waiting for the train that goes home, sweet mary

Entering the US singles charts on this day in 1971 and peaking at number ten, the Brewer & Shipley song featured Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead on steel guitar. The song was successful despite widespread ban by radio stations for its drug references. For their part, the band insisted that toke was short for token as in a ticket—thus the line “waiting downtown at the railway station,” though later Mike Brewer related while they were touring as the opening act for Melanie everyone got very stoned on marijuana one evening with Brewer having to retire early having smoked too much and he was “one toke over the line” and developed a song around it. Despite vice president Spiro Agnew pressuring the federal communications commission (FCC) to ban this “blatant drug culture propaganda that threatens to sap our national strength” within a few weeks Lawrence Welk was lauding the song as a “modern spiritual” and had regulars Dick Dale and Gail Farrell perform a cover version on his musical variety show.

der sendung mit der maus

First aired on this day in 1971 and every Sunday morning thereafter by WDR (Westdeustcher Rundfunk) and a consortium of broadcasters, The Show with the Mouse (previously) is considered “the classroom of the nation” and is one of the most successful and impactful children’s educational television programme (see also)—despite early critics believing such exposure detrimental to children’s development and contravening a law for its first six years of broadcasting that prohibited television aimed at young audiences. The core format consists of so called laughing and factual, practical stories Lach- und Sachgeschichten, cartoons balanced by science segments exploring how things are made, how things work) but has had several mini-series with guest characters from other shows, Shaun the Sheep, Cap’t Blaubär, Der kleine Maulwurf (the Little Mole) and others and a number of special episodes about German reunification, voting, space exploration, atomic energy, etc.

decimal day

On this day in 1971, the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland decimalised (see previously) their respective pounds and pence (d., from Latin for denarii), abolishing shilling (s., from Latin solidi) and subdividing the pound (£, pondo librae) into one hundred new pence (p). A substantial publicity campaign championed by the Decimal Association that also helped make the transition into the metric system made the change-over a relatively smooth one.

winter soldier investigations

Beginning on this day in 1971, the three-day Detroit media event hosted by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) was a multidisciplinary workshop aiming to bring to the public attention the atrocities committed by the United States military in South East Asia and demonstrate that the recently exposed massacre at My Lai and spillage into Laos and Cambodia (see previously) were widespread and not the rare and isolated occurrences that they were portrayed as. The event’s name was proposed by organiser Mark Lane in contrast to what English Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Paine described in his 1776 pamphlet on the war for independence and The First American Crisis, opening: “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the Sunshine Patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Veteran member and future lieutenant-governor, senator, presidential candidate, secretary of state and now special envoy for climate John Kerry echoed those same words speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April of that year. Testimony presented was a harsh indictment against US foreign policy and a painful reflection of American brutality and racism. There were similar panels held in later years for US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

it is pitch black—you are likely to be eaten by a grue

Via Waxy, we learn that in homage to the first text-based version of the pioneering computer game Oregon Trail (see also) that began circulating—peer-to-peer—in the winter of 1971, Aaron A. Reed of Substack will be looking back at the past five decades of gaming and its evolution with an in depth retrospective year week for the coming year. Watch that space for new instalments. You have died of dysentery.

muddlemore manor

The seventeenth and final episode airing on this day in 1972 that brought arc of narrative of this last iterative trope of a trio of teens (one, the brainy ginger, portrayed by Micky Dolenz of the Monkees) solving para-paranormal (most had a non-supernatural explanation) mysteries with the help of a sidekick and readily mobile back to its original premise, “Ghost Grabbers,” taking our friendly spirit, the titular Funky Phantom, an colonial rebel from the US Revolutionary War called Johnathan Wellington “Mudsy” Muddlemore and voiced by Daws Butler, repurposing his affectations developed for the character Snagglepuss (which is perfectly acceptable because we didn’t get enough Snagglepuss, also the talent behind Yogi Bear, Cap’t Crunch, Fred Flagstone, Quisp, Chilly Willy, Wally Gator and Huckleberry Hound).

Seeing two British Redcoats infiltrating the premises, Mudsy and his now ghost cat named Boo, hide in the housing of a large grandfather clock but are trapped inside, eventually expiring. The pair are released in the first episode when the teens happen on the estate on a dark and stormy night and reset the hands of the clock to the correct time, thus releasing their spirits. On suspicion that the Redcoats were hiding looted treasure, two recurring schemers disguise themselves as ghosts of the British soldiers to try and scare information out of Mudsy.

françoise harddisk

Via Kicks Condor, we are directed towards the Organizing Committee and their experimental musical collaboration inspired by Chilean president’s Salvadore Allende’s Project Cybersyn designed to empower the people through direct democracy, soliciting universal and instantaneous feedback with “algedonic meters,” having employed socialist cybernetic folk music as an educational and promotional campaign to introduce the public to this vast and ambitious initiative. Its implementation was tragically pre-empted by the fascist coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973—but at least one song in the new genre was recorded: “Letania para una computadora y para un niño que va a nacer” (Litany for a Computer and a Child Yet to Be Born) by Angel Parra as well as the construction of an operations centre that has the look and feel of a Star Trek bridge. The cyborg pop album produced is co-written by a host of machine learning models, synthesising instrumentals and lyrics, and consists of thirteen tracks with a human at the helm for creative control. Much more to explore with the liner notes and all the songs at the link above.

ansible

First appearing in the February 1932 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper is a piece of short, speculative fiction from H. G. Wells in which the titular protagonist is delivered an edition dated 10 November 1971, a date four decades in the future. The narrative is chiefly a description of the articles contained in the pages and Wells’ predictions for what’s in store with mixed accuracy including simplified spelling for English, a thirteen month reformed calendar, geothermal energy and increased scientific literacy. The title refers to a phone call from the future—see also here and here.

public law 81-831

Also known as the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 or the Concentration Camp Law, the McCarran Internal Security Act, namesake of its principal champion the senator from Nevada, was enacted by congress on this day seventy years ago—overriding a veto by President Truman. In addition to requiring Communist and fascist organisations register with the Attorney General’s office and the already established Subversive Activities Control Board with the broad powers to restrict movement and revoke citizenship of members, it also provided for the emergency detention of dangerous or disloyal persons were there is reasonable cause to believe that such persons will probably engage in—or conspire with others to engage in—espionage or sabotage.

In 1965, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled to invalidate the requirement for political party affiliates to register with the Department of Justice and the ban on card-carrying Communist party members from obtaining a passport and traveling outside the US, with the board abolished in 1972, following Nixon’s Non-Detention Act of the previous year (passed due to overwhelming public pressure, see also), repealing most of aspects of the law. The clauses of the Internal Security Act (its official title) that remain in effect are cited, invoked by the US military as a means of access control for instalations.

a man, a plan, a can

Appropriately called out for its stereotypes and gendered biases that do not advance equity in the kitchen—though I do admit that it is often the most help and the least harm I can do is in setting the table and clearing up—we were struck with the illustrations of this vintage Working Couple’s Cookbook—via Weird Universe but curated then culled by our astute librarians (previously), which are strongly suggestive of adversarial graphic generation.
A Nitty Gritty production, written by Peggy Treadwell with artwork by Carl Torlucci—I can see that he specialised in this signature style but can’t find anything outside of this one collaboration unfortunately, with complimenting an author’s words seeming like an especially democratising task that is relatively accepted and well established as gender-neutral.

the pentagon papers

Leaked to the press by military analysist turned activist Daniel Ellsberg who had researched and contributed to the study and recom- mendations to the US government, the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force was published on this day in 1971, revealing crucially that successive administrations had deceived the public and the US legislature on its prosecution and expansion—mission creep—of the war in South East Asia. The exposé helped inform the growing sentiment opposing the war and intensified the movement against it. Nixon’s hatchetmen (nicknamed the White House plumbers as they were to see about a leak) went after the credibility of Ellsberg and the papers, bringing up charges of treason, which were later dropped during the Watergate investigation as an unlawful intimidation tactic.

an absurd and immature antic

With an albeit split but precedent-setting decision issued on this day in 1971, the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned the charges of lower jurisdictions and absolved the defendant of the crime of disturbing the peace by his choice of attire while in the corridors of the Los Angeles Courthouse.   Three years prior, the then nineteen year old defendant, Paul Robert Cohen, was arrested for wearing a jacket that bore the words F*ck the Draft (see also here and here) when called to a hearing—Cohen removed the offending article when entering the courtroom and taking the stand, however.
The bailiff communicated this to the judge, whom had Cohen taken into custody after his testimony and arraigned. Arguing that his behaviour was provocative and calculated to shock by announcing his views on the war in Vietnam, the county court ruled that his wardrobe choice was below the minimum threshold of civility and not suitable for public view. The case was elevated and the California Supreme Court concluded that neither itself or the lower courts were competent to determine what language was suitable for public consumption without overstepping their powers and trouncing on rights of free speech and referred the matter to the national high court to decide. Despite the chief justice instructing his associates that it would not be necessary to “dwell on the facts”—in effect, an order to censor the wording on the jacket, which was immediately ignored, and the dissenting argument characterising the provocation as the above and thus not a form of protected speech, the case was ruled in favour of Cohen, enshrining the right to express such sentiments and to not have them silenced and suppressed prima facie.

approaching pavonis mons by balloon (utopia planitia)

A few days ago, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured this collapsed opening in a shield volcano (Peacock Mountain) in the Martian Tharsis region—originally discovered during the Mariner 9 mission in 1971 with the gentle rise and general topography near the planet’s equator making the feature a good candidate for the anchor of a space elevator, tethered to the captured asteroid of Deimos—and teased that the protected environment within the cavern could be a promising refuge for hold-out Martian life forms. Long before being imaged again by a Mars orbiter in 2011, it was the subject of the eponymous Flaming Lips’ song from their 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The next phrase of the exploration programme, due to land February 2021 includes a rover called Perseverance equipped with a drill to extract and study core samples and an aerial drone, which could peer down into such places.

simpsons roasting on an open fire

On this day in 1989, the Fox network debuted The Simpsons, characters spun-off from a regular, animated interstitial from The Tracey Ullmann Show, with a Christmas special.
Intended as the eighth episode of the season, production delays had already pushed back release dates to the holidays and the producers decided to open with this show—which was a remarkably smart move in retrospect (The Waltons had a similar start with its pilot episode back in 1971) for the expository and establishing opportunities that come with such tropes.

thus spake zarathustra

We had missed this rather significant directorial choice regarding Stanley Kubrick’s timeless and iconic adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey (see previously) and are grateful to the emendation from Open Culture.
Before deciding on scoring his film with the orchestral classics of Strauss (the above tone poem, fanfare was also used as walk-on music by Elvis Presley from 1971 until his death in 1977), Mozart and Brahms, Kubrick had commissioned composer Alex North (*1910 – †1991) to write a full soundtrack (listen to the playlist in its entirety at the link above) which was ultimately rejected. What do you think about the decision? Of course we are used to the setting as produced but North’s tracks have a different connection and emotional response. North, who had received accolades and Oscar nominations for his music in such films as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Cleopatra, The Misfits, Death of a Salesman, and Spartacus did not take the rejection well—especially having put so much effort into it and not discovering the fact he was cut out of the picture until its New York preview—but was able to incorporate some of the music into later projects, like the score for The Shoes of the Fisherman and Dragon Slayer.

friedliche revolution

Beginning with securing the right to hold regional open elections—with opposition candidates competing against the state party in May of 1989 and the later assemblies referred to as Montagsdemos ahead of celebrations of the country’s fortieth anniversary jubilee amid heavy crackdowns on people attempting to flee the regime, the Peaceful Revolution of East Germany showed itself as unstoppable force on 18 October 1989 when deputy and chairman of the State Council Egon Krenz, heeding the people’s will, conspired with other like-minded members of the Politbüro (with the blessings of the Soviet Union) to oppose and overthrow the long-running leadership of Erich Honecker.
It is always difficult to discern decisive moments but it seems that before this coup, the revolt could have failed.  Staunchly opposed to any reforms and the talk of glasnost and in power since 1971 (his wife Margot being the Minister of National Education all that time as well), the Chairman believed that the only way for Communism to survive the scourges of the West was to take a hard line approach, like Cuba and North Korea and was granted sanctuary in Moscow—at least until protector Mikhail Gorbachev ceded powers to Boris Yeltsin on Christmas Day in 1991. Wanting to be rid of this political liability and stateless person, Yeltsin remitted Honecker to a now united Germany—Krenz helping to oversee the transition—to stand trial. Terminally ill, the court threw the case out (not without massive protests) and eventually allowed Honecker to resettle and join his family in Santiago, Chile.

With a resplendent encampment in the desert much like the summit between Francis I and Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, some attribute the decadent festivities that began on this day in 1971 and continuing until 16 October as a significant factor contributing to the downfall of the Shah and the ousting of the monarchy in this grand fêting of the institution itself on the occasion of its twenty-five hundredth anniversary.
Commemorating the sixth century BC founding of the Achaeminid dynasty, the celebration meant to showcase Iran’s contributions to civilisation and modern advances quickly became a partisan issue and the monumental cost (by some estimates, upwards of twenty-two million dollars) of banqueting and parades curried support for the Ayatollah. In exchange for the Shah’s funding of his own experimental film not released until 2018, Orson Welles agreed to narrate (see also) a documentary of the party for the hosts, which was attended by almost all the world’s royals and heads of state.

mons hadley

Commissioned and placed near their landing site on the lunar surface on this day in 1971 by the crew of the Apollo 15 mission, the aluminium abstract eight-centimetre figurine Fallen Astronaut by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck is the sole artwork (it’s debated whether the postage stamp sized ceramic wafer was really smuggled on-board in an astronaut’s suit and left behind) and poignant memorial on the Moon.
Keeping it a secret until after they returned to Earth, the laid the statuette on the lunar soil along with a plaque that records the names of fourteen astronauts and cosmonauts, regrettably omitting the sacrifice of Valentin Vasiliyevich Bondarenko and Grigori Grigoryevich Nelyubov as their deaths were not disclosed by the Soviet space programme and kept secret and Robert Henry Lawrence Jr, an Air Force officer and presumably considered a military asset as he was in training to be part of a crewed reconnaissance satellite experiment.

hatefulness/impish

On this day at this time in 1971, an erroneous Emergency Action Notification was dispatched to US broadcasters, directing stations to cease regularly scheduled programming immediately at the request of the government but no reason was given.
Listen to WCCO serving Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota area air silence here. The title refers to the codewords to give and them belay that order, and the bungle with the false alarm (the operator picked the wrong tape) revealed a lot endemic faults with the system—including that due to the fact the message coincided with a regularly scheduled systems test and many choose to ignore it and additional safeguards were added.

freedom river

Via Kottke, we are directed towards a 1971 animated parable narrated by Orson Welles that illustrates how creeping intolerance (metaphorically and in tandem with actual erosion and ruination) undermines democracy and the exercise of liberty that attends free and fair societies.
Some of the script is a bit reductive and jingoistic and there’s an underlying current of patriotism American-style that reflects the milieu of fear at the time with the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration, but the overall message is as resonant today as it was back then, the inuring forces of regression and xenophobia as much of a threat to be vigilant against as they were nearly fifty years ago.