The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 40, February 14, 2021
Instead these blue valentines remind me of my cardinal sin
I can never wash the guilt or get these bloodstains off my hands
And it takes a whole lot of whiskey to make these nightmares go away
And I cut my bleedin' heart out every night
And I'm gonna die just a little more on each St. Valentine's Day
Don't you remember I promised I would write you?
—Tom Waits, Blue Valentine
Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights.
All the wealth you make is taken, by exploiting parasites.
Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave?
Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave?
—Joe Hill
Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud.
—Rosa Luxemburg
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
—Elizabeth Bishop, from “One Art”
How James Thomas “Cool Papa” Bell Became a Negro League Superstar -Lonnie Wheeler Celebrates One of the Fastest Men Ever to Play Baseball, Lonnie Wheeler, LitHub, 2/10/21
“Cool Papa Bell,” he said, “is so fast that, when he goes to bed, he can turn out the light and be under the covers before it’s dark.”
When William Nunn of the Pittsburgh Courier discussed the apparent inevitability that black players would soon integrate the major leagues—a movement championed by Heywood Broun and Jimmy Powers of the New York Daily News—he put the Pittsburgh center fielder on the short list of likely candidates.
“The phantom wall of race prejudice,” wrote Nunn, “which for years has kept Negro players out of big-time diamond competition, is under a bombardment from which it cannot hope to stand…And now, look at the cream of the crop…men of the type of Willie Wells, whom westerners referred to as the ‘Colored Hans Wagner’; Dick Lundy, one of the admittedly great shortstops; ‘Cool Papa’ James Bell, who can trail a ball farther than any man in baseball.”
Those were words that resonated with Bell. Integration, rather than adoration, was the shape that his ambition assumed. The gentleman from Mississippi had played too successfully, against too many white opponents, to settle for less. He was interested, also, in the comparative windfall that his talents would rightly command if he wore a major-league uniform, increasing his salary by a multiple of five to ten—there was, after all, Clara Belle to support, the monthly contribution to send his mother, a certain vesture to maintain, and, most of all, the pursuit of justness—but such considerations as celebrity and station were lower priorities. Cool Papa’s stardom was not design but residue, a natural by-product of his speed and grace.
Adapted from The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell: Speed, Grace, and the Negro Leagues, Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. Copyright © 2020 Lonnie Wheeler.
Curt Flood Belongs in the Hall of Fame, Jemele Hill, The Atlantic, 2/10/21
(This article is part of “Inheritance,” a project about American history and Black life.)
One of the most consequential episodes in the history of American sports began with an All-Star Major Leaguer’s simple wish to avoid the Philadelphia Phillies.
The year was 1969, and not only were the Phillies next-level terrible, but they had signed their first African American player only 12 years ago, in 1957. The team’s fan base also had a reputation for being hostile and racist. So it was no wonder that Curt Flood, a superstar center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, balked when he learned that he’d been traded to Philly. Flood wasted no time in registering his objection with MLB’s commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, writing, “I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes.”
(Ed note: This is a great story and a terrific piece of writing, do click through and spend the time reading this one.)
Isn’t 400 Years Enough: The failure to appreciate Black history leaves our nation incomplete, Jonathan Holloway, New York Times, 2/10/21
Many of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were driven by a belief that they were acting in accord with the principles fashioned at the birth of this country, that their protest embodied America’s long history of patriotic rhetoric about freedom and citizenship. And in this, they are at least partly right: Such rhetoric has been used time and again by white supremacists — one of the latest iterations being the Proud Boys and their co-conspirators — to rationalize violence against racial and religious minorities in order to preserve a country white Americans did not want to share.
The insurrectionists seem to believe that their America is under assault. They are not alone. President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission — established as a response to The New York Times’s 1619 Project, an examination of this nation’s history that took the Black past seriously — revolved around the belief that the ideological underpinnings of America were being threatened and that the nation needed to be reminded “that our Declaration is worth preserving, our Constitution worth defending, our fellow citizens worth loving, and our country worth fighting for.”
There’s nothing to argue against in this statement — except that it fundamentally ignores centuries of efforts to make sure that only certain people were protected by the nation’s laws, reflected in its glorious rhetoric and considered worthy of love. Others could be owned, beaten, separated from their families, denied their birthrights, receive substandard education, be relegated to substandard housing and have shorter life expectancies.
Stories of Slavery, From Those Who Survived It: The Federal Writers’ Project narratives provide an all-too-rare link to our past, Clint Smith, The Atlantic, March 2021 issue.
The stories swirling about the room weren’t famous accounts of extraordinary people; rather, they were the words of all-but-forgotten individuals who bore witness to the quotidian brutality of chattel slavery. These stories were the result of the Federal Writers’ Project—a New Deal program that was tasked with collecting the oral histories of thousands of Americans. From 1936 to 1938, interviewers from the FWP gathered the firsthand accounts of more than 2,300 formerly enslaved people in at least 17 states. The members of the last generation of people to experience slavery were reaching the end of their lives, and so there was an urgency to record their recollections. In scale and ambition, the project was unlike any that had come before it. The Federal Writers’ Project ex-slave narratives produced tens of thousands of pages of interviews and hundreds of photographs—the largest, and perhaps the most important, archive of testimony from formerly enslaved people in history.
How to Double Mask, Boone Ashworth, Wired, 2/11/21
THIS WEEK, THE US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released findings that double-masking—wearing one face mask on top of the other—can be an effective way to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. It’s a practice experts have been mulling over for a while now, with President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci advocating for double-masking back in January. Now the CDC’s lab tests show that double masks can reduce the likelihood of coronavirus transmission between two people by up to 95 percent if both parties wear them correctly.
Why Greenland is Ground Zero, John Englander, Sea Level Rise Now, 2/8/21
Why does Greenland command the world’s attention? Because it’s the key to gauging future global sea level rise. It’s where the fastest melting ice is…
Like Willie Sutton supposedly said when asked why he robbed banks: “That’s where the money is.” …
Though Antarctica has seven times more ice, Greenland is melting much, much faster than Antarctica. The Arctic is warming at approximately three times the global average. Without getting technical, suffice to say that the tilt of the Earth, the placement of the continents, and ocean and atmospheric currents all bring more of the excess heat to the Arctic.
Raising the Steaks: First 3-D-printed rib-eye is unveiled, Laura Reiley, Washington Post, 2/10/21
Aleph Farms’ new 3-D bioprinting technology— which uses living animal cells as opposed to plant-based alternatives — allows for premium whole-muscle cuts to come to market, broadening the scope of alt-meat in what is expected to be a rich area of expansion for food companies. A survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults, conducted by MRS research company for agriculture company Proagrica, showed that 39 percent of American consumers have considered going vegetarian or vegan since the pandemic began. Health concerns, climate change and animal welfare are drivers.
WAS ELECTION DENIAL JUST A GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEME? DONORS’ LAWSUITS LOOK FOR ANSWERS. Widespread voter fraud is a fake problem, but some conservative donors say they’re getting scammed out of real money, Richard Salame, The Intercept, 2/6/21
Through a representative, Eshelman said, “True the Vote failed, in every way, to make use of my donation to investigate and either prove or disprove election fraud, as agreed upon, and failed to respond to my requests for information about how the funds were spent. Any attempts by True the Vote to claim otherwise is a red herring the group is using to hide behind its deceptive and manipulative practices.”
According to court filings, the megadonor demanded a refund of most of his donation. When True the Vote offered to return only half that amount, Eshelman filed suit against the group in federal court, forcing open a window into its day-to-day operations for the first time.
COVID Took a Toll on Coal, Clearing the Way for a Recovery, Eric Levitz, Intelligencer, 2/8/21
The pandemic’s toll on coal offers an opportunity to mine durable climate progress from the past year of mind-boggling tragedy: Even as the dirtiest of all power plants took a financial beating last year, global wind- and solar-power capacity actually increased in 2020. And with governments in the United States and Europe looking to reduce unemployment through public investment in green energy, the post-pandemic recovery could accelerate the transition toward low-carbon power.
“We are not saying we predict that coal will be phased out,” Potsdam Institute director Ottmar Edenhofer told the Times. “What we are saying is, this is now a splendid opportunity, and it would be good if energy ministers and finance ministers around the globe will take advantage of the situation.
How Hudson Valley Farmers Are Experiencing Climate Change, Will Solomon, The River, 1/24/21
Dramatic temperature swings are increasingly common in a warming Hudson Valley. This variability, particularly in the context of irregular seasonal transitions, is especially burdensome for fruit growers. “The biggest thing we’ve noticed [are] the fluctuations in the weather between falls and springs,” says Brad Clarke, owner of Clarke’s Family Farm in Modena, which grows apples, pears, peaches, and other crops using a mix of organic and Integrated Pest Management techniques.
Holly Brittain, co-owner of Rose Hill Farm in Red Hook, also grows a variety of apples and stone fruit, and describes this exact problem. “If it gets unnaturally warm in February, and then the temperature dips again, the fruit could be budding too early, and then all the flowers drop off, and you could lose your entire crop.” This is, in fact, exactly what happened to Clarke five or six years ago; he tells me that their farm lost an entire peach crop, which he notes was a first in his father’s lifetime (Clarke’s father is 76, and has been farming in Modena his entire life).
…
Perhaps above all, we ought to think about place—the local ecology, wherever we are, and the best ways to develop healthy long-term relationships with it. As Wehrung points out, connection to ecology in a rapidly and frighteningly changing landscape is vital. “There’s a way we have to not cut off from loving what’s around us, and that’s what happens for me when I get scared,” she says. “I get skeptical and freaked out by it raining, or not snowing, and that keeps me from realizing how much I care, and what it’s possible we can do.
“We’ve got to remember how much impact we can still have, and how much we are having.”
People Should be Alarmed: air pollution in US subway systems stuns researchers, Oliver Milman, The Guardian, 2/10/21
People traveling on subway systems in major US cities are being exposed to unsafe amounts of air pollution, with commuters in New York and New Jersey subjected to the highest levels of pollution, research has found.
Tiny airborne particles, probably thrown up by train brakes or the friction between train wheels and rails, are rife in the 71 underground stations sampled by researchers during morning and evening rush hours in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington DC, the cities that contain the bulk of subway systems in the US.
The levels of these tiny specks of pollution, called PM2.5, were well above nationally determined safe daily levels of 35 micrograms per cubic meter in each of the cities. New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) system had 251 micrograms per cubic meter, followed by Washington DC with 145 micrograms per cubic meter. Philadelphia was, comparatively, the cleanest system but still breached the limit beyond which serious health hazards are risked.
“New Yorkers in particular should be concerned about the toxins they are inhaling,” said the study co-author Terry Gordon, a professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, with the research finding that concentrations of hazardous metals and organic particles were anywhere from two to seven times higher than outdoor air samples in the city.
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As we have seen for a long time, Republicans are astute liars. We’ve seen this well illustrated during the course of the latest impeachment trial, and this article in American Prospect illustrates how damaging Republican liars can be:
One More Republican Needs to Go – the Head of the CBO, Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect, 2/12/21
Yesterday, CBO admitted that it had made a doozy of a miscalculation in its September projection of increased national debt. Thanks to an improved economic outlook for late this year and next as the recovery kicks in, CBO now projects the debt to be just 107 percent of GDP by 2031. This is far less than previously estimated, and well below the World War II peak.
But CBO’s earlier projections added to the anti-stimulus hysteria. These estimates, which change with the winds, are treated as Scripture. CBO is allegedly nonpartisan, but its brand of economic analysis is deeply conservative.
Its director is a Republican, Phil Swagel. He was formerly assistant Treasury secretary for policy under Hank Paulson in the George W. Bush administration.
Swagel was appointed for a four-year term in 2019, at a time when Republicans controlled the Senate and Democrats had the House. He was pushed for the job by Republican Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, then the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and OK’d by House Budget chair John Yarmuth of Kentucky, a progressive. Today, the Senate Budget chair is Bernie Sanders.
At the very least, Sanders and Yarmuth need hearings challenging CBO on the way they do economics. Swagel can only be removed during his term for gross misfeasance. Well, CBO has just demonstrated it.
Go out,
find a cormorant
strut your rant
wide-beaked
short-screamed
as the breath deepens,
whitens in winter air —
don’t despair
the next cormorant
is just around the wave
or just below the surface
& will emerge
if you look long enough
at the sudden end
of this line.
—Pierre Joris
RATATATAT (Quick Hits):
Rodale Enlists Cargill in Unlikely Alliance to Increase Organic Farmland, Lisa Held, CivilEats, 2/9/21
Ford’s next pandemic mission: Clear N95 masks and low-cost air filters, Hannah Denham, Washington Post, 2/9/21
A New Lens Technology Is Primed to Jump-Start Phone Cameras, Julian Chokkattu, Wired, 2/4/21
Inside Clean Energy: How Norway Shot to No. 1 in EVs, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 2/10/21
14 of 16 severe COVID patients in trial recover with experimental Israeli drug, Luke Tress, Times of Israel, 2/3/21
Nine Years After Filing a Lawsuit, Climate Scientist Michael Mann Wants a Court to Affirm the Truth of His Science, Marianne Levelle, Inside Climate News, 2/7/21
The Colorado River Basin’s Worsening Dryness in Five Numbers, Luke Runyon, KUNC, 1/29/21
Trump’s Environmental Policies Killed Thousands of People, Scientists Say: The British medical journal The Lancet released a new report attributing 22,000 deaths in 2019 to the former president’s regulatory rollbacks.
Prostate scan breakthrough could prevent thousands of cancer deaths every year, landmark study finds: Scientists at Imperial College London have developed a 15-minute MRI scan, known as a Prostagram, which can detect the disease early, Phoebe Southworth, Daily Telegraph (UK), 2/11/21
The Dean of DC Poets: E. Ethelbert Miller, interview on State of Belief, 2/6/21
Step aside, please, while our officer inspects your bad attitude.
You have no rights we are bound to respect.
Please remain calm, or we can’t be held responsible
for what happens to you.
—Haryette Mullen, from “We Are Not Responsible”
Back in black, I hit the sack,
I've been too long, I'm glad to be back
Yes I'm let loose from the noose,
That's kept me hangin'
about I been livin like a star
'cause it's gettin' me high,
Forget the hearse, 'cause I never die
I got nine lives, cat's eyes abusing every one of them and running wild '
All Strung Out Over You, The Chambers Brothers (1967), song by Rudy Clark
“In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter,
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover”
—Wendell Berry, from “February 2, 1968”
This Hand is For You
This hand is emotional
This hand carries the weight of memory
This hand wants to be casual, calm, calibrated for
whatever is next
This hand signals across the room
to show I am ready for your love to overtake me
This hand makes the peace sign
This hand counts the birds it sees in winter mornings
This hand waves at the children in the street
and the dogs that follow them
This hand seeks and hides
This hand is ready to take a stand
This hand is learning to scratch insignia in the ground
and sand paintings on the beach
This hand paints messages
on boulders for future generations to decipher
This hand believes in the future as if my life depends on it
This hand remembers everything that has happened to me
since the day I was born
This hand records and wants to be remembered for its stolidity
in the face of every disaster and failed attempts at grace
This hand covers my eyes when I need to hide
This hand glides across your skin at the slightest invitation
This hand makes love real
This hand believes that flesh and blood and bone and love
are one and all we have and all we are together
For Laura, 2/14/21
—David Wilk
Yes, today is Valentine’s Day. Whatever that may mean to you. That may sound cynical, but manufactured holidays seem to have that effect on me, even though I appreciate their role in this modern mass consumption society of which we are all a part. The very act of critiquing them plays into their guiding narrative of control and consent.
Today is also the day after the acquittal of the 45th president by the United States Senate despite overwhelming evidence of his High Crimes and Misdemeanors (did we expect anything else?) and today is also the day before the next manufactured celebration we observe, President’s Day, invented to honor Washington and Lincoln and the other great presidents who have headed up our fragile democracy. The irony is deafening.
Be well, dear friends, this love is for you.
I never had a dream like I did last night
I never had a dog in the fight
I never had a thing I was afraid to lose
I never had a dream like you
—All My Love, The Alternate Routes (a great Connecticut band you’ve probably never heard of)
If you are enjoying The Weird Times, feel free to share and recommend it to your friends and families. And I’m always looking forward to hearing from you anytime.
Be well, be safe, stay strong, and stay committed to what you believe in.