Joe Biden

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Occasionally, in my little corner of the universe, I have to make a decision, as yesterday, when Kathy sent a comment she had seen responding to a Heather Cox Richardson blog.  The comment was long and I include it as sent.  I also agree with it, but that is extraneous…I publish even items I disagree with.

So…special thanks to Kathy V, and to the commenter, Scott Krasner, and to Heather Cox Richardson who’s a prolific and outstanding blogger at Letters from an American (the link goes to her post which includes Scott’s comment).

Scott K:

Scott M. Krasner11 hr ago
I’ve seen many memes where Biden is smiling or laughing, usually with Obama, that imply he’s a fun loving prankster – not that there’s anything wrong with that.
However, since the election there’s been a sobriety or gravitas, or maybe it’s earnestness, in his addresses, and even press releases, that’s both striking and gripping. Why is this grabbing my attention?
“I value your expertise and I respect you, and I will have your back. This administration is going to empower you to do your jobs, not target or politicize you.”
One, Biden rarely uses the pronoun “I” unless he’s assuming responsibility. He doesn’t use it to focus on himself or to elevate his role or skills or knowledge above those of his staff, government employees, or the citizens of the US, not just his “followers.” Two, he doesn’t single out or denigrate individuals or organizations to blame for this lousy state of affairs, but offers a better vision by comparing where he wants to be against specific perceived failings that exist today. Three, he offers belief in, and respects the value of, both his nominees and all the people who come to work each day for the government, on behalf of all citizens AND residents of America. Four, his tone exudes belief and confidence in the hope and ability of collaboration to take on and resolve the challenges facing us. It’s not “us vs. them,” even in the face of recalcitrant Republican Senators and representatives. Five, there’s a resolve to make things happen. While he didn’t say “it’s my way or the highway” about his COVID relief proposal, he did make clear that he’d use whatever levers possible to pass this bill, even if he would’ve preferred a fully bipartisan effort. Six, he’s not castigating his political foes. When 10 GOP Senators asked to speak to him about a counterproposal, he accepted the request without any prior public condemnation. I’m sure he used a side by side comparison to evaluate each point of difference, and when deciding that their counter was insufficient to meet his goals, he didn’t call out that group as stupid or radical or lazy or do-nothings.
I could go on but the contrasts with Trump are clear. Compared to Trump’s wealth, arrogance, and hastily and performatively adopted “Christian family values” alliances with Evangelicals, Biden is more informed by the experiential difference of his humble origins, his personal losses, and his lifelong, but not outspoken, religious faith. Stylistically, Biden’s quiet resolve stands out against Trump’s bombastic threats. I’d characterize his approach to transition as “do no harm but take no shit.” There are times to appease and times to move ahead without worrying about his detractors. He seeks counsel from those who agree with him as well as those who differ, but when he makes a decision he’s politely but clearly saying “your opinion counts but your vote doesn’t.”
Look, Joe’s not an angel. He’s not a saint. He failed to stand up to Clarence Thomas’s racist card when Thomas declared his Supreme Court hearing as “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks” despite credible charges of sexual harassment. His mouth got ahead of him during the debate on the 1994 crime bill when he warned of “predators in the streets” and “lock the S.O.B.s up” in a tone eerily prescient of Trump’s 2015 announcement of his candidacy. And he courted well known and unrepentant racists like James Eastland and Strom Thurmond.
Does he regret those things deep down or only for the sake of political expedience? I don’t know, but they’ve not been consistent or current hallmarks of his public persona in the way that Marjorie Taylor Greene’s social media posts have been. There are few, if any, concerns about questionable moral or ethical actions. He’s not known as a liar or adulterer or megalomaniac.
In short (sorry, too late!), despite some human flaws, foibles, and failings, Biden doesn’t attempt to impose a vision of America predicated on isolation, xenophobia, and disdain for those without privilege. After almost five years of the alternative, it’s remarkable to hear the English language being used to unite instead of divide, and to call the nation to action on behalf of each other instead of for the white donor class. Welcome aboard, Joe, it’s time to kick some ass and reintroduce the better angels of America.

COMMENT from Dick:  “Joe’s not an angel.  He’s not a saint.”  Of course, he’s not.  First, he’s human.  Most importantly, though, he’s been in public office for, I think, 47 years, most of those as U.S. Senator, Vice-President, and now, President.  He’s long been in the most public of positions, having to deal, daily, which most of us mere mortals would gladly avoid.  It is inevitable that he will make decisions I wish he hadn’t – likely he’s already done such.  But he’s working to preside over the most unruly motley crew in the universe, and I’m glad he’s the person whose predecessor, Harry Truman (also previously a Senator and Vice-President) had the sign which said “The Buck Stops Here.”

The State of US

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February 8, 2021: The latest Heather Cox Richardson blog gives a good primer for today.  Note also the comments at the end of the below blog.  Mine is one of them.

also February 8, 2021: “Why You Can’t Understand Conservative Rhetoric” 

February 9, 2021 3:30 a.m.: hours before the Impeachment trial begins, “Grievous Constitutional Crimes“.

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For those who need/want some background on today’s USA: an excellent CNN Fareed Zakaria special, “The Divided States of America.  What is Tearing Us Apart”, airs at 9 p.m. EST on Saturday February 6.  (Tonight.)  This is an encore of the program we watched last Sunday.  All information is available here.  The program is very well worth your time.  We’ll watch it again.

It’s Saturday morning, Feb 6, and I’m getting set to publish this post.  Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove newly elected Marjory Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee assignment to House Education and Labor committee.  It was not a straight party line vote.  11 from her party agreed the decision was correct.

About the same time, the former President of the United States  said he wouldn’t testify in his own behalf at this, his second, impeachment.  At about the same time, a major manufacturer of voting machines, indicted by innuendo in the just completed U.S. election, sued several persons and companies for several billion dollars.

I don’t need to provide chapter and verse on any of these.  They were all over the U.S. media, and there was more that any citizen could easily find out simply by watching TV or listening to the radio or reading the newspaper.  Overnight Just Above Sunset summarized this matter, here.

Monday begins the Second Impeachment trial of the ex-President In the U.S. Senate, only the third President in history to have been impeached.  This is a trial for the history books for those who come after us to learn about.  This is about a crime whose culmination on January 6, 2021, was witnessed directly by the Senators sitting as judge and jury, some of whom may well have been advisors, albeit quiet.  I could go on.

That is how it is in the United States of America on Saturday morning, February 6, 2021.  Every single one of us in one way or another are on trial next week.  We all fit in.  As my headline suggests, WE are US, the United States; the world will see and judge US by what our elected representatives have done and will do.

Feb. 2, 2021, in the rotunda of the Capitol, in memory of Officer Sicknick, the policeman killed in the insurrection at the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021.

My Jan. 6 blog, published as the insurrection began, can be reviewed if you wish: here.  I wrote many times about the state of our Union as I saw it between the November 7 election and today (See postnote).  I expected to take a vacation from politics in those 77 days….  That didn’t happen.

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Usually in history this interim period between Presidential election and inauguration in the U.S. is generally a non-event regardless of who wins the U.S. Presidency.  A transition peacefully happens from one administration to another, most commonly going from the first term to a second for the incumbent.

(In my life-time this would be: a fourth term for Franklin Delano Roosevelt; second terms for Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama; one term only for Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Trump.  John Kennedy was assassinated in his second year in office. Jerry Ford was a caretaker President, coming from Speaker of the House of Representatives, for two years after Nixon resigned, and was unsuccessful in running for his first full term.  He came to the position via the vice-presidency after Spiro Agnew resigned the office in 1973.)

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In the wake of the controversial election 2000, I kept all of the newspapers between that contested election and the final decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on or about Dec 12, 2000.  I still have the papers, and I was going to throw them out this year, but given the events this year, they will join the collected newspapers from 2020-21 for my descendants to toss or keep when the time comes.  Yes, it’s nuts…but harmless.

I’ll probably watch as much as possible of the upcoming proceedings next week, as I can.  This impeachment hearing will be a civics lesson for the future generations who will be impacted by the results.

In the meantime, watch the machinations of state legislatures and the national legislature, and get on the court as a citizen – we are the government.  Already, I have heard it said that there are over 100 proposed amendments to election law in the various states most of which are designed to tighten voting law, not to the advantage of the common citizen.

As I say above, “every single one of us in one way or another are on trial next week”.  Everyone can impact on this, and I hope everyone weighs in for the right of the franchise…and that everyone will prepare to cast an informed vote for candidates for all offices in 2022, and thereafter.

Watch also the apportionment of voting districts as mandated by the just completed 2020 census.  Learn how your state apportionment will be made, and by whom.

Sign seen on a fence at 27th and Lake Street Minneapolis Jan 31, 2021.

This is well worth reading: “Those Damned Canadians“, Just Above Sunset.

POSTNOTE: As noted I had planned to take a vacation from politics between Election Day and Inauguration (Nov. 7 – Jan. 20.  That turned out to be a fools errand, due to the chaotic events we have all experienced.  There were politics related blogs on Nov. 7, 15,18; then again on Jan 1, 5, 6, 12, 13, 15 (Q-anon), 16, 20, 23, 24, 25, 27.

Enjoy the Super Bowl….

August Wilson

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Today I made a routine stop at the Post Office.  An afterthought: we needed some stamps.  I looked at the display at the window, and a commemorative caught my eye, a bit too small to make out who it was.  “August Wilson” said the clerk; “I knew him personally”, I said.  I bought a couple of sheets and was on my way.

The clerk was impressed.  Now, August Wilson was never a BFF, but the encounter with a stamp caused me to revisit my “encounters” with one of America’s greatest playwrights over the years.

Thanks to Laura, a long-time teacher friend, who first caused me to meet her friend, August, in person back in 1978.  I will just give a thumbnail.

When I met August, he was a cook for a Southside Minneapolis group, Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly.  I have only one vivid memory of August, there, and it was in his capacity as cook; a brief chat in the Little Brothers kitchen.  Coincidentally, I likely met him not long after he arrived in the Twin Cities.

He’d moved here from his native Pittsburgh, and I think the cook job was mostly a good fit for his passion, which was his writing, some of which took place at a restaurant just down the street.

Little Brothers was a fine group of idealists, whose mission was  to the elderly in their area.  This was over 40 years ago, and folks move on.  Thad is the one person I keep tabs on – then he was developing the then-technology for fund-raising mailing list; it became his business, which I link here.

A few years later I got some junk mail while living in Hibbing MN.  It was for a theater in St. Paul called Penumbra.  It was at Penumbra that I saw my first, and most, of August Wilson’s famous plays, including a small theater staging of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a recent movie on Netflix.  Laura told me that she sat with August at Penumbra at the premier of one of his earliest plays.  This was long before he became famous.

Once I met August in person at some fundraiser in St. Paul.  He was probably doing a favor for a friend.  His element was not to be a celebrity at such events, though he was already very well known.  I sensed he’d rather have been most anywhere else.

Out of this connection, I connected with August’s sister, Freda, in their hometown of Pittsburgh PA.  In April, 1998, I was in Pittsburgh for a conference and Freda gave my daughter Joni and I a several hour tour of August Wilson’s neighborhood, including the small Bedford Ave apartment where they lived as kids, and the booth at Eddie’s Restaurant where he had done his early writing.  We had a piece of pie in a booth where he probably wrote.

Eddie’s Restaurant with Eddie, April, 1998, Pittsburgh PA

I understand that Eddie’s and the entire neighborhood has been redeveloped in recent years, so I saw part of the authentic history before it was renewed – a sad fate, but inevitable.

In 2011, Freda and her daughter, Kimberley, came to Minneapolis for  performance of one of August’s plays at the Guthrie Theatre.  In part of that trip, I took them to see Little Brothers, still at its old location near Lake Street and Cedar Ave.

Kimberley and Freda Ellis at Little Brothers, Minneapolis, March 2011

A short time later, I was at another conference, this of retired teacher members of the National Education Association, in Pittsburgh.  I had been invited to speak there, and gave much of my time to Freda, who talked about her brother and their experience.  She was very engaging.

Freda died in 2015, 10 years after her brother, August, died at age 60.

I had one last brush with August perhaps three years ago.  Well known speaker Kevin Kling entertained us at a church event.  During Kevin’s earliest days, he was part of a group of aspiring writers, including August Wilson, who supported each other at the Minneapolis Playwright Center.  This was during the time that August was completing and did a reading of his first play, possibly Jitney, the first of the well known ones in what is now called The Pittsburgh Cycle.  I seem to recall Laura mentioning it might have been his very first effort, called “Black Bart and the Sacred Hills” or such, which probably was inspired by a vacant lot on a hillside near his Pittsburgh home in the Hill district.  I’m not sure of that.

I’m grateful to Laura for introducing me to August Wilson, even though she wasn’t with me in the times I met August and part of his family and saw his neighborhood.

Thanks, Laura.

COMMENTS (see also, end of post)

from Kevin: Thank you Dick.  What a great story. This is the side of August I remember too. I think when you meet someone before knowing their work they always live as a person first. August would like that too I believe. Thanks again. This is a great tribute..

Utah Philips, Black History

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It’s Black History month.

Long-time friend, Peter Barus, out in rural Vermont, sent the following along on Feb. 1.  Carve out the 55 minutes to listen to this, while in the midst of all the junk we’re dealing with these days.

I knew of, but little about, Philips.  You can read more about him on-line if you wish.  I listened to the entire link, and found it a fascinating piece of history, and think you will too.

Thanks, Peter.

Peter: This is a link to a file you can download (right click and choose “download linked file”) or just play, of U. Utah Phillips old radio show.

U. Utah was the real thing, a veteran, a hobo, a Wobbly, a follk singer and raconteur, a friend of Pete Seeger and everyone else you could want to have met. He was a good friend of Ani Defranco.

(Sorry, I can’t help imagining a friend introducing him to U Thant, former UN Secretary General: “U., have you met U? U, U.” But Phillips would understand, being also a comic of rare subtlety.)

He brings all these people alive, and plays recordings of their songs and stories and words. Gene Autry singing “The Death of Mother Jones.”

Louis Farrakhan playing Mendelssohn on the violin.

This show is his Black History Month offering, and I, with my intimate memories of the movement, was profoundly moved. Phillips introduces it with the forceful admonishment that white people cannot define “racism”: instead we must listen to those most affected, to learn how it really works.

One thing that stood out for me was the simple ordinariness of the message conveyed by people who had been painted so inaccurately, to this day. Hang together, or hang separately. And we learn about the larger context too: about Abel Meeropol, the Rosenbergs, and “Strange Fruit.”

We learn that the Chisholm Trail was named for a Black cowboy, and another invented steer-wrestling.

Did you know Louis Farrakhan played the violin? He not only did that, but was given a rave review in the NYT. And this was recent.

Mumia Abu Jamal speaks. Old gandy-dancers carry actual rails into a concert hall for their performance of track-lining chants. MLK and Malcolm X speak, and seldom do we hear the words Utah Phillips gives us, somehow sidestepping the media filters and revealing wise, prescient leaders that make the present crop of wannabes cringe and slink into the background.

Worth getting a warm beverage and just sitting for an hour. It will ring through the days that follow, as if you had just stepped out of time into this new reality, and can see the contrasts and samenesses as never before. And get a new purchase on the persistent stupidity that still plagues us all.

POSTNOTE: A commentary in today’s Washington Post seems a relevant fit.  You can access it here.