The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 27, November 15, 2020
"It is the duty of the humor of any given nation in time of high crisis to attack the catastrophe that faces it in such a manner as to cause the people to laugh at it in such a way that they cannot die before they are killed."--Lord Buckley, "H-Bomb"
No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late, hey
—Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower
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We need to start imagining another world into being right now. —Chris Smaje, author of A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth (Chelsea Green Publishing).
“Capitalism and commercial culture, amplified by Silicon Valley, have created the opposite in many ways: a cult of the individual, the rhetoric that all you can desire and win is private and personal, a narrative of the powerlessness and therefore lack of responsibility of that individual, generational segregation and historical amnesia, and moneyed forces ranked against civic participation.”
—Rebecca Solnit, Biden's victory is only the prelude. What happens now is up to us, The Guardian, Nov 9, 2020
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Trump won Florida after running a false ad tying Biden to Venezuelan socialists, Jeremy B. Merrill and Ryan McCarthy, ProPublica, Nov 12, 2020
“In Florida, where President Donald Trump gained crucial support among Latino voters, his campaign ran a YouTube ad in Spanish making the explosive — and false — claim that Venezuela’s ruling clique was backing Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
YouTube showed the ad more than 100,000 times in Florida in the eight days leading up to the election, even after The Associated Press published a fact-check debunking the Trump campaign’s claim. Actually, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro expressed opposition to both presidential candidates.
The video was part of a broader Trump campaign strategy in heavily Latino South Florida that sought to tie Biden to Socialist leaders like Maduro and the late Cuban President Fidel Castro. Trump won Florida by about 375,000 votes, the largest margin in a presidential election there since 1988. He carried about 55% of the Cuban American vote, according to exit polls by NBC News.”
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Thanks to Summer Brenner for sending this powerful recording of William Barber celebrating, preaching last week, the night after the election was called for Biden.
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Biden Won. But Has Trump Broken America? America is Fracturing as a Society Because About Half of Americans Don’t Want to Live in a Democracy, Umair Haque, Medium, Nov 12, 2020
“Biden won — so Trump seems to be attempting a coup. And meanwhile, this election has revealed just how bitterly, painfully divided America really is. So much so that “divided” — the word that pundits have come to use — is an understatement and mischaracterization. The truth is that America’s undergoing what might better be called “social fracture” — it is a society that is badly broken as a society, as a group of people with shared values, especially modern and civilized ones. Americans no longer seem to have those left in common.”
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Indeed, in his willingness to abandon governance for his own benefit Trump is simply following the lead of Republican lawmakers like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who has steadfastly refused to take up bills from the Democratic-led House of Representatives, including a coronavirus relief package to address the coronavirus recession. Instead, McConnell has focused on packing the courts with pro-business judges. Excerpts from a new book by former President Barack Obama, due out next week, reveal McConnell’s response to a plea from then-Vice President Biden to pass a worthwhile bill. McConnell answered: “You must be under the mistaken impression that I care.”—Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, Nov 14, 2020
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The Breaking News
breaking, the news
calls out
a terrible panic overtakes
signal exceeds noise
now
planets align
voices carry
the world rises a new day
caches
the radio voices
release again
a captive voice
breath the silence
overtakes us
history
breaks over us
in waves of joy
David Wilk, November 7, 2020
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My Au Revoir Donald Song Collection
Go Now – Moody Blues
Since you gotta go, oh you'd better
Go now, go now, go now (go now, ooh) — by Larry Banks/Milton Bennett
Goodbye to You - Patty Smyth (new performance, Jimmy Fallon and Patty)
'Cause baby it's over now
No need to talk about it
It's not the same
My love for you's just not the same
And my heart, and my heart
And my heart can't stand the strain
Zachary Holt Smith, lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
You Should Probably Leave – Chris Stapleton
'Cause I know you and you know me
And we both know where this is gonna lead
You want me to say that I want you to stay
So you should probably leave
—Chris Stapleton
Let Me Go, Avril Lavigne+Chad Kroeger
I'm breaking free from these memories
Gotta let it go, just let it go
I've said goodbye
Set it all on fire
Gotta let it go, just let it go
Dave Hodges / Avril Ramona Lavigne / Chad Kroeger © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group
Au Revoir – Cascada
Let's keep it confidential
Boy, you want to show the world how cool you are
No, no potential
I don't buy your show - au revoir
Allan Eshuijs / Yann Peifer / Manuel Reuter © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., BMG Rights Management
Walk Away Renee, The Left Banke
From deep inside the tears that I'm forced to cry
From deep inside the pain that I chose to hide
—Michael Brown
My Favorite Mistake, Sheryl Crow
Did you know when you go it’s the perfect ending,
To the bad day I'd gotten used to spending.
When you go, all I know is you’re my favorite mistake
You’re my favorite mistake.
Jeff Trott / Sheryl Crow © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Ole Media Management Lp
And this one, which is great fun to watch….
The Quarantine Song (Donald Trump Cover) Bruno Mars Lazy Song —Maestro Ziikos
Send me your suggestions for other emblematic songs of this moment.
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Our analysis of the election results suggests that 2020 accelerated a long-running trend-American politics is even more split along urban-rural lines than it was four years ago, The Economist, Nov 14, 2020
An analysis of the election results by The Economist suggests that the partisan divide between America’s cities and open spaces is greater than ever. Preliminary results supplied by Decision Desk hq, a data-provider, show that voters in the least urbanised counties voted for Mr Trump by a margin of 33 points, up from 32 points in 2016. (Specifically these are the bottom 20% of counties by population density. Counties which are more than 10% Hispanics, which shifted right for reasons unrelated to density, have been excluded.) Meanwhile, voters in the most urbanised counties—the top 20%—plumped for Mr Biden by 29 points, up from Hillary Clinton’s 25-point margin in 2016. More broadly, the greater the population density, the bigger the swing to the Democratic candidate (see chart). Even after controlling for other relevant demographic factors, such as the proportion of whites without college degrees or Hispanics in each county, the data suggest that urban and rural voters are more divided today than they were in 2016.
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Here’s How Scientists Want Biden to Take on Climate Change, Andrea Thompson, Scientific American, Nov 12, 2020.
SA interviewed a number of climate scientists after the election to get their take on what the Biden administration can and should do to address the greatest challenge of our time.
“Climate breakdown is a matter of survival of peoples and the planet. It is an intersectoral, international and intersectional issue, thus necessitating actions that are comprehensive. To do this meaningfully, I think the most important action the Biden administration can do is to undertake all its policies and actions through a climate justice lens—which would enable seeing the interconnections across sectors and policies—and approach action with equity, accountability and justice in mind. This means addressing a range of issues, such as international cooperation, trade, financing, policies on agriculture, transportation, energy, housing, industry, etc.” —Farhana Sultana, Syracuse University
Seagrass Meadows Restored off Eastern Shore, Sandy Hausman, WVTF, Nov 5, 2020
“There was a pandemic disease back in the 1930’s that pretty much decimated seagrass meadows throughout the world," says Karen McGlathery, a coastal ecologist and professor at the University of Virginia. "In many places they recovered, but they never did recover in Virginia until we started restoring them.”
UVA, the Nature Conservancy and the Virginia Institute for Marine Science teamed up to harvest, store and spread millions of seeds across 500 acres. Nature took it from there – spreading grasses over 9,000 acres.
“This is really seen as the most successful and largest seagrass restoration in the world, so it is a kind of blueprint for other areas and other organizations to follow,” McGlathery says.
And that has meant good things for the environment.
“The seagrass meadows make the water clearer. They remove nitrogen, so they make the water cleaner," McGalthery explains. "One of the big things that we’ve worked on is the role of seagrass in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and burying it in their soils for decades.”
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One in five covid-19 patients are diagnosed with a mental illness within three months - Anxiety disorders, insomnia, and dementia were the most common diagnoses, Charlotte Jee, MIT Technology Review, Nov 11, 2020
“The news: There have been increasing numbers of anecdotal reports of a link between surviving covid-19 and developing mental health problems in recent months. Now we have some numbers to back those reports up. A new study, published in Lancet Psychiatry, has found that almost one in five people who have had covid-19 go on to be diagnosed with a mental illness within three months of testing positive.”
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Marine mammals may be at risk from COVID from humans, study, Marc Montgomery, Radio Canada International, Nov 11, 2020
While there have been indications that this pandemic spread from animals to humans, a new study shows humans could spread it to marine mammals.
Dalhousie University in Halifax looked at the process by which the virus invades human cells by binding to amino acids, and found that many marine species have very similar amino acids.
They say mammals like beluga whales, dolphins, seals and sea otters could be particularly at risk among 15 species that were susceptible because of the protein that is required by the virus to invade cells.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal, Science of the Total Environment, with the title: Pandemic danger to the deep: The risk of marine mammals contracting SARS CoV2 from wastewater ( available here)
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Birds' genetic secrets revealed in global DNA study, Victoria Gill, BBC News, Nov 12, 2020
Scientists have sequenced and recorded the genomes — the genetic makeup or "code of life" — of species from almost every branch of the bird family tree. The 363 species' genomes, including 267 sequenced for the first time, are catalogued in Nature. It is a list that now features more than 92% of the world's avian families. This has revealed the code for things "Darwin was intrigued by and wrote about", Dr. Michael Braun from the Smithsonian Institution told BBC News. From wildly different colored feathers, body sizes ranging from the giant ostrich to the diminutive wren and raptor flight speeds of up to 300km/h [186.4mph], "it's all coded for in the genome", he said.
We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most profound disruption of the energy sector in over a century, RethinkX.com, Nov 2020
Like most disruptions, this one is being driven by the convergence of several key technologies whose costs and capabilities have been improving on consistent and predictable trajectories – namely, solar photovoltaic power, wind power, and lithium-ion battery energy storage. Our analysis shows that 100% clean electricity from the combination of solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) is both physically possible and economically affordable across the entire continental United States as well as the overwhelming majority of other populated regions of the world by 2030. Adoption of SWB is growing exponentially worldwide and disruption is now inevitable because by 2030 they will offer the cheapest electricity option for most regions. Coal, gas, and nuclear power assets will become stranded during the 2020s, and no new investment in these technologies is rational from this point forward.
My brother was killed in Afghanistan. He became real to me again in Quarantine, Annie Sklaver Orenstein, Time Magazine, Nov 11, 2020
On October 2, 2009, while on one of the very missions he’d described, a suicide bomber waited silently behind a building as Ben rounded the corner and took my brother’s life. I’ll never know if he was saying the Sh’ma, the prayer a Jewish person is supposed to say before death, under his breath as the blast struck….
Ben made a difference. We will learn and grow from his life just as we will from every soldier who has perished on the battlefield, every soul lost to COVID-19, and every innocent casualty of the Trump Administration. They will not be buried in the ash.
For the first time since Ben’s death, I will spend this Veterans Day blanketed in the glow of the moon with my brother by my side. I’ve learned that we can mourn the crumbling world while still keeping our chins held high, ready to fight and face the new world that lies ahead.
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Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee is a community literary center that serves local, regional and national communities. Their 27th annual Poetry Marathon takes place Jan 30/31, 2021; this year it is a 24 hours straight virtual event in which 240 poets will participate. I hope you can attend this great event. We need poets and the places that support them now more than ever.
Lin Enger is a fine story teller, whose work is both challenging and uplifting. His newest is American Gospel, a terrific novel that takes place in 1974 in northern Minnesota during the end of the Nixon era. If you are looking for something new to read during your pandemic quarantine, this book is highly recommended. My interview with Enger is at Writerscast.com. Enjoy.
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We want trumpets that sound like thunder, and men to act as though they were going to war with those corrupt and degrading principles that rob one of all rights, merely because he is ignorant, and of a little different color. Let us have principles that will give every one his due; and then shall wars cease, and the weary find rest.
― William Apess, Eulogy on King Philip. Apess (1798-1839) was the first Indigenous American to write and publish an autobiography, A Son in the Forest.
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Please stay healthy as the pandemic worsens, and as the political landscape continues to challenge us, do not lose hope or optimism. Be ever vigilant and ready to stand up for democracy, human decency and care for the planet. Best wishes to all. — DW