Monthly Archives: November 2024

Throwing away all (well, MOST) of those old notes

Some of the notes I’ve kept — there are very, very few.

When I was subpoenaed to testify in Jim Harrison’s trial in 2018, I was first asked to meet with the prosecutor, David Pascoe. He wanted me to testify about a long-ago (2006) blog post regarding an interview with Rep. Harrison.

Also, he wanted my notes from that interview. I told him that really wasn’t practical, and wouldn’t be helpful even if I produced them. First, there was thge problem of my handwriting. Second, I seldom wrote down full direct quotes (unless something the speaker said was so obviously a quote I would use that I thought it worth the time), because I was a slow note-taker for a journalist. My notes were so sketchy that I always had to write within a day or two of taking them to remember what they referred to. They would mean very little to me now, and nothing to anyone else.

Finally, I seriously doubted that I could produce them before the trial, even if I quit James Smith’s campaign and did nothing but search through the pile of boxes in my garage until I found what he thought he wanted.

So he dropped that idea, to my great relief.

Soon, I won’t have to worry about such subpeonas, because I’m getting rid of most of the notes.

The end of last week, we bought a car. A new car. Believe it or not, it’s the first new car we’ve bought since 1986. Yep, at least 38 years. We’ve gone with “previously owned” on every subsequent purchase. We were sick of the stress of constantly having to come up with money for repairs, and we wanted something with a warranty.

It’s a middle-of-the-road — in terms of cost — Toyota, but in unadjusted dollars, it cost more than the first house we bought, back in 1980.

So we want to take good care of this vehicle — which means parking it in the garage. Which we use for other purposes now, mostly (measured by cubic feet) storage.

Those couple of dozen boxes have got to go. They’ve been piled up in a sort of uneven ziggurat right next to the steps leading into the house. They’ve been covered with a big sheet of heavy plastic, which (I’m now finding) didn’t protect them as well as I’d hoped.

The going is slow, because I’m going through every sheet of paper in each box. (I’ve never been a person for blithely throwing things away.) I’m doing it fairly quickly, but it still takes maybe an hour per box. I was discouraged by the result on the first box, because I eliminated less than half the contents. But that was stuff from college days, and my decade at The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, right after school. Which means I had winnowed through that several times before.

One thing that amazes me is the time I spent on administrative matters while putting out a newspaper — especially the correspondence from the days before we had printers that produced something of letter quality. Letters to readers, letters to prospective reporters (I was over all the news reporters at the Sun), letters to people running some conference I was about to go to. All produced on a typewriter. All that time spent on things that I really don’t care about now (which make up most of the stuff I did toss out). Wow, the energy I had in my late 20s.

Since that box, things have gone much better. I’ve thrown away something like 90-95 percent of each box. And a LOT of that is notes from the ’90s and double-aughts. Still haven’t run across those Harrison notes, though.

But I have run across a few notes here and there that I’ve pulled out to keep. Sometimes because of the interesting topic, but mostly because of the people being interviewed — people I like or enjoyed talking with (Joe Riley, Fritz Hollings, John McCain, Joe Biden), people I found completely appalling (Grover Norquist, for instance) or people who have subsequently become more widely interesting (like Nikki Haley).

I put a few of those together on my scanner so you could see the kind I’m talking about. I have a long way to go — including the dreaded box of an odd shape (like a cubic yard) that I know is nothing but notes. Who knows what I’ll find next?

In any case, I’m making gradual progress. But I thought I’d tell you because while there are always a lot of things preventing me from having time to blog these days, this is one of the bigger ones right now…

As of right now, I’ve eliminated 11 boxes. This is what’s left of the pile…

Hey, y’all, help me check something out

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See if you can tune in the signal…

Lately, I’ve heard it said a couple of times on NYT Audio that their content — or some of their content — is free to nonsubscribers.

It might just be the blogs, like “Matter of Opinion,” and “The Ezra Klein Show.” I’m wondering whether it might also apply to the newspaper’s other content (like The Daily and Headlines), and to some of the stuff they carry from other publications, such as The New Yorker.

This matters to me because so much of what I read and hear — and would like to share with you, so we can have a fully informed conversation about the things I’m thinking about. Which is, you know, what a blog is about — unless I just cut off comments and write a “personal journal” that I simply allow others to read. Or not. Which I’ve thought about.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I include quotes to an extent that some might say goes beyond Fair Use (I would not say that, but we all have our own views, don’t we?), too often the conversations don’t go any deeper than the headlines, which means they don’t go beyond the usual conversations people have about politics or culture or anything in this social media age. And every statement is drawn directly from the current talking points from the two sides — the only two sides too many people perceive.

And if we don’t get beyond that, there’s little point to blogging.

So… let’s see if this works. Here are links to some recent items from NYT Audio. I initially tried to give you something from each category — blogs, opinion and news content from the paper (some read by the writers, some by ersatz voices), and some from other sources.

I’ve also tried to share a variety of topics. But after the first two or three, I ran into a bit of a challenge. Read on:

David Brooks: Maybe Bernie Sanders Is Right
The Daily: An Immigration System Most Americans Never Wanted
NYT: What Does College Football Have to Do with College Football? My answer, of course, is “nothing.” But you might enjoy listening.

OK, that was more complicated than I thought. I couldn’t even find links to most of the dozen or so items I wanted you to listen to. And I’m pretty sure that the last of those three goes to the text content, not the audio. NYT Audio doesn’t give, on the app, direct URLs to specific content. So I was trying to grab those from the browser on my Mac. And even then, I couldn’t find links to outside content that appears on the app, such as The New Yorker and Foreign Policy.

Bottom line: You may have to download the app onto your phone or other device. It’s obvious they want everyone to do that. It’s worth the effort if they give you free access, because there’s good stuff there on a wide ranged of topics and interests. Here’s where you download it.

You would be rewarded by being able to listen to some of these other pieces I was originally going to link to here:

Carlos Lozada: Stop Pretending Trump is not Who We Are
The New Yorker: The Improbably Rise of JD Vance
The Culture Desk: Why Was 1999 the Best Movie Year (No, that’s not a typo; the second 9 wasn’t supposed to be a 3. But as silly as the proposition sounds, it’s an interesting listen while walking.)
NYT Interview: Al Pacino is Still Going Big
Foreign Policy: What a U.K. Labour Win Means for the Global Left
Hard Fork: Apple Joins the A.I. Party, Elon’s Wild Week and HatGPT
The Daily: A Conversation with President Zelensky

Or maybe you’d be thus rewarded. I can’t tell from my end, since they recognized me as a subscriber. But still, if you have any success with anything I’ve offered above, please let me know. I’d really like this blog to feature deeper and more intelligent discussions about … whatever the subject at hand might be… than are likely to be fueled by free media…

Nice playlist, YouTube!

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When I first listened to this, I was initially going to try to say something about how impressed I was that artificial intelligence had gotten so much better.

Screenshot

But then, I realized that such a preference-driven thing as this wasn’t really artificial (or any other kind of) “thinking” at all. It’s more of a case of you press button A multiple times, and the machine keeps showing you A — not even something as smart as “thinks like A,” but A itself. In some way or other, you could probably have built a machine that could do that a hundred years ago. Press these 12 buttons; get these 12 results. Duh…

It wasn’t even as “smart” as the thing I admired Pandora doing several years back — long before, say, ChatGPT and such. That’s when I noticed that, based on the tunes I had elected to hear, the algorithm was intuiting that I would also like this other tune, of which I had never heard. And it was right. I made some really happy discoveries through that process. I was impressed because Netflix had been presented at the time as being able to do that with movies and TV shows, and it failed miserably. I wasn’t sure whether that was because there are fewer variables with music, or because Pandora was just that much smarter than Netflix.

Anyway, this is nothing like that. I’ve chosen at some time or other to call up every clip on this list (except perhaps one), and YouTube just put them together and played them back for me.

But as dumb and obvious as that may be, I really enjoyed it. So I thought I’d share. Maybe you’ll dig it, or some of it, too. Here’s what it presented to me under the “My Mix” heading:

“New Lace Sleeves,” Elvis Costello and the Attractions — What kind of music would you call this? I would have called it “jazz,” based on what that rhythm section is doing. But Wikipedia doesn’t say “jazz” once, which I guess shows yet again that I am a musical ignoramus. It puts both Elvis and the song under “New Wave,” which is hard to argue with. I says Elvis himself said it was inspired by Devo‘s cover of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Stevie Wonder‘s “Superstition“. I can see the Devo, but not the Stevie. At least Wikipedia admits that Elvis’ wife plays jazz.
“Tired of Being Alone,” Al Green — No mystery here. I listen to the Rev. Al quite a bit. As should everyone. And this one may be the best, although, to quote Ed Grimley, it’s difficult to say…
“Elenore,” the Turtles — I love the story people tell about this one. The Turtles wanted to get all creative and produce a Sgt. Pepper or a Pet Sounds, but their label just wanted another “Happy Together.” So they decided to write the worst piece of crap they could think up, and that was “Elenore,” and the studio recorded it, and it was fantastic. Another big hit, because it’s simply an awesome pop song. Even the Turtles had to admit it. It’s even creative — I like the rhyming with the first syllable: “ELenore, gee I think you’re/SWELL and you really do me/WELL..” and so forth. Yes, the lyrics are moronic, but in a clever way, I always thought. I thought the dumb words were a way of saying that Elenore blows the guy’s mind to such an extent that he is rendered incoherent….
“Use Ta Be My Girl,” the O’Jays — Not sure why this is on here. Not that I hate it, but I don’t remember having deliberately played it.
“I’m an Old Cowhand,” Gene Autrey — I know why this one’s here. My mother was talking about enjoying the singing cowboy when she was a child, so I was showing her how to find some of his stuff on YouTube…
“New Amsterdam,” Elvis Costello and the Attractions — Played this a lot before we went to Europe, especially since we’d be spending close to half the time in Amsterdam. Talk about fun, goofy lyrics… “New Amsterdam it’s become much too much/Till I have the possession of everything she touches/Till I step on the brakes to get out of her clutches/Till I speak double dutch to a real double duchess.” Maybe ol’ Declan is saying something super-deep about New York. I dunno. I just dig the wordplay. I listen to it the way I do “I Am the Walrus” — although this is better.
“King Harvest,” The Band — I’ve mentioned my appreciation of this many times before, and this is a great time to listen to it — the most autumnal song by the most autumnal band ever. I first found this video of the guys playing it live in the studio years ago, and consider it a bit of a treasure.
“Happy Together,” the Turtles — Hey, you can’t put “Elenore” near the beginning of a playlist and leave this one out altogether. As Nick Hornby said about making a mix tape, there are a lot of rules. And apparently YouTube’s algorithm follows them.
“Sulky Girl,” Elvis Costello — I’ve mentioned how impressive I found this one before, so of course YouTube puts it in.
“Delta Lady,” Leon Russell — This clip is another classic in the “live in the studio” genre. And of course, this was a time when musicians were fond of putting glitches and restarts on vinyl, to give listeners an illusion of being there. But this is special. When Leon starts, and stops everyone and starts again — twice — you are hearing the Master of Space and Time himself, an actual leading member of the Wrecking Crew, at work…
“A Day in the Life,” The Beatles — No need for explanation here, is there?
“(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding,” Elvis and the Attractions — One of the great things about this is that it comes across as the quintessential Elvis Costello song, suiting his persona perfectly. And yet it’s not. Nick Lowe wrote it… but he could never bring it to life as well as Elvis. Nick sings it too gently. When Elvis does it, he says the title in a way that sounds like he’s ready to fight, and daring you to tell him what’s so funny about it…

So there you go. It’s been a rough week, folks. Enjoy…

You know who inspired “Delta Lady,” right? Rita Coolidge.

The day after…

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The view out my home office window at 7:28 a.m. What a bright, sunshiny day, huh?

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

— W.B. Yeats

Well, we know what rough beast. He’s been rending and tearing at the very meaning of our country for eight years now. We know him. And yet all those millions of people, who were right here through it all, actually went out and voted for him. To me, it remains unimaginable that even one person did. (I mean, have you ever seen this guy? Have you ever heard him speak?) But you see what happened.

As for Kamala Harris — well, it would be dishonest to pretend I was her biggest fan, but I was very impressed at the race she ran under such difficult circumstances. And in the end, I was happy and proud to vote for her and Walz and put a sign for them in my yard.

It’s a great tragedy for our country that she didn’t win. The contours of the tragedy are yet to be fully defined, but here’s a starting point: We were the great hope of the world, the greatest force for liberal democracy in human history (and if you’re one of those people who don’t understand the meaning of the word “liberal” in that phrase, please go do some serious reading). Now what will we be?

Whatever it is, there is no reason to think it will be in any way good.

But you know, as much as I mourn for the country I love, I’m even more immediately worried about people in other parts of the world — you know, those people Trump and his most fervent followers really don’t give a damn about. I could write about that from now to the day I die, and only partially describe the horrific likely effects. Just to mention one: I can’t tell you what will happen next in Ukraine, but it’s logical to expect that thousands more innocents will die, and the survivors will spend the rest of their lives being oppressed by Trump’s friend in Russia.

America can (I still hope and pray) bounce back, eventually. I’m not able to be as hopeful for Ukrainians.

Of course, other than that, some things went well, although that sound like I’m saying, “But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, didn’t the play have some fine scenes?”

But, no longer being the public man I was, here’s my personal view. I had five signs in my yard. Here’s how things went with the folks other than Harris/Walz:

Mary Burkett — This is very pleasing, as she seems to be the biggest vote-getter in the Lexington 2 school board race. There are four winners total, and I also voted for two of the other three — Liz Chitty Castles and Craig Aull. My fourth choice was Brian Habing, and he didn’t make it. I have little or no objection to Tre Bray, who did. Three out of four is hard to complain about.
Micah Caskey — No surprise there, of course. But there’s a slightly interesting thing about the result. As I said in a previous post, his opponent was a very pleasant young man, and I enjoyed talking with him. But it would be hard to find anyone who seriously thought he had a chance in this Republican district. And yet — according to SCVotes, he got 39.63 percent of the vote. Let’s just round that up and say 40 percent. Of course, that could be because this is a fairly moderate Republican district, but still pretty good. Here’s why that matters: Fatalists are constantly saying there’s no point in voting in SC if you’re a Democrat, but take a look at the numbers. No doubt some people wanted Kamala Harris to win, but stayed home because soneone told them to be “realists.” (Alas, far, far too many Americans turn out only for the presidential contest.) And yet she got 40.42 percent of the vote statewide. Just because a state, or a district, is considered “safe” for the other party does not mean anyone has an excuse to stay home. Every vote counts. Every vote. Always.
Russell Ott (for whom I had two signs). This is the one candidate I tried most to help elect, as ridiculously minor as the help may have been — introducing him to friends, knocking on doors to talk a very few neighbors into putting up a sign for him. Make no mistake — the guy who made this happen was Russell himself. He worked as hard as I’ve seen anybody work for a state Senate seat. He made his case, and it was clear that he was the better candidate to any objective observer. But there was reason to worry. His district went for Biden in 2020, but Biden wasn’t running, and I never saw much similar enthusiasm for Kamala Harris in these parts. Congratulations, Russell. I’m glad to see you will be my senator.

That’s about it, from where I sit.

Election of the Body Snatchers II (with a possible answer)

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At first, I thought it was maybe a sign of lack of specifically Republican interest that so few voters were at the polling places I mentioned previously in Lexington County.

For a comparison, since I had to go into town anyway, I ran by several over in heavily Democratic Richland. Most were places I used to drop by each Election Day when I was at the paper:

A.C. Moore Elementary
Rosewood Elementary
Sims Park
Dreher High School

The first two I just drove by, and confirmed that there no visible lines stretching out the doors. At Sims, I went in, and found one or two people waiting to vote — just like at my own precinct back near Lexington Medical Center.

Finally, at Dreher, I went in and engaged the workers — who weren’t what you’d call busy — in conversation. And maybe I got my answer, although it’s an answer I brought up and immediately dismissed in my last post.

One of those signing people in (occasionally) told me not to be “fooled” by the light trickle of voters. He said 600 people from Ward 16 had voted early. That didn’t impress me until he explained that was half the registered voters (as least I assumed he was talking registered and not voting age population, because he would have had those data at hand — but I neglected to ask) in that ward. And, he said, while it might not look like much at any given moment, 300 had already voted there today. He said that at about 1:15. Conceivably, that left open the possibility that the remaining 300 could vote by the end of the day.

I don’t know, but the same could be true at the other places thus far mentioned, and at the Saluda River precinct I drove back by on my way home.

Huh. Those lines for early voting hadn’t looked very long, particularly when you consider these were people from precincts all over that part of the county. But when you stretch that out over a couple of weeks…

So, maybe folks are voting after all. I may not like the way they vote on this or that race, but I suppose I can’t accuse them of slacking off. Or maybe I can. We’ll see. Dreher was the only place where I went in and got some numbers, and maybe it was different at the other places…

Uh — where are the crowds?

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Normally, there are loads of campaign signs in this spot. This time, they had all been stripped away. Voters were almost as scarce in this location…

I get up, and I read how painfully excited everyone is supposed to be across the country, which was to be expected — right?

But then I go check out the action at my own polling place, and — there’s nobody standing outside. And I drive by my Mom’s a couple of miles away, and — it’s the same.

Which is a shock. I mean, here’s what it looked like at my polling place in 2008, which is the year I think of when I think “big turnout.”

You may say, “Yeah, but it’s raining right now.” Yes, very lightly. And an almost identical rain was falling when I took those pics in 2008, too.

But thinking of that, I went back to my own precinct to see if the crowd was all jammed up inside the building.

No. Nothing. No lines at all. I talked briefly with a school board candidate who was standing out greeting people at the door, and he said the workers told him it had been like this all morning — one or two voters at a time.

I stood there and talked to him for several minutes, and during that period that description of the trickle was borne out — one voter went by us and entered.

It wasn’t like this at early voting, as you can see from my previous posts. But at the same time, while the early crowds were good-sized, they weren’t big enough to tell us there would be virtually no turnout on the Day.

What are y’all seeing?

This was pretty good, but the Mick Jagger one was funnier

Nee, ik ben geen Duitser

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We enjoyed the Museum of the Canals, just before my big screwup.

While I’m on the Dutch kick…

You may wonder why I’m still doing the lessons daily, since our trip to Amsterdam and other places where the language is spoken was over months ago.

Well, I enjoy studying it, in spite of the compound nouns and sometimes weird sentence structures. And I don’t want to break my streak, which now stands at 231 days.

Also… back when I was doing 10 and more lessons a day, before the Europe trip, an interesting thing happened. I suddenly was really, really good at the NYT word games I play — Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections. I mean crazy good. There was one week when I got Wordle in two tries three days in a row, and also hit the “genius” level — which means I “won” — three days in a row.

I could really feel the difference during those months. Obviously, exercising the part of the brain that learns new languages helps with intuiting words in my own language as well. And that’s a good thing to be doing at my age. That’s the good news. The bad news is that since I got back and have only been doing a lesson or two a day, I’ve been doing much worse at the word games. So I’ve started the last couple of days stepping it back up a bit.

Anyway, I’ve several good reasons for continuing my studies.

Which is good, because my studies were almost no help at all to me in Belgium and Amsterdam.

Which I suppose shows that the wisdom that comes with age is of limited value. We were in Amsterdam because one of my granddaughters was doing a summer intensive with the Dutch National Ballet Academy. Once we decided to follow her there, I started studying — and urged her to do the same. She said no way. She had heard that everyone there spoke English, especially at the ballet school.

Well, sure, I said, but don’t you want to be prepared for the unexpected? Admittedly, my frame of reference was perhaps outdated. I kept thinking about that time in “Band of Brothers” when Bull caught some shrapnel in his shoulder, and was separated from Easy Company when it was forced to retreat by an unexpectedly strong German counterattack. This was way out in the country near Eindhoven, and he had to spend the night alone in a barn. Eventually, after killing one of the enemy in a hand-to-hand fight, he managed to survive, barely, and even got some first aid from the farmer. But wouldn’t the situation have been a little easier if he had spoken Dutch?

I thought so. And we were planning some forays away from urban centers, where — in my imagination — people might not be so thoroughly educated in the current international lingua franca.

But here’s the sad truth: There was not a single instance, that I could tell, in which I used my new skill and it helped in any practical way. Oh, I would try. I’d walk up to people and greet them in Dutch, either to say good morning or something more urgent like waar is de wc?

I thought I was doing it pretty well, but they responded with neither appreciation nor scorn. They didn’t react in any way, except to answer me — in English.

I had tried this multiple times as we made stops on the way to Amsterdam in Ghent and Antwerp. No success. Probably my greatest triumph was a humble one. Speaking of the wc, when I got off the train in Antwerp, I went looking for one urgently. Finding it, I was happy to pay the standard euro to get in, but then found myself standing staring at the closed doors of the full stalls.

Next to me stood an even older man, a little guy who looked nothing like a tourist, who seemed more displeased than I was. He muttered something I didn’t quite make out (more because of my hearing problem than lack of understanding the language). I just shrugged and said, sort of the way a Russian might say nichevo (or so I imagined):

“We wachten…”

I think he nodded or something. Anyway, I took his response as agreement. At least he didn’t answer me in English. He probably thought I was a complete idiot and didn’t want to talk to this guy, but I congratulated myself for saying something way existential under less than noble circumstances. I was so pleased that when a stall opened, I let him go before me, even though I had been there first.

But then we got to Amsterdam, and on our first full day, I screwed up royally, and after that largely gave up on trying to engage the locals in their own language.

We had spent much of the morning visiting the Museum of the Canals, which was pretty cool. It explained how the canals and much of the city was laid out in the 17th century, with some pretty impressive 3D, multimedia displays.

We had gone there by tram, but were in a hurry to get back to the hostel, and called an Uber. Being the careful kind of guy who learns a language before visiting a new country, I checked to make sure this was our driver as we got in: “Pat?” I asked. He responded in the affirmative and asked, “Brad?”

Filled with confidence from the previous day in Antwerp, I answered:

Ja, ik ben Brad.

Except I didn’t. What I said was,

Ja, ich bin Brad.

I heard it as I said it, and thought, Oh, no! I actually did it! Having had a tiny bit of German at an impressionable age — in high school — during my months of study, I had repeated pronounced similar simple Dutch words as their German counterparts. I blamed my German teacher, Helga. (I never liked her much.) But that just made me practice harder as I prepared for the trip, determined it would never happen in real life.

The Uber driver could have let it go. But he didn’t. In a deadpan tone, he asked, “Are you German?” In English, of course, because he knew the answer to that was nein.

But I forgave him, because he was actually a nice guy, and we had a nice conversation on the way back to the Oost area where we were staying. In English, of course, because he spoke that very well. He wasn’t Dutch, but African. It was the same with all those Middle Eastern people who lived and worked in the area where we were staying. You’d think they’d speak accented Dutch to European-looking strangers. But no, they went with English, mostly.

So I kind of gave up on the trying-to-pass-as-a-local thing. Obviously, it was completely futile, and unnecessary, even outside the international ballet crowd. I later learned why. We had an Uber driver who was actually Dutch — a lady named Saskia who had kids past high school age. She explained that so many of their school courses are in English that just before graduation, they have to deliberately take some classes to bone up on Dutch so they can pass their finals.

So that explains the natives, if not the immigrants from elsewhere.

But I was still discouraged, after all that work. Even now. Whenever the “Are you German?” incident comes up, my wife tries to cheer me up by noting that at least I could read all those signs. And yes, I could. I had enjoyed that from the moment we boarded our first train into Belgium from Northern France.

But still…

Antwerp had a nice station, but it could have used more wc stalls.

bradwarthen.com

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