Ten years ago, I didn’t know how to spell “millennium.” Did it have one “n” or two? An “e” in the middle, or an “i”?
At the time, this was important to know because the dawn of 2000 seemed to signify something Profound and Historic, and perhaps even Apocalyptic: Would nuclear power plants and intercontinental ballistic missiles be so confused by a “00” date they would throw digital tantrums and spew radioactive haze all over the globe? The possibility of millennial disaster seemed so real that we saw runs on bottled water, size-D batteries and large-caliber ammunition.
Ten months and seven days later, Al Gore was declared the winner of the November 2000 presidential election — for about 20 minutes. It seemed like the ’00s were indeed destined to become the False Alarm Decade.
Sept. 11, 2001, was no false alarm. The outrage of those attacks had one apparent benefit, however: America suddenly found new purpose and unity. The ’00s were suddenly the “We Decade,” the flip side of the self-centered, platformed-shoed “Me Decade” of the 1970s.
But, alas, “we” didn’t fit the evolving national argument over whether America had responded properly to 9/11. “We” didn’t fit a time of political and cultural polarization like none in living memory.
Naming this decade — and we must, because we are Americans, and we name things — isn’t going be so easy. Some decades, at least in retrospect, are easy calls. The Gay Nineties. The Roaring Twenties. The Psychedelic Sixties. But naming the ’00s is a challenge best postponed, because nothing we’ve considered rings with authenticity.
The Aughts? Problem is, hardly anyone under the age of 90 knows that “aught” means “zero.”
The Oughts? As in, we really ought to have sold the house when the Realtor told us it had tripled in value.
The Oh-Oh Decade? As in, uh-oh, our PG&E bill is $800.
No, no and no.
All we can do is look at the evidence that historians and sociologists not yet born will consider. And one thing, beyond the bookend disasters of 9/11 and the Great Recession, stands out: Technology reshaped who we are and how we interact.
Social media took hold of America in the last few years of the ’00s, with 350 million users on Facebook, 100 million on MySpace, and 18 million using Twitter.
Some of us are using these platforms to communicate important things to each other. But many of us are not. To a great extent, social media are simply self-aggrandizing spotlights.
At least that’s how Rhonda Dugan, an assistant professor of sociology at Cal State Bakersfield, sees it.
“I’d call it the Decade of Self-Importance,” she said. “Everyone is networking online, but they’re not doing it just to find jobs. They’re doing it to talk about themselves. The ‘Me Decade’ was all about me. Now it’s about me and telling everyone about it. I use Facebook myself. And now I’m asking myself, ‘Why am I posting that I ran a half-marathon?’ We’ve become more narcissistic, and social media has helped push it along.”
Evidence that we’re neck-deep in an era of public narcissism goes well beyond social media; you don’t need to know the difference between a computer and Coke machine to have seen it. Anyone can be a reality TV star, or so one might think: The Balloon Boy hoax and the White House party-crashers were logical conclusions to a decade of mind-numbing self-exploitation led by Tila Tequila and “Fear Factor.”
Russell Travis, the now-retired CSUB sociology professor-turned- Portland-based philanthropist, thinks in somewhat broader terms about the soon-to-be-past decade.
“I’d call it the PTSD — the Post-Traumatic Stress Decade,” he said. That name “reflects the cumulative stress from the aftermath of two ongoing wars and the many coming home afflicted with (real) PTSD; the aftermath of a seriously tanked economy; ... and the aftermath of the 2001 bombing of the Twin Towers.”
Maybe this is how we’ve come to deal with events just too big and too profound to process — by blocking out the wider world and turning inward, going to our own, personal safe place where the mundane trumps the abstract, the ordinary blocks out the incomprehensible, and 140 characters (or less) just about covers it.
Or, better stated in a Dec. 15 tweet by MeanKrystin: “Driving to the country club. I am drinking a juice box. Rock and roll.”
rprice@bakersfield.com.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The song that once roiled America is 40 years old
By ROBERT PRICE
Merle Haggard must occasionally hear that drunk guy in his sleep. More than a few times in his long and fruitful career, the Bakersfield-born singer has been on stage, warbling in his fine baritone, when some yokel in the back bellows, “Play ‘Okie’!”
And, more often than not, Haggard, writer of hundreds of gentle and poignant jazz-country ballads, will — dare I suggest reluctantly? — oblige. Sometimes Haggard’s most famous, profitable and career-solidifying song, the one that expressed disgust with smoking marijuana, burning draft cards and those “hippies out in San Francisco,” must seem like an insufferable relative who just doesn’t know when to go home.
Forty years ago today, “Okie From Muskogee” was at the peak of its power, smack dab in the middle of a four-week run at No. 1 on the country music charts. In the span of those few weeks, Haggard cemented himself in the top tier of American entertainers.
But looking back now on “Okie,” the populist anthem Haggard has said he wrote in 10 minutes, it’s clear the song was much more than that: It was, and remains, a signpost on America’s difficult and unfulfilled journey toward self-identity.
Almost immediately upon the song’s ascent to No. 1 in November 1969, “Okie From Muskogee” was regaled as the voice of the silent majority, a revitalizing tonic for conservatives who had grown defensive and angry over Vietnam and the counter-culture movement it had helped spawn.
Of course, Haggard had been covertly political for most of his career, so covert perhaps Haggard did not fully realize it himself. “I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am,” “Hungry Eyes” and “Workin’ Man Blues,” among others, had already firmly positioned Haggard as a man with working-class, anti-elite, populist sentiments. To a great extent, “Okie” tracked that same course.
Sociologists, historians and assorted pundits (including cultural historian and former Californian reporter Peter LaChapelle, author of 2007’s “Proud to be an Okie”) have long debated the song’s meaning and intent. Was it a parody or a sincerely indignant jab at the LSD-tripping left? At various times, Haggard has suggested both.
Haggard had no inkling what he’d created until he played the song publicly for the first time: His unveiling, at a club for noncommissioned Army officers in Fort Bragg, N.C., inspired a response so passionately rowdy that Haggard, then 32, later admitted he’d momentarily feared for his life.
The song, recorded in Hollywood on July 17 and released in August, made Haggard one of the hottest concert commodities in the country. The Atlantic Monthly described one scene on Dayton, Ohio: “… Suddenly they are on their feet, berserk, waving flags and stomping and whistling and cheering … and for those brief moments the majority isn’t silent anymore.” As a single, the song sold 264,000 copies the first year, propelling Haggard to 1970 entertainer of the year awards from both the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association.
Some critics decried the song’s ultraconservatism; others tried to rehabilitate the song by reading it as a populist, working-class assault on middle-class snobbery and elitism. It became perhaps the most parodied songs of the Vietnam era, inspiring left-of-center knockoffs by Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys (“Asshole From El Paso”), Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and Arlo Guthrie. So many country, rock and country-rock groups released transmogrified versions of “Okie” that Rolling Stone magazine kept score: As of March 1971, the song had been recorded 20 times, with the tally standing at “Honkies, 12, Hippies, 8.”
In the context of Haggard’s lifelong body of work, it’s clear that when Haggard saw protesting college students, he didn’t just see disrespect for flag and country, he saw class distinction and privilege. He saw trust-fund snot-noses who’d never stooped over a row of cotton in their lives, never seen dirt under their own fingernails. The marijuana was one thing — and maybe not such a big thing at that — but the naïveté was quite another. If the literal weight of the lyrics was an indication, the song was less about Vietnam than about class dignity. After all, “I’m proud to be an Okie” is the song’s most repeated line.
Eventually Haggard began expressing misgivings about the song’s tendency to brand him a reactionary, preferring to explain it simply as a statement of Okie pride. When Haggard spoke at the “Oildale and Beyond” history symposium at Cal State Bakersfield Nov. 7, that was the interpretation he shared.
But conservative politicians identified a natural constituency in country music fans, and their efforts to exploit it during the Vietnam era featured Merle Haggard.
Sometimes Haggard allowed it: He of course gratefully accepted Gov. Ronald Reagan’s 1970 pardon for crimes that eventually led to his incarceration at San Quentin Prison in the late 1950s. And he accepted Richard Nixon’s invitation to the White House in 1973 to sing at wife Pat’s staid birthday party. But Haggard refused to endorse George Wallace when the Alabama governor and presidential aspirant — who was already campaigning with country-music singers singers Ernest Tubb and Marty Robbins — asked for his support in 1972. Years later he rejected similar overtures from one-time U.S. Senate candidate David Duke, the ex-Klansman.
Eventually Haggard came to the conclusion that protest “wasn’t un-American” after all. Those young Vietnam-era protesters, he told interviewer Deke Dickerson, could “see through our bigotry and our hypocrisy. ... I believe history has proven them right.”
By 2007, Haggard had moved to the center-left, if his salute to then-presidential candidate (and longtime conservative target) Hillary Clinton was an indication: “This country needs to be honest; Changes need to be large; Something like a big switch of gender; Let’s put a woman in charge.”
But Haggard has never cared much for labels. Try to put a liberal pin on his lapel and risk that scowl. Maybe his political soul is best revealed in a lesser-known song, “Somewhere in Between,” recorded a short time after “Okie” but never released: “I stand looking at the left wing, and I turn towards the right; And either side don’t look too good, examined under light; That’s just freedom of opinion, and their legal right to choose; That’s one right I hope we never lose.”
Merle Haggard must occasionally hear that drunk guy in his sleep. More than a few times in his long and fruitful career, the Bakersfield-born singer has been on stage, warbling in his fine baritone, when some yokel in the back bellows, “Play ‘Okie’!”
And, more often than not, Haggard, writer of hundreds of gentle and poignant jazz-country ballads, will — dare I suggest reluctantly? — oblige. Sometimes Haggard’s most famous, profitable and career-solidifying song, the one that expressed disgust with smoking marijuana, burning draft cards and those “hippies out in San Francisco,” must seem like an insufferable relative who just doesn’t know when to go home.
Forty years ago today, “Okie From Muskogee” was at the peak of its power, smack dab in the middle of a four-week run at No. 1 on the country music charts. In the span of those few weeks, Haggard cemented himself in the top tier of American entertainers.
But looking back now on “Okie,” the populist anthem Haggard has said he wrote in 10 minutes, it’s clear the song was much more than that: It was, and remains, a signpost on America’s difficult and unfulfilled journey toward self-identity.
Almost immediately upon the song’s ascent to No. 1 in November 1969, “Okie From Muskogee” was regaled as the voice of the silent majority, a revitalizing tonic for conservatives who had grown defensive and angry over Vietnam and the counter-culture movement it had helped spawn.
Of course, Haggard had been covertly political for most of his career, so covert perhaps Haggard did not fully realize it himself. “I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am,” “Hungry Eyes” and “Workin’ Man Blues,” among others, had already firmly positioned Haggard as a man with working-class, anti-elite, populist sentiments. To a great extent, “Okie” tracked that same course.
Sociologists, historians and assorted pundits (including cultural historian and former Californian reporter Peter LaChapelle, author of 2007’s “Proud to be an Okie”) have long debated the song’s meaning and intent. Was it a parody or a sincerely indignant jab at the LSD-tripping left? At various times, Haggard has suggested both.
Haggard had no inkling what he’d created until he played the song publicly for the first time: His unveiling, at a club for noncommissioned Army officers in Fort Bragg, N.C., inspired a response so passionately rowdy that Haggard, then 32, later admitted he’d momentarily feared for his life.
The song, recorded in Hollywood on July 17 and released in August, made Haggard one of the hottest concert commodities in the country. The Atlantic Monthly described one scene on Dayton, Ohio: “… Suddenly they are on their feet, berserk, waving flags and stomping and whistling and cheering … and for those brief moments the majority isn’t silent anymore.” As a single, the song sold 264,000 copies the first year, propelling Haggard to 1970 entertainer of the year awards from both the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association.
Some critics decried the song’s ultraconservatism; others tried to rehabilitate the song by reading it as a populist, working-class assault on middle-class snobbery and elitism. It became perhaps the most parodied songs of the Vietnam era, inspiring left-of-center knockoffs by Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys (“Asshole From El Paso”), Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and Arlo Guthrie. So many country, rock and country-rock groups released transmogrified versions of “Okie” that Rolling Stone magazine kept score: As of March 1971, the song had been recorded 20 times, with the tally standing at “Honkies, 12, Hippies, 8.”
In the context of Haggard’s lifelong body of work, it’s clear that when Haggard saw protesting college students, he didn’t just see disrespect for flag and country, he saw class distinction and privilege. He saw trust-fund snot-noses who’d never stooped over a row of cotton in their lives, never seen dirt under their own fingernails. The marijuana was one thing — and maybe not such a big thing at that — but the naïveté was quite another. If the literal weight of the lyrics was an indication, the song was less about Vietnam than about class dignity. After all, “I’m proud to be an Okie” is the song’s most repeated line.
Eventually Haggard began expressing misgivings about the song’s tendency to brand him a reactionary, preferring to explain it simply as a statement of Okie pride. When Haggard spoke at the “Oildale and Beyond” history symposium at Cal State Bakersfield Nov. 7, that was the interpretation he shared.
But conservative politicians identified a natural constituency in country music fans, and their efforts to exploit it during the Vietnam era featured Merle Haggard.
Sometimes Haggard allowed it: He of course gratefully accepted Gov. Ronald Reagan’s 1970 pardon for crimes that eventually led to his incarceration at San Quentin Prison in the late 1950s. And he accepted Richard Nixon’s invitation to the White House in 1973 to sing at wife Pat’s staid birthday party. But Haggard refused to endorse George Wallace when the Alabama governor and presidential aspirant — who was already campaigning with country-music singers singers Ernest Tubb and Marty Robbins — asked for his support in 1972. Years later he rejected similar overtures from one-time U.S. Senate candidate David Duke, the ex-Klansman.
Eventually Haggard came to the conclusion that protest “wasn’t un-American” after all. Those young Vietnam-era protesters, he told interviewer Deke Dickerson, could “see through our bigotry and our hypocrisy. ... I believe history has proven them right.”
By 2007, Haggard had moved to the center-left, if his salute to then-presidential candidate (and longtime conservative target) Hillary Clinton was an indication: “This country needs to be honest; Changes need to be large; Something like a big switch of gender; Let’s put a woman in charge.”
But Haggard has never cared much for labels. Try to put a liberal pin on his lapel and risk that scowl. Maybe his political soul is best revealed in a lesser-known song, “Somewhere in Between,” recorded a short time after “Okie” but never released: “I stand looking at the left wing, and I turn towards the right; And either side don’t look too good, examined under light; That’s just freedom of opinion, and their legal right to choose; That’s one right I hope we never lose.”
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A profile of Merle Haggard
I interviewed Merle Haggard and Marty Stuart for a history department symposium at Cal State Bakersfield on Nov. 7, 2009 -- an event titled "Oildale and Beyond: Interpreting the Region Through Words, Images and Music." I realized later that the event fell more or less on the 40-year anniversary of Haggard's release of his most controversial and enduring (though probably not his favorite) song, "Okie From Muskogee." The CSUB event also fell on the two-year anniversary of the release of Time-Life Records'3-disc set of Haggard songs -- an anniversary that probably means more to me than to Haggard, or anybody else for that matter, because I wrote the liner notes for that package. Here's a sampling of that profile:
•••
The court transcript reveals only spoken words, not stage directions, but the scene is easy to imagine: Bakersfield defense attorney Ralph McKnight has asked the judge to grant his client probation and spare him a prison sentence. But he can offer little to recommend that sort of judicial benevolence beyond the unwavering maternal love of one woman, seated behind him in the gallery. “This mother has tried very hard,” McKnight says, nodding toward her deferentially. The Honorable Norman F. Main looks down at the lengthy rap sheet, glances across the courtroom at anxious Flossie Haggard and then studies the defendant. “If he had tried half as hard as his mother did ....” And down deep, 20-year-old Merle Haggard knows that the judge speaks the simple, undeniable truth.
Merle Haggard apologized to his mother in song, with “Mama Tried,” which reached No. 1 in 1968. But in the half-century since that courtroom scene, Haggard’s music has more often celebrated the Sons and Daughters Who Tried — the hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck, rent-to-own people who drove the trucks, picked the cotton, punched the time clocks and, yes, sometimes committed the crimes, both petty and grievous, as they struggled against a system that seemed weighted against them. Not just the working class but the tier below as well -- the hungry class. Haggard has sung about back doors, swingin’ doors and cell doors, but he has never strayed far from the defining themes of his life’s work: blue-collar pride and personal dignity. Basic Okieness.
The rest of the profile (rather lengthy, but worth every minute of your time) is here.
•••
The court transcript reveals only spoken words, not stage directions, but the scene is easy to imagine: Bakersfield defense attorney Ralph McKnight has asked the judge to grant his client probation and spare him a prison sentence. But he can offer little to recommend that sort of judicial benevolence beyond the unwavering maternal love of one woman, seated behind him in the gallery. “This mother has tried very hard,” McKnight says, nodding toward her deferentially. The Honorable Norman F. Main looks down at the lengthy rap sheet, glances across the courtroom at anxious Flossie Haggard and then studies the defendant. “If he had tried half as hard as his mother did ....” And down deep, 20-year-old Merle Haggard knows that the judge speaks the simple, undeniable truth.
Merle Haggard apologized to his mother in song, with “Mama Tried,” which reached No. 1 in 1968. But in the half-century since that courtroom scene, Haggard’s music has more often celebrated the Sons and Daughters Who Tried — the hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck, rent-to-own people who drove the trucks, picked the cotton, punched the time clocks and, yes, sometimes committed the crimes, both petty and grievous, as they struggled against a system that seemed weighted against them. Not just the working class but the tier below as well -- the hungry class. Haggard has sung about back doors, swingin’ doors and cell doors, but he has never strayed far from the defining themes of his life’s work: blue-collar pride and personal dignity. Basic Okieness.
The rest of the profile (rather lengthy, but worth every minute of your time) is here.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
An update on a sick little boy
Back in September, I wrote about a 2-year-old Bakersfield boy named Garrett Hutchins, who is suffering from brain cancer. His parents brought him to City of Hope, near Los Angeles, and doctors there suggested a double auto-transplant -- but the family insurance company declined to pay for it, citing a policy against covering case trials. That was bad enough, but then the family learned that if they'd been on Medi-Cal instead of private insurance, the experimental treatment would have been covered.
Here's that entire column.
Well, I have an update from Garrett's mom, Katie Hutchins:
Hi Robert,
I just thought you may be interested in an update. Our hospital applied for authorization to have Garrett enroll in the antibody case trial that I had mentioned before. We were fully prepared for a denial - I had even researched the appeal process and was ready to go. Well, they *approved* it, even though it's still a case trial. !!!
Who knows if the article had any influence, but I would like to believe it at least got people thinking.
Thank you again for your help.
-Katie Hutchins
That's great news and, yes, I have to admit it feels good to know it's possible I had something to do with this kid getting treatment that could save his life. Katie says Garrett had been improving anyway. In any case, I'm planning to show up at the kid's sixth-grade graduation in 10 years, if they let me in the building.
Here's that entire column.
Well, I have an update from Garrett's mom, Katie Hutchins:
Hi Robert,
I just thought you may be interested in an update. Our hospital applied for authorization to have Garrett enroll in the antibody case trial that I had mentioned before. We were fully prepared for a denial - I had even researched the appeal process and was ready to go. Well, they *approved* it, even though it's still a case trial. !!!
Who knows if the article had any influence, but I would like to believe it at least got people thinking.
Thank you again for your help.
-Katie Hutchins
That's great news and, yes, I have to admit it feels good to know it's possible I had something to do with this kid getting treatment that could save his life. Katie says Garrett had been improving anyway. In any case, I'm planning to show up at the kid's sixth-grade graduation in 10 years, if they let me in the building.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Coffee habits and the first blast of autumn
The blustery weather inspired me to pick up a hot coffee at the corporate coffee entity that’s on my daily commute. Venti latte, please.
I asked the guy at the window if coffee sales were up now that the weather was turning, and he said things were mixed: Any gains at the drive-up were countered by fewer walk-ups.
But customers were buying their favorite drinks whether it suited the weather or not. One particular customer, for example, was still buying his daily, 6 a.m. iced caramel frappuccino, same as always.
A large man, perchance? Well, yes.
But Starbucks reports that since the chain started using 2 percent milk as the default dairy product in its drinks, waistlines have decreased ever so slightly. Starbucks estimates it saved customers 17 billion calories by swapping 2 percent milk for whole just in the first five months after making the change, and it’ll save us all nearly 5 million pounds of fat annually moving forward.
No, I have no idea how they arrived at those numbers.
Starbucks is stocking the new Wilco CD, by the way (see previous post), although most locally owned record stores have it too, and without any fat content whatsoever.
I asked the guy at the window if coffee sales were up now that the weather was turning, and he said things were mixed: Any gains at the drive-up were countered by fewer walk-ups.
But customers were buying their favorite drinks whether it suited the weather or not. One particular customer, for example, was still buying his daily, 6 a.m. iced caramel frappuccino, same as always.
A large man, perchance? Well, yes.
But Starbucks reports that since the chain started using 2 percent milk as the default dairy product in its drinks, waistlines have decreased ever so slightly. Starbucks estimates it saved customers 17 billion calories by swapping 2 percent milk for whole just in the first five months after making the change, and it’ll save us all nearly 5 million pounds of fat annually moving forward.
No, I have no idea how they arrived at those numbers.
Starbucks is stocking the new Wilco CD, by the way (see previous post), although most locally owned record stores have it too, and without any fat content whatsoever.
Cousin Herb's widow
It was a long before my time, and perhaps long before yours, but the first family of Bakersfield back in the mid-1950s was”Cousin” Herb Henson and his wife Katherine.
His daily, 45-minute TV show, “Cousin’s Herb’s Trading Post,” was on KERO-TV from 1953 to 1963. Henson, flanked by co-stars Bill Woods and Billy Mize, became a favorite throughout the valley, thanks to a signal that boosted the program well past Fresno and all the way over to the coast.
His list of guest stars over the years reads like a Music Row telephone book; Merle Haggard once called him the Ralph Emery of Bakersfield. KUZZ-FM traces its call-letter lineage to the time Henson signed on as general manager of the station formerly known as KIKK and took to calling himself “Kuzzin” Herb.
Henson died of a heart attack on Nov. 26, 1963, four days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. He was just 38.
Now comes word that Henson’s widow, Katherine Henson Dopler, is in hospice care back in Eufaula, Okla. Eldest son Mike Henson says she is 79 and suffers from emphysema.
The update on Cousin Herb’s family comes in a roundabout fashion. Last week, I picked up the new CD by the alt-country band Wilco, “Wilco (the album),” featuring “Wilco (the song).” No, I am not making that up.
I was reminded that Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy once told an interviewer that he came from authentic country-music stock: He’s related to Cousin Herb. Tweedy was born and raised in Belleville, Ill., and Cousin Herb was from East St. Louis, Ill., about 15 miles west.
I called Mike Henson for a review of his cousin’s latest recording and got the news about his mother — at which point his review didn’t seem to matter much. But he is proud that his cousin (third, he concluded) is making music so famously. So that particular branch of the Bakersfield Sound lives on, albeit based in Chicago.
His daily, 45-minute TV show, “Cousin’s Herb’s Trading Post,” was on KERO-TV from 1953 to 1963. Henson, flanked by co-stars Bill Woods and Billy Mize, became a favorite throughout the valley, thanks to a signal that boosted the program well past Fresno and all the way over to the coast.
His list of guest stars over the years reads like a Music Row telephone book; Merle Haggard once called him the Ralph Emery of Bakersfield. KUZZ-FM traces its call-letter lineage to the time Henson signed on as general manager of the station formerly known as KIKK and took to calling himself “Kuzzin” Herb.
Henson died of a heart attack on Nov. 26, 1963, four days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. He was just 38.
Now comes word that Henson’s widow, Katherine Henson Dopler, is in hospice care back in Eufaula, Okla. Eldest son Mike Henson says she is 79 and suffers from emphysema.
The update on Cousin Herb’s family comes in a roundabout fashion. Last week, I picked up the new CD by the alt-country band Wilco, “Wilco (the album),” featuring “Wilco (the song).” No, I am not making that up.
I was reminded that Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy once told an interviewer that he came from authentic country-music stock: He’s related to Cousin Herb. Tweedy was born and raised in Belleville, Ill., and Cousin Herb was from East St. Louis, Ill., about 15 miles west.
I called Mike Henson for a review of his cousin’s latest recording and got the news about his mother — at which point his review didn’t seem to matter much. But he is proud that his cousin (third, he concluded) is making music so famously. So that particular branch of the Bakersfield Sound lives on, albeit based in Chicago.
Attack of the slimy TV producer
You might be sick of reading about the David Letterman scandal, but it’s worth noting that scumbag TV producer Robert “Joe” Halderman — the guy who allegedly tried to extort $2 million from the “Late Night” talk show host — passed through these parts six years ago.
Halderman, who worked for CBS’s “48 Hours” until he was suspended earlier this month, was the executive producer of “Who Killed The Prosecutor?” That hourlong program looked into the September 2002 stabbing death of Kern County Assistant District Attorney Steve Tauzer.
Halderman was slithering around Bakersfield in late 2003, popping in at the newspaper office for research on a couple of occasions. The program aired in January 2004.
I can’t cite any specifics about Halderman’s behavior while he was here, because I can’t remember any of the conversations. I can only recall the urge to wash my hands vigorously after briefly being in the same room with him.
Halderman allegedly sent Letterman a package that threatened to reveal his sexcapades with female subordinates unless Letterman paid him. Instead, Letterman wisely chose to reveal the plot to his audience on his Oct. 1 show. Halderman, apparently deep in debt, was indicted by a grand jury and pleaded not guilty in a subsequent court appearance.
Stephanie Birkitt, a former assistant to Letterman, was apparently one of the women involved, and her diary seems to have been the source of Halderman’s information. Birkitt, who lived with Halderman after his 2004 divorce, first met the news producer while working as a page for “48 Hours.”
So, to summarize, both men slept with this particular subordinate, which makes Halderman not only an alleged extortionist but a hypocrite as well. Now, excuse me while I go wash my hands.
Halderman, who worked for CBS’s “48 Hours” until he was suspended earlier this month, was the executive producer of “Who Killed The Prosecutor?” That hourlong program looked into the September 2002 stabbing death of Kern County Assistant District Attorney Steve Tauzer.
Halderman was slithering around Bakersfield in late 2003, popping in at the newspaper office for research on a couple of occasions. The program aired in January 2004.
I can’t cite any specifics about Halderman’s behavior while he was here, because I can’t remember any of the conversations. I can only recall the urge to wash my hands vigorously after briefly being in the same room with him.
Halderman allegedly sent Letterman a package that threatened to reveal his sexcapades with female subordinates unless Letterman paid him. Instead, Letterman wisely chose to reveal the plot to his audience on his Oct. 1 show. Halderman, apparently deep in debt, was indicted by a grand jury and pleaded not guilty in a subsequent court appearance.
Stephanie Birkitt, a former assistant to Letterman, was apparently one of the women involved, and her diary seems to have been the source of Halderman’s information. Birkitt, who lived with Halderman after his 2004 divorce, first met the news producer while working as a page for “48 Hours.”
So, to summarize, both men slept with this particular subordinate, which makes Halderman not only an alleged extortionist but a hypocrite as well. Now, excuse me while I go wash my hands.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Staying out of the ditch: me and the county fair
I hate carnival rides. I hate nausea and disorientation and losing all my pocket change. If I want to spin or shake or fly around through the air, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
As I stroll the fairgrounds, I sometimes find myself distracted by women, especially those who lack obvious facial tattoos. But giving in to such distractions raises an unavoidable issue: My wife. Being married means getting elbowed in the rib cage every time my head turns. If I want sore ribs, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
I’m not thrilled by dime-toss games anymore. At one particular fair several years ago, my dead-eyelob shot won about a half-dozen of those cheap, paper-thin, beer-label drinking glasses. They were all broken within a month. If I want broken glass, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
No, there’s only one thing about the Kern County Fair that interests me: Greasy food, spicy food, tangy food, sugary food. In general, food.
This is the one time of year when I try to justify dietary irresponsibility, the one time (well, except for Thanksgiving and six or eight other occasions) when I pretend I still have the metabolism of a 14-year-old.
Corn dogs on the main promenade, slathered with mustard. Mini-taco platters at the Mexican village, buried under an inch-thick layer of salsa. Egg rolls. Cinnamon rolls.
And, on the way back to the car, right after the annual family-of-four-in-the-photo-booth thing, the obligatory bag of caramel corn.
I don’t eat this way all the time.
Really. I wouldn’t be able to see the space bar on my keyboard if I were totally without shame.
But this is the fair: I can go back to eating responsibly next month. Fair food, to me, makes the whole two-week affair worthwhile.
What better enticements does the fair offer? Not all that much.
Let’s see: I enjoy going into the exhibition halls and watching pitchpersons with wireless headset mikes trying to sell non-stick pans and never-dull cutlery. (Warning: Never allow yourself to actually appear interested or you may become part of the presentation. I was once forced to comment publicly on the dust-attracting prowess of the Wonder Broom. Wow! It’s really amazing!)
I enjoy watching the joy-terror on the face of my pre-schooler as he circles around in a tiny helicopter at the breakneck speed of 3 mph. Even at this age, like his older sister before him, he is trying to perfect the art of appearing nonchalant while privately wondering about the credentials of the carny-in-charge.
I enjoy hearing the shrieks cascade down from the bungee jumping attraction, though I am smart enough to keep my distance. For one thing, I don’t want to get caught up in any dares. For another, I understand rudimentary intestinal chemistry: Eight beers plus a cone of soft-serve plus an order of nachos, churned violently, equals ... well, you get the picture.
That’s the beauty of the fair. You get to see things you don’t normally get to see (and probably wouldn’t otherwise care to see). Bodies flying through the air. Rows of stuffed Garfields. Rows of Metallica posters. Packs of fairgoers who actually own Metallica posters. Those L.A. deejays, Mark & Brian. People willing to stick objects up their nose in order to impress Mark & Brian.
I’m not normally interested in calf roping or steer wrestling, and I seem to be able to get through the entire year without viewing 90-pound zucchinis or sitting through cheerleading competitions. But I usually end up doing so during the fair’s run, if only because you might as well do something while the digestion process works its magic.
I should note that I’m very proud of my digestive system. But I’m no super-human: I have to draw the line somewhere.
A guy can’t process a chili burger in just any old place. That’s why I steer clear of the calf-birthing area. I have come to realize that the livestock pens are generally not goodplaces to enjoy fair cuisine. Nothing personal, kids: I have only the greatest admiration for the 4-H Club. I’ll support your endeavors 100 percent, as long as I can do so upwind.
Here, for the record, I would like to state my appreciation for farmers and ranchers, as well as 4-H’ers, carnies, metal-heads, deejays and the people who sell those white, 3-foot-long inflatable space shuttles.
Speaking of which, have you see people trying to lug those things around during the fair? Yikes. If I want a massive, white, inflatable thing smacking me in the face, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
I wrote this in September 2000. My kids don't like to hang around me at the fair anymore, except for the time it takes to ask for and receive money. I have long since given up on trying to cram all four family members into a single photo booth.
As I stroll the fairgrounds, I sometimes find myself distracted by women, especially those who lack obvious facial tattoos. But giving in to such distractions raises an unavoidable issue: My wife. Being married means getting elbowed in the rib cage every time my head turns. If I want sore ribs, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
I’m not thrilled by dime-toss games anymore. At one particular fair several years ago, my dead-eyelob shot won about a half-dozen of those cheap, paper-thin, beer-label drinking glasses. They were all broken within a month. If I want broken glass, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
No, there’s only one thing about the Kern County Fair that interests me: Greasy food, spicy food, tangy food, sugary food. In general, food.
This is the one time of year when I try to justify dietary irresponsibility, the one time (well, except for Thanksgiving and six or eight other occasions) when I pretend I still have the metabolism of a 14-year-old.
Corn dogs on the main promenade, slathered with mustard. Mini-taco platters at the Mexican village, buried under an inch-thick layer of salsa. Egg rolls. Cinnamon rolls.
And, on the way back to the car, right after the annual family-of-four-in-the-photo-booth thing, the obligatory bag of caramel corn.
I don’t eat this way all the time.
Really. I wouldn’t be able to see the space bar on my keyboard if I were totally without shame.
But this is the fair: I can go back to eating responsibly next month. Fair food, to me, makes the whole two-week affair worthwhile.
What better enticements does the fair offer? Not all that much.
Let’s see: I enjoy going into the exhibition halls and watching pitchpersons with wireless headset mikes trying to sell non-stick pans and never-dull cutlery. (Warning: Never allow yourself to actually appear interested or you may become part of the presentation. I was once forced to comment publicly on the dust-attracting prowess of the Wonder Broom. Wow! It’s really amazing!)
I enjoy watching the joy-terror on the face of my pre-schooler as he circles around in a tiny helicopter at the breakneck speed of 3 mph. Even at this age, like his older sister before him, he is trying to perfect the art of appearing nonchalant while privately wondering about the credentials of the carny-in-charge.
I enjoy hearing the shrieks cascade down from the bungee jumping attraction, though I am smart enough to keep my distance. For one thing, I don’t want to get caught up in any dares. For another, I understand rudimentary intestinal chemistry: Eight beers plus a cone of soft-serve plus an order of nachos, churned violently, equals ... well, you get the picture.
That’s the beauty of the fair. You get to see things you don’t normally get to see (and probably wouldn’t otherwise care to see). Bodies flying through the air. Rows of stuffed Garfields. Rows of Metallica posters. Packs of fairgoers who actually own Metallica posters. Those L.A. deejays, Mark & Brian. People willing to stick objects up their nose in order to impress Mark & Brian.
I’m not normally interested in calf roping or steer wrestling, and I seem to be able to get through the entire year without viewing 90-pound zucchinis or sitting through cheerleading competitions. But I usually end up doing so during the fair’s run, if only because you might as well do something while the digestion process works its magic.
I should note that I’m very proud of my digestive system. But I’m no super-human: I have to draw the line somewhere.
A guy can’t process a chili burger in just any old place. That’s why I steer clear of the calf-birthing area. I have come to realize that the livestock pens are generally not goodplaces to enjoy fair cuisine. Nothing personal, kids: I have only the greatest admiration for the 4-H Club. I’ll support your endeavors 100 percent, as long as I can do so upwind.
Here, for the record, I would like to state my appreciation for farmers and ranchers, as well as 4-H’ers, carnies, metal-heads, deejays and the people who sell those white, 3-foot-long inflatable space shuttles.
Speaking of which, have you see people trying to lug those things around during the fair? Yikes. If I want a massive, white, inflatable thing smacking me in the face, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
I wrote this in September 2000. My kids don't like to hang around me at the fair anymore, except for the time it takes to ask for and receive money. I have long since given up on trying to cram all four family members into a single photo booth.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Blowing in from the west, a twangy memory of the past
The first song I ever learned on the guitar, back in my Petaluma parks and rec summer class, lo, those many years ago, was a response to Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee.”
It was Jesse Colin Young’s “Hippie from Olema,” an amusing retort sung to the tune of Haggard’s redneck anthem of conserva tive pride. Where Haggard had written, “We don’t grow our hair out long and shaggy,” the leader of the Youngbloods had written, “We don’t spill our oil out in the ocean.” I was subsisting on a steady sugar diet of AM radio pop at the time, but even I picked up on the serious cultural disconnect in evidence.
So when Amanda Eichstaedt e-mailed me a couple of months ago to ask about Bakersfield music, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the small irony attached to her return address: Olema. Yes, a resident of the original Hippieville, 20 miles through the west Marin backcountry from the stomping grounds of my bewildered youth, was writing to inquire about Merle Haggard and friends.
Eichstaedt and collaborator Mike Varley co-host an every-other-Thursday-evening program on KWMR, a charming, appealingly eclectic radio station in Point Reyes, just over the hill from Olema. The show is called “Bakersfield and Beyond,” and it’s worth bookmarking on your computer. (Go to kwmr.org and click on the cow icon to get streaming live audio of the two-hour show.)
Fans of Buck and Merle will find something to like here, but that’s not what makes “Bakersfield and Beyond” a great show. Eichstaedt and Varley may have come late to the Bakersfield Sound party, but they’ve managed to locate and restore a story line that, with a very few notable exceptions, petered out sometime in the mid-1970s.
The story line is this: A unique new genre of distinctly American music, born of folk, blues, Western swing and rockabilly, spiced with sweat, sunburn and a double helping of class resentment, finds a place in the broader popular consciousness. The Bakersfield Sound starts out as the music of independence and rebellion but, like so many other cultural insurgencies, it gradually evolves into a copy of the mainstream product, so indistinguishable it ceases to exist except in memory. Buck Owens himself lamented its passing.
But “Bakersfield and Beyond” reminds us that the spirit of that music is still kicking around — in expected places, like Austin, Texas, and L.A., but also in unexpected places like Calgary, Alberta, where singer-songwriter Tim Hus presses on the best traditions of Billy Mize and Tommy Collins.
And, thank God, in Bakersfield, too: Eichstaedt and Varley served up some Big House last Thursday (“Louisiana in the Rain”), as well as Fatt Katt and Von Zippers (“Rockin’ and Rollin’ Tonight”). Another local, Bruce Theissen, aka Dr. BLT, is a regular call-in guest; his astonishing, barely recognizable rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” a few weeks ago was lonely enough to have made Johnny Cash cry. No, seriously.
In November 2008, Eichstaedt, who already had an interview show on KWMR, was asked to cover the station’s Thursday night slot for four shows. She knew Varley through bicycling — Varley owns the local bike shop, and she is chairwoman of the board of the League of American Bicyclists, a national cycling advocacy group.
She knew their musical tastes were similar and vast, so she asked him to sit in with her. They pulled out some Dave Alvin and some John Doe & the Sadies — familiar names to anyone who frequents Bakersfield’s Fishlips club — along with Vancouver-based Neko Case, who toured with Haggard two years ago. Research helped them realize those performers had a lot in common with the Bakersfield Sound.
They didn’t know much about Bakersfield music, however, and they readily admitted it to their listening audience on that first broadcast. Was there really even such a thing? “Immediately we got a call from a friend who could not believe that, a) we did not know what the Bakersfield Sound was, and, b) we would actually admit it on the air,” Eichstaedt wrote in a recent e-mail.
In the eight months since their debut, they’re uncovered quite a few of Bakersfield’s musical progeny. But they’ve also fallen in love with Rose Maddox, Little Jimmy Dickens, Wanda Jackson and Ferlin Husky, in addition to Buck and Merle.
Depending on how you define the Bakersfield Sound, they might now know more about the genre now than any living man or woman, including those who lived it. Not that they would ever make such a boast: They are properly humble and self-deprecating about their new-found expertise. And now that they’ve actually visited Mecca — last month they caught Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women at Fishlips and Buddy Owens and the Buckaroos at the Crystal Palace — they may qualify for Ph.D’s in honky tonk.
Meanwhile, in Bakersfield, the city’s lone country station plays Nashville hits, and half the dial is given over to hip-hop. Son Volt? Rosie Flores? Who are they? To a far greater extent than we might want to admit, Bakersfield has lost an important part of its musical identity. Fortunately, others have found pleasing remnants of it. Even a couple of bike-riding hippies from Olema.
Reach Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or www.stubblebuzz.com.
It was Jesse Colin Young’s “Hippie from Olema,” an amusing retort sung to the tune of Haggard’s redneck anthem of conserva tive pride. Where Haggard had written, “We don’t grow our hair out long and shaggy,” the leader of the Youngbloods had written, “We don’t spill our oil out in the ocean.” I was subsisting on a steady sugar diet of AM radio pop at the time, but even I picked up on the serious cultural disconnect in evidence.
So when Amanda Eichstaedt e-mailed me a couple of months ago to ask about Bakersfield music, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the small irony attached to her return address: Olema. Yes, a resident of the original Hippieville, 20 miles through the west Marin backcountry from the stomping grounds of my bewildered youth, was writing to inquire about Merle Haggard and friends.
Eichstaedt and collaborator Mike Varley co-host an every-other-Thursday-evening program on KWMR, a charming, appealingly eclectic radio station in Point Reyes, just over the hill from Olema. The show is called “Bakersfield and Beyond,” and it’s worth bookmarking on your computer. (Go to kwmr.org and click on the cow icon to get streaming live audio of the two-hour show.)
Fans of Buck and Merle will find something to like here, but that’s not what makes “Bakersfield and Beyond” a great show. Eichstaedt and Varley may have come late to the Bakersfield Sound party, but they’ve managed to locate and restore a story line that, with a very few notable exceptions, petered out sometime in the mid-1970s.
The story line is this: A unique new genre of distinctly American music, born of folk, blues, Western swing and rockabilly, spiced with sweat, sunburn and a double helping of class resentment, finds a place in the broader popular consciousness. The Bakersfield Sound starts out as the music of independence and rebellion but, like so many other cultural insurgencies, it gradually evolves into a copy of the mainstream product, so indistinguishable it ceases to exist except in memory. Buck Owens himself lamented its passing.
But “Bakersfield and Beyond” reminds us that the spirit of that music is still kicking around — in expected places, like Austin, Texas, and L.A., but also in unexpected places like Calgary, Alberta, where singer-songwriter Tim Hus presses on the best traditions of Billy Mize and Tommy Collins.
And, thank God, in Bakersfield, too: Eichstaedt and Varley served up some Big House last Thursday (“Louisiana in the Rain”), as well as Fatt Katt and Von Zippers (“Rockin’ and Rollin’ Tonight”). Another local, Bruce Theissen, aka Dr. BLT, is a regular call-in guest; his astonishing, barely recognizable rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” a few weeks ago was lonely enough to have made Johnny Cash cry. No, seriously.
In November 2008, Eichstaedt, who already had an interview show on KWMR, was asked to cover the station’s Thursday night slot for four shows. She knew Varley through bicycling — Varley owns the local bike shop, and she is chairwoman of the board of the League of American Bicyclists, a national cycling advocacy group.
She knew their musical tastes were similar and vast, so she asked him to sit in with her. They pulled out some Dave Alvin and some John Doe & the Sadies — familiar names to anyone who frequents Bakersfield’s Fishlips club — along with Vancouver-based Neko Case, who toured with Haggard two years ago. Research helped them realize those performers had a lot in common with the Bakersfield Sound.
They didn’t know much about Bakersfield music, however, and they readily admitted it to their listening audience on that first broadcast. Was there really even such a thing? “Immediately we got a call from a friend who could not believe that, a) we did not know what the Bakersfield Sound was, and, b) we would actually admit it on the air,” Eichstaedt wrote in a recent e-mail.
In the eight months since their debut, they’re uncovered quite a few of Bakersfield’s musical progeny. But they’ve also fallen in love with Rose Maddox, Little Jimmy Dickens, Wanda Jackson and Ferlin Husky, in addition to Buck and Merle.
Depending on how you define the Bakersfield Sound, they might now know more about the genre now than any living man or woman, including those who lived it. Not that they would ever make such a boast: They are properly humble and self-deprecating about their new-found expertise. And now that they’ve actually visited Mecca — last month they caught Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women at Fishlips and Buddy Owens and the Buckaroos at the Crystal Palace — they may qualify for Ph.D’s in honky tonk.
Meanwhile, in Bakersfield, the city’s lone country station plays Nashville hits, and half the dial is given over to hip-hop. Son Volt? Rosie Flores? Who are they? To a far greater extent than we might want to admit, Bakersfield has lost an important part of its musical identity. Fortunately, others have found pleasing remnants of it. Even a couple of bike-riding hippies from Olema.
Reach Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or www.stubblebuzz.com.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The day the president gave a speech to the nation's children from her classroom
Cynthia Mostoller has always believed in bringing history to life. Through the years, she has brought in professional historians, designed Revolutionary War-era newspapers, held birthday celebrations for important but neglected women, and led rousing in-class renditions of American folk songs like “Yankee Doodle.”
Mostoller, an eighth-grade history teacher at Alice Deal Junior High in northwest Washington, D.C., doesn’t have many students falling asleep in class. She certainly didn’t have any students snoozing when President Bush the First addressed the nation’s students from her classroom in 1991, and she doesn’t expect to have any snoozing on Tuesday, when President Obama addresses kids on a similar topic — the importance of education.
This week, via e-mail, I asked Mostoller about those rare occasions when presidents give speeches addressed directly to children.
First, it bears noting that this is a teacher who takes her calling seriously. For years, as the Washington Post noted in 2005, Mostoller has trained other teachers, and used a curriculum she created herself to present U.S. history from Colonial times through 1900.
Her personal connections have helped create unusual and fascinating opportunities for her students. One day in 2005, for example, some of her students led the pledge of allegiance at the National Archives when President George W. Bush dedicated the renovated rotunda that displays the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Hers is a unique American story. Born on a farm in Ohio, she married right out of high school and immediately started spending her days shopping and cooking for farmhands. But she went back to school, got her degree in history from the University of Akron, and in 1985 took on a life-changing trip to the nation’s capital. In Washington for a conference, she stopped in at the school district office to ask about teaching in the D.C. school system.
As she was preparing to go home, the principal of Deal Junior High called and offered her a job. A history teacher had died two days before classes were to begin.
Mostoller is lukewarm about using the Internet for studies of history and skeptical about such things as “standards” and “critical thinking” because, as she told the Post for the first of the newspaper’s 2005 profiles on educational innovators, they “don’t mean anything to the kids.”
Back in October 1991, when President George H.W. Bush spoke to America’s schoolchildren via live TV hookup, he was speaking from her classroom.
“You know, all over America, thousands of schools do succeed, even against tough odds, even against all odds,” Bush said that day. “Kids from all over the District of Columbia petition to get into Alice Deal School here because parents know this school works. It works because of teachers like the one standing over here, Ms. Mostoller, ... decided at the age of 25 that she wanted to teach.
“She was standing in a supermarket checkout line when she saw a magazine ad about college. She went back to school, worked her way through in seven years, waiting tables to pay tuition. She made it, and so can you,” Bush said.
I asked Mostoller what she remembered about Bush’s 1991 speech, what she thought the impact of Obama’s speech might be, and her opinion of the protests about his address.
“I spent some time going through my video of the 1991 visit as well as the newspaper clippings and photographs of the (Bush) event,” she wrote back on Saturday.
“His message that day was the same as the one I expect President Obama to make on Tuesday: Go to bed early, get to school on time, complete your assignments as best as you can, and work toward a rewarding future. Seems like the good, old-fashioned midwestern values I grew up with in Ohio.”
Mostoller expressed disappointment and bafflement at the way some conservatives are portraying Obama’s speech.
“I don’t understand the partisan controversy behind this,” she wrote. “Every president, every year, should start the school year with a message of hope and inspiration. Who better than the one person we elected to advocate for our best interests?”
Partisan politics — and that’s what’s behind this current controversy — has no place in the classroom. It didn’t when Bush chose Mostoller’s classroom for his 1991 pep talk.
“My students in 1991 were much less concerned about his political affiliation than they were having the opportunity to meet the president and be on TV,” she wrote. “The hate-mongers and political pundits looking for trouble where there is none need to give it a rest. Public education is one of the pillars of our free society. We support it with tax dollars because we appreciate its inherent value. We should worry when the president is not interested in promoting education.”
So it’s come to this? People fear a president’s interest in public education so much they’ll pull their kids out of class?
“(Addressing the importance of education) seems like a no-brainer and I regret very much that the few rabble-rousers out there with hurtful agendas have been given so much attention,” Mostoller wrote.
“There were a lot of wonderful kids sitting in my room that day — and many have gone on to be successful adults.
“Did his speech in 1991 change the world? Maybe not, but it did introduce public education into the national agenda in a way that hadn’t been done since the space race of the 1960s. Let’s hope Obama’s speech re-invigorates our engagement in education. Our future depends on it.”
Wise words from a teacher who sees the big picture.
Mostoller, an eighth-grade history teacher at Alice Deal Junior High in northwest Washington, D.C., doesn’t have many students falling asleep in class. She certainly didn’t have any students snoozing when President Bush the First addressed the nation’s students from her classroom in 1991, and she doesn’t expect to have any snoozing on Tuesday, when President Obama addresses kids on a similar topic — the importance of education.
This week, via e-mail, I asked Mostoller about those rare occasions when presidents give speeches addressed directly to children.
First, it bears noting that this is a teacher who takes her calling seriously. For years, as the Washington Post noted in 2005, Mostoller has trained other teachers, and used a curriculum she created herself to present U.S. history from Colonial times through 1900.
Her personal connections have helped create unusual and fascinating opportunities for her students. One day in 2005, for example, some of her students led the pledge of allegiance at the National Archives when President George W. Bush dedicated the renovated rotunda that displays the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Hers is a unique American story. Born on a farm in Ohio, she married right out of high school and immediately started spending her days shopping and cooking for farmhands. But she went back to school, got her degree in history from the University of Akron, and in 1985 took on a life-changing trip to the nation’s capital. In Washington for a conference, she stopped in at the school district office to ask about teaching in the D.C. school system.
As she was preparing to go home, the principal of Deal Junior High called and offered her a job. A history teacher had died two days before classes were to begin.
Mostoller is lukewarm about using the Internet for studies of history and skeptical about such things as “standards” and “critical thinking” because, as she told the Post for the first of the newspaper’s 2005 profiles on educational innovators, they “don’t mean anything to the kids.”
Back in October 1991, when President George H.W. Bush spoke to America’s schoolchildren via live TV hookup, he was speaking from her classroom.
“You know, all over America, thousands of schools do succeed, even against tough odds, even against all odds,” Bush said that day. “Kids from all over the District of Columbia petition to get into Alice Deal School here because parents know this school works. It works because of teachers like the one standing over here, Ms. Mostoller, ... decided at the age of 25 that she wanted to teach.
“She was standing in a supermarket checkout line when she saw a magazine ad about college. She went back to school, worked her way through in seven years, waiting tables to pay tuition. She made it, and so can you,” Bush said.
I asked Mostoller what she remembered about Bush’s 1991 speech, what she thought the impact of Obama’s speech might be, and her opinion of the protests about his address.
“I spent some time going through my video of the 1991 visit as well as the newspaper clippings and photographs of the (Bush) event,” she wrote back on Saturday.
“His message that day was the same as the one I expect President Obama to make on Tuesday: Go to bed early, get to school on time, complete your assignments as best as you can, and work toward a rewarding future. Seems like the good, old-fashioned midwestern values I grew up with in Ohio.”
Mostoller expressed disappointment and bafflement at the way some conservatives are portraying Obama’s speech.
“I don’t understand the partisan controversy behind this,” she wrote. “Every president, every year, should start the school year with a message of hope and inspiration. Who better than the one person we elected to advocate for our best interests?”
Partisan politics — and that’s what’s behind this current controversy — has no place in the classroom. It didn’t when Bush chose Mostoller’s classroom for his 1991 pep talk.
“My students in 1991 were much less concerned about his political affiliation than they were having the opportunity to meet the president and be on TV,” she wrote. “The hate-mongers and political pundits looking for trouble where there is none need to give it a rest. Public education is one of the pillars of our free society. We support it with tax dollars because we appreciate its inherent value. We should worry when the president is not interested in promoting education.”
So it’s come to this? People fear a president’s interest in public education so much they’ll pull their kids out of class?
“(Addressing the importance of education) seems like a no-brainer and I regret very much that the few rabble-rousers out there with hurtful agendas have been given so much attention,” Mostoller wrote.
“There were a lot of wonderful kids sitting in my room that day — and many have gone on to be successful adults.
“Did his speech in 1991 change the world? Maybe not, but it did introduce public education into the national agenda in a way that hadn’t been done since the space race of the 1960s. Let’s hope Obama’s speech re-invigorates our engagement in education. Our future depends on it.”
Wise words from a teacher who sees the big picture.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Hey U-Verse, I want my MTV -- er, GOV-TV
I recently signed up for AT&T’s new digital cable service, U-Verse, and I have to say I’m reasonably satisfied with it, except for one thing. (Well, two things, if you include the four- to five-minute wait to get a real, living, breathing person on the toll-free help line.)
Where’s KGOV? You know, the Kern County government television station that broadcasts Board of Supervisors and Bakersfield City Council meetings, among other important programming. Answer: Coming soon —but maybe not on Channel 16, the easily accessible place on the dial where Bright House and virtually every other Kern County cable provider has positioned the not-for-profit government station.
AT&T is likely to add KGOV in October, but it plans on putting the station on Channel 99. That’s inconvenient enough, but here’s the thing: Viewers will then have to cursor through a secondary menu to find KGOV broadcasting.
That’s just not acceptable. KGOV provides a wealth of essential information. The airing (and re-airing) of local government meetings puts hundreds of thousands of Kern County residents in position to participate in this thing we call democracy. In a time when rumor and exaggeration seem to drive the public debate, we need unfiltered access to the business of government more than ever.
The 200-channel U-Verse package I signed up for has four MTV stations, 15 or 16 sports channels, and more shopping networks than I can count. Is U-Verse really saying that that stuff outranks local government (and its management of our tax dollars and community resources) in importance? I hope not. But if AT&T plans to force viewers to jump through hoops just to stay abreast of such things, it sure seems like the intimation.
Consider this, too: U-Verse may actually be violating state law by relegating KGOV to Channel 99.
The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006, or DIVCA, which sets the rules for government access programming by cable companies, stipulates (in Section 5370, part B) that “the channel numbers for the PEG (Public Education and Governmental) channels shall be the same channel numbers used by the incumbent cable operator unless prohibited by federal law.”
For most viewers, "the incumbent cable operator" is Bright House, and in Kern County, that’s Channel 16.
Kern County legislators need to step in and remind AT&T of its obligations under DIVCA. The rest of us ought to remind AT&T of its obligation as a corporate member of this community — to further that cause of participatory government in every feasible way. Surely this is feasible.
Where’s KGOV? You know, the Kern County government television station that broadcasts Board of Supervisors and Bakersfield City Council meetings, among other important programming. Answer: Coming soon —but maybe not on Channel 16, the easily accessible place on the dial where Bright House and virtually every other Kern County cable provider has positioned the not-for-profit government station.
AT&T is likely to add KGOV in October, but it plans on putting the station on Channel 99. That’s inconvenient enough, but here’s the thing: Viewers will then have to cursor through a secondary menu to find KGOV broadcasting.
That’s just not acceptable. KGOV provides a wealth of essential information. The airing (and re-airing) of local government meetings puts hundreds of thousands of Kern County residents in position to participate in this thing we call democracy. In a time when rumor and exaggeration seem to drive the public debate, we need unfiltered access to the business of government more than ever.
The 200-channel U-Verse package I signed up for has four MTV stations, 15 or 16 sports channels, and more shopping networks than I can count. Is U-Verse really saying that that stuff outranks local government (and its management of our tax dollars and community resources) in importance? I hope not. But if AT&T plans to force viewers to jump through hoops just to stay abreast of such things, it sure seems like the intimation.
Consider this, too: U-Verse may actually be violating state law by relegating KGOV to Channel 99.
The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006, or DIVCA, which sets the rules for government access programming by cable companies, stipulates (in Section 5370, part B) that “the channel numbers for the PEG (Public Education and Governmental) channels shall be the same channel numbers used by the incumbent cable operator unless prohibited by federal law.”
For most viewers, "the incumbent cable operator" is Bright House, and in Kern County, that’s Channel 16.
Kern County legislators need to step in and remind AT&T of its obligations under DIVCA. The rest of us ought to remind AT&T of its obligation as a corporate member of this community — to further that cause of participatory government in every feasible way. Surely this is feasible.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Laura Dennison: Faithful servant of democracy
If you missed the obituary notices in the Aug. 16 Bakersfield Californian, you may have failed to take note of the passing of a gentle and dignified champion of democracy.
Laura Dennison, a former president of the Kern County League of Women Voters, died Aug. 6 in the Southern California city of Claremont, having moved there in 2007 after 15 years in Bakersfield. She was 81 and had cancer.
Dennison helped revitalize a somewhat moribund LWV organization when she assumed the leadership reins a decade ago, and she was active in assorted causes even in semi-retirement.
In June 2007, Dennison, who suffered from asthma, came out in favor of SB719, which added medical and scientific members to the valley air pollution control board.
In February 2007, she urged recalcitrant Bakersfield City Councilman Ken Weir to disclose his economic interests. “I don’t see why Mr. Weir should be an exception (to conflict of interest laws),” she said. “I think transparency is very important.”
In fact, transparency in government was an ideal Dennison held dear, essential as it was to one of her chief missions in life: participation in government by the American citizenry.
She will be missed.
Laura Dennison, a former president of the Kern County League of Women Voters, died Aug. 6 in the Southern California city of Claremont, having moved there in 2007 after 15 years in Bakersfield. She was 81 and had cancer.
Dennison helped revitalize a somewhat moribund LWV organization when she assumed the leadership reins a decade ago, and she was active in assorted causes even in semi-retirement.
In June 2007, Dennison, who suffered from asthma, came out in favor of SB719, which added medical and scientific members to the valley air pollution control board.
In February 2007, she urged recalcitrant Bakersfield City Councilman Ken Weir to disclose his economic interests. “I don’t see why Mr. Weir should be an exception (to conflict of interest laws),” she said. “I think transparency is very important.”
In fact, transparency in government was an ideal Dennison held dear, essential as it was to one of her chief missions in life: participation in government by the American citizenry.
She will be missed.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Take the Bakersfield Sound tour
There's something about physical proximity to cultural history. Got your camera? You can tour movie stars' homes in and around Hollywood. You can take Chicago's Untouchables Tour and visit scenes of assorted mob hits. You can even touch the hallowed Harlem asphalt where hip-hop music was born. Just wash your hands afterward.
You can also visit the spots where the Bakersfield Sound, that trebly, concrete-floored strain of distinctly American music, was born half a century ago -- but it's a do-it-yourself thing.
A few years ago, the Bakersfield Convention and Visitors Bureau tried to market a self-guided tour of Bakersfield-area spots of note: the converted boxcar in Oildale where Merle Haggard grew up, tough and wild; the broom closet-sized building near Baker Street where a third-tier country star named Buck Owens recorded rockabilly records under a pseudonym; even the long-defunct dance club where performers like Lefty Frizzell inspired a generation of young, poor Oklahoma transplants -- including some who played guitar.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau's semi-organized tour never really came off, but that doesn't mean you can't undertake your own Bakersfield Sound Tour, a distinctly unglamorous excursion through central Kern County. From a 2005 article, here's the whole thing, right down to suggestions for accompanying songs.
Enjoy.
You can also visit the spots where the Bakersfield Sound, that trebly, concrete-floored strain of distinctly American music, was born half a century ago -- but it's a do-it-yourself thing.
A few years ago, the Bakersfield Convention and Visitors Bureau tried to market a self-guided tour of Bakersfield-area spots of note: the converted boxcar in Oildale where Merle Haggard grew up, tough and wild; the broom closet-sized building near Baker Street where a third-tier country star named Buck Owens recorded rockabilly records under a pseudonym; even the long-defunct dance club where performers like Lefty Frizzell inspired a generation of young, poor Oklahoma transplants -- including some who played guitar.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau's semi-organized tour never really came off, but that doesn't mean you can't undertake your own Bakersfield Sound Tour, a distinctly unglamorous excursion through central Kern County. From a 2005 article, here's the whole thing, right down to suggestions for accompanying songs.
Enjoy.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Guns, athletes and Steve McNair
Cogent post today from Jerry McDonald, NFL writer for the Oakland Tribune. McDonald comments on the sad case of former Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens quarterback Steve McNair, an apparent murder victim last weekend:
McDonald: "Back in 2003, when Steve McNair was being booked for DUI, police found a 9 mm handgun under the seat of his car.
"(Charges were later dismissed by a judge who ruled police didn’t have sufficient reason to pull over McNair).
"While I understand the rationale of celebrities wanting to carry protection, when was the last time you read about a star athlete fending off an attacker with his firearm? I don’t know who owned the gun that killed McNair, but the whole culture of athletes and firearms makes for almost exclusively sad endings."
One might extend that to celebrities of many varieties. Phil Spector, anyone?
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Ed McMahon's Bakersfield pal
Ed McMahon, the late-night sidekick of talk show legend Johnny Carson, had a Bakersfield connection — a friend who went way back with him and Carson all the way to the early 1960s.
McMahon, who died Tuesday at age 86, told the story of his first meeting with this platonic lady friend in his 2005 memoir about "The Tonight Show," titled "Here's Johnny!"
McMahon and the recently divorced talk-show host were having a drink at Sardi's in New York City. It must have been mid-1963, because "The Tonight Show" had just wrapped up its first season on the air with Carson as its star.
Carson noticed a pretty young woman across the bar who was smiling at him. According to McMahon, she was a wholesome-looking girl with "sandy blond hair" and "cheeks like red delicious apples." McMahon said she had the sort of look that might have deserved the Miss Sunflower title at the Nebraska State Fair.
Carson asked McMahon to invite her over to their table. Her name was Linda, she said, and she was from "just outside" of Bakersfield. Carson most definitely remembered the place, having performed at least one less-than-successful gig at the legendary Maisson Jaussaud's (now Golden West Casino).
After a few minutes of chat, Linda turned toward the door, where a young man had just walked in -- Stan, her date. More introductions were made and then the friendly young couple departed -- but not before Linda called McMahon "Skitch," mixing him up with the show's musical director, Skitch Henderson. Ouch.
"Linda" eventually became reacquainted with Carson and McMahon in Los Angeles, and they were friends for decades. I know this because, when I first recounted this story in a 2005 column in The Bakersfield Californian, I asked readers to help me locate her: "I'm putting out an all-points bulletin: Who was this wholesome-looking Linda from Bakersfield and where is she now?"
Well, "Linda" called and filled me in on the rest of the story. She became CEO of a major real estate association in Los Angeles, as I recall, and actually had some business dealings with Carson. And her name was not actually Linda. But, dummy that I am, I didn't write down any of the details. Like her name.
So, once again: Who was this wholesome-looking Linda from Bakersfield and where is she now? I think I know, but I'm just not certain.
McMahon, who died Tuesday at age 86, told the story of his first meeting with this platonic lady friend in his 2005 memoir about "The Tonight Show," titled "Here's Johnny!"
McMahon and the recently divorced talk-show host were having a drink at Sardi's in New York City. It must have been mid-1963, because "The Tonight Show" had just wrapped up its first season on the air with Carson as its star.
Carson noticed a pretty young woman across the bar who was smiling at him. According to McMahon, she was a wholesome-looking girl with "sandy blond hair" and "cheeks like red delicious apples." McMahon said she had the sort of look that might have deserved the Miss Sunflower title at the Nebraska State Fair.
Carson asked McMahon to invite her over to their table. Her name was Linda, she said, and she was from "just outside" of Bakersfield. Carson most definitely remembered the place, having performed at least one less-than-successful gig at the legendary Maisson Jaussaud's (now Golden West Casino).
After a few minutes of chat, Linda turned toward the door, where a young man had just walked in -- Stan, her date. More introductions were made and then the friendly young couple departed -- but not before Linda called McMahon "Skitch," mixing him up with the show's musical director, Skitch Henderson. Ouch.
"Linda" eventually became reacquainted with Carson and McMahon in Los Angeles, and they were friends for decades. I know this because, when I first recounted this story in a 2005 column in The Bakersfield Californian, I asked readers to help me locate her: "I'm putting out an all-points bulletin: Who was this wholesome-looking Linda from Bakersfield and where is she now?"
Well, "Linda" called and filled me in on the rest of the story. She became CEO of a major real estate association in Los Angeles, as I recall, and actually had some business dealings with Carson. And her name was not actually Linda. But, dummy that I am, I didn't write down any of the details. Like her name.
So, once again: Who was this wholesome-looking Linda from Bakersfield and where is she now? I think I know, but I'm just not certain.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Bye-bye JVs; or, Why are Clovis' stadiums so much nicer?
The budget crisis that threatens so much of what we’ve come to take for granted as Californians has swooped into the gymnasium. The Kern High School District, largest in the state among grade 9-12 districts, will axe a big chunk of its athletic programs, a move expected to save $430,000 of the $3.7 million that still must be cut from the 2009-2010 budget.
Barring a fiscal miracle between now and July 2, teams that field three competitive tiers — varsity, junior varsity and frosh-soph — must eliminate one level. In the five affected sports, the intermediate junior varsity level seems the most likely to go.
Better a piece of the interscholastic sports program than still-deeper cuts to classroom teachers and academic programs, no question. But for those of us who value the character-, confidence- and fitness-enhancing contributions of prep sports, it’s a small tragedy.
Maybe you’ve heard the stories of Bakersfield schools’ long-running ownership of Central Valley championship trophies. That dominance has largely been ceded to Clovis schools over the past decade or so, and this decision only makes things worse in that regard.
The competitive gap between the two districts was already wide and getting wider, but for a different reason: facilities. The five Clovis high schools (120 miles to the north, essentially comprising the northeast corner of metropolitan Fresno) make Bakersfield-area schools look positively bush league in terms of stadiums, gyms, pools, field houses — you name it. The sad tale of Griffith Field, one of the oldest and most venerable sports stadiums in the Central Valley, aptly illustrates the situation. KHSD administrators would like to undertake a major renovation at the Bakersfield High School football stadium, built in 1923, but at this rate they might end up waiting until the facility’s centennial.
The hope is that Griffith Field might eventually get expanded seating, upgraded restrooms, handicap access improvements and perhaps a new, all-weather track. Clovis- and other Fresno-area schools have rubberized tracks in abundance — at last count, 21 schools up that way had them — but Liberty, Taft and Delano’s Cesar Chavez are the only local high schools with that amenity.
How can there be such a disparity? Because taxpayers elsewhere in the valley have been paying a small, supplementary arts-and-recreation fee on their property tax bills for decades, and schools have been able to tap those funds for athletic facilities not covered by education-related, capital-improvement funding.
Clovis Unified School District Superintendent Terry Bradley, who retires this summer, says Clovis pulled it off with a series of five school bonds, the first in 1986, that authorized the small property tax add-on. The bonds are now paid off.
“We have what we have,” Bradley said, “because the community paid for it.”
Clovis’ communitywide commitment to athletics has filtered down into the culture of the respective student bodies. The programs are deep, and the teams win.
Meanwhile, BHS and every other local school with similar dreams will have to wait for state capital-improvement funds to become available, and supplement them with fundraising efforts, as Liberty (with one of the district’s wealthier demographic profiles) did a few years ago.
How badly does the BHS stadium need work? Principal David Reese says Griffith Field would need to be shut down for a full year, probably immediately after the conclusion of a future football season. The track-and-field oval, which now curves behind the visiting bleachers — talk about a poor view of that second baton handoff — would get a makeover. Adding an all-weather track would give the city a second venue for big meets — a centrally located, easy-access-to-Highway-99 facility. But it’ll be costly. Don’t hold your breath waiting.
As for the funding for team sports, it might get worse before it gets better: The KHSD says it must cut $30 million more over the next three years.
It’ll take work and creativity to overcome what seems to be a growing disadvantage for Kern County — now on a second front — in the field of athletics.
E-mail Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or twitter.com/stubblebuzz.
Barring a fiscal miracle between now and July 2, teams that field three competitive tiers — varsity, junior varsity and frosh-soph — must eliminate one level. In the five affected sports, the intermediate junior varsity level seems the most likely to go.
Better a piece of the interscholastic sports program than still-deeper cuts to classroom teachers and academic programs, no question. But for those of us who value the character-, confidence- and fitness-enhancing contributions of prep sports, it’s a small tragedy.
Maybe you’ve heard the stories of Bakersfield schools’ long-running ownership of Central Valley championship trophies. That dominance has largely been ceded to Clovis schools over the past decade or so, and this decision only makes things worse in that regard.
The competitive gap between the two districts was already wide and getting wider, but for a different reason: facilities. The five Clovis high schools (120 miles to the north, essentially comprising the northeast corner of metropolitan Fresno) make Bakersfield-area schools look positively bush league in terms of stadiums, gyms, pools, field houses — you name it. The sad tale of Griffith Field, one of the oldest and most venerable sports stadiums in the Central Valley, aptly illustrates the situation. KHSD administrators would like to undertake a major renovation at the Bakersfield High School football stadium, built in 1923, but at this rate they might end up waiting until the facility’s centennial.
The hope is that Griffith Field might eventually get expanded seating, upgraded restrooms, handicap access improvements and perhaps a new, all-weather track. Clovis- and other Fresno-area schools have rubberized tracks in abundance — at last count, 21 schools up that way had them — but Liberty, Taft and Delano’s Cesar Chavez are the only local high schools with that amenity.
How can there be such a disparity? Because taxpayers elsewhere in the valley have been paying a small, supplementary arts-and-recreation fee on their property tax bills for decades, and schools have been able to tap those funds for athletic facilities not covered by education-related, capital-improvement funding.
Clovis Unified School District Superintendent Terry Bradley, who retires this summer, says Clovis pulled it off with a series of five school bonds, the first in 1986, that authorized the small property tax add-on. The bonds are now paid off.
“We have what we have,” Bradley said, “because the community paid for it.”
Clovis’ communitywide commitment to athletics has filtered down into the culture of the respective student bodies. The programs are deep, and the teams win.
Meanwhile, BHS and every other local school with similar dreams will have to wait for state capital-improvement funds to become available, and supplement them with fundraising efforts, as Liberty (with one of the district’s wealthier demographic profiles) did a few years ago.
How badly does the BHS stadium need work? Principal David Reese says Griffith Field would need to be shut down for a full year, probably immediately after the conclusion of a future football season. The track-and-field oval, which now curves behind the visiting bleachers — talk about a poor view of that second baton handoff — would get a makeover. Adding an all-weather track would give the city a second venue for big meets — a centrally located, easy-access-to-Highway-99 facility. But it’ll be costly. Don’t hold your breath waiting.
As for the funding for team sports, it might get worse before it gets better: The KHSD says it must cut $30 million more over the next three years.
It’ll take work and creativity to overcome what seems to be a growing disadvantage for Kern County — now on a second front — in the field of athletics.
E-mail Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or twitter.com/stubblebuzz.
Your poll of polls
A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows President Obama’s favorability ratings slipping a little. Another poll shows Republican self-loathing at remarkably high levels. If those aren’t contradictory results, they at least present an interesting contrast. What else are opinion polls telling us about ourselves? Plenty. More than I can pack into this little space. I polled the polls for a glimpse.
Inevitability Award: 60 percent of respondents in last week’s NBC/WSJ poll had a very or somewhat positive view of the president, which sounds pretty good until you realize that 66 percent liked him in January. Meanwhile, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who’s practically been on TV more in the last three months than in the previous eight years combined, edged up on the lovability meter, from 21 percent in December to 26 percent today. Does that mean we’ll be seeing more of him? Egad.
Best Reason to Consider Counseling: A new poll from Gallup says 38 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have an unfavorable opinion of their own party, compared with just 7 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners down on their party.
Politicians who may aim to heal the partisan rift have their work cut out for them: 78 percent of Democrats view the GOP unfavorably, while 85 percent of Republicans view the Democratic Party unfavorably, the survey found. In other words, polarization is worse than ever, but self-loathing remains almost exclusively a Republican trait — although, to be fair, the Republicans polled seem to dislike everyone.
Asked who was the leader of the GOP, 10 percent of Republicans said Rush Limbaugh, 10 percent said Newt Gingrich, 9 percent said Dick Cheney, 6 percent said John McCain and 17 percent said nobody. Gulp.
Loudest Potential Response to That Last Item: Republican affiliation is down in almost every major demographic, and a majority of Americans say there’s no clear leader for the GOP. And yet conservatives remain the largest ideological group in the nation. The same Gallup Poll reports that 40 percent of Americans identify their political views as conservative, while 35 percent say they’re moderate and 21 percent call themselves liberal. Last year just 37 percent of Americans called themselves conservative. Can we credit Obama for encouraging a few more to sign up? Seems likely.
Strongest Indication That the West is Confused: Pollster Frank Luntz says 44 percent of the Westerners he asked were unhappy with the federal government, followed by the South with 37 percent, the Midwest at 34 percent and the Northeast at 32 percent. But more than 60 percent of the Westerners polled approved of the job Obama has done so far. We have no idea what to make of that.
Score One For the Spies Award: The CIA doesn’t always poll well with Americans, who tend to see that spy agency as overzealous and ineffective, but when the G-Men go up against Nancy Pelosi, it’s a different story. On the did-she-know question regarding rough interrogation techniques, Americans believe the CIA over Pelosi, 56 percent to 22 percent.
Most Important Poll of the Week: With the June wedding season in full bloom, Brides.com and The Associated Press asked wedding guests about the economy’s effect on nuptials. The verdict: Not much. We were more interested in the food questions: What kind of fare would you prefer at the reception?
The most luxurious option of champagne and caviar had few fans (15 percent). The favorite was wine and chicken breasts (57 percent). But my choice was a respectable second: Beer and pigs in a blanket (20 percent). Must have been the guy vote.
Inevitability Award: 60 percent of respondents in last week’s NBC/WSJ poll had a very or somewhat positive view of the president, which sounds pretty good until you realize that 66 percent liked him in January. Meanwhile, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who’s practically been on TV more in the last three months than in the previous eight years combined, edged up on the lovability meter, from 21 percent in December to 26 percent today. Does that mean we’ll be seeing more of him? Egad.
Best Reason to Consider Counseling: A new poll from Gallup says 38 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have an unfavorable opinion of their own party, compared with just 7 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners down on their party.
Politicians who may aim to heal the partisan rift have their work cut out for them: 78 percent of Democrats view the GOP unfavorably, while 85 percent of Republicans view the Democratic Party unfavorably, the survey found. In other words, polarization is worse than ever, but self-loathing remains almost exclusively a Republican trait — although, to be fair, the Republicans polled seem to dislike everyone.
Asked who was the leader of the GOP, 10 percent of Republicans said Rush Limbaugh, 10 percent said Newt Gingrich, 9 percent said Dick Cheney, 6 percent said John McCain and 17 percent said nobody. Gulp.
Loudest Potential Response to That Last Item: Republican affiliation is down in almost every major demographic, and a majority of Americans say there’s no clear leader for the GOP. And yet conservatives remain the largest ideological group in the nation. The same Gallup Poll reports that 40 percent of Americans identify their political views as conservative, while 35 percent say they’re moderate and 21 percent call themselves liberal. Last year just 37 percent of Americans called themselves conservative. Can we credit Obama for encouraging a few more to sign up? Seems likely.
Strongest Indication That the West is Confused: Pollster Frank Luntz says 44 percent of the Westerners he asked were unhappy with the federal government, followed by the South with 37 percent, the Midwest at 34 percent and the Northeast at 32 percent. But more than 60 percent of the Westerners polled approved of the job Obama has done so far. We have no idea what to make of that.
Score One For the Spies Award: The CIA doesn’t always poll well with Americans, who tend to see that spy agency as overzealous and ineffective, but when the G-Men go up against Nancy Pelosi, it’s a different story. On the did-she-know question regarding rough interrogation techniques, Americans believe the CIA over Pelosi, 56 percent to 22 percent.
Most Important Poll of the Week: With the June wedding season in full bloom, Brides.com and The Associated Press asked wedding guests about the economy’s effect on nuptials. The verdict: Not much. We were more interested in the food questions: What kind of fare would you prefer at the reception?
The most luxurious option of champagne and caviar had few fans (15 percent). The favorite was wine and chicken breasts (57 percent). But my choice was a respectable second: Beer and pigs in a blanket (20 percent). Must have been the guy vote.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
My psychiatrist prescribed Mr. Wiggles
A physician friend of mine occasionally launches into prolonged rants about the frustrations and hilarity of dealing with his idiosyncratic collection of patients. Dr. Bill (we'll leave it at that) sent this one this morning:
"You should write an article about how everyone feels that they can bring a dog everywhere with them.
"I had a patient bring her small dog in the office with her for a visit. We told her that it was inappropriate as others may be allergic to dogs (in fact that may be why they are in the office). Of course, seeing-eye dogs are welcomed, as well as seeing-eye dogs in training. K-9 police do not bring the dogs into the office.
"The reply is that she will get a letter from her psychiatrist stating that it is a companion dog and she needs it as therapy.
"Hey, it is still my office -- what about a letter from my psychiatrist stating that I need a cow to feel comfortable?
"Do I take it to the hospital?
"Is it safe for people to have dogs bouncing around on their laps while they are driving? Is it safe for us to have other drivers with dogs on their laps while they are driving? What if everyone brought their dog to my office? People are just too weird these days."
Dr. Bill may be on to something. The part about the therapeudic cow, I mean. If I had a cow in the office maybe I wouldn't have to keep using this awful Coffee Mate stuff. I can't think of a single drawback to the "personal cow" idea. With the possible exception of our rather small elevator.
"You should write an article about how everyone feels that they can bring a dog everywhere with them.
"I had a patient bring her small dog in the office with her for a visit. We told her that it was inappropriate as others may be allergic to dogs (in fact that may be why they are in the office). Of course, seeing-eye dogs are welcomed, as well as seeing-eye dogs in training. K-9 police do not bring the dogs into the office.
"The reply is that she will get a letter from her psychiatrist stating that it is a companion dog and she needs it as therapy.
"Hey, it is still my office -- what about a letter from my psychiatrist stating that I need a cow to feel comfortable?
"Do I take it to the hospital?
"Is it safe for people to have dogs bouncing around on their laps while they are driving? Is it safe for us to have other drivers with dogs on their laps while they are driving? What if everyone brought their dog to my office? People are just too weird these days."
Dr. Bill may be on to something. The part about the therapeudic cow, I mean. If I had a cow in the office maybe I wouldn't have to keep using this awful Coffee Mate stuff. I can't think of a single drawback to the "personal cow" idea. With the possible exception of our rather small elevator.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Maybe he has a learning disabillity
What's up with radio/TV commentator Sean Hannity? Does he suffer from momentary lapses of consciousness?
Barack Obama, on a weeklong mission to engage the Muslim world in something resembling dialogue, gave an interview to France’s Canal Plus TV on June 1. Here are two excerpts, accompanied by Hannity’s commentary from Fox News.
Obama: “If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.”
Hannity: “He honors the national day of prayer behind closed doors. Now, on his Middle East apology tour, the president calls the U.S. a ‘Muslim nation.’”
Obama: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens, who are bound by ideals.”
Hannity: “The same president who insists the U.S. is not a Christian nation is now calling us a Muslim nation.”
If Obama said “we are not a Christian nation,” he also, by the same utter disregard for context, said “we are not a Muslim nation.” Do you see that, Sean? Sean? Never mind.
This is not to say Obama was totally on the ball either. Obama is almost certainly mistaken about the number of Muslims in the U.S.
The president suggested there are “nearly 7 million” Muslims in America, but the CIA World Fact Book puts the number at 1.8 million — a far cry from Obama’s estimate. But even if 7 million were correct, the U.S. would merely be the 32nd largest “Muslim nation.”
More likely we’re not even Top 50.
Barack Obama, on a weeklong mission to engage the Muslim world in something resembling dialogue, gave an interview to France’s Canal Plus TV on June 1. Here are two excerpts, accompanied by Hannity’s commentary from Fox News.
Obama: “If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.”
Hannity: “He honors the national day of prayer behind closed doors. Now, on his Middle East apology tour, the president calls the U.S. a ‘Muslim nation.’”
Obama: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens, who are bound by ideals.”
Hannity: “The same president who insists the U.S. is not a Christian nation is now calling us a Muslim nation.”
If Obama said “we are not a Christian nation,” he also, by the same utter disregard for context, said “we are not a Muslim nation.” Do you see that, Sean? Sean? Never mind.
This is not to say Obama was totally on the ball either. Obama is almost certainly mistaken about the number of Muslims in the U.S.
The president suggested there are “nearly 7 million” Muslims in America, but the CIA World Fact Book puts the number at 1.8 million — a far cry from Obama’s estimate. But even if 7 million were correct, the U.S. would merely be the 32nd largest “Muslim nation.”
More likely we’re not even Top 50.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
It causes havoc with the central nervous system, but this farm chemical is barely regulated
The cloud was moving in Rachael Woodard’s direction so slowly, she and a fellow gate attendant at the Bena landfill took out their cameras and snapped photos. It was that unusual, that ominous a sight.
Had they fully grasped the danger, they might have immediately abandoned their posts at the county dump and made a run for it.
But the cloud of gas — an insecticide that drifted from an adjacent orange grove — overtook them last Saturday with unexpected speed, and within seconds Woodard and several others were gasping for breath.
A county haz-mat team was immediately dispatched to the landfill about 15 miles southeast of Bakersfield. Detox workers tried to get Woodard to remove her contaminated clothes, but she could barely move. They did it for her.
In all, six employees of the county’s waste management division were treated for exposure, having reported nausea and vomiting, heartbeat irregularities and breathing difficulties. Woodard was taken to Mercy Hospital with a highly elevated heart rate.
What was this chemical, this poison with such neurological power it can render a healthy young woman unable to move and barely able to breathe? Some battlefield remnant from World War I?
Nah, it was just good, ol’ Nufos, an insecticide so common (and supposedly benign) that growers don’t even need to notify the county ag commissioner in advance of their intention to apply it, as they must with certain other chemicals.
Nufos’s active ingredient is chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxin that has been the subject of controversy almost since its first commercial availability in 1965. Certain commercial formulations were banned in the U.S. for several years, starting in 2000, because of suspected links to childhood leukemia and disorders of the reproductive and immune systems.
This stuff is scary, and it’s everywhere, in a stunning array of grocery- and hardware-store items. Among them are various products in the pet flea-control aisle. Chlorpyrifos-based anti-flea drops resulted in 44,000 complaints last year, and the EPA is investigating.
In 2003, its maker, Dow Chemical, was subjected to the largest penalty ever administered in a pesticide case, $2 million, and required to stop advertising Dursban, a household version of chlorpyrifos, as “safe.”
In 2007, a coalition of farmworker and advocacy groups, citing health concerns, filed suit against the EPA trying to end agricultural use of the chlorpyrifos. The following year a federal judge imposed 1,000 foot buffer zones around waterways, banning the aerial application of chlorpyrifos within that range.
That’s certainly good news for fish.
Meanwhile, growers can still spray the stuff on crops almost anywhere in California with few restrictions.
Woodard, who was placed on two days’ bed rest, per doctor’s orders, spoke to ag commissioners’ investigators Wednesday and was back at work Thursday. On Friday, she was back at Bena.
No word yet on whether the grower, Gless Ranch, will face any kind of sanctions. The ag commissioner’s office, which has the power to levy fines, said the investigation could take a week or more.
Woodard’s mother, Paula Woodard, now wonders what else is drifting past our noses (hopefully much more diluted than the chemical overspray that sickened her daughter) here in agriculture-rich Kern County.
“I just want to know why we don’t have the right to unpoisoned air,” she said. “Something’s wrong.
“The farmer said the chemical was not toxic, but all his workers were wearing hazmat suits while they were spraying it. It makes you not trust whoever’s making the regulations.”
Had they fully grasped the danger, they might have immediately abandoned their posts at the county dump and made a run for it.
But the cloud of gas — an insecticide that drifted from an adjacent orange grove — overtook them last Saturday with unexpected speed, and within seconds Woodard and several others were gasping for breath.
A county haz-mat team was immediately dispatched to the landfill about 15 miles southeast of Bakersfield. Detox workers tried to get Woodard to remove her contaminated clothes, but she could barely move. They did it for her.
In all, six employees of the county’s waste management division were treated for exposure, having reported nausea and vomiting, heartbeat irregularities and breathing difficulties. Woodard was taken to Mercy Hospital with a highly elevated heart rate.
What was this chemical, this poison with such neurological power it can render a healthy young woman unable to move and barely able to breathe? Some battlefield remnant from World War I?
Nah, it was just good, ol’ Nufos, an insecticide so common (and supposedly benign) that growers don’t even need to notify the county ag commissioner in advance of their intention to apply it, as they must with certain other chemicals.
Nufos’s active ingredient is chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxin that has been the subject of controversy almost since its first commercial availability in 1965. Certain commercial formulations were banned in the U.S. for several years, starting in 2000, because of suspected links to childhood leukemia and disorders of the reproductive and immune systems.
This stuff is scary, and it’s everywhere, in a stunning array of grocery- and hardware-store items. Among them are various products in the pet flea-control aisle. Chlorpyrifos-based anti-flea drops resulted in 44,000 complaints last year, and the EPA is investigating.
In 2003, its maker, Dow Chemical, was subjected to the largest penalty ever administered in a pesticide case, $2 million, and required to stop advertising Dursban, a household version of chlorpyrifos, as “safe.”
In 2007, a coalition of farmworker and advocacy groups, citing health concerns, filed suit against the EPA trying to end agricultural use of the chlorpyrifos. The following year a federal judge imposed 1,000 foot buffer zones around waterways, banning the aerial application of chlorpyrifos within that range.
That’s certainly good news for fish.
Meanwhile, growers can still spray the stuff on crops almost anywhere in California with few restrictions.
Woodard, who was placed on two days’ bed rest, per doctor’s orders, spoke to ag commissioners’ investigators Wednesday and was back at work Thursday. On Friday, she was back at Bena.
No word yet on whether the grower, Gless Ranch, will face any kind of sanctions. The ag commissioner’s office, which has the power to levy fines, said the investigation could take a week or more.
Woodard’s mother, Paula Woodard, now wonders what else is drifting past our noses (hopefully much more diluted than the chemical overspray that sickened her daughter) here in agriculture-rich Kern County.
“I just want to know why we don’t have the right to unpoisoned air,” she said. “Something’s wrong.
“The farmer said the chemical was not toxic, but all his workers were wearing hazmat suits while they were spraying it. It makes you not trust whoever’s making the regulations.”
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Strange bedfellows (once removed): The Gavin Newsom-Michael Savage connection
Because some things are just too weird to let go without noting, I pass along, without comment, this oddity from blogger Josh Richman:
"Rockstar energy drink founder and CEO Russell Weiner — son of Michael Weiner, aka Bay Area-based, nationally broadcast conservative talk radio talk host Michael Savage — on Monday made a $25,000 contribution to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's 2010 gubernatorial campaign.
"Yes, the son of Michael Savage, who just last October was saying Newsom is "in love again with the gay mafia" and "a whack-job as a mayor — 'Any-twosome' Newsom." Y'know, Savage — the guy the Brits don't care to have around.
"So what's the deal? 'We're personal friends, went to the same high school at different times,' Weiner told me a short while ago. 'And he's a businessman, I'm a businessman, so I hope he'll be good for the business community if he's governor.'"
Richman's blog: http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/
Richman also notes, with some wonderment, that Savage supported Jerry Brown in his 2006 run for attorney general. Richman: "Wonder if that means this Republican father and son will be disagreeing over who to support in next year’s gubernatorial primary – the Democratic primary, that is."
"Rockstar energy drink founder and CEO Russell Weiner — son of Michael Weiner, aka Bay Area-based, nationally broadcast conservative talk radio talk host Michael Savage — on Monday made a $25,000 contribution to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's 2010 gubernatorial campaign.
"Yes, the son of Michael Savage, who just last October was saying Newsom is "in love again with the gay mafia" and "a whack-job as a mayor — 'Any-twosome' Newsom." Y'know, Savage — the guy the Brits don't care to have around.
"So what's the deal? 'We're personal friends, went to the same high school at different times,' Weiner told me a short while ago. 'And he's a businessman, I'm a businessman, so I hope he'll be good for the business community if he's governor.'"
Richman's blog: http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/
Richman also notes, with some wonderment, that Savage supported Jerry Brown in his 2006 run for attorney general. Richman: "Wonder if that means this Republican father and son will be disagreeing over who to support in next year’s gubernatorial primary – the Democratic primary, that is."
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Did valley congressmen really boycott the very first UC Merced graduation ceremony?
This week's most dubious absence award goes to California's Central Valley congressional delegation, which somehow managed to find other things to do Saturday, as UC Merced's first graduating class accepted the sheepskin.
Most troubling was the absence of Rep. Devin Nunes of Visalia, one of the driving forces in the school's birth. Why? Because the commencement featured first lady Michelle Obama. At least Nunes came right out and said so: He skipped because of his unhappiness with the Obama administration.
How silly. This was an historic event for the San Joaquin Valley. It was supposed to be about the graduates, a pioneering class that took a chance on a new, unproven institution. It should have been about Merced, a town that finally reaped some economic reward after years of uncertainty and struggle over this university.
Nunes and his valley colleagues (including Bakersfield's Kevin McCarthy, who instead attended an art competition and the birthday party for Dewar's candy shop) might have used the occasion to illuminate some of the valley's specific concerns, including water, but they missed the chance.
"It's bad manners, it's bad form and it's an insult to the community," CSU Stanislaus political science professor Lawrence Giventer told the Merced Sun-Star. I agree.
The party went on without them. Hotels were packed throughout Merced, sending people north to Turlock and south to Chowchilla. Merced was expecting a huge take in tourism dollars, but you can't put a dollar sign on all that community pride.
Too bad the valley's congressmen didn't deem the occasion worth their time. It was a landmark day.
UPDATE: It bears mention that, although he has been supportive of UC Merced, to the point of fighting to prevent an interruption in funding, McCarthy's district is the farthest geographically from the campus among the valley's members of congress. My point is that it would have been nice to see the valley's entire congressional delegation on hand, not only to celebrate the completion of a hard-won fight for higher education in the valley and to honor these pioneering grads, but because these congressmen themselves deserved a public handshake. I hope they didn't really think it was more important to snub Michelle Obama.
Most troubling was the absence of Rep. Devin Nunes of Visalia, one of the driving forces in the school's birth. Why? Because the commencement featured first lady Michelle Obama. At least Nunes came right out and said so: He skipped because of his unhappiness with the Obama administration.
How silly. This was an historic event for the San Joaquin Valley. It was supposed to be about the graduates, a pioneering class that took a chance on a new, unproven institution. It should have been about Merced, a town that finally reaped some economic reward after years of uncertainty and struggle over this university.
Nunes and his valley colleagues (including Bakersfield's Kevin McCarthy, who instead attended an art competition and the birthday party for Dewar's candy shop) might have used the occasion to illuminate some of the valley's specific concerns, including water, but they missed the chance.
"It's bad manners, it's bad form and it's an insult to the community," CSU Stanislaus political science professor Lawrence Giventer told the Merced Sun-Star. I agree.
The party went on without them. Hotels were packed throughout Merced, sending people north to Turlock and south to Chowchilla. Merced was expecting a huge take in tourism dollars, but you can't put a dollar sign on all that community pride.
Too bad the valley's congressmen didn't deem the occasion worth their time. It was a landmark day.
UPDATE: It bears mention that, although he has been supportive of UC Merced, to the point of fighting to prevent an interruption in funding, McCarthy's district is the farthest geographically from the campus among the valley's members of congress. My point is that it would have been nice to see the valley's entire congressional delegation on hand, not only to celebrate the completion of a hard-won fight for higher education in the valley and to honor these pioneering grads, but because these congressmen themselves deserved a public handshake. I hope they didn't really think it was more important to snub Michelle Obama.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The alien's name is Gerald
I get the best mail. Today it's an alien from a faraway galaxy. He’s running for president and wants me to get Maria Shriver to help him. I'm not sure what Gerald — that's the alien, in his earthly form — thinks California's first lady can do for him (maybe it's a Kennedy thing), or why I am uniquely qualified to do the convincing, but there you have it -- the star of today's mailbag.
Gerald, who lives in Bismark, North Dakota, says he'll give Ms. Shriver a planet of her very own if she can lend a hand. (I'd go for one with a nice beach and absolutely NO GIANT FLESH EATING INSECTS.) Oh, and Gerald would like Maria's husband Arnold to be his secretary of defense, which is a nice gesture, since Arnold will have been out of a job by the time the 2012 presidential election rolls around.
Gerald has a lot more to say, but I sort of skipped to the end of his rather long letter. Anybody have an suggestions to help me get Maria's attention on his behalf? Ideas that won't get me arrested?
Gerald, who lives in Bismark, North Dakota, says he'll give Ms. Shriver a planet of her very own if she can lend a hand. (I'd go for one with a nice beach and absolutely NO GIANT FLESH EATING INSECTS.) Oh, and Gerald would like Maria's husband Arnold to be his secretary of defense, which is a nice gesture, since Arnold will have been out of a job by the time the 2012 presidential election rolls around.
Gerald has a lot more to say, but I sort of skipped to the end of his rather long letter. Anybody have an suggestions to help me get Maria's attention on his behalf? Ideas that won't get me arrested?
No more cigarette butts at the beach?
Some will cite this as another example of government assault on personal freedoms, but I'm having a hard time seeing the downside of a state senate bill banning smoking at state parks and beaches. The bill passed the senate Thursday and now heads to the assembly.
The author, Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach, says the bill, SB4, is intended to protect marine life and reduce fire danger statewide, and those are absolutely worthy goals — especially when we try to fight inevitable summer wildfires with this battered state budget.
But I'll be happy just to start seeing fewer cigarette butts at the beach. I spent a week at the Central Coast over spring break and was frequently alarmed and disgusted to see smokers flipping lit cigarette butts around as if the shore were their personal ash tray. Not every smoker is an inconsiderate slob, I know, but enough of them are to make quite a mess. Even more considerate smokers are faced with a disposal problem when they're lounging under a beach umbrella. Ever see a smoker "pack out" his butts after an afternoon at the beach? I haven't.
If the problem were just my tender sensibilities, that would be one thing. But Oropeza’s No Smoking at State Parks and Beaches Act (nearly identical to a bill with the same number that she introduced in late 2006) targets the fact that sea critters regularly ingest and are harmed by cigarette butts.The Ocean Conservancy says smoking-related waste (butts, cigar tips, packaging, etc.) accounts for 38 percent of all the debris on U.S. beaches.
Meanwhile, the California Department of Forestry says smoking causes more than 100 California forest fires every year, burning 3,400 acres annually. Smoking caused the 1999 Jones wildfire, one of the most devastating in U.S. history.
I know, I know — government is taking away all of our rights, one by one. I'm not too worried about this one, though. Especially if it has aesthetic, health, environmental, public safety and budgetary benefits.
The author, Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach, says the bill, SB4, is intended to protect marine life and reduce fire danger statewide, and those are absolutely worthy goals — especially when we try to fight inevitable summer wildfires with this battered state budget.
But I'll be happy just to start seeing fewer cigarette butts at the beach. I spent a week at the Central Coast over spring break and was frequently alarmed and disgusted to see smokers flipping lit cigarette butts around as if the shore were their personal ash tray. Not every smoker is an inconsiderate slob, I know, but enough of them are to make quite a mess. Even more considerate smokers are faced with a disposal problem when they're lounging under a beach umbrella. Ever see a smoker "pack out" his butts after an afternoon at the beach? I haven't.
If the problem were just my tender sensibilities, that would be one thing. But Oropeza’s No Smoking at State Parks and Beaches Act (nearly identical to a bill with the same number that she introduced in late 2006) targets the fact that sea critters regularly ingest and are harmed by cigarette butts.The Ocean Conservancy says smoking-related waste (butts, cigar tips, packaging, etc.) accounts for 38 percent of all the debris on U.S. beaches.
Meanwhile, the California Department of Forestry says smoking causes more than 100 California forest fires every year, burning 3,400 acres annually. Smoking caused the 1999 Jones wildfire, one of the most devastating in U.S. history.
I know, I know — government is taking away all of our rights, one by one. I'm not too worried about this one, though. Especially if it has aesthetic, health, environmental, public safety and budgetary benefits.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Dubious honor, but we're No. 1
The bad news: California State University trustees have approved a 10 percent increase in undergraduate and graduate student fees for the coming school year. The increase of $306 a year for undergraduates will bring average annual basic fees to $3,354 beginning in this fall, compared with the present $3,048, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The borderline good news: The least expensive campus in the 23-school system, based on on-campus housing, food, books, transportation and other expenses, is still CSU Bakersfield (a mere $15,891 annually). Highest is San Diego State ($20,388).
The fee increase is intended to help offset state cuts in the system’s $2.6 billion budget, including $96 million in 2008-09 and an additional $57 million for 2009-10. Things will get worse if education funding propositions on the May 19 ballot fail.
In other words, things will almost surely get worse -- just in time, practically, for my eldest to head off to college. Of course, if she doesn't figure out calculus, it may be a moot point.
The borderline good news: The least expensive campus in the 23-school system, based on on-campus housing, food, books, transportation and other expenses, is still CSU Bakersfield (a mere $15,891 annually). Highest is San Diego State ($20,388).
The fee increase is intended to help offset state cuts in the system’s $2.6 billion budget, including $96 million in 2008-09 and an additional $57 million for 2009-10. Things will get worse if education funding propositions on the May 19 ballot fail.
In other words, things will almost surely get worse -- just in time, practically, for my eldest to head off to college. Of course, if she doesn't figure out calculus, it may be a moot point.
So much for that no-call list
The car warranty people are back. (See previous post.) The "Theme from Mission Impossible" ring tone on my cell phone started blasting just as I was wrapping up a land-line phone call at work. I pressed "1" to talk to an agent and asked to be taken off the call list. I am not holding my breath.
Sen. Schumer, get the FTC to do something about these people.
Sen. Schumer, get the FTC to do something about these people.
Monday, May 11, 2009
I'll tend to my expired car warranty myself, thank you
It's about time somebody in Washington took some action against those invasive and persistent "your car warranty has expired" robo-dialed cell-phone calls. Apparently it took a senator getting bugged by a call in the middle of a health care meeting on Capitol Hill — Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, in this case — for something meaningful to happen. (Well, we'll see if it's meaningful.)
Schumer is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the companies behind these calls, which somehow get around (or ignore) the "Do Not Call" registry. Several states have tried to take action — but the calls continue, so maybe this is indeed a job for the Feds.
I started getting these calls a couple of months ago. At first I ignored them (just hung up), but finally I pressed "one" to talk to an agent. I asked the guy to tell me what kind of car I had and got a canned response that dodged the question. So I then asked how he knew my warranty was up. He hung up on me.
I did the same thing the next time I got the call, asking where they got my name. Answer: "From the database." Database of what? The agent hung up.
I did the same thing a third time --- this time told the agent I wanted to get a warranty extension on my 1948 Hudson. She said that was too old, they only warranted cars that are 1985 or newer. Did I have another car? I said no (since I was fibbing already). She volunteered to take me off the call list. I haven't heard back from them — but it's only been about a week.
My rule of thumb is, only do business with businesses with whom you initiate contact.
Schumer is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the companies behind these calls, which somehow get around (or ignore) the "Do Not Call" registry. Several states have tried to take action — but the calls continue, so maybe this is indeed a job for the Feds.
I started getting these calls a couple of months ago. At first I ignored them (just hung up), but finally I pressed "one" to talk to an agent. I asked the guy to tell me what kind of car I had and got a canned response that dodged the question. So I then asked how he knew my warranty was up. He hung up on me.
I did the same thing the next time I got the call, asking where they got my name. Answer: "From the database." Database of what? The agent hung up.
I did the same thing a third time --- this time told the agent I wanted to get a warranty extension on my 1948 Hudson. She said that was too old, they only warranted cars that are 1985 or newer. Did I have another car? I said no (since I was fibbing already). She volunteered to take me off the call list. I haven't heard back from them — but it's only been about a week.
My rule of thumb is, only do business with businesses with whom you initiate contact.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Dumbest letter to the editor in history
Writing a letter to the editor of one's local newspaper is a civic-minded and patriotic thing to do. Published letters also frequently showcase the writer's steel-trap logic. But public letter-writing can leave the opposite sort of impression too. To be blunt, sometimes it just exposes the writer as a lame-o. I've seen some breathtaking examples.
This one takes the cake, though. The depth of cluelessness here is staggering. This guy was apparently trying to send "turf" -- as in manufactured "grass roots" -- by selecting some pre-written talking points from the organization he supports, and then inserting them into his "own" letter. But he messed up and sent the instructions instead:
To the Editor,
It is important that you write the letter in your own words. Nothing is more persuasive to the media, lawmakers, and the public than the experiences, opinions, and feelings of concerned citizens. To help get you started, we've provided simple talking points to the right (click the talking point once to add it to your letter), but please remember to use the words that mean the most to you.
REMEMBER: DELETE THESE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE WRITING YOUR LETTER AND INCLUDE YOUR DAYTIME AND EVENING PHONE NUMBERS.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Contact Phone: [Your Phone Number(s)]
Insert laughter here.
This one takes the cake, though. The depth of cluelessness here is staggering. This guy was apparently trying to send "turf" -- as in manufactured "grass roots" -- by selecting some pre-written talking points from the organization he supports, and then inserting them into his "own" letter. But he messed up and sent the instructions instead:
To the Editor,
It is important that you write the letter in your own words. Nothing is more persuasive to the media, lawmakers, and the public than the experiences, opinions, and feelings of concerned citizens. To help get you started, we've provided simple talking points to the right (click the talking point once to add it to your letter), but please remember to use the words that mean the most to you.
REMEMBER: DELETE THESE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE WRITING YOUR LETTER AND INCLUDE YOUR DAYTIME AND EVENING PHONE NUMBERS.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Contact Phone: [Your Phone Number(s)]
Insert laughter here.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Jurors in the Bakersfield molestation cases speak
After having written Sunday about a juror in the Pitts molestion case of 1985, I heard from two more jurors today, one who worked the Kniffen-McCuan case, another who didn't say which case she was on. Here, without their names, are their e-mails:
I read your article in today's paper (Juror left to ponder fallout of reversals) with emotion. I too was a juror in one of the molestation trials and it was a wrenching experience. I had a one year old baby I had just weaned and was in the joyous rapture of young motherhood (I was 31 at the time). Why I was selected as a juror ran continuously through my mind for years. Day after day we heard the burning testimony of the children,watched the blank faces of the accused and took voluminous notes. On the day we found the two defendants guilty I cried. I was consumed with a sadness I have not felt since. After the other jurors left one of the district attorneys approached me -I was sitting in the courtroom crying. He said to not feel bad about the verdict, it was well deserved and there was even more evidence that absolutely proved guilt but was not admissible in court. I ended up in counseling for several months. How could anyone do what these people did to the children? I still relive those days and wish the best for the children - now adults. What kind of parents are they? How has this influenced their roles as mom and dad? You were right to remember the jurors in the trials - we were damaged too.
s/anonymous juror
Thank you for your article. Finally someone has remembered the jurors in those cases. Mary K Stanley spoke my sentiments exactly. I was on the Kniffen-McCuan trial and I went through the same thing. I didn’t want to find the parents guilty, but the facts and children made them appear guilty.
s/anonymous juror
I also got an irate phone from a guy who left a message. Didn't I know how much stuff the DA screwed up? Didn't I know how badly these defendants were treated? Didn't I do any research? I know a lot about these cases, and anybody who has paid attention knows they've been broken down over and over in The Californian and elsewhere. Lord knows I am leading the league in harassment of this DA. But this story was about the jurors, the one group central to the story that's been pretty much ignored. Sorry -- somebody had to tell that story.
I read your article in today's paper (Juror left to ponder fallout of reversals) with emotion. I too was a juror in one of the molestation trials and it was a wrenching experience. I had a one year old baby I had just weaned and was in the joyous rapture of young motherhood (I was 31 at the time). Why I was selected as a juror ran continuously through my mind for years. Day after day we heard the burning testimony of the children,watched the blank faces of the accused and took voluminous notes. On the day we found the two defendants guilty I cried. I was consumed with a sadness I have not felt since. After the other jurors left one of the district attorneys approached me -I was sitting in the courtroom crying. He said to not feel bad about the verdict, it was well deserved and there was even more evidence that absolutely proved guilt but was not admissible in court. I ended up in counseling for several months. How could anyone do what these people did to the children? I still relive those days and wish the best for the children - now adults. What kind of parents are they? How has this influenced their roles as mom and dad? You were right to remember the jurors in the trials - we were damaged too.
s/anonymous juror
Thank you for your article. Finally someone has remembered the jurors in those cases. Mary K Stanley spoke my sentiments exactly. I was on the Kniffen-McCuan trial and I went through the same thing. I didn’t want to find the parents guilty, but the facts and children made them appear guilty.
s/anonymous juror
I also got an irate phone from a guy who left a message. Didn't I know how much stuff the DA screwed up? Didn't I know how badly these defendants were treated? Didn't I do any research? I know a lot about these cases, and anybody who has paid attention knows they've been broken down over and over in The Californian and elsewhere. Lord knows I am leading the league in harassment of this DA. But this story was about the jurors, the one group central to the story that's been pretty much ignored. Sorry -- somebody had to tell that story.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Swine flu news: Special panic edition
From this week's Biggest Best Latest Loudest awards:
Highest-Ranking Foot-in-Mouth Award: Vice President Joe Biden, who told the “Today” show Thursday he’d advise family members to avoid airplanes, subways and other “confined” places to avoid catching the H1N1, or swine flu — even while others in the Obama administration were trying to tamp down the growing (and ill-founded) hysteria. Biden’s office almost immediately issued a statement saying that the vice president meant that sick people should avoid those places.
In a related story, Americans agree that logically impaired people should avoid speaking.
Painful-to-Watch Clarification Award: Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano, who had to ask for a do-over last month, too, after a leaked Homeland Security report suggested that returning Iraq veterans might be potential risks to foment domestic terrorism. This time, faced with the Biden gaffe, she was compelled to reiterate the government’s travel policy: Carry on.
In a related story, Napolitano’s title has been changed Secretary of Apologies.
Best Headline We Could Never Get Away With Using: "Swine Flu Conspiracy — The Aporkalypse,” from an undermedicated (or densely sarcastic) conspiracy blog, ahrcanum.wordpress.com.
But What About Mad Cow Disease? Award: You get swine flu from pigs, right? What? Oops. That’s our impersonation of America, after realizing that one has nothing to do with the other. Don’t believe anyone could actually be that silly? Tell it to the National Pork Producers Council, which says the industry has taken an $18 million hit since the influenza outbreak. Pork folk blame the “inaccurate” name.
“It is not a ‘swine’ flu, and people need to stop calling it that,” said Dave Warner of the pork council. The World Health Organization announced it would instead refer to the illness as “H1N1 influenza A,” which is not nearly as catchy — but then that’s the pork council’s point, isn’t it?
Best Attempt at Out-Bidening Biden: Israel’s deputy health minister, Yakov Litzman, a member of the Jewish state’s ultra-religious party, who said earlier this week that the name “swine flu” should not be used because it contains the name of the animal banned by Judaism. He suggested “Mexican flu,” which won him no friends in Mexico. Clarification time: “Israel has no intention of giving the flu any new names. It was nothing more than a slip of the tongue,” said an unidentified government official who almost certainly was not Janet Napolitano.
Hammiest Twitter of the Week: Steve Mullen of The Commercial Dispatch of Columbus, Miss., who had the gall to announce: “Inoculated self against swine flu by eating three pounds of bacon.” Seems like a marketing opportunity the pork council ought to be considering.
Highest-Ranking Foot-in-Mouth Award: Vice President Joe Biden, who told the “Today” show Thursday he’d advise family members to avoid airplanes, subways and other “confined” places to avoid catching the H1N1, or swine flu — even while others in the Obama administration were trying to tamp down the growing (and ill-founded) hysteria. Biden’s office almost immediately issued a statement saying that the vice president meant that sick people should avoid those places.
In a related story, Americans agree that logically impaired people should avoid speaking.
Painful-to-Watch Clarification Award: Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano, who had to ask for a do-over last month, too, after a leaked Homeland Security report suggested that returning Iraq veterans might be potential risks to foment domestic terrorism. This time, faced with the Biden gaffe, she was compelled to reiterate the government’s travel policy: Carry on.
In a related story, Napolitano’s title has been changed Secretary of Apologies.
Best Headline We Could Never Get Away With Using: "Swine Flu Conspiracy — The Aporkalypse,” from an undermedicated (or densely sarcastic) conspiracy blog, ahrcanum.wordpress.com.
But What About Mad Cow Disease? Award: You get swine flu from pigs, right? What? Oops. That’s our impersonation of America, after realizing that one has nothing to do with the other. Don’t believe anyone could actually be that silly? Tell it to the National Pork Producers Council, which says the industry has taken an $18 million hit since the influenza outbreak. Pork folk blame the “inaccurate” name.
“It is not a ‘swine’ flu, and people need to stop calling it that,” said Dave Warner of the pork council. The World Health Organization announced it would instead refer to the illness as “H1N1 influenza A,” which is not nearly as catchy — but then that’s the pork council’s point, isn’t it?
Best Attempt at Out-Bidening Biden: Israel’s deputy health minister, Yakov Litzman, a member of the Jewish state’s ultra-religious party, who said earlier this week that the name “swine flu” should not be used because it contains the name of the animal banned by Judaism. He suggested “Mexican flu,” which won him no friends in Mexico. Clarification time: “Israel has no intention of giving the flu any new names. It was nothing more than a slip of the tongue,” said an unidentified government official who almost certainly was not Janet Napolitano.
Hammiest Twitter of the Week: Steve Mullen of The Commercial Dispatch of Columbus, Miss., who had the gall to announce: “Inoculated self against swine flu by eating three pounds of bacon.” Seems like a marketing opportunity the pork council ought to be considering.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Billy Mize and the Bakersfield Sound
Buck Owens justifiably gets most of the credit for defining and popularizing the Bakersfield Sound, that rollicking cousin of rockabilly, but Billy Mize — whose 80th birthday party will be held April 28 at the Crystal Palace — was on the local music scene years before Owens.
In fact Mize, along with Bill Woods, deserves much of the credit for helping the music of the late-’30s Dust Bowl migration translate into Bakersfield honky-tonk, an important forerunner of today’s rock and country, and a spiritual predecessor of the alt-country, No Depression sound coming out of places like Austin, Atlanta and Seattle.
I’d never read precisely how the music of the federal labor camps evolved into Bakersfield honky-tonk, so a few years ago I did some research and found Mize (who went on to become a big TV star in the ‘50s and early ‘60s) right there at the beginning. An excerpt:
Most weekend days during the early post-war years, younger residents of the Sunset labor camp, as the Arvin labor camp was also known, would walk a mile east to mingle with migrant workers from the squatters’ camps around the town of Weedpatch, which was not much more than a single rural intersection in the middle of acres of table-grape vineyards. They would meet, hundreds of them, at a business called the Collins Auction.
“This is how it began,” honky tonk drummer Jimmy Phillips told me. “You have all these people that’s migrated here from Oklahoma and they’re squatted there (in tents on private land all around Weedpatch) … A lot of them people would go up and they’d listen to Billy Mize and Bill Woods … come out and play. Man, I’m tellin’ you, it would be like a dream for me and many of the others, just to go up and listen to ‘em. And you would think, man, one of these days, this is gonna work, we’re gonna get to get in and do this (ourselves).”
Mize’s story is an important chapter in a story that touches on Texas-style Western Swing, federal labor camps, and the West Coast shipyards and aircraft factories of World War II. Those were some of the ingredients that came together to create the Bakersfield Sound. Here, in all its 8,800-word glory, is the entire story.
In fact Mize, along with Bill Woods, deserves much of the credit for helping the music of the late-’30s Dust Bowl migration translate into Bakersfield honky-tonk, an important forerunner of today’s rock and country, and a spiritual predecessor of the alt-country, No Depression sound coming out of places like Austin, Atlanta and Seattle.
I’d never read precisely how the music of the federal labor camps evolved into Bakersfield honky-tonk, so a few years ago I did some research and found Mize (who went on to become a big TV star in the ‘50s and early ‘60s) right there at the beginning. An excerpt:
Most weekend days during the early post-war years, younger residents of the Sunset labor camp, as the Arvin labor camp was also known, would walk a mile east to mingle with migrant workers from the squatters’ camps around the town of Weedpatch, which was not much more than a single rural intersection in the middle of acres of table-grape vineyards. They would meet, hundreds of them, at a business called the Collins Auction.
“This is how it began,” honky tonk drummer Jimmy Phillips told me. “You have all these people that’s migrated here from Oklahoma and they’re squatted there (in tents on private land all around Weedpatch) … A lot of them people would go up and they’d listen to Billy Mize and Bill Woods … come out and play. Man, I’m tellin’ you, it would be like a dream for me and many of the others, just to go up and listen to ‘em. And you would think, man, one of these days, this is gonna work, we’re gonna get to get in and do this (ourselves).”
Mize’s story is an important chapter in a story that touches on Texas-style Western Swing, federal labor camps, and the West Coast shipyards and aircraft factories of World War II. Those were some of the ingredients that came together to create the Bakersfield Sound. Here, in all its 8,800-word glory, is the entire story.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Danny Gilmore shows some courage
Danny Gilmore, the Republican assemblyman from Hanford, is taking some heat for having declared his support for Proposition 1A. That’s the initiative on the May 19 ballot that would extend by up to two years a handful of temporary fees and taxes, including the emergency 1-cent sales tax the Legislature put in place in February to keep the state from sinking into a fiscal bog.
That took guts on Gilmore’s part because it could be fatal for his re-election hopes. Bakersfield talk-radio talker Ralph Bailey said as much Monday afternoon, essentially calling Gilmore a one-termer. Bailey could be right.
Why would Gilmore do such a thing? Maybe because he has decided to do what virtually every politician says he’ll do during the campaign but almost never does once he’s elected — forget his party affiliation and answer to the greater good.
It’ll be disaster if Prop. 1A fails. Disastrous for schools, law enforcement, public health — government services most voters didn’t even know they counted on. (And just in time for a potential swine flu outbreak.)
Gilmore knows this — and I sensed he knew it back when the state senate was trying to resolve the budget deficit three months ago. Gilmore didn’t have to vote to raise taxes then because the assembly already had enough votes to make it happen. Gilmore probably doesn’t have to say so now, either, but he’s willing to do so anyway because understands, as a former CHP guy, what a multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall will mean.
That’s called huevos, folks, and I respect him for it even if some of his constituents don’t.
That took guts on Gilmore’s part because it could be fatal for his re-election hopes. Bakersfield talk-radio talker Ralph Bailey said as much Monday afternoon, essentially calling Gilmore a one-termer. Bailey could be right.
Why would Gilmore do such a thing? Maybe because he has decided to do what virtually every politician says he’ll do during the campaign but almost never does once he’s elected — forget his party affiliation and answer to the greater good.
It’ll be disaster if Prop. 1A fails. Disastrous for schools, law enforcement, public health — government services most voters didn’t even know they counted on. (And just in time for a potential swine flu outbreak.)
Gilmore knows this — and I sensed he knew it back when the state senate was trying to resolve the budget deficit three months ago. Gilmore didn’t have to vote to raise taxes then because the assembly already had enough votes to make it happen. Gilmore probably doesn’t have to say so now, either, but he’s willing to do so anyway because understands, as a former CHP guy, what a multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall will mean.
That’s called huevos, folks, and I respect him for it even if some of his constituents don’t.
Friday, April 24, 2009
The award for hunkiest fictional president
Goes to ... Barack P. Obama — and in case you’re wondering, the “P” stands for Photoshopped.
Obama, who’s in pretty good physical shape for a socialist, graces the cover of the latest Washingtonian magazine. The May edition shows a shirtless Obama wearing nothing but red board shorts and sunglasses.
Problem is, the photo, taken in Hawaii by a paparazzo shortly after Obama won the November election, was doctored. Obama’s conservative black trunks are now red, and his skin tone appears more golden than anyone can remember seeing it before. (The magazine denies his skin tone was altered.)
Well, give the Washingtonian credit for resisting the urge to superimpose the beefier abs of, say, rapper 50 Cent.
Obama, who’s in pretty good physical shape for a socialist, graces the cover of the latest Washingtonian magazine. The May edition shows a shirtless Obama wearing nothing but red board shorts and sunglasses.
Problem is, the photo, taken in Hawaii by a paparazzo shortly after Obama won the November election, was doctored. Obama’s conservative black trunks are now red, and his skin tone appears more golden than anyone can remember seeing it before. (The magazine denies his skin tone was altered.)
Well, give the Washingtonian credit for resisting the urge to superimpose the beefier abs of, say, rapper 50 Cent.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Happy Birthday, Billy Mize -- party is April 28
Billy Mize turns 80 on April 29, but there's a party being held in his honor April 28 at Buck Owens' Crystal Palace -- and one of the features of the gathering will be a preview of a new documentary about his life and career. For those who don't know his story, here's a short excerpt from my 1997 profile. It picks up after TV host/fiddle player Jimmy Thomason quit his TV gig to run (unsuccessfully) for the state senate in 1954 and then, out of a job, moved temporarily back to Texas:
Billy Mize, a young, handsome steel guitar player, had taken advantage of the Thomasons’ self-imposed two-year exile, stepping in to host his own program. He called his KBAK show “The Chuck Wagon Gang” and teamed for a year and a half with Cliff Crofford (later to earn a reputation writing songs for Walter Brennan and composing mid-’70s film soundtracks including those for “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Every Which Way But Loose”).
Mize “sang like a bird,” said Roy Nichols, former guitarist for Merle Haggard’s Strangers and a some-time-regular on the “Trading Post.” “Looked good, too.” “He had a lot a trouble with girls,” Red Simpson said. “Trouble keeping them away.”
Mize, who rejoined the “Trading Post” gang after the Thomasons’ return, became the show’s host in October 1963 when Cousin Herb was forced to scale back following his first heart attack. After Henson’s death the following month, the show moved to KBAK, and Mize continued as the show’s host for its final years. The Thomasons essentially switched places with Mize, landing on KERO-TV.
A native of Kansas by way of Riverside, Mize was all over the Southern California airwaves in those days. In a two-year display of road-warrior grit during 1964 and 1965, he racked up 3,000 miles a week driving his pink 1959 Cadillac back and forth between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, appearing on two live, daily TV music shows: “Trading Post” in Bakersfield and “Melody Ranch” on KTLA.
Mize performed on several Los Angeles-area TV shows, including “The Hank Penny Show,” “Town Hall Party,” “The Cal Worthington Show,” and “Country Music Time.” He eventually sold his heroic, well-traveled Caddy to Buddy Mize, his songwriting brother.
Before the Academy of Country Music gave its “TV Personality of the Year” award to Glen Campbell in 1968, Mize owned the trophy, winning three years in a row. He recorded for Columbia, Decca, United Artists, Zodiac and others, but his finest moment in the studio was probably the day in June 1966 that Dean Martin recorded three of his songs, including “Terrible Tangled Web.”
Billy Mize, a young, handsome steel guitar player, had taken advantage of the Thomasons’ self-imposed two-year exile, stepping in to host his own program. He called his KBAK show “The Chuck Wagon Gang” and teamed for a year and a half with Cliff Crofford (later to earn a reputation writing songs for Walter Brennan and composing mid-’70s film soundtracks including those for “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Every Which Way But Loose”).
Mize “sang like a bird,” said Roy Nichols, former guitarist for Merle Haggard’s Strangers and a some-time-regular on the “Trading Post.” “Looked good, too.” “He had a lot a trouble with girls,” Red Simpson said. “Trouble keeping them away.”
Mize, who rejoined the “Trading Post” gang after the Thomasons’ return, became the show’s host in October 1963 when Cousin Herb was forced to scale back following his first heart attack. After Henson’s death the following month, the show moved to KBAK, and Mize continued as the show’s host for its final years. The Thomasons essentially switched places with Mize, landing on KERO-TV.
A native of Kansas by way of Riverside, Mize was all over the Southern California airwaves in those days. In a two-year display of road-warrior grit during 1964 and 1965, he racked up 3,000 miles a week driving his pink 1959 Cadillac back and forth between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, appearing on two live, daily TV music shows: “Trading Post” in Bakersfield and “Melody Ranch” on KTLA.
Mize performed on several Los Angeles-area TV shows, including “The Hank Penny Show,” “Town Hall Party,” “The Cal Worthington Show,” and “Country Music Time.” He eventually sold his heroic, well-traveled Caddy to Buddy Mize, his songwriting brother.
Before the Academy of Country Music gave its “TV Personality of the Year” award to Glen Campbell in 1968, Mize owned the trophy, winning three years in a row. He recorded for Columbia, Decca, United Artists, Zodiac and others, but his finest moment in the studio was probably the day in June 1966 that Dean Martin recorded three of his songs, including “Terrible Tangled Web.”
Monday, April 20, 2009
How do newspapers keep their oldest readers?
How bad are things for the Hodel's Kiwanis Club? Bad enough that they were compelled to bring me in as a luncheon speaker on Monday. They asked questions about the future of newspapers and I was compelled to give them straight answers.
A couple of older members (70 plus, I expect) were not pleased to learn that things are going in a digital direction. Neither of these gentlemen know how to use a computer. Newspapers won't be happy to lose their readership -- that demographic is a faithful customer.
They posed this question: How about printing something (now, soon,whatever) on how to use a computer? While I'm not sure that's the best use of limited newsprint, it does raise an interesting point: What are newspapers doing to bring along these older readers? Are we just giving up on them? Or is there a way to connect them to our digital future? Should newspapers be offering computer literacy seminars at senior centers, or it that too far outside our central mission? Should we be partnering with retailers to put laptops into their hands? (Yes, that stuff is outside the central mission, too, but maybe we should be thinking about that sort of thing as well.) These are customers who WANT to stay with us.
A couple of older members (70 plus, I expect) were not pleased to learn that things are going in a digital direction. Neither of these gentlemen know how to use a computer. Newspapers won't be happy to lose their readership -- that demographic is a faithful customer.
They posed this question: How about printing something (now, soon,whatever) on how to use a computer? While I'm not sure that's the best use of limited newsprint, it does raise an interesting point: What are newspapers doing to bring along these older readers? Are we just giving up on them? Or is there a way to connect them to our digital future? Should newspapers be offering computer literacy seminars at senior centers, or it that too far outside our central mission? Should we be partnering with retailers to put laptops into their hands? (Yes, that stuff is outside the central mission, too, but maybe we should be thinking about that sort of thing as well.) These are customers who WANT to stay with us.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Last place in mutual stalking society's contest
Actor Ashton Kutcher became the first Twitterer to to rack up 1 million "followers" Friday morning, edging CNN. If you're wondering why celebrities who hate gossip websites would encourage people to follow them around, in a digital sense, you're not alone.
One answer: They're anxious to help usher in the birth of the next generation of mass media -- not just Twitter, per se, but all sorts of user-driven content. Plus, in this case, Kutcher's effort was for a good cause: The first one to hit a million had agreed to donate 10,000 mosquito nets for World Malaria Day.
Kutcher, whose wife Demi Moore alerted authorities to a suicidal Twitterer last month, was helped in part by 1,144 billboards donated for a day by Lamar Advertising -- including at least one in Bakersfield. A bit further back, behind Kutcher, twitter.com/stubblebuzz ended the week with seven followers. What did you expect? No billboard help.
One answer: They're anxious to help usher in the birth of the next generation of mass media -- not just Twitter, per se, but all sorts of user-driven content. Plus, in this case, Kutcher's effort was for a good cause: The first one to hit a million had agreed to donate 10,000 mosquito nets for World Malaria Day.
Kutcher, whose wife Demi Moore alerted authorities to a suicidal Twitterer last month, was helped in part by 1,144 billboards donated for a day by Lamar Advertising -- including at least one in Bakersfield. A bit further back, behind Kutcher, twitter.com/stubblebuzz ended the week with seven followers. What did you expect? No billboard help.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Justin "Raymie" Meyer gets his due
Justin Meyer (known as Raymie during his days at Garces High, class of '56) was recently inducted posthumously into the Vintners' Hall of Fame at the Culinary Academy of America in Napa Valley. The writer Gerald Haslam, Meyer's good buddy and a fellow Garces alum, reports that the induction was a grand shindig and a well-deserved honor. Meyer, who helped co-found Silver Oak (there are no finer cabernets in existence, year in and year out) died in 2002.
I interviewed Meyer a few weeks before he died. Read it here.
I interviewed Meyer a few weeks before he died. Read it here.
All right, so now I'm Twittering
I'm in -- a Twitterer. Part of a new, bold social experiment. And just as I type this I see I have my first follower. A follower! Heady stuff indeed. Twitter me if you are so inclined. Join my parade. Whatever. I still don't have the lingo down, but I'll work on it. I promise not to Twitter about restroom breaks. Unless they are exceptional for any particular reason. Then all bets are off.
Here's my Twitter ID: http://twitter.com/stubblebuzz
Here's my Twitter ID: http://twitter.com/stubblebuzz
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Learning a thing or two from Obama
I had a chance to sit down with Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leadership's chief deputy whip, Tuesday afternoon. McCarthy says Republicans have learned at least one thing from Barack Obama: Don't underestimate the power and potential of 21st-century communication tools.
The Obama campaign built a highly effective campaign network with text messaging. Now the GOP leadership is plunging headlong in that direction as well. They're sharing info with each other via iPod, and they're communicating with voters via Twitter. McCarthy, who spent an hour and a half with the Californian's editorial board, says he is amazed and amused by Twitter's power.
When he Twittered about the fact that he had washed his car with a ShamWow cloth (that ubiquitous chamois-like product), the world noticed. McCarthy says his ShamWow blurb got more national media attention than anything else he has Twittered (with the possible exception of a swipe at Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan and his meticulously hair-gelled coiffure).
The message: Spare us the arcane details of public policy — what we really want to know is whether a ShamWow can actually absorb an entire can of soda pop.
The Obama campaign built a highly effective campaign network with text messaging. Now the GOP leadership is plunging headlong in that direction as well. They're sharing info with each other via iPod, and they're communicating with voters via Twitter. McCarthy, who spent an hour and a half with the Californian's editorial board, says he is amazed and amused by Twitter's power.
When he Twittered about the fact that he had washed his car with a ShamWow cloth (that ubiquitous chamois-like product), the world noticed. McCarthy says his ShamWow blurb got more national media attention than anything else he has Twittered (with the possible exception of a swipe at Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan and his meticulously hair-gelled coiffure).
The message: Spare us the arcane details of public policy — what we really want to know is whether a ShamWow can actually absorb an entire can of soda pop.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Documentary misses an opportunity
Bill O'Reilly's favorite actor, Sean Penn, lends his name and voice to "Witch Hunt," airing April 12 on MSNBC. The documentary, by Dana Nachman and Don Hardy, is the story of the six Bakersfield parents who were wrongfully convicted of multiple counts of child molestation in the 1980s. Many locals are undoubtedly well-acquainted with the horrific story, which features names likes Pitts, Modahl and Stoll, so perhaps there is little new knowledge to be gained from the documentary in this part of the country.
But almost three decades after the first arrests, you'd think we were due for some analysis, some historical perspective. The documentary pins much of the blame for the flawed prosecutions on Kern County District Attorney Ed Jagels. But how did he continue to get re-elected by such substantial margins, even after the prosecution's self-inflicted problems became evident? Why didn't anyone ever step forward to oppose him?
Could this only have happened in a community like Bakersfield that tends to assume guilt? Or is it a broader phenomenon?
And where was The Bakersfield Californian in all this? (Answer: Casting more and more doubt on the "molestation ring" as time went on -- something a cursory glance at newspaper archives would have revealed.)
The filmmakers had a chance to study the ingredients of community hysteria. Instead, they seem to have produced a docu-drama that leaves us only with this penetrating question: "Gosh, wasn't that a shame?"
But almost three decades after the first arrests, you'd think we were due for some analysis, some historical perspective. The documentary pins much of the blame for the flawed prosecutions on Kern County District Attorney Ed Jagels. But how did he continue to get re-elected by such substantial margins, even after the prosecution's self-inflicted problems became evident? Why didn't anyone ever step forward to oppose him?
Could this only have happened in a community like Bakersfield that tends to assume guilt? Or is it a broader phenomenon?
And where was The Bakersfield Californian in all this? (Answer: Casting more and more doubt on the "molestation ring" as time went on -- something a cursory glance at newspaper archives would have revealed.)
The filmmakers had a chance to study the ingredients of community hysteria. Instead, they seem to have produced a docu-drama that leaves us only with this penetrating question: "Gosh, wasn't that a shame?"
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Greetings from SLO County
It's 68 and sunny in Morro Bay, but 73 and musty in the Top Dog espresso bar (free wifi if you bring your own laptop and buy a coffee). After five days on the coast, it's clear to me that Kern County really needs to negotiate a reconfiguration of its borders with San Luis Obispo County. Since Bakersfieldians are essentially keeping the Pismo Beach economy from plunging, the Board of Supes really ought to look into trading Maricopa (oil-property tax revenue) for Pismo Beach -- or some sliver of coastline somewhere. Now is the time, in the midst of this buyer's market. I will now reward myself for this brilliant observation by investing in another iced latte.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Teach kids about their planet
Blue is for the expanse of sky on the western horizon that hints of adventures not yet imagined. Green is for the rolling hills of early spring so abundant with hidden life. Purple-grey is for the sea, so powerful and mysterious in its opaque vastness.
Pink is for the letters of termination sent last week to some of the naturalists who’ve made those colors, and all they signify, their life’s work. Camp KEEP, the Kern County Superintendent of Schools’ 35-year old earth sciences education program based on the Central Coast, is in trouble. Things are so dire, I am compelled to attempt bad poetry.
Budget constraints are forcing Kern County school districts to reevaluate their priorities. The Kern Environmental Education Program, five days of intensive (and potentially life-changing) instruction that 6,000 local sixth-graders (and, at some schools, fifth-graders) experience each year, could be partially axed.
The Panama-Buena Vista Union School District board will have a big say in the matter. At their April 14 meeting, the board is tentatively scheduled to decide whether to fund Camp KEEP next year. If you value that portion of the sixth-grade curriculum — and believe the district should, too — tell them now.
Pink is for the letters of termination sent last week to some of the naturalists who’ve made those colors, and all they signify, their life’s work. Camp KEEP, the Kern County Superintendent of Schools’ 35-year old earth sciences education program based on the Central Coast, is in trouble. Things are so dire, I am compelled to attempt bad poetry.
Budget constraints are forcing Kern County school districts to reevaluate their priorities. The Kern Environmental Education Program, five days of intensive (and potentially life-changing) instruction that 6,000 local sixth-graders (and, at some schools, fifth-graders) experience each year, could be partially axed.
The Panama-Buena Vista Union School District board will have a big say in the matter. At their April 14 meeting, the board is tentatively scheduled to decide whether to fund Camp KEEP next year. If you value that portion of the sixth-grade curriculum — and believe the district should, too — tell them now.
McCain wants to pardon Bakersfield fighter
It seems to have escaped attention in recent stories about John McCain's efforts to clear the name of Jack Johnson, but the first black heavyweight boxing champ was a Bakersfield resident. Johnson, who was sent to prison because of his friendship with a white woman named Lucille Cameron, who would later become his wife, lived in the southern San Joaquin Valley from 1901 to perhaps 1911, off and on.
Johnson was convicted in 1913 of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. McCain wants Barack Obama to grant Johnson a pardon almost 100 years after the fact.
The story of Johnson's connection to Bakersfield is here. The tale plays out like a great screenplay (in need of a screenwriter).
Johnson was convicted in 1913 of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. McCain wants Barack Obama to grant Johnson a pardon almost 100 years after the fact.
The story of Johnson's connection to Bakersfield is here. The tale plays out like a great screenplay (in need of a screenwriter).
Editing history to suit your purposes
I've received this message from five different people this week, so I guess it's worth addressing. It's the story of Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman, who heroically flew his Huey copter into the face of enemy fire, repeatedly, to evacuate wounded comrades during the Vietnam War. From the e-mail: "And, he kept coming back.... 13 more times..... And took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out. Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise, ID ......May God rest his soul..... I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we sure were told a whole bunch about some Hip-Hop Coward beating the crap out of his girlfriend. Shame on the American Media."
Ed Freeman actually died last August. Somebody made it more conveniently recent, I suppose, in order to make fun of the coverage of the Chris Brown-Rhianna story. That’s why it’s still a good idea to rely more heavily on the American media, for all its faults, than emails created by people you don’t know. Yes, Ed Freeman would have been a great obituary, but when he got the medal of honor in 2001 it got a lot of play in mainstream media, including CNN. This widely circulated e-mail makes fun of the hip hop star beating up his girlfriend, but that story has people talking about domestic violence like nothing I have seen for quite some time. But, yes, a big obituary for Ed Freeman would have been fitting and deserving.
Ed Freeman actually died last August. Somebody made it more conveniently recent, I suppose, in order to make fun of the coverage of the Chris Brown-Rhianna story. That’s why it’s still a good idea to rely more heavily on the American media, for all its faults, than emails created by people you don’t know. Yes, Ed Freeman would have been a great obituary, but when he got the medal of honor in 2001 it got a lot of play in mainstream media, including CNN. This widely circulated e-mail makes fun of the hip hop star beating up his girlfriend, but that story has people talking about domestic violence like nothing I have seen for quite some time. But, yes, a big obituary for Ed Freeman would have been fitting and deserving.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
He gave the queen what?
When Republicans claimed candidate Obama lacked the experience for the job, they couldn’t have been talking about potential shortcomings in the protocol department, could they? A few weeks after Obama presented visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a DVD collection that Brown might have purchased at Blockbuster (and, it turns out, wouldn’t play in his European DVD player), Obama presented Queen Elizabeth with an iPod. Yikes! Is the president still shopping at Best Buy?
Turns out Obama also gave Her Majesty a rare songbook signed by composer Richard Rodgers. Whew. But should we actually care? Well, yes.
This business of having an elected leader behave like some sort of royal might strike some as vaguely unAmerican, but it’s important that Europe see Obama as a man fully adept at the demands of the job. And the job entails competency in every nuance of global leadership, right down to the details of reception-line nicey-nice.
Turns out Obama also gave Her Majesty a rare songbook signed by composer Richard Rodgers. Whew. But should we actually care? Well, yes.
This business of having an elected leader behave like some sort of royal might strike some as vaguely unAmerican, but it’s important that Europe see Obama as a man fully adept at the demands of the job. And the job entails competency in every nuance of global leadership, right down to the details of reception-line nicey-nice.
Not all social networking sites equal
Social networking sites, applications and tools like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon and Kosmix are growing geometrically these days, and many people are finding them both fun and useful. But not all of them are created equal. I was "friended" by someone via the social networking site Netlog, and when I checked it out, I found an old acquaintance who had issued this warning on her personal profile:
"Netlog stole all my addresses from my address book and sent message to all of them!! If that is why you are here I recommend you do not sign up for Netlog or the same could happen to you! I am so sorry for any problem this may have caused you. I did not realize what was happening. I am leaving this message for those of you who came here because of me. Your friend Ann (Mix)."
Nothing like the bones of those foolhearty explorers who came before to warn away others who might crash upon the same rocks. Thanks, Ann.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
I forgot to pull a prank
I'm bummed. It's April Fool's Day and I forgot to play a trick on my seventh-grader. I've done this three years running: I put a can of garbanzo beans in his lunch, with no can opener. (As if he'd open the can and eat the beans if he had an opener.) He gets nothing else, just beans, along with a note telling him where to find his real lunch. I don't know why I think this is funny — I just do. Must be the name of the bean.
Anyway, this year I completely forgot. I even made his peanut butter sandwich this morning. The opportunity was there. Clearly I am falling down on the job as a father.
Here, in the spirit of things, are two classic April Fool's Day jokes, courtesy of the Contra Costa Times:
• Burger King's Left-Handed Whopper (1998): The full page USA Today ad had readers hankering for a Burger King sandwich expressly for lefties. The condiments, they were told, had been rotated 180 degrees. Thousands of patrons requested the burger -- and many more asked for right-handed versions -- before the fast-food giant confessed the prank.
• The Metric Clock (1975): ABC News announced that Australia was converting to a new metric time system. Seconds would henceforth be broken into millidays, minutes would become centidays and hours decidays. Assisting with the gag, South Australia's deputy premier gave it a thumbs up and explained that Adelaide's Town Hall timepiece had been converted already. Phones rang off the hook at the TV station, and at least one department store manager said concerned customers wanted to know if their clocks would still work.
Anyway, this year I completely forgot. I even made his peanut butter sandwich this morning. The opportunity was there. Clearly I am falling down on the job as a father.
Here, in the spirit of things, are two classic April Fool's Day jokes, courtesy of the Contra Costa Times:
• Burger King's Left-Handed Whopper (1998): The full page USA Today ad had readers hankering for a Burger King sandwich expressly for lefties. The condiments, they were told, had been rotated 180 degrees. Thousands of patrons requested the burger -- and many more asked for right-handed versions -- before the fast-food giant confessed the prank.
• The Metric Clock (1975): ABC News announced that Australia was converting to a new metric time system. Seconds would henceforth be broken into millidays, minutes would become centidays and hours decidays. Assisting with the gag, South Australia's deputy premier gave it a thumbs up and explained that Adelaide's Town Hall timepiece had been converted already. Phones rang off the hook at the TV station, and at least one department store manager said concerned customers wanted to know if their clocks would still work.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
We're gettin' more money -- lots of it (updated)
With all of this federal stimulus money starting to fly around, you’d think more would settle on the ground here in Bakersfield than the $31 million that’s already been set aside to improve roads across Kern County.
And you might be right. People in the know are buzzing about the possibility that Bakersfield could get another $31 million — that’s right, a second pile of stimulus money of identical heft — very soon.
And for what worthy purpose, you might ask? None other than the long-delayed federal courthouse.
Insiders say Bakersfield will be receiving an additional $31 million very soon. If it’s a go — and it’s not a sure thing until it’s a sure thing — the courthouse could be up and running in two years.
The courthouse will go up at the east end of Central Park. Its boundaries are 21st Street to the north, the property line of Central Park to the east, 19th Street to the south and the Mill Creek project to the west.
Expect an update on the courthouse as soon as April 1. And, no, it won't be one of those April 1 press conferences.
(Update: Congressman Kevin McCarthy just issued a press release confirming the funding. "Congressman Kevin McCarthy and Congressman Jim Costa announced that funding would be made available by the U.S. General Services Administration for the Federal courthouse project in the Central Park location of Bakersfield."
The release made no mention of the amount, but McCarthy confirmed it by phone -- $31 million. He and Costa probably put the news out there a day earlier than planned to prevent anybody else from taking credit for it -- like Sen. Dianne Feinstein. You know how politicians are.)
And you might be right. People in the know are buzzing about the possibility that Bakersfield could get another $31 million — that’s right, a second pile of stimulus money of identical heft — very soon.
And for what worthy purpose, you might ask? None other than the long-delayed federal courthouse.
Insiders say Bakersfield will be receiving an additional $31 million very soon. If it’s a go — and it’s not a sure thing until it’s a sure thing — the courthouse could be up and running in two years.
The courthouse will go up at the east end of Central Park. Its boundaries are 21st Street to the north, the property line of Central Park to the east, 19th Street to the south and the Mill Creek project to the west.
Expect an update on the courthouse as soon as April 1. And, no, it won't be one of those April 1 press conferences.
(Update: Congressman Kevin McCarthy just issued a press release confirming the funding. "Congressman Kevin McCarthy and Congressman Jim Costa announced that funding would be made available by the U.S. General Services Administration for the Federal courthouse project in the Central Park location of Bakersfield."
The release made no mention of the amount, but McCarthy confirmed it by phone -- $31 million. He and Costa probably put the news out there a day earlier than planned to prevent anybody else from taking credit for it -- like Sen. Dianne Feinstein. You know how politicians are.)
Friday, March 27, 2009
Might be tough on bare feet
Spurge, begone. Dandelions, away. Leaders in the Orange County city of Garden Grove have voted to allow residents to rip out their lawns and install Astroturf-type artificial grass. We like that idea: Saves water, minimizes lawnmower fumes, and creates growth potential for carpeting companies and vacuum-cleaner sales. Accepted on a wide-scale basis, blotchy, uneven lawns would be a thing of the past. No more weeds, either.
Could we do that sort of thing in Bakersfield? Absolutely — we've got no ordinance specifically banning it.
Astroturf can be pretty tough on bare feet, though, and it gets hotter than good, ol' Bermuda grass. There's also the issue of creating a plasticized enviroment that we all might have fun debating. But it's something for California to think about. Water should be for drinking, farming and natural resources, with landscaping way, way down the list.
Could we do that sort of thing in Bakersfield? Absolutely — we've got no ordinance specifically banning it.
Astroturf can be pretty tough on bare feet, though, and it gets hotter than good, ol' Bermuda grass. There's also the issue of creating a plasticized enviroment that we all might have fun debating. But it's something for California to think about. Water should be for drinking, farming and natural resources, with landscaping way, way down the list.
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