The Day the Music Died +61 years

As a huge Buddy Holly fan since I was a kid, I try to mark The Day the Music Died, in one way or another, just about every year. And while I often link to the excellent Wikipedia article, this year I’ve searched and found some other interesting articles, including this one at Biography.com, as well as the one linked in the article title from grunge.com:

The Day the Music Died was Feb. 3, 1959. That was the morning that a small chartered plane crashed in a cornfield in Iowa and killed three of rock n’ roll’s biggest and brightest upcoming stars. All three had only recently kicked open the door to stardom, and in spite of their relatively short careers, they left an undeniable mark on the world of music. What they may have done, had they lived, is unimaginable.

Unimagineable. Gone, but not forgotten.

by Paul on February 3, 2021 at 8:24am | Permalink
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Amanda Gorman: The Hill We Climb

Amanda Gorman, a 22-year-old poet, recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Biden’s inauguration:

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promised glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

I’ve watched and listened to this maybe a half-dozen times now, and it is truly breathtaking, the way the best art always is.

by Paul on January 21, 2021 at 2:55pm | Permalink
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Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Sworn in as 46th President of the United States

“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over… Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.”
— President Gerald R. Ford, remarks after taking the presidential oath, 9 August 1974.

 

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has taken the oath of office and has been sworn in as 46th President of the United States of America.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, taking office at a moment of profound economic, health and political crises with a promise to seek unity after a tumultuous four years that tore at the fabric of American society.

With his hand on a five-inch-thick Bible that has been in his family for 128 years, Mr. Biden recited the 35-word oath of office swearing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” in a ceremony administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., completing the process at 11:49 a.m., 11 minutes before the authority of the presidency formally changes hands.

 

As of Noon Eastern today, Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States. Halle-fucking-lujah.

Just the thought that an adult is at the wheel again, as opposed to the spoiled, pre-tween little girl that we’ve had at the wheel for the last forty years1.

Now, I’m no particular supporter of Joe Biden. I wish him well, of course, just as I wished Trump well four years ago. I sincerely hope that Joe Biden rises to the challenge and becomes a better president that I think he’ll be2. But I have substantial differences of opinion with President Biden.

Then Senator Joe Biden spoke at my law school about a thousand years ago. I remember thinking at the time that our political opinions are pretty substantially different, but that he was a man who would make a good president. He was presidential in his manner, and he certainly had gravitas.

And so, here we go. Hopefully Biden will be successful in his earnest attempts to unite the nation. Trump, of course, only paid lip service to uniting the country and took divisive steps and spoke with divisive rhetoric every chance he had.

Good luck to us all.

yeah, in a minute…
1 Oh wait, that’s right, it only felt like forty fucking years that Trump was in office…

2 Of course, my identical hopes for Trump four years ago never came to pass, and in fact, he was a much, much worse president that I had feared.

by Paul on January 20, 2021 at 11:54am | Permalink
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Chappelle on Saving America from Itself

Recently rewatched some Dave Chappelle standup.

Dave Chappelle, Sticks and Stones (2019) at 40:39:

I’ve given this a lot of thought. I don’t see any peaceful way to disarm America’s whites.

There’s only one thing that’s gonna save this country from itself – the same thing that always saves this country from itself. And that is, the African-Americans. That’s right.

And I know the question that a lot of y’all have in your minds is, ‘should we do it?’ Yeah, fuck yeah we should do it. Listen, no matter what they say or how they make you feel, remember, this is your country too. It is incumbent upon us to save our country. And you know what we have to do – this is a fucking election year, we gotta be serious.

Every able-bodied African-American must register… for a legal firearm. That’s the only way they’ll change the law.

by Paul on January 16, 2021 at 10:55am | Permalink
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Holler: There’s a name for that

This. Much, much more of this:

by Paul on January 12, 2021 at 10:59am | Permalink
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Rather: The hypocrisy of the Trump thuggery

A “movement fueled by power, injustice, and racism.”

I could not agree more.

by Paul on January 12, 2021 at 10:29am | Permalink
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The High Cost of Trump

The Wall Street Journal editorial board:

[Donald Trump] has cost Republicans the House, the White House, and now the Senate. Worse, he has betrayed his loyal supporters by lying to them about the election and the ability of Congress and Mr. Pence to overturn it.

Truth be told, that’s just the tip of the fucking iceberg. And, for what it’s worth, he’s betrayed all of us.

by Paul on January 7, 2021 at 6:51pm | Permalink
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Just found my next read

Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American, Sterling, 2019.

Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and mendacity, negative attributes for many voters, poised him perfectly to manipulate the evangelical mind. Like the biblical god evangelicals worship, Trump is a thin-skinned authoritarian with totalitarian tendencies. He craves love and punishes any disloyalty or slight. Evangelicals have been taught to worship and adore that type of being above all others. This strain of religion cultivates a veneration for extreme authority. Studies bear this out: religious fundamentalism and a tendency to submit to authoritarianism are highly correlated. Trump acted like the character evangelicals worship and benefited from their ingrained adulation. Evangelicals were simply seeing in Trump a character they’d been taught to revere. As if to prove the point, Ann Coulter called Trump her “Emperor God”.

by Paul on January 7, 2021 at 9:49am | Permalink
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Photos Show Difference in How Police Responded to Anti-Racism Protests and the Siege at the U.S. Capitol

The linked article is good and CBS’s photos of the attempted coup d’état at the U.S. Capitol yesterday by Trump-supporting domestic terrorists are telling, but I personally prefer this from The Recount:

In case you can’t tell — and please, watch the linked video — the photo on the left shows a police officer in riot gear kicking a peaceful BLM protestor (she’s sitting peacefully on a curb), while the photo on the right shows a Capitol Police officer in combat gear gingerly escorting a Trump Terrorist (what is apparently an elderly Trump Terrorist) down the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The differences could not be more striking.

If you can’t finally, for once and all, see the stark, shocking differences here, you should really pull your fucking head out of the sand. Willful ignorance is no excuse.

by Paul on January 7, 2021 at 9:22am | Permalink
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An Attempted American Coup

Make no mistake about it: what we witnessed tonight was an attempted coup d’état.

Call me old-fashioned but when armed insurgents storm the U.S. Capitol at the behest of the recently defeated, but as of yet still seated U.S. President, for the stated purpose of reversing the nation’s lawful election results, I call that what it is.

These lawless, violent, destructive riots — and in the case of tonight, acts of domestic terrorism — carried out by the MAGA crowd, must be put down — immediately and permanently.

No one — NO ONE — has any problem with peaceful demonstrations*, but when an armed, lawless group of violent protesters break the law — especially at the behest of the President — we cannot condone this as “protest,” and must call it what it is: domestic terrorism.

These MAGA thugs need to be put down. Now.

yeah, in a minute…
* Except, of course, the MAGA crowd, if the subject of the demonstration is something they don’t like.
by Paul on January 6, 2021 at 6:54pm | Permalink
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