades of orange to budding green with trunks and branches here and there.
We are almost back to the parking lot.
My windshield was free of notices and I quickly transferred new parking pass from my wallet to the windshield. The view of Turnagain Arm never disappoints, no matter the weather.
Right near McHugh Creek,windsurfers were out.
When we pulled over at Potter Marsh, the photographers were out.
Soon all the straw colored grasses will be bight green.
There was even a pair of swans guarding a nest. I'm still battling my camera when it comes to focusing on distant birds. Eventually I hope to have a truce.
If the conservatives on the Supreme Court have been consistent about anything, it's been in support of big business. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, at the Amy Barrett confirmation hearings, argued that while everyone focused on abortion and LGBT issues before the court, the real impact of packing of the court with conservative judges was to set up a court that unabashedly sided with big business. Whitehouse cited 80 cases that were decided by 5-4 rulings along partisan lines. These cases had four themes important to large corporations:
Unlimited Dark Money - that allows the wealthy and corporations (yes those do overlap) to control legislatures that make the rules and even to get people appointed as head of federal agencies that regulate them. Citizen United is the key decision here, but there are many others
Knock the Civil Jury Down - The powerful can't control civil juries like they can control Congress.
Weaken Regulatory Agencies - particularly pollutors to weaken their independence and strength
Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering - making it harder for citizens to vote for candidates who might vote against big business' interests - Shelby County decision on no factual record against overwhelming support on the other side, that knocked out voter suppression protections and a bunch of states started suppressing the vote. Same on gerrymandering.
*You can see the Whitehouse presentation in the Senate below and I recommend that you listen to it. Whitehouse puts a lot of puzzle pieces together that help us understand the conservative goals of getting Heritage Foundation trained judges onto the court. Here's another Whitehouse report on partisan decisions at the Supreme Court which divides the cases a little differently.
Conservatives Question NCAA Lawyers
So I was surprised to see that in the Supreme Court case National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston**, the conservative judges were asking the NCAA lawyers some tough questions. After all this is about a large monopolistic organization exploiting student athletes for big money. It would seem a natural for the Supreme Court's conservatives to be protecting the NCAA. But no. From the LA Times:
"Justice Clarence Thomas said it was “odd” that the salaries of college coaches have “ballooned,” but that did not destroy the aura of amateur competition between colleges and universities.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the case showed “colleges with powerhouse football and basketball programs are really exploiting the students that they recruit.” Most athletes work very hard on their sports, have little time for studies and often do not graduate. “They are recruited, used and cast aside,” he said.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he, too, was concerned about the “exploitation of athletes.” This looks like a system “where schools are conspiring with their competitors to pay their workers nothing,” he said, likening the situation to a classic antitrust violation in the business world."
But on further consideration, the NCAA is not exactly a for-profit corporation like Pepsi. On its home page it tells us:
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a membership-driven organization dedicated to safeguarding the well-being of student-athletes and equipping them with the skills to succeed on the playing field, in the classroom and throughout life.
We support learning through sports by integrating athletics and higher education to enrich the college experience of student-athletes. NCAA members – mostly colleges and universities, but also conferences and affiliated groups – work together to create the framework of rules for fair and safe competition.
Those rules are administered by NCAA national office staff, which also organizes national championships and provides other resources to support student-athletes and the schools they attend. The NCAA membership and national office work together to help nearly half a million student-athletes develop their leadership, confidence, discipline and teamwork through college sports.
I've left the link to the Core Values there, because it goes to a page that doesn't really mention core values other than being dedicated to to "the well-being and life-long success of student athletes." Most of it is about who all the members are.
Also, notice that their sole emphasis is on the welfare of student athletes. Absolutely no mention of money.
So Why Are The Conservatives Asking the NCAA Hard Questions
The NCAA generated close to a billion dollars just from the NCAA basketball playoffs. They claim that most of that goes to the colleges and universities From CBS Sports:
"The NCAA Tournament remains the lifeblood of the association's 1,268 members. It is the primary source of the NCAA's income. That $800 million in annual tournament revenue is 72% of the NCAA's $1.1 billion annual total. Last year, $600 million of that $800 million was scheduled to flow back to the schools.
That revenue fills athletic department coffers, provides operating capital for conference offices and provides funds directly to athletes in need."
But does this money help support universities or even cover the costs of college sports? Best Colleges says no.
"By any measure, college sports are a big business — but that doesn't mean universities are getting rich off athletics. The reality is that most sports programs operate in the red. If the time comes when colleges have to pay athletes to participate, then the financial picture will change even more dramatically."
Some of the largest college sports programs, the ones that get the most back from the NCAA - see the Best Colleges link above for the top 20 and how much they make - might make a profit. Or maybe not. It's not clear. My quick search for information on this leads me to believe that most of the stories are based on information from the NCAA. I didn't find any in-depth independent studies. But I also didn't look too hard.
So maybe my hypothesis about the conservatives on the Supreme Court is wrong. Maybe they're big sports fans and so they have more empathy for college athletes than they do for average employees. Maybe they see the NCAA not as a corporation (it isn't one) but as a cooperative of universities. Then my hypothesis may be right. Or maybe they think the universities make more money from sports than they actually do. That sports help pay for political science programs and affirmative action scholarships.
Just raising a possibility. I really don't know what paying college athletes would mean. The biggest winners, probably, would be the majority of college athletes who will never go on to be highly paid professional players.
But it's clear that monopolies concentrate power and concentrated power attracts those who want power. Breaking things up will bring change and quite probably good change. When they broke up ATT in 1984, we got a revolution in telephone technology. (I bet some readers don't even know about ATT being a giant phone monopoly that merely leased black dial up phones to every home.)
And if the Supreme Court finds this monopoly problematic, maybe they'll have to take a fresh look at other concentrations of power. That would be the best consequence.
* Here's the video of Sen. Whitehouse at the Barrett hearings. He really does a great job of bringing together a number of threads.
One more hero in my life moves on. The picture below was taken two and a half years before I'd enter UCLA as a freshman. The legacy of Johnson and C.K. Yang and their great sportsmanship (Is there a non-sexist term?) was one of many attractions UCLA held. At that time, California students who graduated in the top 12.5% of their high school class, were automatically admitted. Tuition my first semester was something like $68. And we lived a 30 minute bike ride from campus so my parents were pleased they wouldn't have to pay room and board.
The Photo Description: "Rafer Johnson puts on a weightlifting demonstration for Boy Scouts at UCLA in July 1960 as his track teammate C.K. Yang kneels and smiles. A little more than a month later, Johnson would edge Yang for the decathlon gold medal at the Rome Olympics."
‘Greatest of all Bruins,’ Johnson remained a regular at many events.
By Ben Bolch
Sixty years after he edged a UCLA training partner on weary legs in one of the most dramatic finishes in Olympic history, Rafer Johnson ’s presence continued to blaze on campus like an inextinguishable flame.
He was a regular at track meets and basketball games and gymnastics meets even as his health declined, always graciously accepting requests to pose for photos with anyone who asked. He was also a confidant to longtime athletic director Dan Guerrero, serving as a special advisor who offered wisdom and guidance that no pricey consultant could match.
Johnson’s legacy as a decathlon champion and humanitarian, not to mention his trusted friendship, made it especially meaningful for Guerrero to be part of dedicating the Betsy and Rafer Johnson Track last year at UCLA’s Drake Stadium.
“It’s not a stretch for me to say that Rafer was the greatest of all Bruins,” Guerrero said Wednesday upon learning of Johnson’s death at his home in Sherman Oaks at age 86.
“When you think about it, apart from his athletic prowess, which placed him in history among the most heralded of all athletes, he passionately and selflessly and humbly dedicated his life to better people and our society whether it was through his work with Special Olympics, mentoring young students or his commitment to civil rights. He was a giant, there was no question about that, and while this description is probably thrown around rather capriciously, in this case it’s true. . ."
I follow Kimani Okearah @theKimansta on Twitter. He's a photographer for the Sacramento Kings. Well, that's not exactly right. He's a photographer for Vox News and he covers the Kings for them. I follow a number of folks who experience life differently than I do just to keep tabs on worlds I don't know well. Mostly there's basketball in his Tweets, but also stuff on race, and health, and things I'm not really sure what they are about. But there's something sweet and decent about him. I've grown to like him.
It turns out one thing we have in common is an interest in film. He's working on a documentary. It's called 30 Year Memoirs of a Crack Baby.He's the crack baby and he has, among other congenital health issues, a seriously problematic large intestine.
But as I read the title I wondered, why is it memoirs instead of memoir? So I googled.
[UPDATE 8/15/19: Kathy in KY commented that the boxes for Memoir and Autobiography had the same texts. (I've corrected that.) But then that leaves this post without a distinction between memoir and memoirs. So here's one from the blog Memoir Mind that seems to make sense:
"Writing about one's whole life is writing one's memoirs, plural. It's more akin to autobiography, in which you tell all about what happened, often with intense detail, the personal version of the kind of research a biographer would do if they were writing a life about you. Memoirs tend to be more informal than autobiography, but still have that life-encompassing feel. Most of the people who write them are well-known - that's how and why others would buy an entire book about their entire life, or multiple books about their entire life. Memoir, on the other hand, the currently hot trend in writing and the topic of this blog, is focused on a particular time in one's life, or a theme or thread."
And, back to the original post, below is the bigger picture with the corrected illustration.]
Kimani is asking for a lot of money on GoFundMe, but films cost a lot to make. He's an expert on the topic. And since it's a memoirs, it will be a "1st person POV" and less "formal and objective" than a memoir. [And since it's a memoirs, it will be about his whole life, not just one time, theme, or thread.]
I'd urge you to go to his GoFundMe page. Read it. And if you weren't born to crack addicts and taken from your parents at 6 months and put into foster home and kicked out of that home as soon as you turned 18, you're probably had a lot more 'privileges' than Kimani has had. So you could share some of your privilege by checking out his site.
And making a donation. It doesn't have to be a lot. $5 would do, but if you're going to go to all the trouble, you might consider making a larger contribution.
He hasn't had a contribution for a couple of days. I think it's because people would rather look away. But please, overcome that urge, and give him five minutes. And when the movie is showing (at the Anchorage International Film Festival I hope), you'll know that you helped make it possible.
I'm not putting up his picture. I want you to imagine what he looks like. And then go check how well you conjured up his image. I'm going to check how many people linked from this page to his GoFundMe page. Yes, I can do that (and so all other websites.)
There seem to be fewer notable people born in 1919. World War I had ended in November1918. There had been a big influenza epidemic in 1918 as well. Births dropped significantly in 1919.
Someone born in 1919 would be ten when the stock market crashed, spend their adolescence during the depression, and start their twenties as WW II broke out. Maybe that explains why there are fewer notables compared to other years.
I've only picked out a few folks born in 1919. What has struck me since I first started doing "famous people born" posts, is thinking about a group of people who would have been in the same school year had they all lived in the same neighborhood. So try to imagine these people being classmates together at some school. Did any of these people know each other? Ever meet?
I've put them in order of when they were born in 1919 from the oldest (at least at birth) to the youngest. It's also sobering to see how some lived much shorter lives than others.
"American writer known for his widely read novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Following his early success publishing short stories and The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger led a very private life for more than a half-century. He published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980."
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They’re quitee touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They’re nice and all - I’m not saying that - but they’re also touchy as hell. Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goodam autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out and take it easy. I mean that’s all I told D.B. about, and he’s my brother and all. He’s in Hollywood. That isn’t too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. He’s going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He’s got a lot of dough, now. He didn’t use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was «‘The Secret Goldfish.’ It was about this little kid that wouldn’t let anybody look at his goldfish because he’d bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me."
"The first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era.[2] Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, they heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s.[3] Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.[4]"
"Born in Budapest, Eva aspired to acting from the age of 4. She began studying at 15, but her parents thought acting was too vulgar a profession and forced her to withdraw. Two years later, the 5-foot-2-inch beauty met a Swedish-born Hollywood physician at a party. They married in 1939 and moved to California. , ,
Described as the most down-to-earth of the Gabor sisters, Eva nevertheless had a lot in common with her many-times-married siblings, Zsa Zsa and Magda. Eva, who married and divorced at least four times, was said to have coined the phrase, "Marriage is too interesting an experiment to be tried only once or twice."
They were all entertainers. And they all possessed the unmistakably breezy Gabor style. When introduced to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Eva Gabor greeted him in her trademark Hungarian accent: 'Hello, Mr. President, darling.'"
" For a mild-mannered man whose music was always easy on the ear, Nat King Cole managed to be a figure of considerable controversy during his 30 years as a professional musician. From the late '40s to the mid-'60s, he was a massively successful pop singer who ranked with such contemporaries as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Dean Martin. He shared with those peers a career that encompassed hit records, international touring, radio and television shows, and appearances in films. But unlike them, he had not emerged from a background as a band singer in the swing era. Instead, he had spent a decade as a celebrated jazz pianist, leading his own small group."
"Madalyn Murray O'Hair (née Mays; )[1] was an American activist supporting atheism and separation of church and state. In 1963 she founded American Atheists and served as its president to 1986, after which her son Jon Garth Murray succeeded her. She created the first issues of American Atheist Magazine.
O'Hair is best known for the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, which challenged the policy of mandatory prayers and Bible reading in Baltimore public schools, in which she named her first son William J. Murray as plaintiff. Consolidated with Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), it was heard by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that official Bible-reading in American public schools was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court had prohibited officially sponsored prayer in schools in Engel v. Vitale (1962) on similar grounds. Through American Atheists, O'Hair filed numerous other suits on issues of separation of church and state."
Pete Seeger May 3, 1919 - January 27, 2014 (94)
In 1938, he settled in New York City and eventually met Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, Aunt Molly Jackson, Lead Belly, and others. The quality of music coming from this group immediately captured his attention. He assisted Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress’ Archive of Folk Song and was exposed to a wonderful array of traditional American music. Many in this group of musicians eventually formed the Almanac Singers in 1940. In addition to Pete, the group included Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax, Sis Cunningham, Mill Lampell, Arthur Stern, and others. They lived in a communal home, “The Almanac House,” in New York. The group performed for gatherings, picket lines, and any place where they could lend their voices in support of the social causes they believed in. Later, after World War II, many of the same people became involved in the musical organizations People’s Songs and People’s Artists.
His best-known songs include "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (with Joe Hickerson), "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), and "Turn! Turn! Turn!"
Liberace May 16, 1919 - February 4, 1987 ( 67)
American pianist, singer and actor.[2] A child prodigy and the son of Polish and Italian immigrants, Liberace enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world,[3] with established concert residencies in Las Vegas, and an international touring schedule. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage, acquiring the nickname "Mr. Showmanship".
Dame Margot Fonteyn, DBE (18 May 1919 – 21 February 1991), stage name of Margaret Evelyn de Arias, was an English ballerina. She spent her entire career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet (formerly the Sadler's Wells Theater Company), eventually being appointed prima ballerina assoluta of the company by Queen Elizabeth II. Beginning ballet lessons at the age of four, she studied in England and China, where her father was transferred for his work. Her training in Shanghai was with George Goncharov, contributing to her continuing interest in Russian ballet. Returning to London at the age of 14, she was invited to join the Vic-Wells Ballet School by Ninette de Valois. She succeeded Alicia Markova as prima ballerina of the company in 1935. The Vic-Wells choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, wrote numerous parts for Fonteyn and her partner, Robert Helpmann, with whom she danced from the 1930s to the 1940s.
Best-known internationally as the first man to climb Mt. Everest in May 1953 with Tenzing Norgay, for the last 50 years he has devoted himself to environmental and humanitarian efforts that have made a profound difference to communities in Nepal where his famous summiting was achieved.
American politician and the 45th Governor of Alabama, a position he occupied for four terms, during which he promoted "low-grade industrial development, low taxes, and trade schools".[1] He sought the United States presidency as a Democrat three times, and once as an American Independent Party candidate, unsuccessfully each time. He is best remembered for his staunch segregationist and populist views.[2][3][4] Wallace famously opposed desegregation and supported the policies of "Jim Crow" during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 Inaugural Address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".[5]
I'm offering this video, because I was at this talk. (The actual date is January 10,1964) I came early to be sure to get a seat. The first several rows were already filled with black students. Wallace was known as the racist governor of Alabama who opposed integration. UCLA was a relatively liberal California college. It was going to be tense. But Wallace used charm and humor to win over the audience quickly - even the front few rows. We didn't agree with him, but laughter created a human connection. It was an important lesson for me about preconceptions, my notions about evil people, and how people who violently disagree on fundamental issues, nevertheless can communicate. It also helped me understand why Alabamans voted for him. I absolutely do not endorse most of the comments under this video on Youtube.
He slid down banisters, dated movie stars and wore a red rose in his lapel. Pierre Elliott Trudeau is arguably the most charismatic prime minister in Canada's history. But he was more than just charisma - Trudeau helped shape Canada with his vision of a unified, bilingual, multicultural "just society." Throughout his 16 years as prime minister, he faced some heavy criticism. But when Trudeau died on Sept. 28, 2000, the nation mourned the man who, in the words of one biographer, "haunts us still."
He was also the father of Canada's current prime minister.
Doris Lessing's body of work comprises around 50 books and spans several genres. Her writing is characterized by penetrating studies of living conditions in the 20th century, behavioral patterns, and historical developments. Her most experimental novel, 'The Golden Notebook', from 1962, is a study of a woman's psyche and life situation, the lot of writers, sexuality, political ideas, and everyday life. Some of Doris Lessing's books reach into the future. Among other things, she portrays our civilization's final hour from the perspective of an extraterrestrial observer.
"Anna meets her friend Molly in the summer of 1957 after a separation
THE two women were alone in the London flat. 'The point is,' said Anna, as her friend came back from the telephone on the landing, 'the point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracking up.'
Molly was a woman much on the telephone. When it rang she had just enquired: 'Well, what's the gossip?' Now she said, 'That's Richard, and he's coming over. It seems today's his only free moment for the next month. Or so he insists.'
'Well I'm not leaving,' said Anna.
'No, you stay just where you are.'
Molly considered her own appearance-she was wearing trousers and a sweater, both the worse for wear. 'He'll have to take me as I come,' she concluded, and sat down by the window. 'He wouldn't say what it's about-another crisis with Marion, I suppose.'
'Didn't he write to you?' asked Anna, cautious.
'Both he and Marion wrote-ever such bonhomous letters. Odd, isn't it?'
This odd, isn't it? was the characteristic note of the intimate conversations they designated gossip. But having struck the note, Molly swerved off with: 'It's no use talking now, because he's coming right over, he says.'
'He'll probably go when he sees me here,' said Anna, cheerfully, but slightly aggressive. Molly glanced at her, keenly, and said: 'Oh, but why?'
It had always been understood that Anna and Richard disliked each other; and before Anna had always left when Richard was expected. Now Molly said: 'Actually I think he rather likes you, in his heart of hearts. The point is, he's committed to liking me, on principle-he's such a fool he's always got to either like or dislike someone, so all the dislike he won't admit he has for me gets pushed off on to you.'"
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-80), king of Iran (1941-1979), was born in Tehran on October 26, 1919, the eldest son of Reza Shah. He completed his primary school in Switzerland. He returned to Iran in 1935, and enrolled in a Tehran military school, from which he graduated in 1938.. . .
He replaced his father, Reza Shah, on the throne on September 16, 1941, shortly before his 22nd birthday. He continued the reform policies of his father, but a contest for control of the government soon erupted between the shah and an older professional politician, the nationalistic Mohammad Mosaddeq. . .
By the mid-1970s the Shah reigned amidst widespread discontent caused by the continuing repressiveness of his regime, socioeconomic changes that benefited some classes at the expense of others, and the increasing gap between the ruling elite and the disaffected populace. Islamic leaders, particularly the exiled cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, were able to focus this discontent with a populist ideology tied to Islamic principles and calls for the overthrow of the shah. The Shah's government collapsed following widespread uprisings in 1978 -1979 and consequently an Islamic Republic succeeded his regime.
Russian soldier, best known as AK-47 inventor. a Russian general, inventor, military engineer and small arms designer. He is most famous for developing the AK-47 assault rifle and its improvements, the AKM and AK-74, as well as the PK machine gun and RPK light machine gun.
