What's The Difference Between a Memoirs and a Memoir? And an Autobiography? But That's Just The Hook. There's Also Kimani. [Updated]

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.]

The Author Learning Center explains the difference between a memoir, autobiography, and a biography.    And if you look closely in their summary of a memoir, the second bullet offers a brief note on the difference.

Text comes from The Author Learning Center 

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.)

Tomás Is Loose In Kentucky

My Spanish friend Tomás is in his first few days in Kentucky.  He's a wicked artist, particularly when he's doing caricatures.

We met in 2010 when he left a comment on this post about Exit Glacier and we connected before he and his family returned to Spain. Here's a post with pictures of Tómas and his family and his great kids book Salfón:  El limpiodor de tejados.

His wife will be teaching science (I think)  in a Spanish language high school program in Lexington.  And I'm sure Tómas will be drawing.  In fact he sent me his first US drawing.

I did mention that while he is visiting in Kentucky, he would surely be drawing McConnell.  Let's see how his take on the senior Senator from Kentucky evolves over the year.

Meanwhile I picked up a second book on Peron at the library today - Perón and the enigmas of Argentina by Robert D. Crassweller. This one starts out trying to capture who Perón was by looking at the many long term cultural influences.  One of them is "the heritage of Castille" which he traces to 1492 when the Moors left and the Reconquest.

"That long and arduous crusade had deeply marked the Castilian character and personality.  Society was pastoral and had lived by war for centuries, disdaining lesser and demeaning pursuits such as commerce.  A powerful and authoritarian state emerged, energized by effective government.  The parliament of Castile, the Cortes, lacked the power of the purse and soon languished.  Royal power, resolutely exercised, curtailed any political role for the aristocracy, which contented itself with social privilege, and there was no significant challenge from below.
Freedom in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the world was not a product of these tendencies, but that implies neither tyranny nor misrule  All the monarchs of the age were popular and intuitively sensitive to public moods and aspirations.  Thus royal authority was willingly accepted and viewed as consistent with freedom and liberty.  Absolutism, tied to religious values, was not seen as tyranny, since individual rights and dignity were protected." (pp. 24-25)

I'm just quoting, not saying it's accurate.  It's certainly simplistic, as a short synopsis like this must be.  After all, the subjects of the religious persecution - non-Catholics, particularly Jews - didn't have their rights and dignity protected and probably would disagree.

What I found particularly interesting was a description of the Spanish state and church ruled a much different culture than that in northern Europe.

"The State had never known feudalism in the the northern European sense of a system with centers of politics power apart from, and often in opposition to, the royal authority.  There had been no Magna Carta inSpain, no warlike barons jealously and successfully protecting their local powers, no system of courts enforcing laws that did not originate with the king's justice.  The Church was the Church of the Counter-Reformation, necessarily broad and pluralistic in many respects, a palace of many chambers, but nowhere in it had there been any experience in sharing of the power that was tightly consolidated in the successors of St. Peter.
Thus neither Crown nor Church could contribute to the traditions, the techniques, and the psychological attitudes that are essential for adjusting successfully the claims of competing power centers in a society containing many such.  The arts of compromise and conciliation, and the habits of mind necessary for their appreciation, were dormant and underdeveloped."(25-26)

 Again, I can't judge how accurate this is, but it seems appropriate to do a little Spanish history as I welcome Tómas and his wife to the US.  But let me do a little more.  So far he's talking about what the Spanish heritage Perón would eventually inherit didn't do well, but he goes on to talk about what it did well. He does a paragraph about the philosophy and political thought coming from Aquinas, Aristotle, and Renaissance Scholasticism, not from the social contract theory of Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes.

"Rather, it was  a powerful stimulus to an organic theory of life and of the State, a theory of natural harmony in which every human and every institution had a purpose, a station, ordained and secure.  And it was also a powerful support for the prevailing Mediterranean and Iberian corporatism, defined in the broad sense of a 'sociopolitical organization that is  . . hierarchical, elitist, authoritarian, bureaucratic, Catholic, patrimonialist . . ."
"Castilian society exalted courage and honor and defined them in an exclusive and stringent code as ideals appropriate for the man of rank, the gentleman, the hidalgo.  For such a man and such an ideal ". . . work did not redeem and had no value in itself.  Manual work was servile.  There was little or no interest in science and its fluid experimentation, or in technology and technique in general, or in any kind of economic activity.  The superior man neither worked nor traded:  he made war, he commanded, he legislated.  He also thought, contemplated, loved, wooed, and enjoyed himself.  Leisure was noble." (26)

While it may seem I've taken quite a bit from Crassweller, he would probably say I left out the most important parts.  And this is only one of the cultural heritages he's telling us we need to understand if we are going to get a good sense of Perón.  Another will be the creole heritage.  I like the idea of going back like this to find influences on Perón, but I also realize it's a risky act.  Is he going back and finding things in Spanish culture that manifest themselves in Perón, leaving out much that is not 'Perón"?  I can't judge.  Maybe Tómas will be the best evaluator of this cut and paste Spanish heritage.


[Kathy, for some reason my brain says you're in Louisville, which isn't that far, but not that close either.  Am I right?]

"Trump is a klutz, a bully and a liar. But he's no white supremacist"

That's the headline on Paul Jenkins' column in the ADN today.   Headlines are written by editors, but he does in fact say that in his column, though not in one sentence that succinctly.

But after calling the president a liar, he excoriates Democrats for 'stretching the truth' about saying Trump is a white supremacist by parsing the president's words and the context of this post Charlottesville comments about there being good people on both sides.

I don't have all that in front of me, but even if he is right about what Trump exactly said and meant, there are still some problems:

1.  All the other actions and words of the president that support the idea that he's a white supremacist.

2.  His praise (that he's not a white supremacist) comes after acknowledging he's a 'klutz, bully, and liar."  And he also acknowledges

"He says things that unnecessarily tarnish the presidency and embarrass this country.  He runs with his filters turned off and he often is insulting, combative, denigrating to women, Muslims, and Hispanics."

The only saving grace, he tells us, is that Trump was better than the other candidate.  If he really means that, then impeachment would allow a replacement that wouldn't be Hillary Clinton.

I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland reading this.  He even quotes Goebbels

"If you tell a lie beg enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it"

But that's about the Democrats' "big lie" about calling Trump a white supremacist.  Not about all the repeated big lies he acknowledges that come from his president.

What is the point of this column?  Some possibilities:

1. It's Sunday and he owes one to the ADN and he has nothing to say.
2. It's a secret signal to say that the Republicans are morally bankrupt, without actually saying it.
3. It's fodder for the MAGA crowd, but if that's the case, why not embrace white supremacy instead of implying it's not a good thing?
4. It's there to piss off liberals, just because the ADN gives him a weekly column.  

Which raises the question:  Why doesn't the ADN have a policy that excludes personal attacks and requires regular columnists to stick to actual, rational discussions of policy?

If anyone needs to see the whole thing, it's here.

Learning From History - Juan Perón

We've all heard, in one form or another, George Santana's warning "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But figuring out what the lessons are isn't easy.  People interpret the past differently.  They take in some factors, but not others.  People applied a lesson of post World War II - how Russia took over various countries and made them part of the communist bloc  - to support the US going to war in Vietnam, which was supposed to stop the fall of SE Asian countries, like dominoes, to the communists.  It was the wrong lesson.

After spending a month in Argentina and learning a little about the history of the country, I decided to get some books on Juan Peron to learn more.  I'm just starting the first one - a series of articles about different aspects of Peron and his government.

But which lessons should one take away?  Chapter 2, "Evita and Peronism" begins

"Few political figures in the history of Argentina have aroused as much violent hatred or passionate love as Eva Perón.  To her followers, she was Evita, a selfless woman who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of workers, destitute women, and needy children .  . .To her enemies, however, she only an ambitious actress, a trollop who rose to the top by using countless men, a hypocrite interested in money, jewels, and luxurious clothes . . ."  

Juan Peron was, in the words of Frederick C. Turner,

"far more than the most important leader of Argentina in the twentieth century.  In many ways, he was a prototypical figure of this century.  His ideals were far grander than his lasting achievements;  he sincerely wanted to improve the welfare of the least privileged members of his society.  Yet, despite distrubitionist policies that made the poor unswervingly loyal to him, his economic initiatives spurred inflation and undercut the economic growth that might have been the surest aid to the lower classes in the long run."

We can argue whether he was a good man or not, or whether he was a good president or not, or whether his policies made Argentina a better country.  But what is clear is that he was a larger than life figure who apparently had the best of intentions, but even his supporters acknowledge that he didn't really succeed in improving the long term outcomes in Argentina.

There are parts that I can relate to immediately because of the trip.  Like this sentence:

"The descamisados (the shirtless ones) would gather in the Plaza de Mayo and Perón, the leader, would address them from a balcony of the Casa Rosada."

We went to the Plaza de Mayo on our second outing in Buenos Aires, when it was raining quite a bit.

Here's the Casa Rosado and the balcony from which he spoke is probably on the picture. The first time was 1945.  There were various factions.  He had been the Minister of Labor, but when one president was replaced he had been arrested.  But not for long (5 days) and the labor unions he had worked for marched to the Plaza de Mayo for his release.  And he got out and addressed them.  It was 17 de Octobre and that's still and important day.  There's even a street with that name.

This is the Pirámide de Mayo in the center of Plaza de Mayo.

It wasn't til almost our last day in Argentina when we went of a tour organized by our original host in Buenos Aires to La Boca, that I learned about descamisados.  We saw the words on this building and she explained it meant "the shirtless" (camisa means shirt) and these were the poor who were Perón's staunchest supporters.

When Turner talks about the bibliography, he mentions that it  omits

"references to one of the ways in which tens of thousands of people are currently obtaining a view of Perón:  through Evita, the malicious, one-sided, anti-Peronist musical that has been playing to packed houses in London and New York.  As theater, it is arresting;  as history, it is false.  The musical cheaply exploits the image of Evita as a harlot and perpetuates such myths as her great participation in bringing Perón to power in 1945.  It alleges the dangerous charisma, the essential opportunism of Perón. Yet, in a perverse manner, even this historical travesty underlines the importance and the continuing attraction of Perón and Evita;  its creators may occasionally touch upon the truth quite by accident rather than through design or understanding. . ."

I'm just starting on my Perón adventure, but it's already a reminder that history has many stories that can help us think about the present.  There's a force that tends to pull me toward comparisons between Perón and Trump.  (Turner looks at similarities and differences between Perón and Hitler and Musolini - only because they were alike as very powerful charismatic leaders of their countries.  There are similarities to Trump

"Without sufficient institutional limitations on his rule, choosing his lieutenants, like his wife, on the basis of their loyalty and submissiveness rather than their brilliance or their academic credentials, Perón did make too many major decisions personally.  Having surrounded himself with admirers, he did not benefit from the critical responses of insiders that might have improved the quality of those decisions and therefore also their public acceptability in the long run."

"Perón's failures were more prosaic than stupidity or cowardice:  unfortunately, like so many of us, he failed to understand economics and relied far too much upon his own judgment. . . Perón understood the warm, human issues of political symbolism and the generation of mass support, not the colder constraints of budgeting and sacrificial strategies for economic growth."

Marysa Navarro's chapter on Evita Perón includes this on personal loyalty to Perón:

"Stating unequivocally her fanaticism toward Perón, she demanded - and obtained - that same commitment from his followers.  In so doing, she was responsible for the creation of a cult of the leader that required absolute loyalty to him, complete trust in him, unconditional allegiance to him and blind obedience to his word."

But also serious differences.  Turner argues that Perón had a heart and cared about human beings.

"Noting that Perón increased the share of national wealth going to the workers from 38 percent in the early 1940s to 46 percent in 1948, Juan Corradi quite rightly points out that the workers' support for Perón came from a rational perception of their interests rather than simply from their admiration of Perón's special gifts of leadership style."

What I've got so far is that there is disagreement about Perón still. This first book was published in 1987, over ten years after Perón's death, but still a long time ago.  So I'm not sure what more recent books say.

I'd note that while General San Martin has squares and streets named after him everywhere we went, I didn't notice the same widespread presence of Perón.  We even had to ask people to find Evita's grave at the Recoleta Cemetery.

Gun Lobby Example: Here's Why The Public Interest Regularly Gets Sabotaged

It became clear to me, while teaching about ethics and 'the public interest' that there were good explanations why the public interest loses out regularly to special interests.

Single Issue vs. Many Issues
Each special interest is focused narrowly on one topic - developers, airlines, doctors, unions, auto manufacturers, the  mining industry, oil industry, etc - are narrowly focused on lobbying for what is most important to them.

Protecting the public interest against all those many well funded private interests, is more difficult.  It's hard to keep up with all the threats to the public interest because the public interest is much broader and more generalized.  The public has interests in a clean environment, fair treatment of consumers, work place safety, good education, auto safety, and on and on.  Protecting all these against corporations looking for less regulation, higher profits, as well as tax benefits, is hard.  There's just too much to keep up with.

This LA Times article by George Skelton about the gun lobby and the gun control interests of the public illustrates this basic dilemma for those interested in protecting the public interest.

From George Skelton, LA Times:

Sure, voters tell pollsters Congress should pass legislation to toughen up background checks on gun buyers. Most even want to ban military-style assault weapons.
But gun control is far down the list of voters’ priorities. Many other policy issues rank higher: immigration, jobs, schools, climate change.…
So after every shooting massacre, when more innocent people are murdered by some wacko with a firearm designed for mass killing, there’s tough talk, screaming and flailing for a few days. Then everyone calms down and snoozes until the next slaughter.
Politicians — mainly Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress — don’t feel constant pressure from gun control supporters. These voters have been firing with cap pistols.
But the other side is rigidly committed. The gun zealots — those mesmerized by the power of firearms — tend to be “single-issue” voters who are inspired by the National Rifle Assn. Their No. 1 litmus test for any candidate is the politician’s position on gun rights.
Most Republicans and many moderate Democrats are scared silly and timidly vote against virtually all meaningful gun controls. That is, unless the congressional leader is a Republican, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Then the frightened politicians are spared from voting at all because the leader blocks the bill from the floor.
At least, that’s the way it has always been.

So there it is spelled out - while most people want some form of legislation to curb gun violence, it's one of many issues of interest.  They aren't all focused and ready to lobby hard on that single issue.

But gun lobbyists are focused on that one specific issue at the receipt of an email.


While I think this article makes that point clearly, I find Skelton's style a little loose.  Some examples:

1. " But gun control is far down the list of voters’ priorities. Many other policy issues rank higher: immigration, jobs, schools, climate change.…"
Well here's a summary of issues - first overall, then by different political shades.  The list comes from a Citizens Climate Lobby talk in November 2018 by

Click on image to enlarge and focus

I don't know where Skelton came up with his list of top issues, but this one is more statistically valid I suspect.

2.  "some wacko with a firearm"  - Sorry, this just perpetuates stereotypes of mass shooters as totally crazy folks.  Sure, anyone who mows down a bunch of people is not within the normal range of empathy, moral judgment, personal control, and perhaps other categories.  But given the characteristics of mass shooters listed in the previous post, they've mostly been abused or bullied and didn't have the kind of support most people get.  In that context, their behavior might not seem so irrational or crazy.  We need less clichéd ways of talking about these people so we can come up with effective ways of 1) not letting people get to this stage and 2) having systems in place that intervene when they start showing signs or even talking about shooting up folks.

3.  "mainly Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress"  - What the hell is a moderate Democrat?  I keep having to remind people that if Richard Nixon was in today's Congress he'd be labeled among the most liberal Democrats.  We got the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, and a bunch of other things (Roe v Wade decision came down while he was president and he didn't yell and scream about it)  during his administration.  Yet he was seen in his day as conservative.  Moderate Democrats today are conservatives by 1960s-1970s standards.  Calling them moderates is a huge misnomer.

OK, I'm done.  No wait, I wanted to offer a possible option for the public interest.

The Citizens Climate Lobby is a public interest lobbying group (which I'm a member of) that is focusing very narrowly on one issue - getting a carbon fee and dividend law passed.  They've got chapters in almost every Congressional district so constituents can lobby - regularly, cordially, and with lots of information - their members of congress.  It's a good model.  If we had Citizens  XXXX Lobby for all of those issues on the chart above we could get a long way in blocking special interests whose favored legislation has harmful consequences on the public interest.

Researchers Offer Four Common Characteristics of Mass Shooters

Scholars Jillian Peterson and James Densley  list four common traits of the mass shooters they studied.  This is a very abbreviated form from the LA Times.

"First, the vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence and/or severe bullying. . .
Second, practically every mass shooter we studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting.  . .
Third, most of the shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives. . .
Fourth, the shooters all had the means to carry out their plans.     . . "

They go on to list ways to prevent such shootings.  Basically:

• remove access to good locations by adding more security
• remove access to guns
• remove the notoriety they seek and get from the media
• remove barriers to reporting people for people who see signs of potential violence*
• much more education about mental health and how to cope and get help in all schools

*This is in contrast to the article that friends of the Ohio shooter broke off from him when he DID show signs, but apparently they didn't tell police until after the shootings.  

But let's remember that the NRA not only leans hard on its Republican (and a very few Democratic) members of Congress to prevent  banning any weapons or adding any restrictions to getting weapons, BUT just as pernicious is their successful ban on government agencies doing research on gun violence.  If you can't do research, you can't show the impact of guns on society.  Fortunately, there are some non-governmental research who continue to study gun violence.

In the 2016 election cycle, Open Secrets tells us the NRA spent  $839,574 on Congressional candidates.
In 2018 (not a presidential election year), they spent  $711,654.

Here's what they spent on Alaskan members of Congress in 2016.  

Name	Office	Total Contributions
Young, Don (R-AK)	House	$6,950
Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK)	Senate	$4,500
Sullivan, Dan (R-AK)	Senate	$2,000

And let's remember the NRA, which used to be an organization of hunters and gun collectors that taught gun safety, is now an organization funded significantly by the gun industry.

How many shootings will it take until half the voting population personally knows someone who died in a mass shooting?  Will we change the laws then?

Some Spanish Words That Caught My Fancy

I think it becomes clear why I liked these words - they are literal and thus easy to remember.  But I mentioned them to a couple of native Spanish speakers and they had never actually thought about them being literal and they smiled when they saw it that way.




paraquas  parar = to stop  (bus stop is parada)  and aguas = waters

It rained our first few days in Buenos Aires and then it didn't rain for the rest of the month we were in Argentina.  These folks are carrying paraguas.



anteojos  ante = before    ojos = eyes

He's wearing anteojos.




medialunas   media = half    lunas = moons

The medialunas are on the bottom of this pastry display.  This is more a metaphor.  If it's not clear what the arrow is pointing to - those are croissants.  I didn't zoom in to just the croissants because everything else looks so good.

The moral of “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” seems to be “who doesn’t miss the good old days when cars had fins and white men were the heroes of everything?”

The title quote comes from Mary McNamara's beautifully ruthless* critique of "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood."  Her review helped crystalize part of my reaction to the Democratic debates this week.

Kenneth Turan's review of "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood" in the LA Times last week was positive.  He acknowledged that he wasn't a Quentin Tarantino fan, but said this was a different Tarantino.  Turan saw Reservoir Dogs at Sundance.

"When a visibly pained audience member asked Tarantino in the Q&A how he justified the film’s tidal waves of violence, the director almost didn’t understand the question. “Justify it?” he echoed before just about roaring, “I don’t have to justify it. I love it!”
Over the next quarter-century, little has changed. To enjoy Tarantino was to embrace his preening style, to share his reductive view of cinema and the world and violence’s preeminent place in both.
I was a chronic dissenter — I still get occasional grief about my “Pulp Fiction” review — so how is it that I reacted with distinct pleasure to the writer-director’s 'Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood'?"

I didn't see either of those films.  I'd heard about the level of violence (much directed at women) and decided I didn't need to buy a ticket for films that glorify violence.

[*How can I enjoy a 'beautifully ruthless" critique on the one hand, and shun a violent and bloody film?  Well, one is just well strung words, the other strings bloody images across the screen.  Do we really think that Hollywood and the video game industry have not been primers for mass shooters?]

But given Turan's approval this time, I was thinking about going.

But a few days later,  Mary McNamara, also reviewed the movie in the LA Times.  She came after the movie, mercilessly from a different angle.  Here's more than I'd normally quote, but it's all relevant to my follow up about white males' difficulty understanding why others have problems with their past behavior.

"Nostalgia is fun, and fine when used recreationally; but it’s time to face the dangers of our national addiction to reveling in visions of the past that are, at best, emotionally curated by a select few and, at worst, complete nonsense."

"Watching two middle-aged white guys grapple with a world that does not value them as much as they believe it should, it was tough not to wonder if that something was the same narrow, reductive and mythologized view of history that has made red MAGA hats the couture of conservative fashion."

"Whatever the reason, as I shifted in my seat waiting for the film’s climax, Tarantino’s elegy for a time when men were men and women were madonnas, whores or nags and the only people who spoke Spanish were waiters — “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans” is an actual line played for laughs — began to feel ominously familiar.
If nothing else, 'Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood' laid to rest the notion of Hollywood liberalism — any industry still so invested in sentimentalizing a time of studio fiefdoms, agents played by Al Pacino in a wig-hat and white-guy buddy movies can hardly be considered progressive.
When times, it is implied if not directly stated, were simpler.
Even though they weren’t. Ever.
Unless you were a member of the white, male, Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied, culturally conforming, non-addicted, mentally well, moneyed elite, there was literally no time in history that was simpler, better, easier, or greater. For most people, history is the story of original oppression gradually lessened through a series of struggles and setbacks.
'Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood' is a masterpiece of nostalgia porn. . . Whether it’s the resurrection of leg warmers or fedoras, the British class system, Winona Ryder or, heaven help us, Charles Manson, nostalgia is the new sex and the exquisite museum-like quality of the detail found in period films and television series is its porn.

And he has chosen as his driving force an actor upset because he is no longer seen as hero material and his loyal stuntman companion, who may or may not have murdered his wife. That this death is treated as a joke, and the wife visible only once, in flashback, as a braying nag in a bikini, could be viewed as an indictment of the Playboy-cartoon misogyny of the time. Could be, if Cliff were not portrayed with such charming tough-guy chivalry. If this guy murdered his wife, she probably deserved it .
So for Cliff’s wife anyway, not such a golden era.

I haven't seen the movie, so I can't tell you that she nailed it.  But Tarantino would probably tell you his film doesn't have to follow her rules, and so, at worst, she doesn't have to  follow his either.

But all this discussion about nostalgia for an age when healthy, etc. white males had it best, intersected with thoughts I had about the criticisms of Biden in the debates - particularly about his being friendly with extreme Southern racist Senators and his support of the Omnibus Crime bill.

OK, public policy is complicated and few bills are 100% what the sponsors and supporters want.  There are some who would argue that the mass incarceration of black men had already happened and that the bill didn't contribute that much more, plus it included the Violence Against Women Act. (Which Bernie Sanders says is why he voted for it.)  But others, who understood better what was happening, like Marian Wright Edelman, wanted less emphasis on punishment and more emphasis on prevention.  Indeed, the bill greatly damaged Edelman's relationship with the Clintons.

My thoughts had been along the lines of:

• Policy is complicated and to pass bills, sponsors have to compromise.  
• But ultimately, this was a response to crime fear and was a get tough bill that included the 3 strikes you're out provision that has been so problematic.  
• Can you fault Biden, the bill's sponsor?  

 One can say that he was trying to fight the increase in crime, but that he was using traditional means - more police, stricter punishment, more prisons - and not listening to the minority communities who wanted more prevention money.  If he wasn't such a good friend with racist Southern Senators, might he have had a more progressive understanding of the issues?  Maybe.

When we judge politicians on their past actions, it's reasonable to give some attention to what were the common beliefs at the time.  But I really want our elected officials to be insightful to the extent that the see way ahead of the contemporary wisdom of the day.  I want officials who understand the underlying causes of a problem and look ahead to the best - not the most popular - ways to attack the problem.

Because, if Biden becomes president, his past behavior is likely to be the best predictor of his present and future behavior.  And he wasn't the deep thinker who saw through the flaws of his bill, how it would affect the prison population, or how preventative provisions needed to be included.
 
I want a president who sees, and acts on, a greater vision than current public opinion.  But I also have to weigh in whether he could have gotten such a law passed.  Just as Democrats can't get a lot done while McConnell is majority leader in the Senate.

But I think McNamara's review also points out how easy it is for the privileged in society to NOT see what is happening to the rest of society.    Perhaps if he had spent more time with Southern blacks he might have had a better understanding of the perniciousness of the criminal justice systems in the southern states were.  But I also watched the Watergate hearings live.  It was when I first learned that there were very intelligent Southerners.  Without people like Sen. Sam Ervin, Nixon would never have resigned.  So, yes, in a legislature, it's useful to maintain cordial relations with people whose ideas you abhor.

But Biden was also the chair of the committee that vetted Clarence Thomas.  He regrets how he handled that now - that's good - but dad he had a more insightful understanding about sexual harassment, had he not been surrounded by privileged white men, perhaps Anita Hill would have been treated with more respect.  You can say that 'our national consciousness has evolved" since then, but lots of people were outraged back then as they were more recently.

Even LA Times movie critic Kenneth Turan, who went against the grain in his earlier reviews of Tarantino's work, missed this other interpretation of "Once Upon A Time."  This interpretation that the less privileged, the victims of sexism, racism, homophobia, and on and on,  have of things.

Of course, we all see films differently because we all have different experiences in life which enable us to react  positively or negatively with some things in a film but not others.  So we all see different things in the same films.  I don't know how I would have reacted to  'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' if I saw it.  I grew up in LA in the 50s and 60s so there is surely a lot of 'nostalgia porn' for me to get off on in the film.  (Though I was off teaching in Thailand when the Sharon Tate murder happened.)  But as soon as I read McNamara's review, I understood immediately what she saying.  I'm not certain that Biden would think here concerns would outweigh the 'cool stuff.'

But he'd be a lot better than our current president and he'd have around him people who do get it, now, not 30 years from now.  I think flaws like this can be pointed out without doing much damage to a presidential candidate Biden were he to nominated, because the Republicans don't even understand these complaints.  But they'll try to exploit any divisions among Democrats.

I have a lot of other thoughts about the debates, but I'll save them for a different post - if I get to it.

How Long Ago Did Humans Emerge? Putting Today Into Perspective.

Edited from a timeline in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari:

Years Before The Present
3.8 billion	Emergence of organisms
6 million	Last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees
2.5 million	Evolution of the genus Homo in Africa.  First stone tools
2 million	Humans spread from Africa to Eurasia. Evolution of different human species
500,000	Neanderthals evolve in Europe and the Middle East
300,000	Daily usage of fire
70,000	Emergence of fictive language. Sapiens spread out of Africa
30,000	Extinction of Neanderthals
16,000	Sapiens settle America. Extinction of American megafauna
13,000	Extinction of Homo floresiensis. Homo sapiens the only surviving human species.
12,000	The Agricultural Revolution. Domestication of plants and animals. Permanent  settlements.

Let's put the US experiment in democracy in perspective.  Let's step back from 24 hour cable news that requires sensationalizing the unimportant to keep viewers watching.  Let's step back from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram which make what happened 10 seconds ago the most important event in history.  Until the next post five seconds later.  Sapiens destructive nature has sped up the destruction of the environment that we depend on, but not quite that much.

But let's also pay attention to the fact that where sapiens go, other species go extinct.  I've abbreviated the timeline from Sapiens.  I've left out the last 5000 years.

Chancellor "Ask Me Anything" Session With UAA Community

It was already standing room only when I got to the meeting with UAA Chancellor Sandeen.  With the governor's budget cuts, and the Board of Regents' declaration of exigency, the university is scrambling.  We still don't know how the final state budget will emerge and then there's the kickoff of the campaign to recall the governor to add to the uncertainty.

There were questions from students -

• why haven't there been support teams to help students cope with working, parenting, protesting, and school work when everything is so uncertain?  
• why haven't we had a Native Students director for the last few years?  
• Will I be able to get my classes and graduate?  
• Will engineering be in Anchorage or Fairbanks and can I finish my degree?  
• I'm a theater major, what's going to happen with the arts?

Answers were basically -

• we don't have many answers ourselves, we're trying to cope ourselves and just getting ready to respond,  this meeting is the start
• we were ready to hire when positions were frozen, 
• we're going to make sure all students are able to graduate, either here, or elsewhere, and 
• they're focusing on work preparation degrees, but I believe arts programs are work preparation and Anchorage is the arts center of Alaska, so I'm pushing hard to keep those programs.  

There were questions from faculty and staff -

• what happens when UAA and UAF each have grants that stipulate only one per institution if we combine into one institution?  
• what sort of structure can we expect for administrators?  
• what do we tell prospective students who we've been working with when they ask if UAA will have the programs they want?  
• will faculty be involved in the restructuring?

There was even less certainty here.  (Here's what I heard, though I didn't take careful notes since I was in the standing room section.)

• we don't know.  We'll have to work with the agencies as we transition.
• the HR department has already gone through this and if it's a model, the services will be centralized, fewer positions on campus
• things will work out, there will be places for them somewhere, but right now we don't know any details
• the president's plan calls for making restructuring proposals first and then allowing participation afterward, maybe those will be tentative proposals [don't hold your breath, the President has been trying to make one unified university since he got here and now he's got his way to do it]

Chancellor Sandeen was impressive.  She's only been here less than a year, but she was warm, caring, and listened and she sounded honest and sincere.  The audience, at one point, stood up and applauded her work so far.  She said that she hasn't for one iota of a second regretted her decision to come here, that she loves the community here and we'll work through this.