Newsbites

A mix of interesting articles I came across this evening, thought my truckbuddies might like to see them too:

Why Progressives Are Losing the National Debate -

Americans are grappling with struggling markets, captured regulators, languishing employment, and rising inequality. Self-identified progressives, mostly found on or to the left of the Democratic Party, have for years made these issues central to their agenda. The moment seems ripe for the popular embrace of progressive policies. Instead, progressives find themselves embattled. "Voters feel ever more estranged from government -- and . . . they associate Democrats with government," explains Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. The result is that "a crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism."

Lasers for the Dead: A Story About Gravestone Technology -

Death doesn't change. But that doesn't mean that death escapes its time or culture. The older sections of Washington Cemetery have an identifiable style, too, Ciamaga said. The new stones are just the latest one. But if that's true, then these stones say something about the times in which we now live and die.

Our death stones are shiny and global and technologized to display high-resolution portraits of our loved ones. Our death stones are not quite as durable as the gray granite of the 20th century, but they are stitched between the rocks that came before.

World War II: The American Home Front in Color -

In 1942, soon after the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the Office of War Information (OWI). The new agency was tasked with releasing war news, promoting patriotic activities, and providing news outlets with audio, film, and photos of the government's war efforts. Between 1939 and 1944, the OWI and the Farm Security Administration made thousands of photographs, approximately 1,600 of them in color. OWI photographers Alfred Palmer and Howard Hollem produced some exceptional Kodachrome transparencies in the early war years depicting military preparedness, factory operations, and women in the work force. While most of the scenes were posed, the subjects were the real thing -- soldiers and workers preparing for a long fight. (45 photos)

Riots in London -

Riots that erupted in London neighborhoods over the weekend spread to four other cities yesterday, as hundreds were arrested and at least one person was killed. What began as a protest against the police shooting of Tottenham resident Mark Duggan spread quickly into general rioting and opportunistic looting -- what Prime Minister David Cameron has called "criminality pure and simple." For three days now, buildings and vehicles have been smashed and set on fire, while stores and warehouses were looted. Police have been unable to do much to slow the mayhem. Tonight, some 16,000 police officers will be deployed to London's streets in an effort to quash the worst unrest in the city in decades. Collected here are images of the violence in the U.K. from the past several days. (41 photos)

The Chav Revolt -

"Why are there so many kids who have no ambition but to be horrible, criminal people that don't want to do anything other than cause misery for others? Their only aspiration in life is to be like someone in a rap video or to win the Lottery. All they want is a quick fix and that's fuelled by the media and by advertising.

And then there's all the good people out there who work hard and break our backs and do our best, and stay within the boundaries of what is right. I'm attempting to start my own small business but that's going to be even harder in this area now. I don't blame the police for not reacting fast enough. There are just thousands of scumbag criminals out there and not enough police," - Jon Davis, 32, an outraged resident of Croydon, South London.

Looters mugging an injured man:



Londoners volunteers turned out en masse today for cleanup duty in the debris-strewn streets:

photo via the Atlantic

photo via Joe.My.God.

My First Car

1970 Chevelle Malibu hardtop with mag wheels

It was about this point in time, back in 1971 that I bought my first car - I used to have a good head for significant dates, and August 4th comes to mind, though I can't swear to it now.  But whatever the date may have been, it was a happy, happy day for me.  I tell you what.

I had looked forward for what seemed like ages - time passes more slowly for the young, of course - to having my own wheels, and I remember it seemed like the day would never come when I could get a driver's license and a car.  As a boy my trusty bicycle had carried me lots of places, but when I became a teenager, the places I often wanted to go were too far away on busy roads not safely travelled by bike.

But slowly, much too slowly, the day of liberation approached.  For a year or so previously, while driving my mom's old Buick, I had been developing an eye for all the different brands of new cars, and discovered an unsuspected talent for zeroing in on the precise make, model, and year of scores of cars by paying attention to fine details. 

And in the process of observing, I had narrowed my preference down to a sporty Chevrolet - unlike my straight peers, line and color were everything in my judgment, can you relate?  It came down to a choice between a zippy little Nova or a very sporty mid-sized Chevelle Malibu.  Since my mom was generously donating her old car as a trade-in, it actually would have been possible to go for a Corvette - oh my God, sex on wheels - or a new marque I had never seen until I walked into the dealer's showroom, the brand new Monte Carlo, which looked as sleek and chic as a 1930's limousine, though designed more for sport.

But at the time, I just thought I wasn't quite ready for the last two, which were more grown-up toys than I wanted or needed at the time.  And my mom nixed the Nova, fearing as she always did for my safety in a small car - for one brief moment in time, I had my eye on a used Volkswagen bug that I could have bought from a friend for only a couple hundred bucks, but Mom absolutely forbade me to even think about it.

So I ended up wandering all over the dealer's lot to pick out my very own Malibu 350 V8, a bright cranberry red with a black vinyl top - the height of coolness at that moment.  Oh God, it was a beautiful car, fellas, with a new-car smell that was intoxicating.  Sticker price:  $4,025.

And buddy, it would run like a scalded dog.  I tell you what. 

For months, I peeled rubber taking off from every stop light - what fun.  I never notice anyone doing that nowadays, but it was fairly common among my generation.  Of course, I had no way of knowing that I had just managed to catch the last of an era that would soon disappear forever, as has been so often the case in my life.  Muscle cars were all the rage at the time, when gas was only 28 to 30 cents a gallon.  And damn, they were sexy - and so, it seemed, were the guys who drove them.

But the oil crisis of 1973 ended all that.  I'm glad I got my dream car, though - one ought to have things like that when one is young enough to truly savor the experience.  And I kept that sweetheart for nearly 12 years, though that was due mainly to the poverty of my college days.  I've often wished I had that car back again, that somehow I could have kept it safely stored away.

But at this late age, even if I still had it, it wouldn't be nearly as much of a thrill to drive as it was then.  Once you have awakened from a dream, you can't get back inside it, you know?

But it was great while it lasted.

Curiously, I never thought to take a decent photo of my Malibu; there are only a couple of pics that show a corner of it, but nothing with the whole car.  So I had to search around the 'net for the pics you see above and below.  The top picture is actually a 1970 Malibu, nearly identical to the 1971 except for a few fine details like the turning lights and tail lights.  The bottom picture is a 1971 model like mine was, but a convertible - mine was a hardtop, though I did sometimes wish it had been a ragtop:  what fun that would have been, cruising up and down the beach roads in summertime.

But I loved my car, and it was a good friend to me for years and years and years.   Peace to its ashes.



1971 Malibu convertible with factory-equipped sport wheels

Though I can't believe it's been 40 years ago already. Where the hell does the time go?

Bonus:  That was the summer a number of memorable songs topped the charts, like "You've Got a Friend" by James Taylor, "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" by the Bee Gees, "Brown Sugar" by the Stones, and this rocker by CCR that sums up the feeling of speed, youth, and dreams of sex:

I was riding along side the highway, rolling up the countryside . . .

Last "Pink Triangle" Survivor Dies

Chart of prisoner markings in Nazi concentration camps, circa 1940;
the pink triangles for "homosexuell" are third column from the right

Rudolf Brazda, 98, died last Wednesday in northern France.  Believed to be the last gay survivor of the Holocaust, he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp by the Nazis in 1942.  His remains will be cremated and interred next to those of his partner, Edouard Meyer, who lived together for more than 50 years.

From the Jerusalem Post:

While in Germany in 2009, Brazda’s first visit to his native country in 64 years, he examined his Buchenwald concentration camp documents. “Yet they were never able to destroy me. I am not ashamed,” he noted.

Commenting on the contemporary gay and lesbian generation, he said, “They should consider themselves lucky to live in a free democracy.” . . .

This past April, France appointed Brazda a Knight of the Legion of Honor. Germany chose not to award Brazda the Federal Cross of Merit. Brazda did not receive monetary compensation from the German government for his incarceration in Buchenwald.

Successive post-Holocaust German governments [have] resisted paying financial compensation for gay victims of the Nazi period.

Your Head Trucker encourages all you guys to watch the documentary Paragraph 175, which has many interviews with gay concentration camp survivors; it's a heartbreaking story - but we must remember our past.

Don't think it can't happen again.  Don't think it can't happen here.  Don't think it can't happen to you.

It can.

It Gets Better: "I Was the Bully"

A moving account by J.T. in south New Jersey:

Waitin' for the Weekend

Groovy Guys: Graham Nash

In my younger days the Hollies were a fun group, featuring a very young - and studly - Graham Nash. 

This song always makes me smile: the steel drums remind me of flying into the Bahamas, where they used to have a steel drum band meet all the planes - a DC-6, let's say, or a Lockheed Electra - to serenade debarking passengers as we emerged into the sea-scented air and brilliant tropical sunshine, and descended the steps to the tarmac.

But the young'uns among us won't even be able to decipher that last sentence, so just enjoy the song:



Later, of course, after a string of hits with the Hollies, Nash teamed up with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and sometimes Neil Young, and got his second wind with another truckload of rock classics, including the delightful "Marrakesh Express," which I very fondly recall from the summer of 1969. Here's a hairier, more worldly and wizened Nash doing an interesting live version (1974) with Crosby - consummate musicians:



In 1977, I was lucky enough to see them in concert performing so many great songs, including this one - sung a capella except for Stills's acoustic guitar - all of them perfectly on pitch just as you hear it in this recording, and not a hundred feet away from me. Man, what a thrill that was. I tell you what.



And here's Nash in 2009, explaining why you never hear protest songs on the radio anymore:




Bonus: The guys team up with blues queen Bonnie Raitt on this awesome rendition of "Love Has No Pride":



I remember the song - hell, I lived it once.

A great mistake; but we love and learn.

Four Artists

The ex-roommate, who happens to be a very fine artist himself, and I have been emailing each other back and forth today about some wonderful painters I disovered yesterday whilst surfing about from here to there.  It seems, much to my surprise, that representational art is not dead, after all.  And we both especially love the way the first two artists portray light - exquisite.

Whether from good conscience or just sheer laziness, I'm only posting one work by each artist here - but do follow the links and look at the many other paintings they've done.  I hope they grab you as much as they do me.

1.  Leon Belsky, "Tulip Flight I":

Your Head Trucker don't know too much about art, but it strikes me that this is a dancer's pose - no?

2.  Nancy Depew, "Challenge":

3.  Michael Chapman, "Inner Noir":

4. Francis Livingston, "Rush Hour":

No Problem, Y'all

Even though the Southland is still firmly in the grip of rightwing fundamentalism, attitudes about the gays are changing, slowly but surely.

As witness - OMG! - this bi-racial same-sex wedding announcement in the Columbia, South Carolina, newspaper.

And then there's this Texan's response to the gay weddings last week in New York City:

Honk to Andrew Sullivan.

Dolly Apologizes for T-Shirt Incident

Last month, a lesbian mom visiting Dollywood Splash Country with her spouse and family was asked to turn her t-shirt inside out by a park employee; the wording on the shirt said, "Marriage is so gay."

Now Miss Parton has issued this apology to the couple:

"I am truly sorry for the hurt or embarrassment regarding the gay and lesbian t-shirt incident at Dollywood's Splash Country recently. Everyone knows of my personal support of the gay and lesbian community. Dollywood is a family park and all families are welcome." Dolly adds that the policies on clothing or signs with profanity or controversial messages are in place to protect the person wearing the shirt and keep disturbances at the park to a minimum. Dolly concludes saying, "I am looking further into the incident and hope and believe it was more policy than insensitivity. I am very sorry it happened at all."

Feeling the Heat

Temperatures in Texas at 7 p.m. today:

Temps are forecast to be 108 tomorrow and 109 on Wednesday, then cooling off to 104 by Friday.  And nighttime temps won't go below 80 any night this week.

The President Surrenders

That's the title of Paul Krugman's column today in the NYT.  The clincher:

Make no mistake about it, what we’re witnessing here is a catastrophe on multiple levels.

It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will.

In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.