One of the regular readers of the blog alerted me to the fact that there were several comments today (January 5) that contained vulgarity and profanity that are not allowed on this blog.

These disgusting comments were written in response to a post I wrote on June 1 called “I Am Woke, You Should Be Too,” in which I asserted that I care about justice, equality, freedom, and other fundamental ideals of our society. I took issue with those who would censor the views of those who disagree with them. I specifically criticized Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for passing laws to silence those who don’t agree with his censorious views.

I wrote:

One of the hot-button words that has been appropriated by rightwing politicians is “woke.” They are trying to turn it into a shameful word. I looked up the definition of WOKE. It means being aware of injustice…

Bob Dylan and ‘The Band’ performing at the Woody Guthrie memorial concert In New York City’s Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968.

Feb. 1968: “Bob Dylan finally emerged from 18 months of self-imposed seclusion at the Woody Guthrie Memorial Concert in Carnegie Hall on January 20. His appearance had been announced and the two performances were sold out weeks in advance. … In addition to Dylan, the memorial concert also featured Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Woody’s son Arlo Guthrie, Tom Paxton, Jack Elliot, Odetta and Richie Havens, all performing songs written by Guthrie. Before and after each song, Robert Ryan, the program’s narrator, and Will Geer did readings from Guthrie’s work, accompanied by slides and still photographs of his art. The performers sat in a row across the stage, most of them resplendently dressed. Odetta wore an orange and gold striped floor-length caftan, Judy Collins…

Early in the pandemic, an economist at Brown University named Emily Oster gained extraordinary media attention for the advice she offered. She wrote multiple articles declaring that it was safe to open schools even without the funds needed to pay for extra safety precautions. She wrote, she was written about, she became the go-to person with “evidence” that schools were safe from COVID.

Oster’s research is funded by leading rightwing and libertarian foundations, organizations, and individuals. As the linked article by epidemiologists Abigail Cartus and Justin Feldman explains, Oster’s emphasis on individualism and personal choice ring sweetly in the ears of the rightwing philanthropists.

They write:

Oster’s influence on the discourse around COVID in schools is difficult to overstate. She has been quoted in hundreds of articles about school pandemic precautions and interviewed as a guest on dozens of news shows. Officials from both parties have used her work…

“Everything counts in small amounts. Everything, everything. Everything, everything. All the minutiae matters. El hombre invisible comes into focus only if you shift through enough details. It has always struck me that Ted Berrigan drank Pepsi, not Coke. He is emphatic on this point. It is one of the ten things he did every day along with eat lunch and make noises. You can tell a lot about a man in observing what he drinks. An alternative to Coca-Cola, Pepsi sales first rose during the Great Depression when marketed as a drink for the price conscious. ‘Twice as much for a nickel, too.’ Drinking Pepsi was a sign of class, economically speaking. In the 1940s, it became a sign of race as well when Pepsi began inroads into the ‘Negro market,’ selling specifically to the previously neglected African American consumer. Coca-Cola was viewed as racist as the company, based in…

“The poets and New York natives Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh met at the Berkeley Poetry Conference in 1965, while absorbing the Zen-influenced poems of San Francisco-based writer Robert Duncan. This chance encounter begat a romantic and creative partnership that, back across the country in the East Village, lit a spark within the Downtown poetry scene. Lewis remembers: ‘we were going on nerve, all of twenty years old, but trusting in our love, which was less tricky and in the moment defied all uncertainty.’ Angel Hair, the beloved yet short-lived magazine and small press, was, he says, ‘our way of giving birth — as much to the actual magazine and books as to our selves as poets.’  … Anne and Lewis were living at 33 St. Marks’ Place, between Third and Second Avenues in a ‘skinny railroad apartment,’ which, as Lewis notes in one interview, is now a…

We have seen President Zelensky’s oratory on several occasions, most recently when he addressed the U.S. Congress. He is a master at communicating the plight of his nation, which has been under nonstop assault since last February 24. Putin thought that he would quickly decapitate the leadership, send Zelensky fleeing or kill him, and take control of Ukraine in a matter of days or weeks.

That didn’t happen. Shocking the world, Ukraine pushed Russian forces away from Kyiv, then slowly but surely pushed them out of many of its cities and towns. Now Ukraine endures a daily flood of missiles and drones aimed at destroying its infrastructure—a war crime—intended to cut off power, heat, and water to the civilian population. The point of the Russian onslaught is to terrorize the population.

Please watch and read President Zelensky’s inspiring words to the Ukrainian people. His message: we are united and…

“Portland-based software developer Corey Mohler never took a philosophy class in college. But when it comes to popular philosophy, his Existential Comics rule the Internet. He’s made well over 100 of them since 2013, encompassing thinkers from the pre-Socratic Greeks to contemporary philosophers like Peter Singer and Robert Nozick. The existentialists do tend to appear the most, as you’d expect from the site’s name (and the fact that its logo is a cartoon of Jean-Paul Sartre), but Mohler showcases an extensive knowledge of every topic his works cover. Most importantly, he shares that knowledge easily and openly with uninitiated readers. You can click a ‘Didn’t Get The Joke?’ tab below each comic for a brief explanation of the concepts that comic explores, and on the blog section of the website, there’s an excellent beginner’s guide to philosophy—what books to read, how to read them, and other web resources to explore…

With the New Year here, it’s time for my annual post focusing on some of the novels that will reach round-number anniversaries in the next 12 months.

I’ll work chronologically backwards, starting with 1998-published books turning 25 in 2023. I’ll only mention novels I’ve read, except for two of which I’ve only seen the movie version.

Not sure this qualifies, but Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was first published in the United States a quarter-century ago, in 1998. That novel initially came out in the United Kingdom the previous year under the title of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’sStone — kicking off J.K. Rowling’s outstanding, wildly popular seven books of wizard world-building. The second novel, HarryPotter and the Chamber of Secrets, made its page-turning debut everywhere in ’98.

Perhaps the best novel of ’98 was The Poisonwood Bible, about a very problematic American missionary in…

“The October Revolution in Jazz was a four-day festival of new jazz music which took place at the Cellar Café in New York City. It occurred from October 1–4, 1964, and was organized by composer and trumpeter Bill Dixon. The success of the festival was directly responsible for the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild. During a trip to Helsinki, Finland with Archie Shepp in the summer of 1962, Dixon began to develop embouchure difficulties. The situation deteriorated to the point where, by the following summer, Dixon stopped playing in public in order to focus on correcting the issue. He also began concentrating on writing and arranging. Shepp, meanwhile, began collaborating with John Tchicai, with whom he would soon form the New York Contemporary Five. Dixon composed and arranged a number of the pieces that would be performed and recorded by the NYCF, and also…

A Concert of Dance Nos. 14, 15, 16, by Robert Morris. New York: Judson Dance Theater, 1964.

“In 1968, Village Voice critic Jill Johnston proclaimed that between 1962 and 1964 a ‘revolution’ had occurred at Judson Memorial Church. With its exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, MoMA brings visitors into this seminal moment when a collective of choreographers and downtown artists across disciplines came together to create and show new works in non-commercial spaces, works that transformed the definitions of art and how we experience it. MoMA pushes the boundaries and conventions of the museum space as well, beginning the exhibition in the Atrium, where a video installation and a series of live performances take place daily, showing the work of preeminent choreographers from Judson Dance Theater: Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, David Gordon, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton, and Tricia Brown. As the subtitle suggests, ‘the work…