Seeking A Homeland

Dear Debbie: My reply to a fundraising letter from Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Dear Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz:

In yesterday's mail I received a letter over your signature asking for a donation to the Democratic National Committee, which you chair. Along with the letter you included what you call "the official 2013 Democratic Party Survey." You tell me, "You are among a select group of Democratic leaders being asked to participate." It must not be that select if I'm in it, and my suspicion is that the only purpose of the survey is to get me to send it with "a generous contribution of $20, $30, $40 or more." For now, though, I'll take this at face value and believe that you want my opinion.

I was deeply disappointed by this survey. Its Section IV asks me to rank "13 national issues by their level of priority." They include things I certainly believe in, like "Protecting Social Security" and "Stopping gun violence." They also include some of little or no interest to me, like "Reducing the Deficit" and "Dealing with Iran," whatever that means. Climate change is not even one of those choices. In the view of the DNC it must rank no better than fourteenth among the issues confronting us.

The closest thing to climate change among those thirteen was "Energy Independence." However, energy independence often means the exact opposite of dealing with the threat of climate change. It usually includes support for:

• the Keystone XL pipeline and other schemes for extracting oil from tar sands; 
• hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” to extract natural gas from shale rocks;
• increased drilling offshore and in the ANWR;
• and even the increased us of coal, maybe referring to the chimera of "clean coal" and probably using mountaintop removal to get at it.

These would reduce our dependence on oil from the Mideast, and I understand the strategic value of that. They would also allow us to prolong our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels, the supply of which is ultimately limited anyway. They would distract us from further development of renewable energy sources. They would lead directly to increased emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. They are a recipe for climate disaster.

Responding adequately and promptly to climate change is by far the  preeminent issue of our time. In its urgency, its difficulty, and its potential consequences it surpasses previous generations' challenges posed by two world wars, depression and communism. We now face the prospect of damage to the earth that could last a thousand years or more, and countless generations that follow us will have nothing but scorn if we fail to meet this challenge.

Since last November's election the President has been much more forceful and specific in his plans to combat climate change. I am concerned that he still talks about an "all of the above" strategy, but his increased commitment is very welcome. The DNC, on the other hand, seems not to have received that memo and remains completely clueless.

Therefore I am unable at this time to comply with your request for a donation. I have over the last several years given many, many hours of my time to canvass for Democratic candidates but I also will be unable to work for any candidate who is as oblivious to the current peril as the DNC is. Since you have generously included with your letter a postage paid envelope I will use it to send this letter. Since my letter will probably just be shredded by a mail clerk at the fund raising company you no doubt employ I am emailing this to you as well.

Respectfully yours,

Dale G. Nichols

Daily Dusty Gem, February 20, 2013: Love, Peace And Happiness, by The Chambers Brothers

I enjoy lots of today's music, but I remember yesterday's music, too. I'm planning on posting a track here most days, if not exactly daily, for a while. We'll see how long this lasts.

What I will avoid are the tracks heard regularly on classic rock and oldies radio. I'll tend toward more or less obscure artists, occasionally throwing in less known tracks by well known artists or maybe sometimes live versions of well-known songs.

The Chambers Brothers--George, Joe, Willie and Lester Chambers and drummer Brian Keenan--had their roots in the brothers' gospel group in Mississippi in the early 1950's. Later they went to Los Angeles, where they drifted into the folk scene. They brought down the house at Newport in 1965. They toured with folk singer Barbara Dane, making an album with her in 1966.

In 1967 they were signed by Columbia and released an album with the only song they are really remembered for, "Time Has Come Today," with its heavy use of cowbell and the immortal line, "My soul's been psychedelized!" Like many another band with a sudden big hit, if success after 17 years or so could be called sudden, they seem to me to have been typecast by that hit. After the interest in psychedelia subsided (or came down, you might say), they seem to have nowhere to go and by the mid 1970's they had begun to break up. They did get together in 1980 to back up erstwhile folkie Maria Muldaur, who also knew something about being boxed in by a hit, on one of my favorite albums of the early 1980's, Gospel Night. I hope to find a copy of that album some day.

Their song, "Love, Peace And Happiness" was the title track of a 1969 album, Love, Peace & Happiness. Unfortunately for them, by 1969 talk of violent revolution had taken over and love and peace had become passé. As a long term philosophy, though, it has regained ground. This version, recorded live in New York in 1971, is 19 minutes of boundless energy. Or to be more accurate, it's 16 minutes of energy, with lots of cowbell, and a soaring 3 minute coda of gospel based harmony.

 

06 Love Peace And Happiness

 

Daily Dusty Gem, February 18, 2013: Nature's Way, by Spirit

I enjoy lots of today's music, but I remember yesterday's music, too. I'm planning on posting a track here most days, if not exactly daily, for a while. We'll see how long this lasts.

What I will avoid are the tracks heard regularly on classic rock and oldies radio. I'll tend toward more or less obscure artists, occasionally throwing in less known tracks by well known artists or maybe sometimes live versions of well-known songs.

Spirit was one of the best bands of its day, although they are little thought of today. During the four years when they released their first four albums, 1968-1970, no American musician I can think of had as strong a run, except maybe Neil Young. In time the usual story of too many strong egos, too much fast money and too many drugs tore apart the original line-up of Randy California, Jay Ferguson, Ed Cassidy, Mark Andes and John Locke. They band kept on for a long time with a constantly changing roster led by California's guitar skills but without Ferguson's writing and singing they never had as much success.

California's name was Randolph Craig Wolfe until he was renamed by the lead guitarist of a band he was in, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames; that leader was Jimi Hendrix, shortly before Chas Chandler took him to England. California really was a great guitarist. The beginning of one of his songs, Taurus, was stolen by an upcoming band named Led Zeppelin and used as the introduction to a little ditty they called Stairway To Heaven. He died tragically in 1997 while rescuing his 12 year old son from drowning in Molokai, Hawaii.

The song Nature's Way is  on their fourth album, Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus.

07 Nature's Way

Daily Dusty Gem, February 17, 2013: Simple Gifts, by Addiss & Crofut

I enjoy lots of today's music, but I remember yesterday's music, too. I'm planning on posting a track here most days, if not exactly daily, for a while. Since I missed a couple of days I'm going to fib in this post's title and call it yesterday's post.

What I will avoid are the tracks heard regularly on classic rock and oldies radio. I'll tend toward more or less obscure artists, occasionally throwing in less known tracks by well known artists or maybe sometimes live versions of well-known songs.

Addiss & Crofut were never big stars and are forgotten now. I have found a little information about their lives after their career as a duo for both Stephen Addiss and the late Bill Crofut. There is more information about both in the lengthy liner notes for their Folkways Records release.

Simple Gifts is the first song on their 1967 Columbia Records debut album. (The entire album is available through that link.) It was written in 1848 by Shaker leader Joseph Brackett and has been recorded by many artists since Aaron Copland reintroduced it to the world.

Addiss & Crofut - Simple Gifts

Daily Dusty Gem, February 11, 2013: Got My Mojo Workin', by Carla Thomas

I enjoy lots of today's music, but I remember yesterday's music, too. I'm planning on posting a track here most days, if not exactly daily, for a while. We'll see how long this lasts.

What I will avoid are the tracks heard regularly on classic rock and oldies radio. I'll tend toward more or less obscure artists, occasionally throwing in less known tracks by well known artists or maybe sometimes live versions of well-known songs.

Carla Thomas was the first star Stax-Volt Records ever had. In 1960, before the company's name changed from Satellite to Stax Records, she and her father, Rufus Thomas, made a recording of "Cause I Love You" that became a regional hit. Early in 1961 they recorded "Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes)," which would become her biggest hit and her trademark song. Coincidentally, several years earlier Rufus had the first hit for Sun Records, although that turned into catastrophe for Sam Phillips.

This recording of "Got My Mojo Workin' " comes from the album The Stax / Volt Revue Volume 2 Live In Paris. This was the same tour that produced a total of five albums. Samples of another volume in the series, Stax/Volt Live In Europe #3: London To Paris, can be heard here. The tour was also the subject of a 2009 PBS program, "Sweet Soul Music: Stax Live in Europe 1967," although Thomas, the only woman in the show, was not included  in the program.

This song has been the subject of copyright litigation. The version Thomas sings here is clearly closer to that of Preston Foster's and Muddy Waters than it is to the version by Ruth Stratchborneo, but it is different from both. This lends support to the idea that it is nearly like folk music, so much part of the culture that no one owns the idea.

I chose this track by Thomas in part because Steve Cropper's part in it is really smoking. 

01 - Got My Mojo Working - Carla Thomas

 

 

Daily Dusty Gem, February 10, 2013: Can You Hear Me, by Hedge & Donna

I enjoy lots of today's music, but I remember yesterday's music, too. I'm planning on posting a track here most days, if not exactly daily, for a while. We'll see how long this lasts.

What I will avoid are the tracks heard regularly on classic rock and oldies radio. I'll tend toward more or less obscure artists, occasionally throwing in less known tracks by well known artists or maybe sometimes live versions of well-known songs.

Hedge and Donna, made up of Hedge Capers and Donna Carson, was a folk duo in the vein of Richard & Mimi Fariña, Ian & Sylvia, or Peter, Paul & Mary (if you subtracted one of the guys). They recorded six albums, the last of which was released under the name Capers & Carson, from 1968 to 1973. They toured regularly, often sharing bills with major acts. When they broke up as a couple they broke up as an act too, and both left the music business for good. They sank so deeply into obscurity that none of their music has ever been reissued on CD.

Their music has never been forgotten by a small circle of fans, of whom I am one. I still listen to it often, and it sometimes pops up in my head unbidden. Their Facebook page, which seems to be maintained by Donna, has lots of reminiscences of all they meant to listeners forty years ago and still mean to many of those fans. They weren't known for flashy instrumental virtuosity, but both of them, particularly Donna, had beautiful voices. Their warm, tender sound and choice of romantic, hopeful material might make them seem a little ingenuous or bathetic today, but it also made them comforting and uplifting in anxious times, whether 1971 or 2013.

"Can You Hear Me" is the first  song on their first album. It was written by Billy Batson. The Facebook page has links to download all of their albums. Links to stream more tracks can be found on their MySpace page.

01 - Can You Hear Me

 

Army veteran threatened to shoot anyone who tried to take his house

Larry Modic was another gun massacre waiting to happen. This time, fortunately, the authorities intervened in time, but it could have turned out much worse.

According an article titled Akron homeowner who threatened to kill anyone who attempted to demolish house taken into custody in my hometown newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, he was arrested Wednesday night and taken to a mental health facility for evaluation. It's a good thing he was stopped because despite a history of mental illness he had several guns.

You have to feel sorry for this guy, though. He gave 22 years of service to his country in the Army and the National Guard, ending 18 years ago in 1994. For the last 20 or 21 years, or a couple of years before he and the military parted ways, he has battled addiction and depression. Then last summer he found a great deal on a house he could fix up and live in. For $10,000 he got a home on the shore of Summit Lake in Akron.

 Lawrence “Larry” L. Modic, 57, in front of his house.

In 1973 I lived for a while on Summit Lake, in the apartments on the opposite side of the lake and a little farther south. It was very peaceful, which was just what I needed at that stage of my life, but even then it wasn't a great neighborhood and I gather that the last forty years haven't been kind to it. Summit Lake wasn't always that way, though. In the early decades of the 20th century there was an enormously popular amusement park on the east shore of the lake. 

In the '20s the dance pavilion burned down and was not replaced, so I guess the park began to go downhill. Still, my extended family used to go out there for picnics when I was small, in the '50s. I remember there being some rides even then, when it probably looked like this picture taken in the '40s. The boars even look familiar. (Don't these kids look like they're having fun? They're probably just mad that they got stuck with the pigs, not the horses or giraffes.)

 

From what I've read the neighborhood has deteriorated badly in recent years and many houses are boarded up and slated by the city for demolition. Modic didn't know it, but before he bought his house, which was built in 1925, it was one of those slated to go. Apparently the seller failed to disclose that minor detail. For a long time this landlord had been renting it out without maintaining it. Becky C. who commented on that Beacon article wrote, "I lived in that house from 2003-2010. Yes, it LOOKS nice from the outside... The garage was supposed to be torn down before we moved in, but we had no idea because the man who owned it didn't tell us that. There were problems with the wiring, tub, plumbing, windows, walls, and roof. There is a window on the side of the house facing the yard that had no glass, just some blue insulation. There was a hole in the kitchen ceiling from the leaking tub, but was never fixed." She goes on and on about all the problems she had with the house.

There were plainly things Modic liked about the house anyway because despite its state he was ready to fight for it. The problem lay in the way he was going to conduct that fight. He wasn't going to negotiate with the city or take anyone to court. He had told politicians and a reporter that he was "willing to take someone’s life” to “protect what’s mine.” When the police went to his house after he'd been arrested they found "four rifles and a handgun, all loaded, along with two boxes of ammunition... and a flak jacket." It seems not to have occurred to him that in sane, civilized society this is not how disputes are resolved. This was another tragedy like the ambush of firefighters in Webster, NY last Christmas eve waiting to happen.

How many more Larry Modics are out there waiting to explode? No one knows, but there are surely lots of them and many of them are armed. After all, you take a society that pushes the poor around more than anyone could stand, throw in lots of movies about isolated heroes taking a stand, legality be damned, and stir in lots of easily obtained guns, and you've got a lethal stew. Look at the comments on this article. One doesn't expect much of newspaper Web site commenters, but lots of them applaud Modic's willingness and apparent intention to kill. We won't be able to do much very soon about our treatment of the poor or about the movies, but the time has come for common sense restrictions that keep someone with a documented twenty year history of addiction and depression as far away from firearms as possible.

Talking At the Same Time

This track from Tom Waits' 2011 album Bad As Me sums up a lot of what's going on these days.

Get a job, save your money, listen to Jane
Everybody knows umbrellas will cost more in the rain
All the news is bad
Is there any other kind?
Everybody’s talking at the same time

Well it’s hard times for some
For others it’s sweet
Someone makes money when there’s blood in the street
Don’t take any lip
Stay in line
Everybody’s talking at the same time

Well the dog is in the kitchen
And the war drags on
The trees wait by the freeway
All the moneys all gone
Well she told me she would leave me
I ignored all the signs
And now everybody’s talking at the same time
Everybody’s talking at the same time

Ain’t no one coming to pull you from the mud
You gotta build your nest high enough to ride out the flood
I know you’re leaving and there’s no more next time
Everybody’s talking at the same time

A tiny boy sat and he played in the sand
He made a sword from a stick
And a gun from his hand
Well we bailed out all the millionaires
They’ve got the fruit
We’ve got the rind
And everybody’s talking at the same time
Everybody’s talking at the same time

 

Talking At the Same Time

 

Buy the album directly from Waits

Buy it from Amazon

Buy it from eMusic

Why occupy?

A few days ago, after I shared on Facebook a notice of an Occupy Denver event taking place this weekend, a close friend replied, "What are you promoting Dale? What's this movement about?"

Another friend liked my reply and suggested that I post it as a note. I decided to make it a blog post instead, so I could include some images and hyperlinks inline. Here it is.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, that's a fair question. This is my understanding of it, which may not be expressed the way the people most involved would choose for themselves.

I think it is a more or less gut response to economic injustice. There have always been some people more wealthy than others, and as someone is supposed to have said, "Ye have the poor always with you." In the last thirty years, though, and particularly in the last ten or so, there has been a systematic, deliberate and massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.


The government, which in theory is supposed to represent the interests of all people, and particularly of the most powerless and therefore most vulnerable, has been little more the willing servant of the rich, bought out body and soul. Both parties have been more or less complicit in this.

The most culpable have been the financial sector,the big banks and Wall Street investors. They went on an unprecedented spree, gambling recklessly with other people's money to enrich themselves. When it all fell down around them, as it had to eventually, we the people bailed them out. Then they walked away with impunity, not one of them (except a few of the most egregious examples, like Bernie Madoff and Raj Rajaratnam) being indicted, much less jailed, for larceny on a scale that defies comprehension. Many of them even received and were allowed to keep bonuses for the success of their crimes!

All of this wouldn't sting so badly if there were an expectation of a better life for all and a chance of upward mobility for at least some of us. The widespread fear is that we are being locked permanently into a society with a tiny class of the super-rich, an ever growing underclass suffering in poverty, and a shrinking middle class with less and less hope for financial security. My parents and yours believed we would have a better life than they did. Hardly anyone believes today that their children will live even as well as we do, even in our straitened economy.

For better or worse, right or wrong, we Americans have always believed in our exceptionalism--that we were meant to be a "Shining City Upon a Hill." We thought we had a social compact that guaranteed we would be an example to the world of what it might be, free of an aristocratic ruling class securely ensconced in its privilege, a place where everyone had room in which to develop and express the best they had within themselves. That is what we are losing, and this may be the last chance to seize hold of that dream and resuscitate it before it slips away, irretrievable forever.

 

A Mayor for Aurora

For 24 years the last name of the mayor of Aurora has been Tauer. In 1987, when Ronald Reagan was president, Microsoft released Windows 2.0, and the Broncos lost to the Giants in Super Bowl XXI, Paul Tauer was elected mayor here. In 2003 his son Ed succeeded him.

That is going to change this year.  Ed is term limited and on his way out. So far, though, no one who really excites me is running to take his place. The only person whose name has been discussed for the job about whom I would have been enthusiastic, Molly Markert, has decided not to run. That's too bad. She may have taken a step or two I disagreed with, but overall she has been and will continue to be a vital part of Aurora. She would make a good mayor.

Aurora is a good city, but it could be much better. It badly needs new leadership, though, and with Molly out of the race no one else has shown up yet to provide it. Steve Hogan has been part of the local political scene since 1979, when Jimmy Carter was dealing with the Iran hostage crisis, Bill Gates was tinkering with BASIC, and John Elway had just entered Stanford. I don't think he'll be the innovative mayor this city deserves. None of the other names I've heard kicked around excite me, either. We need another candidate, and since the election is less than nine months away, we need one now.

 I sense a lot of dissatisfaction and immense boredom with the way things have been run. This is an enormous opportunity for someone new to step in and point the way forward. What we need is someone who could be for Aurora what John Hickenlooper was for Denver--a new face, successful outside politics, with a fresh approach and no baggage from past battles.

Here is what I would like to see, ideally, in a mayoral candidate. Besides meeting the basic qualifications, of course, here are some traits I'd like to see in her or him:

• a strong concern for our city and its future;
• capable of leading a large enterprise and turning it around in a period of tight finances;
• energetic, willing to work hard both campaigning and after election;
• a good speaker, personable, maybe even charismatic;
• respect for Aurora's diversity, one of its greatest strengths;
• ability to work well with the business community without being dedicated only to its interests;
• commitment to preserving city services and restoring lost services;
• determination to get the FasTracks I-225 corridor completed and linked to the East Corridor;
• understanding of the necessity of planning for Aurora's long term water needs, particularly as climate change is likely to reduce precipitation both in the mountains and locally;
• a vision of renewal of Northwest Aurora, including the Fan Fair area, as vital to the city overall, without gentrification that drives out the community there now;
• election of a woman or a person of color would emphatically mark the transition from the past 24 years to the future.

There is one characteristic this person wouldn't need. This is a non-partisan race. As long as a mayor cares about the right things and has the right skills, he or she might be a member of either political party, or no party at all.

All that's not too much to ask for is it? Actually, it is. It's unlikely that anyone will have all those traits, but someone with many of them could easily be our next mayor. But if the routine political process has failed to produce that person yet, to find one we who are usually outside that process will have to think and act outside our routine.

Do you know someone like that? Could you talk to him or her about running?

It might be a businessperson,  or someone from a nonprofit or community group, or from a religious community. If you know someone like that, could you talk to them about this opportunity? Or you could pass on that person's name to me, and I can pass it to people who have been much more involved in Aurora politics than I.

I will be sending this note to a number of people both through email and on Facebook. If you get it twice please excuse the redundancy.